[excerpt]

The next time she heard from Shigaraki’s Sensei was the day of her Todai entrance ceremony. It was the day before classes started, dedicated only to the pomp and circumstances and mixers for majors and clubs. Her and her family had just gotten home from it all when a delivery man knocked on their door, presenting a boutique box that was addressed to her.

As curious as the rest of her family after she signed for it, she’d planned on opening it in the living room. Until she saw the card sticking out of the top. 

Signed Z.S.

Zen Shigaraki.

Oh right. That was his fucking real name.

She brought the box to her room instead.

Inside, laid on a bed of dark grey tissue paper, was an absolutely gorgeous Tumi backpack in taupe. She actually remembered seeing this exact one while out shopping with her mom the other day.

Its sticker price was 12,000 yen.

There was a phone number written on the back of the card. She called it immediately.

She wasn’t sure if he already had her phone number, or if maybe he’d given her one that only she would call, but when All for One answered on the second ring, he seemed to already know that it was her on the line.

“Hello dear,” he greeted, his sickly sweet voice feeling even more disgusting directly in her ear, “I assume you received my gift. How did you like it?”

“What’s your game here?” She paced the room. She didn’t want any of her emotions — the anger, the anxiety — to be evident in her voice. She tried to channel them into her legs instead. “You make this big speech about how you’re going to disown Tomura if I don’t ditch him, but then once he actually stands up to you and you have the opportunity, you don’t do a thing?”

“Would you believe me if I said I had a change of heart?”

“Not for a second.”

He hummed on the other end of the line. Taking his sweet time reveling in his sick enjoyment.

“You know, dear, there’s a little secret to my success. A simple but crucial one.”

She stopped in the center of the room, stumped by this new tangent.

“When I find myself with a goal, I plan many paths toward it,” he continued, “I put equal time and energy into all of them, sometimes mapping out routes years in advance, but I don’t get attached or overly-set on any particular one. If one path fails, I simply switch to a different one. Or even a new one altogether. A perfect balance of fastidiousness and flexibility.”

“Can you stop the self-aggrandizing bullshit and get to the point? What do you want? I know you don’t make empty threats, so what’s the deal here?”

“There’s no ‘deal’ or duplicity here, really. It simply occurred to me that there is a path of much less resistance towards this goal I have with Tomura. I don’t need to separate you two by force. You’ll fall apart all on your own.”

That was not the explanation she had expected to hear. That’s what he really thought about Shigaraki and her? Had he not been in the office with them that day? Had he just been playing this game with their lives with his eyes shut? 

“That… that’s ridiculous.”

“You think so? Well then, I suppose we should start planning a wedding, shouldn’t we?”

Her breath hitched; her confident optimisms stopped in their tracks. Swept away by a wave of panic that the “W” word brought her.

“What… What the hell are you talking about? Wedding? Why would we—?”

“Well, that’s where you two must be headed, right? You’ve found your happily ever after at the oh-so wise age of eighteen and twenty. So why wait? If you’re so committed to each other, I mean...”

Infuriating defeat lodged in her throat. Because, of course, she had no intention of going wedding dress shopping any time soon. But she couldn’t exactly say that. Not without proving the smug son of a bitch right.

Then again, her silence seemed to speak just as equal volumes.

“...no? No wedding bells? No little storybook ending or riding off into the sunset? Are we ready to come back to Earth now?”

Her hand clenched tight around her phone, trying to ignore the bitter taste of how well-deserved his condescension was.

“Most young romances ended,” he said. “Even ‘healthy’ ones. And ‌you two are far from that, aren’t you?”

Very well-deserved condescension.

“Heartbreak isn’t just a potential for you. It’s an inevitability. Hurt and cruelty are baked into the very foundation of your relationship. You’ve covered it up for now, but soon enough it will rise to the surface again. I don’t need to interfere to ruin things for you two.”

She could hear that smarmy grin of his seeping through the phone, making her feel dirty just touching it.

“You’ll do that all on your own.”

She couldn’t take it anymore; the very feel of his voice and amusement coating her skin. She threw the phone across the room before she even realized it.

She gasped in realization when she heard it slam against the wall and drop limp onto the carpet. She rushed over to check it.

Okay, well she hadn’t quite given Shigaraki a run for his money — the phone hadn’t shattered at least, though the screen certainly had. The ‘call ended’ screen  was completely spider-webbed over.

She sighed, dropping the phone gently to the ground.

All for One… 

She hated him. She fucking hated him.

Hated his wealth, his confidence, his disgustingly resonant voice. She hated the parts of him she could see sewn so firmly into Shigaraki. Even the good qualities she wanted to develop for herself. The ego, the drive, the cunning…

But mostly, she hated how right he was.

She and Shigaraki had everything in the world — everything in themselves — working against their relationship. If she could even call it that. They weren’t even an official couple, and yet his entire freedom and happiness seemed to ride entirely on what they had. It made her feel hopeless, nauseous. It made her feel spiteful.

She packed All for One’s gift back up and slung its box under her arm, not caring how it crumpled and gave as she stormed out of her room and the house with it. She went straight to the dumpster and slammed the box down inside.

This wasn’t over, not by a long shot. All for One wanted to feign passivity? Wanted to let the chips fall where they may, confident that he had enough control of the board to win in the end? Let him believe that. She wouldn’t play his game.

She’d break the rules instead.

He's in luck: no aliens, mercenaries, or otherwise immediate threats to his continued bodily integrity.

(Bodily integrity. Henrik would get a kick outta that one.)

(Henrik is, also, why he's in this goddamn space station in the first place, helping them research some aliens that the fucking Russians, of all people, had found, so on second thought...)

You, of course, may never see inside that glass. Don't take it personally! Very few people do. The Yu brothers are... extremely selective.

He clears the line of broken glass with a crowbar before he vaults it. Security, apparently, is a joke when your entire top-of-the-line space station has been hijacked and wiped by aliens-- those damn aliens, dude!-- which means that he's a little underwhelmed by the entire space. Bright, white sterile lights, with unidentified stains on bright, white sterile floors that he's not looking too hard at. Glass cases are shattered, chairs upturned. There's a coffee mug on the table that he gives a conspicuous berth; it'd be just his luck to get murked by a Mimic when he's finally gotten into the goddamn Psychotronics labs.

At the core of Psychotronics, our goal is to push humanity to its very limit. To redefine innovation. To redefine what it means to be human.

So far, innovation looks like a whole lotta nothing. Chase snatches up a wad of inorganic material, and shoves it into his bag. He'll look and see what he can synthesize later. More importantly, he has to figure out where all the goods of this place are.

"All of this talk about redefining ourselves," he muses aloud, and circles through the lab, slowly prowling to the back. At the end of the day, he hasn't learned his lesson about the aliens having ears, and maybe he misses talking to other people a little bit, "what would I keep as my big reward? Neuromods? A fancy upgrade for a shotgun? Or another alien?"

He hopes not another alien.

Not any alien, anyways.

Chase, unfortunately, rarely gets what he asks for. See: every single event that dropped like one shitty domino after another, landing him on a doomed science project in a doomed space station.

Ssh, hang on... someone's coming.

Chase quietly, quietly, holsters his wrench. His pistol has three shots; he only really needs one for this. One for the headshot, and then he can smack the shit out of it.

I used to wish we weren't alone in the universe.

"Me and you both, buddy," Chase murmurs, and peeks around the corner. Luck is on his side, this once: it's facing away, and it's not one of them fancy Phantoms.

Child's play to fire off a headshot, and stumble the thing, before he's on it. Their aura always feels weird, like stepping into a cloud of dry ice, and the world goes a little bit strange inside of it. Like someone's overlaid 3D glasses over each other, and then turned up the contrast to maximum. It's why he doesn't pay the grin in the corner of his vision any mind; just the sensation of organic material pulping underneath his wrench. The Phantom flings him off; he ducks under its arm, and takes another swing. Stuns it. Feels the area where its ribs should be cave in. His eye throbs, just a little bit, like the little scar where the Neuromod went in is protesting; what a shame, buddy.

It's gone in minutes. A near record, compared to the near-hour that his first encounter had taken. Doesn't drop a whole lot of goodies, but he'll take what little exotic material he can scrounge up to put towards Chase Brody's Neuromod Fund, est. March of 2032.

A slow, slow round of applause sounds behind him, and Chase pivots on a heel, holstering the wrench and drawing his pistol in one smooth motion, and being greeted with something that probably was a man, once.

It looks like a man, anyways. He's not quite sure where its hands begin and the swirling miasma of... matter ends, but he's also not sure that matters-- God, Henrik would kill him-- as much as the fact that it's fixed the two brilliant specks of light that probably pass for pupils on him.

"I didn't know grunts were capable of art," it says, and tilts its head. His head? He looks enraptured, but Chase is mindful of the fact that it would be very, very easy to snap his very human bones right here. "You look lost, little rabbit."

So: about the Psychotronic's pride and joy. There are three very important things to know about the Talos I.

One: the Yu brothers, with every fiber of their being, meant to expand the bounds of the human race, up to and including sacrificing themselves for it.

Two: the Yu brothers, with every fiber of their being, believed that it was acceptable to sacrifice others with them, so long as the end goal was met.

And three: not everybody agreed with it. Least of all, the very people sacrificed.

Chase knows a thing or two about it. And he also knows a thing or two about negotiations. Negotiations, for example, for freedom, in exchange for revenge.

"Well, I was," he says. "They don't exactly give you a blueprint of the place that they leave you to die on."

A spark of interest flashes through the oily tendons that flex along his new companion's arms. Chase tries very hard not to get distracted by the literal expression of-- what did Henrik call them? Impulses? Nerve impulses?-- and tries to focus more on the fact that the hook's out.

"And you came here," his companion says, amusement warbling the edges of his syllables. He prowls closer; Chase runs some quick calculations, decides he's not good enough at math for it, and holds still, because the last thing he needs is to trigger some latent fucking predator instinct. Not latent, maybe. Very, very present. "To die quicker?"

"Well," Chase says, again, and thumbs the grip on his pistol. "You could try that. But then you'd also die a quick fucking death in the middle of nowhere, the Milky Way, because if you think that they're not preparing to blow this station-- and all of their work-- to smithereens, you're wrong."

"So you're negotiating," he muses, and halts, a bare breath away from Chase. Chase's teeth hum with the sheer energy that shivers through this thing, and he has to look up. Just a little bit. "As if you have something to give."

"A way off," Chase says. "Sure, you can try to brute-force your way off of this thing, but how much did it take out of you to get this far?"

"You assume a lot," he murmurs, and tilts his head. The hairs on the back of Chase's neck rise. "For someone who knew so little."

"And yet, at the end of the day, there's probably a reason you haven't blown your way out, to kingdom come," Chase points out. "So you're looking for something. They kept you here, like the world's shittiest Rapunzel. Two and two, mi amigo."

Chase has the distinct pleasure of watching an actual alien's eyebrows rise up the more he talks. It fades, of course, back to that smirk, that I know more than you, I have more than you, but if there's one thing that Chase knows about this station, it's that it was built by liars.

He wonders what that says about the Talos I's last creation before him.

#thyme- sfw posts

#cumin- nsfw/suggestive posts

#rosemary- romantic/fluffy posts

#coriander- angst/whump posts

#lemongrass- about the blog

#spice.txt- text posts where I am talking

#spice writes- my fics and headcanons

You blushed as he inched closer to you, but you turned your face away, trying to hide your burning cheeks from his view. He was too tied up in treating his human’s wounds to notice, but it still made you shy.

The truth was, you were just as crazy for Mammon as he was for you. You’d had a crush on him ever since Lucifer introduced you to him, and fell harder for him after seeing him stumble to show his affection for those he cared about... you could tell he cared a lot. And you remember how you felt, your boiling blood pulsing through your clenched veins when you heard the lesser demons gossipping about him behind his back.

“Yeah, I can’t come over, I got roped into playing poker with Mammon tonight... Can you believe my rotten luck?”

“Ugh, I have no idea how you can stand that guy! He’s just such a lazy scumbag and a troublemaker.”

“I know, right? He’s going nowhere fast, a real good-for-nothing. But I can’t say I hate being with him, it’s always hilarious when he screws something up!”

“Hahaha! Yeah, ain’t that the truth!”

“The funniest bit is... I think he’s actually trying. It’s sad.”

You couldn’t remember the exact moment when you launched yourself at the lesser demon, but you remembered his surprised gasp the moment he hit the floor with a raging, wildly-swinging human on top of him.

“TAKE IT BACK!” you roared, “TAKE IT BACK NOW!”

You remembered the face of this particular demon-- Mammon talked to him sometimes, introduced him to you as a friend of his, and earnestly thought of him as such. But the fact that he was standing there, laughing and insulting someone who was never anything but kind to him, even if Mammon could be rough and difficult sometimes...

It really pissed you off.

One of the other demons pried you away from him after you had gotten some good hits in, and pain shot through you as his foot collided with your unprotected stomach. Fury searing your nerves, you wrenched yourself from the offending grip and rushed toward the demon, clawing and punching and even biting with no real strategy. You were made of pure, enraged feral energy.

In the end, Mammon had to separate the both of you two. You and the demon barked insults at each other before you were carted away.

And here you were, sitting on your bed and staring into Mammon’s concerned face.

The alcohol stung against your scratches as he cleaned each one clumsily with a swab, and you shivered from the cold ice packs against your bruises and your wounded stomach.

“Jeeze,” Mammon scoffed, leaning back. “What’s got ya so riled anyway? Did he insult your outfit? I’ll have a talk with him...” He swiped his hand through his hair, still clutching the tweezers that held the bloodied cotton ball. “I can’t have my human gettin’ eaten before the Solstice. You haven’t seen everythin’ yet, so just don’t get into anymore fights and let the Great Mammon take care of it from now on, okay?”

You can’t help but tilt your chin, squeezing your teeth together. 

“He deserved it!”

You could barely stomach the insults the brothers tossed at Mammon, and how he would grumble, and hiss, but ultimately shake it off. Even when he couldn’t, in those rare moments his lips would fall and his eyes would water behind his glasses, he kept going-- he kept trying to be himself.

You loved him for that, and under it all, so did his brothers... so you could let it go...

But not from some... stupid, inconsiderate little...

“C’mon,” Mammon sighed softly, dropping his tool to rest his hand on top of your head. “I know this li’l guy and he probably didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

Your eyes stung now and you ground your teeth. 

You’d be damned if you’d cry but your throat was closing, flames licking at the side of it from the fury simmering in your ribcage. 

“MC?”

You sniffed, trying to fight back the sob clawing its way through your chest.

“Y...You don’t get it...”

“What? Are ya sayin’ I’m stupid?” Mammon chuckled dryly.

With his insult toward himself, you finally bawled, cheeks darkening with the force, as you flung yourself onto his shoulder.

“I don’t think you’re stupid!” you sobbed, “Y-You’re protective, and good with numbers, and honest, a-and.. and...”

...and so, so kind, you want to add.

Kind enough to take you under his wing, kind enough to protect a sick little girl from the human world at the cost of being bullied by those witches, kind enough to put up with the constant slew of insults from his brothers...

Kind enough to offer his friendship to some lesser demon who doesn’t even appreciate it.

“And I won’t let some dumbass little punk talk about the demon I love like that!”

Oh.

If Mammon wasn’t already flustered when you threw yourself against him, he definitely was now.

Yes, he’d just learned that his ‘friend’ was talking about him behind his back, apparently... Though that wasn’t anything new to him. He was fairly used to being disrespected, even if he was an esteemed member of RAD’s student council. He wouldn’t lie (not to himself, anyway) and say it didn’t hurt, but...

You just said you loved him, and he’d be damned if he let his anger at his former friend overshadow that.

“Hey... can you say that again?”

“He’s... a-a dumbass punk...?” You hiccuped, swallowing down some of the snot clogging your nose.

Mammon couldn’t help but laugh, pressing you tighter against him. 

Maybe... Maybe he could live with just one person respecting him.

“Not that,” He shook his head, resting his head against yours. “The other part..”

“The... other...?” You blinked before feeling more heat flood your cheeks. “Oh, shit.”

“C’mon... Just one more time?”

His voice softened, dropping to a low rumble, and you could hear the quiet desperation there. The longing, the desire, and... The hesitation, uncertainty.

You wanted to wipe it away.

“I love you, Mammon.” You spoke honestly, clearing your throat so the words would be clear. “I love you, I love you, I love you... and I won’t stand for anyone talking about you like that. Ever. Not when you are so wonderful.”

He only held you tighter, somehow wishing he could get closer, closer, closer. You were so warm, and even though your cheeks were blotchy and there were tears and snot staining your skin, you were so... beautiful.

“I love ya too... I’m so lucky to have such an amazing, fiery, cute little human by my side,” he paused, pressing his forehead to yours, “But don’t get in any more fights, okay? I don’t wanna lose you because of somethin’ some little pipsqueak said. You’re my human, all mine, and maybe that’s selfish, but... I wanna keep ya around as long as possible.”

You laugh through the tears, nuzzling him and pressing a kiss to his temple.

“P-Please… Stop, please…”

A smack. A loud one. Sounded like it was right across the face, and Dabi wouldn’t doubt if it was. Shigaraki really liked to mess up the face.

“Oh come on, you can beg better than that.”

“N-No, I— I…”

“No no — I know you can. You just were begging— begging fucking amazing too. Come on. Do it, you worthless slut.”

Dabi rolled his eyes, taking a drag from his cigarette as he stood watch outside the reconstructed Toyota Hiace they made their base of operations. One they’d gutted the seats out of to make room for a full-size mattress and some metal grating dividing the front seats from the back. 

A killing machine.

They parked it outside the city, in an endless valley of nature only ever occupied by a few off the grid campers. Ones that wouldn’t be suspicious of a lone van and two men in the middle of nowhere. They were also ones who typically had very few connections back home.

Who nobody would miss if they saw too much.

“Oi— I’m talking to you, slut! Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Jesus, this must’ve been the thirtieth time that Shigaraki called her a slut this session. How uncreative could one demented incel be? He’d kind of expected more from the bastard…

Truth be told, he didn’t particularly like his partner in crime. They weren’t friends, they were barely even acquaintances. But they were kindred spirits. Two particularly violent young men who’d met on a particularly violent darknet forum about women.

And the inhumane positions they’d love to put them in.

Of course, just because they both lived for the end result, didn’t mean that they agreed on the journey there. 

Shigaraki was a raging misogynist and by-the-book incel. He despised women, wanted to take revenge on them for everything he felt they did wrong to him. He wanted to make them bleed because he wanted to make them hurt. Because he was full of anger and disgust and hate. 

Dabi was the opposite. He loved women. The unique beauty of every single one, the range of emotions they showed in their darkest, most desperate moments. Emotions he himself was never allowed to show. Ugh, the euphoria of it all. He loved women so much he wanted to see every part of them.

Including their insides.

“Come on you ugly fuck!” Shigaraki snapped from inside the van, “Scream! It’s all you’re fucking good for!”

…Truth be told, Dabi wasn’t sure why exactly he’d partnered up with Shigaraki of all people. He’d been looking for a co-pilot for this sick and twisted little endeavor of his for a while, and there had been many others in the forums who probably would’ve been better fits personality-wise, who seemed more agreeable. Guys who weren’t so picky about the girls they picked, who didn’t grumble and gripe when it came time to finally cleaning up their mess, who didn’t use the “standing watch” excuse when it came to carrying the bodies to the disposal spots. 

Who didn’t put their disgusting fucking feet on his dashboard…

That being said, while they both lived almost exclusively on the other’s last nerve, they also had a strange, almost psychic symbiosis. They balanced each other out. Dabi was emotional and passionate, often getting over-excited by the next prospective victim, moved so intensely by his passion upon seeing a new girl walking down the street or sitting at the bar that he wanted to grab them right there and then. Shigaraki on the other hand was meticulous and paranoid, holding him back until he was absolutely sure that they wouldn’t get caught. 

He kept them careful at the beginning of the kill. 

Whereas Dabi, who truly believed that he held a lot of deep respect for the women they abducted, wanted to be careful with their bodies after the fact. Shigaraki grew bored easily and completely. He often wanted to just dump the bodies down a valley or in a back alley and move onto the next one. A broken toy wasn’t worth another second in his mind. But Dabi wanted better for the girls. He wanted them to have a proper burial. Deep, deep in the ground where nobody else could ever find them. 

He kept them careful at the end of the kill.

Dabi exhaled a long stream of smoke as he considered where their latest little sylph would be buried. They had passed a grove of what looked like magnificent spider lilies on the way out of town.

Maybe he was thinking too much into all this, he kind of had to whenever it was Shigaraki’s turn. The brutish way in which he handled and defiled these girls, it always made Dabi contemplate just what redeeming factor he had ever seen in the guy. 

And then he’d hear them, the screams Shigaraki managed to rip out of their victims. Screams that only came from a level of brutality Dabi would never be able to inflict himself. They were so unique, so beautiful, so perfect . And they were sounds that he’d never be able to hear if it weren’t for Shigaraki.

Truthfully, that alone was worth the endless collection of crushed Monster cans that littered the floor of his van.

It had gotten pretty quiet in there now. The screams, the pleading, even the choked little sobs of self-pity, all muted to nothing. There was only the creaking of tired mattress springs, Shigaraki’s heavy breathing and grunting, and the occasional sound of a slap followed by irritated mumbling. Yeah, she was losing all will to fight. Which meant it was just about time for—

“Oi,” Shigaraki snapped as if on cue, throwing the van door open, “She’s no fun anymore. You take her.”

Dabi took a long last drag of his cigarette, watching as Shigaraki climbed out and readjusted himself in his pants. His partner-in-crime gave him a weirded, disgusted look at the way he took his time.

“What’re you fucking staring at me for? You want me to off her or something?”

 Dabi waved him off, tossing his cigarette to the ground and stepping it out, “Nah, nah. I’m on it.”

“Hop to it then,” Shigaraki barked, crossing his arms and leaning against the passenger door of the van, “We’ve been here long enough already.”

“And who’s fault is that?” Dabi retorted as he stepped into the van.

Shigaraki whipped around, “Get bent!”

“I’m trying to,” Dabi threw right back, slamming the van door closed behind him.

He quickly pulled back his cool once he was inside. It really was amazing how quickly and effectively Shigaraki pissed him off. But he knew he needed to simmer it. He didn’t want to let his own anger and hate slip out too much in front of his newest precious angel. He’d hate to scare her off.

Dabi turned back to her with a small, but reassuring smile, “Hello.” 

Of course, she didn’t respond, didn’t even bother to look at him. 

She laid in more or less the same position he’d left her to Shigaraki in. Arms and legs pulled wide, cuffed to the rods mounted on each side of the van. Her once smooth and spotless skin was now swollen and purple, black and yellow in some places even, where Shigaraki had managed to break a rib and an ankle. Dry blood caked her nose and the corner of her mouth while fresh blood seeped onto the mattress out of recent scratches and cuts Shigaraki had inflicted in a last ditch effort to make her wail again.

None of that bothered him though, quite the opposite actually. He loved a roughed up woman, one at her most natural and vulnerable. It was the beauty that got him into this in the first place. No, what Dabi turned his nose up at was Shigaraki’s loads spilling out of her abused pussy, all onto her raw, reddened thighs and the crumpled tear-stained sheets. 

Ugh, see this is why he’d said no when Shigaraki asked if they should get an apartment together. The motherfucker never cleaned up after himself.

“P-Please…”

Dabi turned his attention back to her face, to her eyes, dull and lifeless, staring right through the back wall of the van.

“Just kill me already…”

Oh, this sweet thing, he thought, tilting his head at her sympathetically.

He climbed onto the mattress next to her then, resting a hand gently on her hip, careful not to put any pressure on the bruises littered there. She didn’t even flinch when he did it. She was that far gone.

“Kill you?” he asked, curiosity far from feigned.

“Aren’t you those serial killers that have been on the news lately? The ones that—” she couldn’t even finish. The fate that she knew of being too much to leave her throat.

“Huh. Are we now?” he said, mostly to himself as he had a real epiphany from those words. So they were serial killers, were they? 

Yeah, he could work with that…

She buried her head into the mattress, trying to muffle the dry sobs from ducts that had long gone barren.

“Please, if you’re gonna do it then just do it already! I can’t go on anymore! I can’t take it…”

He ran the back of his hand slowly, whisperingly down her cheek, “Talk to me beautiful. Tell me how I can make this better.”

This finally got something out of her. A snort of sick, stupid amusement, weak and wheezy.

“God, what fucking game are you two playing? Some sick good killer, bad killer shtick?”

Dabi smiled. She sure was spunky. Even now. What a lovely quality.

“No,” he breathed, dusting feather light kisses down her neck, her chest, that sweet, soft tummy… “No games.”

He buried his nose into the crux her thigh, reveling in the heat and tremble of her raw, abused thighs.

“W-What are you doing?!” she gasped, a whole new flavor of fear coating her voice.

“Just relax,” he purred, kissing a path all the way to her center, “I’m not gonna hurt you…”

She cried out as he licked up the length of her cunt, flicking the stud in his tongue against her clit playfully when he got there. She tried to move her hips away from him, still completely baffled and terrified by not knowing what he was going to do to her, but thanks to her restraints, the struggle only ended up pushing her hips closer to Dabi’s lips in a grind motion. A wanting motion. 

It spurred him on to pleasure her further as the delusion of her reciprocation had him falling utterly in love.

Shigarai’s spunk was still slipping out of her, heavy and salty on his tongue as he buried it deeper inside her, but that didn’t matter. Her own sweetness overpowered it, those resistant sobs overpowering all of his senses, sending him into a delirium of pleasure.

Fuck, how much he wanted to throw her legs up over his shoulders, coil his arms tight around her and devour her, but he resisted. He knew how raw and wounded she was, and all he wanted from her now was a fraction of the bliss that she was giving him.

“P-Please! I don’t— nngh! ”

Her sounds were brand new now — constant choked sobs of despair and self-hatred over the way her body reacted against her will. She was so raw and oversensitive from Shigaraki’s brutal treatment, Dabi’s own gentle, devoted ministrations had her ankles straining up painfully against her restraints as she came in mere minutes.

Dabi pulled away, a crooked, love-drunk smile on his face as he watched her trembling chest rise and fall, listened to the sweet serenade of her wheezing breaths.

He hummed happily as he pulled himself back up to her level. He cupped his hand gently along her cheek.

“You have a beautiful voice.”

She snapped back to him, anger tearing violently through her “afterglow”.

“ Fuck you .” she quite literally spat, a newfound fire within her that set his own body ablaze.

Dabi brought a thumb to his cheek, stroking the spit she’d hurled at him to the corner of his own mouth. His tongue reached to meet it, and he shuddered as both of her tastes mingled on his palate.

Fuck, he couldn’t hold back any longer. He quickly back onto his haunches, trying to not let his desperation to be inside her rush or roughen his movements. He still wanted her to enjoy this, but it was taking every bit of self-control he could muster not to blow his load over the sound of her voice alone.

“W-Wait!” she yelped out, as she felt him line himself up at her entrance, “You said you wouldn’t hurt me!”

“I won’t sweetheart,” he breathed, easing his cockhead in slowly, “I promise this won’t hurt.”

“But it does! You doing this now— you’re hurting me!”

He groaned as her heat completely engulfed him. Between the mix of her own arousal and Shigaraki’s, and the desperate pulsing of her insides, post-orgasm, he barely even had to push his hips. 

“There’s no need to lie now, your body’s completely giving you away,” he grinned, dropping his forehead to rest against hers, “Your pussy is sucking me right in.”

She choked out a sob as he rocked out of her just barely, then buried himself again, somehow deeper than before.

“ Fuck —” he groaned, “I couldn’t pull out if I tried. Your body just wants me that bad. Doesn’t it baby?”

She tried to stifle a moan as his soft yet sturdy thrusts hit that perfect angle inside of her. She managed to keep the pleasure of the sound locked in the base of her throat, allowing out only a stilted and very unladylike grunt in its place.

The horrid little sound didn’t put Dabi off in the slightest though. If anything, it endeared him. He smiled, almost giddily, as he watched that strain and struggle coarse through her. She really was perfect no matter what she did, wasn’t she?

They all were, after all.

“How does it feel, sweetheart?” he urged her again between thrusts, “Do you like it like this? Does it feel good?”

“N-No, it doesn’t…” she whimpered out hoarsely, that momentary fire from before quickly extinguishing as she felt her dignity once again slipping away “Just stop…”

Dabi’s brows pinched disappointedly, hips slowing to a near-stop. 

“You don’t like it like this? Soft and sweet?”

She looked back up at him, confusion creasing her own cute little face.

His hand on her hip started to tighten, nails digging deliberately into the meat of her hip, “Maybe then you liked Shigaraki’s way better…”

Her eyes widened.

“Well I can certainly do that too,” he breathed, hip suddenly snapping painfully into her.

“N-No!” she yelped, “No, please I—!” she squeezed her eyes closed tight, trying to hold back her tears, as a particularly rough thrust jostled her broken rib painfully, “I want it soft! It felt so good what you were doing before! Please! ”

“Are you sure?” Dabi tilted his head, pounding hips having yet to slow, “Don’t just say that because you think it’s what I want. This is supposed to be good for the both of us.”

“I-I’m not! Really, I mean it! I want it soft, please!” she cried out, “Please! Fuck me soft, g-gentle! Just—!”

His hips finally eased to a soft roll.

“...yeah?”

She opened her eyes then, and instantly her blood ran cold. His voice was soft and romantic, he’d gotten that part of his act down to a science, but clearly he hadn’t quite figured out how to keep that sadistic fervor from his face. 

His eyes were wide, pupils blown. He was clearly trying to keep his smile even and comforting, but he couldn’t fight the way those corners twitched higher and higher, teeth grinding and showing through harder and clearer. 

Just a horrible face. 

This man was clearly no more a voice of reason than his more blatantly violent partner outside. He too was clearly deranged, a powder keg. Completely unpredictable.

And that made him a thousand times scarier.

Dabi leaned in closer to her, fighting to keep the manic tremble from his voice, “You want me to make love to you?” 

She gulped hard, desperate to keep the absolute terror from her voice, “Y-Yes. Please… M-Make love to me…”

He stared down at her for a long moment, utterly reveling in those words long enough for her to start panicking that maybe she’d said the wrong thing. 

But thankfully — god, she couldn’t believe she was thinking that — they were exactly the words he wanted to hear. He dropped his head down into her chest, groaning unabashedly as he began to hump into her again, slower for sure, but also deeper. With his entire body and being.

“Fuck, yeah… Yeah baby. Anything you want. I’ll do anything you fucking want…”

She choked out a joyless laugh at that. Anything she wanted, huh? What a fucking joke.

“You’re so good, fuck— perfect . And you too— it’s good for you? Come on tell me baby. I wanna hear how good I make you feel—”

“Uh-huh, it’s good…” she said flatly as she slipped into dissociation.

She stared up at the same tear in the headliner she’d tried to focus on by the end of Shigaraki’s torture, thinking about how oddly shaped it was. Those kinds of tears were usually outright holes, maybe with a flap of fabric hanging off of it. Or maybe it’d be just a little tear, a small line practically unnoticeable in the dim light of this van. But this one was different. Long and unnatural, it almost looked like a big Frankenstein surgical stitch. Or like the dermal piercings running up her captor’s cheeks—

Fuck. Her eyes fell back on her captors flushed, blissed out face. The electric blue of his eyes, the babbling growls spilling from his lips. She was having a much harder time tuning the pleasure out with this man than she’d had tuning out the pain with the previous one, and she didn’t know why.

Maybe it was because he was kind of her type. That’s exactly what she’d thought when he leaned out of the car window to ask her for directions after all. Watching him move over her like this, leaning down to catch her lips passionately with his own more frequently as time went on she couldn’t help but picture an alternate universe. 

One where he really had been asking for directions to the beach. Where he’d been alone in his car rather than having a freak friend in the back, lying in wait. And where she’d been standing on the well-trafficked main street just a couple blocks down instead of in front of the empty alleyway she’d been smoking a blunt in when he’d stopped. 

A universe where they’d flirted and hit it off and exchanged phone numbers and eventually he’d taken her on a date rather than just taken her. Where these sweet nothings and pleasurable rolls of his hips were accompanied with champagne and room service rather than rope and broken bones.

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she pictured it all, what a wonderful life this could’ve been.

“Shhh, shh, shhh,” he cooed, “It’s okay. You’re so perfect, it’s okay…”

But that only caused her to sob harder, face reddening voice straining as she wailed uncontrollably. She didn’t even notice Dabi’s hand slipping up along her body and up to the base of her neck.

His thumb settled snug into that soft, sensitive dip of her throat.

God, she was crying so hard now, she couldn’t breathe.

And then he started to squeeze.

Wait, no, really. She couldn’t fucking breathe —!

She gasped out suddenly, arms instinctually shooting forward to try and force his hand off, but she was once again denied by her restraints. She quickly shifted gears, thrashing her body up and down wildly. And for a moment, she did loosen his grip.

But then he brought his second hand to her throat, pushing her deeper into the mattress.

“Perfect,” he growled through the steady snapping of his hips, “So fucking perfect…”

Her throat bobbed and begged as he constricted his hands tighter, getting lost in the song of her voice getting steadily higher, weaker, until she couldn’t form a word at all, could only gurgle and croak desperately. 

“Oh yeah, just like that. Be good for me baby,” he groaned, “Be good…”

He couldn’t say that this was the best part of these excursions, he savored every moment of it after all. 

…But there was something particularly special about these last few moments. 

It was so rare that anybody actually got to witness them, let alone experience them with their own hands — this perfect feeling of her body both tightening and going pliant around him, stiff and spasming, not to mention the view of it all that sent him barrelling frantically towards his release.

Fuck, she was so pretty! The way her drool spilled out her mouth, all gurgled and frothy. That lovely shade of blue she was starting to turn. The rabid fear that filled those eyes before they started to roll back — fuck even the pink undersides of her eyes were cute. He wondered what the backs of them, the optic nerves, looked like. He was sure they’d be adorable. 

[excerpt]

A few days later, she found herself in another familiar place — the elevator of Shigaraki’s building. She ran a hand through her hair as she watched the floor numbers change one by one, her fingers dancing with the ends far sooner than she was used to.

She and Nejire had gotten… daring at their post-graduation sleepover. Full of liquid courage and giddiness about their future college debuts, they cut Nejire’s hair to just below her ears. And as for her own hair…

Well, it was substantially shorter than she'd ever had it in her life.

She hadn't told Shigaraki about it yet, thinking it'd be fun to see his surprised reaction live. But she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a little nervous about it.

It’s not like she thought he was going to be mad or that they’d get into a fight over it or something. Not anymore, at least. In the old days, she wouldn’t have been so sure. But even then, she still wanted him to like it. There weren't a lot of mundane mental blows more fatal than when the man you loved hated your new haircut.

The elevator finally opened, and she powered through the doors. A little haircut wouldn’t change a damn thing between them. Not with how far they’d come. They’d been through so much worse together, she knew that any changes for them from now on would only be for the best.

“I’m coming in!”

Her own echo was all that responded from within the apartment.

Huh. That was odd. 

It’s not like it was weird for Shigaraki to be holed up in his room rather than hanging out downstairs or anything, but where was Kurogiri? He usually did some kind of food prep around this time of day.

Plus, they’d both been expecting her. She and Shigaraki had made specific plans to go out and celebrate together today. So, that nobody had come to greet her was…

“Well now, look who we have here.”

She felt a chill shoot through her.

So, someone was here.

The absolute last person she wanted to see.

Shigaraki’s Sensei. The man she’d oh so jovially nicknamed All for One in her head. But standing in front of her now, she regretted ever making jokes about him. Because, as opposed to what that wide, leering smile may have portrayed, there were no fun and games to be had with this man. None.

“It’s good to see you, my dear. It’s been far too long.”

She didn't understand why she was so scared. It's not like he was going to hurt her or anything. At least she didn’t think he would — that creepy-ass doctor friend of his seemed to imply differently. No, in all ‌the times she'd interacted with him, the only pain he'd ever inflicted was the strike of his cutting over-politeness and the singe of condescension.

But there was just something about being in the same room as him that made her feel like a deer in a clearing. Frozen under the watchful eyes of a predator.

"H-hello, President." She cursed herself for how shakily the words came out.

He looked her up and down.

“You cut your hair.”

“I did.”

He hummed. "Pity. You had such lovely hair."

…Asshole.

"Is Tomura here,” she huffed, “I'm supposed to be meeting him."

His smile tightened a little at the way she called him Tomura so casually.

"Yes, I believe he had a last-minute errand to run with Kurogiri. I imagine they'll be back soon though."

So she was completely alone with him. Great. That was just great.

"Ah, okay, well I'll just go wait for him in his room then—”

"I'm glad I ran into you, actually. I've been wanting to have a little one-on-one with you for a while now."

“I, uh—”

He didn’t let her argue. "It won't take long. Indulge me?"

She couldn’t think of a reason she couldn’t. Not a polite one, at least. (I’d rather take a bath in boiling acid didn’t count.) And not a fast enough one for things not to get awkward.

"O-okay... Sure. Let’s talk.”

"Wonderful.” He gestured down the hall. "Let's step into my office then."