It started with a puff of pink-purple powder and Monoma being his usual dramatic self.

A training exercise went sideways, some experimental quirk mist, and now Neito Monoma couldn’t stop feeling... weird. Hot, dizzy, and full of this maddening buzz that made his heart race like it was trying to sprint out of his chest. He brushed it off at first, until he ended up at the mall—trying to distract himself—when he saw him.

There, leaning against a shop wall, was Shinsou. Hood up, dark hair falling into tired eyes, headphones slung around his neck, hands in his pockets. He looked like a fever dream in ripped jeans and that deadpan expression that could kill a man. “Hey, emo boy,” Monoma thought, dazed, the words looping in his mind like a song he couldn’t shake. Saw this boy at the mall last week... got the kind of look to make me freak.

The quirk’s effect hit hard. Every move Shinsou made was slow-motion cinematic—his voice like velvet smoke, his sigh enough to make Monoma’s knees weak. He wanted to say something normal, but his brain short-circuited the moment Shinsou looked up. That sleepy-lidded stare? Yeah, it was lethal.

“Monoma,” Shinsou said, arching a brow, “you look... flushed.”

Yeah, Monoma thought helplessly. Because you look like the embodiment of My Chemical Romance.

He tried to play it cool, but his mind was screaming the lyrics of his new internal soundtrack. Please, handsome, don’t be coy. Come on, f-ck me, emo boy— He nearly choked on his own thoughts, heat crawling up his neck as Shinsou smirked faintly, clearly amused by something unsaid.

The quirk’s pull was strong, a mix of mortification and something electric that had him teetering between laughing and kissing him right there beside the Hot Topic. And damn it, maybe the quirk wasn’t entirely to blame.

Because Shinsou looked real good right now. And Monoma wasn’t sure if he wanted the quirk to wear off—or if he wanted an excuse to keep feeling this way.