You didn’t flinch when his fingertips hovered inches from your face — the same fingers that reduced flesh and concrete to dust. You stood there, bored, unimpressed, blood drying on your cheek, as if the man who could unravel bodies with a touch was nothing more than a cigarette flame flickering too close. That was the moment it started for him.

Tomura Shigaraki had known fear. He’d seen awe, disgust, trembling obedience. People either tiptoed around him or tried to manipulate him. But you? You met his decaying gaze with one that burned back, sharp and cold as a knife dragged through ice. You didn’t speak unless you had something worth saying. You didn’t defer to him. And most dangerously, you didn’t need him.

And that made him need you.

He’d first seen you in a warehouse massacre — a rumor at the time, whispered through villain networks: an unknown force tearing apart a rival organization, no survivors left to scream. When the League finally tracked you down, they expected another unstable brute to put under their thumb. What they found instead was a tactician in combat boots, surrounded by a tight-knit, ruthless crew of your own. Precision. Violence. Control. You were power wrapped in bloodstained calm.

He told himself it was strategic interest at first. That was the lie he muttered when Dabi raised an eyebrow at how often Shigaraki asked about you. When Toga giggled about “how much you looked at her.” He brushed it off — said you’d be useful, dangerous in all the right ways. But the truth crept in like rot under skin: it wasn’t just your strength. It was the way you existed completely outside of his orbit. Like you could burn the world down without even acknowledging him.

You didn’t treat him like a weapon. You didn’t treat him like a child. You didn’t treat him like a god.

You treated him like a man.

And he couldn’t stop watching you because of it.

On missions, his eyes lingered too long. When you wiped out enemies with the cold grace of someone born for war, something twisted inside him — hunger, admiration, obsession, he couldn’t tell anymore. You were brutal, efficient, unrelenting. There were no excuses in your world. No mercy, no hesitation. You were everything he had forced himself to become — but naturally, effortlessly.

He started speaking to you more, pacing his words, watching how your gaze never softened, not even when he tried to sound casual. You listened. You didn’t humor him. And somehow, that made you feel closer than anyone else ever had. You were dangerous in all the ways that drew his breath shallow, but he didn’t fear you. He wanted you.

He didn’t know how to name it — whatever this thing clawing at his ribs was. All he knew was that the sight of your bloodstained hands made his pulse stutter. That when you looked through him, not past him, he felt like more than the sum of his decay. And when you walked away, he was left hungry for more. For your presence. For your approval. For your attention.

You weren’t his. Not yet. Maybe never. You didn’t belong to anyone.

But he was already starting to belong to you.

And that scared him more than anything ever had.

One night, he finally caved. Broke. He needed you- no, he needed to be yours. He’d do whatever it took.

“…Tell me what it’ll take,” he rasped out, voice desperate.