Archive of Our Own ^beta

The grass was tall and uneven, the wild kind that hadn’t seen care in years. It made the perfect spot to sit in silence, away from the world. Slender blades rustled underneath two bodies, while clouds rolled lazily over a sky of pale blue.

The city stretched out over the distance, far enough away that the traffic noise and consistent smell of fried food couldn't reach them. Just fresh air that tousled hair and the rapid clicks of a handheld console.

Spinner sat cross-legged, one hand absent-mindedly picking at grass while the other brushed Tomura’s bangs off his forehead. Tomura wasn't paying him much attention, his focus on his game. The two had come out here for a break, both from the other League members and the constant clatter that was their lives.

“Living in the city is kind of weird,” Spinner said. “Everything’s always open, lights are always on. You can get noodles off a street stand at four in the morning.” He eyed the city in the distance. “When I was a kid, I thought cities meant something cool was always happening, but it’s not that interesting.”

“Just a lot of crime,” Tomura remarked, eyes not leaving his game.

“I guess a lot is happening. More than it was back home. Lot more heroes and stuff.”

Tomura’s fingers moved fast, thumbs flicking with precise taps. The game chimed and he grunted. Spinner expected little in the form of responses from him, and he wasn't saying much of any meaning. He was just talking to talk.

“It’s all just a whole lotta noise. Everyone too busy for everyone else. Big city folk feel like a bunch of performers to me, all dressed up and looking down on everybody like they’re better cause their life’s too fast for you to keep up.”

Shigaraki shifted, muttering something. “NPCS.”

“Huh?”

“They're like NPCS,” he said. “Everyone walks the same path, says the same lines, acting like they don't have choices. And, sometimes, they don't, so they pretend they have it all figured out to keep you from realizing the truth. Thay nobody knows what they're doing, they're all just going along with somebody else’s game.”

Spinner thought that over, plucking a longer strand of grass to chew on.

“What are we, then? The players? While they do what they’re told, we're playing the game.”

Tomura’s clicking paused, fingers stilling. His screen flashed, the large letters of Game Over appearing. He blinked at it for a moment before laying the console on his chest. His eyes rolled upward to meet Spinner’s.

“Yeah, well, players don't always win either.”

“At least they're doing something. So what if you're a loser, you played the game.”

“Inspiring,” Tomura deadpanned in response.

“I don't mind that you're a loser, I still like you plenty.”

Tomura, who had restarted his game, spared a moment to give Spinner a look that was not particularly grateful. “Thanks, I feel so loved.”

“I’m a loser, too, if it helps any.”

“It doesn't,” he said, but his lips formed the smallest of smiles.

The breeze picked up, rustling through Tomura’s blue hair. It whispered through the grass words they never said out loud to one another.

“We’ll beat the boss,” Tomura said. “Stick it to the man. Prove all of those idiots wrong. One day, Spinner, we’ll get what we want.”

“I know you will.”

“Isn’t it weird,” Tomura said, giving his lagging screen a series of angry taps, “that no matter how much you shake them up, they just reset? I don't get it, how people can be so trusting. So believing.”

“That’s what happens when someone gives you hope. Some people just put it in the wrong things.”

“You have hope, Spinner? For a better future.”

Spinner tilted his head, catching Tomura’s eye.

“Course I do.”

Tomura kept his eyes on Spinner’s for a moment, searching them for something. Then he turned back to his game, sound effects binging and buttons tapping. Spinner continued to watch him, a faint smirk on his face.

Sometimes, Spinner just liked sitting with Tomura, not saying a word. Watching him, observing him, admiring what he was like. Listening to him talk instead, sitting back and just watching. Seeing.

Tomura groaned again.

“You trying to break the cycle?” Spinner chuckled.

“You know me, always ending generational curses. Everything ends with me.” His mouth twitched, his frown reflecting on the darkened screen. “Games are fair. The rules are simple. You make your way up, you die if you mess up, you make your choices and live with them. No excuses or special treatment.”

Spinner leaned back on his hands, head tilting up toward the sky. A flock of birds passed overhead, standing together in imperfect formation as they moved across the sky. Just doing what they pleased as the free of this rule-obsessed world.

“You know,” he said. “For a guy who wants to destroy everything he comes across, you sure do appreciate the small things.”

Tomura huffed. “It’s not small.”

”To who?”

The wind picked up again, sweeping past them and toward the city. That city that would be lit up soon, windows filling one by one with the glow of human life. People with nonstop lives and places to be flowed through sidewalks and traffic-packed streets like blood through arteries. Another function. Just people doing what they were supposed to.

“I don't think I ever really believed in hero society,” Spinner mused. “But I used to want to. I think I wanted someone to come save me, to prove to me heroes were real. And, hey, maybe they are, they just don't find everyone worth saving.”

“Not much of heroes, then, are they?”

“No, I guess not. I don't think it matters anymore, though.”

Tomura didn't look at him as he spoke. “You’re worth more than any of those phony heroes and their obsessions with fame and glory they hide under the name of altruism.”

There was a celebratory ding signaling Tomura’s success. He'd cleared the level he'd been trying at. He pulled his sweatshirt’s hood over his head, blocking out the wind, and looked up at Spinner.

“We’re going to have to keep playing, even if we lose a few rounds. Next level’s coming up.”

“Who’s being inspirational now?”

Tomura sat up, tucking his console away in his hoodie pocket and drawing his knees up to his chest. He leaned into Spinner, head resting on his chest. A pair of arms wrapped around him, tucking him safely away from this world.

“Did you ever want to be a hero?” Spinner asked. “When you were a kid or something. I used to think it was cool, but I never thought someone like me good be one. Guess I was right about that.”

Tomura didn't answer right away, mulling over the question and racking his brain for an answer. He scratched his neck, fingernails attacking a persistent itch.

“I don't know.”

“I used to think about it. Being a hero. Not just for the cool costumes and the glory. I wanted to be someone who mattered, to do something important, you know?”

He rested his chin atop Tomura’s head. Tomura plucked a dandelion from the ground, pinching it between two fingers. He blew every bit of fuzz away, sending seedlings drifting in the wind to plant new life somewhere else.

“What did you wish for?”

“Can’t tell,” he hummed. “What made you change your mind? About being a hero.”

“I grew up. I realized the only people who were allowed to matter were the ones with perfect smiles and good sponsors. Not people with scary quirks.”

A dry, raspy sound left Tomura’s throat, a hollow laugh.

“Heroes are supposed to protect people, but the only thing they protect is their status quo.” His red eyes burned, sharp and heated. “Did you ever see a hero on your street, near your neighborhood? Do you think they'd be lining up to save a monster and someone who destroys everything they touch?”

Spinner’s jaw tightened. “No.”

“No,” Tomura repeated. “They don't save people. They pick the prettiest and easiest, and the rest get to be background noise, drowned out by all the cheering crowds.”

“You know what the first pro hero I ever met called me? Mutant trash. Said people like me need to be registered and contained like I was some kind of sickness going around.”

“That’s the joke of it all. They're heroes while the camera’s rolling. When it suits them. But because we don't hide our off-putting selves, we’re called villains. Villains for simply wanting to live out in the open.”

“It’s funny,” Spinner said. “They say villains are selfish, that they don't care about anyone, but it’s the heroes who hoard. They keep all of that praise, power, and peace, and they sell it back for the price of devotion.”

“Exactly. This world pumps us full of lies of what it means to be a hero, then goes around and praises those who only pretend to meet all these righteous standards.”

“What would we be, if not villains?”

Tomura slipped free of Spinner’s hold, sitting back to look at him more clearly.

“We’re the correction. We're going to fix this.”

“You think anyone will remember us?” Spinner asked quietly. “When this is all over?”

“Course I do.”

Tomura stood up, brushing dirt from his pants, and cast a quick look around. He found what he was looking for and returned to Spinner with another dandelion.

“Make a wish.”

“I wish things would get better for us,” he whispered, sending fuzzes into the wind. One stuck in Tomura’s hair.

“You’re not supposed to say it out loud,” he scolded, picking at his hair. Despite his tone, he wore a small smile. “But I wished for the same thing, so I guess it’s okay that I know.”

Tomura took the stem, turning it to dust that floated away in the breeze.

Spinner lay back in the grass, arms crossed behind his head. The blue of the sky above them was dripping slowly away, its watercolors smearing into orange hues. A chill crept into the air as evening approached, but not enough that it bothered either of them.

Tomura lay down, too, resting his head on Spinner’s stomach. He talked like he always did, not very loud, not with anything important to say, just to talk. Like he didn't care if anyone was listening or not. Like it didn't matter. Spinner was listening.

Tomura’s voice was dry, but Spinner felt every word slip smoothly over him. Sort of like rubbing sandpaper over a stone in hopes it would somehow smooth it out. It never really worked, but maybe it was the thought that counted. Maybe it was the effort. Or maybe it was just two things too rough to get on with anything else.

Spinner had learned by now that beneath the disaffected tone, and sometimes seemingly misplaced frustrations, were real thoughts, rightful anger, and broken dreams. And he wanted to unravel every single one of them, to tug on the spool of thread and watch as it fell apart. That was why he listened. He wanted to know how Tomura saw the world, what it had done to him, and how he was going to change it.

When Spinner was young, as he grew up alone and afraid, he'd never heard someone talk the way Tomura did. He didn't have a voice like that. He still didn't, not really. The kind that didn't just pick apart the world, frustrated at things he couldn't understand. The kind that saw through it, that found something wrong and found a way to fix it.

“You think heroes ever show up for someone when there's no crowd around?” Tomura said. “When there's no money to be earned?”

“I know they don't.”

“Me too,” he muttered, tugging at a loose thread on his sleeve. He yanked it off and tossed it in the grass. “They don't show up unless it makes them look good, that's what they're all about. It’s all performative.”

Spinner watched him as he spoke, catching every movement of his hands, the way he scratched absentmindedly at his skin whenever his thoughts started to catch and bump into one another. He knew what most people thought when they saw Tomura. That he was unhinged and violent, damaged, or completely broken. But they didn't listen to his words. They couldn't hear him.

“They save people when they can lift a building a crush a ‘villian.’ Not when someone actually needs help.”

Spinner felt a tug in his chest, the pull of a thread with its other end tied around Tomura’s finger. He was tugging, however unknowingly, on a part of Spinner that for so long wasn't sure if it was allowed to speak. It wasn't sure it knew how to.

Spinner didn't interrupt, he had little to say compared to Tomura’s ever-flowing mind. Sometimes he felt stupid, like he couldn't sit through a proper conversation with Tomura because he couldn't keep up. But he didn't have to. Tomura liked to talk as much as Spinner liked to listen.

He wanted to know everything that went on inside that brilliant mind. He wanted to get tangled in those threads, caught in the web of Tomura’s head instead of the rotten world they had once tried to belong to. They didn't have to be lost souls anymore, drifting through the world in hopes that some part of it would let them call it home.

Spinner’s hands curled in Tomura’s hair. Tomura crossed his arms over his stomach, inclining his head ever so slightly into Spinner’s touch. This was his home. Their home. He didn't have to wait around for someone to tell him it was okay, that he was going to be something. Right here, with Tomura, he was something.

“I used to think I was just angry,” Spinner said. “That I didn't really have a reason. I was starting to think maybe I was wrong, that I needed to get over whatever it was.”

“And what do you think now?”

“I think I was angry for a reason.”

“Are you still angry?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“Good.”

“When you talk like that, about this stuff, it makes sense. In a way it didn't before.”

Tomura blinked, a cloud of unreadable emotions passing over his face. It wasn't soft, his forehead creasing into hard lines, but there was a twitch of surprise. Appreciation, maybe. Whatever it was, it passed quickly.

“I’m not a good speaker,” he said.

It was Spinner’s turn to be surprised. He didn't agree, but he didn't say that. That wasn't what Tomura needed to hear. It would feel only like an empty compliment.

“Maybe, but you say what needs to be said, and most people don't do that. Can't that be enough?”

“It should be.”

To Spinner, it was. To him, Tomura didn't have to be the head of the League of Villains. He didn't have to be powerful and dangerous, though he was those things. He didn't have to stand atop the world and shout what he wanted, what he believed. He did, he tried to, but he was already Spinner’s hero. Better than all those fake heroes.

He was the first one to truly make Spinner feel like he wasn't the one who was broken. Like maybe it was the rest of the world that needed fixing. Because when he spoke like he did now, when he tore the mask off of Hero Society and exposed them for what they were, Spinner didn't just listen. He believed. And he'd always done so little of that.

“Do you know what you are to me, Tomura?” he said, twirling a strand of blue hair.

“Really awesome?”

“You’re not afraid to call things as they are, and to do something about it. That's why I follow you instead of any of those heroes. You're my hero.”

Spinner could tell the way that caught Tomura off guard, the way he tried to hide his face.

“Tch,” he muttered, brushing invisible dirt off his hoodie sleeve. “You’re weird.”

“Takes one to know one, I guess.”

Tomura huffed, and Spinner smiled faintly to himself. He hoped Tomura never stopped talking, that he never stopped thinking the way he did. Because the sound of his voice made the rest of the world sound like white noise. Because Tomura gave him something he didn't know he needed until it was right there, lying by his side, head resting against him.

Tomura tilted his head up toward the sky, glassy-red eyes blinking up at the pale violet creeping over them. His fingers twitched against his knee, restless as always. Spinner let his arm drape over Tomura’s chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing.

“Do you ever think about what we’d be doing if we were just normal people?” Spinner said.

He got a scoff in return. With a brush of his hand, Tomura crumbled a patch of long grass. “We were never going to be normal.”

“But imagine if we were, just for a second. I used to want to be someone, not, like, famous, just someone to people. Someone good, I guess. Or maybe just not, I don't know, what I am. Did you ever feel like that?”

“I did. Once.”

That word 𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒 hung in the air, lingering around them like the thick smoke they were no longer trapped in.

Spinner tilted his head slightly to glance over. “I think you're pretty good, all things considered.”

That got a dry laugh. “Oh, yeah? Do you think I could be normal? Have a normal life?”

“Is that something only good people get?”

“Yeah, it is.”

Spinner felt Tomura’s body tense, saw the way his jaw tightened. He traced a clawed finger across the stiff structure of his jawline. The wind stirred the grass around them, swaying against Tomura like it wanted to ease him, too.

“Do you think I could work at a grocery store?” Tomura said. “Here’s your milk, oh, my bad. Turned to dust.”

“Maybe not, but what about other stuff? Imagine it, I'd get a job to take care of both of us, you could stay at home and play video games, and make me dinner.”

“You want me to be your wife?”

“Yeah, we’d have a happy marriage.”

“Would we?” There was amusement beneath his words, and in the crease of his smirk.

“Sure.”

”That always seemed like something meant for other people. Seems fake, if you ask me, happy marriages and romance. No one really loves you like that.”

With two fingers on his chin, Spinner turned Tomura’s face toward him. “No?”

He shook his head, but he didn't deny it again. “The whole idea of it, promises, diamond rings, forever and ever, it’s insane. When you…think about it.”

Spinner caught onto that moment of hesitation. That kind of hesitation meant everything to him. It was the kind of split second doubt that had saved his life once.

“Imagine wedding planning,” Tomura said, his tone somewhat lighter. “Picking flowers, and, what do you do? Cake testing?”

“I kinda like the sound of that part. For Dabi’s wedding, we'd have to only eat soup.”

“Who would want to marry Dabi?”

Tomura’s head shook with Spinner’s laughter, and his own.

Spinner gave Tomura’s shoulder a nudge. “Do you really think love is fake or whatever?”

“I mean,” he shifted uncomfortably, like the question bothered him, “it just seems like something made up. Like it only happens in movies. And if you don't want a movie life, a wedding, and a wife, then is your love even real?”

“Guess not.”

“Is this the kind of conversation normal people have?”

“I don't think so.”

Neither of them had said anything very funny, but they both started laughing again. The sound carried across the empty field, to the clouds, and into the wind. And nobody could hear it but them.

Still laughing, Tomura turned his head to look at Spinner. The deep indigo skylight shadowed half of his face. Spinner touched his cheek, one finger sliding down to the top of his lip where the scar was. Tomura turned his face into Spinner’s hand.

Spinner sat up, forcing Tomura to move from his comfortable position. He resituated himself on Spinner’s lap, head resting against his thigh. That tender hand was still on his face, holding him there. Spinner could see him better like this.

Just for a moment, to sit in it for the fraction of time he was allowed to, Tomura closed his eyes.

With his free hand, Spinner plucked a long, slender blade of grass from the ground. He twirled it thoughtfully between his fingers. He picked up Tomura’s hand, slowly because he knew how that startled him, and wrapped the blade of grass around his ring finger.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said, staring down at his finger. He held his hand out in front of him, turning it as he examined the makeshift ring.

“If you ever wanted to get married,” Spinner said, voice low, but playful. “I guess I'd have to say yes.”

Tomura’s lips twitched with the faintest hint of a smile. “That your idea of a proposal?”

Spinner brushed his fingertips along the length of Tomura’s fingers, all except his thumb. Minding said thumb, he clutched his hand.

“My dearest Tomura, I vow to always tolerate your constant brooding and your late-night game sessions.”

Tomura snorted, his hand gripping Spinner’s in return.

“I promise never to decay your things unless you deserve it.”

“I vow to never leave you alone, even when you want to be.”

“You already do that one.”

“So I’ll make a good husband?”

“Idiot.”

“I vow,” Spinner said, rubbing his thumb over Tomura’s knuckles. “To always fight for you.”

“Then I promise,” the smirk he wore meant he was searching for something to one-up that, “to be someone worth fighting for.”

Spinner tilted his head and Tomura met his gaze. He searched for answer in it, like he couldn’t come up with a reason why. Spinner found him one.

“I like being around you.” He let the words settle between them, not expecting anything in return. To his surprise, and delight, he got something.

“I don’t usually get along with people. Especially not annoying people like you. But I don’t think I’d like it if you weren’t here.”

Spinner chuckled under his breath. “Gee, thanks. My wedding vows were a little better than yours.”

“I’m not marrying you if you talk to me like that.”

Taking his head in both hands, Spinner nuzzled Tomura’s face. It earned him an annoyed grunt, but Tomura didn’t pull away.

“Stop that.” Tomura pushed his head away. “You’re going to mess up my ring.”

Spinner pulled away laughing. “I didn’t do anything.”

Tomura held his hand out as if he were displaying something precious, looking at it the same.

“Feels weird,” he said, whatever that meant. Maybe it was weird. They were weird.

“Good weird?”

“Yeah. Good weird.”

Good weird like grass rings and fake wedding vows that might mean more than some people’s real ones. Like not being afraid of each other and not going anywhere. Like someone changing the way you see the world, and maybe some of the firmly held beliefs about all of its people. Good weird like two people who really knew each other. Like two villains doing absolutely nothing evil.