ftm reader x various oneshot book

shigaraki/// "what is love"

This one. This oneeeee! What up it's your friendly neighborhood author here with a public service announcement: so, uh, this one shot deals with a lot of stuff personal to me, specifically concerning the reader's anxious tendency to pick the skin from his hands. It's just something I do, and it's hard to describe in a way that makes sense and conveys what it actually is, and my hands bleed more than they don't, and that's just the state of things. One of the reasons I have this weird attraction to Shigaraki is because I kind of identify with his anxious scratching; it's just something I can relate to? So yeah. That's it. This one's personal, that's all you've gotta know.

—-level one—-

Tomura Shigaraki realized rather quickly that (y/n) (l/n) was a generally nervous person. From the way he fidgeted his hands and couldn't quite stay still, Tomura saw part of himself in (y/n), and wasn't sure if he liked it or not.

The new recruit seemed scared of everyone. When Tomura asked why he wanted to join the League of Villains, (y/n) replied, "I don't know." His voice was so small, so lost, so quiet it almost went unnoticed. The boy wouldn't look up for too long, preferring to look down at his hands as they fidgeted and scratched.

"Then what the hell are you doing here?"

"I don't know."

"Well you've got to have some idea."

"I have nowhere else to go," the boy replied, running a shaky hand through his freshly-shorn hair. Judging from the uneven fringe, Tomura assumed the boy had cut it himself.

"And you decided being a villain was better than being a street rat?"

"Something like that," (y/n) agreed with a nervous laugh.

Tomura let the boy stay- because why not? What would it hurt to add one more person to the League of Villains' ranks? And while this boy seemed quite nervous and unsure of himself, he was also hurting inside, and Tomura knew from experience that this would take (y/n) far in a career like this.

Whoever had hurt (y/n), Tomura had a feeling (y/n) wouldn't let them get away with it.

———

(Y/n) looked around his new room. It wasn't much, but he didn't need much anyway. It's not like he had any belongings other than his satchel of books and his beloved childhood plush. He knew he should've been more practical in what he chose to take with him when he left, but he'd never been a practical boy anyway.

What few clothes he had he left untouched as he fell to the bed in exhaustion. He'd had a long day, made worse by being an unwitting recruit of the League of Villains. When their scout had found him in an alleyway threatening a would-be mugger's life, he was swept off to the League's headquarters without much question.

Pity. (Y/n) had so many questions. Not only about the League, but also about the League. He quickly fell asleep that day and fell into uneasy dreams. He dreamt of the family he'd left behind, who had so often made him feel alone. He dreamt of his friends, people he might never see again. He dreamt of being a hero, even though he'd seen the darkness of that life just as often as he'd seen the light. He dreamt of being a villain, which he supposed he now had no choice but to be.

He woke in the middle of the night and found himself unable to return to sleep. So he lay there, picking at the skin of his thumb, in a strange bed in a strange building full of strangers, and he thought he ought to be crying by now. But tears never came. He'd run out of tears a few days ago, when he was told to turn his back on his true identity in order to be deserving of love. He'd run out of tears when he left the only life he'd ever known in search of love for who he really was.