Make the world spin again
Spinner x Reader - 3,7k
Wake up. Eat. Move his body around. Go back to bed.
The days have started to blur together, and Shuichi picks up pen and paper again and again, hoping, wishing, craving for an idea to come. Something to make the world spin again, to make him feel again.
He gets to see the sky for about one hour a day. Gets to take a breath and suck in fresh air, taste the fresh snow, and the first warm breeze of spring. Summer arrives overnight, the sun baking the stones with unexpected warmth.
Shuichi measures time by his fingernails. Almost a month has gone by again, the sky above so blue it looks painted, unreal.
They call him inside a little earlier, and he knows he’s not done anything to deserve the cut to his limited freedom. But he’s learned to listen first, demand answers second. He’s learned to be a quiet observer.
He’s led down unfamiliar hallways until they reach a room he knows again.
“A visitor?” He asks, surprised, well aware of the state of his hair and his nails, the rough stubble that’s not quite a beard and not quite nothing either. “Is it the boy?”
-
It’s not the boy.
Shuichi drinks in your sight. It has been a while since he’s seen a woman, let alone one this pretty. You watch him just as eagerly, eyes flickering over his features as you take him in.
“You look good,” you mention after a minute of silence, shifting in your chair. “I- I was afraid-”
“What?” Shuichi crosses his arms over his chest, feeling a little naked in his overalls. You’re dressed in chic business clothes, and he hopes he’ll get to see you leave, wondering if you’re wearing trousers or a skirt underneath the table.
To be fair, he hasn’t seen a woman in a looooong time.
You push out a breath and a laugh, surprising him. “Do you recognize me, Shuichi?”
He narrows his eyes. Wonders. Sure, your eyes look familiar, but he could also be reaching.
Silence stretches as you worry at your lower lip, teeth digging into the sensitive skin there. A memory itches at the back of his head, the name inching to the surface just as you open your mouth to explain.
“Little Miss Piggy?” He asks, cringing when you flinch at the unflattering nickname you earned in elementary school, never to be seen without your trusty pink backpack. “How? Why?”
“I read your book,” you admit, fiddling with your fingers. “And I-I’m sorry. For never speaking up. If I had, you wouldn’t-”
“If you had, they would have killed you,” he cuts you off. “I’ve got tough skin.” Shuichi sighs. “If anything, I should have helped you.” He swallows thickly. “I’m sorry they said all those things behind your back.”
“It’s fine,” you shrug your shoulders. “It doesn’t define my worth as a person if a couple of dickheads think ill of me.”
Shuichi laughs, surprised by your words. “Look at you, you learned how to curse.”
“Ah, don’t start,” you wave him off, but your grin is proud, he can tell.
He can’t help but smile back at you, his heart squeezing. “I can’t believe you went through all the trouble to visit me.”
“Why not? Oh,” you jump, reaching for something next to the table. “I brought some things. I was told you’re not allowed to keep anything, but I’ll bring better stuff next time.”
“Next… next time?” He asks, hands sweaty as you lift a box onto the table.
“Yeah,” your smile is wide, almost a little naive. “Here, I got pictures of all our old classmates and wrote down what they’re doing now. You’ll be delighted to know that all our old bullies have sucky jobs or a beer belly.”
-
Your face sits on the last page, right next to his.
You cut out the picture they used for the back of the book, he can tell, and there’s not that much difference between the boy he used to be and the man he is now. There’s always been darkness in his eyes; it’s just more visible now.
“I can’t believe you’re a psychologist now,” he mumbles, brushing his thumb over the picture of little you, pigtails and ill-fitting glasses. “And you lost the glasses.”
“Contact lenses exist for a reason,” you mutter, pulling the book toward yourself with an apology. “I have to go now,” you explain quietly, pulling out a pack of Chuupets, the cheap kind you get at the corner store. “One last snack for the road?”
“Sure,” he wishes the taste would linger, but he sucks it up too fast, like he always does. He can already feel the emptiness your departure will leave behind. Wouldn’t he have been better off without meeting you in the first place?
Your voice is cheerful as you gather your stuff, your words barely reaching him.
“I get off earlier on Tuesdays. I talked to the guards, and I get an hour every week, so if you want something special, let me know, okay?”
“Sure,” he nods, but keeps quiet otherwise, his mind so clouded he can’t even appreciate the sight when you get to your feet. You’re wearing a skirt, after all, one that shows off your ankles in the best way.
Shuichi knows he will be dreaming of your face for a while.
-
Wake up. Eat. Move his body around. Go back to bed.
He’s started filling up the pages again. Dreams and memories, all mixed in a poutpourry of soft colors. The taste of cheap chuupets and the laughter of children, your small hand on his elbow, your thumb tracing the inside of his palms.
“I like your skin, Shu,” you giggle, brushing over it. “It tickles.”
Tuesday rolls around. He squashes his hopes at the bottom of his heart, though not far enough down not to care about the length of his nails and the mess of his stubble.
He’s clean-shaven when the guards come to fetch him, not the least bit mad about the fifteen minutes that get cut out of his sky-watching time. The soft blue is dotted with clouds today, like cotton candy or the puffs of white you only get to see on cold winter nights.
“HI!” You greet him cheerily this time, blazer draped over the back of the chair. His eyes linger a little too long on the soft skin of your arms, his heart in his throat as you smile back at him.
“You didn’t say what you wanted, last time,” you tell him, your voice quivering funny in the middle. “So I brought chocolates. I hope that’s okay? I made them myself.”
He tries not to read into the heart-shaped chocolates that look like they could have been a Valentine's present months ago. Even if you’ve written his name on them.
Hope has never done him much good, has it?
-
- x - months later -x-
-
“This is a really stupid idea,” he points out, yet unable to keep his knee from bobbing up and down.
Your hands are folded around one of his, and he knows it would be best to pull away, but your skin is warm and soft, and your eyes seem a little too deep to still be considered normal. Is this your Quirk?
“Why?” You ask, squeezing his hand. He squeezes back before he’s fully thought it through, and curses you under his breath. “You love me, don’t you?”
His breath hitches. If he could blush, he would. “I never said-”
“Didn’t need to,” you shrug. “I always knew,” you duck your head, flustered. Why are you the one flustered? His grip tightens, and you look up again, smiling softly. “Was I wrong?”
“N-no, but-” But he’s in jail. But he’s killed people. But-
“Just say it, Shuichi,” you ask him, and you could ask him to kill with that voice, and he would. Though killing isn’t as hard nowadays, not when one has done it before. You’re asking for something much more difficult, something he’s not yet sure he can. You’re asking him to live for you. To hope.
“I love you,” he admits, quietly, barely audible. But his own heart hears it and squeezes hard at the implications. You squeeze his hand as if you know. You probably do.
Your lips stretch into a smile, and then you lean over the table, fast enough that the guard by the door stirs in worry. Your lips press against his, warm and soft, like all you’ve ever been.
You giggle as you move back. “I like your lips, Shu. They tickle.”
-
-x-
-
He leaves his cell with nothing but the clothes on his body and a bundle of pages tucked under his arm.
A heavy weight on his right ankle reminds him that he’ll never truly be free, but he can’t quite worry about that when your arm is hooked through his, your cheek pressed against his shoulder.
Shuichi is a famous case, he knows. One slip up, and he’ll be locked up forever, taken from you, you taken from him. They can hurt him more, now that he’s got something to lose again.
The tinted windows hide the world from him until the police car reaches your district. One window rolls down, and you point, show him the world.
“That’s the corner store I always go to. The park is really nice here, we can take a walk after work. Oh, and this is where I go to do my laundry, the lady there is so sweet, she’ll love you.”
He can tell you’re nervous. Can feel the tremor in your hands as you tug him up the stairs to your apartment, one police officer in front of you, one following close by.
A tiny kitchen, an even smaller bathroom, a bedroom overlooking the park, and a living room. It’s far larger than his cell, far comfier than any place the League ever got to crash at. Pictures and paintings line the walls. He traces the patterns, lost in them as the police search through your stuff once again.
“Did you paint that?” He asks, your hand in his, lost in the moment as the world tilts on its axis, starts spinning again.
“Yeah,” you admit quietly, though say nothing more about the green and the pink, a memory of a memory.
“It’s beautiful,” he breathes, and though he’s not quite ready to admit to himself that this is how you see him, he can admire the way you see the world.
-
The sweet lady at the laundromat takes a while to warm up to him, but she shows him how to properly wash your clothes so that your chic work blazers don’t come out all wrinkly. She laughs when he finds one of your panties in the mix and needs a five-minute pep talk to fold the darn thing. And she offers him a bottle of chilled tea when he manages to fix the broken clock above the door, a thing she’d been worrying about for at least three weeks.
Life is a quiet thing. It stretches out ahead of him for miles and miles and miles, but all he can see is your face when he wakes up, your hair a mess, or that mischievous twinkle in your eyes when you try to catch him by surprise, forgetting that he can see you in the bathroom mirror.
He’s filled more pages with his thoughts. Short stories, recollecting all the good and bad he comes across each day. The fact that they stopped producing his favorite lemonade. Or that they’ve started making ice pops out of heroes, enabling him to bite off the heads of people he does and doesn’t like. How hard it is to iron a fancy blouse or his never-ending questioning of period products. How is he supposed to bring home the right stuff when they keep changing the packaging design? He’s a simple man, he just wants to grab the purple box and go home.
-
At some point, Shuichi runs out of paper. Or rather, he runs out of space.
You take them to the office with you, just another space that exists out of his reach, where you digitize them, send all the data off to the poor agent who agreed to sell his first book.
Shuichi doesn’t think anyone will want to read his musing about love or life.
But he doen’t say no when they agree to print it. Picks one of your paintings for the book cover, the greiyish blue reminding you of the sky when they called him in to meet you, and somewhere, somehow, it also reminds him of Shimura. He wonders if his friend would have liked you.
He tapes the ring onto the first page of his new book, right below your name, the one only he gets to call you. It’s nothing fancy, god knows he doesn’t earn much money to begin with, but he paid for it, and he picked it out by himself, glad that they got at least one jewelry store that he’s able to reach.
You say yes without crying, and he’d wonder if that’s a bad thing if you didn’t seem so happy about it, dotting hundreds of kisses all over his face until he can’t help but catch your face in his hands, holding you still. “My lips are here, idiot,” he chides, pulling you in.
-
It takes them a while to get approved for the wedding, and Shuichi insists that you keep your last name. It’s better for your business, better for you.
The only friend he could think of to invite is still in jail, and he can tell that most of your friends aren’t too fond of him, anyway. But they come, and they raise their glasses for a toast, wishing you well. And who could argue against your happiness when you look like one of those cotton candy clouds drifting by, floating at least two feet above ground, untethered. He hands you a pebble, and you make it the moon.
-
-x-
-
If Shuichi believed in Gods, he’d think they tapped the earth a little too hastily, made it spin the other direction by accident.
How else could he explain the picture taped to the bathroom mirror, a white dot in a sea of black?
His kid, your kid, their kid.
You write lists as he makes dinner.
“I’m sending in a request,” you tell him as you write down the words. “So you can come to my doctor's appointments.”
“They might not allow it.”
You scoff. “I will fight them if they don’t.”
“Hey,” he stops cutting the carrots and waits until you look up. “It’s not that big of a deal, okay? I’ll be okay missing the appointments if I can be there with you during the birth.”
“Yeah,” you nod, sighing. “I get it. I just… I want you to hear the heartbeat with me. You’ve been good. You deserve to be there.”
“The police might not agree with you there. After all, I wrote about biting people’s heads off.”
“You wrote about ice cream,” you correct him, leaning in for a kiss. “I’ll put you down for the prep courses as well. You’ll need all the info you can get, since you’ll be a stay-at-home Dad.”
“Do you think it will be a girl or a boy?” He asks, dropping the carrots into the pot. What he really wants to ask is if you think they’ll have your Quirk or his.
“I don’t really care,” you shrug. “I hoped for twins, to be honest, but we can try again once we find a bigger apartment.”
“A bigger apartment?”
You nod, chewing on your lips. “Your books keep selling. I know it’s risky, but we’re going to need the space when the baby is here, right?”
Shuichi nods. Waits until you’re distracted again before he jokes. “If push comes to shove, I’ll just rob a bank.” He revels in your laughter, the easy way you brush over it. He knows you know he’d never do it. He’s got too much to lose.
-
Your belly grows.
Shuichi cries when he gets to hear the heartbeat, his own heart squeezing in tune, your hand in his. They want to know the gender, but their little gremlin doesn’t quite care for their wishes, turning one way or another, always a little out of reach.
“We’ll just paint the nursery green,” Shuichi decides eventually, the room still unfinished.
Their new apartment no longer overlooks the park, the sight of the street below a little jarring.
“I could paint a mural,” you offer, fingers twitching. “I saw this textured paint at the store. Can I?”
“It’s your wall, too,” he points out, fiddling with the unopened package of the baby bed before ripping it open. “Go ham on it.”
-
Nothing’s quite done when you wake him in the middle of the night, breathless from pain.
Shuichi’s not allowed to drive a car. The ambulance isn’t allowed to take him with.
He has to wait half an hour for the police car to arrive, thirty endless minutes of waiting, cursing, hoping. But he makes it in time, glad he can make it at all, won’t budge from your side when the nurses ask him to leave. Like hell he’s going to wait outside as you bring a new life into this messed-up world. He holds your hand, pushes your hair back as you scream, watches with bated breath as a restless, hungry, screaming thing is placed into your arms. A girl. Pinkish hair a mess, skin freckled with green. Not quite him, but not quite you either. Eyes wide open, drinking him in.
“What should we name her?” You ask, and they’ve talked about it before, all the names that mean something to either of them.
Shuichi knows he could never name anyone Tomura, has a million reasons not to.
But he looks into the eyes of his daughter, and she looks right back at him, a little too daring for a life this young, and he laughs.
“Himiko,” he says, breathing it out as if he should have known. “Don’t you think?”
“I like it,” you agree, and Himiko wails as if she, too, feels the same.
-
-x-
-
Another book, written in the spare moments of peace he finds between changing diapers and doing the dishes. He thinks up funny names for it as it grows, things like “How to raise your kid into not becoming a supervillain” or “Daddy for Dummies”. It’s a love letter to Himiko, that’s what it is, despite his claims. To her shrieks of joy and wails of misery. To the lovely scent of her skin and the stench of her farts. To the ten perfect little toes, two of them green, and the fingernails that are a little too sharp for a newborn. To her funny little skin, that tickles, and the red of her eyes.
To the dreams she has now, and the ones she’ll live out in the future.
-
He’s known by now. Not as Spinner, the villain, but as Shuichi, the father.
The neighbour that can be found walking the streets in ratty pajama pants and a stained flannel because Himiko only sleeps when she’s being moved, and a stroller is the best he’s got. The husband who keeps asking if his wife’s favorite chips are back in stock and pays extra to get them delivered faster because he knows she’s craving them. As the guy who keeps trying to convince the cats that he is, in fact, not edible, lizard traits be damned.
Some people start greeting him on the street. An older lady down the block gifts him a plushy she’s made by hand, a monstrous green thing that might have been planned to resemble him. Himiko keeps dragging it everywhere she goes, her first two teeth digging into one corner if she’s got her hands otherwise occupied.
Once, he even gets asked for an autograph, and he gives it, proud to write his name in the book that you inspired.
He barely feels the weight on his ankle anymore.
-
-x-
-
You like to pick Himiko up from preschool when you can
He puts Juro back to bed as he waits, watching the street below for your familiar face. Has it really been years since they moved in?
He looks around for proof. His son, curled up next to him. Ten tiny toes, two perfect little fists.
Marks on the doorframe, Himiko’s growing frame. A new painting hanging above their bed. Yet another one of his books on your nightstand, an ultrasound picture tucked between the pages.
-
“Daddy!” Himiko climbs him like a tree, takes perch on his shoulders. “Can you teach me how to punch?”
“Sure,” he says, leaning in to kiss you. “Why do you need to know?”
“The boys are being stupid.”
“They always are,” he agrees, helping you out of your jacket. “What did they do now?”
“They’re making fun of me,” Himiko exclaims, and he would have reacted differently if not for the absence of anger or hurt in her voice. She just sounds annoyed.
His eyes cut to yours. You don’t seem to know more about the topic.
“Okay, peaches,” he pats her knee. “Can you tell me more?”
“I’ll get Juro,” you mumble at the low whining coming from their bedroom.
-
Tiny fists collide with his palm. Himiko’s focused as she keeps practicing her punches, whooping when he acts accordingly.
“Did I hurt you, Daddy?” She asks, hugging him tight. “Did I hurt you?”
“A little,” he lies, because she’s only four and he’s fought in a war. “Now, remember what we told you!”
“Don’t punch until you’ve tried talking it out,” she repeats like the good girl she is, before she blinks up at him. “And if they’re really mean, you can beat them up, too. Right, Daddy?”
He laughs. And wants to promise he will.
But your voice, soft like a summer breeze, catches him nonetheless.
“No, Himiko. Daddy won’t beat anyone up.”
“Why?” Himiko asks. “He’s really strong.”
Because I’d go to jail, he wants to say. But Himiko’s still too young to understand. Maybe she’ll be lucky enough never to understand.
“I’ve got something more powerful than my fists,” he says instead. “I’ve got my words.”
And it might have sounded corny - and not at all cool enough for his daughter's liking - but he revels in the warm glow of your affection.
After all, he’ll never grow tired of you being proud of him.
-
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