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When Spinner checks on Shigaraki this time, it’s because the silence has dragged on too long.
Those first few days since fleeing Jaku and gathering at All for One’s island getaway sucked. Shigaraki, or whatever wormed its way into his ruptured skin, recovered slowly, groaning and shrieking the entire time through. And Spinner was helpless—helpless to follow that echoing misery down the tunnel Shigaraki haunted, helpless to do anything to ease his suffering. All that pain, reduced to everyday white noise.
So when the silence hangs a few minutes too long, it’s unnatural. At least when Shigaraki is screaming, it means there’s air left in his lungs to scream with.
Spinner’s steps echo down the tunnel that had Shigaraki hidden away in, heavy with the restraint it took to not let dread run him through. Heavier still as the lights rigged up in the main cavern fade, leaving only the knots in his stomach and the weight of Shigaraki’s surviving family in his pocket to ground him. Part of him wants to reach for that hand, as if the charred flakes held any lingering warmth. He almost gives into that temptation as he leaves the light's dimmed edges, until he finds Shigaraki, kneeling placid and quiet, turned away from the tunnel entrance.
For a frustrating moment Spinner wants to yell at him, ask why the fuck he couldn’t say he was fine before Spinner got all worked up and came down this sparse excuse for a dated horror game level. That urge dies as soon as it appears, at the faint fall and rise of Shigaraki’s crooked back. Instead, he forces himself to hope.
“Hey,” Spinner says, voice breaking as he halts just behind him. Hand shaking, he reaches for Shigaraki’s shoulder. “Are you all right…?”
Shigaraki turns around.
Looks like Shigaraki, at least. Past the shield of lank hair he sees Shigaraki’s face, pale and cracked. His eyes are dark, but actually there, set deep within the rings of scars and shadows. This is Shigaraki, fully in the flesh—except for the way he looks at Spinner. Glassy and distant in the way he'd only seen in Grandpa's old taxidermy projects.
His claws skim over Shigaraki’s shoulder before he thinks to back away, and then they’re bouncing off the cavern wall, the force vibrating all the way up his arm. A strangled cry rattles in his chest, before the Shigaraki-that-isn’t gags it with a palm to the throat.
“You again.” Hell, he even sounds like Shigaraki. Raspy and irked, none of that smug drawl or delirious howling, except—maybe he just hasn’t known Shigaraki long enough to recognize this, so cold and flat. “Don’t know when to quit.”
Despite all the warning bells screaming in his ears, Spinner doesn’t struggle. For all the weight that the edge of Shigaraki’s palm presses on his larynx, his fingers are spread and distant—maybe he's being careful, maybe Spinner isn't worth the mess of decay. Still, if Spinner had a shred of self-preservation, he would get away, grab Shigaraki’s wrist and force him back.
But Spinner only has instinct to guide him now, so he raises his hand to brush his knuckles over Shigaraki’s cheek. “Sh-Shiga…wha—”
The palm grinds in further, butting up against the crook where neck meets jaw and crushing out Spinner’s last gulps of air. He’s scraped raw on two sides—the cave wall at his back, and the gnarled line of Shigaraki pressing at his front.
“This is it, right?” The chapped edges of Shigaraki’s lips catch at Spinner’s beak. They could share a breath, if there was breath to share between them. One of Shigaraki’s legs draws closer, knocking Spinner’s knees apart and stabbing in. “What you want?”
Shigaraki’s palm skids down without any reply, jabs the hollow of Spinner’s throat sharply enough that his head smacks against the cave wall. Doesn’t know what answer he would give anyways, with Shigaraki’s edges biting into his own and heated breath condensing against the corner of Spinner’s mouth, and Shigaraki’s ebbing eyes jittering away the longer he’s without oxygen.
“Can’t really blame you.” Shigaraki’s other hand snakes into Spinner’s hair, sifting and digging uncut nails into his scalp with a sigh. “What else can we do?”
Panic hits late, but hard. Leaves him squirming like bait on a hook, convulsing with that ingrained survival compulsion. The remaining dregs of light snuff out, the last thing he’ll know is the iron of Shigaraki’s grip, the bloody flint of his eyes and his mouth—
Darkness plunges and takes Spinner down with it. His knees crack against the cave floor.
Spinner squeezes his eyes tight, curling into himself without Shigaraki’s palm to pin him in place. He feels the bruise still on his trachea, can barely eke out a gasp past it. Between that, the spiked throb at the base of his skull, and the pricks of light stamping through his eyelids, Spinner is trapped.
His ears are ringing, numb in that pins-and-needles way. Somewhere something sobs, keening and bestial even as it’s muzzled and stifled, bit by bit. But it will gets its fangs back, and it will come back and consume him.
Pain pulses sluggishly at the back of his head, forcing him to screw his eyes tighter as the light stabs harder—may as well strip his eyelids out, for all the good they do. Strip out everything else while he’s at it, until he’s made weightless and meandering, some balloon twisted up into a parody of an animal and let loose to the wind.
Something cool and dry touches his jaw, trying to coax his face upwards. Spinner peels his eyes open, enough to see a broad silhouette hovering above him, and closes his eyes again with a groan.
Above the shuddering noise, there’s a whisper at his ear—“Hush now, I have you, all is well…”—and an arm looping around Spinner’s back, easing him to his feet and then back into something cold and rigid. Whatever he’s seated on glides so smoothly it almost doesn’t occur to him that it’s taking him back to the light, away from—
Alarm wrenches him around, peering around the slab at his back to search out Shigaraki’s huddled, writhing form, growing small as Spinner is carried away. Back to the way things were before.
With a heave that drags his hands to his face to keep himself together, Spinner collapses in on himself, and cries.
The last time Spinner broke down like this, it was on the bus two hours after he'd left his hometown. Maybe it was stupid, but he was leaving behind everything he’d known. All the nooks he could hide in before the townsfolk rooted them out, all the shortcuts he escaped through before everyone else had them mapped, the easiest buildings to climb before they started laying barbed wire around the roof edges and window sills. And now he was starting all over again.
So he crumbled against the window as the countryside blurred by, around the backpack of clothes he'd managed to put together, and shook. If the other passengers glanced at him when a sob couldn't be choked back, if they saw someone who might be worth checking on before turning away anyways—well, it was better this way. Fucking stupid reaction, for a fucking stupid place that didn’t deserve it. But if someone had reached out then—maybe he would have lost his nerve. Never sought out the League. Never knew Shigaraki Tomura any deeper than the fourth page in the newspaper.
It took a while to stop shaking, but eventually Spinner could follow the low timbre of the voice, still murmuring reassurances, the firm brackets of warmth holding him up. When he opens his eyes, it’s to All for One kneeling in front of him, one hand securely cupping the meat of his thigh, the other curving around the side of his neck.
“There you are,” All for One murmurs, with a light squeeze.
He’s close, claustrophobically close, the expanse of his button-up shirt brushing the knobs of Spinner’s knees. The top two buttons of his shirt drape over his collarbone, offering a glimpse at his chest. With a surge of hysteria he thinks, well, whatever the damage to his face, or the forced stagnation of imprisonment, at least that glimpse is still a nice view. Spinner squirms back, only for his escape to be blocked off at his back. He flinches, right back into All for One.
But it wasn’t the craggy wall of the cave trapping him. Just the smooth, upright seat of a chair. All for One’s chair, with all the tubes and medical equipment that kept him tethered. Of course All for One would have to stay close. Nonetheless, his scales crawl.
Throat clicking as he tries to speak, to explain himself as if he’s done something wrong by seeking Shigaraki out by himself, Spinner slumps back into the seat, eyes dropping from All for One’s scarred face to the hand on his thigh. All he can muster is a croaked, “Sorry.” It’s nearly softer than the rattle of Shigaraki’s growls and wails.
All for One hushes him, all gentle and even. “No, my dear, I should be sorry. It was never my intention for you to see Tomura in such a delicate state. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“You said,” Spinner says in lieu of whatever vitriol tries to crawl up his throat, “you said he was still Shigaraki. That wasn’t…he wasn’t.”
“Ah.” The hand at his neck drifts up, running lightly through the hair at the base of his skull. It soothes the pounding ache there, to Spinner’s disgruntlement. At the same time, the thumb at his thigh massages firmly into the muscle, as if All for One is seeking out his way into Spinner’s scales until he’s sick with the need to slough them off and let him have the remains. Still, he lets All for One hold him close, like he’s worth the tenderness. “He is the Shigaraki you care for. He’s just also…more.”
Fury shot Spinner to his feet, boiling over so suddenly that his head spun with it. All for One rose with him as though the violent motion isn’t an inconvenience, taking his arm and his back with ease when Spinner wavers on his feet.
“More?” For once, Spinner wishes he had that animalistic, guttural growl everyone expects, instead of plaintively whining, a kid upset that his friend was too sick to play. “Why does he have to be more? What does that even mean? He…he’s already so much, he’s already Shigaraki, what more can he be?”
All for One hums, like he’s seriously thinking of his answer, like the way he slowly circles his palm at the small of Spinner’s spine was just absentminded comfort. The echoing patter of Shigaraki in the background fills the silence. Some distant part of him, waiting with impatient shame for a Shigaraki he could talk to, shivers at how All for One's hand spans the width of his back.
“I suppose,” he says, slow and considering, “what ‘more’ means depends on what you think ‘enough’ is. What do you think it means, to be enough?”
Spinner grinds his teeth, glare falling back to his knees. All for One’s palm dug in that little bit harder. “It’s…”
A cruel question, for something Spinner could only conceive as a peak he’ll never reach. Something that he could only muster through being a shoulder to nap on, an agreeing voice about how the recent League of Legends updates sucked to distract from the bruises and scrapes, by offering the larger half of a split protein bar. Inconsequential things, to someone who held the country in the palm of his hand.
“...it’s being able to give everything you have. And have it matter. I think that’s enough.”
Nodding along like that meant anything, All for One rests his hand between Spinner’s shoulder blades, heavy and warm. Spinner isn’t dependent on heat for survival the way lizards were, knows that the “human” and “animal” overlap in aniheteromorphic biology is bogus. Can’t help but twitch into that scrap of warmth anyways. “That’s actually a very insightful answer, Iguchi. I certainly understand why it’s the one you came up with.”
Spinner’s lip curls. “But?”
A small smile tugs at All for One’s mouth. “Sometimes everything that we have still can’t quite cut it. I gave everything at my disposal to defeating All Might, and I still fell short. Despite everything…”
He trails off, the steady movements of his hand slowing down. It’s a long moment, one where Spinner isn’t sure if he should move away, before All for One sighs.
“Now, Tomura. He’s much like myself, once upon a time. Pushing the boundaries of what ‘enough’ meant, but he was always going to hit a limit. All the willpower in the world can get you far, but the kind of resources the heroes have at their disposal? The power that One for All has become? It’s…oh, Iguchi, how about we sit back down? You look rather peaky.”
Spinner flushes, weakly attempting to wriggle away. “I—no, I should…you need this chair, right?”
All for One’s hands don’t budge; his smile sharpens. “No reason we can’t share.”
Heat carves through Spinner like a knife, striking everywhere from the back of his neck to the bruises forming on his knees. His face grew hotter when All for One laughs, the kind of deep, solid laugh that comes from the belly. “Sorry, my dear, I shouldn’t tease—I spend too much of my time standing around anyways, it’s nice to have an excuse to stretch my legs.”
When Spinner looks up at All for One, looming with his broad shoulders and big hands and amicable grin, he’s—tempted. Too wrung out fretting over Shigaraki, over what the heroes are doing with Compress, the deepening shadows in Toga’s eyes when she returned, what could have been if he had trusted his gut about Hawks. And now his throat is sore and eyes are swollen, and his head still aches, and sitting down and letting someone else do all the fussing sounds. Nice.
He almost takes the offer, about to slump back and let come what may, when his palm brushes against the lump in his pocket.
Straightening up and squaring his shoulders. He reaches into his pocket, lacing his fingers with the remaining hand. His own body heat, pressed up against his left all day, left it warm enough for comfort.
“I should go find Skeptic,” Spinner says, eyes meeting the scarred over notches where All for One’s own used to be. “He wanted to go over something. Sorry for the hassle—and, um, thanks. For your help.”
If the rejection miffed All for One in any way, it doesn’t show; he just waves a hand with a chuckle. “Don’t you worry. Any friend of Tomura’s is a friend of mine, after all.”
Unsure how to reply to that, Spinner nods curtly and ducks his head, hurrying past to the cavern exit. Shigaraki’s screams still ring in his ears, a siren call.
“Oh, and Iguchi?”
Gritting his teeth, Spinner turns around. All for One has already reclaimed his seat, somehow both relaxed and stately in the dim gloom. His hands rest on the sturdy girth of his lap. “What?”
“I understand that you’re feeling overwhelmed right now, with everything that’s happened.” He tilts forward slightly, the open buttons again hanging open for a tantalizing peek. “I’m proud of how you’ve risen to the occasion, but if you need any support, I am here.”
Spinner swallows, gripping Shigaraki's hand tight. "Sure. Thanks."