Brief Author's note: This story came to me while I was listening to really chill coffee shop jazz this one rainy day. Why chill coffee shop jazz? Because college is stressful and finals week is a nightmare and I needed an outlet. I would recommend listening to the music that inspired this story while reading it. It's not required, but I just think it sets the mood better since it was my inspiration.

Here is the link should you choose to listen to it: watch?v=xR4ibUq9iVw

Again, not required, but it's there if you want the full experience. I do not own this franchise, nor do I own the music. They belong to their respective owners.

Sometimes

Not much was cheery or bright in the underworld, the putrid, oily armpit of the city where the outcasts and castaways took up their refuge. It was a dirty, graffiti-etched wonderland of refuse in all its various forms, and generally smelled so terrible one couldn't walk through it without wanting to hurl. But an ugliness you can see is easier faced than an ugliness you must endure, and so the castoffs fled to the dark alleys, away from the cruel world outside.

To some it wasn't even a refuge, though, but a last resort. An only option. A necessity. To Shigaraki Tomura, it was just that. A place he stayed because Master decreed it, just like everything else. Master controlled everything that went on in the League of Villains. Sometimes he would issue full-out assaults on the heroes, a mission that would raise the villains' hot blood and push their quirks to the greatest extent. Those were the best times, when he got to show what he was made of.

But sometimes Master would issue something small, something demeaning. A scouting mission. "Go observe the enemy," he would say. Watch the "heroes" until the jealousy hurts and you want to vomit at their easy lives and the naivete of it all. Brood on it a while, Shigaraki, and let it fuel the pain you feel boiling inside.

Sometimes he hated to leave the dilapidated bar complex he called home base. Sometimes he didn't want to be alone – a drab, forgotten patch of midnight in the sunlit world outside. But he would go – as Master had said – and be out all day, watching, boiling, brooding, sneering at the common crowds and despising them for their tremulous, rose-colored boxes of security that they sat in and drooled in, like brain-dead corpses obeying the will of their masters and desiring nothing else.

He would watch people moving about the stores and shops along the streets, buying and selling whatever their hearts desired without a thought for what it meant. He would watch cars on the highways, and people walking in the parks, and their smiling, laughing faces and he would hate them all because he could never have any of it. He hated them for their ignorance and innocence, but mostly because he had none of his own. Sometimes he would wonder what it was all for. What the point of it was. Why he even tried if he was going to end up alone, time and time again.

He would stay out all day on those occasions, and late into the evening, and then evening into night. And still he would wander as though time had no meaning. Because it didn't in those moments. Because nothing had meaning and he would simply exist for that time, wandering like an ant on a sidewalk with no sense of direction or purpose until he looked up and realized that it was dark and he had to go back, whether he liked it or not.

Sometimes he would come home in the small hours of the morning and he would open the door to the old, dilapidated bar and the smell of food would hit him square in the face, brushing aside his gloom and intrusive dark thoughts like a hand sweeps dirt from a table.

The old bar was the sort that had a back room with a small kitchen area, no doubt for feeding customers back in its hay-day. Of course, no one would have come to such a run-down, secluded place just to get food, so the kitchen was hardly used. But there were days when Kurogiri would put it to use and when that happened, the smell of rice or curry or whatever he had made would fill the small building with its warmth and heaviness and Shigaraki's mouth would water at the thought of not having to eat cold soup from a can again because Master had decreed they leave immediately on their next mission and they had no time to heat up food. His stomach would growl in anticipation.

Kurogiri's face was always obscured by the heavy, purple smoke, but Shigaraki would just be able to make out the traces of a knowing smirk on his blurred features. The older villain would say nothing as Shigaraki sat down at the bar, but would slip into the back and fill a bowl with whatever he had made that night. Wordlessly, he would come back and set it in front of the young man and would calmly begin wiping down the counter while Shigaraki attacked the food with a hunger born of anxiety, despair, and days upon endless days of disappointment and failure. And then Shigaraki would remember that he hadn't eaten all day and it would taste all the better.

Sometimes it would be raining when Shigaraki came home, and when that happened, Kurogiri would wait until he was done eating and then would pull the younger villain's only other pair of clothes from behind the counter and simply say, "Go take a shower." And Shigaraki would comply, using the one flaky, rebellious shower they had in the building that, more often than not, would match the temperature of the weather outside rather than the temperature you wanted. He would wash the stress and worries away under that lukewarm water along with the mud and rain until he felt his muscles unlock one by one and his body relax.

He would come back into the main bar not much cleaner but calmer inside. Kurogiri would have turned the outdated jukebox on and it would be playing one of the few records that was still in decent shape.

Shigaraki would take up his seat at the bar again and neither he nor Kurogiri would say anything, but would remain in comfortable silence, listening to the pounding of the rain on the old walls, the noise of cars driving past on the distant highway, and the sound of soft, staticky jazz filling the room. It was such a difference from the usual tenure of his life; sitting in the dim room with its flickering bulbs and torn posters along the walls, his stomach full and his wet hair drip-drying in the warm atmosphere, leaving little puddles on the otherwise spotless countertop.

Not much was bright or cheery in the underworld, the putrid, oily armpit of the city. But on these nights, when Master was silent and it was just the two of them in that smoky, dusty, mildewed back alley, where no sound passed between them and the worries and concerns of their hectic lives pressed in against the walls and neither knew what sorts of squalls the morning might bring, this was the closest thing to happy Shigaraki ever felt.