You stand in the doorway to the bar, Toga gently nudging you more and more so that you're slowly edging in.
You're clutching the pages close to your chest, as though they'd fly away, or at least act like a barrier to keep you safe from what you were about to do.
"Come on!" She encourages. "He's not that scary!"
You'd beg to differ.
Even hunched over at the bar with some kind of handheld console being held by careful and thin fingers, he radiated an air that demanded to be feared and respected.
And sure, he wasn't cruel to you, he didn't bully you or lay his hands on you. At the most, he was indifferent towards you.
You're unsure if your wariness of him came from Dabi's anger when you'd first met him, or from Shigaraki himself, but all you knew was that you had to be on your best behaviour around him, lest you piss him off again, and by extension, Dabi.
Toga gives you another shove, a little firmer this time, finally pushing you over the safety threshold of the hallway to the bar.
Kurogiri picks up on you straight away, turning to face you.
"Miss Star, have you finished your worksheets?" He asks.
You shake your head, your head twisting to look at Toga as she darts back up the stairs, giggling.
Kurogiri gives a slightly judgemental 'hm', which you don't particularly care for.
"Do you need my assistance?" He asks, tilting his head slightly.
You shake your head again, slowly backing away from him and towards Shigaraki, who was still completely enthralled in his game.
When you get close enough to Shigaraki to speak to him, you clutch your papers even tighter to your chest.
"Um, Shigaraki?" You ask quietly.
"What?" He replies bluntly, not looking away from the screen in front of him.
"Can you help me with my math work please?" You practically squeak.
"Ask Kurogiri." He grunts, waving at you lazily.
You look over at Kurogiri briefly before looking back at Shigaraki.
"Please?" You try again. "Dabi said you're smart at math..."
Shigaraki fell quiet, his fingers stopped mid-clicking.
He glances at you curiously after hitting pause on his game.
"He did?" He asks, almost suspiciously.
"Mhm." You nod a little, loosening your grip on the papers to your chest, feeling slightly more comfortable now you'd spoken to him a little and hadn't been outright snapped at.
Shigaraki seems thoughtful as his eyes slide back to the screen, resting on the pause menu for a little while before he huffs.
"Fine." He agrees gruffly, placing the handheld console to the side and giving you his undivided attention. "What math is it?"
You clamber onto the stool next to him, shyly placing the papers down onto the counter.
He looks down at them for a half second before looking straight back up at you with what would probably be a raised eyebrow if he didn't have all the scarring around his eyes.
"I got mad." You mumble, half-explaining the angrily scribbled over worksheets.
Shigaraki hums harshly, calling over Kurogiri and thrusting the papers towards him.
"Print off more of whatever these were." He orders.
While Kurogiri goes to follow Shigaraki's orders, Shigaraki frowns at you once more, leaning his face onto his fist.
"What was it? Sums?"
You nod, feeling your face burn up as he stares you down.
Your mind keeps half going back to what Dabi had said about them kissing, and you can't help but take occassional glances at Shigaraki's dry, cracked mouth, fighting the urge to scrunch your nose up in disgust. Kissing was so gross.
"Subtraction, addition, multiplication...?" He sighs, waiting for you to elaborate.
"Taking away." You reply in a mumble, looking at your hands.
Kurogiri places the newly printed sheets between you, his other hand placing a glass of apple juice in front of you.
You thank him, Shigaraki doesn't, instead leaning closer to you ever so slightly to read the questions and tips on the sheets.
You watch him as you sip your drink, watching his vermillion eyes scan the page quickly, his cracked lips parted, his pale hair hanging limply in the way of his face.
"What's the problem?" He asks, leaning back after looking over them all, staring at you once more.
"The numbers are too big, and the way they say to work it out doesn't make sense." You huff, frustrated already without even started on the math again.
Shigaraki looks down again, giving the papers another look, before grabbing the pen and writing down one of the sums, one of the figures written over the other, with a line underneath it.
You watch in fascination as he does so, looking up at him when he addresses you.
"Try this instead." He says calmly.
He explains how to use what he's done to figure out the answer, gently marking figures onto the page with the pen to help you understand.
You quietly listen and watch, trying to soak in what he was saying, nervously taking the pen from him and suddenly feeling pressured as he stares at you, waiting for you to solve the equation.
You're almost in 'freeze' mode, moving the pen backwards and forwards in your hand as you stare at the numbers on the page, the numbers seeming to distort the more you get anxious about the fact he's watching you.
After a couple of moments of you not doing anything, Shigaraki seems to pick up on the problem, making a show of huffing and picking up his console again, his pinkies raised. Noises come from the game, and the crushing pressure you were feeling disappears, allowing you to begin trying to complete the question.
"Shigaraki?" You ask quietly after figuring out the first half of the question.
His red eyes slide to look at you, his thumb pressing the pause button again.
"I put the ten here?" You ask, pointing with the pen.
He nods curtly, watching briefly as you mark the ten down, quickly returning his attention back to the game.
You manage to finish the equation using this method without getting angry or frustrated once, and you feel your heart lift a little with hope.
"Uh, Shigaraki?" You call quietly, not wanting to disturb him too much.
But he instantly pauses the game, placing it back down and paying attention to you once more, his eyes flickering over the sum for next to no time at all, giving another small nod.
"It's right?" You ask enthusiastically, perking up your shoulders.
"It is." Shigaraki says, taking the pen from you despite your flinch at his hand being so close, and drawing out the second sum. "Do it again."
"But, um, it doesn't say to use this way..." You point out cautiously.
Shigaraki shrugs, picking up his games console again in a careful grip. "Who cares what method you use as long as you get it right?"
You suppose he has a point, so you get straight to work, using the method he taught you to figure out the question that you'd struggled with so much on your own.
It takes a lot less time than your first attempt, and you push the paper a little more towards him when you're done instead of calling him.
He doesn't pause his game this time, simply giving it a quick glance and nodding again at you.
"Do the rest on this page yourself." He instructs, giving you a quick look.
"Okay!" You agree, carefully penning out the way he'd drawn the sums.
You silently work on them on your own while Kurogiri cleans glasses, and Shigaraki continues playing his game, the sounds of metal clanging, yelling in-game and the buttons clicking the only other sounds filling the bar apart from the scratching of your pen against the paper.
There are a couple answers you're not confident in, but you manage to get them done without scribbling angrily on the page once, even if you nearly came close on the final equation.
"I'm done." You inform Shigaraki gently.
He grunts, clicking another couple of times before laying the console down and looking over the worksheet again.
You wait anxiously for him to tell you which you'd gotten right, only for him to nod curtly at the end.
"Only one wrong." He says, pointing at the final sum. "You got the first sum wrong here."
He points at where you went wrong. "This should have been fourteen."
You groan in frustration, slumping a little.
"Did you get angry?"
"Huh?" You ask, confused by the sudden unrelated question.
"Did you get angry and want to scratch them out?" He repeats, his red eyes moving to meet yours.
You shake your head. "Only once..."
"Then count it as a win. One out of six isn't bad." He tells you gruffly.
He moves the completed sheet to the back carefully, smoothing the new clear sheet down.
You're too busy relishing in the slight praise that came from Dabi's boss to pay attention to Kurogiri swapping your empty glass of apple juice with chamomile tea.
Shigaraki gestures to the page of unsolved questions.
"Try again." He instructs, once again leaving you to follow the example he'd given you.
You nod eagerly, wanting to hear any more praise you could possibly get from him.
The questions on this sheet were a little harder, and needed more time for you to figure them out. You were having to use your fingers a little more to count, and eventually, Shigaraki had slid from his seat, disappearing upstairs, only to come back with lego pieces placed in a bowl.
"Use these." He'd said, placing them next to you.
Surprisingly, this helped a lot for when you were struggling to remember where you'd counted to on your fingers.
You couldn't help but look at him as he was distracted by his phone at one point and think: 'wow he really is smart.'
He seemed to pick up on problems you were facing without you even voicing them and find solutions to help you without you asking.
It isn't until the last question again that you're stumped, and actually have to ask him for help.
"Shigaraki...?"
His eyes slide over to you, looking at you through gaps in his hair.
"This question is impossible." You say, pointing at the final question. "I've tried working it out three times but there's nothing lower than zero."
"There is." He replies simply.
You stare at him blankly, your mouth a little agape, your brain trying to figure out what could possibly be lower than zero.
"The negatives." He says, putting down his phone and reaching for the pen, holding his hand out just shy of yours.
He even must have noticed you didn't like him getting too close to touching you.
He draws a line on the paper from ten to zero, and then zero to minus ten, explaining how you would get to a minus number.
You groan a little, lamenting at the fact there were more numbers than you'd originally thought. You catch him looking at you with a strange expression, his fingers twitching slightly, but its only for a second before he encourages you to continue.
He watches as you use his chart, adding more numbers to it yourself to help you figure out the question.
You manage to solve it, or so you think before he shakes his head, going over the few math questions you got wrong and correcting them, telling you where you went wrong a little more bluntly than you'd like, but at least he wasn't calling you an idiot.
A little disheartened, you start working on the final sheet, finding the bravery this time to ask Shigaraki for help whenever you need it.
He's surprisingly helpful, even if his delivery is a little blunt sometimes, and you find yourself easing more and more into his company.
You manage to finish the final worksheet with no wrong answers, thanks to his help, and you're thrilled about it, proudly showing Kurogiri, who politely expresses being impressed too.
"You hate math, right Star?" Shigaraki asks, running his finger around the rim of his glass.
You bob your head up and down enthusiastically. "Math sucks!"
"Want me to destroy it?" He asks, making a crushing gesture with his other hand. He's smirking a little on the scarred side of his lip.
You look thoughtfully down at the sheets, the one you were proud of in your hand.
You push the two with mistakes on them towards him, keeping the correct one in your hands.
"You can rot these two, but I wanna show Dabi this one." You say firmly.
Shigaraki's eyes gleam in amusement, but he nods, picking up the sheets carefully, lifting them and then squeezing his fist around them, the paper quickly turning to ash and falling to the bar.
You clap with enthusiasm, letting out one excited giggle.
"Stupid math!" You cheer, catching yourself with a blush when you realise you're being a little louder than Shigaraki usually allowed.
He doesn't seem fussed though, watching the flakes fall from his hand onto the bar's countertop.
His eyes slide towards you again, his lips tugging upward in the slightest smile, it's a little mesemerising to see considering he usually looked angry or unapproachable all the time.
"In my world, everything we hate will be destroyed." He promises lowly.
He says it with such conviction that you just nod a little in agreement, wishing that you could have a Dabi head-pat right about now.
Shigaraki didn't seem the type to like physical contact, and you weren't overly sure that you wanted him to touch you with his fingers outstretched just yet.
"Shigaraki?" You ask, swinging your legs again. You were happy with the outcome of the evening, and you had a bright idea.
"Yes, Star?" He rasps, looking over at you.
"Can you fist bump?" You ask, making a fist.
His eyes narrow, before relaxing again and giving a singular, hard laugh. "Yeah. I can fist bump."
You reach your hand out, waiting for him to bump his fist against yours.
He makes a fist too, gently knocking his knuckles into yours.
"Good game." He says simply. "Now go to bed, brat."
You beam at him, not that he's paying any attention to you.
He had called you a brat again, but he'd also helped you with math without yelling at you or calling you names, as well as bumped fists with you.
You had a feeling he didn't mean it this time.
"Thank you Shigaraki!" You exclaim, sliding off your seat and rushing off upstairs.