Rough Hands - A T.ShigarakixReader Story

Gifts.

Tomura had tried sneaking into your bed again. This time without reason.
"Move." He mutters, his body half hanging off the edge of the mattress.
"What's wrong?" You ask sleepily. Tomura rarely came to your bed without reason and it had been a while since he himself had been plagued with nightmares like you sometimes had. Unless he had just been hiding it.
"Nothing." He says, scooting his body behind yours. "Don't move."
You weren't really planning on it anyway, but as one of his arms lays over you, you understand why.

You remain as stiff and as still as possible, as though one small move may scare him off, like someone trying to tame a stray dog. Your eyes move to the clock behind Tomuras monitor. Midnight on the dot.
It had been a long while since either of you had actually held the other properly. Both of you having had become more and more distant until the introduction of others into the group. Now Tomura seemed to be more interested in you again, listening to you, being a little more thoughtful and keeping himself closer to you physically.
You wonder what brought on the sudden interest in cuddling. You'd both frequently hug each other as children, seeking comfort in the other.
But that hadn't happened for a while.

His arm seems to get heavier and heavier resting on your body, a indication of him slowly falling asleep. You're surprised by it, usually it takes him a while to get to sleep, usually playing a handheld console until he literally couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. Sometimes as you turned over in the night, you even caught him staring at the ceiling for hours on end, his palms facing the ceiling too, ensuring no accidental touches during the night.
You close your eyes again, allowing yourself to slip back to sleep yourself.

-

Your eyes fall on the calendar, a completely innocent thing to do, but your face falls as you see the date, the numbers highlighted with a pink marker.
You pretend that you didn't see it, moving your face so it's cradled in your palm, watching as Tomura tries to talk sense into the restrained UA boy.
All eyes were on the restrained blonde kid, everyone gauging how he was going to react. A couple of times you had met his eyes, the red of them rivalling those of Tomuras.

Tomuras speeches weren't going down too well with  the boy, and it was fairly obvious. Even Toga, who was sat beside you had begun swinging her legs, her eyes scanning the bar, looking for something to do, trouble to cause.
Tomura couldn't seem to recognise the lack of interest he held in what he was saying, demanding Twice remove the gag in his mouth.
"Bad idea." You murmur, already seeing how it was all going to play out the second the tie was removed.
Sure enough, the second Dabi removed the scarf from his mouth, he began spitting venom straight back at Tomura.

Tomura seems unphased, much to your surprise.
He simply looks over the ranting child as though he was ten times smaller than he actually was, his chin lifting so he physically looked down at him.
He waits until the boy's finished, a slight sheen of sweat over his forehead as he looks at Tomura, his eyes bright, confident. His mouth is twisted into a smug grin.
Togas nose scrunches up, her head moving closer to yours. "He's not cute at all."
You raise an eyebrow, unsure of how to respond. She was so young, so boy-driven.
"Dabi..." Tomura rasps, turning to face the scarred man that had been leaning against one of the walls, lazily watching the two rant at each other. "Put him to sleep again."

The boys eyes snap to Dabi, the hate filling his ruby eyes immediately before he starts thrashing around, trying to get out of the bindings and snapping at the air with his teeth.
"Ah, ah, ah." Dabi says teasingly as the UA students teeth gnash a little too close to his arm. He manages to get a handful of the kids spikey blonde hair, yanking his head viciously back.
"Night night." Dabi says with a smirk before knocking the kid clean out.

Maybe, years ago, you may have felt bad for him. But the empathy had long since left you. Heroes meant nothing to you, and neither did kids that thought they were special for trying to become heroes.
The world was cruel. You'd grown to learn that.
And Dabi punching a fifteen year old in the face was just another example of that.
Twice and Magne cart the boy off down to the basement, his head lulling around as they move him, and Dabi saunters over to Tomura, speaking to each other in voices too low to hear.

"Can I keep that?" Toga says, suddenly drawing your attention back to her. One of her sharp, pointed nails was directly in the middle of the face of one of the photos Tomura kept of the two UA students.
You raise your eyebrow at the photo of the green haired boy, Midoriya, before meeting her eyes again.
"Why?" You query, distrustfully.
Her eyes begin to sparkle. "Isn't he just the cutest? I want to take him home with me."
Your eyes dart towards Tomura.
"You'll have to ask him." You say, jutting a thumb towards Tomura, more than willing to pass the slightly deranged girl over to him.

She yips out an excited "okay!" before sliding herself off the stool and practically skipping towards Tomura, tapping his shoulder despite him being mid conversation with Dabi still.
You watch as Tomura talks to her, her practically bouncing on the spot as she asks him for the photo. You roll your eyes away, briefly making contact with the numbers on the calendar again before shying your eyes away again.
You can feel people looking at you, despite being in your own little world. Trying to remember this day fourteen years ago. When your mom was still-

"Seeya Y/N!" Toga calls cheerfully, bringing you back to earth with a kiss on the cheek and a slip of her hand as she sneaks the photo towards herself.
"Oh. Bye Toga. Good work today." You murmur, picking at the bar. Your body was starting to ache now, and you wanted to go to bed.
Her entire face lights up and she clutches the huge mask that hangs around her neck happily before leaving with a wave to you.

Dabi and the others seem to slink off without much of a word, Dabi only throwing you a half glance, one of his scarred arms moving up to give you the laziest wave possible. You ignore him, knowing that it was probably best with how possessive Tomura was getting over you, never having had to share your attention with other people before had made him really sour whenever anyone made conversation with you.
You fade off into your memory banks again, trying to remember all the details you possibly could. You come out of it fairly unsuccessful, though. The faces blurred, the background wavy and uncertain.

Tomura gets up, as though he was about to leave too, but you barely acknowledge him, too caught up in your own thoughts. His back remains turned to you, his head tilted as though he's looking at something.
You feel two fingers swipe over the back of your hand, and you snap out of your trance, your eyes slowly trailing to meet a sea of red.
"This is for you." He says, sliding a book across the bar to you.
You look at it, before reaching out gingerly and touching the cover.

It was in immaculate condition. The spine wasn't broken, the pages had no signs of being dog-eared, no water stains, nothing.
It was brand new, which meant Tomura had to have somehow stolen it.
It was some kind of fantasy novel, the genre Tomura knew you loved despite having called it 'dumb' more than enough times over the years. Especially when you wanted to read instead of play with him as children.
You look back up at him, slowly moving the book closer and closer toward yourself. His body is as hunched, as 'relaxed' as Tomura could possibly get, as though giving gifts was a regular thing between you both.

"Happy birthday." He says as dully as ever, his eyes averting as he walks away from you.