he drops the package unceremoniously on the countertop in front of dabi ; there’s no bows , no fanfare , no little card with his adoration ascribed in cramped lettering : just a box with the price tag still attached . ❛ take it . ❜ it’s just a box of white chocolates . ❛ you’re supposed to give the person you’re with something /white/ you know . so where’s my gift ? huuuh ? you didn’t forget me ? ❜
he’s a little surprised if he’s being honest —— a present , a present from shigaraki tomura of all people and with it an admittance that they’re … something. something that’s not just fucking on a mattress under a ceiling of dimly glowing stars , something other than bodies and heat and needy hands searching for safety in charred skin and the smell of smoke. it’s kind of nice / it’s kind of weird. but he can’t be one to judge really , he thinks as he picks up the box , does his best to ignore the price tag dangling off the side of it ; this man has never given a gift before and the lack of care put into presentation shows it and somehow that makes it a little nicer. first kiss , first fuck , first person warranting some kind of effort —— if he were someone else , the thought might make him blush.
but he’s not , so he doesn’t.
❛ sound like a kid when you whine like that. ❜ it’s not really chastising , but it’s not exactly not either ; manchild , that’s a good name for him , something he thinks often when tomura speaks and while he knows he could get away with calling him that … he doesn’t. not now , anyway. would hate to ruin the mood.
❛ heart shapes … cute. ❜ is the mumble that escapes him instead , lifting the cover of the box to inspect the contents. he’s kind of indifferent to sweets , and can’t say he’s the biggest fan of white chocolate , but … eh. he’ll eat ‘em. if nothing else he can pawn some off on toga. but that’s a thought for another day , for later , when he isn’t being quizzed about what he has or hasn’t done —— head lifts , box momentarily ignored as he instead deigns to finally answer the surprisingly thoughtful toddler. ❛ yeah , i gotch’a somethin’. underestimated how impatient you get , thought i’d surprise you. but that’s notes for next year , yeah ? … there’s somethin’ on your desk. go look. ❜
THEY COULD HAVE MEANT SOMETHING . something , something —— even if it did not need to be labeled the way other things did in this world ( a world desperate to slap things onto anything it could / hero , rookie , villain , miscreant ) they were something more than what they both presented themselves as : that which could be taken apart , unwrapped ; human beings in chocolate boxes . there was meaning here that went beyond dirty sheets and a filthy , indiscreet language . he has no label for it other than he wants the attention the other man provides ; has found other hands to press to his face which can bring him comfort , hungers for it the way someone on the edge of starvation does .
something twists in his stomach when dabi tells him he has a gift . it’s neither pleasant nor unpleasant ; maggots over meat left out to rot . dabi calls his own gift cute and heat pools in his stomach , turns his ears red and ugly . ❛ shut up . ❜ it feels stupid because it is / because obligations like these are stupid , no good . nothing he cares to put thought into because they’re not something worth thinking about .
shut up isn’t a thank you , but they both know he isn’t the person for them ; shigaraki retreats to his room and to the desk and to the presents settled in his chair and while they’re not the first he has received ( his birthday is a meaningless affair , no reason to get anything when all the material desires you wanted were at your beck and call , sensei’s courtesy ) but he picks them both up with a delicacy he doesn’t afford to his other possessions , like they might break in his hands , like they might decay back into dust —— leave him with his loneliness and his other toys .
the first gift is expected : assorted chocolates . defeats the purpose of the day to not follow the meaningless tradition they’re participating in , he thinks , but he isn’t unhappy with it , settles the box precariously back on his desk where it will be nibbled on over the course of the week , perhaps commanded to be fed to him / dabi would do it . dabi would do anything . that devotion is unfamiliar ; sanctifying , heating . dabi would do anything .
it’s the second gift that he doesn’t know what to do with . he’s sure he looks stupid and perhaps that was dabi’s point , to make the overlord of the villains stand in the midst of the room clutching a stuffed animal , holding it out from him as though it carried some airborne virus that’d infect him quickly enough . maybe dabi was around the corner with his phone . it has little black buttons for eyes which reflect back out at him , catches the refraction of his sallow body and makes him shiver .
he’s never had one of these . his instinct is to disintegrate it ; what did dabi think , to give him this stupid thing ? but making the motion to crumble away its soft faux fur makes him pause —— he has never had one of these . there’s enough clutter in the room to make a neat freak’s head spin , so one more bit of it wouldn’t matter , so he hides it . behind collapsed books and wilting comic books , figurines that stand as testaments to a childhood lived in isolation , an adulthood seeped in sentimentality , and its buttoneyed stare catches the computer light , and little else , making it merely a revenent in the dimly lit room , one he could ignore .
shigaraki tomura sits in the desk chair in front of his computer , creaks when he turns around , and picks at milk chocolate pickily .
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