Anime Oneshots

All that Glitters is Gold

Pairing: ShigDabi (Tomura Shigaraki (Tenko Shimura) x Dabi (Touya Todoroki)
Had an idea. Don't know why I decided ShigDabi was the pair to do it for but, ok. This is my first time writing anything ShigDabi. I do actually like this pairing, second favorite Dabi pairing and I just think they have a really interesting dynamic to play with. I'm gonna give this a shot so bear with me. Might be a bit OOC. Which means Out Of Canon for those that don't know. This might be kinda gory/generally unsettling based on what I do with it.

Dabi, by all means, was broken. Just look at him, his body covered in years of damage, smelling of burning flesh, too weak to house his hated quirk. He was literally held together by staples like some sick patchwork doll that would give a child nightmares. He had nightmares of his own, about his father, his childhood, the people he'd killed, his siblings, and what happened to them, he had nightmares about anything he could fathom. Fucked and distorted memories of his childhood haunted him every waking hour. He was constantly lost in his own head. Always having to keep his image, calm, cool, and collected. On the inside, he was broken but, that doesn't mean he wasn't beautiful.

That's what his partner assured him of. Partner, that's the best word he had to put to his relationship with Tomura Shigaraki, other than boss, that's all he had. They didn't use the term boyfriend, too many strings to deal with there, too much attachment, a fear they both had. It was more than a hookup or friends with benefits though but, they were both confused about it and chose not to label it because that's just too complicated and their lives are complicated enough.

He stood there in the mirror, pulling on his staples, not hard enough to rip them out, just in mild disgust. He skimmed his fingers over his grotesque burn scars, some were his fault, others weren't. He hated this body, he hated what had happened to him, he hated his father, and one day he would drag him down to hell, even if it meant going with him.

"Stop picking, you'll make yourself bleed," Tomura tutted from behind him, his eyes trained on whatever game he was playing on his handheld console.
"How can you even tell? You're so focused on your damn game."
"Because I know you, zombie man, you do this all the time when the voices in your head are too much. I scratch, you pull on your staples, Toga makes little cuts on whatever she can find. I do actually pay attention to you people," Tomura commented on offense that his partner doubted his attention to detail.
"Aw, you actually care about us," Dabi said, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
"Shut it, you know I do," Tomura responded, putting down the console and going to retrieve Dabi from the mirror.
"Enough of that now. Let's go for a walk or something."

Granted walks were a lot more difficult than they used to be. See about a month ago the "heroes" and All Might had busted into their frankly cushy abandoned bar set up. The villains were left frantically searching for a new place to set up shop and so far all they had was an old safe house in the worst part of the city. Going out was terrible now, their faces and identity were known to the public. They now had to go full out on the villainy, stealing and swindling, rather than just murder, arson, and general terrorism, ya know, the fun stuff.
All of this happened because Shigaraki decided it was a good idea to kidnap some kid from the hero course at U.A. and to try to convince him to join their team, that was an obvious bust.

So now, Dabi was forced to put on a pair of obnoxiously dark sunglasses and a hoodie in the middle of August, a pain in the ass when your body is roasting all the god damn time. Tomura on the other hand just pulled up the hood on the sweatshirt he wore all the time, he was easy to hide, most of his trauma was on the inside anyway. They would have kind of held hands, their thing was for Dabi to wrap his hand around Tomura's pinky but, that would have drawn attention to them. Instead, they strolled silently down back alleyways filled with a disgusting array of random junk.

"Kiroguri tells me fresh air is good for clearing your head," Tomura comments.
"You know what else is good for that? A smoke."
"You said you'd stop with the cigarettes."
"I know, I know. I mean like weed dipshit."
"Oh. Fair enough."
"But I guess I can try fresh air instead of getting high."
"I'm not gonna stop you, I know it helps with the pain."
"Speaking of which," Tomura stops them in an alleyway close to the safe house after they had doubled back from their walk.
"If we're gonna stop wait till we get back," Dabi advised as the sun began to set behind Tomura's dry face. Sunset brought out unsavory crawlers like them but, they didn't want to be caught up in the rifraf.

"Well, before I was so rudely interrupted," Tomura began as he slipped on a more comfortable pair of sweatpants rather than his jeans. Dabi stuck his tongue out at Tomura like a teasing child and threw up his middle finger before continuing to fight off his boots.
"I got you something."
"This better not be you pulling your middle finger out of your pocket like that time. I will cremate you."
"Hot but,"
"What the fuck?"
"You heard me. Anyways that's not what this is. Have you ever heard of Kintsugi?"
"Is that some kind of drug?" Dabi asked, welcoming his gloved partner into his warm chest.
"No dipshit, it's an art form. When vases or plates break they repair them with melted gold, it embraces the flaws of the object."
"What's your point handjob?"
"That's a disgusting name and I told you not to fucking call me that but," Tomura paused and reached over his shoulder grabbing a box from the nightstand. "Here, Kintsugi made me think of this."

Dabi rolled over on his back and unwrapped the neatly wrapped box, Toga must have wrapped it. He tilted the box back to meet his eyes, inside the box was a multitude of golden surgical staples.
"Tomura where the hell did you find these? Are they real gold?"
"Don't worry about that and yes they are. Don't take out the ones you have, just replace them with these when they fall out," Tomura instructed.
"You are something else Tomura Shigaraki."
"I'm expecting a thank you," Tomura said impatiently.
"Thank you Tomura."
"You're welcome."

Dabi reached over Tomura's small form to place the box back on the nightstand and then pitching the wrapping to some random corner of their shared room.

"Come 'ere, loser," Dabi instructed patting his chest for Tomura to lay on.
"Don't get soft on me now Dabi."
"Not a chance handyman."

_____
Reereerereeeree. Ok, we're just gonna ignore that one. I had this dumb idea for a while after seeing some art on Instagram from @ chroniclesof_momo who draws Dabi with golden staples. I just now figured out how I wanted to execute it. So this is a thing now, it's purely self-indulgent but, I hope you like it. It's pretty OOC like I said in the beginning and I'm still playing with the ShigDabi dynamic since this is the first time I've written them. I don't think it's too bad though. With that, I'm gonna go work on some other stuff and panic about the election for the next like two weeks. You'll probably hear from me soon but, we'll see.