Work Text:
April 1st, One month before Death Wish’s debut
It had been a long time since Takashi had bought anyone a birthday present. Well, he’d always brought home Tenko a can of tuna on his birthday but that was beside the point. He squinted at his phone in the darkness of his tiny room at the League of Villain’s warehouse hideout. He couldn’t wait to get out of here. Kurogiri has said they’d be out of here soon ages ago. Apparently trying to find housing for several highly recognizable Villians was difficult. At least Takashi wasn’t paying for all the data he was using as he surfed the web. He’d never met All For One but he sent him a silent thanks for his offshore accounts that now paid his phone bill.
Tomura’s birthday was in three days and Takashi had been trying to find something appropriate to get him for a few weeks. Just what did you get the Leader of the League of Villains who also happened to be your younger brother? His first thought had been a video game. Tomura was obsessed with them, when he wasn’t working on his plans he was playing games. A while ago, when Tomura had gone out for the night Takashi, at risk to his own wellbeing, had snuck into his room to check out his stash of video games. He didn’t want to get him something he already had.
Tomura’s taste was all over the map. He had FPS games, RPG games, a bunch of horror games, every single GTA, an unopened copy of FIFA 18 for some reason, and that was just what he had for his consoles. Takashi had no way of finding out what he had on his computer because it would have been like hacking into the CIA. Takashi had decided he wasn’t stupid enough to try that and took his information and got the hell out before Tomura came back and Decayed his leg for being in his room without permission.
So really any kind of video game would work. But did he really want to get him a game? It wasn’t very personal. Would Tomura want something personal? He wasn’t a very personal person. He didn’t do feelings. That's what happened when you watch your parents die and are kidnapped as a child and brainwashed into villainy by the most powerful Villain in the world. So a heartfelt card clearly wasn’t the way to go either.
Takashi groaned and dropped his phone on his face, flopping his arms over the sides of the mattress. He was going nowhere fast. He had to admit to himself he really just didn’t know Tomrua all that well yet. He knew him just as well as any of the League, maybe a little better, but Tomura was so closed off and that made him hard to shop for. He picked his phone up off his face and rolled over to plug it into the one outlet in his room. He’d sleep on it. Maybe he’d ask the others what they were getting him in the morning.
Another day in paradise washed over the League hideout. Takashi went about his normal routine. Kurogiri would warp him to the shipping yard where they stored his undead soldiers. Takashi’s Quirk was Necromancy, when he touched any dead body, be it human or animal, he could bring it back with a facsimile of life and it would follow his orders without question. He hadn’t used his Quirk since he was five years old before he joined the League so he was learning more and more about it as he used it. The more people he brought back the more tired he became. He sensed that the life force of his undead was directly tied to his life force. Right now he only had three undead but he also had a pile of bodies he could bring back at any time should the League need them.
Takashi would train with his zombies every day. In the months he had been training he had graduated from verbal commands only to mental commands which could be relayed to all of his minions even if they were out of earshot. After he was done with the undead he would warp back to the hideout and Twice, who he now called Jin, and Toga would force him to take a shower before they started their training. Jin and Toga were teaching Takashi how to fight. He had proven abysmal at it when he first arrived and Tomura had deemed it essential that he learn how to take care of himself. Jin was a strong sparring partner and Toga was surprisingly skilled at hand to hand combat for a girl who just wanted to bleed people out. But they were good teachers and Takashi was much better now. He’d managed to start taking Jin down every so often as of late but he still couldn’t beat Toga. Jin told him not to worry about it, the rest of them couldn’t beat her either. It was imperative he got stronger. The stronger his body was, the stronger his life force was and the more undead he could bring back.
The end of the day was signaled as per usual by somebody warping in with take-out. Tonight it was Magne with her arms full of Indian food. She divided it up amongst the group and Kurogiri made a small portal for her to set a box of chicken tikka masala on Tomura’s desk without the hassle of him having to get up from whatever he was doing. As everyone dug into their food Takashi decided now would be the best time to bring up his plight to the rest of the group.
“So.” He started picking through his saag. “What are you guys getting Tomura for his birthday?”
Pretty much everyone stopped chewing.
“It’s his birthday soon?” Toga asked curiously.
“Yeah, it’s the 4th.” Takashi said, “Figures he didn’t tell you guys.”
“Well before you turned up I assumed he just spawned fully formed,” Dabi said tossing a piece of shrimp in the air and catching it in his mouth.
“You’re telling me that Tomura-chan is an Aries?” Magne said gleefully. “That makes so much sense.”
“Well, now we have to get him gifts!” Toga squealed. “We should have a whole party for him!”
“I don’t know if he’d like a party but I did want to get him something,” Takashi said. “I just don’t know what.”
“Get him a hand,” Dabi said dismissively.
“Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea.” Takashi hummed at him.
“A video game?” Jin suggested. He had his mask pushed up over his mouth to eat.
“I thought that too but it was too obvious.” Takashi sighed.
People named off a few more suggestions before it just got ridiculous. Takashi laughed with them but they weren’t really helping in his struggle. Toga and Magne started excitedly planning the party they were now going to have. Jin and Kurogiri and Mr. Compress, Sako now, were getting in on it too. Maybe it had been a bad idea to tell them. But who knows, Tomura was a wild card, maybe he’d like being the center of attention and getting gifts. Before they all dispersed for the night Kurogiri agreed to warp them all to wherever they wanted to get Tomura gifts so long as they were careful and didn’t call attention to themselves. They all agreed to behave themselves, even Dabi and Spinner which was surprising. Dabi didn’t really seem like a birthday kind of guy and Spinner seemed to question Tomura’s motives as compared to Stain’s quite a bit.
Takashi sat by himself while the others wound down for the day. Spinner and Twice were plugged into Tekken on their shitty tv with their even shittier original PlayStation. Spinner often pestered Tomura to share his meticulously cared for newer consoles but he never did. Toga and Magne were doing the quizzes in a Cosmo Magne had swiped along with dinner. Sako was on watch duty. Kurogiri had shut himself in for the night, needing to get away from their antics for a while. And Dabi was in his usual perch by the back window rolling a joint for himself.
Takashi tried his phone again. Looking at online stores and trying desperately to find something, something, he could give his brother without looking like a fool. What did he need? Well in Takashi’s opinion he needed to get the hell out of his room and interact with people for once in his life. Maybe go outside and get some vitamin d. He needed to open up to someone, maybe him, maybe someone else, and let his League help him instead of carrying the weight of their rebellion on his own skinny shoulders. He needed to unglue his eyes from his screens and get to know the people working for him in order to become an inspiring leader, someone they would fight and kill for.
Takashi shook his head. He wasn’t going to change his brother. He couldn’t just expect to waltz in here and revert him to how he was at seven years old. Besides he couldn’t get him human interaction for his birthday, not when someone else would inevitably buy him something new to play.
A light went off in Takashi’s head. He knew what he would get him.
By the time April 4th rolled around everyone had gone out to get Tomura something for his birthday. Takashi fussed over the wrapping paper on his gift for a while before he went to join the others to set up for the, possibly poorly thought out, party they were going to force their boss to enjoy. When he did go out he was pleased to see that Toga had not put up forty thousand balloons like he had expected her too. Instead, she and Magne had crisscrossed the room with black streamers and set up the candles that Dabi had brought back when Takashi had first risen Mamba, his first undead, and the hideout had smelled like rotting bodies. The had dragged the desk out of the old office and covered it with a black cloth and sprinkled it with red confetti. It was nice. Tomura might possibly not bite their heads off when he saw it.
He also saw that someone had somehow procured a large sheet cake that read “Happy Birthday Shigaraki” and left Takashi wondering what kind of bakery would fulfill that order. Were there such things as underground bakeries? Moving on from that he brought his present to the small pile the others had made. As he set it down he noticed Dabi pinning something to the wall next to the desk with the cake on it.
“What is that?” Takashi asked him pointing to the poster he had just put up showing a pretty good likeness of Tomura. “Did you draw that?”
“Yeah I did, why? Is it bad?” Dabi asked, cocking his head.
“No, actually, it’s pretty good. Just...why? Is that your present?” Takashi was still confused. Dabi laughed and held out a cardboard box for Takashi to look at.
“Oh no, it’s a party game! See,” he fished out a crude cut out of a hand from inside the box. “It’s a classic, pin the hand on the Shigaraki!” he cackled.
“Jesus Christ and you call me death wish,” Takashi said but he couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“You think it’s funny,” Dabi said, still chuckling.
“I am not Tomura,” Takashi said. Dabi winked at him and went back to setting up his game.
Once they were all ready Toga pushed Takashi in the direction of Tomura’s door. They hadn’t seen him all day, which wasn’t unusual, so he had no idea what they had been doing. Takashi took a deep breath, it was the moment of truth and pounded on his door.
“Yo, Tomura. Come out here for a minute,” he called. He gave it a second. Tomura never answered on the first knock. He tried again. “Tomura. We have something to show you, come here.” Still nothing. He tried again. “Are you dead? Do I have to have Kurogiri warp in there to check on you? Because I will.” That got his attention. He heard Tomura shuffling around for a second before the door opened.
“What is so important…” he started but was cut off by a loud chorus of...
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”
Nobody moved. After a second Tomura actually had the audacity to take Father off his face to confirm what he was seeing.
“Yeah, no,” he said and tried to shut his door but Takashi wedged himself in before he could close it. “Go away or I will Decay your face.”
“You keep saying that but you never do it,” Takashi said. “Come on Tomura, everyone actually worked hard to put this together. We wanted to make you happy. You’re always shut away stressing yourself out and we wanted to show you we appreciate you and we’re with you. We just wanted to do something nice for you.”
“You’re making all that up,” Tomrua said, tucking Father into his sweatshirt pocket. “You said something about it and they all went crazy, didn’t they? You didn’t plan this.”
“Okay, no, I didn’t plan this for you,” Takashi admitted. “But I don’t think this is crazy, honestly I was expecting a lot more from Toga and Magne, they tried to decorate so you would like it. So no, this wasn’t my intention but come on. Everyone got you a present, won’t you at least come open them?”
They stared at each other for a minute. Takashi knew this game, Tomura would try to wear you down with his eyes. You had to hold eye contact to assert your dominance. After a solid thirty seconds, Tomura finally looked away and clicked his tongue.
“Fine. I guess if I’m getting stuff out of it, I’ll come….join you.” He said it liked the idea physically disgusted him. Takashi smiled brightly at him and pushed the door open, standing aside to let him out, but keeping a firm hand on the door just in case this was a ploy to try and slam it in his face again. Tomura slouched out of his room and over to the group who stood anxiously around the cake. Gingerly he sat on the sofa and all was quiet for a second.
“I didn’t think you’d actually come out.” Dabi drawled from the back of the group where he was leaning against the wall. Tomura stood up again.
“Sit down, he’s just being an asshole,” Takashi said, wishing he was close enough to Dabi to elbow him in the ribs. Tomura grimaced and sat down again.
“Come on, lighten up Tomura-kun this is supposed to be a party!” Toga cheered skipping over to the pile to pull out a present wrapped in bright pink paper. Takashi supposed she really couldn’t help herself. She flounced back over to Tomura and tossed it in his lap before throwing herself on the couch next to him. “Open it!” She said expectantly. This seemed to break the ice a little and everyone gathered around, taking seats to watch Tomura open his gifts. Tomura’s eyes bugged out a little and his hands went to his neck but Takashi was there to intervene.
“If you don’t like everyone looking at you, you can put Father back on, it’s okay, we don’t mind.” He whispered in his ear, under the pretense of stopping his hands. Tomura swallowed and quickly pulled Father out of his pocket and settled him on his face before looking down at the small gift in his lap.
“We’re really doing this?” he asked, somewhat shyly.
“Let us show our appreciation for our leader, Shigaraki Tomura. Your Sensei was not opposed to gifts from his followers.” This seemed to please Tomura and he carefully began to undo the packaging. Thank god for Kurogiri, Takashi thought, he always knew what to say.
Tomura made quick work of the wrapping paper to reveal a slim black case. Using four fingers he opened it to reveal...a pen.
“You got me a pen?” Tomura asked turning his head in Toga’s direction.
“Not just any pen!” Toga said taking it out of the box and pressing a small button on the side. An infrared beam lit on the couch where she pointed it. “It’s a scanner! I know you and Kurogiri are always breaking to places for intel, you can scan hard copies of anything you need with this instead of stealing them and then no one will know you were there! You can put them right on your computer!” Tomura seemed taken aback. What he had thought was something stupid was actually a pretty useful gift.
“Oh, well, um…” He tried.
“It’s alright Tomura-kun, you don’t have to say thank you.” Toga waved a hand.
“It’s very useful.” He said instead, which made Toga smile.
Kurogiri stepped forward next with a tall bag and placed it carefully on Tomura’s lap.
“I don’t have quite the options I had at our last base, but as I recall this is your favorite, Shigaraki Tomura,” he said as Tomura pulled tissue paper out of the bag. He pulled out a stout bottle of Hibiki 17, which Takashi knew to be a very expensive Japanese whiskey. You could see Tomura’s grin behind Father.
“Now this is a present, Kurogiri!” He said happily. Kurogiri nodded fondly.
“I’m glad you like it, Shigaraki Tomura.”
Tomura set the bottle carefully on the couch next to him like it was his own child only to react quickly as a plain brown paper bag flew at his face. He caught it nimbly, pinkies raised and glared at Dabi who had obviously thrown it.
“Happy Birthday, creep.” he droned. Tomura frowned and unceremoniously upended the bag onto his lap. A tube of deep moisturizing lotion fell out.
“You of all people shouldn’t be giving me shit about my skin, leather face,” Tomura said clenching his fists. “It’s part of my Quirk my face just looks like this.”
“Well, if you would do me the honor of reading the label you’d see its not for your hideous face it’s for your hands. I know you like to keep your weapons in top shape so I thought this would help.” Dabi said smugly. The single red eye visible between Father’s fingers blinked and looked down at the lotion on his lap which was indeed specified for tough hands. Tomura grumbled and set it aside.
“Whatever,” he said petulantly. Dabi just smirked.
Jin went next, he had gotten Tomura the new Monster Hunter game, which was a big hit with the boss. Apparently, he’d wanted it for a while now. Spinner had gotten him a book about the creation of the Grand Theft Auto series since it was pretty much the only thing they had in common. Takashi was surprised that Tomura would actually deign to look at a book but he flipped through the first few pages and told Spinner it looked interesting. Magne had made him a scrapbook of different news articles about him and the League. That was smart, Takashi thought, a good ego booster. Sako apparently had been in cahoots with Kurogiri and had gotten him a set of tumblers and whiskey rocks. Takashi went last. He was very nervous as he brought his present forward. A medium sized rectangular package. He handed it to Tomura. Tomura opened it eagerly. He was getting into it now. Hopefully, they could get him to stay for cake. When he was finished a special edition Risk: Heroes vs. Villains sat in his lap.
“This is a board game,” he said looking up at Takashi. “I like video games.”
“I know that dumbass,” Takashi said rolling his eyes. “I thought since you like strategy games so much that this would be up your alley. I thought maybe you could play it with us. This game is all battle decisions and I thought maybe playing with some of your followers would give you some idea as to how our minds work and how you can use us to our full potential. Also for the Hero side, the 10 troops tokens are All Might figures which I thought you would enjoy defeating.”
Tomura looked between him and the game, checking the side with the pictures of the tokens to see if they really were All Might.
“I guess we could play.” He finally said, shrugging. Takashi knew that was the closest he was gonna get to “thanks, I like it” so he took it and gave his brother a grin.
“Who wants cake?!” Magne called out over the group.
“No singing!!” Tomura said quickly.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, boss.” Dabi snickered, sauntering over to Magne to get a piece.
Once everyone had a piece of cake, including Tomura, they began idly chatting amongst themselves.
“So, Tomura-kun, how old are you today?” Toga asked licking frosting off her lips. Tomura shrugged.
“No idea,” he answered. “Sensei and I never kept track of birthdays. We had more important things to do.”
“Don’t you remember how old you were when you were kidn...I mean, when you first met All for One?” Takashi asked incredulously.
“Not really,” Tomura said, “I don’t really remember much from back then. As I said, I have better things to think about then how old I am.”
“You’re twenty-four if you care to know,” Takashi said stabbing his cake, his anger at All for One frothing up to the surface again. But that wasn’t something he could show Tomura.
“Goddamnit, I can’t believe you’re older than me.” Dabi groaned. “Life is so unfair.”
The rest of the night passed lazily, people swapping stories of their own birthdays and pestering Tomura to look at his presents. Both Jin and Spinner were trying to get him to let them have a go at Monster Hunter. When Dabi suggested they play his Pin the Hand on the Shigaraki game Tomura had launched himself across the floor at him and the pursuit ensued. Eventually, Tomura Decayed the offending poster but not before everyone had agreed that Dabi was actually quite a good artist. Eventually, people started tapering off and wishing the others goodnight. In the end, it was surprisingly just Takashi and Tomura left, sitting on the couch in companionable silence. Tomura seemed content, Takashi thought, he’d even removed Father at an earlier point. Now, he was still, resting his hands on his belly full of cake, he’d had two pieces, seeming like he was falling asleep.
“You should go to bed,” Takashi suggested after a while. “I know this was a lot for you.” Tomura yawned. Takashi had never seen him look so vulnerable since they were reunited.
“It wasn’t horrible.” He said. “But, I think I will go back to my room.” Takashi nodded.
“I’ll help you carry your stuff.” Takashi gathered most of Tomura’s presents in his arms and headed over to Tomura’s room. Tomura himself cradled his ¥23,000 whiskey in his arms and followed him quietly. Once Takashi had set everything down he turned to let himself out.
“Hey,” Tomura called after him.
“Yeah?” Takashi asked turning around in the doorway.
“Maybe…” He huffed tilting his head down to hide his face with his hair. “Maybe we could play that game tomorrow.” Takashi smiled softly.
“Sure. I’d like that.” He could see the blush from behind the curtain of hair.
“What are you looking at me like that for? Go away.” Tomura said quickly, turning his back to him. Takashi snorted.
“‘Night, Tomura.” with that he closed the door behind him.
Takashi trudged back to his room. It was late. He was exhausted from his normal training earlier and then the party. He spared a look over his shoulder for the messy main room and decided to deal with it in the morning. He fell into his bed. Barely managing to remember to plug his phone in before sleep started pulling at his eyes. He snuggled into his thin pillow and smiled to himself. That had gone better than he had hoped. He hoped they’d make it to do it again next year.