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If you would have told him that he would be an amazing father, Tomura would probably have given you an undeserving sneer before some biting comment about you being crazier than he gives you credit for.
It doesn’t make it any less true though. Despite his visceral need for space and natural nonchalance, he couldn’t help feeling nervous about your newfound condition. It’s a lost battle between his own hesitance towards the life changing news and the immensity of his love for you, making him fidgety, gentle, moody, and paranoid all at the same time. Thank God by now you are filled and familiar with his general neurosis, so you leave him to his own imaginary torments because trying to fight them is a waste of time and you, swollen and tired and tied to him of all people, already have more than enough on your plate.
It doesn’t really surprise you that he turns out to be a very good dad, though. Regardless of his well known misandry never entirely out of his system and the aversion towards everything nice (like the little grinch he is) the moment curiosity calls him gently, nudging him to hold his brand-new baby, something flips inside him.
It overwhelms him immediately. The way his clammy hands manage to hold the little baby burrito, his face like a deer caught in headlights, looking between the tiny face, yours, and the nurse.
“It’s a girl.”
Then he’s smiling like a moron and you know he is in love.
And it’s funny because he fought the idea of sharing you with some brat during all the pregnancy, never really at peace with the fact that sooner or later you would love someone else more than him, a thought that truly tormented his dry little heart and filled him with dread.
Did it ever occur to him that “yeah, I may love my child like that too”? Well, not really.
Because for Tomura, something like that was nothing but laughable. How could he? If you invented kindness and peace and he needs you. There is nothing like the feeling of having you, wether it be holding his face gently or gasping under his weight. So, the idea of you being needed more than that, needed to survive, to live and grow was nothing but excruciating. And even when he, too, knew he loved his child already, it would never match what he felt for their mother.
Your baby would even eat from you, dammit! and fuck wasn’t he jealous of that.
But of course, you already imagined his whole inner tantrum monologue of envy without him speaking a word of it, completely aware he’s being irrational, and that was what made it so funny.
Because you knew out of you two , he’d be the one to fall the hardest, and despite the general sexism about men wanting for a boy to make a team, him having a girl is the cherry on top of the cake.
“I thought we could call her Hana .” A simple statement that forever changes his definition of love. The memory of his sister holding his tiny hand forever imprinted behind his eyelids as you give them a second chance by honoring her memory.
Imagine, him jealous of his own perfect baby daughter. What a ridiculous thought.
It makes sense then. If you had to choose between the baby and him, he’d gladly, gladly bite the bullet every time. And it’s not like you didn’t foresee this development of events, but it does surprises you when you see him angrily rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt to catch some insurgent tears of joy at the gift you just gave him (but you know better than to say anything about it, don’t you?).
“yeah…I’d like that.”
And boy does he like it.
Tomura has never been afraid of getting his hands dirty, but still it catches you off guard when you find him looking intently at the way you prepare the bottle. The methodical clean, boil, dry of the glass and the subsequent pour, fill, shake, test on the skin of your wrist.
So next time he tries it, carefully and quietly without asking you for help, getting familiar with the process until it is natural on his hands like the finger he keeps up at every moment. And even when he’s still weary of touching the baby directly and remains fairly annoyed at the antics of being a months old tiny human, he proves again to be an infallible guardian of her sleep, making you thankful of his bad habit of sleeping at ungodly hours for fucking once until eventually, he ends up rearranging things around the house.
“You like that one, don’t you?'' His voice comes accompanied by the rapid twfl twfl twfl of the buttons on his control over the game’s music. “Yeah, it’s not that powerful, but it’s really effective. Watch this.”
You pad quietly out of the shower into the room, where he has improvised a seat against the cradle in front of the tv, allowing the babe to stand by the bars of her crib right next to his head, both of them looking intently at the combo displayed on the screen in an explosion of colors and movement that makes the child scream and bounce in excitement that matches his.
Hana cheers in her own way, you suppose. A joyful screeching as she babbles something unintelligible between her drooling and some weird attempt for “otosan” that never quite lands, but you suspect he likes it even more because of it, even despite the fact that he’s wholeheartedly against being called some shorter westernization like “papa” because something something manners and something something respect . (And yes, that’s another irony that has you raising your eyebrows to your hairline in disbelief but he’s Kurogiri’s child after all, what else did you expect?)
“See? I told you. Hey, don’t eat my hair. Your mom likes it.”
And fatherhood may not make him less sharp nor slaps the edginess out of him, but it does bring out a more playful side of him, the part of him that’s eager to learn and teach, so you find him reading about butterflies just to tell her stories about how the caterpillar becomes a chrysalis before developing wings, and saying stuff like he cannot play if Hana is not there, because she’s the lucky charm and his secret to defeat all the bosses.
Time and time again shows you a new side of Tomura, and it dawns on you that the boy you loved all those years prior is no longer a teen but finally a man, and you cannot help but watch amazed at the growth that happens non stop in front of your own eyes.
And just as he became braver for you, he becomes wiser for her. His natural protectiveness making him stronger, truly stronger, a type of strength he would have never achieved under the shadow of his sensei, no matter the torture or deceits he would had lay to his ears.
Sweet baby kisses and unfathomable love that sounds like little steps following him around the house; a better reward than any promise of destruction, because he was made for love and compassion, despite what everyone else thinks. Despite what he himself thinks.
Yes, for Hana Shimura, Tomura will wholeheartedly be Tenko again.