title: you can hear it in the silence

pairings: NatShig, DabiHawks,

genre: romance, family/friendship, light angst

gentle suggestions: listening to 'you're in love' by taylor swift, it's so soft

Shigalentine, DAY 6: chocolate/gardenia

Shigaraki drops onto the couch beside Natsuo, groaning as the cushion sinks back against his aching shoulders. Natsuo spares him a glance, brow raised, but Shigaraki waves him off, reaching for one of the tinfoil wrapped chocolates Natsuo is peeling out of the bag on his lap. "So, what did I miss?"

Natsuo smooths the edges of the tinfoil with his thumbs, glancing at the messages written on the on the inside, before looking back to where his brother and Hawks were having their non-argument in the alley blow.

They were too far up and the voices were muffled by the glass, but the couch in Shigaraki's new apartment offers a first-class view of the angry gestures and tense expressions pantomimed on the figures below. Shigaraki watches the display with a suspicious eye as Hawks continually slaps his fist into his palm. Natsuo clears his throat.

"They've been at it for a while now." Natsuo fills him in, voice low and conspiratorial as he adds the tinfoil wrapper to his growing pile on the coffee table. "I really hope they don't spend the whole day fighting. We were gonna work on the reach of my ice."

"Ah, let 'em. What do you care?"

Natsuo pouts or, as he calls it, puts his thinking face on. His salt-white brows drawing together as he leans further over the arm of the couch, straining for a view of the action below. Shigaraki peels at the edge of the tinfoil heart.

It's no secret that Natsuo supports whatever it is that's happening between his second-in-command and the double agent. Shigaraki does not really care so long as it does not impede upon their plans.

"They really like each other."

"Hm?"

"They like each other." Natsuo repeats, turning away from the window. His mouth tugs at the corner a bit, pink and worried from where he had been chewing on it. "I think," He drums his fingers, gathering his words. "I just feel like Touya deserves something good for him, you know? He's my brother and he's been through so much, I just. I want to see him happy."

This draws a furrow between Shigaraki's brows. "You think Hawks makes him happy?"

Since the two of them arrived at PLF base two days ago, they have been non-stop not-fighting.

"Well, yeah." Natsuo huff, turning in his seat so he can look at him fully, giving the window his back and privacy. Shigaraki lifts his brows. He wonders what Natsuo has seen in the alley now. "Hawks makes him happy. He's good for him."

He presses his lips into a line, feeling the rising ridge of his scar. Shigaraki knows that there is more to Hawks than just a bored pro-hero, tired of how he makes his paycheck. He knows there's more to Hawks than just the smiles and jokes, plans and connections. Even standing over the body of Best Jeanist, blood crusting under his nails, the physical exertion of having done something terrible and necessary hung on him like an ill-fitted coat.

Shigaraki does not trust him.

Dabi may be fooled. Natsuo and Jin and Himiko, too, but Shigaraki is not about to put his guard down when he is so close to getting what he wants.

He catches sight of crimson wings scooping up air as Hawks vacates the alley. The following scream of frustration from Dabi, an indicator that the not-argument had, in fact, not ended well.

Natsuo flinches at the sound and glances over his shoulder, skittish as a foal. When he looks back there is a considerable pink blotching on his cheeks. His teeth click. "Oh-kay, so their relationship is a little rocky, but that's how it is, right?"

"What?"

"Well, okay," Natsuo leans his head against the back of the couch, white hair stark against the black leather. Shigaraki puts up his elbow so he can rest his head against his knuckles. "I just think the older you are, the more time passes, the more life you live—you just get more baggage, you know?" Gray eyes cut to him, a habit that assures Natsuo that he is listening even without a litany of micro-responses. "And, when it comes to relationships, or love, you just have to find someone who's baggage goes well with yours."

The confession leaves Shigaraki thinking on his own parents and their marriage, what little Shigaraki actually remembers of it. But, all memories of the time he was called Shimura Tenko seem fuzzy at best.

He remembers a lot of yelling, though. Yelling and tense silences, slamming doors and half-hearted apologizes that smelled like dying roses on the kitchen table.

A white flag. A feeble display of unity.

Shigaraki curves his nail under the tinfoil heart, peeling back to the chocolatey smooth layer beneath. The scent of dark chocolate hits his nose. Dark chocolate and coffee, antiseptic and eucalyptus. The heady scents that Shigaraki has come to associate with Natsuo over these past few months.

At first, he had been annoyed at the presence of Endeavor's son, but the reveal of Dabi's true identity, along with everything Shigaraki had been fielding from Hawks, became micromanaged down into decaying old buildings and Deika City to ease his frustrations.

Natsuo, at least, came with an expandable skillset and a rice cooker. Besides, their party needed a healer anyway. Also, unlike Hawks, Natsuo did not drive Shigaraki up a wall everyday that ends with y. Natsuo was easy. He was gregarious with his height, wide shoulders and wider smiles, tender hands and soft voice. Natsuo made him feel at ease, as was his nature.

Which is why when Shigaraki needs some quiet, he often finds himself in Natsuo's makeshift office; sitting with his games as Natsuo organizes the League's non-existent healthcare system. Natsuo would make small-talk and tea, tea that Shigaraki wouldn't drink, but Natsuo would reheat for him again and again as their conversation dwindled into the night.

It was easy.

As it should be.

His nail slid into the back of the heart, curling a ribbon of chocolate flakes.

Natsuo shifts on the couch, his face tipping towards him. There's something in those eyes, deep gray, almost blue, like a stormy sky.

Shigaraki doesn't know much about Natsuo's past, just like he doesn't know a lot about anyone's in the League. To him, it has never mattered where a person has come from, so long as they were here now. Still, there is something about Natsuo that makes him want to know. He has his gathered pieces that Natsuo shared, snip-bits and reactions, flinching at raised voices, concealed scars, and overheard conversations from between brothers. Shigaraki can puzzle together a story for his own.

And it sits with him, like a lump in his throat, something uncomfortable and suffocating and too much that makes his palms itch.

"I just don't think love should have to be so miserable." He says to the spare space between them, the one that fills up with the silence that stretches like a chord waiting to be played. Shigaraki looks down to the chocolate in his hands, the curve of the tiny heart at the tips of his nails.

His fingers itch with the urge to destroy, but his gloves, two-fingered archery gloves, stop him.

Natsuo's fingers curl against his own, pulling the candy free. Shigaraki still cannot look at him. He feels too raw, too deep in the moment to face Natsuo properly.

He watches Natsuo's palm slid across his hand, brazen, unafraid. His fingers touch the curve of his wrist over the clasp of his gloves and pops the button. Shigaraki watches, unable to move as Natsuo slips off the glove and sets it aside on the coffee table, contact lost for all but a moment before he is back again. He presses the chocolate heart into Shigaraki's palm, then curls his fingers inward until his quirk activates and the chocolate turns to dust.

It sates something in him, something he cannot put to words.

"You hate dark chocolate, you big softy." Natsuo smirks at him, smile stretching wider the longer it's there. His handsome face a bloom of a smile, teasing and jovial and too much.

Shigaraki keeps his fingers curled into a fist, anxious in spite of himself. He knows he should complain, make noise, and bitch that Natsuo buy him white chocolate the next time he's out, but then Natsuo leans into his space, building a bridge of the tension between them, and presses his mouth against the curve of his scarred lip, stealing all the words bubbling in his throat.

He can taste the scent of chocolate and coffee. This close, he can count Natsuo's eyelashes, darker than his hair color, framing those stormy eyes in ways that are unfairly attractive.

Natsuo's head tilts, a forelock of hair falling across his brow. "And," Natsuo's thumb runs across his sealed fingers, tapping against his nails like buttons. "Are you miserable?"

The heat in his voice, his own words thrown back at him, makes something arch and ache inside of Shigaraki that he had not ever known existed until Natsuo.

And Natsuo understood him, in a way that made his skin feel too tight, the self-conscious beat of his pulse sinking further with every blow.

He knows his answer is clear on his face. It's a no, no not in the slightest, no, never so long as you're here.

But those are lofty words. And Shigaraki has trouble voicing them.

Natsuo lifts a hand to touch the curve of his cheek, running a finger under the healing scar tissue under his eye. "I know," Natsuo says, and swoops forward, pressing his lips to his. "I understand. I know."

His lips are warm, mouth melting against his own in a steady rise of push and pull. Shigaraki can feel himself unbricking under Natsuo's care, like he had from the first moment he let Natsuo put his hands on him. He feels unmade, new and reborn to another world. One where it does not have to hurt as much.

Shigaraki uncurls his fist, letting the dusted chocolate slide through his fingers like a shive. Carefully, Natsuo's fingers slide against his palm, minding his pinkie. He is unafraid. As no one else has been before. He fits himself along Shigaraki's body and invites himself in.

And Shigaraki lets him.

yeah, i really couldn't wait to do Day 6. Sorry!

Happy Shigalentine Week! I should be posting more NatShig connect because it's one of my Big BNHA ships.

INSPO: So, I was at my home, pondering the NatShig prompts like I have been doing, and I was running a bit ragged with a lot of angst that's just been getting me down, and then I heard something that stuck with me over a Justin and Hailee Bieber interview commentary by a YouTuber named Tefi. She said something that I think is very important, which is, "I also just want to remove this stigma that love has to be so fuckin' miserable" – and I thought, 'what if Shig said that to Natsuo?'

Thus, the fic which I finished in one sitting where everything else has taken twelve.