Chapter Text
There was a time, not so long ago, when Oboro felt big.
He can’t remember why, or when, or what made him think that way, but he remembers the feeling. The stretch of it, building in his long bones the ache of growing. Comparing, constantly, scratching out centimeters into the wall, standing back-to-back with…
Someone. Someone smaller. Laughing at them. And at times, when the drugs are at half-life and lucidity creeps back in, fickle as a stray cat, he can imagine the contours of their face. The dark hair, and dark eyes, and dark grin.
There is a. Gaping hole. Inside his head.
He can feel it, right now, sucking and sucking, endlessly hungry. Siphoning his focus into an unending vortex, trapping him in a whirlpool. He is drowning, and the...
The faucet leaks.
His feet have gone numb from standing, thighs trembling at the effort of keeping him upright. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here.
Nights are the hardest. Tomura sleeps at night, and without the distraction, without the direction, there is nothing to interrupt his spiraling. Oboro barely sleeps anymore, and he loses long swathes of time to the dark hours.
So, he doesn’t know how long he’s been here, frozen in front of the sink, listening to the round, metallic plink, plink, plink of the water as it hits the basin.
He should. Should stop it, the leaking. He should make the water stop.
His limbs move like they’re suspended in honey, fingers coming up to curl around the lip of the sink, bracing himself. Oboro blinks, blinks harder, and looks up.
The light is not on. They aren’t allowed to be on while Tomura is sleeping, because it might wake him up.
The doctor did something to his eyes. Made them rheumy and sensitive. Turned them a sickly yellow. He doesn’t need the lights to see the soap scum congealed on the faucet, the grime caked around the metal. He doesn’t need the light to see his own shadowed silhouette in the mirror.
Oboro looks up. Remembers, abruptly, why he came into the bathroom in the first place.
His teeth are stained black. They twinkle in the darkness of his slightly parted mouth. The medication must be wearing off again.
Oboro brings a hand up, touches his lips, oh so gently. His throat is tingling and raw, and the sensation of it, the pain, filters in so, so sluggishly. He resists the urge to gag.
His fingers come away soot stained. His tongue tastes like carbon.
All for One would laugh if he could see his servant like this. Paler than snow, shaking like a leaf in the wind, just from a bit of a coughing fit.
He leans forward, over the sink, puts his face right next to the dripping. This close, it’s much louder. Much bigger. He digs his nails in, so he won’t fall.
It smells like wet metal and fatty soap. Thin strands of lifeless gray hair flop into his face, escaping the half-hearted knot the rest is gathered in at the base of his neck.
He opens his mouth, runs his tongue over his black, ash-coated teeth, and turns on the faucet.
Water fills his mouth, runs down his cheek and over his neck. He squeezes his eyes shut, spitting and spitting, grounded by the taste of iron.
He rinses until iron is all he can taste, and it doesn’t feel so gritty and painful to swallow, and then stops.
Even with the water off, he holds himself there, underneath the still-dripping sink, shuddering.
He could drown. Actually, really drown, not just in his head. Fill himself up until the vortex is smothered.
Oboro lets go of the sink to hug himself. Rests his forehead on the cold porcelain of the basin. He feels feverish. Unwell, but he always feels unwell.
He needs to get up. Go back to the Room so that Tomura won’t be alone when he wakes up.
But there’s a long time ‘til dawn, and Oboro isn’t used to being in his own head in the dark. It’s… calming. Quiet. To be alone.
He might have stayed there indefinitely, if not for the sound of approaching footsteps.
Panic is… strange, now. In this state. It doesn’t come as easily as it should, is as muffled as the rest of the sensations. He’s lost it, like he lost his sight, and gained servility in its stead. The only thing he truly fears is his Master.
Even so, the sound has him stiffening. Oboro straightens out of his bent posture, turns to face the door.
It’s only as Tomura shuffles round the corner, his tiny white-tufted head coming into view, that Oboro realizes he can hear something else too, nearly drowned out by the tapping of his bare feet.
His pupils, slitted as they are, dilate. Wider and wider until his head spins with it, and his gray-scale vision sharpens into something picture-perfect. His fingers twitch, muscles spasming, a physical reaction to the command programmed into him.
The boy cries the same way he did when they first met. Oh so softly, oh so quiet. The lancing sound of it prickles down Oboro’s spine, until he can’t think around the failure.
“Tomura,” he says, the words dragged up from the recesses of his chest, scraping and tearing all the way. It’s horrible, like nails on a chalkboard. “Why are you crying?”
He kneels, then, because as small, as dwarfed and insignificant as this apartment makes him feel, as the master makes him feel, he’s big to Tomura. Bigger, and stronger, technically, and it’s his job.
His knees are jarred, bones moved by the reverberation, and he falls forward, palms out.
Tomura is filthy. Oboro pauses, hovering just short of touching, blinking down at the mess of him.
There’s snot all over his face. Crusting on his cheek, getting into his eyes. His shirt is soaked in bile, chunks of regurgitated food plastered down his front. He’s smells strongly enough that, this close, Oboro can taste it, sharp and acidic, in the air around them. Worse than that, though, is the wave of heat that radiates from the boy, flushing his face, eyes glazed and swaying.
Oh. Oh, no, no, no.
Tomura trembles, shaking so violently his teeth chatter, and when his teeth start chattering, he starts coughing, and when he starts coughing he starts gagging, and—
And Oboro watches, in horror, as the boy pitches forward, and vomits all over him.
It’s warm, and wet, and viscous and almost as soon as it touches Oboro’s skin he wants it off. Even without the corrosive bile, the sensation is putrid. There’s such a, such a profound sense of disgust to it all. Visceral and automatic. Oboro rears back, the way he never has with Tomura, cringing from him.
For a second, Oboro truly does exist in the moment, shocked into his skin, without the depress of the drugs or the vacuum of his thoughts. He just reacts, scrambling out of the way even as Tomura continues to vomit, flinching every time it splatters on the tile flooring.
A horrible, horrible sound. Like something is being wrenched from the deepest parts of him, almost violent.
All the while Tomura continues to cry. Big, fat tears streaking through the grime on his face.
“Oh,” Oboro says, strangled, wheezing slightly. “Oh.”
He’s sick. The boy’s never been sick before.
Oboro is frozen, drenched in quickly-cooling throw up. It smells, and it’s dark, and the faucet is still dripping behind them, a metronome to keep the rhythm of Tomura’s terrible crying. He doesn’t—doesn’t know what to do, but the compulsion is screaming at him to fix it, and he can’t just sit here and stare.
He’s moving before he realizes it, stooping to wrap his hands around Tomura’s waist, hoisting him up, at arm’s length. The maneuver shocks him into a soft, hiccuping silence, and Oboro’s never been so grateful for anything in his life.
“Hush,” he says, roughly, stumbling across the cramped, narrow bathroom to the tub. “Be quiet, little boy.”
He doesn’t listen, tipping his head back, and wailing his indignation at the low, popcorn ceiling. His chest hitches, rhythmic and jarring.
Oboro sets the boy in the bathtub, pulls off his own vomit-crusted shirt. It's foul, overwhelming and sour. He might be crying too, if something that nasty came out of him.
He strips Tomura, listening to the boy weep in the darkness, basking in the fever that pours off him. When he breathes, Tomura’s chest rattles with a sound that is physically painful. Oboro pities the poor, sick creature.
“Hush,” he says, again and again, not quite as reassuring as he means to be, with a growl for a voice and a face straight from hell. “Hush, hush, hush.”
Tomura softens to him anyway. Lifts his arms so Oboro can take off his top, lets himself be manhandled in the tub.
Oboro detaches the shower head, crouching half-naked next to his child. He turns the water as hot as it’ll go. Tomura's teeth chatter, regardless.
The master will know. Even if he doesn’t visit tomorrow, he’ll know. He’s not sure if All for One will be mad or not. Doesn’t know if he’ll blame Oboro for allowing Tomura to get sick in the first place or praise him for taking care of him so well.
Tomura clings to him, wrapping his wet, dirty arms around Oboro’s neck, while he tries vainly to clean him off. He’s shivering, pressing his sweat-soaked face into Oboro’s shoulder.
It takes too long. Oboro has to climb halfway into the tub just to get the job done, soaks his pants in the process, and by the time he’s wrapping Tomura in a towel, carrying the boy back to the Room, he’s only in his boxers, dripping wet, wracked with shivers of his own.
His feet pad against the hard floor, the sound oddly mundane. Oboro cradles Tomura to his chest, chin tucked over the soft gray-blue-white hair, breathing in the smell of the soap he used. The vortex is calm. Negligible, even. Oboro feels present.
“It hurts,” Tomura moans, lips moving against Oboro’s collar bone. He’s hanging there, limp and exhausted, one arm squirming free of the tight binds of the towel to get a fistful of Oboro’s hair, just holding it.
“What hurts?”
Tomura sniffles. “My feelings.”
“Your head?” Oboro suggests, tightening the arm he has around the boy’s thighs, leaning back, to free up a hand and let the tips of his fingers brush over Tomura’s forehead.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Tomorrow, he’ll use the rotary phone to call the Master. It’s for emergencies, technically, but this feels like an emergency. Tomura is never this lethargic. He needs medicine, right? Soup. Ginger, for his stomach. Oboro has hazy memories of chalky chewable tablets and soft lips pressed to forehead, a woman’s voice, high and fretting, right above his face. Long, queasy days, all associated with the idea of sickness.
The Room is as it was. The same small, empty bedroom where Oboro first met Tomura. The bed hasn’t gotten any bigger, because the boy hasn’t gotten any bigger.
“No,” Tomura says, when Oboro goes to put him down. He digs his nails into his scalp, tugging on the knotted mess that is Oboro’s hair. It hurts, in a stinging, distant sort of way.
Oboro sighs, shifting Tomura so he’s balanced precariously on his hip, and goes about getting his clothes.
There’s an itch at the back of his throat, the threat of another bout of coughing, and Tomura isn’t any help. Squirming relentlessly as Oboro dresses him, getting the thin, tickling strands of his hair in his face and up his nose.
He’s been getting more and more of them, lately. Long, debilitating fits that leave him doubled over and wheezing. Looking and smelling like he went through a chimney. The drugs aren’t helping as much anymore, and Oboro doesn’t know how to feel about it. Doesn’t know how to care about it.
But he does know he doesn’t want Tomura to see it. He stifles it as best he can, clearing his throat gruffly, shoulders jerking in muted, aborted shudders.
He dries Tomura’s hair, movements automatic, ingrained. It’s not good to go to sleep with wet hair.
Tomura curls up in his lap, sedate and contented. He’s only getting hotter, sweat beading on his freshly cleaned skin. Oboro feels warm just sitting with him.
“Bedtime,” he tells the boy, once he’s dry and dressed again. He picks Tomura up, stumbles over to the bed. Tomura doesn’t let go of his hair.
Oboro hisses, tugging, trying and failing to pull off the little limpet.
“Tomura,” he says. “Tomura, let go.”
“No.”
He lets himself be dragged down, the bars around the bed digging awkwardly into his sternum, a pair of skinny little arms wrapped firmly around his neck. He hovers there, hugged to Tomura like a glorified teddy bear, bare, his back exposed to the room.
Demanding. Always so demanding.
Oboro shifts, kneels, so he isn’t hunches so dramatically. Allows himself to drape over the boy, turns his face sideways, so his cheek is to Tomura’s chest and the weight of his head is on his shoulder.
Only then does Tomura settle, eyes fluttering shut, breathing heavily through his mouth. Oboro lays there, not daring to move.
He waits, anxiously, for the fog to descend again now that the boy is asleep. Waits for the faded, tarnished feeling to creep back in. It feels imminent, a storm cloud in the distance.
It never comes, though. Oboro stays painfully solid, blood in his mouth, trapped in the arms of a child.
He thinks, maybe, this is happiness.