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Tomura wasn’t sure whose turn it was to clean the base; he just knew whoever it was had forgotten to do it. Toga was lying on one of the couches, holding up a vial of spirits-know-who’s blood against the iridescent lighting while Magne sat on the floor, painting Toga's toenails a godawful pink. At the bar, Kurogiri was passing two light beers to Spinner and Twice-gross-while talking tactics. Compress was sitting next to them, admiring…something in one of his marbles. Somewhere, he could hear Dabi rummaging around the bowling balls to set up a game. He turned and followed the sound towards Dabi, knowing the skinny fucker wouldn’t bring him a ball heavy enough to throw. Honestly, how can you be almost six feet tall and still throw an eight-pounder? Toga threw heavier than him, and she’s a child.
“Hey asshole, got your gloves on?” Dabi asked, not turning around.
“Yeah. Hand me a twelve.”
Dabi handed over a bright blue ball, making some sort of comment about it matching his hair. Rolling his eyes, Tomura looked for a lane that wasn’t half-destroyed. Having a base in a bowling alley wasn’t all bad, but it really sucked when both of the bowlers were really fucking sore losers. Half of the lanes were completely unusable, and every issue with them could be chalked up to either Tomura disintegrating the ball corral or Dabi setting the lane on fire. Maybe they should take a page from Toga’s book and just play for fun?
Tomura had just thrown for the fifth frame, an extremely irritating late 10, when Toga suddenly sat up. “Y’know, I could really go for some hot chocolate right now.”
Dabi was massaging his right shoulder, prepping for his throw. “It’s three am.”
“Oh, so you guys can bowl, but we can’t go get food?”
Magne shrugged. “I’d be up for Denny’s. It’s not like it’s a far walk.”
“Aw!” Toga’s bottom lip jutted out in a strong pout, but her eyes glittered. “I was hoping we could go to Waffle House this time.”
“What,” Dabi asked, almost like a statement. “The fuck. Is a Waffle House?”
“Dabi you cannot be serious right now,” Great, now Spinner was involved. Couldn’t they just finish the fucking game?
“What? Is it weird that I don’t know what that is? Is it like IHOP?”
Spinner and Twice were both snickering. Twice answered, “You call yourself a villain, and you’ve never made a run to Waffle House? The workers there give even less of a shit about us than Denny’s workers.”
Dabi’s eyes widened at this. “So you don’t think they’ll make fun of me?”
“Anyone would make fun of your food crimes, Dabi.” Toga’s eyes had sharpened into a glare. “Please. Please don’t. I just want to have a nice, middle of the night breakfast.”
Dabi’s left eyebrow raised. “And who’s to say you can’t? We’re going to Waffle House.”
Tomura made a point of taking off his right glove and disintegrating Dabi’s ball before they left. This was only happening because Tomura was winning; he was sure of it.
Even though Denny’s was much more convenient, being next door to their Staples-turned-bowling-alley-turned-base and all, the Waffle House wasn’t that terrible of a walk. Tomura just wished he could ignore Compress making Toga laugh by compressing stop signs and putting them back in places they didn’t make sense. Behind him, Spinner and Twice were still chatting at their same, annoying volume, and Dabi was being as frustrating as ever, his brooding aura spilling out all over the sidewalk like smoke or something. Kurogiri already had that sort of thing taken care of; Tomura wished Dabi wasn’t necessary sometimes. Then, he remembered that Dabi was the only one who would bowl with him whenever he wanted; he decided he could deal with the brooding a little longer. Maybe.
Magne held the door open for everyone, making Dabi go first so that he had the purest reaction possible. He muttered something about not being impressed, to which Toga shouted something about the experience. Tomura suppressed the urge to touch the door handle with his bare hands. For four days, Tomura had been on Kurogiri’s good side and hadn’t gotten in trouble with All For One; he was going to do his best to keep it that way. For now.
They crammed into two booths, back-to-back. Mange, Toga, Dabi, and Tomura sat together at one booth while Kurogiri, Spinner, Twice, and Compress sat at the other. When the waiter came to take their drink order, Tomura realized his mistake. How could he have forgotten that murder wasn’t Dabi’s worst crime?
“I’ll take a large glass of milk with lots of ice please.”
“Lots…of ice?”
“Yeah. Lots of ice.”
“Dabi,” Toga groaned. “Can’t you be normal in public for once?”
Dabi rolled his eyes. “Looking like I look, being normal in public isn’t really an option. And ordering a hot chocolate with triple whip isn’t necessarily angelic of you.”
“It is too!” The pout was back, but Toga’s eyes were wild. “The whip makes it perfect! So triple whip means triple perfect!”
It didn’t matter how quickly Dabi downed his glass of iced milk once it got to the table; the image of it would haunt Tomura’s nightmares more than All Might making an impossible return.
Tomura had ordered a coffee, but he was a food criminal all on his own. Rather than drink it scalding, like Magne, or wait a few minutes and drink it hot, like Twice, Tomura waited for his coffee to be a pleasant, cool, room temperature before taking the first sip. It didn’t really change the taste all that much, but it was more than rewarding enough to watch Dabi squirm as he sipped the too-cold liquid.
Their food came around the time Tomura was ready to drink his coffee. Before he tasted his waffles, he reached for the coffee mug, when… oh, fuck. Using his left hand, he felt around his pockets. It wasn’t there.
“God dammit.”
“What’s up, Shiggy?” Toga asked around a mouthful of red velvet pancake.
“I forgot my fucking glove.” He reached across the table with his left hand while flashing his right.
Dabi flinched backwards, causing Tomura to smirk. “Sucks for you, though, because you can’t cut up your waffles.”
“That’s fine.” Tomura set his mug down after a long, excruciating drink. He stabbed his fork into his waffle after coating it with an ungodly amount of syrup and lifted the entire disk to his mouth. “I’ll eat it like this.”
“Tomura Shigaraki.”
Tomura dropped his fork at the sound of Kurogiri’s Mom Voice. “Yes?”
“I will cut your waffle for you.”
Tomura groaned in protest, sinking into the booth. “That’s so embarrassing.”
“Not more embarrassing than you making a mess of yourself in public,” Magne countered with a sneer.
“If you’d prefer, I’ll cut your waffles for you,” Dabi offered, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Absolutely not.” He turned around to face Kurogiri. “If it’s no trouble…”
“Not at all.”
“Look, I swear you didn’t give us any bacon. We got the waffles and the hash browns, but no bacon.”
“Are you sure? I’m nearly positive I brought out bacon.”
Compress gestured to Toga at Tomura’s table. “Well, she got bacon. Maybe that’s the bacon you’re remembering.”
The waitress shrugged. “Guess so. Sorry about that; it’s pretty late.”
“No problem.” Compress flashed her a cheery smile that turned sinister as soon as she’d walked away. He tapped two marbles against his plate, revealing the aforementioned bacon. “Got her.”
Tomura could feel Kurogiri roll his eyes, even though he couldn’t see them. “There’s no need to torture her like this.”
“Look, I gotta have all the bacon I can get, Crispy always burns his.” Compress made a gagging sound.
“Hey,” Dabi all but growled, “my bacon is good.”
“Yeah, if you like it as crispy as you are.”
“Shigaraki, move. I’m killing Compress, and then I’m burning this entire Waffle House down.”
Toga smacked her hand on top of Dabi’s, as if to hold him in place. The grin on her face made Tomura's skin crawl. “If you do, I will steal your blood.”
After a long moment of eye contact, Dabi resigned, grumbling to himself.
When Compress made yet another fuss about getting no bacon, Spinner requested his fourth glass of orange juice for the evening. “What?” he asked in response to Twice’s exaggerated hurling noise. “Orange juice is incredible.”
“Yeah, if you’re a fucking child. Face the world like a regular adult and drink black coffee.”
Spinner stuck his tongue out in disgust. “You will never be able to make me drink that shit, okay? No.”
“Black coffee is gross; it’s better with sugar,” Toga piped up.
Dabi rolled his eyes, more occupied with his cell phone. Probably texting that dumbass bird dude. “Sugary coffee is disgusting.”
“You don’t get to have an opinion.” Magne shook her head in disdain. “You drink your milk with fucking ice cubes in it.”
“It’s not cold enough without ice cubes!”
“It comes from the fridge!”
“Children, please.”
As usual, Kurogiri’s voice calms the storm. Breakfast, or whatever the fuck eating breakfast food at four am is called, was quiet for a few moments again. For those few moments, Tomura reveled in the sounds of eggs sizzling behind the counter and nothing else. Then, fucking Dabi ruined it again.
“Toga? Why are you stabbing me?” Tomura looked up. Sure enough, Toga was repeatedly poking Dabi with her knife, still sticky from cream cheese and syrup. “I thought you liked me?”
“I do!” Her tone was far too cheery for the middle of the night. “I’m stabbing you with love.”
After they returned home, Tomura decided that he hated Waffle House. There was something about that atmosphere that made the League of Villains even more insufferable than usual. Denny’s was better for more than just the closeness to their Staples-turned-bowling-alley base.
“Y’know,” Dabi voiced to the group as he lined up to throw after getting a new ball, “I really like Waffle House. We should go there more often.”
Yeah. If for nothing else, Denny’s was better because it’d annoy Dabi more to go there.