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For someone who hated to drink, Tomura spent a lot of time sitting at the hideout’s bar. He couldn’t have done it if the place were still in business—some unlucky server would’ve had several drunk assholes to mop up off the floor before the night ended. But with it sealed off from the outside world the atmosphere suited him fine. It was quiet. Clean. Both adjectives that applied to his room upstairs, but locking himself in there too long gave him the urge to start climbing the walls. Even he needed to get out of his own head once in a while, whether that involved speaking with Sensei or just watching Kurogiri dust the glasses.
The open space of the bar never threatened to close in and suffocate him. All the different sizes and shapes of the bottles occupying the shelves, glinting in the low lighting, gave him something to look at while he thought besides a glowing screen or blank ceiling as he laid in bed. Or, like now, he could simply trace the swirling grain of the bar top with one finger and think nothing. Or what passed for nothing in his case—his mind churned and surged as relentlessly as the sea grinding away the edges of the land. He’d only learned how to roll back the tide enough to allow for some sleep or brief breaks that kept him from throwing himself off the roof and quieting his brain for good.
The Internet had fished up terms like rumination and obsessiveand thought loops when he’d done a search once. Psychobabble for being his own worst enemy, in other words. Tracing patterns in fabric or wood or pictures or whatever did help sometimes like a few of the articles had suggested, though. Listing colors or items in his surroundings too when he became overwhelmed and started to flounder. (Breathing exercises, however, could fuck right off—all those did was cause him to hyperventilate as he counted each inhale and exhale faster and faster.) The tricks allowed him to hit reset and go back to a previous save point, in a way. The level didn’t get any easier when he returned to it, but the momentary respite allowed him to regroup and adjust his tactics.
He’d been doing an awful fucking lot of both ever since Giran’s first two finds had moved in. Tomura’s nail scraped against polished wood, digging in while his mind replayed the conversation with Kurogiri the evening before, clear as a cutscene.
We cannot further our ends without skilled support, Shigaraki Tomura.
I know, damn it. He couldn’t have even said what his party was fighting on-screen. He’d just kept selecting Attack each round. That doesn’t mean we have to take in every stray Giran drags in from the gutter.
True…yet please recall why we hired the man in the first place: to scout for promising candidates. He wouldn’t present us with anyone he considered beneath our notice. Each point had been spoken with the polite but unwavering logic that had won him the job as Tomura’s handler to begin with. Drifting over to the computer desk, Kurogiri had warped two manila folders onto it. At least skim their profiles before declaring your ultimate decision.
So, Tomura had. And he’d seen beyond a doubt that the fucking walking Rorschach test had been right, as usual. The description of the brat’s quirk had been particularly surprising. Tomura’s mind had roiled with all the possible uses for her. The smartass’s, on the other hand, didn’t boast as much versatility, but it did promise the kind of ranged and wide-area attacks needed to control a battle.
Giran had brought him an illusionist assassin and a black mage. With them, he’d have a better chance at clearing higher level quests. He hated the facts, but that didn’t change them, as he’d been taught in no uncertain terms during the little excursion to UA’s training facility.
Thus, Toga Himiko and Dabi, whoever he really was, had been granted permission to move what worldly goods they possessed into rooms of their choosing upstairs. Tomura hadn’t bothered to learn which. He figured he’d reduce the chances of murdering them in their sleep if he didn’t know.
His hand left the bar and relocated to his throat. The fingers didn’t scratch, but they flexed in the familiar pattern. Letting those two move in might have been a mistake—yet another in a growing string of them. He shouldn’t have given in to Kurogiri so easily because of rattled confidence. He should have insisted all recruits stay somewhere else until they proved their worth and loyalty. To hell with Giran’s professional instincts. What if they were spies for some hero agency? The Toga brat especially, with a quirk like hers. Barring that, they still hadn’t made it past basic introductions without trying to kill each other. How could they be expected to follow orders or not botch a mission because of their own petty goals? And anyway, both of them were just fucking weird.
A sound barged into Tomura’s thoughts from the outer world. Only the small, metallic click of a door handle turning, but it made his head snap in the direction of the hallway. Kurogiri never used the door. He didn’t need to.
Sure enough, there slouched a tall, ragged figure. The zombie. The one name wonder. Dabi.
The skin of Tomura’s throat stung as his nails finally found purchase. Of course the last person on Earth he wanted to see would show up at that very moment. Of course. Because the universe fucking hated him and the feeling was very much mutual.
For a minute, Dabi just filled up the space in the doorway, watching and being watched. When Tomura didn’t move to attack, he finally stepped into the room. His ugly boots clomped on the floorboards as he approached. Still wary, still keeping an eye on where Tomura’s hands rested, he paused at the far corner of the bar. Kurogiri must have had a chat with both newcomers, oh yes. Now they had to be aware of just how close they’d come to never annoying the shit out of anyone ever again.
“So.” Dabi nodded toward the shelves. “We gotta pay for booze or is it included in our membership?”
Even while asking a simple question he couldn’t sound anything less than full of contempt. Putting on an air of boredom despite the knot of tension between his shoulder blades, Tomura shrugged. “Knock yourself out. None of this shit comes out of my pocket.”
No further invitation was required. Dabi strode behind the bar and started examining labels, back turned. Tomura’s fingers twitched. Patchwork asshole. Like he’d fall for a trap that obvious.
Dabi settled on a dark blue bottle with a foreign label. Turning around, he grabbed a glass from beneath the bar, twisted the cap open, and poured without restraint. Fumes wafted over, crinkling Tomura’s nose. Great. Wonder-fucking-ful. The reek of alcohol made his stomach tie itself in knots just as much as it had after his first and final hangover.
He’d thought that drinking the toxic shit might help shut his brain up. And, after choking down an acidic gulp—he’d chosen something a deep gold because he’d just liked the color—it had, sort of. His thoughts had softened, stretching out and slowing with a new elasticity. So, even though his chest and nostrils had still been full of napalm he’d knocked back another swallow. The volume of his mental chatter had faded with the third. By the fifth it became benign background noise. The alcohol’s chemical burn had faded away on the seventh. Memories slid into blank blackness sometime after the tenth.
Kurogiri must have warped him to bed that night because when Tomura woke, sweaty, shaking, sicker than a lab rat, the man already had a bucket at the ready. He spoke not a word while letting Tomura puke his guts up. Or when he brought miso broth, umeboshi, and tea after the dry heaves stopped. He didn’t have to. Tomura hadn’t drunk a drop since.
“You look like you swallowed a bug.”
Tomura’s gaze leapt up from the bar to find Dabi staring at him over the rim of the now empty glass. A little riff of unease jangled his nerves. He’d never seen eyes such a deep blue. They caught the low lighting and glinted the same way the selected bottle did. The patches of ruined skin sagging beneath just made them more striking.
“Must be the company.” His tongue moved too sluggishly to be sharp, turning the comeback into little more than a mumble. Another jolt of realization lanced through Tomura: Father wasn’t shielding his face. There wouldn’t be much to see with his hair hanging in a messy curtain…but he still had to repress the urge to fidget on the stool and shift away.
Dabi smirked. Tomura couldn’t tear his stare away from how the smooth skin of his upper cheeks and the trauma-purple scar tissue of his jaw pulled in opposite directions against the surgical staples—the fuckmothering staples—binding them at the seams. The smirk only grew under the attention.
“Yeah, about that…” Dabi reached into his raggedy jacket and Tomura tensed. Then mentally cursed when not a weapon but a small jar was produced. Dark glass, unlabeled, it looked utterly boring in the other man’s palm (also stapled, also intensely weird) as he offered it across the bar. “For you.”
“What…what’s in it?”
“A gesture of goodwill.”
The scarred corner of Tomura’s upper lip peeled back just enough to show a glimmer of teeth. “You couldn’t have given me one in the first place by introducing yourself properly?”
Those disquieting eyes almost glowed. “Sure. But then I wouldn’t have seen who you are. People always show their real selves when they’re pissed.”
A fine tremor infected Tomura’s hands. One swift, short lunge. That’s all it would take to disintegrate Frankendick’s face for good. There would be no Kurogiri to play referee either… “So, what? That was just part of some elaborate test? You going to amaze me with an in-depth character analysis now?”
“Nope. I’m not feeling that generous.”
Right. That did it for his quota of fucks to give for the day. If he stuck around for another thirty seconds there really would be a murder in progress. Tomura turned away from the bar with a scoff.
“Hurts, huh? The stuff around your eyes.”
He froze with one foot on the floor, one still hooked on the bottom of the stool.
“Itches like a sonuvabitch too when it’s humid probably,” Dabi continued, sensing the hook had set. “What’s in the jar helps with that kind of thing.”
“Nothing helps.” The words hissed out of Tomura like a jet of steam.
“This will. I make it. Look how good it works on me.”
For the next solid minute, Tomura could do nothing except grapple with the question of how this staple-faced fucker could even be for real.
Dabi, for his part, let his smirk soften into something that almost resembled an actual smile. Unscrewing the jar’s lid, he set it down on the bar and dipped two fingers into the contents. When he reached forward, Tomura’s hand shot up and captured him around the wrist. Only his index finger didn’t touch, pointed at the ceiling and ready to clamp down in an instant.
On the verge of being reduced to bloody slush staining the floor, Dabi just cocked his head. “Jumpy, are we?”
“The hell do you think you’re doing?” It came out entirely too high and strained to spare Tomura’s dignity.
“I told you. Showing goodwill.” A pause. “Are you touch averse?”
“Am I what?”
“You know. Like, being touched gets you nervous or grosses you out. That sort of thing.”
“The fuck would I know? It’s not like I ever let anyone try!”
Okay. That hadn’t come out quite as intended. Tomura dug his fingers into Dabi’s wrist, deep enough to leave marks even through the sleeve of a jacket, daring the bastard to laugh or make a crude quip. Instead, said bastard quit smiling. His strange, stained-glass eyes only observed, absorbing details while giving none away. Contrary to the lack of mockery, hot blood rushed straight up Tomura’s neck and flooded his face.
All he had to do was flex one finger and Dabi would be dead. Every scenario that played out in inside his mind showed him having the clear advantage at such a close range. So why, why, why had the pulse in his chest and temples kicked into hyper mode?
“Think of this another way,” Dabi said, as if reading his thoughts and causing another spike in blood pressure. “As a show of trust.”
“T-trust?” The word tripped up Tomura’s tongue like it came from an alien language. “We tried to kill each other yesterday.”
The response was a shrug. “That’s yesterday. Like I said, you showed me what I wanted to know. Now I’m returning the favor. That’s why you were so pissed, wasn’t it? When I didn’t make an introduction? You wanted to see if you could trust me. Well, here I am, close enough for you to use your quirk on without much chance to dodge. Still not gonna tell you my name, though.”
All valid points. And having Dabi at his mercy did make for a strong show of dominance. It still didn’t explain why Tomura was the one on the edge of his seat. He eyed the pale goop coating Dabi’s fingers. Sensei had educated him on a wide variety of poisons used for killing or incapacitating victims, but he held few suspicions from that angle. Another crackpot personality test sounded more plausible. For cowardice? To see if he’d flinch if confronted? The only thing Tomura knew for sure was that he couldn’t back down without proving both.
Gathering his will, he eased his fingers from Dabi’s wrist. “Fine. I accept.” A little forethought went a long way; the words came across as gracious rather than sullen.
Dabi continued to study him for a few more heartbeats. When he caught no hint of a trick he reached out and closed the gap.
The warmth came as a shock. It radiated off his fingers just before they made contact with Tomura’s cheek. Against skin they bordered on searing. Despite the extensive training in muscle control and pain tolerance Sensei had drilled into him, a twitch from his jaw betrayed him.
Raising his eyebrows a fraction, Dabi pulled away a few centimeters. “All right?”
Mismatched ass rag. He’d probably raised his body temperature with his fire quirk to provoke a reaction. Rather than Decay his hand and snap it off at the wrist, Tomura curled his fingers into fists on his thighs and said through a snarl, “I’m fine.”
Dabi’s hooded stare declared his doubts on that, but he reached out again. Tomura didn’t falter a second time. The ointment, whatever it was made of, glided onto his cracked skin hot, clingy, and stinging. The fingertips applying it, though, did so with gentle strokes. After a minute or so the sting fizzled into tingling and the heat turned tolerable. It seeped into Tomura’s skull, his jaw and neck. The pinched muscles of his face slowly relaxed. Not so terrible after all. Weird to the nth degree, and he had no clue what he’d do if Kurogiri warped in on them, but not awful. Maybe he’d order Dabi to do this again in the near future. See how much the fucker smirked when his plan worked too well.
Fingers sliding into his hair scattered all petty plans of revenge. Tomura jumped and jerked his head away, blinking, startled.
Dabi’s skin pulled at the seams slightly from a small smile. “Your hair’s covering the other side of your face.”
“Oh.” The only way he could have sounded stupider was if he’d fried his brain like the UA kid with the electricity quirk. A possibility, given how his cheeks and neck were burning up. How the hell had he wound up on the defensive—again? This was why he liked games: whenever a dialog option or approval interaction went wrong he could backtrack and do it over until he got the desired result.
Dabi reached out again with one stitched up hand and brushed aside Tomura’s misgivings along with his hair, tucking the latter behind his ear. The tickle of the messy strands and strokes from warm fingertips sent fireworks sizzling and popping along the bundles of nerves in his neck and shoulders. His nails dug tiny crescents into his black jeans, but that didn’t stop a shiver from rolling through him from head to toe. Tomura barely managed to swallow what would definitely have been a humiliating noise in his surprise. He didn’t even want to consider what his face had betrayed in that instant.
Was this why people hugged and held hands and all that? Because contact gave them a high? Somehow, Tomura doubted it. Novelty and his inexperience were probably heightening the sensations. Every rare touch he could remember exchanging with someone had been a threat, either given or received. This would turn out no different. He raised his eyes from the bar, intent on finding some shred of evidence to support the suspicion.
Instead, he caught Dabi watching him. Not focused on rubbing the salve in. Not gauging reactions. Just…staring straight at him, irises as bright as the hearts of candleflames. Brain upended, Tomura shrunk in on himself a bit. Seriously, what the blazing fuck did this guy want? Why not spit it out already? The game didn’t have a point without a clear objective.
Tiny sparks spat across the network of nerves in Tomura’s scalp as fingers slipped into his hair again, combing through it. The sharp, involuntary breath he sucked in had nothing to do with the few strands that got caught and pulled by staples. Dabi took his hand away only to let it settle against the curve of Tomura’s cheek. The mildly calloused pad of his thumb caressed soothing heat into the peeling skin.
“There. Better?” His voice was almost as soft as his touch.
Against his will, Tomura realized it was. Not just his face either. For several glorious seconds, his thoughts stayed silent, at rest. There was nothing but warmth and blue eyes and strange feelings he had no names for.
Then the real reason behind the whole bizarre encounter finally hit him, breaching the calm surface of his mind and churning it back into chaos.
The stool tipped precariously under Tomura as he lurched back from Dabi’s reach. He latched onto the bar’s edge in the nick of time, keeping a finger on each hand away purely by the grace of reflex.
“You really are jumpy. Like a damn stray cat.”
If looks could Decay, he would have given Kurogiri something to sigh about in the form of sixty-eight kilograms’ worth of dust sprayed all over the immaculate shelves and cabinets.
Willfully oblivious, Dabi pushed the little jar across the bar top. “Here. Keep it. Should last awhile.” The smirk returned to his mismatched face as if it had never left. “Don’t expect me to share my chapstick, though. You’re on your own with that one, creep.”
Nothing but a strangled sound of outrage managed to escape Tomura’s constricted throat while the unbelievable bastard grabbed his chosen bottle and sauntered away. He considered flinging the empty glass after him. Using his quirk to bring the entire building crashing down on everyone inside. Crawling into the nearest hole and never coming out too. By the time Dabi was halfway across the room, Tomura had made his decision.
Slowly, his hand went to the jar. One finger touched the lid.
Dabi stopped in front of the door.
A second finger touched the dark glass.
The handle turned.
Three points of contact now.
Faint light spilled in from the hallway.
Tomura’s thumb wrapped around the jar in fourth place.
The door swung shut behind Dabi just as Shigaraki Tomura made his gesture of goodwill disappear, not in his grip but into his pocket.