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The light spilling out of the bathroom doorway should have been enough of a warning. While living with multiple people came with a steep learning curve, even Tomura knew many preferred privacy. Maybe if he hadn’t just woken up, or been so absorbed in thoughts of what needed doing after breakfast he would have turned around. At the least, he wouldn’t have carelessly glanced inside as he walked by, expecting to catch Toga putting her hair up at the mirror over the sink, or Twice telling his reflection off.
He didn’t see Toga. He didn’t see Twice. Not Spinner or Magne or Compress. Tomura stumbled to a stop. Worse, he stayed and stared.
The frosted glass screen past the sink area had been folded back, allowing a clear view of the shower half of the wash room beyond. On the stool in the middle of the floor sat Dabi. His back, turned to the doorway, was an unbroken expanse of deep maroon scar tissue. Eyes feeling almost too big to fit his face, Tomura studied the patterns of whorls and waves imprinted on it. He traced them down to where they met pale living flesh, then followed the neat row of staples over to his hip. The long thigh and calf visible from that angle bore no marks, smooth and whole and perfect. In contrast, Dabi’s arms from palm to bicep wore sleeves of the roughest scars yet. The texture reminded Tomura of meat slowly roasted on a spit, all crinkles and cracks. Yet, somehow, the muscle beneath still flexed and relaxed smoothly as Dabi brought a washcloth up from the basin and pressed it gently to his chest, squeezing. The water made a pretty tinkling sound as it ran down and hit the floor, flowing to the drain.
“See something you like, creep?
Catapulted back to reality, Tomura jerked his gaze upwards to find—how could he have been so fucking stupid, stupid, stupid—butane-blue eyes aimed directly at him. The blood in his limbs turned to ice water while somehow managing to superheat his face at the same time. At least he’d had the sense to wear Father, not wanting to risk exposure with so many strangers running around the hideout now.
Tomura mumbled something that might, with more presence of mind, had been, “Sorry,” before staggering away from the door.
“Hey, hold up. Got a favor to ask.”
Walk away. Just go. That’s all he needed to do. Yet Tomura found himself returning to the doorway as if hypnotized. Hands against the wall with index fingers raised, he peeked around the edge. Surprise—Dabi hadn’t had the decency to vanish forever, thus solving everything. He sat half-turned on the stool, brilliant blue eyes steady and patient. His usually spiky hair had been slicked back, wet and sleek and longer than expected, curling around his ears, dangling down to his neck. The angles of his face looked stark without it. A slight smile caused the seams between healthy and charred skin to curve more.
“What…” Tomura had to take a moment to peel his tongue away from the roof of his mouth. “What sort of favor?”
Dabi shrugged; the staples in his sides flexed and pulled at flesh with the movement. “I forgot to grab a towel. Bring me one from the closet, yeah?”
Tomura’s heart resumed beating. It was a simple request. Reasonable. How many times had he done the same thing, having to leave a dripping trail down the hall? Anyway, he’d gotten familiar with Toga over the past couple of weeks since their chat on the fire escape. With Twice and Magne somewhat too—even Spinner, if only about gaming. Surreptitiously, Tomura touched his trouser pocket and the lump of the jar he’d taken to carrying everywhere. He hadn’t avoided Dabi, not exactly, but he hadn’t spoken to him in a string of more than two words since that night in the bar either. He hadn’t given Tomura any real reason for hostility after they’d been introduced…maybe the time had come for a gesture of goodwill on his end.
“Okay,” he replied at last, sounding strangely out of breath. “Fine. Sure. Yeah.”
Why the fuck couldn’t he stop blabbing?
Shaking himself, Tomura lurched out of the doorway and slunk back down the hall toward the linen closet. Despite the short walk, his heart slammed against his ribs like a racquet ball. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t under attack. He’d just been asked to get a simple item. Nothing that should have his palms turning damp and clammy, or make Father smother rather than protect him.
Except…could he be walking into a prank? Another joke crafted around his inexperience with people? Dabi had come across casual enough, but if he’d learned anything from his brief time around the other new League members it was how much a person could hide behind a smile, a shrug, a single word. Tomura had already jumped through the hoops of one eccentric personality test. Who was to say he wouldn’t blunder right into another? Or worse—what if Dabi wanted something else? Something he couldn’t foresee?
That last concern had Tomura, towel now in hand, sneaking back to the doorway with as little noise as possible. He didn’t think he could have breathed even if he’d tried as he peeked around the edge.
Dabi hadn’t moved. He remained modestly half-turned on the stool, dabbing at the seam just below his shoulder with the washrag and wincing occasionally. He probably couldn’t use the tub—not with all those staples in him. Were the seams open? How did he deal with the constant pain? His patches looked so symmetrical, so neat. A manifestation of his quirk? Possible, though, somehow, Tomura doubted it. However, that meant that somewhere along the way Dabi had been severely burned and refused to be healed, at least completely. On top of that, somebody must have agreed to let him wear all that cooked skin, trimming and fastening it to his body like a tailor altering a shirt.
While Tomura wouldn’t have minded hearing how Dabi had come by the scars, his curiosity dimmed beside the wonder of realizing he’d chosen to keep them. Despite the factors of chronic pain, limited mobility and feeling, and the threat of infection or further injury, Dabi hadn’t gotten grafts. He didn’t try to hide anything. He’d taken the dark, ruined pieces of himself—likely reminders of some event that could have spelled his death—and transformed them. He had made them orderly, striking, and completely his.
Tomura touched Father with a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking. An odd, dull ache generated in his suddenly tight chest while he clung to the wall and watched Dabi.
See something you like, creep?
With a nasty start, he realized just how much he was living up to the insulting nickname. Gathering himself into a semblance of nonchalance, he rapped on the doorjamb.
Pausing with the washcloth somewhere around his stomach—at least Tomura assumed and quickly veered away from any further thoughts on the subject—Dabi looked over his shoulder. “About time.” He held out his free hand.
Right. All that needed to be done was to walk a few steps, pass the towel off, and go about the morning as usual. Tomura could do that. Nevermind Dabi being completely naked and making direct eye contact. People took their clothes off in front of strangers at hot springs or public baths and it wasn’t a big deal, right? Everyone was made of the same meat and skin and bone. There was no difference here. None. It didn’t matter.
Except it did. This wasn’t a hot spring. This was where they lived, in private, between just the two of them. Tomura wasn’t dealing with a stranger but Dabi, who had seen his face, touched his hair, given him a gift, and who was now raising eyebrows at him.
Though someone had replaced his knees with sponges, Tomura managed a wobbly step. Another followed. Then another. He finally stubbed his toe on the raised lip of the washroom entrance on the fourth. With a soft curse, he thrust the towel in Dabi’s general direction, looking everywhere but directly ahead. He saw the cover still folded over the tub. Counted the various soaps and products crammed onto the shelves beside the basin. Noticed the steady drip of the showerhead. Spotted another towel, blue just like the one he held, hanging on the rack to their left.
Tomura’s heart thundered like a festival drum, rattling his bones to the marrow, as his gaze snapped to Dabi. Multiple dimples lined his cheeks as a sly smile pulled at his staples.
“Had to get your attention somehow, didn’t I?”
It took his mouth opening and closing several times before any sound came out. “You…I…”
“Funny. That’s exactly what I wanted to chat about.” With no hesitation whatsoever, Dabi laid a hand over most of the one still holding the towel. The distraction. The bait. Tomura’s fingers twitched, Decaying the fabric in an instant. Dabi watched the remains drift down to the floor, his smile never wavering, his touch not retreating.
“Are you upset with me?” The smartass street cadence had vanished. With it gone, it was easy to notice how soft-spoken he actually was.
“I don’t…but…” Tomura floundered in the storming sea of his thoughts, flailing for a coherent lifeline to cling to. Finally, he bumped into a single bit of flotsam good enough to keep him afloat. “Why?”
Dabi studied him through a hooded stare. “You’re not used to this type of thing, I get it. But you aren’t stupid either. Far from it. You know why.”
Tomura waited for some scathing comeback to leap to mind. Nothing stirred. Because, deep down, the truth had already taken hold.
He did know. He’d known since that night at the bar weeks ago. Eye-rolling movie scenes and people-watching had given him enough to guess why he couldn’t form a coherent sentence while meeting Dabi’s gaze directly. He’d replayed certain interactions between favored game characters enough times to recognize the fluttering sensation in his middle. He’d grown up with Internet access, for fuck’s sake. He was inexperienced and adept at avoidance, but not ignorant.
Which explained, maybe, why he made a small sound in the back of his throat but didn’t fight when Dabi gently pulled him closer. So close that Tomura smelled the sterile sting of antiseptic, the sweeter scent of the soap he’d used, and another lingering beneath both. One that made him think of the first few minutes of summer rain falling on the streets, scouring them clean, the natural mingling with the man-made. Had Dabi smelled that way at the bar? Tomura hadn’t noticed. He breathed deeper, committing it to memory.
Dabi cocked his head, a scowl tugging at the scars covering his jaw. The sensation of living fingertips skimmed right along the lower edge of Father, making Tomura inhale sharply…but not struggle or protest. Not even when the stiff, dead thing was carefully pulled away and set aside on the ash-sprinkled floor. Dabi’s frown immediately inverted. He turned more on the stool so his other hand could come up and comb Tomura’s hair back from his brow. A static charge rippled over his skin on contact. He couldn’t stop a shiver from riding down his spine along with it.
Angling his head up, Dabi hooked two fingers into the V of Tomura’s shirt and tugged. “Come here.”
Against any and all protocols of common sense, Tomura obliged. Heat radiated from Dabi as if he were the sun in human form and gathered in the few centimeters of space still between them. Tomura’s own constantly cold limbs soaked it up until every muscle and bone buzzed with peculiar, restless energy. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so warm, even bundled under his blankets.
Some still semi-functioning portion of his brain hissed runRUNpullbackDecayitallaway because, again, he knew what this meant and did not need the added complications.
Only…Dabi didn’t make another move. He remained motionless, head tipped back in offering, lids heavy over dilated eyes. Watching his smile morph into a smirk triggered a chain reaction of realization.
Tomura wasn’t being tricked or backed into a corner. Far from it. Yet he most definitely wasn’t off the hook. Because he was being called on to choose, to take responsibility for that choice, and fucking Midoriya Izuku had been right—Tomura lacked conviction. He desired nothing outside a general notion of being left the hell alone, to hoard his games, to hate everything in relative peace. Even Sensei’s mysterious mentions of reshaping society and empire amounted to a chore carried out from a vague sense of obligation.
Dabi, though…he dared Tomura to reach out and claim something on his own. He may have gone through the trouble of a ruse to get in close—so, so close—but he wasn’t going to make the finishing move. Dabi already knew how to take a final leap without flinching.
Centimeters separated them physically. The hollow place at Tomura’s core turned the distance into a yawning chasm. He stood at its edge, teetering, long enough to risk awkwardness.
Think of this another way. As a show of trust.
Tomura took a breath. Leaned…tipped…tipped…tipped…and let himself fall.
Patchwork hands caught him around the waist, a few staples snagging his shirt and scraping his sides. He barely registered the fact once lips, searing and half-scarred, pressed hard against his own. The copper-plated taste of blood followed the sting of his chapped skin splitting near the vertical gash in the corner. Catching a hint of it too, Dabi pulled away. A tiny smear of red painted his bottom lip. He brushed Tomura’s chin with his fingertips before locking stares. His meaning took several seconds to process.
“Again,” said Tomura, voice rasping, alien to his own ears.
Dabi’s teeth flashed white in a triumphant grin. He darted forward and sucked on the cuts in Tomura’s lip, old and new, in a way that made his whole body thrum. Their lips sealed for a second time, and a third, and a fourth, and he blanked on what numbers came next sometime after that. The hands cradling his waist drew him closer. He didn’t resist, allowing his knees to fold and drop to the hard floor. His own hands crept up to rest on Dabi’s upper arms, pinkies mindfully kept up. The scars were raised and rippled, like the patterns of lava stone, almost scalding to the touch. His chest, though hot, proved more bearable. Tomura’s hands stayed there, splayed across smooth skin so unlike his own, and tried in vain to name the sensations saturating him from head to toe.
There was no urge to scratch. Instead, the feelings compelled him to squirm closer and press against Dabi, eliminating the space between them. The empty place inside him steadily filled with the scent of warm rain on the city, contrasting textures of flesh, and breath-stealing kisses. For the first time he could remember, Tomura wanted. Not with the material greed behind chasing a new game, or the sullen rage that had fueled his ill-fated attempt on All Might’s life, but with a consuming drive that couldn’t be deterred by a little thing like reason.
“Hey, Spinner!” The thumps of a fist pounding against wood echoed from farther up the hall along with the voice. “Rise and shine! It’s your turn to cook breakfast. Get your tail out of bed or I’m gonna eat all the eggs myself! You snooze you lose, lizard lips!”
Twice’s voice hit Tomura like a bucket of water tossed on a cat. He jolted back to full cognitive fuction, jerking away from Dabi. The other startled at the sudden movement. He blinked as if waking from a dream, heard a door open followed by Spinner’s grumbled reply, and shook his head.
“Great timing as usual, guys.” His eyes flicked back to Tomura, the annoyance lifting from his expression. Above the borders of staples, a flush tinted his face. “Want to close the door?”
“I…” Tomura upended his brain, hoping a suitable excuse that would let him escape with nominal dignity would come rattling out. Instead, more and more yes piled up, threatening to bury him.
Life didn’t come with a reset button. No cheat code would fix this. So, he selected the only sensible action left to someone in over their current level.
Tomura got his feet under himself, pivoted, and fled the encounter. He didn’t stop until he’d slammed his bedroom door shut, locked it, and sunk down in a heap against it.
When the waves of panic finally subsided, Tomura’s neck was a shredded mess. Blood soaked his shirt collar so heavily that if it weren’t black it would’ve been doomed to the trash. He ran a trembling, red-splattered hand over his face.
Terror dug icy talons into his heart as he realized he’d abandoned Father on the bathroom floor.
Gasping, Tomura pressed his bloody hands over his mouth. He’d acted so reckless, so stupid, unable to think of anything but a beautiful boy he hardly knew and now…He had to go back. What if Dabi had been offended he’d run and taken Father? What if he’d destroyed Him?
In a blur, Tomura scrabbled to his feet and yanked the door open. He managed a single step before stumbling over something just outside.
A blue towel, folded into a neat square, sat in front of his door. Something inside it created a sizable lump. Hope blazing to life in his chest, Tomura snatched it up and flipped the folds open.
Father’s pale fingers peeked out at him, whole and safe. A sob of relief hiccupped out of him before he could stop it. Tomura staggered inside again and closed the door. Squeezing his eyes shut, he hugged both mementos to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, unsure which he was addressing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Eventually, he pulled enough of himself together to go to the closet. Using the towel to keep from smearing blood everywhere, he placed Father with the others in their lacquered box, storing them away until later. Sliding the closet shut, Tomura pressed the towel to his gory neck. Its damp coolness helped soothe away the stinging. He stayed that way, breathing in the mix of antiseptic, soap, and summer rain while ideas took hazy shape in his head.
Life didn’t come with a reset button. However, that didn’t mean he couldn’t hit continue and keep trying.
Drifting over to his desk, Tomura switched his laptop on and sat down. Sign in screens for the game servers he frequented popped up, but he banished them for the moment. He had a lot of information to process first. Even more gaps in knowledge waited to be surveyed and bridged. He’d definitely have a plan to set in motion by the time he was satisfied he’d done both. Maybe after that he’d feel like playing something.
Then again, maybe he’d already pressed start.