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There is a pocket of time where the world seems to still completely. Where the people who are productive with their normal sleep schedules are sound asleep and the insomniacs curse them with every fiber of their sleep deprived souls. The only ones awake are the people who have been up way too late or have woken up way too early.
Shigaraki Tomura curls his fists tighter as he hugs his companion’s back closer to his chest. He’s in a weird state of emotion where there are so many different, contradicting emotions bubbling back up after so long of being buried, but at the same time, the man feels numb to everything. At this hour of the late night, of the early morning, he doesn’t even feel the urge of an itch that he just can’t quite satisfy.
He tries his best to lull himself to sleep by the sound of Dabi’s light wheezing breaths, but it doesn’t work. It never has. It doesn’t even help distract him from the thoughts clouding his mind anymore. He can feel his breathing become uneven, his lungs quivering. His sight blurs and he buries his face into the other’s back, trying to muffle any sounds that may try to escape him.
“Tomura?”
Shit. Shigaraki tries to still, hoping the other is too far close to sleep to be fully woken up, but he can’t stop the shaky breaths that force themselves past his lips.
“Tomu, may I turn to face you?”
Shigaraki tries to pull himself together to give a vocal answer, but he knows he’s not ready for that yet. So instead, he just loosens his embrace and nods against the other’s back.
Dabi turns himself around in Shigaraki’s arms, snaking one of his own around his waist to rub tender circles into the base of his spine and bringing the other up to the man’s face to cup it so he can slowly move his thumb back and forth over his scarred cheek. Shigaraki pulls his own curled fists to himself, crossing his arms to bury them away from touch.
“Shig,” Dabi presses a kiss to Tomura’s forehead, “what’s on your mind?”
Shigaraki opens his mouth to speak, but instead a sob rips through the soft silence. He can feel hot tears run down his face faster. It feels like a barbed wire curls cozily around his vocal cords to rob him of his ability to speak.
Dabi waits patiently, pressing gentle kisses to Tomura’s face as he whispers soft reassurances.
“I-” Shigaraki hiccups, but forces his voice to continue. “I can’t stand it.” He heaves before trying to put everything into words. “There’s just so much, it’s too much, too many.”
Shigaraki can feel the numbness begin to melt and fall away as a hurricane begins to wreak havoc across his brain. “It’s all… I can’t anymore, why is this so fucking heavy? I’ve always been just fine unless I’m left alone and awake this late at night.” Shigaraki tries to make his breathing even again, but the cries crash over his lungs in waves that pull him deeper into his emotions.
Dabi presses his forehead to Shigaraki’s, peering into the glazed over look that clouds the other’s eyes. “It’s okay Shig, you don’t have to carry it alone anymore, you can tell me everything.”
“I don’t even know where to begin!” Shigaraki is beginning to be unable to breathe through his nose, snot clogging quickly as sob after sob ruins his entire body.
“That’s okay. May I leave for just a moment, Love? I will run to get water and tissues and I will be right back to hold you in my arms.”
Shigaraki tries to look at the other, but his vision is worse than usual from tears forming faster than they can spill. He nods quickly as he hiccups, curling in on himself as soon as Dabi jumps from the bed.
Shigaraki tries to count as he breathes in and out, but his mind can’t make a single coherent thought. He’s not even able to count to four when he hears Dabi’s footsteps returning.
“Shig, I’m back,” Dabi’s voice is smooth and gentle as he moves across the mattress on his knees. He sets several bottles of water and a box of tissues on the nightstand before sitting against the headboard. “Can you sit up for me, baby?”
Dabi helps Shigaraki move up to lean into him, Shigaraki’s fists still clinging to his own shirt. Dabi brings a tissue to Shigaraki’s nose and tells him to blow. He tosses the tissue somewhere to the ground to pick up later then twists a cap off of one of the water bottles and presses it to Shigaraki’s lips. Shigaraki tries to force large gulps of water down, but Dabi’s strength is currently more than Tomura’s, only having him take small, steady sips to keep him from choking on the liquid. Dabi has his other arm wrapped back around Shigaraki to return to rubbing circles just like before.
Shigaraki has never felt safer than being so vulnerable in Dabi’s arms at almost four in the morning. Once he’s half way through the bottle, Dabi sets it aside as he presses a kiss to Tomura’s temple, urging him to try to continue.
“I don’t remember much of anything before being on the streets those few days before Sensei found me, but I’ve never been able to forget the fact-” Shigaraki feels another sob shatter whatever calm Dabi had just been able to bring him, “the fact that I know it wasn’t good. Something awful happened and I can’t remember it. All- all I’m able to remember is how it felt and how it makes me feel now.”
Shigaraki releases more sobs that turn from loud and ugly to soundless and painful. He curls in on himself as he leans against Dabi’s chest. He’s able to hear the man’s soft and calm heart beat. When he feels the lip from the bottle press lightly against his lips again, he tilts his head back slightly to accept the sips of water. Once Dabi has deemed him having drunk a considerable amount of water, he pulls another tissue to Tomura’s nose and Tomura repeats the process from before as he feels more tears fall from his eyes almost painfully.
“Those days I spent on the streets, so many people had walked right past me. Most of them pretended not to even notice I was there, while the ones that did gave me those damned looks of pity just said that a hero would come to get me soon.”
Shigaraki can feel his guilt, regret, and sadness churn into anger as he spits his words. “I was on the streets for days.” Shigaraki shakes his head as he glares into the air in front of him. “Hundreds of people passed, dozens of them even looked at me. Not one of them reached a hand out to me. I was five!” Shigaraki’s anger melts back into a guilted sadness as his fists loosen. “Part of myself thought it was what I deserved. Another part still hoped that a hero, that anyone, would swoop down to save me. It never happened. And Sensei found me, took me in. Taught me everything I know, and no matter how many times I ever fucked up, he never got mad and he would always say I can just try again…”
Another sob tears through Shigaraki’s throat, but he forces himself to choke out his next words before Dabi has the chance to make him drink more water. “And then with what happened with that UA student and the Kamino incident-” Shigaraki can feel his chest tighten as he tries to breathe. “That entire thing was my fault. It was my plan, my ambition, my idea, and I fucked up. Worse than fucked up! God fuckin- I can’t believe I was so-” Shigaraki’s vision blurs intensely again and he squeezes his eyes shut.
Dabi has him blow his nose again before having him drink more water. His hand has slowly been making its way up his spine and once he reaches Shigaraki’s neck, the man slumps against Dabi’s chest, his whole body going lax.
His breathing is quiet as he inhales. “And I think- I think one of the heaviest things that has been weighing me down for a long time, god. It’s so fucking stupid and way past naïve. There’s this part of me that still thinks that a hero will come and save me. It’s so fucking stupid. No matter how many times I’ve tried, I can’t kill that part of myself. He’s still there and sometimes the innocence and utter crave for that childish desire- It just-... Sometimes it just feels so fucking oppressing and I’m confused.” Shigaraki feels one last tear spill over as he turns his face half way into Dabi’s chest. “Sometimes I still feel like that lost little kid.”
After a long moment of silence, Dabi takes a deep breath before speaking. “Some mistakes get made and that’s alright. I know saying that won’t release him from imprisonment, but it’s okay Shiggy. You learned from it. You’ve been learning so much so quickly and it amazes me because I forget how smart you are. Bad things happened in your past, but you were a child , it wasn’t your fault.”
Dabi lightly scratches Shigaraki’s head as he presses feathery kisses all over his face. “You have every right to be angry about those people blatantly ignoring you, out of hundreds of people, one of them should have actually done something instead of just assuming it was a hero’s job. But people allowed themselves to get trapped into that bystander effect. It’s as we always say, it’s a shitty society anyway. Fuck those guys. You didn’t deserve that shit, not as a child and certainly not now.”
Dabi nuzzles his nose against the messy locks of hair laying on Shigaraki’s forehead as he continues. “I know I’m certainly no hero and that nothing will make that feeling of missing out on the good things that should have happened to you disappear, but I’ll always be right here beside you. So will the rest of the league, our family.”
Shigaraki chokes on a tearless sob as he looks up to Dabi, his face stained with wet streaks. Dabi gives him a soft smile as he kisses each and every streak. “It’s not supid or naïve to be upset over and wish that something good could have happened when all life did was deal you a shitty hand. And you’re not stupid to have wanted it in the first place. I know I’m not a hero, but I’ll stay right here, I’m not going anywhere and no hero will make me. No hero will take me from you, okay Tomu?” Dabi brings his arms around Shigaraki’s body and he melts into the embrace.
Never has he felt as safe as he is right now, vulnerable and in Dabi’s arms.
“Yeah. I love you.”
Shigaraki is on the verge of an emotional high crash when he hears Dabi return his words.