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Dabi is, to put it lightly, not having a good day.
Did he wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Well, he woke up on a shitty mattress in the attic of the League's new bar, so there's that. And of course it quickly became one of those days, where everything hurts and his scars are irritated and itchy, the staples pulling uncomfortably with every movement. All of this before he even remembers that it's that day.
He pops a few of the pain pills that Giran hooked him up with, and climbs up onto the roof for a smoke.
The weed settles him. Takes the edge off. Makes things just fuzzy enough that he can focus.
He blows out a cloud of smoke, watches it curl up into the winter air. Satisfying. Smoke has always been satisfying to him. The smoke from the hero wannabes' training camp, the smoke from the remains of wannabe villains who couldn't cut it, the smoke from the candles of a wannabe prodigy's birthday cake—
Dabi squeezes his eyes shut, willing that thought away. He's not thinking about that today. He's not. Today doesn't exist. It's just some random Tuesday, nothing special. Nothing to get worked up over. Nothing to care about. Nothing to—
"Hey!"
It's a concentrated effort not to outwardly betray his startlement. Dabi drags his eyes open to glare at Toga, who is standing behind him, leaning over him to give him a crooked smile.
"Whatcha doin'?" Toga asks, leaning further down until their noses are almost touching.
"None of your business," Dabi grunts, batting at her face to push her away. Toga rolls with it, unperturbed, and flops down onto the roof next to him.
"You're grumpy," she chirps, her grin still in place. "But I have something that'll cheer you up!"
"Right," Dabi scoffs. "You just want to use me for free labor."
"I can neither confirm nor deny that. But!!" She lurches up, reaching out to poke his cheek. "I have something fun for you to do! And doing it will help me! So it's a win-win!"
Dabi slaps her hand away. "Pass."
Toga juts her lips out in a pout, slumping against Dabi's shoulder and looking up at him with big sad puppy eyes. "Pleeease? Pretty please?"
Dabi presses his lips into a tight seam, trying not to look her in the eye. He won't be suckered in by her like Twice and the others. She bats her eyes at him, and he makes the mistake of looking directly at her. Damn it.
"…what did you have in mind?"
Toga beams, hopping to her feet. She grabs him by the wrist, tugging on him. "C'mon, I'll show you! We gotta get some stuff first, though!"
"Give me a second. Jesus," Dabi gripes, shaking her off and snuffing out his joint. He stashes it for later, then slowly pushes himself to his feet. Spinner and Twice keep offering to spar with him, and Mr. Compress keeps lecturing him about getting more exercise, but none of them seem to get that it's more than just Dabi being out of shape. Which, he is, but it's hard to motivate yourself to be more active when moving hurts.
They head down into the bar, Toga chattering excitedly the whole way. Dabi only makes out about half of what she's saying, but it sounds like she's prepared a long to-do list for the day. Shit, what has Dabi gotten himself into?
"Couldn't you have gotten Twice to do this with you?" Dabi questions, holding a basket while Toga dumps things into it seemingly at random. They're in a seedy part of town where villains aren't likely to be ratted out, but both of them are wearing their disguises anyway.
"Twicey and I do this all the time," Toga says, picking over the convenience store's selection of candy. "I wanted to do this with you for once!"
"And what are we doing, exactly?"
Toga blinks up at him, cocking her head to the side. "Isn't it obvious?" she asks. Dabi stares at her blankly, waiting for an explanation, but that seems to be all Toga has to say on the matter, as she turns back to the candy and scoops up an armful to deposit into the basket. She skips off down the aisle, her eyes set on something else, and Dabi scolds himself for expecting to get an actual answer out of her.
Toga drags him through just about every aisle of the convenience store, and Dabi starts to wonder how, exactly, Toga thought this would be fun. Though this is probably fun for her, in that deranged little brain of hers.
Dabi is startled out of his drifting thoughts by Toga squealing practically in his ear.
"Holy shit," Dabi hisses, reaching out to yank on one of her space buns. "Are you trying to ruin whatever hearing I have left?"
"But Dabi! Look!" His sight is suddenly filled with something pink, fluffy, and sparkly.
Dabi puts a hand on Toga's arm, easing it down. Once the object isn't shoved practically up his nose, he can make it out as a stuffed animal. Some oversized cat unicorn thing. It's incredibly ugly, and Toga's eyes are shining like she just won the jackpot. Dabi blinks slowly at it.
"Okay," he says. "What about it?"
"Isn't it cute?" Toga says, trying to shove the monstrosity back into his face. Dabi grabs her by the wrist, holding it at arm's length. "We have to get it!"
"Fine." Dabi takes the toy from her, throwing it into the basket. "But we're using your money, not mine." Toga grins, victorious in a way that gives Dabi a sinking feeling that he's already lost some important battle.
Toga plays with the stuffed toy on the counter while Dabi shells out the cash to pay for everything. At least he actually has money now, let alone enough to waste on a bunch of crap from a convenience store. Working with the PLF has its perks.
Toga makes Dabi carry everything except for the stuffed animal, because of course she does. She skips along with it clutched in her arms, singing some tune under her breath, Dabi has to, very grudgingly, admit that it's kind of endearing. Kind of.
It doesn't remind him of anyone else. Someone who carried her Stuffie around everywhere she went, clutching it to her chest just like that. Someone who was inconsolable when she lost it, quietly sobbing into her mother's shoulder and staining her cardigan with snot. Someone whose big brother came back after missing for nearly an hour, covered in mud and soaked head-to-toe, his little sister's bunny plushie clasped in his hand.
"Dabi, Dabi!" Toga snags his sleeve, yanking him to a halt. "A movie! We should get a movie!" Dabi follows her pointing to a movie rental machine sitting outside a drugstore.
"Whatever," Dabi says, shifting the bags so he can wriggle his wallet out of his back pocket. He holds it out to Toga, who takes it and punches in her movie selection. She uses one of the cards Compress gave them all, the ones under fake names that go dead every other week. It's doubtful if Toga will actually return the movie, but that'll be someone else's problem.
"What's all this for, anyway?" Dabi tries to ask again, despite knowing how futile it is.
"Are we missing anything?" Toga mutters to herself, walking ahead of him. "Snacks, makeup, plushies, a movie… Oh! Did we get any games?" She glances at Dabi, who just stares back blankly. Why is she talking about games? Toga shrugs, turning back around. "Eh, we can just steal some from Shiggy, he won't mind." Dabi's pretty sure Shigaraki will definitely mind, but making Shigaraki lose his shit over stealing one of his dumb video games is the most fun idea Dabi has heard all day, so he'll go along with it.
They get back to the bar, and Toga shoos everyone out of the living area to set up camp. When Spinner looks to Dabi for help, Dabi just shrugs helplessly. There's really no stopping Toga when she's set her mind to something.
"Absolutely not," Shigaraki growls, standing between her and his game console. "You're not getting your greasy mitts all over my Switch."
"We'll be really careful with it!!" Toga promises, smiling sweetly. Dabi and Shigaraki both know that's a lie, even if Toga doesn't fully mean it to be.
Shigaraki narrows his eyes at Dabi over Toga's head. Dabi raises a brow; what does he really expect Dabi to do about it?
Shigaraki finally yields with a string of colorful swears, stomping off towards his room. Toga grabs the controllers, bouncing over to set them on the coffee table. Then she turns to Dabi, expression serious.
"I have a very special mission for you, Dabi. I need you to go and find every blanket and pillow in this base and bring it here."
Ah, Dabi's pretty sure he knows where this is going now. "You just tricked me into having a sleepover with you, didn't you?"
Toga beams. "No take-backsies!"
Ugh, whatever. He's come this far, hasn't he?
He goes and collects the blankets and pillows, including Hawks' stash from Dabi's room. Dabi himself prefers to sleep with a single thin sheet, but the birdie is a lush that likes to nest, and it was easier to just let Hawks slowly take over Dabi's room with pillows and blankets than try to get Hawks to change his habits.
Once all the bedding is gathered, Toga talks Dabi through the construction of a pillow fort, and Dabi goes along with it because, well… okay, he'll admit that sentiment got to him a bit here. He hasn't made a pillow fort since he was a little kid.
"It's perfect!" Toga declares, flopping down into the nest of pillows. "It's like you're an expert at this!"
Well, he's had some practice. "Now what?" he asks, lowering himself more gingerly into the fort.
"Now," Toga says, "we eat junk food, watch movies, play games — oh! And we'll do each other's makeup!" She digs in one of the grocery bags to pull out a palette of eyeshadow, but Dabi holds a hand up
"Uh-uh. Gonna have to stop you there, twerp. I'm not wearing any makeup."
"But you'd look so good with eyeshadow!"
"Yeah, but an infection from getting that powder under my scars wouldn't be too pretty, now would it?"
Toga pouts, conceding the point. "Well… can you at least do my makeup? It's sleepover tradition!"
Dabi heaves a sigh, but it's mostly for show. "Alright, but you can't bitch at me if it doesn't look good."
"Deal!" Toga starts pulling out the other makeup materials, setting them out between them. "It's more about the process than the look, anyway."
"If you say so," Dabi says dryly.
Toga puts on her rented movie, which turns out to be a Barbie movie ("Really, kid?" "It's a perfect sleepover movie!"), and munches on the candy while Dabi does her makeup. She makes him braid her hair next, then paint her nails, and she does manage to rope him into letting her paint his nails too.
The Barbie movie turns out to actually not be that terrible, the snacks Toga picked out that aren't hyper-sweet sugar-bombs are pretty okay, and he has to admit that the black nail polish does suit him. Maybe he'll ask her to paint his nails more often. Or just do it himself, so she doesn't get a big head about it or anything.
When the movie's over, they play a few rounds of one of Shigaraki's games. Dabi has no idea what he's doing, and he's pretty sure Toga doesn't either, but she's having a lot of fun 'eating' Dabi's orange princess character with her little pink gumball character — or whatever the fuck that thing's supposed to be.
Toga tires herself out on the game pretty quickly — though Dabi suspects that she's also coming down from her sugar high — and curls around her new plushie, tucked up against Dabi's side. Dabi puts the movie back on, just to have some noise, and settles down, letting Toga rest her head on his shoulder. It almost reminds him of another time, another younger sibling snoring away on his shoulder, and it hurts, but Toga isn't them, and this isn't that house.
If Dabi pulls Toga a little closer, if he presses a kiss to her hair and silently thanks his new little sister for making his birthday bearable, well… no one but him has to know.