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There is frost speckled along the edges of the window when Dabi wakes up, drifting back to consciousness with no feeling in his extremities and hair in his mouth. He spits it out to be able to breathe, then stretches out as much as he can and yawns loudly on purpose as if embodying the spirit of a just-roused cat. He feels a staple pop out of his shoulder from his dramatics in deserved retribution as Tomura stirs beside him. As he cracks one eye open and blinks blearily at Dabi to focus his gaze, the blissful youth is washed from his face, and the crease between his eyebrows, his lips twisting down, and the ever so faint crow's feet at the corners of his eyes all filter back in like a coin being flipped to the opposite side. A fifty-fifty chance of being disintegrated or left behind. There's a metaphor about those half happy half sad jester masks in there somewhere, but Dabi's brain hasn't totally come online yet, so he can't possibly hope to find it. But it's there. It might even mean something.
The temperature's dropped at least ten degrees since Dabi passed out an hour after Tomura, who was already snoozing away by the time he shimmied under the covers, curled into the fetal position as he always is when he's sleeping. It's the exact opposite of Dabi, who, when given the real estate to do so, will stretch his limbs as far as they'll go to cover every square inch of the mattress. It'd kinda suck to accidentally push Tomura over the side though, if only because of the wrath it'd incur, so Dabi settles for second best, which is stretching his limbs around Tomura instead and clinging to him like an octopus. It's warm and comfortable despite their mutual boniness and it's comforting, but it can't happen all the time. Sometimes Tomura needs to feel his blood rush through him with no one else listening in. Sometimes just a hand clasped around a wrist is all. Sometimes two solitary pinkies linked together. Sometimes, a line gets drawn in the sand, and you're on your own for the night.
Dabi's pretty sure those times in particular should feel greyer than any other, but it's odd, because it's somehow a privilege in and of itself to not be allowed to touch Tomura. Because Tomura is trusting him to listen. He'll say leave me alone when Dabi sidles up to him but he won't budge or threaten him. He'll say leave me alone and it'll mean don't touch me right now, my body feels wrong. Give me a little while. Just go to sleep.
And Dabi will scoot away and go to sleep. And Tomura will come up behind him in the morning and wrap his arms around his middle, resting his cheek against the back of Dabi's neck. The pale sunlight will hang heavy with silence, spread overtop like a weighted blanket. Good for anxiety and all that garbage.
He should really go check the thermostat with how cold the room feels and how the rest of the apartment is bound to too, but the bed is so cozy with two warm bodies lazing around in it. Dabi shuts his eyes for a moment, just to rest them and not to fall back asleep as anyone who's lying to themselves would say, but they snap open when Tomura squirms and presses his iceblock feet to Dabi's thigh. The reaction is instantaneous; Dabi yelps and clambers to get away while Tomura cackles like a maniac and chases him through the sheets. In his rush to not get any of his precious heat sapped away, he backs away too far and tips over the edge and falls right off the bed, flat on his ass. Tomura looks down at him with mirth dancing in his eyes like waterbugs. "Pussy." He snickers. Partnered ballroom damselflies, zigzagging around his irises with a jaunt that can only be described as amused.
Dabi glowers at him, but he still has to bite the inside of his lip. He's still not at all used to the whole ‘empathy’ thing, much less being able to actually experience the feeling, but despite the odds it comes scarily easy in moments like these. Anything that so much as crosses Tomura's mind or heart or wherever he does his thinking leaves a trail of muddy footsteps on Dabi's throat, but it's not like his boots are ever clean. Him and his grimy soles have no room to judge. It'd be nifty if they made welcome mats for your skeleton.
"Put on some fucking socks instead of giving me frostbite." He grouses, standing and lumbering over to grab a pair himself, as well as a shirt that he's currently lacking. Tomura sniffs but follows suit, grabbing two fuzzy, neon orange ones balled up in each other and tugging them on. The juxtaposition of his seraphic beauty with a garment more befitting a teenage girl than a national terrorist is stupidly cute. Dabi pulls his eyes away before Tomura can notice and throws on a longsleeve whatever, then shoots himself in the foot anyway and drapes himself over Tomura's shoulders. He smells like plain soap and vaguely of rot. That might turn anyone else off, but Dabi smells like a dumpster fire all the time if not overcooked flesh too, so it kinda does something for him. That's probably wrong too.
It doesn't matter. Nobody's here to critique how Dabi lives his life, not anymore. Nobody's here to be disappointed by his already fractional impulse control utterly extinguished by a white nostril. To look at him and the bruises on his forearms with disdain and even anger. There's nobody but Tomura, whose lake of a gaze will be tumultuous with ripples when he runs a hand over Dabi's back while he pukes his guts out and then his stomach acid later, and who will even brandish a toothbrush afterwards and brush his teeth for him. Dabi won't notice the conflict because he'll be too busy feeling sick and suicidal. All he might realize, if anything at all, is that he can't kiss Tomura tasting like tossed chunks. So he'll be grateful.
He buries his face in Tomura's neck, saying nothing. He doesn't do anything other than wrap his arms around his waist and lean on him. Dabi's blood is wispy and forlorn in its longing for its favored acquaintance, but he only has so much left, and there's so much damn snow outside that no one in their right mind would venture out into it, much less his dealer. Gotta ration necessities in wartime, even if Dabi feels like he really will croak sometimes. He's gotta ration because he won't die, he'll just feel like he will. He's gotta because there's shit he still has to do.
I don't want to do anything, a small, quiet, familiar voice says. It sounds congested. I don't want to do anything.
"Get off me." Tomura mumbles. Dabi's hands on him tighten involuntarily for a half-second before he complies and obediently tears himself away. Without the option to leech off Tomura's body heat, goosebumps break out across his arms. It's too fucking cold in here. It's too cold.
I don't want to do anything. I want to sleep some more. I want to die.
I'm so tired. Let me die.
With his usual telekinesis, Tomura turns and circles one hand around the side of Dabi's neck, pressing his thumb hard into his Adam's apple. There isn't a point in trying to play it off because Tomura shapeshifts into a bloodhound when he's sniffing out Dabi's bullshit. There's no point in trying to hide. All he can do is leave his janky internal organs out in the open and hope Tomura won't eat too much of them. All he can do is trust him, and he does. He really really does. It's calming, and it's liberating, and it's so terrifying he could scream. Tomura presses his thumb into his throat and he looks at him and into him and he says, "Let's get breakfast." He says, "Let's go somewhere."
Going out in four or five fresh inches of snow sounds like a foolproof way to kick the bucket with their immune systems, but the wind isn't blowing, and the sun is out. Tomura got him a bunch of stuff last month for Christmas, much more than he ever needed to, and amongst the newspaper wrapping was a fleece scarf and thermal gloves, ones with the grippy things on the palms and insides of the fingers. Somehow knowing he shoplifted them is sweeter than if he were to have bought them. Stealing isn't some bigshot crime or anywhere near as dangerous to their usual honey-do list, yeah, but it's the principle. And now he's got a nice scarf and nice gloves to brave the cold in, so whatever else is irrelevant.
Even with boots laced up tight, sweatpants, a long coat that's not his usual one and a hood, this weather will be awful. It'll suck when they're both shivering and crowded into the cramped shower later under the hot water because it'd be unfair for there to be a first and a second turn. Tomura will bitch and moan and Dabi will come down with a bad cold and be a royal pain in the ass to deal with for its duration. The aftermath probably isn't worth one whimsical decision. Logic would insist on staying indoors.
But Tomura isn't suggesting, implying that they have to go somewhere, he's just asking. He's fiddled around inside Dabi's ribcage again and realized most of the flowers he'd grown in Dabi's heart valves have withered and weeds have overtaken them. He might be a little sad about it, but people don't realize that someone with such lethal hands can have a real green thumb, at least when it comes to Dabi's bloodpump. Tomura's saying let's go somewhere and he's asking because he knows where the overgrowth sprang from and because he's already got a scythe handy for the worst of it. Let's get breakfast with its literal meaning and that of the seeds in his pockets.
Dabi huffs out a laugh. "Yeah." He agrees. "I’m kinda hungry."