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It was absolutely freezing. Yeah, it had been a bit chilly lately, but this had come entirely out of nowhere. It wasn’t snowing, but Shigaraki was pretty sure it was cold enough to. His breath formed white clouds with every exhale.
Where was the camp? He’d wandered too far. The trees all looked the same. Cold and grey. Broken branches and disturbed earth from previous days of fighting Gigantomachia. No way to tell what damage was from today’s battle and what was from a week ago. No discernible trail. No clear path back to camp.
This wasn’t the first time he’d wandered too far fighting and gotten lost. But it was the coldest it had been since the fighting began, and the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. So cold…
Sweat plastered Shigaraki’s shredded clothing to his body, the wind passing right through the sodden fabric. Gooseflesh had spread across his skin, what little body hair he had standing on end in the chilly air.
But he found that the cold was becoming more bearable. His hands and feet weren’t cold anymore. Neither were his ears and nose. In fact, he couldn’t feel any of them at all.
Clumsy, numb feet dragged against the forest floor. Why was he still walking? He couldn’t remember.
Oh yeah. He was trying to get back to camp. But why? It seemed so far away, and he was so tired.
He rubbed at his eyes with hands that moved slow and clunky, like big clumsy paws. When he stopped rubbing his eyes, the vision was blurry and spotty.
Somewhere, a brown moth flitted through the air. Shigaraki watched it with childish fascination, blurry eyes struggling to form a clear image of the insect. Before long, it disappeared somewhere into the brown of the endless trees.
He’d stopped shivering at some point. Maybe he wasn’t cold anymore. Had it warmed up? Shigaraki didn’t know. But now that the discomfort of cold was gone, exhaustion crept in to take its place.
Well, a short nap couldn’t hurt anything, right? Shigaraki lay on the forest floor, propping himself up against a tree. His eyelids fluttered shut.
…
Yeah, it was a bit late. But Dabi didn’t care. He came and went as he pleased, unbothered by deadlines and schedules that others tried to enforce on him. If he wanted to return to the League’s camp at sunset, that’s what he would do.
Dabi had never been bothered by cold. Whether it was caused by his ability to heat himself up or his body’s resistance to ice inherited from his mother, he didn’t know, but winter weather had never been an issue for him.
He drifted like a dark ghost through the forest, heavy boots making no sound as they fell against the packed leaves of the forest floor. His hot breath froze in the icy air, white clouds trailing from his nostrils. The path back to camp was obvious if you could memorize landmarks, and Dabi learned to do that years ago. So he walked, leaving shallow footprints.
At some point off the trail, he could see red shoes. Perhaps some hobo, or a strung-out drug addict. They seemed to be entirely still, probably sleeping. Maybe they were dead. Dabi didn’t really care. But if they were dead, maybe he should check to see if they had anything valuable on them. Maybe a phone or wallet. A nice coat. A pack of cigarettes. Maybe Dabi would find nothing of use and it would all be a waste of time.
As he drew closer, he noticed that those red shoes were familiar. Knock-off low top converse with an obviously fake logo that Dabi almost had to laugh at and shoelaces replaced with black ones when the originals became too stained with dirt and blood. He recognized the pants, too, a pair of his own black jeans that he’d grown too thin for. Shigaraki had cut the legs shorter and taken the pants for himself.
Shigaraki. That’s who was laying passed out on the floor of the forest. Dabi laughed at the absurdity of it all. This was prime blackmail material. He grabbed out his phone and snapped a picture.
Actually, Shigaraki was holding a little too still. His skin was a little too pale, nose and cheeks a little too greyed and a little too waxy. Fingers a little too bloodless. Lips a little too purple.
That was bad.
Dabi didn’t particularly like his boss, but he didn’t want the man to die of hypothermia either. And they were still a long ways from camp.
With an exaggerated sigh that produced a puff of white in the frigid air, Dabi sat down on the ground next to Shigaraki.
“Hey, Crusty. Wake up. It’s too cold outside for you,” he said loudly. Shigaraki cracked an eyelid but didn’t otherwise respond.
“Shig! Get up or you’re gonna freeze to death!” Dabi tried again. No response at all this time.
He was not going to get anywhere with trying to get Shigaraki to regain consciousness and get back to camp.
Unfortunately for him but fortunately for Shigaraki, Dabi was pretty much a portable heater.
He supposed he’d have to do this himself.
To start off, Shigaraki’s shirt was obviously entirely saturated with sweat. That was probably why he’d so quickly succumbed to cold.
“Hey, Fuckhands, I’m gonna need to take off your shirt. You cool with that?” Dabi asked. No response. Well, at least he could say he tried.
Half-conscious Shigaraki put up no fight as Dabi removed what was left of his ripped shirt, staring up at Dabi with barely cracked eyes. He didn’t have any eyelashes, Dabi realized. Or eyebrows. Weird.
“You fucking owe me one,” Dabi muttered as he removed his jacket and wrapped his arms around Shigaraki, pulling him into his lap.
Whether he was doing so consciously or not, Dabi wasn’t sure, but Shigaraki was definitely damn near snuggling into his body. It was annoying. And maybe a little endearing, in an obnoxious, childish way.
Dabi knew that his body was warm, more so than most people realized. Shigaraki seemed to be seeking out his heat. This, rather unfortunately, ended with his face shoved firmly into the crook of Dabi’s neck and his hands balled into fists and situated between his own chest and Dabi’s.
This was… a lot closer than Dabi had intended.
Shigaraki’s hair was entirely in Dabi’s face, fine strands tickling the top of his nose. The hairs moved every time Dabi exhaled. This close, Dabi could see a sort of gradient to Shigaraki’s hair, darker towards the tips and growing in nearly pure white at the scalp. It hung heavy, clumped together with sweat and oil.
When Dabi had first met Shigaraki, he’d called the man gross. And, well, he still stood by that, but it was different. Yeah, his hair was somehow both oily and dry. And his skin was entirely covered in scars and flakes of dry skin. And the aforementioned lack of eyebrows or lashes. By all means, Shigaraki was hideous.
Well, he was, but he also wasn’t. Greasy off-white hair fell in gentle waves around his face, with big monolid eyes, a soft but pointed nose, a wide, scarred mouth with full, pale lips, soft cheeks, and a sharp jaw. That little mole at the corner of his mouth. His features weren’t conventional, but they were delicate. Like a scratched-up doll.
His body was long and lithe, even curled up as it was in Dabi’s lap. He was skinny, yes, but not bony like Dabi; his slender frame was packed with hard, sinewy muscle. Not a mountain of muscle like showy pro heroes, but not like Dabi either, a weak body fully reliant on an overpowered quirk to fight with.
No, Shigaraki was built like a gymnast, fast and agile, every inch of his body fine-tuned to kill from his flexible limbs to his deadly hands. Hands that he was warming against Dabi’s chest.
The scars and moles of his face and neck extended to his torso, Dabi now saw. There was no boring, forgettable expanse of creamy skin like he was used to seeing on models on the internet. No, Shigaraki’s skin was covered nearly entirely in scars, dark moles spotting any unscathed areas. Faint stretch marks webbed their way beneath the scars on his back and chest.
Shigaraki wasn’t pretty in any traditional sense of the word, but he certainly wasn’t boring to look at. Dabi felt like he could stare for hours without getting bored.
Fuck. This was not the time to go catching feelings.
Dabi was only with the League long enough to get him to Endeavor. He planned to die when he killed Endeavor, to turn both himself and his bastard father to ash. He couldn’t have anyone he cared about enough to hesitate leaving them behind.
His life was always meant to be a suicide mission. He’d never intended for anyone to mourn him.
But then Shigaraki made a contented little sigh as he burrowed further into Dabi’s warmth. The two were fully entwined now, limbs wrapped around each other in a sort of braided embrace.
And it really wasn’t fair at that point. How was Dabi meant to do anything other than sink deeper into this ill-fated crush?
Wait, Shigaraki was snuggling into him like that because he was still cold. Dabi had been so lost in his own head he’d neglected to notice.
He carefully maneuvered an arm out from their embrace and grabbed his discarded jacket. With a little situating, he got it draped over Shigaraki like a sort of blanket.
Near immediately, Shigaraki stopped shifting around and fell properly asleep. Dabi was quick to follow.
…
Shigaraki woke slowly, not yet opening his eyes as he could see that it was only early dawn from the darkness behind his eyelids. Perhaps he should try to go back to sleep. He was certainly comfortable enough.
It was so peaceful and quiet in a way that almost felt eerie in comparison to the chaos and noise he was used to in his life. But there was no chaos here. The morning air was cold and still, the kind of stillness that you only really get when it frosts.
But somehow Shigaraki wasn’t cold at all. He was leaned up against something warm. Burying his face further into the warm thing, he started to drift off to sleep again, lulled by the steady rise and fall of the surface he leaned on.
Wait.
That was a person, wasn’t it.
Shigaraki’s eyes opened slowly as he took on the features of whoever had, at some point in the night, become his pillow. Holy shit. Was that-
Dabi was just about the last person he expected to see. Not that any of the others really would’ve wanted to hold him in their lap. Well, maybe Toga. But he wasn’t bleeding out, so she probably would be as put-off by the situation as everyone else.
But here Dabi was, fast asleep against a tree with Shigaraki on his lap. He even had his arms wrapped loosely around Shigaraki, as if holding his heavy coat over the two of them like a blanket.
What the fuck had transpired last night?!
Well, Shigaraki wasn’t going to question it too much. Dabi was warm. It was nice to be so comfortable for once. He may as well take advantage of the situation and soak up as much warmth as possible before Dabi woke up and threw him off.
The last time he was held in someone’s lap like this, it was Kurogiri and he was maybe nine or ten years old. So Shigaraki didn’t have much to compare this to. But he was still pretty sure that Dabi would classify as a better-than-average human pillow. He was so warm and always smelled like a campfire, a pleasant change from the sweat and blood of daily life. Yeah, Dabi was a bit bony, and the bumps of his staples were a bit uncomfortable against Shigaraki’s skin, but Dabi’s heavy arms created a secure pseudo-embrace that more than made up for it.
And Dabi was, admittedly, pretty when he was asleep like this. The expressions he carried throughout the day - exhaustion, rage, mania, anxiety, and, worst of all in Shigaraki’s opinion, bouts of catatonia - were no longer present to disrupt his soft features.
Because Dabi was soft looking if one could get past the scars and staples and dye-fried hair. He had a round face with a dainty pointed chin and a thin, delicate nose. Thick white lashes framed large double-lidded eyes, and his eyebrows - obviously dyed like his hair - were thin and almost feminine. The contrast of Dabi’s dainty features with the roughness and edge of his scars, piercings, and clothing created a beautiful juxtaposition that Shigaraki found himself passively staring at more often than was perhaps acceptable.
With his head resting on Dabi’s chest, Shigaraki could hear the raspy rattle of his breaths. He smoked too much, Shigaraki thought. Not that breathing in the smoke of his own flames was doing his lungs any favors.
Realistically, Dabi probably wouldn’t survive long enough for lung cancer to take hold. Dabi probably knew that. Perhaps that’s why he smoked - the nicotine provided him temporary respite from life, and he knew he wouldn’t live long enough to see the consequences of the unhealthy habit. Shigaraki didn’t quite know why that made him so sad.
By the time Dabi died, he’ll probably have served his purpose to Shigaraki’s cause. So why should Shigaraki care what happens to him after that point?
His mind drifted to Toga’s rants about love, that lie that society had made up to add some sort of veneer of virtue to the pathetic, hormone-driven human desire to fuck. Shigaraki never believed in it. To care about someone so completely seemed remarkably unlikely. For someone to return that care, even less so.
Shigaraki Tomura was incapable of loving or being loved. Love did not exist. Sensei had taught him this, and Sensei was always correct.
So no, he didn’t love Dabi or any other form of that fictional emotion. But he did seem to care about his well-being, even when it did not directly benefit or affect him. Me that was more than he could say for… anybody, really. Only for Sensei and Kurogiri did he share that same type of unselfish concern.
Shaking his head lightly, Shigaraki decided that this was not the time to contemplate this. His time until Dabi woke up was probably running low, and he didn’t want to waste time thinking when he could be drifting back to sleep against Dabi’s warmth. So he did.
…
The second time that Shigaraki woke, Dabi was awake and absentmindedly petting his hair. It felt good. His scalp was very sensitive. Like a dog being pet, Shigaraki leaned into Dabi’s touch.
He heard a wheezy chuckle from Dabi at that, but the petting didn’t stop. He seemed intent on detangling Shigaraki’s hair by combing it out with his fingers.
He almost drifted back to sleep again before being hit with a wave of sudden clarity. He sat upright abruptly, startling Dabi, who reacted by shoving him off of his lap.
Lying in a crumpled heap on the forest floor, Shigaraki could only think of one phrase to articulate all of the questions that he had: “what the fuck, Dabi?!”
“Well, you startled me, bastard!” Dabi shot back.
The two of them just sat there in stunned, confused silence for a few seconds, regaining their bearings.
“Uh…. So,” Shigaraki said after a few moments, “what exactly… happened?”
Dabi burst out laughing at the question, an awful, wheezing laugh that shouldn’t have been half as endearing as it was. “What happened is that I found your stupid ass dying of hypothermia. I didn’t exactly plan to wind up cuddling or whatever the hell this is, but you’re really clingy.”
Shigaraki flushed. “Shit up. I was probably just cold.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Oh, and why did you not shove me off the moment you woke up? Don’t try to act like you’ve got any more dignity left than me.”
“Bold words from a guy who was drooling on me ten minutes ago.”
“I do not drool!”
“Sure,” Dabi said sarcastically, gesturing to the wet spot on his shirt.
“You did that!”
Dabi had to stop for a minute to process that one. “You’re saying that I managed to drool onto my own shirt halfway down my torso. In a spot where your face was at the moment.”
“…yes.”
“You, boss, might be the worst liar I have ever met.”
“Not worse than Jin. His other personality flat out blurts out the truth half the time.”
“Yeah, but he has an excuse. You’re just dumb.”
“I only gave you a 3/5 intelligence score on my team stats.”
“Oh, and I bet yours was 5/5.”
“Yeah, but your quirk is stronger than mine. And you work better in a team than me.”
Dabi snorted. “You actually created ‘team stats’. I didn’t know it was possible to be that much of a nerd.”
“They’re useful, okay?! It helps me figure out who to send on what missions.”
“That is the dorkiest thing you’ve literally ever said, and the bar was high. You’re lucky you’re pretty, or talking to you would be a nightmare.”
Shigaraki opened his mouth to retort, but he stopped. “I’m lucky I’m what now? Did your quirk fry your eyes, too?”
Well, Dabi certainly hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but he wasn’t the type to try to take back a statement. “Yeah, you’re pretty. Still insufferable.”
“Alright, Cerulean-Orbs-San -“
Dabi cut him off. “Fuckin- cerulean orbs? ORBS? How much goddamned fan fiction do you read?!” He burst out laughing. “My name is Dabi Dark’Ness Dementia Raven Way, and I have sapphire globes.”
“Oh, so you also spend way too much time on the internet. Fuckin’ hypocrite,” Shigaraki said, raspy laugh blunting the aggression of his words considerably.
“Not much else to do. Y’know, between burning people to death.”
“I’ve got an extra controller. And a few multiplayer games that I never get the chance to play.”
“Dork,” Dabi teased. “Wait, doesn’t Spinner play video games? Why not ask the lizard to join you?”
“Well, he likes first-person-shooters. I don’t. So there are a few games we both like, but not that many.”
“So you ask me?”
A pause. “Yeah?”
Dabi laughed. “Fine. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do. Let’s go back to camp. We can do your nerd shit there.”
And do they did. And if they arrived holding hands, no one made any comment about it.