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It’s dingy in the bar, smells faintly of blood and sick and whatever else sticks to the skin of a sinner. Practically five-star accommodations. Twice is almost-nervous. As comfortable as if this were home.
“Shut up,” he mutters to himself, leaning back on his elbows against the counter and turning his mask over in his hands.
He’s half-surprised when he’s joined by somebody else— completely expected it.
“You’re the one with the clones, right?” asks the intruder.
The hot one, his brain supplies helpfully, and he thinks— hopes— that it’s in relation to his quirk and not the lanky form in front of him, bruise-black scars interrupted by cream-smooth skin.
“Nah,” he says, finding his voice through the surge of battle prickling at the back of his skull, “I am.”
He pulls his mask on and realizes that the other is speaking again.
“Have you ever…?” Dabi makes a vaguely lewd gesture, and he’s grinning faintly. “… With yourself?”
Twice pauses; not quite sure if he’s being mocked or interrogated. Of course. Never. “Fuck off,” leaves his mouth, but he’s smiling faintly, too.
A beat passes between them, laced with understanding. Twice does not recognize whatever is pooling up inside of him, and is grateful when Dabi speaks again.
“Have you ever with anyone else?”
The follow-up makes him frown. Idle conversation isn’t something any of them can afford, but maybe…
He makes a soft, dismissive noise. “Yeah, plenty. I’ve never been with anyone. Have you?”
Dabi’s eyes flicker around the room, fall on Shigaraki for a fraction of a second so short that Twice has to war internally over whether or not he imagined it, then trail noncommittally up to the ceiling.
“Shit, I’m not a kid,” he chuckles, like it’s obvious, pushes off from the counter and casts a glance back at Twice.
He sees it, ‘You’re pretty fucked up,’ written all over the lattices of scars and piercings, and bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying anything.
—
There is a wrongness that bubbles up from somewhere around Twice's navel. He can’t count the days, weeks, months since he’s been anything but alone (lonely? Fuck no, everything is fine—) and suddenly there’s Dabi, at his door, a bead of blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth to his chin, swaying half-lucid.
For a moment, they stare at one another. Twice is-and-isn’t himself, sweats and a shirt that is stained and sleeveless, four days of stubble and sleep still crusted in the corners of his eyes.
“Go away,” he says, stepping back to let Dabi in.
It’s as late as it is early.
“I was in the neighborhood,” comes the explanation, as good as any, and Twice watches with a morbid fascination as Dabi smears the blood with the back of his hand. He’s limping.
Some part of him feels almost-embarrassed; his house is a hodgepodge of bottles and cans, odds and ends, messes that have existed so long he doesn’t notice anymore.
Before he knows it, though, Dabi’s half-dressed and laying in his bed (like he belongs there, he needs to get the fuck out) and he’s clutching a blanket and about to be exiled to his own threadbare couch (wait, did I agree to this?) when—
“You could stay,” purrs Dabi, patting the mattress beside him. Twice balks, then--
“Buy me flowers first,” he grumbles back, and shuts the door.
—
Dabi is gone by morning.
Just as well, he thinks, savoring the regularity of his morning routine, the taste of smoke.
—
Sometimes, he thinks Dabi can see through his skull, can hear him talking to himself. His lips peel apart like he knows something, the scars around his mouth twist with a dark humor.
“You think too loudly,” he mumbles, confirmation.
“What the fuck do you know? You’re a goddamn genius,” Twice huffs back, raises his beer to his lips again.
“Well,” says Dabi, and that’s all.
Twice remembers, vaguely, that he’d asked something.
“Jin,” he answers, cringing inwardly.
“Jin,” repeats Dabi, and Twice feels as though the knobs of his spine are a string of lights that have just flickered on.
Once again, Dabi’s eyes— blue, like fire— slim a bit. Twice smiles back, busies himself with tipping back the last of the bottle.
Jin, his mind taunts, in a voice that flicks off the lights again.
Shut up, he replies emphatically, and from the hum that rises from the other’s scarred throat, he thinks maybe he said it aloud.
—
“Jeez, you scared or something?” Dabi mutters, taunting.
“No, asshole, you’ve got your knee in my—,”
The two of them shift around each other, easy, like shadows sliding together-then-apart.
“Well I’m about to have my—,” Dabi starts to say, but is cut off by Twice’s elbow sharp in his gut.
“Ouch, you prick, that felt good,” Twice hisses. He can feel the other moving again, limbs unfolding and folding, an arm slinking around his chest to secure him back against the other man.
“Stay still,” breathes Dabi, and holds out his hand with the needle glinting between his thumb and forefinger. “Quit being a wuss, you’re the one who asked for this.”
“Stop fuckin’ manhandling me, then,” Twice grumbles, and Dabi’s laughter makes the back of his neck hot.
Within minutes, there’s a silver glint in Twice’s ear where there wasn’t before. Dabi peers at his handiwork, then swipes a finger through the rivulet of blood trickling down Twice’s neck, brings it to his mouth.
“Gross,” Twice spits. Beautiful, he thinks.
—
Dabi shows up, as he often does, at that time just as early as it is late, dripping blood on his doormat.
They sit side-by-side on the couch, silent, and Twice threads a needle with fishing line and tries to pull the gash back together.
“Think it’ll hold?” he asks, to shatter the silence.
He assumes Dabi tries to shrug, because a second later, he is hissing through his teeth and tense, steely, smoking faintly at the seams.
“Hope so,” he manages to grit out.
I don’t, Twice’s mind supplies as his mouth fumbles over the words, “Me too.”
They fall silent again, wary.
He doesn’t do a pretty job, but Dabi smiles when he’s done anyway.
“Got any whiskey?”
“You need to be more careful,” he advises as he retrieves it, pouring into mis-matched plastic cups. His brain says something nasty about how happy he’d be if Dabi were hauled off to jail.
The answer is a derisive snort, shaking his head so that his shaggy dark hair catches the lamplight distractingly.
“Just a freak accident,” he laughs, then downs the whiskey in one gulp. “Like us.”
—
He likes his brand of cigarette because they’re darker, rougher, like inhaling fire.
Someone told him once that he’d stop enjoying the taste, just do it out of habit, but that isn’t true—it just morphs into something different, the idea of cerulean eyes and lungfuls of death itself. He finds himself wanting it more frequently, but it’s got nothing to do with the nicotine.
He taps out a new pack, starts to tug one out of the box when—
“Can I bum a smoke?”
His eyes meet Dabi’s.
“No way, get your own,” he huffs, and slides out two, offering one to the other man.
“Need a light?”
The offer is smooth, natural, feels like a soot-smudge across his unmasked cheek, which Dabi’s thumb follows. Three in the morning brings them together too often, for whatever reason, shoulder-to-shoulder on a low ledge with a part-empty pack of American Spirits between them.
Twice leans forward with the cigarette between his lips, catches a gleam in Dabi’s eyes as he leans, too, and flicks up a flame between them.
In the closeness and the unnatural glow, the shared inhale, Dabi looks young, unsettled. Twice blinks away the thought.
—
“I’m perfect,” Twice says. I’m fucking awful. Why me?
Somehow, though, Dabi seems to understand; he shakes his head.
“Sure you are,” he chuckles. They face each other, dark alley, familiar and grimy and fitting.
Dabi tugs up the mask, just above his nose. Twice feels warm breath against his cheek, tastes ash in the air between them, but for once there is a unanimous yes as surprisingly soft lips brush across his own.
—
There are flowers, half-wilted, forgotten in a vase on the television cabinet.
There is Twice, cigarette between his fingers, scrubbing his free hand through his hair and pretending that makes it any less unruly.
There is Dabi, at his elbow, meeting his eyes in the mirror.
‘You’re pretty fucked up,’ is still evident on his face, but there’s something else, too; for a second, Twice can even hush the soft no, there isn’t that’s tickling at the back of his mind.
‘You’re pretty fucked up,’ says Dabi, without a word, ‘But you’re not alone.'