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In the dream, Dabi sits on the porch steps and watches the waves sluice by out past the gate, greyblue rabies-froth drinking down kindergarten bones and backpacks as the asphalt dyes black sand beneath its heavy tongue. White foam bleeds down its sputum sides, split so cleanly between the threshold as if flush with prophet hands, buccal bacteria loose yet languid with crystal-cut mono-slug-ium glutamate foul enough to feel fowl. It stretches around the cement-caged cobblestone and reaches for him, coughs and drudges and rasps too damp to sound, clutching into the unwashed path and fraying thinner the further it strays-- but Dabi's boots remain dry as the day that surrounds them. His soles sleep saltless and the riverlicker's dragged back by a lunarmagnet lasso trailing only sunbeam in its wake.
It doesn't feel odd or strange, the way the sewer-nami slashes faster thereafter, nor the empty sacks that float dung down atop its drainage. It makes sense why the woodwear he slouches upon grasps the outside to arm's length. How only he can watch from within. It makes sense, in the dream.
After, too, when the crust has been smeared from his eyelines and amygdala both, its wires hold staunch. But with wakefulness comes language and Dabi doesn't speak neurostem-- so when he cranes himself to his feet the only thing that rests below is hardwood paneling. Weathered but still worldly.
At least, that's the feeling he gets. Lucid dreams within whatever brainial bindles're only ever busted by night terrors so this should be fine. Still, some of that seawater must've caked up in his kneecaps and shoulderblades 'cause it stinks of juxtaposition, soy-soaked kelp-stuffed onigiri his mom used to shape before she went loony-- like mother like son, hm?-- and the baby teeth gnawing their damnedest at his savory leather knuckles feel just a tad pointed for reality. But he hasn't lost an index or a thumb so it's probably fine.
Come out, that parasite of an embryo murmurs over his eardrum. Get it over with. Rip the bandaid.
Y'know, that'd be a lot easier if there'd been more than one bodybag, Dabi snarls within the confines of his own cranium. The horsefly doesn't respond because it too is a product of his matter. Even in death, one or two or six, whatever Dabi's count's at now-- a grave can't fill a gouge.
He ventures out into the hallway. There's no bandage to free any basilic because he's been good about that lately. No such thing as a life sentence 'cept in the glazed-donut eyes of a squealer, don't'cha know?
Just as expected, Tomura is nowhere to be found, but someone else isn't, a someone he hasn't seen in a while now-- a while, but not too long. Probably. Graves and gouges and gumbrains, you know how it is. Sometimes it never really feels like death. Dabi watched enough junkies spit and sleep and die as a kid to know. Sometimes it just feels like a dream.
He shuffles over and slouches down next to Jin on the couch. His corpsebuddy taps a cigarette out and hands it over without a word, and Dabi lights up as he goes back to his own.
Jin swallows a couple hungry puffs before something other than smoke can seep. "Been a minute, huh?" He remarks, as if they're acquaintances who just haven't seen each other in a while-- which they essentially are, but 'acquaintance' feels kinda stale to use about a moldymaggot friend. Little too impersonal. Dabi's a bonafide bitchburning sociopath but he's still got a bloodpump rattlin' around in there, contrary to popular opinion.
"Yeah." He exhales, half tobacco and half braise. "Ain't thought I was gonna see ya for a while longer."
Jin laughs at that, a hearty bark that can only feel weird to know his headmeat can conjure. "'A while'?" He elbows Dabi rough in the side and Dabi glowers at him. "C'mon, you gotta at least beat me by a couple. Or lose by a couple. Lemme win this time." He grins and cigarette smoke slithers out between his teeth like the mint blood Dabi has the fortune of slobbering up when Tomura scrubs particularly cruel at his own grabbers, vicious to a mouth already raw from the chompers therein. Gotta go against the grain for tender shit because along it's always too much to chew through.
"Why're you here, Jin?" Dabi rasps. "I tried and it didn't work. 'M g'na try again, okay? I'm sorry, man, y'just gotta gimme a bit, 'ight, I'll get it done--"
He sputters and coughs and his eyes start to water by millimeters when Jin swivels and blows the drag he'd taken directly into Dabi's face. Replacing his jabber with simple words too acceptant and relaxed to feel at all calm, Jin yawns, "Nobody cares, dude." So reversed yet one-sided, he claps a hand hard on Dabi's back and hacks another choke out of him, and adds, "Can't go chasin' dead guys forever, right? Gotta get the live ones."
The ensuing silence lays heavy while Jin finishes his cigarette and watches as the crummy filter hisses hot as his fingers that helm it, hanging like a banner down the front of Dabi's face and cleaving his mouth cleanly in two despite his sedent. He inhales one last time from that which hangs limply from his lips and puts it out on his palm.
Their cracked and waterstained ceiling's never made him shudder before, but there's a first time for everything. His hands still feel stovegas, steaming, screaming eyepatch kettle boiling-- but it's not just his hands, it's everything. Nothing smells. No filter-farce nor the menthols that Jin prefers.
Preferred.
Dabi squeezes his forehead between two crushing temples. Get it together. Nothing chimes in. Wake the fuck up.
This time, he hears Tomura before he sees him; now that they've had plenty of time to cozy in he's trashed any prior reservation he might've had for subtlety skirting the tables of this modest some square foot sanctuary. Even loud ones Dabi remembers sending Tomura's napehairs some feet in the air back before, even those have fumbled their knobs too faulty for him to do more than glance over a loose shoulder-- which is exactly what he does when Dabi's footsteps trip across the aux into the kitchen. He's not all sure he can trust his own breathbox yet, but something in the paused motion of Tomura's sticky fingers butchering a melon feels almost as serrated as the knife buried in its belly; so with a gravelly pre-noon voice Dabi croaks, "You're up early."
Tomura doesn't bother blessing him with a response and instead jabs him a look skeptical enough to read romantic. "Am I now." He mutters to his snailtrail mess of a cutting board. The sweet flesh makes a succulent sound as he rends it from its rind and dices it down to appleseeds.
For a split second, too quick, just as Dabi's eyes are slipping to blink, the counter around Tomura and all that busies him has dyed his skin and clothes and hair a deep wine red more fitted to dining amongst plunger guests, but then he blinks-- and it's gone. Tomura pops a chunk in his mouth and looks awfully satisfied for a cannibal.
A flash of since-razed and ranker red flickers through Dabi’s gut like a hollow drum. Get it together.
“Didja already eat?” His tongue rests leaden behind his bottom teeth but he still manages to spackle out some spoken word. Tomura nods mutely and sets his knife aside as he scoops the melon into a pelican bill of a wooden bowl– one with grooves littering the inside clawfoot graveyard from prior misuse, one of his favorite secondhand snatches to this day– and jerks his chin at it as he shuffles away to wash his hands. “Eat,” he says. Dabi blinks dumb and has to remind himself he hasn’t rinsed his mouth yet to keep from doing something stupid. Or just hungry.
The distaste with which Tomura all but trebuchets his way as Dabi skewers a chunk with a single chopstick is hilarious enough for an encore, but about four needles in a triple prick seems a hell of a lot more convenient, so he cans the act and grows languid as the rest moseys by simpler. Pale sunbeams spill through the kitchen window at Tomura’s backside and tumble down around his edges like noble gasses to light him up all 24/7 church sign, and he laps from a cup that is decidedly not wine but probably could be if he chose. No, not probably– it could, definitely it could. You don’t need any explanation by now, do you? Is there even any new one he could dig up to deign you anymore?
Might not be wise to raise that challenge. But something that probably hasn’t been told before is that despite his best efforts (best being a tentative definition, at best), there isn’t one single person in this world that can eat fresh melon with fresh hands much less at its annual peak, so he ends up tapping with sickly summer residue glued to his fingers and the seams in his cheeks and chin like some kinda fucked up art project. Tomura snorts into his mug and, after watching him grimace enough to sate his sadism gauge, fetches and offers a wet cloth. “You ain’t gonna suck it off for me?” Dabi juts out his lower lip with all the authenticity of a sixteen-something with a smartphone and Tomura wastes no time beaning him in the head. “I do enough of that as is.” He claims. Dabi wiggles his eyebrows at him and Tomura pointedly turns his face away.
But he’s right, and he’s got more for the evidence locker only two odd hours later when it has been thoroughly Dyson’d up. Good to know he won’t be needin’ any new V10 Cyclone since he’s got one whirring ‘round his windpipe already. "You been practicing or somethin'?" Dabi yawns, a perfect picture of middle-aged bedpartner ready for a nap post-one measly bust. Tomura exhales through his nose in a huff and, the same as any china shop status un-quoter, just says, "How do you know you're not just easy to please?" He mashes his lips together and his nose twists up at the decidedly omniseasonal petri dish his mouth's inflamed. His chin is thick with gloss.
Dabi rubs his chin and considers this despite his lack of long grey beard to stroke. That’s probably true. He’d fucked a couple people before his dopamine receptors decided on their solitary standalone agonist and it’s not like it was bad, but. Yeah. Wasn’t no Shigaraki Tomura. He’d probably remember something nice– a specific something, that is– if there were any Tomura hadn’t already left in bitten up dust. Literally.
But said first place isn’t patient enough to wait around for old news to reprint, so he plucks a tissue from the box on the nightstand and scrubs his jaw dry before pawing around in the drawer for a condom and lube. “What, I don’t taste good?” Dabi drawls, propping himself up on his elbows and crossing his legs at the knee, clearly content to let Tomura handle all the limber lifting. Feels like a prime time for a catnap but his crane’s always liked dogs more so Dabi lounges and remains complacent. “Not at all.” Tomura answers, perfectly content to drain him of any play at pride, then tosses him the cheap plastic bottle he’s unearthed from their box of wonders. “Make yourself useful and heat this up, would you?”
Dabi nabs it out of the air and clasps it all churchy betwixt his palms. ’Useful’ my ass, he grouses inwardly. Literally.
It's not like this isn't the six-thousand and ninth time Tomura's put his freak anatomy to work for ends debatably less savory than the sugarsweet global genocide it was originally installed for, but it never gets any less grotesque to watch him sprout a hangman out of his definitive lack of one just to have something organic to bag up. After the fact it could actually be passable as non-GMO junk, or maybe the kinda thing moneygrubbing MDs alchemize for the self-assured, but when you get up close and personal, washing the baby blood off with microscope slides, watching a damn near bonafide bonedog swell out of a taiga like a tsuchinoko confused about its own shape until something like a shaft writhes free and a discernedly bald head wells up like a fat zit at the end-- well, you know how it goes with gay deviants. But Tomura gets off on dropped-dead skin flopping off his dripping face so it's still a pretty even playing field.
(You tryna say somethin’ about hooded heroes with the whole junk thing? Dabi had asked him over lunch once. Tomura blinked once before catching the topic at hand and scrunching up his nose like he’d gotten a whiff of dick cheese from the mention alone. I don’t love you enough to risk getting your cum in my foreskin if the condom breaks. he’d grumbled. I still have to clean it before it– he gestured vaguely– goes back in.
Condoms aren’t even totally necessary since even if Tomura was poking the shit that lubricates a bit more all on its lonesome, it ain’t like he’s got any sperm to spew. But this is Tomura and Dabi is Dabi, so there are some road signs that reflect visible enough for a glance to nothing more than a turn signal.)
“You wanna do the honors?” Dabi offers, and Tomura’s dash blinks with demure unamusement and a pinch peek of fondness too familiar not to flash through. “I’m already gonna end up doing all the work, you do it.” He sniffs as if he’s been slighted somehow. Dabi barks out a laugh at that and slathers some goop over his left hand, scooting back to jimmy himself half up against the wall and wriggling around to get his shitter positioned for the smallest probability of a hand cramp. Tomura gazes upon his shifty machinations with an excitingly mild expression and that creeping affection hasn’t been bombed at all. Despite his transhumanism treading stale towards their new norm, the pseudo peen doesn’t pop out pre-boned (contrary to what any prior verbiage might have you believe) so the sight is a boon to his coming efforts.
And that diction surely applies in whole with the slimy finger Dabi prods his own with then nudges on in. The first is always easy 'cause when is it not when you're used to the kinda bombs we all drop in the bathroom, so that's all fine and dandy, but the second always takes a second of finagling 'cause if you're taking dumps that explosive then you should really reconsider your liquid intake. Ain't there enough wars being fought nowadays?
That’s not to say it’s all oof’s and ow’s though. Sure, his teeth always clack each other at the first few pokes of a digitbuddy, but it ain’t any dehydrated dookie run. Just kinda aches a little ‘fore you get everything situated. It might help that a fag like Dabi laps this kinda pastime up like the jizz Tomura can’t magic up despite his all-powerful wizard dick (and so does Tomura, but sex is the single arena they switch off in-- today, it’s Dabi on laundry duty), but hey, even fags need their rectums sorted out before they’re good to make nice with a visitor.
Dabi groans and Tomura’s eyes refocus at the complaint lodged within. “My hand’s crampin’, Tomura, gimme yours.” He gripes. The geni-recter in question rolls his eyes and feigns annoyance, but he’s crawled along the other side before and that grass couldn’t be greener than the rest even if it cried. Proverbs eat more shit than a toilet stuffed with douched IBS crop.
Apparently some people say it’s easier with your ass in the air. Easier access and less arthritis cream post-cream or somethin’ like that-- but with the way you already gotta angle yourself on your back just to get in there comfortably, down on the knees’s just too damn emasculating. Not that there’s anything fucked about fems; everyone’s gonna be fucked at the end of the day. But it just is, and even a penis popper needs a second to escape his knotted up systems first. Different strokes for different folks.
Dabi grabs the lube and hands it over after candlelighting the goo slugging around inside again and Tomura spurts a lick more onto his singular quintupled hand than he figures’ll be necessary. Better safe than sorry, right? One time Dabi got a bit too spitterhappy and, no joke, tore an itty bitty fiszy in the very tissue that’d been haulin’ him in there to begin with. It took all of none second for Tomura to clamp up like a vice and start chewing him out more colorful than his dick would’ve been if Tomura hadn’t spared him parole and decided two was better than one. Sure, it wouldn’t actually have made a difference, since Dabi’s no cock witch so all he’s got is nifty little things-- well, not little, per se-- to shimmy into like the horniest fucking rock climber you ever seen. But to be fair-- he’d still prefer minimal milliliters of ass blood to wash off after.
So that’d left him dutifully dabbing lidocaine over Tomura’s dumphole whenever asked between meals doubly as green and fibrous than usual for the couple weeks he’d claimed for camping. Dabi’d kinda thought he was gonna croak of blue balls for a while there, but having an excuse to soap down Tomura’s back every day he clambered in the tub was fulfillment in and of itself. Plus: no anus didn’t mean no head. So it’d been fine.
Dabi ain’t gonna end up on those tracks though, ‘cause despite the train that Tomura may pack his self control is something that can never tumble out the cars. Five times four for twenty and then some. The masochist would probably welcome it for how terribly passionate he delights in the havoc Tomura wreaks in and outside a rusty-spring mattress, if the way he shoves him on the shoulder with his foot after only a modest few minutes of a three-crowd wiggling around in his rectum like fat fishing worms. “Don’t even.” He glowers at him when Tomura’s mouth aligns with the dubiousness alight in his eyes. “Doesn’t take me that long.”
It definitely does, ‘cause even seasoned bathroom battlers would wanna wait ‘til the nightcrawler’s hooked rather than just adjacent, but Dabi gets impatient too quick and if Tomura loiters any longer he’ll writhe away and mutter something about doin’ it my damn self and Tomura hasn’t hit any kinda it in a hot second, so he relents and slides his feelers out like an unplugged cable. USB-C to HDMI and the 15 pin screwies they haven’t made for years.
He gropes around for the sugar packet he’d foolishly carried to the comforter earlier rather than counted his sensibilities, and Dabi’s peepers don’t leave his puncher while Tomura clingwraps that main course rather than the leftovers. It’s kinda uncanny, though, like it always is within the interludes, the just-befores and right-afters-- the expression Dabi dresses in, it sheds an odd dictionary atop those graft holes and past-pubescent craters and the everpresent fatigue that may not rest grey beneath his eyes but withers his lower lashline regardless. It’s not anything alarming, because Tomura can recognize that too easily from a mile or millimeter away at this point-- obviously-- but it’s just kinda weird. Kinda reminds Tomura of the trash plate gaze that bores into his side profile like a nail gun whenever the news is on. Kinda looks like a question a little grimier than any beanpaste enema.
But it’s not anything alarming. One day he’ll empty the fridge, spill rank and rancid egg drop soups forgotten at the back shelves for months if not all of a year, but until then he can take them to go afterwards. And Tomura already set the damn table, for god’s sake-- but maybe he should stop comparing his meat to a meal at this point. There’s matters at hand a touch more pressing than fucking skewers and aburage.
At least Dabi doesn’t comment on Tomura’s crystal clear clouds-head and spares him an explanation. It’s only ‘cause he does the same thing but it’s still clean of him, and Tomura can always appreciate that of which is next to godliness, so he scoots back over and prompts, “Which way?”
As if Tomura’s freakazoid cantrips apply to his very speech too, the fog clears from the set of Dabi’s mouth and nose just as squeaky as the reality renewed in Tomura’s thoughts, and he weighs the feathers against the iron with all the certainty of zodiac scales before deciding. “I’on care, you pick.” He yawns catnap casual to punctuate and the depressingly obvious duality has Tomura biting the inside of his lip to swallow a giggle. A robin of recollection flits by his ear and murmurs in recordscratchy cords, we gotta get a fucking massager or somethin’ boss, so he suggests, “Back?”
Dabi just shrugs and grunts in agreement, squirming around about as elegant as a snake stuck in deer netting so as to establish himself comfortably again, but the curtains peeled back by Tomura’s decision rest pungent as pus where they hold pinned in the wings, so he allows himself a degree or two of satisfaction. Dabi squints at him after he’s gotten all set and settled, having found the perfect spot as if he got around on four legs rather than two. “What you smilin’ about?”
Tomura sticks his tongue out at him in a way that can only be described as before. “Nothin’.”
Kneeling between Dabi's stark and naked legs and Tetris'ing himself into taint territory, he carefully threads his medical marvel through the needleeye much simpler than a camel'd try but still well patient, and Dabi's resolutely unripe face contorts in a fashion opposite his sphincter; while one half throws the gates down, the other coils ropes tighter than the fraying asked. Yeah, yeah, three cheers for three fingers, sure, but c'mon. A few vienna sausages ain't nothing to cough at but a motherfucking bratwurst's still a bit of a culture shock for a crapchute. Dabi's windpipe flash-fries for a whole horribly lame three seconds before any oxygen can pry back down and wind out his innerouter junkie to de-padlock Tomura's keyblade. The other grunts in return, not pleasure but somewhere along succor, and when Dabi has sufficiently tulpa-plugged Tomura says in a tone amusingly yet fittingly conversational, "This thing isn't natural but I can still feel it all the same, fuckhead."
He scowls at him. "Just 'cause I don't got nerve endings in mine don't mean you aren't a piece'a work in the sack, honeypie."
"Don't call me that."
"D'you prefer 'fuckhead'?"
"Would you prefer 'honeybunches'?"
"Sure I would. Keep it to y'rself while y'got yer shit in my ass though."
Tomura groans, palpably pained. "Can you not refer to it like that when I'm literally up your shithole?"
Dabi smiles more like a dumbass than a fuckhead and says, "Y're the one who made it gross." His voice carries the same lightness as if they were bumbling forecasts and that's probably weird, but. That kinda thing kinda does it for Tomura. Dabi can feel it, too, and wastes no minute nor second in molding his mug into the stupidest scandalousness he can manage with his face half thrift-stiched. "I'm unsucking your dick as we speak." Tomura informs him curtly. "Are you good already. I'm fucking aging over here."
Dabi waves a hand in the air aimless as if he isn't even in it for a blockbust at all. "Yeah, yer all good. Get a move on, grandpa." He catches Tomura's eye and there, dwelling in both their respective sightsockets-- that's where it all syncs up. But didn't you already learn your primary colors way back when you were a shitty brat like the rest of us did? Purple's a secondary but it still ain't anything new. Ain't any hoity-toity CMYK, that's for sure.
So Tomura gets a move on. Dabi has a tough time buying that he didn't learn some trashy fiction term like pistoning from anything other than a crafting table, but hey, words're words, right? Least it taught him something. Can't you put slimeballs on that shit anyway, 'cause if Dabi's got that clear than that'd be an even slicker metaphor-- or. Not slick, actually. The internet is a beautiful anthill but somehow broken jars and screwdrivers in asses rather than thunderstruck forearm horse dildos are less shudderworthy than the dictionary definitions rendered moot in the mouths of virginal hermits. Dabi snickers to himself and Tomura frowns. "Can you at least try to focus when we're having sex?"
That's how you know, Dabi thinks as he moans and groans about how he's having such a hard time getting in the mood 'cause Tomura's being so mean and rude and evil and cruel and how it's so unfair to his poor and destitute pooptube. That's how you know y'got it right.
In the image of a modern Ashoka, Tomura sighs and does his best to stagger a consistent pace while scritching much more vulgar edicts into Dabi's own nutcracker; ever the penniless body, he doesn't got any rooster to drop a copy on his humble Jr. Hands like Tomura does, but that's alright. Penises are for posers. Plus, Dabi's always had some kinda philic fixation over his fingys, and phallus per pith to palm just isn't the same, okay. But the self-assured stay self-assured and the plastic surgeons stay draining more than just their wallets so it's just a thing you know if you know.
Not the meat hex thing. You know what he means.
And it's good too, 'cause Tomura might be down a few pokers on this particular grabber but he's always gonna be one dextrous motherfucker. His bedsheet manner's more of a sibling to gas pump than the fire hydrant step-cousin those sweet and stupid Pornhub dwellers wax so piss-poetic and poorly of, but Dabi's one of those weirdos who likes the stink of gasoline so it works out pretty well. Different strokes for different folks and different oaks for different smokes. What's also good is that Tomura knows when to shut up mid-romp 'cause even with the bickers and wicker baskets chock-full of goofy assyolks to lob admist Reddi Whip in the making, sometimes the leaderboard blips off for a moment. There's enough always left to wilt in brain tissue to not mind the five. Different jags for different fags.
Downers are best in silence anyway. Gutblasting isn't anything like boofing but it's beloved no matter the manner.
Saying something about pleasure pooling in his prick might sound a little too cliche to be genuine, but it fucking feels good, okay? It feels all happy hormones and incoming insemination if Tomura had any spellbook sperm to his name, condom notwithstanding. So fuck your cliches 'cause there's no brick about'a bean him in the balls but that's just a tad more trope than truth to begin with. Not always though, Dabi's placid mind ripples. 'S just not that kinda day. Too tired. The water spreads in a solemn circle over the shootertrack grooves in his brain and fleetingly, Dabi wonders why it's always in bed with Tomura that the silence settles. Perhaps his biological mastery extends to Dabi's insides too. Maybe Dabi's yawning anus isn't the only place his fingers have jonesed around in.
He should give me the cum then, he thinks, cutthroat careful not to chuckle aloud. World's first double hermaphrodite pregnancy.
Babies are terrifying, though, even if kids aren't quite as damageable-- but you better keep that to yourself 'fore you get those lofty creeps on your ass harder than a haughty hand on a hacky sack, 'cause the internet truly is a crazy place to live with the blinds always drawn.
Freaks. But he supposes you can't keep that in the bedroom when you're the only one there.
But that's neither here nor there in fresh air and sunshine. No song needs a rhythm like four minutes and thirty-three seconds of softness if there's no sheet to glimpse, and Dabi's got no qualms with whatever Tomura strums out 'cause if he did it'd go different or done and that's all good too. Ain't that what 't's all about anyway? Connection? Whadda you think, Tomura?
What Tomura thinks shatters their sugarglass dome only a split second later-- and Dabi feels it too. His beautiful knock-knocker freezes like he's had his cables yanked before his wood got a chance to. The maggots feast silent for all of one squirrel-shot second, and--
"Y'know, to be fair, I didn't getta chance after I got up." Dabi notes with philosophical schadenfreude. "'Nd you didn't ask."
Tomura stares at him with a brow twisted terrible enough that the temptation to put the genocidal bits to work would be fresher than feces to anyone watching. He withdraws like a sheep's to his sheath and, as he's peeling open his parcel with a jaw clamped to repulsion, he spits, "You're blowing me after this." Dropping the condom in the trash, he greens queasy as he bores into his hands before he looks up and shoots Dabi a withering look. "Open the door for me. And take a goddamn shit while you're at it."
Dabi raises his hand in a two finger salute. No fish for dinner today but there's always another reel. The sea isn't going anywhere. "You got it, bossman."