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Summer leaving its wet and disconcerted footsteps smudged along the windowpane should probably feel relieving, but Dabi knows better than to believe that as grace by now. He can hate that heat all he wants but the opposite isn't any greener, not at all, and it's not like his body knows the difference. He wishes there was a something in a baggie to dim that too, something other than what calmly pats the trembling head of his central nervous system, but even that has run dry.
It's a waiting game this way. It's safer, sure, and it's guaranteed-- almost-- kind of-- but most importantly, it eases Tomura tremendously, even with his terracotta army of reagents and testing strips. I still hate it, he'd said anyway on a night like any other, a night that starts and ends the same as all of them do, or should-- warm, not hot; groggy, not tired; buzzing, but so lovingly acheless-- and Tomura tentacled around his arm. Doesn't he like a game with octopi in it? He was telling him about a new thing the other day, wasn't he? When will it be enough?
He isn't talking about the drugs. Every night those bony hands grow dearer from that frustrated itch and all Dabi wants to do is remind him that it's just a waiting game, that's all. He's just gotta wait awhile. One more day. One more night.
One more father. One more mom. But Tomura sat in a phony hospital room just a bit earlier than Dabi did.
And the thing is, it isn't really the timing or the promised emptiness, it isn't even the pain, it isn't even Dad, some-fucking-how, it's just-- it's so frustrating, angering, upsetting and brimming with unshed blood, because it's just-- it's just so--
Tonight really should'a been a night like any other. Dabi resigns himself to scraps and stabs and wriggles half onto his side so he can watch Tomura sleep. Like a creep. Hey, he called him that when they first met, didn't he? Maybe that hippocampus ain't all mush yet. That'd be nice.
It's all a waiting game. Maybe it'll be morning soon and Dabi can gag at Tomura's dessert in a cup of an excuse for coffee again while his untouched mug eats the same medicine. Yeah, that'd be nice.
Tomura really is beautiful like this, up close, creases smoothed and scars so deeply engraved. There're way too many ways to say that way more eloquently than how he has all the times Dabi's cortexes have burped just the one, but that's what you'll have to wait on-- more words. Tomura's always licked the bowl clean no matter how full to start and that, that's why Dabi sympathizes with those knuckles of his. Tomura wants to destroy all the pain inside him. Dabi wants to feed him all the rest.
The moon's got a fifty-fifty chance of peeking through the foggy sky no matter the season (no stars, of course, did you really think Musutafu was anywhere near that gracious?), but even with the blinds clasped careful and caring too, Dabi feels as if the night glow is embracing Tomura through their very walls-- after all, there's no other way to explain this shimmer, is there? What else could have him glimmering so heavenly? Have Dabi's silly and all too serious Jesus metaphors come to life through repentance he didn't even wanna give?
It's not that, of course. It's sparks. Dabi's very face is calmly catching fire.
It's not sympathy. He's got the right word, but don't you remember what he actually means? Has your brain gone bad, too? What are you waiting for?
Tomura's a go-getter so he wakes up 'cause his sixth sense is going something just as bonkers as the embers dripping down Dabi's temples. He's said all that before too, remember? Are you waiting, or stalling?
The cobwebs wipe from his conflictingly young crows' feet the second he's got his vision again. "Wh-- Christ, Dabi, get up, fucking--" He spits as he bolts up himself and takes his poorly regulated dakimakura with him. He's clearly worried about burning a hole in the pillowcase and it makes Dabi wanna laugh, so he does. All that joy, that comfort and warmth and all the relief those CNS calmers so happily afford him and all he's got in there wedged between the crevices, he spews it out with more mirth than last call in a cheap bar bathroom stall. Tomura watches impassively, or at least it might seem that way to anyone else, but Dabi knows this bastard, dammit, he knows his sweet-tooth clean-freak creepshow ass-- literally, too, he sniggers out with the rest-- so he sees what fresh meat wouldn't. He's been to the butcher too many too many times not to recognize the cleaver behind the counter.
This is the face he makes when Dabi's wormed his way into his veins for a change and he's only got so much he can do to tamp down all the grin he wants to crack. This is the one he makes when Dabi prepares his godawful coffee instead and does so just as seamless as he sneers at it. This is what Dabi sees when he locks the door over and over and over before he turns around to follow. This is medicine.
"I hate this." Dabi coughs, choking for breath again through his mania. Tomura's too stupidly beautiful to keep looking at him like that so his gaze goes dumb mushy instead, mirroring all that Dabi lugs around in his cranium. "I know." He murmurs, then continues-- "But in the meantime--" His eyes glitter but it's from microplastic remains instead of bonfire promises this time. Or maybe Dabi's just lovesick instead of dopesick-- or whatever you'd call this. You probably wouldn't know either way.
That's alright though, 'cause Tomura's smiling now. Yeah, this is probably lovesickness. That's alright too 'cause Tomura's smiling and he gets to see it all up close. "I had a really good dream."
Dabi's not fresh meat-- he's miles past well done. Who knows how many times that scale has chimed. "I hate you so fuckin' much sometimes, y'know that?" His voice is just as bloody as his face might've been if this was a different night, a different day or season, but you know just what he meant before, don't you? You remember, don't you?
Tomura's eyes crinkle at the corners and those corvid footsteps bulge out, but he's way past the point of avian hauntings no matter what lies in any grubby back alley, so it can only feel relaxing. If only he could walk them with steady feet. "I know." Tomura answers, soft. Quiet like the night that the blinds hide them from. Safe like the walls that enclose them. "I love you too."
Fuck eloquence, Dabi decides as he laces his boots up and Tomura zips up his hoodie. Fuck waiting.
He locks like the door behind them all correctly and tangles his fingers up with Tomura's itchy ones and shows him the way. The moon really is there, just like he'd thought-- and a spark is kinda like a star, right? All shiny and shit?
Close enough. So what're you waiting for, hm?