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"You wanna try?"
Tomura glances over at Dabi, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the coffee table with a razor blade in hand. He's got his whole setup spread out in front of him, scale and bottle and rocks all placed meticulously atop a sheet of plastic wrap, little terracotta soldiers standing stationary as they await their fearless leader's gloved fingers. Washed and dried and bagged and wielding rubbing alcohol like a fire hose. Because if there is one thing Dabi will submit to Tomura's sanitary standards on, it is drugs.
Tomura supposes he should feel disappointed at the ease with which Dabi returned to his old ways and the muscle memory persisting in his movements as he works, but he can only bring himself to feel relieved at the reinvigorated self control that has settled over him again too. That's the thing, Dabi had told him, a month after he quit, another since he'd started again. Gotta keep yourself in check. Everything in moderation, y'know? Don't let the stuff do you instead. The fading daylight had flickered across his eyes as if they were motherboard instead of the blue Tomura's long since come to associate with more hearth than hellfire, and he hadn't been able to tell what circuit had shut but he'd witnessed it all the same. Maybe it was determination. Something to signify another new game plus with an even better manual this time. Maybe it was just new batteries.
"Sure." Tomura says, boldly. Dabi blinks at him for all of a fourth-second and something that looks a whole lot of kid on Christmas spreads across his face before he schools it back to mellowality and all his usual attitude. Perhaps the gift in and of itself is Dabi looking that happy about being indulged for once, but Tomura doesn't bother growing guinea pig claws because he knows that the ease with which Dabi handles himself pharmaceutically isn't as haphazard nor impulsive as one would think. He's lazy, he's whiny and he is truly insufferable when things don't go his way and he ends up with a bad press and only empty pockets to show for it, but he is not stupid. He knows exactly what he's doing. He just doesn't bother trying to change anyone's minds because he also knows that there are two kinds of people in the world, and those are people like him and those not at all; he doesn't bother because people unlike him aren't interested in changing their minds anyway.
People unlike Dabi, people working their 9-5s and hating their grey little lives in the privacy of their shoebox apartments after being dragged from a gaudy bar by two equally sloshed and suicidal coworkers all in proper salarymen suits, people who couldn't fathom so much as a joint on the weekend much less coughing on changa-- they are specific in their thought processes, and any science freak unlike them could have their brains better compartmentalized than a hysterical teenager's identity crises in seconds. Tomura is not anywhere near as experienced as Dabi with falling asleep and waking up mid sentence nor bouncing frenzied from task to task and topic to topic and tears to laughter, energized by not just stimulants but flesh itself, and he doesn't know what it's like to lose the essence of your own existence to abyss for however long the barrel decides-- but. But.
People unlike Dabi haven't ever been privy to those forbidden flavors of pomegranate calm to begin with-- so while he hates it, Tomura can understand why. He can rationalize it and the argument and the fickle fucking footnotes. And he can wish with every atom of every cell of his GABA receptors that any of those stickass armchairs would learn to let loose once in a while because it would do wonders for his tendencies towards domestic terrorism. More than clonazepam would, at least.
But moral high ground is a drug in and of itself. So it’s best not to get your hopes up, right?
Right. Tomura's lived in this ditch all his life and it may look meager on the surface but there is a thriving colony six feet below. It's in one of those hideaways that he takes a mug of his favorite peach black tea from Dabi's generous hands and sees the honey masking rotten tongued psilocybin for what it is. It's at their kitchen counter at slipsoft six pm that Tomura takes a sip and the flavor isn't even vaguely heaven-aided. The sweetsyrup at the bottom is heady enough-- mushrooms be damned.
Dabi sweeps his forceps and scalpels and curved suture needles back into their dinky little plastic containers while Tomura sinks into the couch and lets his eyes slip shut as his brain sways towards a handsome kaleidoscope at the end of the bar. "If y'wanna listen to anythin' specific, better speak now or forever hold yer peace." Dabi warns as he's plugging his phone into some speaker ancient enough to connect via headphone jack. Tomura doesn't bother dignifying him with a response because Dabi knows damn well he wouldn't let Tomura queue up anything while tripping, much less his first time doing so-- so he waits, and cricket wails fill the room in tune with guitar and maracas and wet Portuguese, and Tomura does not bother to thank him for it either. Dabi knows damn well already.
He listens, and no heaviness shackles him, no Atlas-shouldered dumbbells carve rugged into his chromosomally rugged palms, but the sensual lilt of the singerwoman’s vocals hook into his tissue and tug exhaustion he hadn't even noticed up through his follicles. Dabi plops down beside him and his upper lip is clean but there's a bandage wound around his bicep because skin grafts are much worse at clotting than organic. Nothing's kicked in and nothing has for Dabi either because he's mainlined enough that the gears are crusted enough that the spit has to lube 'em first, but Tomura feels weird and odd and weirdly vulnerable, oddly enough, so he adjusts himself and falls back over Dabi's lap, back bridged across his thighs. He snorts and Tomura glances up at him and feels thirsty. The dehydration really contributes to the delirium, y'know?
By the time the ceiling starts to breathe and Tomura can't bring himself to tear his eyes from the wiggling hairs sprouting from his arms, Dabi is already boarding, but his hand moves in firm circles up and down Tomura's bare abdomen where he'd shoved his shirt up shiatsu. Any whiff of intent is as blatant as a stove smoking canoxide, but egoless or not Tomura's seen him pissed about flicks to the forehead and tattling to his tactile senses enough to take the woodworked whorls pressing into his fat layer as the offering they are. All he can do is accept, and it might be the psychedelics or the tinny birdcries, but he doesn't return the favor. He offers nothing. He lays quiet and counts the snakes on his forearms and then the crooked and even staples both embedded in Dabi's oily cheeks. He offers nothing and in the deep pit of his spinal cord Dabi smiles where Tomura can't see.
The only indicator that time continues to sludge by is the chipdipping sun into orange and the frog gulp bass underlining sound that soaks him as if red, and suddenly something fizzy and blobby starts popping in his chest, something sticky and slippery and warm, and it bubbles up his throat until Tomura can't help the laugh that escapes. First it's just a giggle, then another, then one more and a guffaw and his belly rumbles with mirth as he proceeds to lose his shit over nothing but Dabi's nails scritching feline at the organ itself and the purplepink paintshadows squirming slimy trails across the floor. His equine cushion deigns to bare an unfocused gaze clearly still half at sea from his own colorscopes to lick up the horizon ocean that tumbles off Tomura's tongue, and Tomura would feel flattered or even a little flustered if he could catch his breath. Dabi smiles outwardly this time and leans down to nudge his face into Tomura's soap bubble. "Look." He says. Tomura shakes like an easily amused chihuahua, but it's not his hands, it's not itching or prickling ivy wound 'round his wrists and Dabi says, coaxing him cottonpuff quiet, "C'mon, Tomura." Coaxing him, he says, "Look."
So Tomura fails to notice the yellow sunray that drips from the corner of his left eye and looks up, and-- he’s already realized by now, beneath the fairy ring forest in his brain, that poetry isn't anything fingertips like his could weave, not verse nor verb, but-- he really can't help snapping from the vines that tether him to the upholstery and clasping Dabi's face in his palms, ten whole pen nibs sinking into his skull in ten different pages. The metal in his nose twists as if struggling free of the fistulas so Tomura places his thumb atop them to spare Dabi a few needles, and Dabi laughs too. "They ain't goin' anywhere, boss." He tells him. "The visuals make everything all wormy."
Tomura knows this but he still holds them in. He figures the lack of desire to answer is another effect the fungi’s equipped but Dabi wouldn't give him anything he hadn't test ran himself first, so it doesn't matter, because that means he knows and isn’t expecting him to. The navy-grey flakes in his irises jive around a void of a disco ball and Tomura wonders what Dabi sees in his own when he paws him onto his side and sits cross-legged on the floor, staring into him starry enough to feel stabbing. It must be enough because Dabi always gets a little teary when he trips that hard, and it feels like the blood that salivates nauseous from his seams can only be colored by that pooling in Tomura's tired eyes. At those times, Tomura will rub the crud from his eyelashes and reach out a groggy hand, and Dabi will pillow his cheek into it and feel not quite as drained as before. A little less hungry from the IV at his bedside. This sodium only makes Tomura's mouth dry and has him swallowing on nothing as the song switches and the tempo taps its feet smooth on the hardwood.
Joga bossa nova samba, DJ, please play bossa nova for me
Radio, radio, colors in life, everyday things like a stick or a fly...
It could still be the mushrooms or the way the vocals have gone grassy or even Dabi's brand having morphed to mindless drumming across Tomura's stomach, but something like piano wires tighten his hold and he lets go; but he makes no time to see any expression flit, and instead clutches Dabi's shoulder and heaves himself up. Dabi grunts and nearly falls sideways but Tomura pays no heed and pushes himself sitting before standing. He plants himself upright over the black and purple blob with its cut threads thrown messy all over the cushions, steady enough so as to keep himself from falling too, and he holds out a hand. Speaking with a rusty voice and an indecipherable expression, he says, "You come on." Dabi gazes up at him motionless for just long enough for him to go hazy before he grasps it weakly and somehow manages to pull himself up without reminding both of them of what physics is all about. Gaussian blurs are no exception to any Newton or Galileo nor any Todoroki or Shimura.
Pele zico pele na TV on TV, hat trick, lich trich
The kings of the day ease away the pain of today...
Dabi's done this before, so he gets the question before it's asked and lets Tomura guide him as he sways to the beat, liquid in ways previously thought solely mercurial. Moving that evenly on ketamine is truly comparable to a Fromsoft game from what Tomura already knows of the stuff, and it shows in Dabi's stilted puppet motions but he doesn't withdraw, so Tomura allows himself just a word's worth of childish satisfaction while he toes the line of introducing Dabi's nose to the floor for the thirty-ninth time. Notes flow through his limbs and ligaments as if faux-oxygened to his blood and he moves with no particular grace nor fashion but it feels nice. It feels like green and blue and pink and red and the fuzzy orange socks Dabi thinks are stupidly cute but wouldn't be caught dead cooing over aloud. It's stupidly amusing how easy he is to read, too. But that's probably a learned skill.
Cantar is to sing, doer is to hurt, camisa dez, number ten shirt
Surfer surfista, samba dancer sambista, me conquista, da da da, da da da...
There are many things that Dabi does Tomura's not sure he'll ever understand and things he says too, and there are things he does and will continue to that make Tomura feel raw sometimes, things that make a meat mallet at lunchtime feel so much louder than it is, but it's fine. It's fine because he's not just saying that to relent, he's not just caving and tossing in the towel and saying go ahead, do what you want-- because there is no towel to throw, and there is no tunnel to boulder in. Tomura isn't sure he can say with certainty that he and Dabi would share a shelf in a smoke shop but he is sure he'd be just below. Because he doesn't hate it. He doesn't hate any of it. He may worry, he may pull his hair sometimes and he may hiss sometimes too, but he doesn't hate it. All that he hates is that his hands still aren't precise enough to rend the aches from Dabi's muscle and bone; but there's still time to practice.
There's still dishes to dirty and counters to clean, cigarettes and joints and paste to smoke. There's still clothes to wash and sharps boxes to fill, but more importantly, there's still flesh to hold it all. There’s them and the music, this hot and gored silksummer night closing in to unravel all else, and the fetal future Tomura will sew into his own canvas to splatter. The future where unlike and like exist only in tombs.
He clutches Dabi's hand tighter because there's still a couple bars left. Still a little time left to dance.