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Dabi was fucked. Royally fucked, actually. He had the bad luck of having to fight a small gang of thugs, one of which had some sort of quirk cancellation. They all had weapons and Dabi hadn’t been prepared for this scenario, he always relied on his quirk after all.
How could he have been so stupid? How didn’t he think of this ever happening?
He managed to drag himself to the League’s hideout, leaning against the doorframe to give himself a break once he knew he was somewhere relatively safe. His hand pressed against his side in a pathetic attempt to stop the blood gushing out of the several stab wounds. To say he was glad no nobody else was away would be an understatement.
As he continued making his way towards his room, the room started spinning and he felt himself get even more lightheaded. The world went black for a second and he reached for the nearest wall to rest up against. Catching his breath was hard when every movement felt like he was getting stabbed all over again. He couldn’t let anyone see him like this, he didn’t feel like getting scolded for not being careful and seeing everyone look at him with nothing but pity.
Finally, the nausea seemed to calm down a little and he stepped inside his bedroom. He left the door open, not having enough energy to turn around and close it after himself. He had to put all the effort into getting to the bathroom to clean off the blood and the wounds.
After a minute or two of struggle, Dabi laid in the tub, the sound of the water running filling the room. He hadn’t even bothered to take his clothes off, aside from his coat which had been thrown somewhere on the floor. The water around him was turning red, and he felt his consciousness slip away again. He reached over and turned off the faucet. After all, they really couldn’t afford dealing with a flood and he wasn’t about to cause one.
He laid back against the tub, not even caring about the wet clothes, the pain or the wounds anymore. How could he care when he was so tired?
He was just going to take a quick nap and it’d all be better when he woke up.
Compress woke up without his boyfriend next to him, which was weird. Usually, Dabi would come to his room and sleep next to him after missions.
“Maybe he crashed on the couch again.” Mister tried to explain to himself, ignoring the worry bubbling in the back of his mind.
He got up and quickly got ready for the day before leaving the room and heading straight to the living room. His stomach twisted when he saw the couch empty as well, and he only felt worse when he saw the drops of blood trailing from the front door. He immediately rushed to Dabi’s room, which was at the other end of the hall.
His heart dropped when he saw the handprint of blood in the wall right by Dabi’s open door. Open. Dabi never left his door open. He hated when people would pry into his privacy, he would rather die than let anyone even peek into his room. Compress rushed in and headed straight to the bathroom where the trail of blood seemed to end.
He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Dabi lay in the tub full of bloody water with his eyes closed. He looked as pale as a ghost and his body was alarmingly cold when Mister reached over to pull him out of the water.
“Dabi.” He tried to shake him awake, but got no response. “Dabi.” He repeated, growing more and more concerned.The pyro just continued lying motionlessly in the dirty water.
Tears filled Compress’ eyes and memories came flooding in. He couldn’t lose Dabi. Not like he lost Magne. He just couldn’t.
He managed to pick Dabi up and drag him out of the bathtub, placing him on the floor with his back against the wall. He sat next to him, shaking him again, waiting for a reaction.
Finally, Dabi seemed to wake up a little, but he was still lethargic and barely even able to open his eyes. Seeing his boyfriend stir even slightly seemed to help Compress relax a bit. At least he knew that Dabi was still alive.
“Let me sleep.” Dabi slurred out.
“I can't do that, love.” The older of the two breathed out, almost like a sigh of relief.
Dabi’s breath hitched and his hand went to his side, pressing down as he muttered a string of curse words. He let his head fall back, lightly bumping the wall behind him as the pain hit him again.
“It’s okay, just tell me what hurts.” Mister immediately tried to help. He noticed his boyfriend starting to zone out and slip back to unconsciousness. “Dabi, talk to me.”
But he got no response. Dabi just looked over to him, his eyes almost closed at that point.
“Dabi.” He tried to get his boyfriend to respond again.
When that didn’t work, he quickly picked Dabi up despite the faint noise of protest.
Even with all the first aid kits in the world, Dabi had lost too much blood for a simple stitch of his wounds to help. So Compress ran out of the room and down the stairs that led to the lab.
By the time he arrived at the creepy office in the basement of the mansion, Dabi had passed out again, which only distressed Mister more, but he laid Dabi down as Ujiko instructed him.
Compress didn’t trust that freaky doctor, but it was his last resort and he truly couldn’t take losing another lover. He sat on a chair in the corner of the room, closely watching everything Ujiko did and only feeling worse when the doctor revealed Dabi’s wounds. Once Dabi was stable, Mister felt as if a stone had lifted off his chest and he could finally breathe again.
He spent hours just staring at his boyfriend lay there, in the makeshift hospital bed of that disgusting office, machines beeping as they tracked his vitals.
Bright lights blinded Dabi when he finally opened his eyes again. He squinted as he got used to the light which he soon recognised as the light inside the lab.
That set him off.
He shot up, immediately looking for a way to take the wires of whatever machines were in the room off of him. His head was pounding and he felt stitches pull at his skin as he moved around.
“Dabi, calm down!” Someone called out to him and turned his head so fast he almost snapped his neck.
Compress walked over to him from where he had been sitting for the past few hours. He looked relieved, concerned, maybe even mad, but mostly relieved. Dabi calmed down once he saw his boyfriend there.
Mister pulled him into a tight hug, holding him as if he was going to disappear if he was let go.
“You scared the living soul out of me.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” Dabi’s words were muffled since he had his face buried in Compress’ shirt.
“Are you kidding?” The older villain took a step back, looking at his boyfriend in disbelief. “Are you hearing yourself right now, Dabi?”
Well, if he hadn’t been mad before, he definitely was now.
Dabi hesitated to reply, choosing to stare at Mister for a few seconds before opening his mouth to speak. “But I’m all good now.”
“All good?” As levelled as Compress was trying to keep his voice, it was clear that he was upset. “Dabi, I found you in a bath of your own blood and had to carry you here. You couldn’t keep your eyes open for more than a few seconds!”
“Oh.”
Dabi had been so out of it when Mister found him he couldn’t remember anything. He looked away, unable to look his boyfriend in the eyes anymore. He just couldn’t when Compress looked at him with so much worry and pain, especially when he was the cause of that worry and pain.
“Didn’t mean to scare you. Thought I’d be better in the morning after I took care of the injuries.” He finally muttered.
“Why didn’t you just come to me for help?”
“Didn’t have time.” Dabi admitted, pretending to not hear the way Compress’ breath hitched.
“Didn’t have time.” Mister repeated, as if he was taking in the information. “You’re telling me you were convinced you were going to die, convinced you didn’t even have time to come to me for help, but it still “wasn’t that bad”?”
Dabi opened his mouth to speak, but his words were caught in the back of his throat. Just a few hours earlier he was struggling to breathe and keep himself alive and he was sure he’d just die in that bathtub without anyone knowing he was there.
“I can’t lose you, Dabi. I don’t want to.” Those two sentences made Dabi immediately look up at Compress again, eyes wide as if he had just been told the most shocking thing he had ever heard.
He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to lose Dabi.
“That’s a bit of a tough goal to achieve.” He looked away again, trying to ease the tension of the situation by joking.
“I know.”
An awkward silence fell between the two and Compress sat on the bed next to Dabi, who murmured an apology. He only got a nod as a response.
“You weren’t supposed to know me,” Dabi broke the silence.
It was true. Nobody was supposed to know him, nobody was supposed to wiggle their way into his personal life, yet Mister did. Mister managed to break through Dabi’s mask of stoicism and get to know him as a person, and a part of Dabi was still scared by that, while the other part of him was still processing the fact that someone was putting in the effort to get to know him.
“but I don’t want to imagine a life there you don’t.”