The arrangement was simple. Once a week. Tuesday nights. The Sakura Inn, room 207, paid for in cash by Dabi. That was the deal, the friends-with-benefits contract Shoto had drawn up in his head. It lasted precisely one week.
By the second Tuesday, Dabi’s raspy voice was in his ear through the phone on a Thursday afternoon. “Can’t stop thinking about that sound you make. The wet one, right when I push in.” Shoto’s knees went weak in the grocery aisle. He was back at the Sakura Inn on Friday.
By the third week, it was Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday. Shoto’s laundry hamper smelled permanently of cigarette smoke, leather, and sex. His own peppermint scent was buried under it. He found himself savoring it.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Shoto says now, back against the familiar headboard of room 207. It’s Tuesday again. Or is it Thursday? The days blur into a hungry cycle of class, work, and this. He’s naked, skin still damp from the shower he took immediately after his last lecture, already here and waiting.
Dabi, leaning in the doorway to the bathroom, a towel slung low on his hips, just smirks. His piercings catch the neon light from the window sign. “You’re the one who beat me here. I’m running late, you said. I was in the neighborhood, you said.” His mimicry of Shoto’s measured tone is terrible, and fond.
“I had a gap in my schedule.” Shoto’s lie is transparent, even to himself. He’d cancelled a study session. He’d deleted Grindr off his phone two weeks ago, the icons for other dating apps gathering digital dust. The experiment was over. The data was conclusive: he only wants this. Him. The specific weight, the particular taste, the exact way that monstrous cock stretches him open and makes him feel whole in a way that scrambles his psychology textbooks.
“A gap,” Dabi echoes, pushing off the doorway. The towel drops. He’s already hard, his pierced cock curving thick and heavy against his thigh. The sight of it, every time, is a punch to Shoto’s gut. A need so acute it feels like panic. “Funny how those gaps keep lining up with my breaks from the shop.”
He crosses the room, the mattress dipping under his knees as he crawls over Shoto. The smell of him—embers and ink and clean sweat—envelops Shoto. His inner monologue short-circuits into static. Dabi’s scarred hand comes up, his thumb brushing Shoto’s lower lip. “Miss me, pretty thing?”
It’s a taunt. A game. The rules demand Shoto play cool. He doesn’t. His voice is wrecked before anything even starts. “Yes.” The confession is raw, unflinching. He turns his head, catches Dabi’s thumb in his mouth, sucks it clean with a filthy, wet sound.
Dabi’s blue eyes darken. The lazy smirk vanishes, replaced by something ravenous. “Fuck,” he breathes, the word all gravel. “Open.”
Shoto does, letting Dabi’s thumb slip free. He’s already spreading his legs, his own body slick and ready, anticipating. He’s always ready for him now. His cunt aches, his swollen clit throbbing in time with his heartbeat. The clinical part of his mind, the one that used to observe, is silent. There is only want, a white-hot cable pulled taut from his core to Dabi’s.
Dabi doesn’t tease. He never does, not anymore. He aligns himself in one smooth, brutal motion and pushes inside. The stretch is perfect, a burn that melts into overwhelming fullness. Shoto’s head falls back, a choked gasp ripped from his throat. It’s the sound Dabi mentioned on the phone. The wet, surrendering noise of being entered.
“There it is,” Dabi groans, hips flush against Shoto’s, buried to the hilt. He doesn’t move. Just stays there, his forehead dropping to Shoto’s shoulder, his body trembling with the effort of holding still. “Every fucking time. You take me like you were made for it.”
Dabi moves. A hard, deep, claiming stroke that drags a ragged scream from Shoto’s throat. He sets a brutal pace immediately, no warm-up, no tenderness. Just the savage slap of his hips against Shoto’s ass, the wet, obscene sound of his cock pistoning in and out of Shoto’s soaked cunt. It’s punishment and worship fused into one relentless rhythm.
“Look at you,” Dabi grunts, his voice shredded. His scarred hands grip Shoto’s hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh, holding him down to take it. “Fucking look. See how you take it.”
Shoto’s vision whites out. His hands scramble against the cheap satin sheets, finding nothing to anchor him. Every cell in his body is alight, screaming. This is what he cancelled his life for. This wreckage. This fullness. His brain scrambles for analysis—neural pathways, dopamine floods—and comes up empty. There is only the split-second cycle of loss and re-filling, the exquisite torture of being empty for a breath before being brutally stuffed full again.
“Perfect,” Dabi grunts, the word punched out of him with each brutal thrust. “This perfect, greedy fucking cunt. Made for me. Dream about this.” His voice is shredded, raw, each syllable a hot gust against Shoto’s sweat-slick neck. “Only pussy I ever want. Only one I see when I close my eyes.”
Shoto’s mind fractures on the praise. It’s not sweet; it’s filthy, a dark sacrament. His own voice is a broken, high-pitched thing. “Yours,” he gasps, the earlier admission now a frantic chant. “Only—ah!—only yours. God, Dabi, your cock—”
“Tell me.” Dabi’s hand slides from his hip to fist in his silver-and-maroon hair, tugging his head back. The sting grounds him, focuses the blinding pleasure into a sharp point. “Tell me what my cock does to you.”
“Ruins me,” Shoto chokes out, his body jolting with each deep drive. His cunt is a sopping, clenching vise around the thick, pierced length. “I think about it—all day. At class. At work. I’m addicted. I’m fucking addicted to how you fuck me.”
Dabi moans, a low, ragged sound of triumph. He releases Shoto’s hair, his scarred palm slapping down on the mattress by Shoto’s head, caging him. His pace becomes even more punishing, a relentless piston. “That’s it. That’s my good boy. Dream about this dick splitting you open. Dream about coming back here and finding you wet and waiting.”
The clinical part of Shoto is dead. There is no analysis, only sensation: the burn of stretch, the slap of skin, the obscene wet squelch filling the room. His swollen clit throbs, a frantic, ignored pulse. He’s not going to cum from that. He’s going to cum from the sheer, brutal fullness, from the way Dabi’s pelvis grinds against his ass, hitting a spot inside that makes his vision speckle with white stars.
“Can’t get enough,” Dabi rasps, his control fraying. His breathing is harsh, open-mouthed against Shoto’s ear. “You ruin me right back. Cancel everything. Just to feel this.”
Shoto’s hands scramble, finally finding purchase on Dabi’s scarred back. His nails dig in, scoring lines through sweat and ink. He’s clinging to a cliff edge. “Love it,” he sobs, the confession ripped from a place deeper than pride. “Love your cock. I love it, I love it, I’m obsessed—”
The words trigger something in Dabi. A guttural sound tears from his throat, and he crushes Shoto into the mattress, his entire body bowing over him. The angle shifts, and the thick head of his cock rams directly into a place that makes Shoto see God. His body seizes, a silent, open-mouthed scream. The orgasm doesn’t crest; it detonates.
Hot liquid gushes from him, a fountain soaking the sheets beneath them, spraying Dabi’s thighs. It’s a continuous, uncontrollable release, his cunt spasming wildly around the relentless invasion. Dabi curses, a prayer and a profanity, and drives into him through the storm, his own hips stuttering. “Take it, take it, take all of it—”
He comes with a ragged shout, his body locking, pulsing deep inside Shoto. Shoto feels the hot flood, a second fullness that makes him sob. Dabi collapses, his full weight a welcome anchor, his face buried in the junction of Shoto’s neck and shoulder. They are a wreck of sweat, come, and squirting fluid, shaking in the aftermath.
Dabi shifts, slipping free with a wet, intimate sound that makes Shoto shiver. He doesn’t go far. He just rearranges them, pulling Shoto so his head is pillowed on Dabi’s chest. The scar tissue there is slick with sweat, a landscape of ridges and smooth patches under Shoto’s cheek. Dabi reaches over to the nightstand, fumbling for his pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The click is loud in the quiet room. The first inhale fills the air with the familiar scent of smoke and embers.
“These long hotel stays,” Dabi says, the words curling out with the smoke. His tone is casual, too casual. “They’re getting fucking expensive.”
Shoto’s mind, always analyzing, immediately calculates. He has savings from his part-time work at the campus library. His rent is cheap. “I could help with—”
“No.” The word is sharp, final. Dabi’s arm tightens around him. “Not what I meant.” He takes another drag, exhales slowly. The smoke drifts toward the mirrored ceiling. “Why don’t you just start coming over to my place instead?”
The question hangs in the air, heavier than the smoke. Shoto goes very still. His place. Dabi’s apartment, a space he’s never seen, a territory he’s never been invited to map. This isn’t a neutral, tawdry room. This is a threshold. A big step in this… whatever this is. A flush creeps up his neck, hot and undeniable. He’s glad Dabi can’t see his face.
“Yeah?” Dabi prods, his voice dropping into that low, raspy register that does things to Shoto’s insides. He can hear the smirk. “Cat got your tongue, pretty boy?”
Shoto swallows. He nods against Dabi’s chest, a small, shy motion. “I’d like that,” he says, his own voice soft. The admission feels bigger than screaming his obsession during sex.
Dabi’s chest vibrates with a quiet chuckle. He stubs the cigarette out in the cheap glass ashtray. “We could even meet more often,” he adds, the smirk audible. He means it as a joke, a lewd suggestion. A friends-with-benefits perk.
Shoto answers with the stark, unvarnished truth. It’s all he has left. “I’d like that, too. To see you more often.”
The silence that follows is different. The arm around him doesn’t move, but Shoto feels the subtle tension that enters Dabi’s body. The steady heartbeat under his ear stutters, just once. Shoto lifts his head, just enough to look up.
Dabi is staring back at the young man, his blue eyes wide. The smirk is gone. In its place is something raw, a flash of hurt so profound it steals Shoto’s breath. It’s there and then gone, shuttered behind a slow blink. Dabi’s expression softened into something genuine, something painfully open. A small, real smile touches his scarred lips.
He doesn’t speak. He cups Shoto’s jaw, his thumb stroking the apple of his cheek, and kisses him. It’s not hungry or claiming. It’s deep, and slow, and passionate. A sealing of a promise they haven’t spoken aloud. Shoto melts into it, his hand coming up to rest over Dabi’s heart, feeling the strong, rapid beat beneath his palm. When they finally break apart, breathing the same air, Dabi rests his forehead against Shoto’s. “Okay,” he whispers, the word a vow. “We will then.”
The address Dabi texts him leads to a narrow, brick-faced walk-up in a part of the city Shoto’s mother would call ‘gritty.’ The late afternoon sun cuts between buildings, painting the cracked sidewalk in long, sharp shadows. Shoto stands on the curb, backpack slung over one shoulder, heart hammering against his ribs. This is stupid. It’s just an apartment. But his palms are sweating.
Dabi leans in the open doorway, a silhouette backlit by the dim hall light. He’s in loose black sweatpants and nothing else, his scarred chest and arms on full display. A cigarette dangles from his lips. “You gonna stand there all night, or you coming up?” His voice is that familiar low rasp, but there’s a new tension in the line of his shoulders.
Shoto crosses the street. The stairs are narrow and steep, smelling of old wood and mildew. Dabi’s apartment is at the very top, the last door on the left. He pushes it open and steps aside. “Home sweet home. Try not to judge.”
It’s a one-bedroom, but the main room is long and narrow. It feels like the inside of a well-worn leather jacket. The walls are a deep, matte charcoal, covered in hundreds of tattoo flash sheets—skulls, roses, snakes—pinned up in a chaotic, beautiful collage. A mood board of ink and ambition. A single, large window looks out onto a fire escape and the brick wall next door, the glass smudged but letting in the last of the afternoon’s dusty gold light. The air smells of leather and the ghost of countless cigarettes, undercut by the sharp, clean sting of antiseptic soap. Through an open door to the side, Shoto can see the corner of a bed, the sheets black and tangled.
“Well?” Dabi’s voice comes from behind him, still in the doorway. The question is casual, but Shoto hears the edge in it. A challenge. A vulnerability. Shoto doesn’t answer immediately. He steps further in, his sneakers quiet on the scarred wood floor. His eyes catalog everything. The cluttered kitchenette, dishes piled in the sink.
Shoto turns from surveying the space, crosses the few feet between them, and pulls Dabi into a kiss. It’s sweet, almost chaste compared to the wreckage they’ve just left at the hotel, a deliberate punctuation to his silent inspection. When he pulls back, his heterochromatic eyes are soft. “The flash art,” he says, his voice quiet, measured. “It’s incredible. All of it.”
Dabi’s shoulders lose a fraction of their tension. He leans against the doorframe, the ghost of a smirk touching his scarred lips. “Not just a hobby. It’s the shop’s portfolio. I own the place.”
“A tattoo parlor,” Shoto states, the analyst in him filing the fact away. It fits. The leather, the ink, the controlled precision required. “You don’t work out of here, though.”
“Fuck no,” Dabi laughs, a short, raspy sound. He pushes the door shut, sealing them in. “This is the sanctum. The shop’s a few blocks over. Cleaner. Less… personal.”
Shoto’s gaze drifts back to the walls, to the hundreds of pinned designs. He sees the repetition now—certain floral patterns, a particular style of serpent. A signature. “It’s not just a portfolio. It’s a mood board. A brain map.” He takes a step toward the nearest cluster, his fingers hovering near a detailed skull wreathed in peonies. “This is how you think.”
Dabi is silent for a beat, watching him. Shoto can feel the weight of that blue stare on his back. “Most people just say ‘cool tattoos, man’,” he says, his tone unreadable.
“Most people are lazy observers,” Shoto replies, not turning around. His heart is doing that stupid, frantic thing again. He’s in Dabi’s space, dissecting his mind, and the intimacy of it is more dizzying than the sex. He finally faces him. “You’re an artist.”
“I’m a businessman with a steady hand and a high pain tolerance,” Dabi deflects, pushing off the door and moving into the small kitchenette. He grabs two beers from the fridge, pops the caps on the counter edge. He holds one out. “Don’t romanticize it.”
Shoto takes the bottle. The glass is cold, beading instantly in the warm room. “I’m not. I’m categorizing it. It’s what I do.” He takes a sip, the beer bitter and crisp. “You create permanent narratives on skin. I try to understand the narratives in minds. Different mediums.”
A genuine smile, small and surprised, flashes across Dabi’s face. “Yeah? You gonna psychoanalyze me, college boy?”
“I would need more data,” Shoto says, entirely serious. He lets his eyes travel over Dabi’s bare chest, the landscape of scars and ink, the metal glinting in his nipples. “The canvas is compelling, though.”
Dabi’s smile turns into a slow, knowing thing. He takes a long pull from his beer, his throat working. “You’re in my apartment for five minutes and you’re already conducting fieldwork.” He sets his bottle down with a soft click. “How’s the sample size? Sufficient?”
Shoto doesn’t blush easily, but heat creeps up his neck. He matches Dabi’s gaze, holds it. “The sample is singular. And statistically significant.” He puts his own beer down, untouched after the first sip. “I downloaded Grindr to play the field. To sleep with different people. As an experiment.”
“And?” Dabi prompts, his voice dropping to that low register. He hasn’t moved from the kitchenette, but the space between them feels charged, thick.
“The experiment failed,” Shoto says, the words stark in the quiet room. “I only want to fuck you.”
Dabi’s blue eyes darken. He pushes a hand through his black hair, the silver roots visible at the temples. “Friends with benefits,” he says, like he’s reminding himself. The phrase sounds hollow here, surrounded by his art, his bed visible through the open door.
“Is that what we are?” Shoto asks. He takes a step forward. Then another. The scarred wood floor doesn’t creak. “We agreed to once a week. It’s been three times a week. I cancelled a study group tonight. For this.”
“For what?” Dabi’s breath hitches, just slightly, as Shoto stops within arm’s reach.
Shoto’s hand lifts, not to touch Dabi’s chest, but to gesture at the space around them. “For the sanctum. For the brain map. For you.” His voice is calm, analytical, even as his pulse thunders in his ears. “The benefits are… substantial. But the friend part seems under-negotiated.”
Dabi catches his wrist. His grip isn’t tight, but it’s firm, his calloused thumb pressing against Shoto’s rapid pulse. “You want to negotiate? Now?”
“I want to understand the terms.” Shoto doesn’t pull away. He can smell the cigarette smoke, the leather, the clean, antiseptic scent of him this close. “I am a singular sample. You are a singular sample. This is an anomalous pattern. I need to know what I’m participating in.”
“You’re participating in me wanting to bend you over that couch and fuck you until you scream,” Dabi rasps, his control fraying at the edges. His other hand comes up, cups the back of Shoto’s neck. “Is that enough data for you?”
Shoto’s breath leaves him in a soft rush. His body answers before his brain can, a slick, familiar heat gathering low in his belly. His nipples tighten against the cotton of his shirt. “It’s a data point,” he whispers. “It’s not the full dataset.”
Dabi stares at him, his expression a war between hunger and something terrified. Finally, he leans in, his forehead resting against Shoto’s. His eyes close. “The terms are fucked,” he murmurs, the words a confession against Shoto’s lips. “I don’t know what we are. I just know I can’t stop.”
It’s the most honest thing he’s ever said. Shoto’s analytical mind quiets. He tilts his head, closes the last inch, and kisses him. It’s not sweet this time. It’s deep, searching, a physical echo of his inventory of the room. He tastes beer and smoke and the metallic hint of Dabi’s lip piercings. When they break apart, both of them are breathing hard.
“Okay,” Shoto says, echoing Dabi’s vow from the hotel. His hand comes up to rest over the frantic beat of Dabi’s heart. “Then we don’t stop.”
Shoto’s hand slides from Dabi’s chest to the back of his neck, fingers tangling in the black spikes of his hair, and he kisses him again. It’s not an answer. It’s a consumption. Dabi’s mouth opens under his with a ragged groan, and the taste of him—smoke, beer, that metallic edge—floods Shoto’s senses. His analytical mind whites out. There is only the slick heat of Dabi’s tongue, the bite of his piercings, the desperate press of his body as he crowds Shoto back toward the center of the room.
“Couch,” Dabi rasps against his mouth, the word more vibration than sound. His hands are already at the hem of Shoto’s shirt, yanking it up and over his head in one rough motion. The cool apartment air hits Shoto’s skin, pebbling his nipples, but Dabi’s palms are scorching as they skate up his ribs. “Need you on it. Now.”
Shoto stumbles backward, his calves hitting the low frame of the black leather couch. He breaks the kiss, gasping. “Your neighbors—”
“Fuck ’em,” Dabi growls, popping the button of Shoto’s jeans. The zipper grates down, loud in the quiet. He shoves the denim and Shoto’s underwear down his thighs in one push, and the leather is shockingly cool against the bare skin of Shoto’s ass as he falls onto it. Dabi drops to his knees on the floor between Shoto’s spread legs, his blue eyes blazing. “Let ’em hear.” His calloused thumbs dig into the soft inner flesh of Shoto’s thighs, spreading him wider. “Let the whole goddamn building know who I’m fucking.”
Shoto’s head falls back against the couch cushion. The ceiling is plain, cracked plaster. His mind tries to latch onto it, to analyze the pattern of the cracks, but then Dabi’s mouth is on him—not his cunt, but the inside of his thigh, biting just shy of pain—and all thought dissolves into a sharp, bright wire of sensation. He fists a hand in Dabi’s hair. “Dabi—”
“You’re dripping,” Dabi murmurs, his breath hot against Shoto’s soaked folds. He doesn’t use his tongue. He just looks, his gaze a physical weight. “For me. For my cock.” His own sweatpants are tented, the outline of his cock obscene. He leans back, shoving them down just enough to free himself. The sight of it—thick, pierced, ruddy and leaking—makes Shoto’s mouth water and his cunt clench around nothing. A thin string of his own arousal stretches between his thighs.
Dabi doesn’t answer with words. He surges up, his body covering Shoto’s, the heat of his cock a blunt, insistent pressure against Shoto’s soaked folds. His hand fists in Shoto’s hair, angling his head back, and his mouth is on Shoto’s throat, biting, sucking, claiming the pulse point there. Shoto’s legs wrap around his waist, heels digging into the small of Dabi’s back, pulling him closer. The metal of Dabi’s piercings is cool against Shoto’s feverish skin, a sharp contrast to the burning heat everywhere else. *This is the dataset*, Shoto thinks, a frantic, half-formed observation as Dabi’s hips jerk, the thick head of his cock notching at Shoto’s entrance. *Pressure. Heat. The specific texture of scar tissue under my palms.*
“Now,” Shoto gasps, the word ripped from him. It’s not a request. It’s a confirmation. His own need is a live wire, sizzling through his veins, erasing every carefully constructed boundary. He’s already so open, so wet, his body arching up off the leather.
Dabi pushes inside. It’s not the slow, devastating stretch of the first time. It’s a single, relentless thrust that sheathes him completely, a brutal, perfect fit that punches the air from Shoto’s lungs. The fullness is immediate, overwhelming, a seismic shift in his center of gravity. He cries out, a raw, unfiltered sound that echoes off the tattoo-covered walls. Dabi’s groan is lower, a vibration Shoto feels in his own chest where they’re pressed together.
There’s no pause for adjustment, no whispered sweet nothings. Dabi fucks him with a hard, driving rhythm, each snap of his hips jolting Shoto up the couch. The slap of skin on skin is obscenely loud, a wet, rhythmic counterpoint to their ragged breathing. Shoto’s fingers scramble against Dabi’s scarred back, nails biting in, holding on as the pleasure builds, a coil tightening low in his belly with every deep, punishing stroke. *He’s everywhere*, Shoto’s mind supplies, uselessly. *The smell of him. The taste of his sweat. The sound. God, the sound.*
“Fuck, you’re tight,” Dabi rasps into his ear, his breath scalding. “Even like this. So fucking greedy for it.” His pace doesn’t falter. It’s relentless, a focused, animal need that bypasses romance and lands squarely in the primal. Shoto can only take it, his body yielding and clenching in turns, each thrust sparking a fresh, blinding wave of sensation. The orgasm gathers fast, a tsunami building from the depths, and Shoto knows, with a terrifying clarity, that he is utterly, complete addicted to the ruin of this.