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inkykeiji · 2 years

Text

i can taste your skin in my teeth

characters: dabi | todoroki touya, takami keigo | hawks

genre: smut and angst

notes: waaaaah finally!!! after working on this piece for nearly two years, it is finally finished!! this piece is the second part of my tag you’re it series and it deals with some pretty dark and heavy subject matter, so please heed the warnings carefully! also, there is a LOT of smut in this, all clumped together relatively close to the beginning so beware of that i guess! | part one | title credit: tag you’re it by melanie martinez

warnings: 18+ minors do not interact, daddy kink, power play, blood, physical fighting, verbal fighting, manipulation, toxic relationships, size kink/size difference, rough sex, pussy slapping, dumbification, praise, degradation as a form of emotional release/therapy, thigh riding, dacryphilia, cum feeding/snowballing, minimal prep, the faintest hint of mindbreak, marking, implied car crash/accident, physical abuse + mentions of physical abuse, graphic depictions of drug use and addiction, drugs in general, needles (heroin)

words: 25.6k

synopsis:

It’s incredible, the way his body so readily reacts to your confessions—shoulders curling in a protective shield around your trembling frame, palms grabbing fistfuls of your flesh and tugging, lips brushing yours as he sucks the proclamations from your mouth—an instinctual response he’s hopeless to hold any authority over whatsoever; a natural inclination that had lay dormant, slumbering in his soul, patiently waiting to be awoken by you.

Because he loves you, too.

He tells you as much, in a soft, hushed voice, vulnerable and cracking. It’s been a long time since he’s said those words to anyone, and although they feel rusty on his tongue, creaking under the weight of authenticity, of pure truth, he’s never been more sure of anything in his life.

Dabi has lost all semblance of time.

He doesn’t remember how long it’s been since you called, going through his transactions blinded with rage, nostrils flared and teeth clenched, your quivering words, stuffed full of tears and terror, ricocheting off the walls of his skull and reverberating against the bone, more and more and more until his ears are ringing and his heart is charred with scalding anger and it’s all he can fucking think about.

He doesn’t remember how the deal went, doesn’t remember if it went well or if he blew it—not that any of it even matters anymore. There will always be another slimy boss looking to recruit a decent and loyal dealer; they’re a dime a dozen.

You are not.

He doesn’t remember driving to the house you and your brother share, either, but now, somehow, he’s made it here, standing on the small slab of concrete outside that white front door. Trembling hands rifle through his pockets in search of your house key—the one he had persuaded you into giving him a few weeks ago, for emergencies such as these, for fear of the absolute worst.

It’s all been a hazy, fuzzy blur, like his mind is a camera that’s been knocked out of focus, everything feeling slightly surreal, body running on pure instinct until the click of the lock sliding out of place snaps him back into kilter, everything suddenly sharp, crisp, clear.

Something slams—the muted yet colossal bang! of a brass doorknob making it’s mark in cream drywall, sending gentle tremors through the whole structure—and bounces a few times against the small crater it’s created, mingling with heavy echoes of rubber soles colliding with pristine hardwood.

Keigo crowds his vision in an instant, wildly swinging curled fists in Dabi’s vague direction, so messy and uncoordinated Dabi can’t help but laugh.

It’s a callous little sound, nothing more than a few notes playing at the back of his throat, grim and cruel as broad shoulders roll once.

Bone knocks against cartilage half a second later, sharp knuckles striking soft, pliable tissue hard enough that Keigo stumbles backwards, tripping over his own ankles and landing on his ass, blood cascading over his bitten-raw lips, collecting in his cupid’s bow and trickling down his chin.

A large hand, strong and calloused and unlike his own, tangles nimble fingers adorned with flashes of precious metals and stains of gleaming crimson—gold, not silver, yet much like his own—in his hair and yanks, forcing him to his feet through sheer will and power, impelling him to confront, to be condemned with and cornered by, glowing, glaring sapphire.

“Where is she?”

And despite his heaving chest, rising and falling harshly under his sharp, deep breaths, Dabi’s voice is calm, cold, almost serene.

“Y-You’re not taking her,” Keigo manages to spit through the sticky blood flowing into his mouth, staining the lines of his teeth and the curves of his gums.

A rumble behind a cage of ribs, another punch, square in the jaw this time and hard enough to dislocate it, Dabi’s fingers still threaded securely through tousled gold keeping Keigo standing and steady.

“Like fucking hell I’m not,” Dabi snarls, nostrils flaring, that serene mask already beginning to crack as hot lava boils underneath.

“I wo—” he coughs around the word, sentence drowning in blood. “Won’t let you.”

“Yeah?” Another blow, another breath. “You gonna stop me?”

Short nails sink into the flesh of the hand knotted in Keigo’s hair, a pathetic attempt to claw himself free from its grip. But it’s no use, Dabi’s fingers rooted firmly in shimmering curls, keeping him captive as his knuckles collide with Keigo’s mouth, bottom lip catching on top incisors and splitting the skin.

“Please, you—you can’t,” Keigo nearly whines, a rush of tears flooding his eyes, diluting the steadily pouring blood to a watery pink. “You can’t take her from me, Dabi. I need her.”

“Need,” Dabi snorts out the word, eyes rolling in pitiful disbelief. “You wanna talk about needing something? Huh? Which one do you need more: your baby sister, or heroin?”

“What?”

“Either she comes with me, or you don’t get your fix this week. Your choice.”

“I—You can’t—” Keigo sputters, head shaking in jerky little movements, still trapped in Dabi’s grasp, vying fingers coming to scrape at the other man’s wrist again.

“Oh, but I can, can’t I?” Dabi tilts his head in mock question, eyes twinkling as he stares down at his newest masterpiece, a twisted little smirk crawling onto his face. “Make a decision, Keigo.”

Shame sludges through Keigo’s veins, thick and acidic as his chin trembles and his eyes squeeze shut, jaw clenching with a thick swallow.

But he doesn’t need to say anything; Dabi already knows his answer.

Meanwhile, the sounds of their scuffle seeps through the thick white wood of your bedroom door, muted and muffled, words dulled to caustic, rancid lilts that bear little semblance to what they’re supposed to be, your ears only able to discern their voices, their tones—Dabi’s furious, Keigo’s terrified.

You hasten to pack the last of your belongings, fearing that your boyfriend might truly murder your brother if you don’t appear soon.

And it’s hard. It’s harder than you expected it to be.

It’s hard to leave him, bloodied and bruised and broken, gilded curls matted with sweat and scarlet, stray strands sticking to his salty cheeks.

It’s hard to take your Daddy’s outstretched hand, soiled with the blood of your brother much like your brother’s hands are still stained with that of your own, dried streaks of russet painted across smooth skin, tarnishing the once bright silver of his rings.

It’s hard to walk away without a single glance back, to walk out of that little white house with its white door and white windowsills and white panelled walls while Keigo lays in a crumpled heap on the floor, his hoarse pleads of don’t go, sweetheart, please, don’t go, you’re all I have, and cracked whimpers of your name following you on your way out, words clinging to your skin like a sticky film in permanence, soaking through your flesh to poison your blood and permeate your brain as they fuse to the walls of your skull.

✰ ✰ ✰

They’re uncontainable, those half-stifled sobs that keep shattering to pieces in your chest as you try to hold them back, to push them down, to keep them restrained just until you get to the safety and solitude of the Eldorado.

Dabi’s got both arms wrapped around you as he walks you hastily towards his car, grip tightening with each shredded cry that wracks your body, lips murmuring sweet nothings into your hair as they press endless kisses to the crown of your head.

Any attempt to deposit you on the passenger seat is immediately abandoned as you cling to him with a sharp whine of protest, dainty fingers twisting almost violently in the fabric of his hoodie.

“Okay, okay,” he’s pacifying, nodding to himself before he tucks you beneath his chin, holding you tightly to his chest as he maneuvers the two of you to the drivers side, fluidly sliding into the vehicle with you still tangled up in his limbs and shuffling you into a straddling position on his thighs.

The steering wheel digs into your spine, grinding against each notch of vertebrae as you wiggle on your Daddy’s lap, attempting to smush yourself closer to him. A large hand is roaming your back at once, pressing you against him in an attempt to protect your backbone while his other hand hastily fiddles with the seat adjustment, thighs tensing beneath you as he uses his feet to push the seat back.

For a moment, everything is nearly silent, the full weight of the situation settling into place, dense and suffocating and padded by Dabi’s jagged breaths and your poorly suppressed sniffles.

And then, it breaks.

And, oh, how you cry, chest stammering sobs that send ripples through your flesh, that shudder your bones and stutter your breath, until your eyes sting and your head pounds and your throat aches and your lips crack.

You cry until you can’t anymore, until the tears turn torrid, leaving behind sticky trails of salt to stain your cheeks.

And throughout it all, Dabi holds you, safe and secure against his vibrating chest, palms pressed to your heaving back and nose buried in your damp hair, softly humming, his strong arms keeping your bones from splintering under the weight of your agony.

“Hey,” he whispers after your weeping has calmed to hiccups, leaning back a little and shrugging a shoulder to nudge your face from his chest. “Look at me, precious.”

His features twist into a wince as you obey, peeking up at him from your sanctuary, eyes swollen and lips licked raw.

Calloused palms cup your jaw, more tender than anyone’s ever touched you before, as if you’re physically delicate—one careless action and you might smash to pieces—and tip your head further upward, rough skin contradicting the gentleness of his actions.

Tilting your face to the right, Dabi reveals your injured cheek, a sharp hiss sucked through his teeth at the full, unadulterated sight of it, his grimace deepening.

You can feel it below you, the way tremors of fury course through his veins, can see it in the air around him, the way it pops and crackles with potent energy, ebbing and flowing with the blazing sapphire of his eyes.

“That fucking bastard,” he chokes out, voice fading to a snarl.

It’s obvious he has more to say, the methodical flexing of his jaw and violent bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he repeatedly shoves the words back down his throat serving as a testament to this fact.

And although he doesn’t vocalize them, you can hear them, rattling around rancorously in your head, ghosts of sentiments he’s expressed before—I told you I’d fucking kill him if he put his goddamn hands on you again, baby, and I fucking meant it. I’m gonna fucking slaughter him, gut him from groin to sternum and watch all his insides spill out; a slow, tortuous death for what he’s done to you…

But you’re thankful he refrains from speaking such notions anyway, sparing you the gory, grotesque details of everything he wishes to do to your older brother; now is hardly the appropriate time for such vile things.

Instead, he clears his throat, scrambles the letters around and exhales a singular, shaky breath from his nose.

“Look, I…” he begins, then falters, eyes intently searching your face before they dart away, his front teeth nibbling at the thin skin of his bottom lip. “I wish I could take you hundreds of thousands of miles away from here, so far that this all becomes nothing more than a distant, hazy nightmare. I—I can’t do that right now, because I just don’t—I just don’t have the money yet, but…”

He halts again, sounding truly regretful, gazing at you through his lashes almost as if he’s embarrassed, as if he’s worried it won’t be enough, or it’ll be too silly. A hand, small and gentle, finds its dutiful place on his cheek, cupping his strong jaw; a silent plea to continue. His chest rises with an inhale, and he nods once before continuing, powering through the words.

“But I can offer you an escape, even if it’s just for a little while.” A thumb skims across your unmarred cheekbone, then over your bottom lip, azure eyes tracing his actions before finding your gaze. “Will you let me do that for you, baby girl?”

Yes, your nodding your head in his loose grasp, a fresh wave of tears lacquering your eyes. Yes, of course you will, you always will.

✰ ✰ ✰

The sun has retreated below the horizon by the time Dabi pulls into the nearly empty parking lot, a healthy slice of moon bathing the indigo sky in flares of silver, beams distorted by a veil of clouds.

The Mint Motel stands crumbling and cracked on the other side of the city—far away from that small white house with it’s little white fixtures, far away from Dabi’s dingy little bachelor apartment three floors above the convenience store.

Fog diffuses the flickering neon sign, casting a haloed glow around the bright blue VACANCY, soft and surreal as you both walk back from the front office, the Honeymoon Suite key pressed tightly to Dabi’s palm. The wet, warped asphalt beneath your feet shimmers in the dim light, pitch black catching the waning fluorescent rays.

The suite’s bathroom—all gleaming black ceramic and shining red acrylic—has you gasping in surprised delight, eyes glittering as they catch on the heart-shaped jacuzzi tub sitting lonely and empty in the corner, encased in a rectangle of black tile and surrounded by mirror-panelled walls.

Your soft noise garners Dabi’s attention, hands halting their rummaging through the cabinets and throwing a glance over his shoulder, a smirk spreading across his lips as he realizes what has you so enamoured.

“We’ll use that later, baby,” he promises as he turns back to his task, pulling a small first-aid kit from the bowels of the cupboard and tossing it on the counter. “But right now,” he begins, grunting a little as he pushes on his knees and stands. “Daddy needs to get you all cleaned up.”

Strong hands snake under your armpits, hefting you up and placing you on the edge of the countertop, sharp hipbones nudging your thighs open wider as he stands between them. A damp, soapy wad of gauze presses gently against your swollen cheek, sending little thorns of pain searing through your flesh, and a low whine catches in your throat, face jerking away instinctually.

“Shh, I know, I know,” Dabi murmurs as his free hand comes to cup the back of your head, holding you in place as he dabs at the wounds again. “It hurts, baby, Daddy knows. But it has to be done.”

The impact of Keigo’s rings has left two large, deep gashes across your right cheekbone, blood crusting around the wounds in ugly, uneven mounds. The bleeding has mostly stopped by this point, dried strokes of rust and crimson smeared across your cheeks and jaw, Dabi being mindful not to displace the scabs as his hands work.

Dark sapphire eyes, turbulent with a storm of fury and contempt raging in their irises, stay diligently trained on his task, angular jaw clenching as molars gnash together behind his lips, grinding all of the hateful words he wishes to speak to dust and exhaling them in sharp breaths out his nose.

But despite the terrifying malice blazing in his gaze, the thumb on the back of your head is tender, loving, rhythmically petting your hair as the other cleans, a small but appreciated comfort.

The pungent stench of alcohol stings your nose a few moments later, after Dabi has completed his initial cleansing, features contorted into a wince as you cower away from the smell.

Such a reaction has Dabi laughing a little—nothing more than a short chuckle, yet still enough to break through the hard emotion coating his face.

“This is going to burn,” he tells you honestly, though there are still glimmers of mirth playing in his eyes, voice morphing into that tooth-rotting condescension you’ve come to know so well. “But I want you to be a big girl and sit still for me, yeah?”

“No promises,” you grumble through a pout, eliciting a snort from your boyfriend.

“Dramatic little brat,” he huffs out through a grin.

Taking your chin between his thumb and his forefinger, Dabi holds you firmly in place, inhibiting you from squirming away as he begins his second round of cleansing.

He’s careful to only apply it to the cuts themselves, avoiding the surrounding sensitive skin while explaining that this isn’t technically necessary—the water and soap should’ve been enough to adequately clean the wounds—but he wants to be safe, he wants to be sure an infection won’t occur.

Responding coos fall from his lips while he continues with his duty, each an acknowledgement of the small pained whimpers vibrating in your chest, procured by the waves of pinpricks that sprout through the wound with each blot of alcohol.

“Almost done, almost done,” he placates, throwing the soiled gauze on the counter next to your thigh. “Just a little bit longer, princess. You’re doing so well.”

Rough fingertips, pads stained pink with your diluted blood, slather glops of Polysporin over your cheek, glazing the lesions with the substance before taping thick bandages over them.

“There,” he says softly, eyes scanning over his handiwork, that storm dulled to a drizzle as he soaks it all in. Knuckles brush back strands of hair from your temples before skimming the curve of your cheek, gaze following their slow trajectory, their touch featherlight. He swallows thickly, voice coarse when he speaks again. “Good as new.”

This is the gentlest he’s ever been with you—this is the gentlest anyone has ever been with you—and something buried deep and dark inside of you breaks, fractures into sharp shards that pierce your organs, a dense ache radiating throughout your chest.

For the first time in your life, you are the one having your wounds tended to, taken care of, instead of the other way around.

You try to tell him this, but the words materialize into splintered sobs before they reach your lips, nothing more than an incomprehensible jumble of letters on your tongue.

But you don’t need to vocalize it—he knows.

He knows, because he can see it: in the way appreciation gleams behind a thick shield of tears, in the way your fingers are tangling in his t-shirt, twisting in the fabric and tugging him closer, needing him closer, in the way your ankles are hooking around the backs of his thighs, clinging to him in every sense of the word.

Calloused palms cradle your jaw, heedful of your injured cheek as they drag your lips towards his own, mouths slotting together.

Despite his tender actions, his kisses are anything but, saliva-soaked lips bruising in their fervour, mouths messily slotting together as they slip and slide, drool oozing from the corners to lacquer your chins and cheeks with shimmering spit. Nimble fingers dig into the back of your scalp, tugging you closer, closer, closer, noses mashed against one another as your tongues grind, hickory and Marlboros staining your flesh.

You kiss him back just as voraciously, suddenly insatiable for his touch and his tongue, an urgent yearning to submerge yourself in him completely igniting at the core of your body, desperate to feel him surrounding you, intoxicating you, numbing you.

One set of fingers tangles in the tufts at the base of his neck as the other set, already knotted in the fabric of his t-shirt, give a harsh yank. Your teeth suck his bottom lip between their edges and sink into the plush flesh, savouring the groan that rumbles from his mouth into yours, a shiver creeping up the notches of his spine as he drags his lips free of its sharp captors, the ridges of your teeth scraping against it in the process.

The thighs cushioning his hips flex as you attempt to pull him closer, the ankles clasped around his legs tightening, heels digging into firm muscle.

He’s just as desperate to give you everything you’re craving, just as desperate to take away the anguish that has been instilled in you; to suck it from your mouth and soul in the form of precious little gasps and broken little whines, to store it safely in the depths of his lungs and the pit of his stomach and take the strain of its immense weight off your body, to share the burden of carrying it.

“I want this off,” he murmurs against your lips, hands pulling at the hoodie your body is currently drowning in—his hoodie, used to hide your marred face from the motel clerk at the front desk, since you had refused to wait for Dabi in the car, refused to be away from him for even a moment.

You obey immediately, retreating and lifting your arms, allowing Dabi to rid you of the garment, cautious of your injuries.

Taking your face between his palms again, sapphire eyes sweep across your face, gaze trailing after the crystalline tears that continue to drip down your cheeks, watching as they collect in small puddles along the edge of your jaw.

And, for once, Dabi does not find them agonizingly beautiful.

Not when they aren’t solely conjured up by him.

His tongue laves across your jaw in wide, sticky strokes, the muscle pressed flat to the bone as it mops up the salty little dewdrops, swallowing down ounces of your pain.

The repetitive rubbing of denim chafes the smooth skin of your inner thigh as Dabi ruts against it, action almost involuntary while he paints your neck in glistening saliva and blooms of violet, hard cock straining, hot and throbbing, against its confines.

A dainty hand snakes between your bodies to pick at his thick belt buckle, whining softly as nails scrabble against silver.

“What is it, baby?” he asks, a hint of teasing tinging his tone, though his voice holds none of its usual derision, the question soft and sincere. “You want something?”

“Daddy,” you cough around the word, stuttered breath slicing it to pieces. It’s all your able to manage: one word, two syllables, pitched high and full of cracks.

But that’s okay, because Dabi knows, just like he always does.

“I’m here, baby, I’m here,” he whispers, nosing along your jaw. “Daddy’s gonna make the pain go away, okay?”

“Please,” you whimper, and your voice sounds so small, so raw with uncut emotion that it has Dabi nodding in an almost frantic manner, eager to rid you of such distress.

Calloused hands slip beneath your dress, kneading your supple flesh as they travel up, up, up, until fingertips brush silk and lace, delicately clinging to your skin. They trace the trim, following it around the curves of your thighs and along your hips until they locate the waistband, toying with the cute satin bow before hooked thumbs dip into the material and tug.

But you refuse to unlock your legs from his own, unwilling to part with his warmth or his touch for a single second, and Dabi laughs, huffing out something about how fucking greedy you are, the words doused in adoration.

Looks like you leave him no choice, he’s saying as his fingers tear through the lace as effortless as fire licking through a spiderweb, yanking the ruined garment from your skin in one swift motion.

It flutters to the floor in a dainty heap of white—Agent Provocateur, two hundred and forty dollars, destroyed in mere moments—but you can’t seem to find it in yourself to care at all, too preoccupied with shoving Dabi’s jeans down his thighs, the balls of your feet aiding his hands, then locking him in place again, ankles hooked together behind his back, heels digging into those sweet little dimples that frame the base of his spine.

His cock bumps against your inner thigh, drooling sticky pre-cum across your skin, another whine, impatient and needy, hiccuped in your throat.

Dabi’s muttering something, low and pacifying as he lines his cock up with your unprepared hole, allowing an impressive dollop of spit to drip from his lips, haphazardly slathering it around his shaft. His eyes stay fixed on the apex of your thighs as he pushes into you slowly, steadily, watching his movements with a sort of fascinated awe as your body stretches and struggles, sensitive skin splitting open for him, welcoming him home.

The pain is immaculate, a sharp hiss slithering from between your clenched teeth, throbbing little spikes searing through your thighs, flesh trembling in their wake.

But it feels so right, being stuffed full of him. It feels so safe, bodies encased in a protective bubble of affection, where nothing can get to you.

“Please, Daddy,”

One final plead, quiet and broken, thick tears dazzling your eyes, continuously escaping the corners like clockwork—two at a time, twin diamonds streaking your flesh, others embellishing your lashes, tiny jewels sewn into fluttering lace.

One final plead is all it takes to have his hips drawing back, charged with dutiful intent, then snapping forward, hard and rough and fast as he builds up a rhythm, one hand braced on the counter, the other pressed against the mirror, fingertips leaving smudges with each thrust.

The consistent bang! of his heavy belt buckle against the edge of the counter acts as a crude metronome, keeping time for the breathtaking symphony of your moans—airy little mewls and pretty little whines, garnished with his own guttural groans and growls.

Every tear that falls, every sob he fucks out of you, every slam of his cockhead against your cervix melding delirious pleasure with delicious pain all diminish the suffocating ache in your chest bit by bit, relieving a deep sorrow knotted at the core of your body.

Together you create something beautiful, something safe, something yours, an ephemeral masterpiece that ebbs and flows and grows and crests before it explodes in tandem with you both, clutching and clinging to one another, bodies shuddering and hips stuttering with the clench and pulse of gushing juices and thick cum, drenching him and filling you.

And, God, you love him. You love him so much, love him more than anything on this planet or any others, love him so tremendously it physically hurts, organs expanding with the sheer density of it, bones straining beneath the immensity, whole body seeming to swell with it, threaded through your blood and brain and barreling up your throat until it’s spilling out your mouth in a single continuous, seemingly uncontrollable stream.

Dabi isn’t even sure if you’re fully conscious of what you’re saying, fucked so good your brain has melted, body pliant and sagging, but he knows it’s true nonetheless, struck by the sincerity in your voice, the urgency in your grappling fingers, pawing at him senselessly.

Because he loves you, too.

✰ ✰ ✰

You wake somewhere between Friday and Saturday, the sky still dark and void, the dim motel room blinking in time with the screen of the small television, the only other source of light pooling around a bedside lamp.

Dabi sits next to the puddled yellow glow with his back propped against the wooden headboard, a book held open with one hand and a steadily burning cigarette wreathed between the fingers of the other.

“What are you reading?” you croak, wincing at how raw your voice sounds.

He turns the book towards you, showing you the cover—Brave New World—eyes flicking up to meet yours, a small smile tugging at his lips.

“Found it in my car,” he says with a single shoulder shrug.

“You’ve read it before,” you say, not an accusation but merely an observation, gaze scanning the worn, veiny back cover, noting the laminated library sticker plastered around the bottom of the spine.

He nods. “I have, but I don’t mind reading it again.”

Accepting his answer, you flop onto your back, staring up at the stuccoed ceiling. It’s hard, in the muted silence, to keep those recent memories at bay, the most gruesome events of the past twenty-four hours flickering through your mind—the flash of silver, the sting of the slap, gold matted with crimson and salt, sticking to flushed skin that begs you not to leave—a crudely stitched together montage playing torturously on loop, screened on the walls of your skull.

And the harder you try to force them away, the more vivid they become, binding themselves to the tissues of your brain and ensuring they’ll never be forgotten.

You don’t even realize you’re crying until Dabi’s placing his book face down on the nightstand and drawing you into his arms, murmuring out comforts into your hair as he squeezes you tightly, a smothered sob scrabbling at your sternum.

Anger flares in his chest again, bright burning flames of carmine licking up his throat, but he swallows them back down, douses them in his love for you—in your love for him—extinguishing the blaze to a dull smoulder.

Now is not the time for such things, for such hatred and fury. But he will save this fire, keep it kindling deep within the core of his body until he can finally release it to ravage that fucker.

The most important thing at this moment is eradicating all of that pain, all of that suffering and sadness from your soul and replacing it with love, with warmth, with him.

“Oh baby, oh baby,” he’s saying as he cradles you to his chest, bodies rocking back and forth slightly, legs entwined. “Let Daddy make it better, yeah? Do you want Daddy to make it better?”

You’re nodding against his shoulder, a little hiccup stammering the breath in your throat, sweet jumbled pleads spilling from your lips.

“Okay,” Dabi says softly, rolling your tangled bodies so you’re trapped between the mattress and his chest, those jutting hipbones snuggling between your thighs. “I’m gonna take the pain away, princess.”

You’re mewling out little affirmatives beneath him, legs folding on either side of his torso as your feet find his hips, pushing his briefs down his legs as far as you can.

A soft chuckle wafts across your face and he kicks the garment off the rest of the way, ending up in a small heap of fabric near the foot of the bed.

Leaning back on his haunches, he hooks one of your legs over each of his thighs, spreading you wide and bare, vulnerable beneath his stare. Sapphire eyes watch in an almost trance-like state as nimble fingers skim across your skin, outlining all of your curves and all of your contours: the hills of your breasts, the peaks of your nipples, the bends and ridges and slopes of your stomach, down, down, down until they hit the apex of your thighs, thumb brushing against your clit.

It’s beautiful, he’s telling you, still enchanted by your body, how easily you react to him, how readily you react to him, two pads of his fingers pressing down hard on the little nub to accentuate his point, observing with an almost morbid fascination the way it sends jolts zipping through your body, flesh rippling with the force.

His cock is already hard, pink and perfect and leaking against his pelvis, and your hole constricts around nothing, hungry and raring for something to stuff it full.

A gentle laugh, embellished with just a hint of patronization, falls from his lips, index finger tracing the outlines of your pussy—hood, lips, circling your hole—before finally pushing inside, breath exhaled in short pants as you greedily suck him in.

He teases you a little, pumping that singular finger in and out, crooking it at just the right time and pressing a knuckle into that plush spot until the digit is slippery with slick, until your hips are wiggling and whines keep crumbling in your throat, back arching a little in impatience.

It’s not enough, the ache of your cheek beginning to permeate the haze of lust Dabi had veiled over your mind, and you need something else, you need something stronger, you need more.

“Need you, Daddy,” you drool out, words lazy and full of spit. “Need you right now.”

A sharp slap to your cunt with the back of his hand has all of your pain radiating to the core of your body, the sound sticky and wet as it rings out among the room, Dabi speaking over your pitchy cry, strong thighs keeping your legs from instinctively snapping shut.

“There’s never any excuse to be rude to Daddy,” he says, another slap sending pinpricks tingling throughout your inner thighs. “Where are your manners?”

“Please,” you gasp out, lashes fluttering against a torrent of tears, desperate to keep them locked behind your lash line. “Please, please, Daddy,”

“Please what?” His knuckles collide with your cunt a third time, a faint glint of malice glittering in his eyes. “Tell Daddy what you want, sweetheart.”

“Please, your cock!” The words rush from your mouth in a singular huff of breath, tongue nearly tripping over itself in your haste to clarify. “Want you to fuck me with your cock, Daddy, please, want it so bad!”

A coo vibrates at the back of his throat, fingers turned gentle again as they caress your slit.

“That’s better,” he murmurs over the stream of pleads still oozing from your lips. “Okay, baby, okay, hush now, Daddy will give you what you need.”

The stretch is incredible—not that you’ve come to expect any less—delicate skin ripping itself wide to take him, the little sutures created in the bathroom opening again, gleefully, willfully, needing him.

But the pain is welcomed, the pain is familiar, the pain is good, because it numbs your mind, takes your focus off the emotional wound festering in your chest and the intermittent stinging burrowing through your cheek and renders you incapable of concentrating on anything else except for him, him, him.

His hips gyrate for a moment, cockhead grinding little circles into your bruised cervix, inducing a dull ache to take root at the very core of your body. A palm flattens between your hipbones, pressed tightly against your body, softly moaning Dabi’s name as you feel his motions nudging through your flesh.

“I’m gonna fuck you until all you can feel, all you can think about is my cock,” Dabi vows, hips drawing back, unhurried yet purposeful. “I’m gonna fuck you until you go stupid from my cum, baby.”

“Want it, w-wan’it,” you babble out, sentence fragmented by his cock as it slams back into you. “Want it, D-Daddy, please.”

And, fuck, he can’t deny you a single goddamn thing, not when you’re like this, staring up at him with those glazed, starry eyes, glistening chock full with your love for him; not when his name and his title are tangling on your tongue, his cock fucking the most beautiful rhapsody out of you, shards of words infused with sounds of pleasure, sentiments routinely smashed to bits with each pound into you.

So he gives you what you want, thighs straining as he balances on his knees, creasing your legs and crushing them to your chest, using your shins to keep him steady as his hips snap relentlessly.

Tears are seeping through your clamped shut lids, streaking your face with gleaming paths of salt as they roll down the sides of your face. Thick lashes trap a few, shimmering dewdrops that cling to dainty feathers, sparkling in the weak golden lamplight.

“Yeah,” he pants out. “That’s it, baby, cry for me. Cry for me, let it all out, c’mon.”

It’s all so overwhelming, the pain and the pleasure and Dabi, Dabi, Dabi—sweet hickory and spicy nicotine enveloping you, his aura like a thick haze of smoke, candied and intoxicating, burning as it rushes down your throat to ferment in your lungs.

Every stuttered inhale is a shot of novocain to your brain, numbing those memories, numbing your consciousness, every harsh thrust forcing thorns of pleasure searing through your gut, little spikes that melt together in the pit of your stomach, forming a heavy, fluttering ball of blue fire.

It’s all so overwhelming, yet it’s all so fucking good, simultaneously too much and not enough.

“Da-Daddy,” you’re sobbing, little fingers groping at his biceps, trying to grip him, to bring him closer, to find comfort. “Daddy, it’s so much, it—it’s too much!”

You’re really wailing now, whole body juddering with the force of it, nose puffy and twitching with harsh sniffles, a vain attempt to keep it from leaking, spit collecting in the vacuities of your mouth, so much that your words drown in it, coming out mangled and soaking.

“Oh, baby,” he breathes, leaning down so his chest is pressed flush to your folded legs, cupping your face between his palms as his hips slow to uneven rutting, dimming the sphere of fire roiling in your tummy.

“Hey, look at me.”

Your damp lids lift, dislodging some of the teardrops that had been caught by your lashes as sapphire searches your salt-stained face, a glimmer of condescending concern in his irises.

“You can take it for Daddy, though, can’t you?” A rough thumb caresses your uninjured cheekbone, calloused skin contradicting such a tender action. “I know how good you are, princess, I know you can take Daddy’s cock for him, right?”

Your head is nodding before you’ve given it permission to, pathetic little mewls of yes, Daddy and of course, Daddy tumbling mindlessly from your lips, desperately vying for his praise, desperately vying for the mind-numbing high that comes packaged with it.

“Good,” he murmurs softly, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead before he starts fucking into you again, rapidly gaining speed with each jackhammer of his hips and surpassing his previous pace.

The prettiest whimpers are spilling from your throat, gentle little things that break and fade into wispy little whines, each one pushed from your lips in time with his brutal thrusts.

“How’s that, baby?” he breathes, eyes voracious as they sweep across your face, desperate to devour every little change in expression. “Go on, don’t be shy, tell Daddy how his cock’s making you feel.”

Good, good, so fucking good, every drag of his cock against that plush spot buried deep within you sending another flare of scalding sapphire flames licking through your veins, adding to the blaze coiling at your core.

So good, in fact, that you can’t seem to stitch the simple words together, letters turning to ash in your throat, wheezed out as bastardized versions of what they were originally supposed to be.

And Dabi can’t help but huff out a little laugh, strained with pleasure, murmuring something about how fucking cute you are when you get like this, all dumb and fucked out with hedonistic bliss.

“Yeah, yeah, just think about Daddy’s cock, princess, s’all that matters right now,” he rasps, stringy strands of ink, clumped together with sweat, hanging in his eyes. “God, look at you,” he nearly keens, gaze flitting to where you’re conjoined. “Such a perfect little whore I’ve got, taking my whole cock like that, such a—f-fuck—such a good, good girl for me,”

That sphere of fire is curling in on itself, tighter and tighter and tighter with each pump of his hips until finally it explodes in a shower of sapphire sparks, singeing into your flesh and steeped in your blood, lighting your entire body ablaze as your cunt spasms, floods of heat gushing at the apex of your thighs.

“Yeah, baby, c’mon, cream all over my cock,” Dabi says, voice hoarse with passion.

You’re still cumming when he does, only a few pistons later, muscles pulled taut as his cock pulses, spurt after spurt of hot cum stuffing you to the brim, your name cracking in his throat.

He collapses on you a moment later, a heavy heaving mess of sticky skin, cock still buried inside you, twitching with the corollary of his orgasm. You can feel his cum oozing out of you, thick and cooling as it trickles down your skin, thighs tensing as you attempt to keep it inside of you.

“Daddy,” you whimper, the name nothing more than a warped mess on your tongue, weighted with spit. “Daddy.”

“Yeah, baby,” he mumbles into your shoulder, noncommittal, breath still coming in short puffs.

“Daddy, your cum,” your hips squirm beneath him, shoving upwards, trying to use his cock as a plug.

“What about it?”

“S’leaking outta me.”

Dabi pulls back to look at you, eyebrows slightly wrinkled. “So?”

“I don’t want it to,” you whine. “Want it to stay in me forever.”

With a laugh, he shakes his head. “That’s cute, princess,” he says. “But there’s nothing Daddy can do to make sure it stays in you forever.”

Another whine, pitchy and petulant, vibrates in your throat, hips rocking again. “My mouth,” you say. “Feed it to me. Put it in my belly where it’ll stay forever.”

A piece of him, seeping into the floor of your stomach, mouth watering with the thought.

Crystal eyes search your face for a moment, darkening with the sincerity of your expression. You look as though you may cry if he denies you, staring up at him with lust-blown lidded pupils and a spit-shined mouth, high mewls spilling from your throat.

He doesn’t say anything as he disentangles his limbs from your own, body sliding down the mattress to hook your legs over his shoulders, arms crooked around your thighs, big hands splayed on your hips, pushing them down and keeping them still.

Unblinking, his eyes hold yours as his head dips, tongue unfolding from its cavern, tip hooked as it licks into you, gathering glops of his cum. He laps as much of it as he can from your abused cunt, slow and methodical with each lave, each delve into your soaking hole, filling his mouth with his own essence until you’ve been sucked clean.

Only then does he release the grip he has on your flesh, crawling back over you and using a hand to squeeze the hinges of your jaw, popping it open. His tongue sprawls from his mouth, drenched in thick cream, and hangs enticingly above your own, threads of cum diluted with saliva dripping in slow, large dollops directly into your throat.

You swallow them readily, greedily, both hands clawed around his wrist as your back arches, starved for more. He laughs at you again, after he’s emptied all the viscous substance from his mouth, telling you in sugary condescension that there’s no more, that you’ve eaten it all up, like the good, greedy little girl you are.

The thought makes you giggle, sends a rush of tingling spikes through your veins, whole body buzzing as you nod along to his sentiment, his cum a warm comfort in your tummy.

Placing a kiss on the tip of your nose, Dabi pushes himself up from the mattress, sauntering into the bathroom. You watch as he goes, stretching your sore limbs out across the sheets, catlike, before you roll over, floundering a little until your toes sink into plush carpet.

Standing in front of the gilded mirror, your eyes skim over your own body. There are traces of Dabi all over your skin, your flesh a map of the past twenty-four hours, of where he’s been and what he’s done, impermanent little artworks that’ll fade by next week—sketches of his teeth, all thirty-two of them, tinctures of their thin red edges etched into your flesh; dark swirling blotches of deep violet and navy-grey, scattered along your neck and collarbone; tiny starbursts of fingerprints pressed into your thighs, hips, ass, periwinkle speckled with scarlet—and it is all so magnificent, physical declarations of your love.

Eyes drifting back up, your gaze lands on the ugly patch of gauze, the hints of a bruise—lilac, tinged pink around the blotchy, uneven edges—encasing the pads of white bandages plastered across your face.

Dabi joins you then, strong arms wrapping around you from behind, lips pressing sweet kisses to your neck as sapphire eyes catch your own through the reflection.

“You look so beautiful covered in me, baby,” he murmurs into your shoulder, eyes fanned by black lashes. “I think this is the most beautiful you’ve ever looked.”

You smile a little in response, stare breaking from his to find your injured cheek again, grin deflating. Dabi follows your trajectory, the light dimming from his eyes, replaced by something hard, something hateful.

“The bruise will take a few days to show up,” Dabi says pragmatically, as if he speaks from experience. “The deeper the trauma, the longer it takes to show.”

You nod your understanding, hesitant fingertips prodding at the swollen flesh—marks of Keigo, evidence of your big brother and his hands on you, patched up, hidden away behind thick ivory bandages and paper tape.

“Don’t touch it,” Dabi chides halfheartedly, stepping back and latching onto your elbow with a gentle tug. “Here, come. Let Daddy redress the wounds for you.”

✰ ✰ ✰

The sun is hanging high in the sky by the time you rouse on Saturday afternoon, filtering in through the moth eaten chiffon curtains and painting strips of gold across the room, sparkling motes playing between the shadows.

Dabi’s sitting in one of two leather armchairs positioned near the small wooden table, eyes fixed on the flickering tube television murmuring out a staticky version of True Romance to itself.

He looks ethereal, ivory of his bare torso almost glowing in the afternoon rays, the colourful ink sketched into his skin stark and striking, coming alive with each of his gentle breaths, rippling with the rise and fall of his chest.

The sunlight haloes him, encompassing his body in its glowing embrace and outlining all of his sharp edges and contours—the slope of his nose and curve of his cheekbones, the ridges of smooth muscle blanketing his upper body and the prominent hill of his Adam’s apple.

The rustling of sheets alerts him to your wakefulness, gaze snapping to your form immediately, a small grin spreading across his lips.

“G’morning, princess,” he teases, but his eyes are soft, scared, worry etched into the lines of his forehead and the downward curve of his mouth as he observes your form, the skin of your cheeks taut and glazed with dry salt, strands of hair crusted to your face, lids sticky and puffy. Large hands pat his thighs enticingly, his head quirking to the left in indication. “C’mere.”

You’re scampering across the mattress before the word has fully left his lips, already yearning for his embrace and all the comfort and protection that comes along with it, a quiet chuckle vibrating in his throat as you straddle his lap, one of his thighs slotted comfortably between your own.

“Missed you,” you mumble into his neck as a form of explanation.

He snorts, a palm coming to pet your back. “Did you now?”

“Uh-huh,” you nod, eyes slipping shut again as you snuggle against his collarbone, haze of drowsiness still dousing your brain. “Were gone for too long.”

“I’ve only been awake for about an hour, princess.”

“Too long,” you assert with a pout.

“Alright, alright,” he soothes, laughing a little around the words. “Are you hungry?”

Shaking your head, you hum in dissent.

“Okay, but you’re gonna eat something a little later for Daddy, yeah?”

His voice is kept light, pleasant in tone as his fingers continue to stroke your spine, a sugared demand folded into his words.

“Of course, Daddy,” you breathe out dreamily.

“That’s my good girl.”

The next hour passes in a fragmented daze as you flit between states of consciousness, Christian Slater’s fuzzy voice twirling through the recesses of your mind, twined with the occasional rumble of your Daddy’s laughter.

But it isn’t long before you begin to grow restless, tormented by sharp splinters of memories once again—sticky scarlet smeared across metal, shimmering topaz lacquered with tears, the tangle of deep, angry, terrified voices growling out muddled words—slashing through any semblance of peace your semi-sentient state had brought you, suddenly desperate for your twisted guardian angel to dissipate the pain, to distract, to push those harsh, hard, hurtful realities back outside that sky-blue motel door and locked away for just a little bit longer.

You squirm a little in Dabi’s lap, clit catching on the ragged denim of his jeans, weak shocks cackling along your spine. A sharp intake of breath stings your throat, teeth sucking your bottom lip between their edges and biting as your pelvis involuntarily wiggles again, pressing down harder this time, grinding the swelling bud into clothed flesh.

“Having trouble getting comfy, baby?” Dabi questions after the third time you shift your hips, bare cunt pressed flush to his thigh. “Or,” his muscles flex, firm and strong between your legs. “Is there something else on your mind?”

The drop in his voice, the way it fades to a rough whisper as his lips caress your ear, has scalding heat unfurling in the pit of your tummy, thick and sticky as it seeps through the floor of the organ, leaking into your gut.

A low whine slips from your lips, embarrassment scorching your cheeks and eyes shutting tightly as you mash your face against his collarbone, answering with a single rock of your hips.

Dark laughter vibrates against your cheek, a large palm connecting with your bare thigh half a moment later, the shock and the sting of the impact forcing your head from its hiding place as Dabi speaks clearly over your resounding yelp.

“When Daddy asks you a question,” he begins, lithe fingers digging into sore flesh and squeezing, gathering a healthy handful in his palm. “He expects an answer, sweetheart.”

His eyes practically glow as they search your face, slow and purposeful, as if they’re trying to singe the sentiment into your flesh.

“Yes, Daddy,” you whimper, nails scraping against his biceps as you cling to him, resisting the urge to bury your face again, wide eyes holding his. “I—I was just—M’horny, Daddy,”

He knows there’s more to it than that, knows you’re using him as a distraction, an escape, from whatever thoughts and memories are currently poisoning your mind, but he accepts your response as satisfactory anyway. Because he’s honoured to be your preferred escape, your favourite escape, ready and willing to do his duty to his baby, to help and protect and take it all away, even if it’s just for a short while.

“Yeah?” he breathes, calloused hands slipping beneath the hem of his t-shirt and curling around your hips. “You wanna use Daddy’s thigh to help get you off?”

“Yes, yes, please,” you squeak, head moving in slow, lethargic little motions against his shoulder as it falls forward again, limp and pliant in his arms. “Want it s’bad,”

“Okay, baby,” his fingers twitch against your skin in anticipation. “Go on, then, hump my leg.”

Pricks of humiliation erupt across your skin at his candidness, but your hips begin moving immediately, snapped into action by a direct order.

It’s slow at first, the rock of your pelvis granting featherlight touches to your already swollen clit, a sudden shyness cascading over you, evoked by his pure, undivided attention.

It isn’t sufficient, of course, these shallow motions only working to frustrate you more, dull flares of the heat in your tummy not nearly enough to ignite the inferno you crave, your thighs clenching around the one wedged between them as annoyed little sounds spill from your mouth, huffed out against his neck.

But Daddy knows.

And Daddy knows just what to say, too.

“Aw come on, princess, you can do better than that, can’t you?” Dabi’s tongue tuts, as if he’s disappointed in you. “Or are you embarrassed, hmm? Acting like such a shameful little slut, so needy for her Daddy that she’s willing to take whatever he’ll give her, even if that’s just a thigh to hump?”

Usually, such a scathing remark would have lit a fierce fire in your chest, fuelled solely by your stubborn desire to prove that you can do it!, determined to demonstrate that you’re capable and worthy of his praise. But today, those insulting words are exactly what you need.

Because they open up a space where you can be vulnerable, granting you permission to be a fucking baby, to cry and whine and cling and want, to be pathetic.

You’re nodding again, forehead pressed tightly to his collarbone as eyes squeeze shut against the familiar nip of tears, half-coherent affirmations bubbling past your lips. Yes, Daddy, can’t do it on my own, Daddy, need you, Daddy.

“Oh, baby,” he coos, syrupy words dripping off a razor, the normally sharp blade dulled by true emotion, fondness. “Don’t worry, Daddy’s here, Daddy will help you make it feel good, since you’re too stupid to do it by yourself.”

Although the words are harsh, his voice isn’t, insults cracked open and oozing melted sugar, soaked in a sort of playful admiration.

Lithe fingers dig into the flesh of your hips as he forces the rolling of your hips to accelerate, blunt nails branding violet crescents into your skin, a low whimper tickling the back of your tongue.

The denim of his jeans is coarse against your sensitive cunt, fucked open and raw from the night before, each grind against the tough material sending little spikes of agony tingling through your gut, promptly devoured by sparks of pleasure.

The pain fades quickly, though, the rutting of your hips morphing into a more sensual grinding expertly guided by Dabi’s hands, sweet little cunt steadily gushing slick all over his leg, fabric rendered sleek and slippery, aiding each glide of your pussy over the strong muscle.

“You’re soaking me, baby,” he nearly whines out, the words airy and infused with awe. “All the way through my fucking jeans; I can feel how wet you are.”

His grasp has gone lax around you now, fingertips merely resting on your skin as he encourages you to keep rubbing and riding, motivating praise panted out in hot breaths, curling around the shell of your ear.

That’s it, baby, that’s it, and There you go, you’re doing perfect, and Look at you, baby, being so good for me; each set of praise that falls from his lips merely inspiring you to go faster, grind harder, do better.

“Keep going, princess, keep going,” his cock strains against his jeans, eager and impatient as it throbs against your waist, each rut of your hips brushing up against it teasingly. “Yeah, yeah, just like that, use Daddy’s thigh to get yourself off.”

You mewl into his chest, hips beginning to gyrate in purposeful circles, chasing his validation, a high just as potent as an orgasm itself. Flame-charred fingers tweak a nipple through the thin material of his t-shirt, forcing a yelp from your throat, a patronizing chuckle syrupy on his tongue.

Beneath you, his knee begins to bounce, hard, fast little motions that reverberate against your clit, a loud moan escaping your lips. Each vibration sends another flurry of cinders to collect in your gut, torching a flame that burns bright and beautiful, a fire that cleanses, that blazes those memories to ash and whisks them away, replaced with addictive adoration.

“C’mon, baby, stop hiding,” a shoulder nudges your head. “Daddy wants to see that pretty face of yours.”

Your face lifts, forehead knocking against his, exhaling little cries into his waiting mouth—precious sounds that melt like maple sugar on his tongue, sweet and saturating. Azure glitters in the late afternoon sun as half-lidded eyes watch your expressions, ravenous for every little crinkle of pain that flattens to unadulterated pleasure, his breath wafting across your skin as he speaks.

Laughing, a palm cups your cheek, locking you in place. “That feel good?”

An indiscernible noise of pleasure tumbles from your lips in response, head bobbing clumsily, nose bumping against his own.

“Use your words,” he chastises.

“Y-Yes, Daddy,”

“You gonna cum soon for me, huh? Gonna show me how fucking gorgeous you look, creaming all over my thigh?”

“Yes, Daddy,” you gasp, eyes squeezed shut as you nod vigorously against him.

“Yeah? Then make a mess, baby. Make a mess all over Daddy.”

So you do, staining charcoal denim with your cream, a groaned curse falling from his lips, pitched high and cracked with love as he feels your gushing cunt clench and flutter around nothing, his thigh pressed hard into your core, and that’s so hot, that’s so fucking hot, baby.

You’re still in the throes of a post-orgasmic haze, body shivering with sweat and bolts of overstimulation quivering through your veins as he carries you towards the bed, laying you gently on the edge before shoving his jeans down, cock gorgeous and glistening with desire and pre-cum.

The excess of slick and cum, now smeared all over your inner thighs and still steadily leaking from your cute cunt, enables him to slam into you in one swift thrust, cock buried deep inside of you, balls pressed to your ass.

It still stings despite the aid of your wetness, sweet little hole barely stretched out at all now gorging on his thick cock, flesh quavering as it tears into little fissures to accommodate him, an instinctual wail drowning in your throat.

“What?” he pants out, the question embedded in a laugh. “You think you can—can just ride Daddy’s thigh without him needing to fuck you after?”

No, of course not.

He finishes quick, though, pumping your womb full of burning, sticky cum, a vicious tremor coursing through his whole body as he crumples next to you, cradling your body with his, and he loves you, he loves you, he loves you.

Later that night, as you lay awake in bed, tummies stuffed full of blueberry pancakes and cinnamon buns, you ask him to tell you a secret.

He wavers for a moment, body turned to ice and then thawed in the blaze of your love, voice low and throaty as he speaks.

He tells you about his mother, a woman with snow for hair and slate for eyes, a woman he hasn’t seen for several years now, a woman he misses deeply. He tells you about his siblings—Fuyumi, Natsuo, Shouto—their likes and dislikes, hobbies and interests, fears and flaws, laughing wetly to himself about how much he still remembers, wondering aloud if any of those things have stayed the same, or if they’ve changed since he left, and how much so.

He tells you about Touya, the boy he killed when he was only a teenager, the boy who was spirited and ambitious and longed for nothing more than his father’s approval, the boy who only exists in memories now, hazy and desolate, nothing more than a ghost of smoke and ash.

He tells you about his father, about his father’s penchant for hitting women and smacking children—his most cowardly habit, according to Dabi—about his father’s precarious favouritism that changed with the wind.

And he tells you about the accident—his father’s fault, as always—tells you about the melting metal and burning leather and scorched skin, the feeling of the flames licking at his body, the heat of the crash, the cries of his baby brother, the firemen who pulled him from the jaws of the car and saved his life, the father who did nothing but stand and watch.

And by the time the sun begins to rise, his throat is raw from the past, his nose blotchy and his eyes swollen, and you hold him tight to your bosom, dainty little fingers cradling the shards of his old life, placing them piece by painstaking piece back in their proper places.

✰ ✰ ✰

The inevitability of Monday casts a deep shadow over Sunday night, the inescapable threat of reality looming in the near future, but Dabi holds it at bay for a little bit longer, the bubble of your own private utopia kept intact with clementine suds and whirling jets, calloused hands and soft kisses and an old heart-shaped tub.

His hands are tender, unhurried as they lather soap across your skin, almost lazy in how they clean you, appreciating the way every dip and curve, edge and contour converge to create the masterpiece that is your body.

It’s as if he’s in some state of wonder, sapphire glittering in the low light as it follows after his movements, outlining their trajectory and branding it into his consciousness, admiring the way your flesh yields to him as he pinches and kneads and rolls it between his palms.

“I love you,” he says finally, stare drifting back to yours. “I’m in love with you.”

You giggle a little, suddenly feeling bashful, body curling towards his. “I’m in love with you, too.”

“I’m so lucky you are.”

“I’m the lucky one here.”

“Don’t fight me on this, baby,” he warns. “You know you’ll lose.”

“Alright, alright,” you dismiss with a wave of your hand. “But it’s my turn to wash you, now, Daddy,” you murmur through a smirk, crawling towards him to straddle his thighs.

He mutters out a few weak protests about how you don’t need to, princess and he can do it himself, but you insist, already pouring out a syrupy dollop of body wash into your palm.

Breaths of chuckles escape his parted lips, eyes gone soft as they watch your delicate fingers trace out trails of suds across the koi fish swimming up his forearms, tiny white bubbles crudely illustrating the art inked into his skin.

You speak as you work, musing softly about which of his tattoos are your favourites.

“Why did you decide on koi fish?” you ask as your fingers wander up his arms.

“Because they persevere. They swim against the current and prosper, no matter how strong the waves are,” he shrugs a little, eyes sweeping across his body. Your gaze follows suit, noticing for the first time that all of the fish swimming up his arms are swimming against tumultuous waves, chaotic and dangerous as they crash into white caps.

“They’re like you.”

He nods, keeping his gaze averted. “And they’re—Well, they’re supposed to symbolize good fortune or whatever, so I figured…” he trails off, and you wait, allowing him a moment to sift through his thoughts, thumbs idly stroking his biceps. “I figured it couldn’t hurt, to carry them everywhere with me.” He looks up suddenly, blue eyes so clear you swear you can see into the depths of his soul, shimmering with bright love for you. “Maybe one day I can get one that reminds me of you, so I can carry you everywhere with me, too.”

“I—I’d be honoured, Daddy,” a rush of admiration, of appreciation, surges through your chest, leaving behind a swell of warmth, fingertips reaching up to draw out his features—his strong brow, the bow of his lips, the jut of his jaw.

He’s so fucking gorgeous it kicks the breath from you, onyx hair slicked back from his face in streamlined rows separated by the grooves left behind by his fingers, a few stray strands falling forward and curling to frame his eyes.

“I’d love to have you—a constant reminder of you—permanently stained into my skin,” he whispers, arms encircling your hips, pressing you flush against his chest.

“Maybe I’ll get one, too,” you whimper, tapering off into a gasp as his hard cock nudges your hole.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, why not? Make sure everyone knows I belong to you.”

He groans in response, nodding as you sink down on him, eyes dark with the thought of branding you as his, forever.

It’s sweet, slow and sensual, each roll of his hips, each rock of your own, dainty hands clasped behind his neck, fingers twining in the wet tufts of hair at the base of his skull, foreheads pressed tightly together.

Lips suck sweltering breaths from each other’s mouths while tongues suck on the sounds that spill from one throat into another, greedily swallowing them down to add to the collections each of you carries within your hearts; slivers of your lover, your soulmate, buried safely in pulsating flesh, never to be removed.

Your movements increase in force, Dabi’s cock pounding against your sore cervix with each pump of his hips, but the pace remains deliberately unhurried, every moment savoured, every moment sacred, almost as if you’re both terrified one vigorous motion—something too brutal, too harsh—will shatter your manufactured peace a little too early.

Blue flames lave over your organs, blazing stronger and stronger, growing larger and larger, until it engulfs you both in its inferno, bright and burning, licks of sapphire rushing through your veins as your cunt clenches around his cock, as his cock stuffs you full of cum, bodies stilling and nails gorging on flesh, clinging to one another like lifelines.

And as you come down from your conjoined high, unclamping your fingers and dislodging your nails, you feel something shift, change, the air suddenly denser, heavier, more substantial than it’s ever been before.

“I don’t know what I’d ever do without you,” you whimper, words loose and languid, the unapproved confession dribbling from your lips.

“Neither do I, baby,” Dabi whispers, hand emerging from the water—fluffy bubbles dissipated to a flat froth that lines the rippling surface—his thumb brushing baby hairs back from your forehead. His eyes glint in the feeble light. “Neither do I.”

✰ ✰ ✰

Finally, Monday comes, bringing with it a slew of texts from your brother, anxious and eager to know when you’ll be returning home.

Dabi laughs, harsh and rancorous, when you timidly ask if he’ll be bringing you back to that little white house with its little white fixtures, shaking his head with audacity, sharp twinkle in his eyes reflected in his gleaming teeth.

“I’m not allowing you to go back to that junkie psychopath!” he says, words infused with an incredulous chuckle, as if he can’t believe you’re even asking at all. “He’s dangerous, and I’d be an utter fool to let you live with him again.”

“But—But then, where will I—”

“You’re coming home with me,” he says, though the humour has faded from his features, replaced with a heavy set brow and slightly narrowed eyes. “I thought I made this clear already.”

He hadn’t—not explicitly, anyway—though you had had a feeling this may be the case.

“Dabi,” you begin slowly. “I don’t think—I mean, do you think me just abandoning Keigo like this is really the right choice?”

“Princess,” he says, the pet name full of condescension. “He hurt you. What man in their right mind would allow their baby to go back to such a monster?”

“It was only one time, though—”

“For now,” Dabi spits. “But it won’t be only once if you go back to him, I can promise you that.”

“But he—He can’t—I’m not sure how he’ll survive without me…”

“Look,” he sighs, large hands wrapping around your shoulders and forcing you to stare up at him. “You want him to get better, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. But I don’t see how this will help—”

“Keigo needs to lose everything—most importantly, you—because of his addiction before he’ll even start thinking about kicking the habit.”

You shrink into Dabi’s palms, voice small. “He can’t do it alone, though.”

“Actually,” Dabi says. “He can only do it alone.” At your confused look, he continues. “It has to be his choice and his choice only, if he is to seek help and get better.” You begin to protest, but he speaks over you, voice clear and certain. “No one can do it for him, no matter how badly they wish to. This will only ever work if he wants it to.”

“Shouldn’t I at least go home to check on him?”

“He’s texting you, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then he is very clearly fine. He’s an adult, he should have the basic capabilities to take care of himself when left to his own devices.” he pauses, eyes scanning your face thoroughly. “Despite what he’d have you believe, it is not your job to take care of him.”

“We’re family, of course it’s my job to—”

“There is a fine line between helping out family and being taken advantage of by an addict.” Dabi says sharply. “Never forget that.”

His tone, firm and resolute and chock with experience, startles you, and you look down at your feet, fingers twisted into an unsure knot in front of you.

“I know it might be difficult for you to understand, sweetheart,” Dabi murmurs, casting your gaze back to him. “But I need you to trust me on this. You know I’d never lead you astray, right?”

Yes, Daddy, of course, Daddy.

✰ ✰ ✰

Your days with Dabi are vastly different than your days with Keigo were, and you fall into a routine quickly, easily, effortlessly.

Gentle forehead kisses and lips caressing your ear rouse you from sleep each morning, flame-hardened fingertips tracing your facial features and brushing back strands of stray hair as your Daddy murmurs that it’s time to wake up.

While you dress and pack your things for your day at university, Dabi prepares you some sort of standard breakfast: cereal and milk, fried eggs and toast, steamed rice and egg yolks, or an omelette. He rarely eats breakfast himself, opting for a single cup of black coffee, but he’s always sure to keep you fed, even if the meals are basic and cheap—it’s all he can afford, at the moment.

You appreciate the gesture anyway, despite the fact that you often go against his wishes, sneaking out to the nearest grocery market during the rare moments when Dabi leaves you alone, armed with one of those pretty platinum credit cards your foster father gave you and arriving home with armloads of expensive meats, fruits, and cheeses. It’s important that he eats, too, you say to him.

Soon you won’t have to do that, he tells you one night, voice soft. He’s moving up the ranks, he says, climbing the corrupt corporate ladder within the underworld. Soon he’ll have his own group of lackeys, he promises. Soon he’ll be able to buy you all of the food and items your heart desires, with his own hard earned cash.

It’s hard to understand why Dabi has such an aversion to you lavishing him with your father’s wealth, even if it’s only in the form of good, fresh food, but you can imagine it has to do with some deep-seated need to care for, to provide for, to protect and nourish and own.

As you munch on whatever breakfast he’s made for you that morning, Dabi busies himself with constructing sweet little lunch boxes for you every day you have class; little snacks to bring along to your lectures, to keep you sated throughout your day, claiming your mind will absorb more knowledge if you aren’t hungry, if you are properly fuelled.

It sounds like something a father would tell their picky child in an effort to entice them to eat their school lunches, but you humour him anyway, being sure to consume every piece of food he packs you, never allowing any of it to go to waste.

He attempts to make the boxes cute and aesthetic, like the bentos you had showed him on Pinterest before, but his hands are too large, his fingers too clumsy, rendering the finished product a grotesque edition of the picturesque meals, grumbling to himself that it doesn’t matter, it’s all going to be chewed up anyway.

But it’s the thought that counts, and you love it all the same.

Some things stay unchanged. You still go to that stupid little run-down drive-in theatre you love so much, still go on your weekly breakfast diner dates every Saturday, still go on those joyrides with him, his little partner in crime.

He takes you with him everywhere he can, actually; everywhere he deems safe. Just like the joyrides, it’s nice to be a part of his life, to be included in some way.

You meet his closest friends—people he never spoke of before, but people he is evidently quite close with nonetheless: people he shares Zippo flames with, two hands cupping the precious little fire with cigarettes secured between sharp teeth, foreheads nearly bumping as they lean forward to light the entwined ends; people whom he can hold entire conversations with through side-eyed glances and quirked heads and private smirks; people that seem to know him—his wants and desires, his fears and traumas, his extended personal history—a hell of a lot better than you do.

There is a special type of intimacy that permeates the air around them when they’re together; something electric, something that snaps and crackles with their loud laughs and sharp quips, yet something that is cozy, homey, almost, akin to the warmth of affection that drapes itself over your heart like a protective blanket, the kind that fills your lungs and seeps through your ribs and into your bloodstream, setting your whole body pleasantly ablaze.

It’s a cherished type of intimacy, a rare and exceptional type of intimacy, forged through the lifelong building of friendships and the bonds of trauma.

Out of the three who are, undoubtedly, the most important to him, Tomura was the one who caught your eye first, who catches your eye often, still.

They were a pair to be seen—sapphire and ruby, a combined force to be reckoned with: Dabi with his vintage Cadillac, all electric blue and shimmering chrome; Tomura with his Mercedes Maybach, all glossy crimson and white leather—parked perpendicular to each other in the diner parking lot, owners perched on their respective hoods with glowing cigarettes wrapped up in their lips, huffing out clouds of smoke towards one another as they conversed.

Tomura is handsome in an unconventional sense, with striking, stark features—a sharp, angular jaw, pronounced cheekbones, glowing scarlet eyes—that often knock the breath from anyone he speaks to.

The air around him seems to be infused with a peculiar type of superiority, despite the fact that he is astonishingly apathetic, almost bored looking, toward practically every aspect of his life. When he talks, his voice nearly leaks from his lips, a smooth and unhurried drawl, the words occasionally huffed out in a dismissive drone, or drooled out from his mouth like thick, spoiled syrup.

Nonetheless, you like him, bonding over your shared love of ostentatious banana splits, doused in too much caramel and chocolate and encrusted with stale sprinkles.

“That looks like vomit,” Dabi had once sneered, face screwed up in disgust as he glowered at the colourful concoction shared between the two of you, his comment prompting both you and Tomura to spitefully shovel absurd spoonfuls of mountainous ice cream into your mouths in retaliation.

Yet, irregardless of his clever tongue and his lethargic indifference, he seems, in some way, delicate, with slim wrists and bony fingers and a protruding collarbone, expensive trousers hanging off his jutting, sharp hipbones.

A deep melancholy sometimes shimmers in his eyes, a small sparkle of it glimmering beneath waves of carmine, only revealing itself when Dabi’s voice drops to that low, guttural muttering, so quiet it’s difficult to understand, a raw, vulnerable edge tinging his tone; or when Himiko’s chipper chattering cuts off, sharp and sudden, gasp murdering the sentence in her throat, chopped to pieces so the words that do make it to her tongue and past her lips are stuttered and scrambled and scared; or when Jin makes a remark, then shuts his eyes tightly, face screwed up in psychological pain, a contradictory retort tumbling from his mouth in a seemingly uncontrollable, almost automatic manner, followed by his own paradoxical rebuttal, rushed and breathless as if attempting to suck his previous statement back in past his lips and down his throat and into his stomach.

Himiko—whom you had already been acquainted with at the diner—is lovely, if not a little eccentric, and you admire her dedication, her determination, to hold true to herself. The strength and commitment to wholeheartedly embrace and defend her beliefs and values, regardless of how morally dubious the rest of society considers them to be, is almost inspiring in a way, and you secretly long to covet her carefree confidence and courageous nature.

The saccharine scent of toffee and tiger lilies clings softly to her skin, mouthwateringly sweet and surprisingly dainty, and she leaves a residual trail of it anywhere she goes, a hazy mist of it hanging dreamily in the air long after she’s gone, ready to daze and entice any who may wander through it.

The owner of the small, shabby convenience store on the ground floor of Dabi’s apartment complex, Jin is the one you see most frequently.

Kind-natured yet brutally honest, with a large, gouged scar splitting the center of his forehead, Jin spends his days packaging the drugs and frying up fresh homemade donuts, encrusted with sparkling cinnamon sugar.

Best coffee in the Goddamn world, your Daddy had told you one day while depositing you by the front counter, as he often did when he deemed a job too serious, scary, important or dangerous for you to tag along. No one brews it better than Bubaigawara.

You don’t mind spending time with Jin—quite the opposite, actually, with the man frequently frying up your very own batch of mini donuts to snack on as you await Daddy’s return, pages of your homework stained with cinnamon and oil—but you hate watching Dabi go, features coated with a forlorn despondency as he pauses in the doorway, balancing a large paper bag on his hip and patting his pockets in search of that pretty silver gun, the one he had allowed you to adorn with glittery pink hearts, so every time he took it out he’d be reminded of you, reminded of why he does what he does, and who he does it for.

Still, Jin does a fairly good job at keeping you occupied while Dabi works, permitting you to sit crosslegged on the front counter with a knee pressed flush to the old chrome register, a textbook cradled in your lap and a pink, fluffy pen dangling daintily from your fingers, some sort of sweet—donuts or chocolate or lollipops—beside your hip.

As it turns out, he has a very difficult time saying no to you, an issue which often lands him in hot water with your Daddy, sheepishly accepting Dabi’s ruthless scoldings about your sugar consumption yet never making any slight effort to change his ways.

“You spoil her,” you had caught Dabi muttering once, a begrudged grin fighting its way onto his lips.

“I enjoy doing so,” Jin had responded simply, as if he didn’t see any sort of problem, as if the answer was clear as day and he didn’t understand why Dabi couldn’t grasp it.

Himiko visits the shop often, strolling in well past midnight in her impeccable waitressing dress, all pristine white lace and red piping, a cute little cap pinned haphazardly to her blonde curls, with Tomura occasionally in tow.

He doesn’t seem to like the place much, it appears, glowering pretentiously at the shelves surrounding him as two lithe fingers tug at the folded turtleneck of his black cashmere sweater.

This never seems to deter him from stealing bits of whatever sweet Jin has gifted you with that day, though, bony hands plucking a half-sucked lollipop gleaming with your spit from the crinkled wrapper it lay on, or cradling a few of those cute tiny donuts in a large palm and dusting his flesh with warm cinnamon, or snapping off a couple squares of stale chocolate from the bar half-eaten and discarded beside your thigh, always delighting in your sweet squeals of protest with a smug quirk up of scarred lips.

“I like your friends,” you had told Dabi one night, soft and sweet, as you handed him a dish for drying.

“Yeah?” he had smirked, casting you a glance from the corner of his eye, his mouth curving into a lopsided crescent. “We’re a bit of a motley crew,”

“Yeah, but that’s kind of the endearment of it all. You still fit like perfect puzzle pieces, even if you’re all from difference boxes. It’s…nice.”

“Who’s you’re favourite?”

“Trick question. You’re my favourite.”

Dabi had laughed, deep and fond, tossing the dishtowel on the counter and turning towards you, damp palms wrapping around your hips, tugging you to his chest, sapphire glittering with adoration as he gazed down at you.

“That’s my girl.”

✰ ✰ ✰

The group had an almost ritualistic schedule, routinely and rigidly adhered to, and Thursdays, you found out, are incredibly sacred.

Every Thursday, they gather—you included, Dabi’s protective paranoia already too strong to handle leaving you on your own for a few measly hours—at The League, crammed together in a singular red booth or huddled around the bar, legs swinging off the glittering, cracked stools as they speak in hushed voices and shuffle around crumpled papers, with fraying edges and folded veins.

It’s difficult for you to keep up with their conversations, something you assume they do purposefully, and you find yourself constantly drowning in a sea of numbers—weights and dollars—and foreign language; keys and eightballs, freebasing and black tar.

You’re rarely allowed in the cellar—the lab—but you don’t really mind, much happier to ignorantly munch away on a cookie or lick at a melting sundae, far from the harsh chemical smell and the chalky bricks and the soft mountains of powder.

These meetings span several hours, and often consist of Jin or Himiko periodically checking up on you, delivering a Daddy-approved meal—some sort of soup or salad or satayed meat with steamed rice and seasonal veggies—about halfway through the night.

It is during these moments, when you are finally, truly and completely alone, that you find yourself most frequently texting your brother.

Dabi knows, of course, because Dabi knows everything, has caught you more than once, not only at the diner, but at home too, snuggled up in his bed with your phone pressed to your face, or in his car, with your knees pressed to your chest and the device cradled in your palms.

Truthfully, you hadn’t even tried to hide it from him. In your mind, there really wasn’t a reason to.

Sure, Keigo had lost control and hit you, and yes, Keigo’s addiction has been spiralling into unrestrained depths, but he’s still your brother—still all you have, all each other has—and you thought Dabi would understand that, at least in some capacity.

You’re not sure how you could’ve ever been so stupid.

✰ ✰ ✰

The first time he brings it up is after one of your frequent moviegoing excursions at the drive-in—a double feature of Sunset Boulevard + A Fistful of Dollars this time, the pungent scent of buttersalt popcorn still steeped in the fabric of your dress, mouths smudged with a purple tint—an amalgamation of interspersed saliva infused with candied blue and pink dyes, respectively—your phone screen flooded with messages from Keigo; questions about your opinion on the stupid western you had barely paid any attention to, and suggestions that you come see a movie with him, too, sometime soon.

“I just—I don’t get it,” you’re mumbling through a pout as Dabi guides you through the apartment door, a stifled sigh heavy in his lungs.

You’ve been going in circles the entire car ride home, and you can tell he’s beginning to get irritated, shoulders tight and pinched, voice wavering under the strain of keeping calm.

“It isn’t a difficult concept to grasp, princess.”

“But—I—I’m not living there anymore, anyway,” you attempt to reason, the fact coming out as more of a whiny protest. “Why can’t I at least meet up with him?”

“You seriously don’t get it?” Dabi’s asking, though his voice is soft, large hands finding your shoulders and squeezing, thumbs rubbing lopsided circles into your skin.

Shaking your head, your pout deepens, puckering your chin and crinkling your brow.

“Listen,” he begins, his voice turned sickly sweet, drenched in condescension and encrusted with sugar. “It’s for his own good, and yours.”

“How?” you cry, frantic eyes darting across his face, searching for the answers in his glinting eyes and twitching grin. “How is me just—just ignoring him and forcing him to fend for himself good for either of us?”

With a short chuckle, Dabi shakes his head, pressing down on your shoulders and perching you on the edge of his—your—bed.

“You answered your own question, baby.”

“I’m serious, Dabi.”

“So am I,” he responds curtly, smile melting from his face as his eyes narrow slightly. “I don’t understand why this is so hard for your pretty little head to comprehend. I told you already; Keigo needs to hit rock bottom before he can begin getting better. You want him to get better, don’t you?”

“Of course,” you breathe out instantly, head nodding in short quick motions.

Of course you do; you want Keigo to be healthy, you want Keigo to be ridded of this demon hollowing out his organs and filling his veins with poison, you want to go home, to the only home you’ve ever known, the only home you’ve ever had, warm and golden and bright like the sun.

“Then you have to let him do this on his own. By giving into his demands—any of his demands, even the seemingly innocuous ones, like seeing you for an hour or two to watch a film or have dinner—you are continuing to enable him; you are continuing to give him what he wants,” pausing, sapphire sweeps across your face slowly, allowing your brain to absorb his words. “You are continuing to tell him that it’s okay, that you’ll still be here even after all he’s done to you, even if he doesn’t change or make amends. But, baby,” a rough palm cups your cheek, thumb hooked firmly behind your jaw, inhibiting your gaze from straying from his. “He will never hit true rock bottom if you continue to give him access to you.”

“But—But he—” A hiccup cuts you off, sharp and vicious and startling your body as it hitches in your chest. “He probably isn’t eating, you know. He probably isn’t—isn’t cleaning his track marks, or drinking enough water, either.”

“He probably isn’t,” Dabi agrees simply. “Because you used to do all of those things for him.”

Salt stings your eyes, vision going blurry with thick tears. Sticky guilt, dense and suffocating, unfurls in your chest, engulfing your heart in its tarry embrace and squeezing.

Is that true? Have you been enabling him this entire time by simply taking care of him? Allowing him to live in relative comfort as you cooked and cleaned, nagged and negotiated?

“En—Enabling him?” your face twists, features screwed up and sour, despite the rapidly sinking barbed panic in your stomach. “But—No! I was just trying to help!”

Dabi barks out a short laugh, loud and absurd.

“No, sweetheart,” he begins, his voice turned caustic. “No. Helping would’ve been telling your parents about his rapidly raging addition. Helping would’ve been bringing this to the University’s attention and stripping him of all his false achievements and awards. Helping would’ve been working in tandem with all these authorities to enrol him in a program. Helping would’ve been leaving him, the moment he began to take advantage of you.”

A beat of silence grows, stretches, wavers, hanging heavy in the air between you, Dabi’s eyes following a tear streaming down your cheek with a sort of pitiful apathy, eyebrows drawing together in annoyance as your head shakes to indicate that you don’t understand, or don’t agree, face puckered in defiant confusion.

“Cooking his meals, fucking spoon-feeding him, cleaning his track marks, doing his laundry, keeping the house spotless—including the paraphernalia I’m sure he left lying around—and covering for him by verifying his lies to your parents about where those massive sums of money keep disappearing off to…None of that was helping. At least, not in the way you thought it was.”

Bitter remorse churns in your stomach, crawls up your throat and claws at the back of your tongue, confusion melting into horror as you realize that he’s right.

Because that’s not all; Dabi doesn’t even know the half of it. Dabi doesn’t know about the papers and assignments you completed for him when he was too high to finish them himself, out of fear of him losing that precious scholarship, or tarnishing his sterling reputation with late work.

Dabi doesn’t know about the money you used to give him, taken from your own monthly allowance when his own ran out a little too early—Just this once, princess, promise I’ll pay you back; though it was never ‘just this once’, and he never did pay you back—when he hadn’t budgeted his habit properly and you were too terrified of the inevitable withdrawal looming in the murky distance, sick with dread at the mere thought of him having to go through that.

Dabi doesn’t know about the times you skipped class to sit in his bed with his head in your lap, feeding him teaspoons of water in an attempt to keep him hydrated on those rare occasions where he did slip into that hellish withdrawal.

“He needs me,” you argue weakly, voice small and shattered, sentiment slathered with spit.

“Clearly, he needs heroin more.”

And that hurts, because it’s true. Because no matter what you say or what you do, no matter how much you shout and scream and cry and threaten, Keigo seems to prefer heroin, every time.

“He has chosen heroin over you many times,” Dabi continues, words echoing your thoughts, calloused palm smoothing your hair back from your forehead, voice snapped back to the Perfect Boyfriend edition, soft and soothing. “Because you continued to stay anyway; because he knew he could get away with it. But now, now it’s different; now you’re gone, and he’s all alone with his prized addiction.”

“I’m so scared, Daddy, I’m so, so scared. What if he—”

“If you truly love him, you’ll let him do this on his own,” Dabi whispers, both palms pressed to your cheeks now, forcing your trembling head still, holding your stare captive.

Something flashes in his eyes, a melancholic glimmer of knowledge that catches in the dim yellow light, vanishing a mere moment later, drowned in a sea of tumultuous sapphire.

Really, you suppose Dabi’s right, suppose what he’s saying makes sense, but it’s still difficult to accept, lodged like a hard, stubborn lump of lead in your throat.

Even if what Dabi says is true, you can’t seem to eradicate the terror that bubbles deep in your tummy at the thought of leaving him to fend for himself and survive on his own, fragments of the most grotesque scenarios slashing through your mind; Keigo bloated and blue with a needle stuck in his arm, Keigo face down in a pool of his own vomit, Keigo pale and cold and hard to the touch, dressed in his best suit and encased in varnished rosewood, surrounded by wreaths of flowers with those topaz eyes closed, never to be bright again.

Nausea swells, boiling up your esophagus, but you shove it back down, coughing around a wrecked little sob that rips itself to pieces in your throat. Dabi clicks his tongue in a sort of patronizing sympathy, strong arms encompassing your form and pulling you onto his lap, cradling you to his chest.

“This is his punishment,” Dabi speaks clearly over your crying, chest vibrating against your ear. “He needs to hit an all-time-low and seek help on his own; you can’t do this for him, no matter how badly you wish you could.”

“Why can’t you just stop giving it to him,” you weep into his neck, fingers tangling in the cotton of his t-shirt, his feigned gasp startling you slightly.

“That would be worse,” he pulls back to look at you, azure eyes serious. “Baby, that would be worse.”

“How?” you whisper, the question wobbling with your bottom lip, the teardrops clinging to your clumped lashes glittering as you blink them away.

“Because my shit’s pure, you know? My shit’s the best. Think about it: if I stop supplying to him, he’s just going to go look for it somewhere else, isn’t he? Would you rather he turn to some unknown dealer? Someone who probably cuts their shit with massive unregulated amounts of fentanyl?”

No, you suppose you wouldn’t.

“That could be so dangerous,” he continues in that same placating lilt, fingers rhythmically climbing the notches of your spine as your face snuggles back against his collarbone. “And besides, I gotta eat too, don’t I?”

You’re pretty sure losing a single client wouldn’t be detrimental to his business, but you don’t know just how much Keigo spends on drugs, so you keep quiet, nodding again.

“At any rate, it’d probably be best to limit your contact with him as much as possible. It does more harm than good, making this whole nightmare more messy and harder on everyone than it has to be, yeah?”

You don’t say anything, can’t say anything, that thick guilt devouring your insides, swallowing down your lungs and heart in its glutinous voracity, acrid as it sludges up your throat.

Is that true, too? Are you inconsiderate for wanting to talk to him, to be in contact with him, to check up on him? Is it wrong to do these things? To continue to allow him access and attention? Does it really just make it all worse for everyone, Keigo especially? Does it inhibit his potential to get better?

“This is what’s best for both of you, princess,” Dabi murmurs, tender voice pulling you from your sea of thoughts, his familiar voice eliciting an automatic, mindless nod from you. “I promise.”

✰ ✰ ✰

Sitting on that small slab of concrete porch wedged in front of that tiny white house, dismal topaz eyes watch as small rocks pop beneath the tires of the Eldorado, the large car grumbling to a stop with a shudder. Silence. Then: the slam of a car door, the jingling of boot buckles, footsteps stalking, almost catlike, up the paved driveway, coming to a stop a few meters away.

Finally, Keigo stands, gazing at Dabi from beneath grease-matted curls, thumbs hooked in the edges of his denim pockets, waiting.

“Christ,” Dabi snorts around a cigarette, lips curled into a smirk as he scans Kegio’s form. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, well,” Keigo says with a half shrug, a hand floundering aimlessly.

He knows he looks terrible; sunken pools of patchy violet encasing his eyes, hair so dirty it hurts at the roots, grime framing his fingernails in a grotesque grey-green.

His coaches comment on it all, at least once a week or so, and can always manage to coax him into showering at the gym while delivering lecture after lecture about why he can’t let himself slip like this, and how he has to stop being so Goddamn obvious now, but Keigo is finding it increasingly more difficult to care. What’s the point, if you’re not here? Why keep up any semblance of normalcy, why put any effort into the facade at all, if you’re not here to see it?

Dabi’s still talking, he realizes dully, jabbering on in that infuriatingly apathetic drawl, though there’s something else there, something razored and sharp glinting just beneath the surface, the unmistakable blade of personal offence.

“—Though I suppose it’s what you deserve,” Dabi’s saying, Keigo’s ears finally tuning into his frequency. “Y’know, being a fucking abusive asshole and all that.”

“I’m not—” Keigo begins, then he exhales, eyes closing briefly. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“Oh? But you meant to slap her, yes?”

“No, I—I didn’t mean to do any of it at all.”

Dabi laughs, a booming echo that bounces off the cars and the house and reverberates in Keigo’s bones, harsh and brutal and unforgiving. The sapphire flames flickering in his eyes flare, glimmering with hatred.

“What are you talking about, you didn’t mean to do any of it? How the fuck do you manage to accidentally backhand someone so hard you leave scars?”

Scars? Keigo’s forehead crinkles. Had he really hit you with that much force? Were his rings, in that moment of rage and self loathing ringing tinny in his ears, sharp enough to have cut you that deeply? With a frown, Keigo shakes his head a little, swallowing weakly against the thick, slimy saliva that has pooled at the back of his tongue.

“Listen. I—I messed up, alright? I messed up,” a large hand cards roughly through golden curls, glinting dimly under the overcast sky. “I messed up,” he repeats, quieter. It’s silent for a moment, then his head snaps up, topaz eyes blazing. “It was only one time, goddamn it. You—You can’t tell me you haven’t fucked up before, too, Dabi,”

“One time? One time?” Dabi throws his half-finished cigarette to the ground. “Oh yeah? And those finger-shaped marks encircling her wrist, were those only one time too? The Keigo-sized handprint on her back, was that only one time as well? What about the bruises on her hips, or the blotches on her thighs? The fingerprints on her arms? Were they all just one time? How many one times have you had, exactly, Keigo?”

Keigo’s mouth drops open, closed, then open again, a pathetic, hurt little sound strangling itself in his throat, aggression melting into guilt-soaked shame, humbling the ugly crease between his brows.

Thunder roils in the distance, faint yet menacing, a warning growl of what’s to come.

“And I would never hit her, you bastard,” Dabi continues, his voice sharp and sure, calm and confident. “I would never lay my fucking hands on her precious skin.”

“No, no of course not,” he sneers bitterly. “No, you’re fine with simple emotional manipulation.”

“Better than physical abuse.”

”Is it?” Keigo questions, amber eyes suddenly bright, burning. “Will she still love you as much when she finds out what you’ve been doing? How you’ve been treating me? Treating her? Ping-ponging us around like this, using each other as bait for your sick little game? Because she will find out, Dabi.”

“I mean, she still loves you, doesn’t she?” Dabi retorts, the sentiment soiling his mouth, face screwed up in abhorrence.

A sharp exhale escapes flared nostrils and Keigo looks away, jaw clenching hard as he tries in vain to swallow his words, to suppress his vulnerability, to not hand Dabi yet another weapon to shred and stab and brand him with.

Except, irregardless of his desperate attempt, he can’t seem to keep that ambition locked safe and secure behind a cage of bone, the words prying their way past clenched teeth and pressed lips as if they need to be spoken, as if they need to be heard.

“I hope,” he mutters, so quietly Dabi nearly misses it.

He scoffs with a humorless laugh, appraising eyes raking over Keigo’s hunched form in a way that makes Keigo feel exposed, Dabi’s razor glare tearing him open, slicing through flesh and bone and bearing his soul to the man in front of him.

“She does,” he finally spits in an almost begrudging manner, like he’s upset about it, like the words have bitten his tongue and forced their way out licked-raw lips. “Trust me,”

A reprehensible little spark ignites in the pit of Keigo’s stomach, and he does his best not to douse it in hopeful gasoline.

Carefully, as if navigating a field of land mines, Keigo speaks, aiming to keep his voice placid, that despicable little tremor sewn into his tone imbuing his words with a certain type of pleading.

“Listen, I—I need her back, Dabi,”

“Oh, need, huh? It’s a need now, is it?”

“It’s always been a need.”

“No,” Dabi shakes his head with a tut of his tongue, a sinister smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “No, it hasn’t. It’s always been a want; heroin has always been the need here, Keigo. Don’t kid yourself.”

“I—” his voice splinters, and he clears his throat, hacking up the words. “I need her, too,”

“Not badly enough to quit, you don’t.”

An eyebrow raises in mocking question, daring Keigo to refute his statement, but his azure eyes look bored, as if they’ve been through this a million times already, as if Keigo’s some stupid child who just can’t seem to grasp a simple concept.

Maybe he is.

“It’s more complicated than that and you fucking know it.”

It’s supposed to come out strong, firm in it’s conviction, but the sentence wavers, a mirage in the desert, translucent and unstable.

“There’s absolutely nothing complicated about it,” Dabi snorts, and although there’s mirth playing in his eyes, sapphire shimmering with amusement, his features are anything but, his brows lifted ever-so-slightly and his mouth set in a slant as he digs through his coat pocket. “You love her, right?”

“Of course,”

“More than heroin?”

“More than anything,” Keigo says instantly.

“Prove it.”

Tugging his hand free from the depths of his jacket, Dabi’s fist unfurls, long fingers stretching out to reveal a bulging baggie stuffed with white powder, sitting prim and perfect in his palm.

China white.

Keigo hasn’t used China white in a long time—it’s purer, as pure as it comes, really, as pure as you can get it on the street, and a hell of a lot more expensive because of it. It’s the fucking best, the warmest, safest paradise he’s ever had the pleasure of experiencing, but Keigo’s had to resort to the sugary brown smack when his father had noticed the large sums disappearing from Keigo’s bank account a little too frequently, his suspicion growing when he discovered Keigo didn’t actually own any of the expensive sports equipment he had claimed to spend it on.

The blood in his veins itches, having sprouted tiny little thorns at the sight of his beloved, eager to scratch their way through the capillaries, to puncture tiny little holes and welcome an old friend home.

“What—” he begins, swallowing stickily, his throat dry. “What are you—”

“Prove it,” Dabi repeats, irritation bleeding into his tone, fingers wiggling a little in enticement. “I’ll give you this entire bag, free of charge, if you want it.” A pause, a moment for Keigo to digest the offer. “Or,” he continues in an amicable nonchalance. “You can choose to have your sister return home.”

Blinking several times, Keigo shakes his head as if he doesn’t understand, a frown toying with the corners of his lips. “You’re—You’re fucking with me.”

“I’m not,” Dabi assures him, shuffling his palm a little, the baggie jiggling happily.

The head shaking has become more vigorous now, his dirty golden tufts bouncing with the motion. “Bullshit,” he says, but his voice is weak, wobbling with the quiver snuggling into his chin. “There’s no way you’re giving that up for free. That’s—”

“I am,” Dabi cuts him off, impatient. “Make a decision. Dope, or your baby sister. You can’t have both, Keigo.”

Unblinking honeyed eyes stare at the bag, his nose twitching twice, large hands curled into tight, trembling fists. The fragment of a memory slashes through his mind—this same situation, this same offer, this same mistake, the afternoon Dabi took you, cautious sun hiding behind misty clouds.

But it’s beautiful, white as powdered sugar and infinitely sweeter, its plastic housing glinting in the grey light, comforting and familiar. Its allure envelopes him, soft caresses like a precious old friend, whispering enchanting promises of the most potent bliss, phantom as it twines itself through his blood, rushes through his body and sets it all at ease, makes it all alright, devouring all of his problems like the most delicious corrosive, melting his brain to a euphoric mush.

Finally, his glassy gaze meets Dabi’s, eyes shielded thickly with salt water, balancing precariously on his lash line.

He doesn’t speak.

He doesn’t need to.

It’s only when Keigo’s walking away, hand cupped protectively around the large bag in his pocket, shoulders caving in as they shudder with half-swallowed sobs, that Dabi calls out to him.

“Hey, Keigo, don’t shoot your regular amount, yeah? That shit’s more potent than what your body is accustomed to.”

His steps falter at the sound of Dabi’s voice, the soft mud molding to the soles of his sneakers, the smooth muscles of his back tensing as he listens. It’s difficult to tell whether Dabi’s concern is genuine or mocking, his tone seeming to fall somewhere between the two, wavering on the line of distinction and blurring it significantly.

After a moment of hesitation, he nods, just once, wordlessly and without a glance back.

Keigo knows how to fucking use it.

A jaded flush of revulsion courses through his body, hands trembling with the enticement of a fix: beautiful, breathtaking, jumping daintily just out of his reach, calling to him with a soft smile and pretty eyes, come catch me, come catch me, I’m here, I’m yours.

He feels fucking disgusting.

He feels disgusting as he shuts the door on Dabi, disgusting as he collapses on the couch with his little wooden box of paraphernalia, disgusting as he holds a warped, blackened spoon over a tiny flame, substance bubbling delicately.

He feels disgusting, but it’s okay, his true love vowing to make it go away, to take the pain and turn it into pleasure tenfold, to wipe his mind free of anything other than a sick paradise.

He can hear his own breath, shaky and urgent, echoing around him, eyes intent on his methodical actions. Anticipation rises in his chest as he draws the liquid into the syringe. Rubber cuts into his flesh, tied tight, tighter, veins popped and prominent, inner elbow embellished with pinpricks of red. The welcomed sting of the needle puncturing skin—press, push, pull—a gush of warmth surging through his veins a mere moment later.

And everything’s fine, everything’s fine, everything’s fine.

✰ ✰ ✰

Irregardless of your Daddy’s stern warning, and how you, for the most part, agree with it, you struggle to find the strength, the conviction, to fully cut ties with your brother. It’s too much, too scary to lose contact with the only person who shares your blood, to purposefully allow him to aimlessly flounder on his own without an anchor. You’ve drawn back drastically, of course, taking care to text him only every few days, just to check in on him, to make sure he’s still breathing, and to reassure him that you are safe.

But you hadn’t truly realized the severity of your actions, and how much it genuinely upset Dabi, until one dreary night in October, with the constant drizzle of rain from an impossibly cloudless sky, deep navy and glowing with the silver light of a nearly full moon.

The steady drool of raindrops paint the whole atmosphere in a sort of dreamy haze, softening edges and blurring lines until its all kind of melted into one another, the void sky dripping into the neon city line dripping into the muralled concrete.

It’s wistful in a way, and it makes you ache for home, for your brother and his stupid buddy-cop films and 1950s westerns, and the roar of your antique fireplace, harmonizing with the splash of rain against stone.

Swallowing past the dazed memory that has lodged itself in your throat, you pull your phone from your bag, thumb hovering over Keigo’s name.

You know it’s wrong, you know you shouldn’t, you know Dabi would be absolutely furious if you did, but you can’t quell the deep, dull pulsating twinge burrowing in your chest, a specific type of gnawing that isn’t sharp or quick but prolonged and painful, a tender pang that seems to grow with each passing second until it engulfs you entirely, until your whole body hurts, and you want nothing more than to be back in the haven of that small white house, back in the safety of your brothers arms.

As it turns out, though, he saves you from having to make that difficult decision, just as he always does, just as big brothers are supposed to, the gentle vibrations of your phone jolting through your palm.

You fumble in your haste to answer, his name flashing in large white letters across the screen procuring a rush of thick tears to flood your eyes, his honorific a jumbled mess of letters on your tongue.

He breathes your name into the receiver, and it’s so heavy you swear you can feel his breath caressing your ear.

How long has it been since you’ve heard him say your name? Since you’ve heard him say anything at all?

That ache digging through your chest finally hits your core and cracks it wide open, clean in two, releasing a sob so ferocious it rattles your ribs and shreds your throat, your free hand slapping over your mouth in a pitiful attempt to muffle it.

The torrent of tears is so dense now you can barely see at all, the watery shield rendering your vision nothing more than an incoherent blur, and you blink rapidly in an attempt to clear it, crystalline drops streaming down your cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Keigo is saying, his voice cracking on the other line, full of static and emotion. “I’m so sorry. I know I shouldn’t be calling, but I—”

“I miss you so much,” you inadvertently finish his sentence, the words weeped out. “I miss you so, so much, Kei,”

“I miss you too, sweetheart,” he whispers, and you can almost see him with his eyes squeezed shut, with his phone clutched tightly to his head. “The rain made me think of you.”

The sentiment conjures up a wet laugh, and you brush more tears from your eyes, little droplets clinging to your lashes and clumping them together in large spikes.

“It made me think of you, too,” you admit. “And your dumb cowboy movies,”

“They aren’t dumb,” he shoots back, semi-defensively. “I know you secretly love them,”

“In your dreams! They bore me to death,”

“And yet, you still watch them with me,” he hums in mock contemplation.

“Yeah, because I love you, stupid,”

Your laughter twines together, sharp thorns of longing stabbing at your lungs. For a moment, you can almost trick yourself into thinking everything is okay, everything is back to normal—that you’re just out on a date with Dabi and will be home to your peppermint pink room and loving nii-san before the night is over—the effortless banter the two of you settle into lulling you into a second of complacency before reality tears through it, with sharp claws and gnashing teeth.

“How are you?” You ask, your tone suddenly more urgent, the words flying from your mouth at a rapid pace. “Have you been eating? Have you been—Have you been cleaning them?”

The heaviness of the situation seems to weigh on Keigo, too, and he clears his throat roughly.

“Yeah, ‘course,” he coughs around the words. “‘Course I am,”

“I’ve known you my whole life, Keigo. Don’t you think I can tell when you’re lying?”

The line goes silent, embellished with the occasional pop or hiss of static, and your tongue withers in your mouth, saliva gone pungent and sour.

“I’m trying,” he finally responds, his voice tiny and tired. “I’m doing the best I can. It’s hard when…” his voice fades into nothing, but you know what he was going to say.

It’s hard when you aren’t here.

“Hey,” he begins after several prolonged minutes of silence, in that soft, sweet, coaxing voice you know so well. “Why don’t you come back home, yeah? I promise I’ll—” his voice cuts off abruptly.

He promises he’ll what? He’ll stop? He’ll get help? He’ll get better? Get clean?

If there’s one thing you know for certain about your brother, it’s that he never makes a promise he can’t keep.

The thought inspires a flash of sharp, scalding anger to slice through your chest, but you stuff it down, contain it in the recesses of your belly, to smoulder and simmer, teeth grinding together as you exhale a slow breath and try to keep your voice from trembling.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

The question is whiny and petulant, and that fury blazes in your stomach, another deep, controlled breath shoving it down again.

“I can’t, Keigo,” you repeat, this time stronger, this time firmer, the words searing your tongue, red hot from that bubbling rage blistering your insides. “I-I won’t. I won’t sit there and watch you kill yourself,”

“No,” he spits bitterly, so harshly the word bites your ear. “No, you’ll just leave me to die, and let your boyfriend do it,”

The accusation, and the fierce brutality of it, stuffed full of venomous hatred, causes you to sputter for a moment, an indignant noise catching on the back of your tongue.

He isn’t pushing that needle in your vein! You want to scream, the words turning to vaporized ghosts in your throat, murdered on sight by Dabi’s sudden emergence from the cellar.

“Who are you talking to?” Dabi asks, his voice calm and cold, the blood roaring in your ears simulating alarm bells.

You don’t even need to say it.

Frost coats your veins, extinguishing your anger and freezing your blood, rendering your body immobile save for the gentle quivering of your puckered chin, the sweet trembling of your jutted bottom lip, the infinitesimal shake of your head.

With a heavy sigh, one that heaves his chest and rolls his eyes, Dabi stalks towards you, rubber soles of his boots colliding with the tiled floors echoing the throbbing in your head, and pries your phone from your fingers.

Keigo’s talking, you think, just an unintelligible mumble of his voice flowing through your speakers, but you can’t make out what he’s trying to say, his stream of words cut off bluntly as Dabi’s thumb jabs the red END button.

He places the device on the table in front of you, eyes cold as concrete, actions slow and deliberate, before turning, almost mechanically, to continue his discussion with his friends.

You aren’t sure how much longer you stay at The League, brain nearly comatose with the situation that just occurred, limbs feeling numb and stiff as your watery eyes stare at the speckled table top, not daring to touch the incessantly vibrating device until it’s time to leave.

Finally Dabi’s hoisting you up, one large hand wrapped tightly around your elbow, and dragging you out towards his car, your feet stumbling as your toes trip over the shining asphalt.

The rain feels refreshing on your skin, the sensation restoring some calm to you, but it is a short-lived relief, strong calloused hands shoving you into the passengers seat only a moment later before slamming the door so hard the entire car shakes.

The drive home is terse with silence, sharp and suffocating, your breathing laboured yet soft, as if you’re afraid that too large, too loud a breath may shatter the thin veil of serenity cast across his face.

You steal glances at him as he navigates the city streets, unblinking eyes glaring at the road, jaw methodically flexing and unflexing, undoubtedly flowing with his thoughts.

He doesn’t speak as he hauls you from the car, doesn’t speak as he drags you up four flights of stairs, doesn’t speak as he pushes you into the apartment, exhaling a slow, controlled breath as the door bangs shut behind him.

And then, he begins.

The air around him has changed, dense with anger. You can feel it radiating off him in thick, cresting waves, fumes of fury that lave over your body with pinpricks of terror.

“Alright.” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and his forefinger. “Give me your phone.”

“What?” you breathe, clutching the device to your chest.

“You heard me,” Voice icy with a stony resolute, Dabi holds out his palm expectantly, fingers crooking in enticement when you don’t immediately obey. “Give it to me.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeats in disbelief, eyes widening, as if it’s astonishing that you are this stupid. “Because you are still giving him fucking access to you!”

“Dabi!” you cry, phone cradled tightly in both palms, the screen digging into your collarbone. “I can’t just—I can’t just give up on him! I can’t just cut him off entirely! What if he needs me? What if it’s an emergency!”

“You’re fucking ridiculous, y’know that?” Huffing out an incredulous laugh through a sharp smile, he shakes his head, as if he cannot believe your audacity right now. “No wonder he chose heroin again. It’s because you won’t fucking leave him—it’s because he knows you won’t fucking leave him; he’ll never actually lose you, so why bother giving up his true love, right?”

His voice is so mean, so vicious and dripping with venom, acidic words that burn holes through the atmosphere before they sink into your skin and erode.

“You just—You don’t get it,”

“I don’t get it?” Calloused fingers press to his chest, accentuating himself. “I don’t get it? Really?”

“Yeah, you don’t! You—You could never understand what this feels like, what it’s like to have—”

“My mother was an addict,” he cuts you off calmly, and you choke on your own words, slathered in spit and tears. “Yeah, didn’t know that one, did you,” he snaps. “My father drove her to do it—merciless brute of a man—looking for any sort of escape she could grasp. Except that didn’t work so well, because then she got reliant, needed higher and higher doses to function, to feel okay, and then the psychosis kicked in, and she poured a kettle-worth of boiling water on her youngest child.”

“I—” blinking in quick succession, your head shakes in short little motions, apologies evaporating in your throat. “Dabi, I—”

“The day she left—the day they took her—was the day I ran,” he tells you, voice strong. “The moment she was gone, there was nothing left to tether me to that family.”

His voice holds its conviction, but something flickers in the sapphire of his eyes, a dash of quicksilver, a puff of white.

It’s gone before you can inquire, blinked away with a willful forgetfulness, and then he’s continuing.

“The only one who doesn’t get it is you, sweetheart,” he seethes. “But, I mean, hey, you wanna continue to enable him? Be my fucking guest. You’re only accelerating his date with the reaper,”

“I—I just—” the words hiccup in your throat, thick with emotion. “I just don’t understand why it’s necessary to cease all communication with him!” Your head throbs, eyes shut tight against overwhelming confusion. “I get why I can’t see him, but—but can’t I leave just a thread of communication open? The thinnest, slimmest little line? Just so we can check up on each other every once in a while; just so I can make sure he’s still alive!”

“But that’s exactly the problem! He hasn’t truly lost you if you’re still bothering with him, if you’re still showing him you care!” He shakes his head, irritated. “Look. I’m not going to explain it to you again. I really don’t know how much clearer I can make it; I can’t fucking understand it for you. You are the only thing he has to—”

His voice stops suddenly, a clean cut, the type that occurs when a new thought, a better thought, slices through the previous one. Annoyance melts from his features, revealing something cold, something calculating beneath.

“Actually, that’s not exactly true, is it? You may be the most important thing he stands to lose, but you aren’t the only thing he has to lose, are you?”

Keigo’s scholarship.

Your head begins to shake—a small, automatic motion—as you blink furiously, watching as Dabi paces.

“They hide it pretty well for him, don’t they? My father, all those coaches and trainers and doctors.” He says this casually enough, but you can hear it, that sharp malicious edge of a threat buried beneath his amicable tone. “He must be making them a helluva lot of money, huh. Only a matter of time until someone slips up, though. Only a matter of time until the truth comes out.”

Sapphire glints with the implied threat, blood turned frigid in your veins.

“You wouldn’t.” You say, and although the words are supposed to be strong, assured, but they come out brittle and quivering.

“Oh, but wouldn’t I? He has to lose everything, remember? Don’t you think that includes his cherished sports scholarship?” Blinking, his head tilts, as if he’s expecting an actual answer. “Honestly, it’s a miracle he can even perform in such a condition.”

“Well—He only shoots just enough to keep from being sick on race days,” you mumble, eyes fleeing his blazing stare, nails ruthlessly picking at your cuticles. To be honest, you had wondered the same thing, several times in the past. “And I think…The coaches, they give him something. Something else; little tablets. Uh, orange.”

A look of recognition glazes Dabi’s features, smirk curling in on itself.

“Interesting. So he’s got a whole system set up and figured out, does he?” Dabi shrugs. “Well, it’s just a matter of time anyway. No addict can keep up the facade of normalcy forever. I mean, wouldn’t I be doing him a favour? Ripping that bandaid off hard and fast, forcing him to—”

“No, Dabi, please,” you breathe, head snapping up. “Not—Anything but the scholarship. Anything. I—Racing is so important to him.”

“All the more reason to—”

“Please,” you hiccup, glassy eyes pleading with him. “Don’t take this from him.”

Racing is the last—albeit light—anchor that’s keeping Keigo from floating away entirely. The thought of Dabi ripping it out from under him all because you were too selfish, all because you refused to give up the luxury of being able to contact him, hurts more than you can bear.

Dabi’s smirk turns sinister, creeping out from edges of his expertly crafted mask of concern. “Give me your fucking phone, then.”

✰ ✰ ✰

Over the next few weeks, you only see your phone once—despite knowing Dabi keeps it on his person at all times—in the subdued twilight of the autumn nights, fuchsia haze painted across Dabi’s walls diluted by the pollution of the city, Dabi’s shadowy figure crossing through it as he fishes the tirelessly vibrating device from his pocket.

“Hello?” he had answered, calm, composed. “No, she can’t come to the phone right now…No, she won’t be able to come to the phone for a long while; I think it’d be best if you’d stop calling.”

Tap, click, silence.

And, just like that, the vibrating ceases.

✰ ✰ ✰

“You’re a fucking bastard, y’know that?” Keigo’s growling the moment Dabi’s Cadillac pulls into the empty high school parking lot, soles of his sneakers stomping across the cracked concrete, the slaps echoing among the vast, empty space, pinched face illuminated by Dabi’s headlights. “A deranged fucking psycho,”

“Oh yeah?” Dabi questions, voice calm and flat as he climbs out of his car. “And why’s that?”

“Taking her fucking phone away, as if you have any authority at all to do such a thing,” he spits, features twisted in abhorrence, acid dripping off his tongue. “That’s her only line of communication—”

“To you. I know.” He taps out a cigarette from a veiny Marlboro box. “That’s why I had to confiscate it; she’s made it very clear to me that she cannot handle having access to it.”

“Cannot handle having access to it—what the fuck?”

Dabi fixes him with an unimpressed glare, face blank. “She doesn’t know how to obey simple rules. Seems like the two of you have that in common.”

“You better give it back.”

Finally, Dabi cracks a smile, half-stifled snort scrunching his nose. “Oh? Or else, what?”

“I’ll get my father involved.”

A scornful laugh twines around the cigarette perched between his teeth, Dabi nodding as he cups the flame of his zippo, words slightly muddled. “You’re a comedian tonight, aren’t you,”

“I’m serious,” Keigo snarls, but his voice tremors ever-so-slightly, and Keigo can practically see Dabi’s ears perk up, eyebrows raised a trifle in falsified surprise.

“Oh?” he asks, question exhaled with a puff of smoke, Dabi squinting at the blonde through the cloud. “Are you? And then, what? You think you’ll get off scot-free just because you’re the Chief’s son?” With a tsk, Dabi shakes his head in mock sympathy. “Nah, nah, nah, pretty boy. It doesn’t work that way. You’re just as guilty as I am, and I’m sure your sterling father would be devastated to discover he has such a pathetic junkie for a son.”

“Maybe I don’t mind sacrificing myself, too, if it puts you behind bars,” Keigo growls, eyes flashing with topaz sparks.

“Don’t be stupid, Keigo. You do something like that and I might just do something equally as idiotic: I might just replace those pretty pink pills she takes every day—you know the ones, taken at the same time each day—with a pack of sugar pills, because Christ, wouldn’t she look so beautiful with a cute round tummy stuffed full of my spawn?”

“You wouldn’t,” Keigo says, though he doesn’t feel nearly as confident as he sounds.

“Why not? Our baby would be gorgeous, don’t you think?” Dabi muses, almost wistfully, sapphire eyes turned to mist. “My eyes, her hair; my nose, her lips…Perfection.”

“You’d ruin the rest of your life with a kid,” he hisses, words sharp but raspy with desperation.

“Ruin?” Dabi questions, and he sounds genuinely surprised, blinking twice. “How would having a child with the love of my life—and binding her to me for at least the next eighteen years—ruin anything at all?”

Keigo’s breath is coming quicker now, harsh and uneven as it rushes down his raw throat, vision beginning to blur with stinging salt. Dabi’s calm is infuriating, head quirked to the side as if he had asked Keigo a sincere question that demands a sincere answer, eyes glinting smugly, something like arrogant satisfaction tugging at a corner of his lips.

A half-baked response sputters on the back of his tongue, lead sinking toxic and heavy in his stomach as he realizes that he cannot win this game against Dabi, whole resolve crumbling to ash.

“I just—Please, Dabi, for God’s sake, I just want to talk to my sister,” the words are whiny and cracked, not a request but a plead.

“You can,” Dabi responds with a shrug of indifference, juxtaposed by the rapidly growing grin on his face. “It’s simple, really. All you have to do is stop being a fucking addict. But you can’t even do that, huh? Not even for your precious princess of a baby sister. Pathetic, that’s what you are.”

A forceful exhale, sharp and strong, halts the twitching of Keigo’s nose, his chin puckered with the trembling of his bottom lip, jaw flexing as he swallows down the excess saliva collecting on his tongue.

The world has turned into a quivering, blurry haze, objects turned to abstract, avant-grade versions of their former selves, with wiggling lines and blurred edges, lights diffused to massless, shapeless entities.

He refuses to blink, determined to keep the tears obstructing his vision safely behind his lashes, though every word that falls from Dabi’s lips drives that stake of disgust further into his soul.

Because regardless of whatever personal qualms Keigo has with Dabi and Dabi has with Keigo, he’s right. It’s true, it’s all true, and why can’t Keigo quit already? Why is he having so much trouble with this? Everything has always come so easy for Keigo, why isn’t this the same? Why can’t he quit?

“You clearly love heroin a hell of a lot more than you love her,” Dabi continues in that same insouciant lilt, though sadistic amusement sparkles in his eyes. “If you didn’t you would’ve already quit by now, right?”

Keigo shakes his head, choking on his own tears. “I’m trying.”

“Are you? Then why’d you meet me tonight? Why’d you call me two days ago, asking for another two fucking grams?”

Why? Why is Keigo in love with such poison? Why can’t Keigo kick the habit? Get help? Be better? Why can’t Keigo find the strength, the motivation, the willpower to go through with it for good? Why does the thought of never shooting up again fucking terrify him, crack his heart in two and devour the pieces in a bottomless black hole?

“Do you know how much she cries over you?” Dabi spits, eyes narrowed, throwing his cigarette at Keigo’s feet. “Do you know how much fucking pain you put my baby through? Why do you want to see her, when all you do is upset her?”

“I need to see her,” Keigo croaks, the words mechanical at this point, tears streaming down his face.

“Why would I ever allow you access to her again? Why would I subject her to that? She doesn’t deserve that, does she?”

So many whys, all echoing through his head, all in your voice. Why did he do it? Why did he start? Why didn’t he quit when it was early, when he was ahead? Why can’t he quit now? Why can’t he switch to something else, something less lethal, something more controlled (as if such a thing has ever existed for a drug addict)? Why does he still want to do this, when it’s destroying his body, destroying his life?

“Does she?” Dabi presses, sharp.

“No,” he weeps. “No, she deserves a good, sober big brother,”

“Exactly,” Dabi seethes. “But her big brother only cares about this.”

He pulls from his car a large ziplock bag, full of small white squares.

Forty little baggies, prim and pretty and perfect, the headlights of Dabi’s car casting a sick, haloed glow around them.

“I took the liberty of separating it into dime bags for you,” Dabi says, though his sounds revolted, face screwed up in bitter disdain, as if his own kindness has left a horrid flavour on his tongue. “So you don’t shoot too much at once and fucking kill yourself.”

Voice evaporating to smoke in his throat, Keigo blanches, gaze glued to the plastic clutched in Dabi’s fist.

It’s hard to believe Dabi’s done such a thing, hard to believe Dabi’s capable of thinking about anyone but himself at all. Keigo’s always thought all of this—this whole act he charades, about caring for you, about caring for Keigo, in some backwards sense—as something for Dabi’s own selfish benefit, some sort of twisted game he’s been playing with some sort of goal or gain in mind. He never thought Dabi actually meant anything he said—the man known to be a stellar actor when he wants to be, not unlike Keigo himself—never thought there was any sort of true emotion or feeling behind those sentiments.

But this—this is something else, this is something different. This is action, effort, separate from mere words.

He coughs on his shock, stuttering out sticky words of thanks, but Dabi merely rolls his eyes, shoving the bag into Keigo’s chest so hard he nearly falls over.

“Don’t fucking thank me,” Dabi snaps, not bothering to look back as he walks towards his car, keys jingling in his palm, fidgety, nervous. “You’re dancing on glass, Keigo, and it’s starting to crack. This shit will kill you one day; there’s no way around it.”

✰ ✰ ✰

Christmas comes and goes, your foster parents’ impromptu trip to the Bahamas saving you from having to explain why your boyfriend will not allow you to attend the family Christmas Dinner this year. We’ll have a celebration and exchange gifts in the new year, they promise, but you know it will never come, expensive presents wrapped in luxurious golds and reds doomed to lay in wait for a whole extra twelve months, collecting a fine film of dust in your parents’ basement.

New Years comes and goes, too, the eve of the next year spent surrounded by Dabi’s friends, with the lifeline to your kin held safe and secure in your boyfriend’s pockets.

Idly, you wonder what Keigo might be doing for New Years—he had always taken you and your friends out with him to one of those extravagant parties he always seems to be invited to; will he be going this year, alone for the first time in how many years?

Probably not.

Don’t kid yourself, Tomura had told you, in his special blunt nature, the words somehow simultaneously soothing and stinging. He’s getting high like every other year. Only this time, he’s doing it without you.

He’s probably right.

The thought makes your chest ache, wavering images of your big brother blissfully fucked up on opium, head thrown back against the couch as lidded eyes flit and flutter delicately, a needle still stuck in his arm slithering through your mind. Is he feeling as miserable as you are, right now? Is he feeling as alone, as lonely, as hopeless as you do? Does he miss you nearly as much as you miss him?

These questions grow louder and heavier with each passing day, weighing on your conscious until, finally, something breaks.

It was inevitable. You had both known it was. It was only ever just a matter of time; a matter of when, of how, but never of why.

Everyone knew why.

It’s been building for a while now, chipped bricks stacking atop one another in some sort of sick, precarious game of Tetris, another added with each freedom snatched from you, another added with every panged memory of Keigo.

It’s something innocuous that does it, that finally sends those decaying bricks tumbling down in a heap of dust and rubble, shattering to pieces upon impact and releasing the monster it had housed.

Dabi’s old television flickers idly, murmuring softly to itself as you sit cross-legged on his bed, a textbook between your thighs and a highlighter cap between your teeth. It bathes the small bachelor apartment in faded blues and washed out purples, casting long shadows across the warped wooden floorboards.

You’re barely paying attention, the screen set on some borderline decrepit channel that cycles through old game shows and sitcoms from the 90s, but you’d know that jingle anywhere.

The first few cheerful notes leak through the television’s weak speakers, distorted with the hiss of static, and your head snaps up, a razored little gasp slicing your throat.

It’s a commercial for some sort of gummy fruit snack—a snack that you and Keigo were, admittedly, not usually allowed to have, though your foster mother indulged the two of you on select occasions: when you had been exceptionally well-behaved, or when you had managed to ambush her in the snack aisle at the grocery store, a bright box clutched tightly to your chest as Keigo expertly listed all of the reasons the both of you should be allowed such a treat.

But despite how desperately you wanted to indulge in the treat, the advertisement had mortified you as a child; a sort of grotesque scene consisting of children’s heads exploding into a variety of terrifying fruits subsequent to ingesting the snack. Keigo had teased you about it at first, remarking that someone would have to be a real idiot to think that such a ridiculous thing would actually happen in real life.

Right, you had agreed with a shaky nod, desperate to be as smart and brave as your big brother. Of course, how silly. You were just kidding about being scared, duh.

It wasn’t until he finally got a packet in his palm for the very first time—something he had managed to sweet talk another student into giving him—that he realized how afraid you truly were.

Hey, he had said, golden eyes rippling with worry, such an expression much too serious for a child of his age. It’s alright, it won’t actually happen, he pinky swears.

You had given a small, uneasy nod in response, unable to banish the weariness from your features as you gazed at the colourful little candies.

Look, he plucked one of the gems from his hand, holding it carefully between his thumb and forefinger. I’ll go first, okay?

When nothing happened after he swallowed, his head keeping its normal, human shape, he pushed his palm towards you, gently urging you to try one next.

It’s a sweet memory, one that stings your eyes and burns your throat, fragments of the two of you later joking about the stupid commercial spearing through your mind, Keigo earnestly asking you which fruit you’d want your head to turn into (a strawberry, you had said), this little game becoming increasingly absurd as time went on, answers morphing from strawberries and lemons to gigantic watermelons, too big for your necks to hold.

You glance towards the bathroom door, rendered nothing more than a bleary, wavering rectangle of taupe wood parallel to your spot on the bed.

The shower’s still running, the uneven spray from the old, rusting head hissing against the limestone tiles, symphonic stream interrupted by Dabi’s body as he moves beneath it.

His jeans lay crumpled and abandoned near the foot of the bed, a small mountain of creased black denim on the floor, his trademark white t-shirt curled around them like an ivory reservoir.

Fingers curling in the sheets, you swallow thickly, unblinking gaze trained on the pile of clothing.

You know it’s there, buried deep within the fabric. You know you shouldn’t touch it, know that even if you miraculously manage to get away with using it that he’ll know in an instant, that he’ll be able to tell it’s been moved simply by the way you place it back in it’s cocoon of denim.

But the need to hear Keigo’s voice, even if just for a second or two, is too strong a pull, overriding any sense of judgement or risk assessment.

Your hands tremble while your fingers sift through the jeans, fumbling and unsteady as they dive into the material, finding your phone, at last, in the back right pocket. The screen awakens as you lift it to your face, bright white light straining your eyes.

Quick little pants escape your lips as your thumbs work, hastily scrolling through your contacts until you find his honorific and jab at it three times, rushing blood and ragged breath leaving your ears deaf, muting everything except for the drone that echoes through the phone’s speaker.

It’s halfway through the second ring that the bathroom door swings open and he emerges, steam clinging to his bare chest in crystalline beads, a ratty white towel hanging low on his hips, bones jutting out from beneath the fabric.

Shards of ice form in your veins, sharp and prickly, eyes not leaving his as you wrench the device away from your ear and slam down on the red END button, silencing the voice that was just beginning to answer.

For a moment, everything is still, stiff, silent, your breath held dense and stagnant in your lungs as you wait.

He breaks it with a rancorous little chuckle and a roll of his eyes, scoff dripping with incredulity as he turns towards the small bedside table and pulls open a drawer, rooting around for a pair of clean briefs.

“Whatcha got there, baby?”

He doesn’t look at you as he speaks, but you can see the thorny smirk etched into his face, the corners of his lips twitching with fury. To the untrained ear, his voice would sound painfully indifferent, almost patronizing in a way, as if the current predicament you’ve found yourself in is entirely insignificant. But you can hear it, the notes of anger infused in his tone, boiling just beneath the surface.

You must take too long to answer, response morphing to frost in your throat, because then he’s turning towards you, flames of sapphire raging in his eyes, his glare scathing your skin.

“When Daddy asks you a question, he expects a fucking answer.”

The fire blazing in his eyes thaws your voice and you sputter, choking on the words in your haste to spit them from your mouth.

“I just—I wanted—It’s not, I mean, I wasn’t—”

Head cocking in mock confusion, he frowns and furrows his brow, the inferno in his stare still scalding.

“You just, what?”

The soles of his bare feet slap against the hardwood as he prowls towards you, each movement slow, steady, calculated.

“You wanted, what?”

The sound echoes out among the small apartment, sick and sharp, and he shrugs, eyebrows raising as if enticing an answer from you.

“You weren’t, what?”

Finally, he reaches you, his thighs mere inches from your face, azure glowering down the slope of his nose.

“Huh?”

“I—I miss him, Daddy,” you nearly wail, harsh sniffles sandwiched between your words. “I just wanted to—to hear his voice, just for a moment, I swear, I didn’t mean to break the rules, I don’t—I’m not trying to be bad, I promise, there was just this commercial, and—”

“Excuses,” Dabi spits, features warped with aversion, squinted eyes and a screwed up mouth. “You know, I do so much for you. I do so much for you, and all I ask is that you obey a few simple ground rules, so I can keep you fucking safe,” a pause, a harsh breath, “and what do you do? You continue to treat me with this—this blatant disrespect: you spit in my face, you sneak around behind my back, you lie to me—”

“I’m not lying!” you squeal, free hand pawing at his denim-clad thigh. “I promise you on my life, on Keigo’s life—”

“Well that’s not worth much,”

“—that I’m telling you the honest truth!” your voice cracks with earnest, and Dabi scoffs, stepping back from your vying fingers as if he’s downright disgusted. The sudden lack of support has your whole body crumpling, shoulders curling in on themselves, ribs rattling with the irregular stretch and compress of heaving sobs.

“The honest truth,” he snorts to himself. “You really expect me to believe that bullshit? After all you’ve shown me time and again is how fucking selfish you are?”

“Sel—” Selfish?

“Yeah, that’s right,” he sneers, twisted triumph infused in his smirk. “Selfish. You’re greedy, craving the artificial comfort familiarity bears, not caring whether or not your brother gets better, not allowing him to truly hit rock bottom and instead teasing him with flitting interaction, like a cat with a string.”

“I—I—” Incoherent static, the fuzz of confusion, permeates your brain, razored little breaths exhaled harsh and uneven as your vision wavers, fat tears racing down your cheeks. “What are you talking about?” Your voice is shattered to fragments, raw in your throat. “Dabi, I can’t just abandon him entirely. He’s the only family I have!”

“Not anymore!” Dabi roars, but the flames flickering in his eyes are full of fear, of hurt. “I’m your family now, too. Aren’t I?”

Even through your thick tears you can see the heartbreak on his face. It dribbles through that expertly crafted mask he always puts on at times like this; when he wants to hide his truths—feelings and thoughts—from anyone who might be capable of deciphering them.

It’s in his voice, in the way it wavers on certain words, in the way it fades nearly to a whisper, soft and shattered, before it restores itself to a bellowing roar as his fury overtakes his pity yet again.

“God, if you’d just—just leave him alone, if you’d just let him be to realize that there is something important at stake here and it is worth getting better for then maybe he’d already be in a rehab program.” A hand cards roughly through his hair, fingers tugging at the strands. “But you only keep popping up, reminding him that you’re still there for him, you still care for him, that you’re not going anywhere no matter what he does, even if that thing is killing himself, slowly.”

It still makes no sense to you, how merely checking in on your brother equals any sort of enabling, but you can’t seem to stitch the question together, words welded with spit, emotion overriding your brain.

“I want my brother,” you whimper brokenly, crumpling in on yourself, desperate for Keigo’s arms, Keigo’s warmth, that special type of comfort only a big brother can provide. “I want my big brother.”

“Sorry,” Dabi snarls. “Niisan’s too busy being a Goddamn junkie to give a shit about you. When are you going to realize that he loves that drug more than he’s ever loved you!”

“M’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry,” you’re weeping, nails digging into the flesh of your knees, clutching your legs to your chest, each sob sending violent shivers rippling through your body. “I don—I don’t know what to do, I dunno how to help! It all feels…” Wrong. It all feels wrong. No matter what you do, or what you say, it all feels so wrong, like nothing will ever truly be enough.

Dabi stares at you for a moment, crystal eyes hard and assessing, before finally he sighs, chest heavy with it, and drops to his knees in front of you.

Slim fingers work to uncurl your own, loose and uncommitted, removing the device from your palms. He doesn’t have to use force, doesn’t have to pry it from your fingers or tear it from your grasp as trembling hands offer it up to him, your head bowed, terrified to meet the diluted hell in his gaze.

He pulls you into his lap a moment later, after the phone is safe and secure on his person, hugging you to his chest as he murmurs out indistinct comforts into your hair.

The words don’t register, voice nothing more than a soothing vibration against you cheek, and you cling to him tighter, desperate for someone to gather up all of your shards and keep you put together—keep you from falling to pieces entirely—his love the only force keeping you here, real, whole.

You have nothing and no one left but him.

Or so it seems.

✰ ✰ ✰

It’s an unassuming Tuesday, when it finally happens.

It’s as if the circumstances had been perfectly tailored by fate himself: your final afternoon class ends just over a whole hour early on this particular Tuesday, following an unfortunate mishap between your professor’s laptop and his coffee, leaving you with nothing to do but time to kill.

Dabi usually converges with his suppliers on Tuesdays—his busiest day of the week by far, comprised of meetings and testings, inventory and accounting—which means Tomura more often than not picks you up from class.

The sky is a blistering blue, the unrestrained sun beaming down on glittering waves of undisturbed snow. It’s blinding, but it’s welcomed; a nice break from the monotonous grey you have come to expect cementing the sky.

Yet, despite the bright sun unhindered by clouds, the day is cold, full of sharp winds and frosty air that gobbles up your clouds of breath nearly as quickly as they form.

You shield your eyes from the harsh light as you step out into the frigid atmosphere, squinted eyes scanning the campus idly, a glint of gold snapping your gaze to the left.

You’d know that head of unruly curls anywhere.

For a moment you’re unable to move, feet frozen to the ground as your lungs fill with ice, each stuttered breath like icicles ripping through your throat, leaving the flesh stinging and raw.

He doesn’t see you—not at first, anyway—jogging around the well-maintained track outfitted in black spandex and red shorts, bounding along to whatever song is currently playing through his headphones.

Even from your distance, you can tell that he’s lost weight, the spandex that used to cling to him like second skin gone sagging and slack, baggy shorts hanging lower on his hips than they used to.

Tears flood your eyes, thickly blurring your vision and you blink rapidly, two mittened hands moving to swipe viciously at them, scratchy wool rough against the skin of your cheeks. A hiccuped sob catches painfully in your chest, heavy and stuffed full of saliva as it tangles on your sternum.

That’s when he notices.

Feet skid to a stop on the track, kicking up a thin cloud of dust from the frozen floor, his shoulders heaving as his body stills, straight as a rod.

Time slows, just for a short instant, seconds dripping by sticky and sedated as the universe allows you a moment to process this, to savour it, before it kicks your body into gear, thawing your limbs and clearing your mind, your legs snapping into action and immediately taking off in the direction of your big brother.

You hurdle into his chest with such force it nearly knocks him off balance, heels teetering a little as he catches you in his arms and crushes you to his body. Delicate hands fist in the fabric of his shirt as you attempt to pull him impossibly closer, gripping him so tightly it feels as though your knuckles are going to slice right through your skin, stretched taut and firm over the bones.

Lithe fingers flex too hard on your waist as he holds you just as firmly, murmured apologies spilling from his lips into your hair.

You can barely make out his words, too slurred with spit and muffled with tears to be properly legible, but it doesn’t matter—you already know what he’s trying to say.

Burning salt leaks from your eyes and you burrow your face into his bony chest, a vicious sob shredding through your torso with such vigour it sends tremors throughout your bones.

“Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay, niisan is here, niisan has you,” you feel his voice vibrate against your scalp, but it’s gruff, hoarse, weighed with such heavy sadness it sounds like it’s about to split apart.

“What—What are you—?”

“My training schedule has shifted a little for the new year,” he explains with a wet laugh, squeezing you to his chest again.

Cold fingertips press into jutting bones as your hands roam his back; the knobby vertebrae at the nape of his neck, the sharp shoulder blades in his upper back, the bumpy ribs at the dip of his waist.

He hasn’t been eating.

Of course he hasn’t; you haven’t been there to make him, to check up—check in—on him, to cook him his favourite meals and coax him into having at least a few bites while he’s higher than heaven.

You aren’t spared a minute to inquire about it, though, Keigo pulling back and cradling your salt-stained face between his palms, peppering you with kisses—your forehead and your cheeks and your nose—as garbled sentiments spill from his lips; God, it’s been months now, hasn’t it? and He never got to give you your Christmas present this year and How are you? How is Dabi treating you? Has he hurt you? and Christ, he misses you so fucking much he can’t stand it, each tumbling from his tongue at such a fast pace the words collide and clash, as if he’s worried you’re suddenly going to disappear, going to be snatched from his very palms before he’s able to get it all out.

“Keigo, Keigo, Keigo,” you’re nearly weeping, fingers aching from the strength of their grip on his shirt. “Please, please, I miss you so much, I’m so —I’m so lonely.”

“I’m here, songbird, I’m here.”

In the distance, someone hollers his name, followed by an order, too muddled by the blood surging in your ears for you to comprehend.

Cursing under his breath, Keigo looks down at you, regret tugging at his mouth. “I have —I have to get back to training now—”

“No!” you gasp, dainty hands tightening in the fabric. “No, Kei-nii, please, I don’t want you to go.”

“I know,” he says softly, nose twitching with the threat of tears. “But it’s okay, alright?” Gloved thumbs run across your cheekbones, mopping up drops of crystals. “It’s okay, because you and I, we’re going to make a plan.”

#dabi x reader #dabi smut #bnha smut #todoroki touya x reader #todoroki touya x smut #dabi #takami keigo #tw toxic relationship #tw drugs #tw minimal prep

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