farewell!

I no longer write here! details in pinned.

[farewell-itoshisoup]

the end of itoshisoup!

hi guys! I've turned off my inbox here because tomorrow it will be the eve of my new year and I've decided it's now or never 🫡 I will be moving to @yinyuedijun for the foreseeable future and taking the following wips with me:

everything related to my dan heng fics/series

higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea

there's a bluebird in my heart

desire path

I will unfortunately be dropping all other wips, but on the off-chance I ever pick one of them up again, I'll be coming back here to post it.

here's what I will be doing with the soup moving forward:

over the next few weeks, I will be doing my best to clear out my inbox here, and transferring/linking all my wips to the new place

after all my fics have been ported over/moved to ao3, I will be changing the url of this blog and archiving itoshisoup

from then on, I will be predominantly using this blog to post/reblog political actions, primarily relating to palestine. you may see me pop back in here for interactions/replying to comments every so often - but the main purpose of keeping this blog around will be political actions.

and that'll be the end of the soup!

now, with all that housekeeping out of the way, please humour me and allow me to soapbox a little lol:

thank you to everyone who's supported my writing here over the past 7 years. not to get soggy on main, but it's hard to put into words how much this space means to me, both as a writer and as a person. I think everyone here knows atp that there's something pathological about my writing habits and creative drive lol, so thank you all for sticking through my unbearable writing shitposts and batshit craziest fics 🫡 you are truly god's strongest soldiers.

but ALSO, aside from writing - it's also just been absurdly fun here LOL. I crack up just thinking about literally every era of this blog. our moon daddy era, our megumi hair discourse era, our glock posting era, the thirsty rin anons, the thirstIER dan heng anons... everyone from my og magi readers to my aot mutuals to my feral jjk anons to my fellow dh enjoyers - I am genuinely so fond of you all. thank you for being on this creative journey with me, and thank you for allowing me to be part of yours!!!!

there is absolutely no pressure to follow me to my new blog, but it'd mean the world to me if you did <3 and in return, I will do my very best to make it a creative, fun, and safe space!!

see you on the other side!

[farewell-itoshisoup]

higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 5

dabi x f!reader, shouto x f!reader

“I’m so sorry, Shouto.” Your eyes are so hot, but you do not cry. You wept so often in front of Touya, but it is different with Shouto, who is younger than you and more fragile and completely motherless. “You can always come to me. I promise I’ll always help you.” The ruin of Sekoto Peak flashes before your eyes, all that charcoal and death and flowers turned to ash. You recall the jawbone that Todoroki Rei had cradled in her arms, the lone remnant of her son that she had to place into his urn, crossing chopsticks with his killer. You cannot let Shouto become another jar full of ashes.

notes: 12.7k+ words of childhood friends to stockholm syndrome! warnings for childhood abuse (pertaining to Shouto), implied feelings from Shouto despite a 5-year age gap, discussions of disordered eating and body image in relation to hero society, non-explicit flashes to the noncon events of the previous chapters, and Buddhist themes. please try to read chapters 4 and 5 together—they are meant to be experienced as one segment.

YOU

xiii. riverside

(Dabi will hold you.

After half a lifetime of grief and an eternity without sunlight, you will wake up in an ice-cold room and Dabi will be holding you. Tightly and with tenderness, if a little clumsiness. Every inch of his body will feel stiff with uncertainty when he does it—like it's foreign, like it’s fragile, like it's a dream.

Like it’s a dream, but not one of your usual nightmares. You will no longer be building towers under a blood orange sky, no longer stranded on the shore of some empty river; you will instead be cocooned in someone’s arms, and it will feel all too familiar: salt tracks on your face, traces of wetness. A body that is unbearably warm, midsummer heat coupled with adrenaline. Bones that ache to the core, a throbbing pain in your chest that your quirk cannot touch. You will imagine opening your eyes and finding yourself on a bench outside a convenience store, wrapped up in a redheaded boy with white streaks in his hair.

But then you'll realise that you are wide awake, held by your kidnapper in the pitch darkness of his room. The stench of cigarettes will settle in your lungs. This is Dabi, not Touya, but it's like he’s eleven years old and holding you for the first time all over again.

You'll wonder when was the last time he embraced someone.

I didn't love any of them, you will remember. Only you.

You will open your eyes, and you will find a lost child staring back at you.)

xiv. atonement

After Todoroki Rei is locked away, you resolve to make good on your promise.

You visit the Todoroki household routinely, bearing small gifts and updates on your life and pleasant smiles for a man you will never forgive. You tell Enji that you are visiting Fuyumi and Natsuo, that you’re still friends with the two of them despite Touya’s passing, but really—you are there for Shouto. For Shouto, and for Touya, and for their missing mother.

With each visit, you go to Touya's room without fail, always offering fruit and flowers and incense. The sandalwood smoke stings your eyes, but you stay there a long time, saying your apologies to Touya. You try to explain to him that you are helping Shouto because his mother asked you to, and because you cannot allow his father to inflict Shouto with the same wounds that he gave to Touya. Helping Shouto is the most I can do for you, you tell his spirit. You know, after all, that he’ll never pass peacefully if his father doesn’t change his ways.

Once, Endeavor comes upon you mid-offering. He sits down beside you, studying Touya's photo.

"You were very close to my son," he starts.

You are quiet.

"Touya was so troubled, but he was always smiling around you."

You think he must have talked to Rei about this.

"Where do you think I went wrong?"

Now you are looking at Endeavor, eyes a little wide. And—you don't like it, looking at this large, powerful man who inflicted so many wounds upon his wife and children. You don't like seeing him praying for the son whom he killed. You do not like his regretful expressions, his human grief, his dimensions that make him seem less like a monster and more like a broken man.

He is not as heartless as you thought he was, and you hate it.

(Dabi will not like it, either. He will listen to this with his false jaw clenched, his eyes cold with fury. You can see, in real time, his struggle to reconcile your memories with his delusions. You will wonder if he will push you onto the bed and force himself inside you, as punishment for telling him these things.

But in the end, even as his fist curls and fire burns at his fingertips, he doesn’t lash out. He only burns himself, leaving his wrists blistering and raw. You will want to reach out and touch his wounds, but you think it would just make him angrier.)

"I have an idea of what I did wrong," Endeavor adds, "but I'd like to know your thoughts. Touya must have shared things with you that he didn't share with anyone else."

He did, you want to say. He shared so many things with you. He shared with you his deepest hopes, which included him wanting to be a hero—not because of his father, but because he wanted to protect you. He shared with you his wounds, which he took as a sign of his father's love. And after those wounds scarred over, he shared: My father no longer wants me. I’ll never be good enough for him. I’ll never be good enough for anyone.

Touya told you that he didn't care about anyone more than you, but really, you think that the person he cherished most was actually his father.

(That's why he wants to destroy Endeavor more than anyone else, you will think when he is on top of you, as his fingers dig bruises into your waist. And then when he is inside you, scarring your viscera, you will think: Maybe this means he loved me, after all.)

You organise these thoughts in silence. Endeavor waits.

"I caught a glimpse of Shouto today," you finally say. "He looked like he wanted to play with us."

A pause.

“Is that where I went wrong with Touya? Is that what you're saying?” Endeavor looks down. “I told him so many times to go out and make more friends. To do other things than training.”

You think of Touya's aimless stare atop that rooftop.

“I don't think he knew how.” You never taught him, after all.

During the silence that passes between the two of you, you listen to the ticking from Endeavor's watch. The seconds pass by. Shouto is ageing, but Touya is no longer.

Incense is burning in your lungs, mingling with the stench of Seven Stars and those burning camellias on Sekoto Peak.

"You’re doing well in U.A.," he finally says. "A lot of pros are talking about you because of the sports festival. You're going to be a fine hero." After a pause, Endeavor decides, “You'd be a good influence on Shouto. It would be good for him to talk to you.”

You agree. You will be a good influence, an even better influence than with Touya. You won't make the same mistakes with Shouto. You will protect him, and you will teach him to protect himself, and you will make it known that there is a life beyond his father's vision. You will let him know that there is a life he can make his own.

You will let him know that refuge is within his reach.

xv. redo

You are allowed to properly meet Todoroki Shouto for the first time that spring.

He is just a child, but it is clear that the events of the past year have forced him to grow up far too quickly, obvious from the weary and suspicious look he gives you when he first greets you. You know he has seen you around the house, has waved at you on occasion and ducked away as soon as you sent him back a smile or said hello, but there has been no actual conversation until now. He's been kept so tightly chained to his father that he never got the chance to talk to you. He does not trust the fact that he is suddenly allowed to see you, and it is obvious from the way he talks to you.

“My dad thinks talking to you will help me become a hero,” he says. Chilly tone. No honorifics. You raise a brow.

“Maybe. I’m just supposed to be a good influence.”

“You’re supposed to be my father’s influence,” he replies, and you find yourself staring at this too-old child, floored by the chill in his voice.

You lean down so that you are eye level with him. You hope that Endeavor is not watching from the engawa or through any window, and if he is, you hope that he cannot see your face when you reply, “That’s what your father thinks, but I have other plans for us.” You give him a conspiratorial wink. “You’ll keep them a secret, right?”

Shouto blinks, suspicion giving way to surprise. “Plans?”

“Yup.” You straighten up, smiling at him. “Have you ever been to the arcade, Shouto?”

He stares at you, wide-eyed, off-guard, his eyes fixed upon your smiling face.

(In several years’ time, when Shouto is a grown man and living away from home, he will drink with you while you chatter about your painful first meeting. You weren't a cute kid at all! You were so cold to me! you'll laugh. Pink will dust his cheeks.

“Sorry about that,” he will say. “I shouldn’t have been so rude to you.”

You will smile at him, then put your fingers into his hair, disorganizing his middle part. “All water under the bridge, Shouto.” You'll smile fondly at him, and his eyes will linger on your expression. You'll wonder if there is something on your face, because he seems unable to look away.)

Over the years, you are only allowed to see Shouto every once in a while—his father’s grip on him remains unyielding—but you make the most out of each chance. During your tutoring sessions, you sneak him sweets that his father would never allow him to have. When you are supposed to be helping him train, you instead take him to the arcade and play fighting games with him, smiling fondly each time he declares that he’ll be playing as his idol, All Might. You walk him to that bridge at the edge of your neighbourhood and make him peer over the railing, down at the sunlit river below. You take his hand, like Touya sometimes did with you, and the two of you free-fall into the water.

His expression is usually impassive throughout this all—or sometimes nervous—but you hope he feels the joy that you once did with Touya.

Or the joy that Touya was supposed to feel with you.

“I never thought I’d do things like this,” Shouto eventually blurts out during a diving session at the river, after he comes up to the surface.

“No?”

“Yeah. My father would never approve.” He frowns as he floats on his back, kicking in the water.

“I know.” A long pause. The sun is tinted red, enlarging as it drops toward the horizon. Voice softer, you admit, “Touya and I had to sneak around a lot to do fun things. Stuff like diving off this bridge, and more.”

You hear a splash. Shouto is upright now, looking at you as he wades in the water. His stare on you is intense, and hints at discomfort. It's been a year since Touya’s passing, but you still feel your heart jump with anxiety, wondering if you’ve resurfaced any pain.

“Let’s get out of the river,” you suggest quickly. “The sun is going down. It’ll get cold soon.”

Shouto wades to the shore with you obediently. By the time the two of you are wringing water out of your clothes, the sun is a blood orange, just like in your dreams. The longer the quiet stretch lasts, the more you squirm with nausea. Touya’s memory allows for no easy silences.

Finally, the young boy beside you asks, “Did Touya-nii get to play with you like this? All the time?” He sounds more curious than upset.

You have to hold back a sigh of relief. “Often,” you reply. “We, um, trained a lot together too. With our quirks.”

Shouto nods, expression unchanging. He stares at the grass at his feet, looking thoughtful.

“Why don’t we head back to my place?” you say, after another silence. “I can dry our clothes, and I’ll help you with your English homework. Your father will wonder what we were doing if it’s not done by the time you go back.”

Shouto nods. He remains quiet as you walk back, and your mind wanders to all the times you walked this path from the river back with Touya, sometimes with Rei. Often she'd point at all the flora and talk about their meanings in flower language—something her mother taught her, so naturally she wanted to teach you and Touya as well.

Touya had written it off as a stupid, girly topic—or one for snobby old families like the Himura clan, which he wasn't really part of—but he always ended up asking her questions. You think he liked seeing her smile at his curiosity. You think he liked to make you smile, too, because if he ever caught you staring at a flower, he'd turn to his mother and insist she talk more about it. Sometimes he'd pick one and casually examine it before handing it over to you for no reason—just in case you wanted to look too, that's all! He once fell into a pond trying to grab a lotus blossom you'd been studying.

You are deep in this memory, enough so to smile, when Shouto asks—

“Did Touya-nii make you happy?”

You pause, staring at him.

For a moment, you're lost for words. Everyone always talks about how you made Touya so happy, how you were so special to him, how he opened his heart to you and you alone right before he died. No one has ever asked about your happiness.

“Yes,” you admit aloud for the first time. “He made me happier than anyone else.”

Shouto looks down at his feet. He kicks pebbles as he walks, and they roll across the dirt path. He is silent the rest of the way back, and you wonder if you’ve made him sad. You don’t know if Touya ever made Shouto especially happy, after all. You think Shouto’s existence might have been too much of a sore spot for him to do that.

(You will understand Touya's warpath against Endeavor. You will understand his violence toward you. These are both things you cannot deny him—both things you have no choice but to forgive.

But even if you understand his desire to hurt Shouto, you will not be able to allow it.)

For years after that, you try your hardest not to talk about Touya. Without bringing up his deceased brother, you continue to mentor Shouto, just as Endeavor wants. Sometimes this involves sneaking him out to festivals with Natsuo and Fuyumi; sometimes it involves taking him to the theatre to watch big budget action flicks; sometimes it involves ruffling his hair when you’re teasing him; and sometimes it involves helping him with his math homework. Like Touya, it seems to be his worst subject.

Sometimes it involves cutting little rabbit-apples for him, to which he always gives a distasteful look. “But I’m not a kid anymore,” he always says, annoyed. Still, he always stares quietly at the slices when he thinks you’re not looking, and he always eats them without fail.

Sometimes your mentorship involves actually training with him, like his father wants. You start doing it only because Shouto insists on it—it has nothing to do with his father, he tells you when he starts pressing you about it. It's All Might he wants to be like. And because it's something he wants to do for himself, you nod and humour him.

The first time you tear a trapped foot out of his ice and he sees your torn flesh, he is so horrified that he completely forgets about fighting you.

“Are you okay?” he asks, alarmed. “Do you need first aid? Should I carry you back inside?”

You try not to laugh at the mental image of him—a scrawny kid—struggling to piggyback you, and reassure him, with a straight face: “It’s fine, Shouto. You don’t have to worry so much.” You lift a foot up, and he watches your flesh stitch together on the spot. “My quirk always heals me. I’m already better, see?”

You’re about to start lecturing him on the limits of his quirk, how he shouldn’t rely on it so much in case he runs into something like you, but then his eyebrows furrow and he says, in a tiny voice, “But it still hurts you. And I don’t like seeing you get hurt.”

Well, that’ll make it hard if you want to spar with me, you want to joke, but something about his words sets off a strange sense of déjà vu, and longing, and hollowness.

(In two years' time, Shouto will listen to you describe an upcoming mission: your most dangerous one yet. “This assignment is too dangerous for you to do on your own,” Shouto will protest. Warm tone, worried expression. Still no honorifics, though. “I have my provisional license now—please, let me go with you. I can keep you safe.”

“I’m basically immortal, Shouto. I don’t need protection.” You smile at him, and you hope your expression looks more reassuring than confused. “Anyway, I’m your senior—it’s my job to keep you safe. Not the other way around.”)

Sometimes your mentorship involves sitting down with him in the privacy of his yard, when Endeavor is on patrol, and asking him if he has any injuries that you can heal for him. Even when it’s obvious that he’s in pain, he lies to you for several years in a row. “No, I’m fine,” he’ll say, or “No, there’s nothing wrong,” or, most frequently: “No, there’s nothing you can help me with.” But you gain his trust gradually, and one day, when the pain gets to be too much, he finally opens up.

Shouto is twelve years old when he cries in front of you for the first time, when he lets you examine his broken rib with tears in his eyes. Just like you did for Touya, you put your hands on his body and heal the wounds of his flesh. And then you wrap him up in your arms, trying to do something for the wounds of his mind.

“I’m so sorry, Shouto.” Your eyes are so hot, but you do not cry. You wept so often in front of Touya, but it is different with Shouto, who is younger than you and more fragile and completely motherless. “You can always come to me. I promise I’ll always help you.” The ruin of Sekoto Peak flashes before your eyes, all that charcoal and death and flowers turned to ash. You recall the jawbone that Todoroki Rei had cradled in her arms, the lone remnant of her son that she had to place into his urn, crossing chopsticks with his killer.

You cannot let Shouto become another jar full of ashes.

Your arms tighten around the boy as he cries into your shoulder.

“Come to me if it’s ever too much, okay?” Your eyes burn, and it feels like your heart is self-immolating. “I can protect you from your father.”

“But you shouldn't,” he says quietly.

"Why not?" 

Shouto shakes for a long, quiet time before he finally replies: “Because I don’t want him to hurt you too.”

His voice fractures, and you feel something in you breaking with it.

You try to smile at him, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t worry about that, Shouto. I’m a hero, remember? I can protect myself, and I’ll protect you, alright? Even if it’s from your father.”

Because that's the kind of hero you want to be. The kind who can protect anyone, no matter who is hurting them. Even if you couldn’t be that kind of hero for Touya, maybe you can be that for Shouto.

(In seven years, Touya will rape you after you get into an argument with him about Shouto. It will feel like a knife twisting your insides. He will use his body to dig out all the value from between your legs, leaving nothing but wreckage. You will be damaged goods, worthless, and no one will want you after this, just like your mother said.

But you will continue to beg anyway. Knowing it will mean further violence, you’ll still cry: Please don’t hurt Shouto. He’s innocent in all this. Please don’t hurt him. He's as much a victim as you. You will keep pleading for mercy and offering your body in a futile exchange—at least if Touya is here raping you in here, it means he isn’t out there, hurting Shouto.

You will not mind the pain. Your suffering will be worth any refuge for that boy.

For both of them.)

xvi. repeat

Despite your best efforts, Shouto grows colder over the years, distant in a way that Touya gradually became, but somehow chillier. Your influence is lesser than his father’s, after all. You cannot remove the scars etched into his neurons, and they accumulate until they spill onto his tongue. He grows more and more abrasive, until he one day lashes out at you—for the first time, and the last.

(He will come to you later, his usual impassivity crumbling into shame. “I’m sorry,” he will say quietly. “I’m so sorry. I’ll never hurt you again. I”—His face will twist with pain, and he will sound much too old to be a teenage boy—“I will not be that kind of man. Especially not to you.”)

You stumble upon him training with his mother’s quirk, readying himself for his entrance exams. You notice that he has pushed himself to his very limits, pierced the heavens and his own skin with his ice. The right side of his body is dusted with crystals, discoloured flesh punished by his own rage. He is shivering uncontrollably.

An image creeps into your mind: you are healing burns and blisters on a white-haired boy with watery teal eyes, trying to repair the disfigurement that he inflicted upon himself. You make the mistake of telling him that he is doing the right thing. You make the mistake of telling him that you will always heal him, even though you won't.

You try to push away your memories to yell at Shouto—and maybe those images overlap with the present, but you manage to scold him all the same: “What are you doing?” You run to him, nearly slipping on a path of ice, but you manage to slide until you’re in front of him. “Why aren’t you using your left side?!”

Before he can say anything, you’re cupping his face and the hand on his left cheek is warm with your quirk. You generate heat for his body where he does not, and you create new cells where his old ones have died of frost. He winces at the sensation, but his expression quickly slides into something cold anyway.

“I am not going to use my father’s power,” he says, voice stiff.

“But you'll hurt yourself if you don't!”

“So what?” he retorts. “I’m never going to use the quirk I inherited from that man. I don’t care if it means I’ll get hurt every once in a while.”

“But you should care! You should!” You grip his shoulders. “You have to take care of yourself. I know you’re angry, but you can’t self-destruct like this.” Your voice is choked, and your fingers are digging into him. In your mind, you are still holding onto a boy you once loved, a boy who turned to ash.

Then you’re shoved away, torn off his body. You finally slip on the ice under your feet, bruising as you land. Your eyes are wide with disbelief, because is this really Shouto? Is this really Shouto, whom you’ve cared so deeply for, who held your hand tightly as you dived off that bridge, whom you held as he cried from his bruises?

“Stay out of my way,” he snaps, eyes cold. “This is none of your business.”

He leaves you there, on frozen ground, staring at his retreating back. His shoulders tremble as he walks away, fists clenched at his sides. He does not glance back at you.

Rejection, rejection, rejection. Shouto will not accept refuge. Freezing is easier than healing. Despite the way that your breath is misting, you feel like your heart is burning to ash. When you cry, you pull your knees to your chest, tuck away your face in them, and you try your hardest not to cry. You wish so desperately that Touya were alive to hold you, but he is not here to comfort you because you could not save him.

Maybe you can’t save Shouto, either.

Touya, you think, desperate even for the touch of his ghost. Touya, I wish you were here.

(Dabi will not be happy hearing all this about Shouto, but he does not lash out in the way you expect. He will snarl and say cruel things, and his eyes will be steeped in pain, but he does not rape you when he hears this story. He will understand what you mean to convey.

All the things that I did for Shouto are just the things I wish I had done for you.

I just didn’t want to let him die, too.)

xvii. corruption

Over the same span of years that you try to honour your promise to Rei, you break a long string of vows you made to Touya.

The two of you spent so long on the rooftop of your school, talking about what kind of heroes you would like to be, how the two of you would always stay together, how you’d save more people than anyone else in history. He was supposed to be Number One, and you were supposed to be Number Two. Or we could tie in the rankings, he once said, ‘cause I wouldn’t mind being at the top with you. We're gonna be partners, after all.

We're gonna save so many lives together, you remember replying.

But you do not aim to be at the top. You do not aim to become a hero who can save anyone, no matter what. You only focus on your income and your image and moving out from your home. When you say these goals in an interview with a potential manager, he does not seem the least bit surprised.

You know Nakano through a pro bono consultation he did for your class at U.A. some years back, when you were all trying to figure out how to brand yourselves. His careful polish, achieved by his expensive suit and meticulously styled, pitch-black hair, somehow makes him feel less trustworthy as opposed to more. But he’s reached out to you with the promise of success, and he does not judge you in the least when he hears your priorities.

Nakano pulls a box of cigarettes out of his pocket—Seven Stars, you notice with carefully hidden distaste, of course it is Seven Stars—and lights one up.

“Well,” he says between puffs of smoke, “You wouldn’t have been able to become Number One anyway. Young, pretty girls have trouble topping the charts.”

You blink.

“Do they?”

“Yeah. The only woman who’s breached the Top Ten is Ryukyu, and she’s been in the industry forever. Done way more than most of the guys in the Top Ten.” Another breath of smoke. “People have their eyes on Mirko too, but she’s different from most women heroes. She’s a powerhouse and looks like it, but still manages to have a ton of sex appeal."

“I could be a powerhouse,” you say, straightening up. “Hysterical strength and speed are some of my abilities. As long as I build up my body and eat properly, I can—”

“You won’t,” Nakano cuts off. “You need to eat less if anything. You wanna make money? The easiest thing for you to do is market your face and body. Use that quirk of yours to get skinny. Oh, but make sure you still have some curves.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Oh, well. Then you’ll have to work out and diet like everyone else. Or we'll find the money for plastic surgery once you're more established.” He spits rancid smoke into the air, then peers at you from over his Gucci frames. “You’re young, you’ve got an”—he pauses—“okay-ish face. We can improve it, but this isn't a bad start.” You try not to bristle, and he does not notice your discomfort. Or maybe he does not care. “And you’ve made a great impression on the media with that fire rescue story, because of that stunning front page shot of you. God bless that photographer. Anyway, your image will be your biggest moneymaker, not your quirk.”

Your jaw tightens. “I didn’t want to become a hero for this.”

Nakano raises a brow. He tilts his head, studying you carefully.

“Then tell me—why did you want to become a hero?”

You have no answer for Nakano. You never wanted to become a hero in the first place, after all. That was Touya’s dream for you, and now you’re simply living out its ghost.

xviii. confession

(“Why did you want to follow me so badly, huh?” Dabi will ask you. You will feel like you are back on that rooftop, with him leaning over you and blocking out the yellow light of his ceiling lamp, which has been your substitute for the sun for the past several weeks. But unlike in your preteen years, you will be lying together in his bed, foreheads nearly touching. He will place a hand on your cheek and brush his thumb against it—a gesture so intimate that he'd have never done it when you were both children.

His voice will be a deep, quiet whisper when he asks, “Why didn’t you just do what you wanted to do? Instead of all that hero bullshit that I tried to drag you into?”

“I think you know why, by now.”

"Maybe." His tone is casual, but his eyes are trained carefully on you, teal irises peering at you over purple ridges. “I wanna hear you say it, though.")

xix. emptiness

You mull over your conversation with Nakano for several weeks, thinking about his proposal as you wrap up your contract with Endeavor’s agency, pondering it as you help Shouto train with his newly accepted fire abilities, and even talking it over with Fuyumi and Natsuo.

“I heard from Fuyumi that you’re in discussions with Nakano Hiroshi right now,” Endeavor mentions to you once, when you’re over for dinner. You are picking out pieces of fish to place onto Shouto’s plate, and you pause at his father’s words. Shouto glances at you curiously when you stop, but you do not make eye contact.

“Yes.” You smile, hoping that it does not look stiff. “Have you heard of him?”

Endeavor’s expression is severe. “Most people in this business have heard of him. He’s well-known for how he manages his female clients.”

“I know.”

A pause. It is quiet enough for you to hear Shouto and Fuyumi chewing.

“You know,” Endeavor says, “you can work at my agency for as long as you want. Or I can refer you to other agencies. You don’t need to rush your debut as an independent hero—you can take your time and find a reliable manager.”

You feel queasy at the suggestion. You have eaten out of Endeavor’s hand for so long, and no number of incense sticks nor flowers feels like enough to make up for the betrayal. Careful not to let the nausea show on your face, you reply, “I think I’ll be fine going solo. Nakano’s got a fine track record—all of his clients all make it into the Top Fifty rankings.”

Before Endeavor can say anything in protest, you turn to Shouto and smile brightly at him. “Why don’t you tell us how school’s going, Shouto? Have you made any friends?”

(Shouto, himself, will end up expressing his own reservations about Nakano’s management. He will watch you with worry as you eat like a bird, saying, Don’t you need huge meals for your quirk? His expressions will be complicated every time he sees a new photoshoot, each of your outfits progressively more revealing. He will never say anything, but you will know that he is judging you for it. Everyone will judge you for it, but at least you will have moved out into your own apartment by then.)

At the age of nineteen, you end up signing a contract with Nakano in agreement with his vision. He gives you a veneered smile and shakes your hand with an iron-tight grip.

“Don’t think of me as your manager,” Nakano advises. “Think of me as your producer.”

(In a year's time, you will search up your name on the internet and read the news coverage, the blog posts, the social media criticism. You will read about how men of all ages celebrated your eighteenth birthday, and you will see the tabloid gossip about your dating life, and you will read comments like, ‘Do you think she slept with Endeavor to intern at his agency? She doesn’t have a fire quirk, after all!’ or ‘She did a collaboration with Midnight—do you think they’ve fooled around? Gone down on each other?’ or ‘Do you think she can even lose her virginity? Maybe her hymen regenerates itself every time she has sex.’ Frequently, this last type of question will be followed by an equally offensive reply, or sometimes just laughter.

You will feel disgusted, but you will think: I am a product now. I am a product for mass consumption. It doesn’t matter what I want.

Dabi will later tell you that your worth is entirely between your legs, and you will think, I know.)

xx. betrayal (II)

If there was any illusion that you might have been following Touya's dream, it is shattered when you are a year into your career as an independent hero.

By this point, Endeavor is no longer your supervisor, but you always keep in mind his advice. (“He’s not good as a person,” you once said to Shouto, when he asked why you’d accepted an internship with his father, “but he’s good as a professional.”) His training—the instruction of every pro—is to stay on high alert for accidents and for villains, intervene before anyone else can. Even better if it is among crowds of people, where news reporters might flock to you at any moment. Your job is to protect the public from any dangerous threats, all your U.A. teachers used to tell you, and that's why it's so important to act fast. They’ve also explained, many times, that the cameras are important because when heroic acts are aired on the news, it serves as a deterrent for future crime. That’s how All Might became the pillar of peace, after all.

But your mother often tells you the truth, learned from her days as a hero: It has nothing to do with saving people. It's all just publicity stunts. When your wins are higher profile, you'll bring in more money, and you'll get higher ratings.

That's how you need to go about it, to earn money.

You don't want to? It doesn't matter what you want, with a job like this one.

You figure out, one day, that she is right.

It is an overcast, miserable afternoon out on the streets of Musutafu, the kind full of scattered showers and hardly any sun. You aren't so bothered by the weather; your hero suit is waterproof, and your quirk allows you to control your body temperature. You drive idly by on the major streets of the city on your agency bike, keeping an eye out for any disturbances.

The streets are empty and the day is relatively peaceful—even villains, you guess, try to avoid bad weather. So on a whim, you turn off the main road and weave through side streets, your eyes scanning the beaten down, back alley roads of Musutafu. All Might's legacy might reduce any grand aspirations of villainy, after all, but not even he can control poverty. You always find some kind of work here on slow days, even if it isn't flashy: mostly healing people—they can hardly access healthcare, after all—and distributing blankets or food. That sort of thing.

Today, you catch sight of a child, or maybe a young teenager—older than nine but younger than thirteen, you guess—shivering violently beneath a bridge. He's managed to find a dry patch of cement, but is otherwise surrounded by filthy rainwater. His clothes are rags, tattered things streaked with mud and grime.

A frown cuts itself across your face, knits into your brows. A child this young, without a parent nearby, who has been outdoors for so long, is almost certainly a runaway.

You don't think twice about braking your motorcycle and hopping off to pick him up. You approach him with the kind of soft voice and slow steps with which Todoroki Rei once reached out to you. Of course, you are not accompanied by anyone like Touya, so it is a long conversation before the child drops his guard.

Once he does, you crouch down and take a closer look at him. He looks down immediately, almost seems to hide behind his unkempt hair—which might be white, or maybe blonde; you can't tell with all the grime and rainwater—but you catch the scales layering his face and his slit-pupil eyes. Mutant-type quirk, you recognize immediately. It isn't hard to guess why he's run away, or why no one's helped him yet.

"Do you have a name?" you ask gently, careful not to let your smile falter as you crouch down.

The boy pauses for a moment, glimpses at you through his bangs. Nakano always directs your various stylists to make you look as pure and innocent as possible, because it's marketable for your age. Emphasise her eyes and give her a no-makeup look. Remember: no hard angles with the contouring.

While you don't love the manipulation of your image, it has the upside of making you appear very non-threatening. The boy's eyes stay wary—almost reminding you of Shouto, you think—but he unfurls a little.

"I'm Shuichi," he says quietly.

"It's nice to meet you, Shuichi." You introduce yourself, and you watch a flicker of recognition pass through his eyes at your hero name, for which you are grateful. It's important for trust-building. "Say, Shuichi-kun, how do you feel about coming by to my agency to warm up and snack on something? And afterwards I can take you to a place with people who can help you."

The child hesitates.

"Is something wrong?" you ask.

He struggles, for a long time, with trying to find an answer. "I just don't know if anyone would want to help me," Shuichi eventually replies, while shivering.

"Well, I want to help you. And I can find other people who'd help you too. Would you like that?"

He stops, for a minute.

"How come you'd want to help me?"

"Because I'm a hero, obviously. It's what heroes do."

"But heroes don't want to help me, either," he says, and his voice isn't filled with dejection or anger—just resignation. His shoulders are weighed and he is far too young to sound this old, and it makes your heart shrink up a bit.

"Well, other people are shitty heroes," you say with hesitation, and he blinks at you in surprise. "But I'm not like them. Will you let me help you, Shuichi-kun?"

You are relieved when Shuichi finally agrees to tag along with you. You give him a helmet—small enough, thank god, for a child his age—and try to distract him by going through all the features of your motorbike. He asks what your quirk is, and his eyes widen in shock when you place your hands on his and he feels himself warming up. He talks to you while you wait at traffic lights, confesses that he is, indeed, a runaway. You glance at him, his light hair masking his face and his thin frame shivering, and something in your heart aches.

When you arrive at your agency, Nakano gives Shuichi a warm smile, directs him to a private room where an assistant can help him with a change of clothes and some refreshments, and asks you to come to his office for a one-on-one meeting.

He yells at you. Cheeks red, brows cut downward, all of his executive polish lost. Tobacco smoke blows out of his mouth with every single criticism, and it makes you feel sick.

"Where the hell were you today?" he snaps. "Do you know what happened while you were on patrol? Do you know what villain attack went on in your jurisdiction?"

You stare blankly. "Of course I do. There was a theft committed by a petty criminal. Mutation-type quirk, with very little combat abilities. The suspect only had an ability to camouflage with certain surfaces." Trying not to frown, you add, "I radioed Hawks about it, and he said he had it covered."

"So you let him take your case?" Nakano balks.

You frown, trying not to look too openly annoyed. "We share jurisdictions, so it was his case too. I had to handle this kid, so I let Hawks handle the thief. He didn't need my help."

Nakano looks furious. Ready to implode. He practically smashes his cigarette into the tray, putting it out beneath his thumb with a violent press. It reminds you of your mother. "How the hell are you so naive?" he snaps. "It doesn't have to do with needing help or not needing help. You shouldn't be wasting your time on saving some homeless kid when there are high profile villain cases in your territory!"

Your mind goes blank.

"Wasting my time?" you repeat, quietly. "It's a waste of time to help a runaway kid?"

"Of course it's a waste of time! Leave that busywork to the police or to non-profits! It's not going to help you with your ratings, so what's the point?"

"But he was out there for months," you reply, almost on autopilot. You feel like you're listening to a recording of yourself, trapped in a futile script that will end poorly, but you can't stop talking. "He was out there for months, and not a single person helped him. So I had to."

"That's not your problem!" Nakano sighs deeply, rubs his temples. "You're young in this business, so you don't get it now, but you will in a few years—your job isn't to help people. It's to entertain."

"Entertain," you repeat flatly. "I wasn't aware."

"Of course you weren’t. It’s because of all that bullshit they teach you all at U.A." Nakano shakes his head. "That school's great at teaching kids to fight with their quirks, but not how to think with their brains."

"What do you mean," you ask stiffly.

He sighs. "Listen—and listen carefully. There's a million government and non-profit jobs that overlap with heroism. SDF, police, EMTs, firefighters, doctors, just to name a few. These are all careers that could use quirks like yours, or Hawks', or even All Might's. Yet we created this subspecialty of heroism, where instead of uniforms you wear designer outfits, and instead of looking at metrics like number of people saved, you're all graded on public opinion about other things—the villains you've taken down, your performance in interviews, your social media presence. Why do you think that is? Why do you think All Might wears a fucking spandex suit that shows off all his muscles, instead of a uniform?"

"Because heroes are given different privileges from police and SDF to intervene where villains are involved…" you parrot from your classes, but your voice trails off weakly.

"Then why the hell aren't you all in the police and SDF, and they just give those organisations those privileges instead?"

You go quiet, which you think placates Nakano, because he exhales deeply and some of the redness leaves his face.

"Take that kid to a shelter," he says, "and don't let this happen again. I know I sound harsh right now, but you'll be thanking me in a few years, when you're about to hit the Top 10 and you're making bank."

(In a few years, you will be wasting away on Touya's bed, listening to him talk about the failures of your society. This world is wrong, he insists—it is cruel and that is why he must burn it to the ground. You're wrong too, and that's why he's burned you. Not as revenge, but as retribution.

"There are no true heroes," he will declare, and you will say nothing, because you will agree.)

When you go to see Shuichi, his hair is free of dirt and practically glows with how white it is. He smiles as he snacks on onigiri and can't stop talking about how grateful he is to be so warm, to be eating, to be saved.

"Heroes are so amazing," he says, beaming at you with his innocent, snake-like eyes. "Do you think I could be one too, someday?"

"I think you can be anything you want," you reply, smiling brightly, and you feel like throwing up.

xxi. closed

(One of the questions that Dabi will ask you, over and over again, is: “How come you never dated anyone else?”)

You rarely see anyone over the years, despite ongoing questions from your family and friends. You are acutely aware of how strange your lack of a romantic life is, since your mother will not let you forget it. She often says that with a quirk and an image like yours, landing a respectable husband should be no trouble. She shows you pictures of men with their names, incomes, and positions listed beside them, and you decline them all.

Fuyumi and Natsuo try as well, constantly asking if you’re still single and if you’re maybe interested in their friends. Natsuo has set you up with several baseball players from his high school and college teams over the years, who you don't see for very long before breaking things off. Fuyumi recurrently shows you pictures of her teacher friends, and while you do linger a bit on a photo of a redhead named Daichi, you decide to pass in the end. Shouto listens to each of these conversations quietly, and only chimes in once:

"What exactly are you looking for in a partner?"

Natsuo perks up. "Yeah, tell us what you want! I don't get your standards."

When you draw a blank, you realize that you do not know your own preferences. So you shrug at both boys and default: "As long as their personality is a good fit for mine, and we can make each other happy, then nothing else really matters."

"That's not helpful at all," Natsuo complains. Shouto doesn't say anything, but his dissatisfaction is obvious from the narrowing of his eyes. "Can't you be more specific? Height, hair colour, body type, career? All I know is that you don't like baseball players."

You laugh. "It's my PR answer for interviews," you admit, "and I'm not allowed to specify any of the traits you're asking for. But I actually don't think it's a bad answer." You pause to sip your drink, which is an expensive shochu you've brought over. "What's more important than happiness?"

A pause.

"Then," Shouto realises, "nobody makes you happy?"

(In your twenties, your therapist will notice that you are pathetically alone: no parents, no partner, and hardly any friends. He will ask about your support systems, who you can open up to, and who you go to when you are upset, and you will say: "I go to therapy. To you. That’s why I pay you."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?"

Your therapist will lean in. Pitying eyes, as if he knows the answer.

"Say you're upset about something. Enough to cry. Who's the first person you think of going to? Who do you know will make you feel better?"

Rather than replying immediately, you will glance at the clock, eyes tracking the unceasing motion of its secondhand. For once, it feels too slow.

"I don't like to cry in front of other people," is your eventual answer.)

Your stylist also often grills you about your love life, showing you pictures of various men and women friends. Often he does it over drinks, while the two of you are sitting in private booths at high end bars, you in plain outfits designed to be inconspicuous, while he stubbornly pops out with his blue hair and richly coloured suit jackets. Today, he's flipping through photos on his phone with impressive speed, now immediately able to clock your disinterest at each person.

After pointing out one blond man with a dazzling smile and impressive set of abs, he says, in a deadpan voice, “I promise he knows what he’s doing in bed, if that’s your problem. He can find the clit.”

You choke on your drink. “Satoshi!”

“I’m serious,” he replies, still straight-faced. “Not that I’d know firsthand, but I’ve heard he’s a good lay. From many people.”

You consider Satoshi’s words, staring at your plum wine. Truthfully, possible issues of sexual chemistry hadn’t even occurred to you. You realise: “You know, I’ve actually never imagined myself in bed with anyone. It's not something I worry about."

It is Satoshi’s turn to choke. “What?”

“I just don’t think about that sort of thing.” You pause. "And I wouldn't know what to think about, anyway. I don't have a lot of experience."

"You mean to say, you've never had sex?"

You blink. "No? And I don't think much about it, either."

He tilts his head. “Are you asexual, then?”

You frown, considering. Sifting through the various dates that you’ve gone on, the many people whom you’ve looked at, you almost feel like the label could fit. But then you think about when you were thirteen and Touya was alive, and you think about how you definitely felt strongly for him, and how you definitely would have kissed him if he hadn’t been so shy about it. Had the two of you grown up together, you have no doubt that you’d have done other things with him as well, if he'd asked.

“I don't know about being asexual," you reply, "but I definitely think I’m hung up on someone."

“Oh. Well, I didn’t expect that.”

Satoshi waves down a server, orders an expensive and strong drink for you and demands that you spill your secrets to him in return. You could easily erase the effects of the whiskey with your quirk, but you choose to let it burn you from the inside-out. Face hot, you tell him everything about Touya. The names are redacted, as are the quirks, and you replace your mother with some schoolyard bullies, but the story is clear: “You had strong feelings for someone when you were a teenager,” Satoshi summarises, “and he was the only person who ever made you happy during a very miserable time in your life. And you never got over him after he passed away.”

“That sounds about right,” you mumble.

“That’s tough,” Satoshi says, voice kind, "and I can't imagine your pain, to be honest.”

You feel something tremble inside you. Staring down at your glass, you think about how much easier it is to talk about this to your therapists—stone cold sober, putting all your acting skills to use. Smile for the camera, kitten. Trying to sound neutral, you reply, “It was a long time ago.”

“It was,” he agrees. After a brief moment of hesitation, “Have you tried to let go of him?”

You make a noncommittal noise. Satoshi gives you a dubious look.

"You're twenty years old now," he points out. "You're not thirteen anymore. It’s time for you to move on, don’t you think?"

You glance at Satoshi's watch. It is an analogue piece with a wooden finish, and its second hand is relentlessly ticking onward.

“You’re right about that,” you admit. You stare into your drink and down the rest, considering Satoshi’s many recommendations. There was that blond whose name you’ve already forgotten. A redheaded girl named Kara. A white-haired boy named Yun. Then countless others. Surely, you will be able to feel something with at least one of them?

(“I’ve only dated a couple of people,” you will tell Dabi, mind hazy as you both lay on the bed. Despite the pain between your legs, you will want to be as close as possible to his warmth, so you will not leave for the washroom or turn away from him. You’ll stay beside him instead, thinking about those times that the two of you sprawled out like this on the school rooftop, watching clouds roll by. “I never got far with any of them,” you’ll say, eyes tracing the outlines of birds and angels and handprints. “I never liked it when people touched me.”)

You start to wonder why you feel nothing for anyone, after all those dates lead to nowhere. You start to wonder if something in you broke when you were thirteen. Was the part of you that is required to love people also the piece of you that died with Touya?

After one day of feeling particularly frustrated, you down half a glass of whiskey, burn through a quarter pack of Seven Stars—this gives you a horrific cough, and you have to repair your throat and lungs with your quirk—and you lie down in your bed. Desperately, you imagine movie stars and pop idols and fictional men. You even try to think of other heroes, from Midnight to Eraserhead to All Might. Your fingers are clumsy between your legs, and you hardly feel a thing besides minor discomfort, a stinging pain that your quirk cannot seem to suppress.

I wonder if she can lose her virginity, you suddenly remember from all those message boards, or if her hymen just heals every time after she has sex. And then you think about those photos of your naked back, the glow of your computer screen when you stumbled across that website hosting your countdown clock, the picture of that serial killer's victim with her legs spread wide in death. You think about your smiling face at the top of his stack of photos.

You don’t touch yourself for weeks after that.

(In three years, Touya will rape you and leave you bleeding onto his sheets. He will spend a long time in the washroom afterward, emerging only to snap at you to stop crying. After he leaves, you will try to get yourself to the bath to clean up, but you'll find that you cannot walk. Every movement will be accompanied by the cut of a knife through your insides. You will still feel him inside you, even when he is long gone. There is no quirk, no healing, no reversal—he simply tore into a piece of your flesh, and then he left.

You end up crawling back into bed.

Much later, while you are halfway passed out, someone enters the room. A wet cloth slides along the inside of your thighs, wiping away your blood. The hands that treat your burn wounds feel so familiar that tears prick at your eyes.

When you glance up at Touya's face, you wonder if he is crying too.)

Once, you come close to something. You’ve given up on looking at pictures of people, both living and fictional. Instead, you try to imagine someone faceless. Faceless, but they are male, you figure out partway. Faceless, but they have red hair. No—white, you change your mind. Faceless, but they have eyes that are your favourite colour. You’re not doing anything besides kissing, his lips rough against yours, his breath running hotter than even the flush of your cheeks. And his hands—you expect his hands to be as harsh as his kiss, but instead they are gentle and careful, like he doesn't want to hurt you. They run up and down your bare skin, hold you close in a way that is familiar—before reaching down between your thighs.

"Oh," you breathe, finally, finally feeling something. Your stomach tightens for the first time in your life, a sweet-sickly heat forming that makes your hips press up against your hand. More, more, more, you think, whine in your throat, as your fingers gradually become slick with need. You clench around nothing, feel unbearably empty. You want someone to fill the lonely space inside you, to complete you, to want you.

You're close. So, so close that you want to cry. You try to fill in the features of the face that is kissing you. Teal eyes, and delicate cheekbones, and, and—

You draw a blank.

The tension recedes.

Then you taste sandalwood and Seven Stars in the back of your throat.

(You will taste it again in the air when you come for the first time, when Touya opens you up and tears such bliss from your body that you feel like you are dying. The unknowns on that face are filled with scar tissue. Your emptiness is filled in by a ghost. The missing part of you has been returned, and it makes you want to throw up.)

xvii. loneliness

("There's really nothing going on between you and Shouto, then?" Dabi will ask.

"Nothing at all."

"Sure could have fooled me." Dabi will look bitter as he says this, skin straining against his staples in an ugly expression. "He looks like he's in love with you."

"I doubt it," you will reply in a tired voice. "I really don't think about him that way. And he knows… He should know…")

You are in your early twenties when you decide to stop drinking. It happens after a night out with some friends and acquaintances, which happens to include Shouto. At eighteen, he is still too young to drink, but is old enough to dutifully chaperone you home whenever Fuyumi or Satoshi have to cut out early for the night.

"What's the point of doing this?" he asks you as he drives. In the seat to his left, you hold your throbbing head in your hands and groan. "This doesn't seem enjoyable."

"When you turn twenty," you slur, "I'll show you how to party and you'll get it then."

"But I know how to party," he insists, completely straight-faced, and you laugh fondly.

"Those hero conference functions don't count. Neither do any of your old school festivals." You smile at him even through your headache and nausea. "I swear I'll get you to loosen up, even if it kills me!"

He gives you a slightly alarmed expression. "I'll be as loose as you want," he replies, completely deadpan. "I don't want to kill you."

You snort loudly at that. The corner of his mouth quirks up, and he looks maybe a little happier as continues driving in silence. When he finally pulls over, he doesn't even wait for you to try exiting the car—he simply comes around to your side and hauls you out on instinct. The world tilts around you, but he holds you up.

"Whoa," you breathe, letting him wrap an arm around you as you lean against his frame, which is firm and noticeably taller than you nowadays. It’s nothing like when he was a kid, and you had to stop yourself from laughing at the mental image of him trying to carry you. He can—and does—very easily pick you up these days.

"Thank you, Shouto,” you say, beaming up at him as he supports your stumbling figure. “You're too good to me."

"It's not a problem." He does not complain even as he walks you up the stairs and into your shitty little apartment—the same one you've been living in ever since you finished high school with a catastrophic amount of debt. You have the dignity to kick off your own shoes, but Shouto has to practically carry you to the couch. It is strange, being cradled like this in someone's arms, and you find yourself closing your eyes and pressing yourself into his body. The heat from his left side feels so familiar.

(You will wake up the next morning, desperately trying to recollect your memories from the night before. When you finally piece together this one, you will want the floor to drop out from underneath you.)

"No one's held me like this," you sigh, "in a really long time."

Shouto pauses as he places you down on the couch, and at your small protest, he sits down with you. You press yourself into him.

"That can't be true," he says. "Your partners must have."

"I've never had a partner."

He stops, for a moment.

"Why not?"

You do not answer, close to drifting off like this. You fell asleep in Touya's arms once, you recall. It was on a bus, and all your classmates teased you for it afterwards. You've never slept so well since.

After another pause, Shouto shifts and you feel his breath sweep your face. He must be looking down at you.

"Was Touya-nii the last person to hold you, then?"

"Mhm." Your eyes flutter open, and you're met with teal and grey eyes. Something strange is in them, but you ignore it. "The first and the last."

Shouto takes a moment to absorb this.

"...you said once that nobody else has ever made you as happy as he did." You feel one of his hands fist into your dress. Satoshi will be annoyed about that, you are sure. It is expensive material and should not be stretched. You make a small noise of protest, but Shouto's grip is tight when he asks, "Is that still true?"

You blink, sifting through all your memories. Free falling off a bridge. The taste of homemade okayu. Frostnip under your fingertips. Dates with a baseball player. Kisses that taste like Asahi. Flashing lights, cameras, now you're live. That recurrent dream of trying to make a tower of pebbles, only for an invisible force to knock it all down.

"It's still true," you decide.

"I see."

Shouto draws a breath, loud enough for you to hear. There is hesitation in his eyes, and you recall his expression as a ten year old when he stared into that river. He seemed so uncertain until you took his hand.

"What's on your mind?" you ask gently.

He looks away.

"Did you love my brother?"

You pause, surprised. And then you laugh in the way that Nakano taught you, laugh like you do with your therapists. "We were just kids, and kids don't know anything about love," you dismiss. "We weren't even in a relationship, you know. We never even kissed."

His stare is intense on you. Cutting. Shouto's gazes are often inexpressive and unyielding, and mostly you don't mind them, but occasionally it unnerves you. Particularly when you want to lie.

"But did you love him," he asks again.

And while you are held by someone for the first time in ten years, feeling on one half of their body a nostalgic summer heat, you find yourself admitting to the deepest wound of your mind.

"I was just a kid, and I didn't know anything about love," you confess, "but I did. I did love him. I don’t think I ever stopped."

(Dabi will hear this admission, and he will not know how to respond. The tension will drain from his body. He will watch you, quiet and you think maybe lost.)

xvi. summoning

A few months later, you see Endeavor tearing through the skies of Kyushu, fighting a pitch-black monster. You see red feathers at the back of a man to whom you owe all your wealth and all your grief. You sigh heavily, closing your eyes when he does not die. Guilt floods you when you realize that you are relieved.

Then a burst of cyan on-screen, violent.

Your heart stops.

Freeze frame, rewind, replay a million times: you study the news footage in every angle you can find, both in slow motion and twice the speed. His figure is thin, lanky—maybe what you’d expect, if he’d had a hard time over the past ten years. Wild hair—and it’s black, but that could just be dye. The colour of his eyes is exactly what you remember. And the scars are an exact match for the burns you once healed upon Sekoto Peak: all along the jawline, right below the eyes.

Your heart pounds, aching and confused. You laid Touya to rest years ago, listening to that priest's chanting. You have lost count of the amount of incense you have burned for him, the number of apples you’ve peeled for his altar, the volume of tears you’ve cried at his grave. His ashes were interred there so long ago—

And then you realize: His ashes.

His ashes.

His ashes from cremation—written as 荼毘, rendered as dabi.

(I like the villain name, you will say when you meet him again. On the nose, but I like it.

There’s a cruel kind of humour in his voice when he replies, I hate your hero name.

So do you, you’ll tell him. Nakano came up with it.)

You must be insane, staring at the dark silhouette of this murderer, imagining Touya’s mannerisms in all of his movements. You must be without conscience, reading about his crimes—thirty-odd petty criminals killed in various alleyways over the past three years; and before that, countless hero fans with second-to-third degree burns—and wondering if there is a way to save him. If there is a way to bring him back.

(You will tell him this, after you have been carried to his bed and treated with his fire. You'll tell him, I want to help you, and he will look at you with sharp, cobalt eyes that make you feel equally unsettled and excited.

You'll tell him this, and he will crouch down and brush his fingers against the gauze he placed onto your side. You should worry about yourself first, Miss Top Twenty, he will say. You would be a Nomu now, if I didn’t stop those bastards. And your heart will jump with painful, stupid hope, and that night, as you fall asleep and watch him exit, you will try not to think about the fact that the room locks on the inside.)

You must be hopeless, seeing your own image on TV and thinking about how much he would hate what you’ve become. Pretty idol on TV, your face more important than your quirk. Who cares about how many people you've saved if you can't even rescue a child from a parent who beats them? And who cares about all the villains you've apprehended when you accept money from someone who beats his wife?

Someone who killed the boy you loved?

If Touya has really become the villain Dabi, then you stand for everything that he now wants to destroy. That he deserves to destroy.

(I’m sorry, Touya. Sometimes you will look at him as you say this, wincing through the feeling of something foreign inside you; sometimes you will say this while staring at the ceiling instead, trying to ignore the nausea crawling in your throat. No matter where your eyes are trained, they are always lined with tears. You have every right to be angry.)

You must be desperate, thinking, Even if he hates me now, I still need to try.

(When Dabi returns from his long absence, you'll notice that his muscles are sluggish and sprawled on his bed, that there is blood running from his staples and onto his shirt. He is exhausted, but he asks if you are okay, and you will think about how he held you after you got ill, about how all the food you got after that tasted just like his mother’s cooking. You will think about that and watch red soak through his shirt, and something will grip you: an absurd fear that he'll die again and you'll once more be a bystander.

You'll ask him, Before you rape me, can I at least clean your wound?)

You must be delusional, wrapping your arms around yourself and trying to remember how warm his touch once felt. Delusional, sitting outside a building that used to be a convenience store and trying to recall the first time he held you. Delusional, wondering if he would still do that for you now.

Fucked up, for thinking that you’d understand if he didn’t. If instead of holding you, he'd now be the one making you bleed.

Pathetic, for still not letting him go.

(Touya will never kill you: of this, you will be certain. He will maim you and rape you and gut you of your worth—but he will never kill you. You will know this from the broken look he wears during each assault; you will know it from his eyelids pressed into the crook of your neck, a hot waterline against your pulse. You will know it from his soft, apologetic touch after each assault, and you’ll want to reach out and say, Don’t cry, Touya. I’ll heal you, silly. Then you’ll remember that you do not have your quirk—and anyway, you’ve never been able to heal wounds of the mind.

You will feel something tremble inside you when he starts being gentle with you, even if it is still rape. He'll linger beside you and smoke and ask questions in a quiet voice, questions about if you have ever been in love. Were you lonely before I came? you will want to reply. Are you still lonely now?

Sometimes the pain will be unbearable. So unbearable that you’ll feel yourself slipping away from your used-up body, listening to yourself cry. So unbearable that you cannot think of healing yourself, let alone him. And then you will think of washing the blood out of your hair and running away, broken glass crushing into your bare feet, cicadas screaming in your ears.

But I’ve only ever wanted to run into your arms, you will then realise, shuddering as Dabi moves inside you, so where would I even go?)

When you resolve to go to Jaku, you feel a selfish elation at the possibility of meeting a ghost. If he has been locked out of the wheel of reincarnation, then at least he can return to you. And even if he is now hungry for vengeance, you still want him back.

"Touya," you murmur once more, just like when you were a child at his grave. "Touya, please come back to me."

(You will abandon your refuge for him.)

end part v

notes: hi happy new year i am So Sorry for not updating in literally 1.5 years it is my greatest source of guilt in 2023. thank you from the bottom of my heart if you commented on the last ones - I wish I could find the energy to reply individually to each review, but life hasn't been so kind to me lately ;_; but thank you from the bottom of my heart - I would not have returned to this fic if it were not for your support!

[farewell-itoshisoup]

ART OF THE BEDCHAMBER | part 1

"Dual cultivation with you wouldn't be very useful. You might have extraordinary qi as a Vidyadhara, but it's sealed when you're in your human form."  Dan Heng stares at your fingers, deliberates as you trace the invisible paths of his meridians.  "Then," he says, "what about my dragon form?"  (Or: Dan Heng dreads the thought of outliving you and will do anything to help you achieve immortality. If that means fucking you in his dragon form, then so be it.)

6.5k words. smut, fluff, established relationship, xianxia elements. semi-explicit sexual content (only with dan heng in his human form in this chapter, sorry). reader is gender neutral, afab — they have breasts and bomb pussy game. cultural notes: "yinyue jun" is the chinese equivalent for "imbibitor lunae". please see the end notes for information on cultivation. other notes: this is set pre-1.2. 风月 was based on this fic so some things may feel very familiar! network: @trailblazernet. MDNI.

When Dan Heng—in a rather unexpected move—fell in love with you, he didn’t foresee all the agony that would come with it.

Shockingly, you aren’t the direct cause of this agony: a remarkable fact, given your routine of pestering him for as many hours as the day will allow. Dan Heng often complains about your many inconvenient behaviours (e.g., trying to cuddle with him in the archives, trying to kiss him in the archives, trying to have sex with him in the archives), but to the amazement of his fellow trailblazers, he never actually does anything about it. After getting over his initial embarrassment at such public displays of affection (this took quite some time), he’s come to tolerate it.

You often like to tease him for his leniency, all playful smiles and lilting tones: You don’t have to act so shy, Dan Heng—I know you enjoy the attention. My Heng'er likes to be spoiled, huh?

He always rolls his eyes in response. Consider it a miracle that I haven’t kicked you out yet, he’ll usually say, flicking you on the forehead. He never tells you if he means kicking you out of the archives or if he means throwing you out of the Astral Express itself, right into the vacuum of space. (Most bystanders are astonished that the latter hasn’t happened yet. So are you.)

He also doesn’t tell you how wrong it feels when he isn’t listening to the background noise of your shameless flirting. Or how wrong it feels when he doesn’t get to humour you with a kiss every once in a while.

Which brings him to the root of the problem: the wrongness that he’s feeling right now. The emptiness of the archives without your laughter, the tasteless quality of his food when you’re not there to dine with him, the restlessness of trying to sleep without you—it’s all wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong enough for it to be a little agonizing, now that he’s nearing one hundred and twenty days of this.

You often have to leave the Express for many months in a row, so Dan Heng is no stranger to these unsettling feelings. Neither are you. If I could spend more time with you, I would, you’d said before leaving last time—and the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that. But I can’t avoid going into seclusion. It’s part of the whole Cultivator gig, y'know—gotta go to a mountain somewhere and meditate for a few months. That’s just the price of immortality if you’re a measly human. Then you’d given him a little smile, pecked him on the lips. Most people do it for years at a time, but I wouldn’t be able to leave you alone for so long.

The first time you’d pointed this out, Dan Heng was startled by the relief that flooded him. Vidyadharas have an intuitively different sense of time compared to human beings, and two or three years should feel like nothing to him: relative to the centuries he’d lived as his previous incarnation—or the decades as his current one—it would be only a fleeting moment.

But in your absence, it would feel like an eternity.

It surprises him how much he hates the crawl of time without you. Dan Heng had never before been a needy person: solitude and isolation had always been the norm for him, in a lifetime absent of human touch—first imprisoned from birth, then exiled from the first moment he got to see the sun. Even after leaving the Alliance, he hadn’t allowed himself to become particularly close with anyone: it would have been too complicated because of the sensitive matter of his past, and he simply didn’t feel deserving of it anyway. Nor was he in need of it.

Then he met you.

Then he met you, and he became accustomed to the sound of your laughter, and then your offhanded, warm touches, and then your smile as you sat in the blue glow of the archive floor and poured baijiu into everyone’s cups. (Scalding, bitter; you had laughed as he made a face and warmed up huangjiu specifically for him next time, and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.) And then he became accustomed to talking to you—to letting you unearth things he’d buried for decades, to revealing his suffering and receiving your compassion, to the gentle feeling of your hand on his shoulder. Then the tender, nervous look in your eyes, then the silky press of your lips, then the closeness of your unclothed body, and then the breathless warble of your voice—Dan Heng, I’m close, I’m so close, please—and then the euphoria of having you arch and fall apart so beautifully in his arms.

And then the afterglow. He hadn’t only grown used to that: he’d become addicted to it. Warmer and headier than huangjiu, something that he’d have never been able to imagine while growing up in the night-dark prison of his childhood.

Even the memory of his first taste of sunlight aboard the Luofu pales in comparison to the feeling of having you in his arms. The first time he’d had the privilege of holding you, he caught himself thinking: If paradise is but a dream, then I wish to sleep forever.

And now, each time he lies awake on his futon, alone except for the glow of artificial stars, Dan Heng becomes acutely aware of the emptiness left by your missing form.

He isn’t exactly deserving of your companionship. He knows that.

But he is in need of it.

After one hundred and twenty one days of seclusion, you are ready to return to the Astral Express.

Time moves differently when you cultivate behind closed doors. The act of such intense meditation and training distorts the flow of the world for you, makes entire months feel like days. Emerging from seclusion always comes with a certain anxiety: Are your friends well? Have they forgotten you? Has the Express continued its journey across the galactic railroad, or has some terrible event happened to your home—a supernova, a meteor shower, the destructive force of a stellaron?

And, most importantly: Did anyone murder your boyfriend while you were away?

There is at least one intergalactically wanted criminal who's tried to kill Dan Heng a number of times, and an entire alliance consisting solely of his haters. Half the reason you take your cultivation so seriously is to prepare for the inevitable day that someone is going to seriously attempt to murder him in front of you (probably the aforementioned criminal). You want to be strong enough to one-hit KO Arbiter-General Jing Yuan himself, if it ever comes down to it.

Of course, the downside is that the murder attempt might happen while you're off training, but you're hoping that March 7th and Caelus can cover for you in that case.

Still—while you have nothing in confidence in Caelus’ abilities (you adore March, but will not comment on hers), you sigh in relief when your phone begins to buzz.

> Are you out yet? We're on our way. > Get something to eat if you haven't yet. I'll make sure something is ready for you on the Express too. > I know you can practice inedia, but you're still a human at the end of the day. Please get something to eat as soon as possible.

No hello, no I missed yous, just plain, practical concern—as always.

You are not a practical person.

> GEGE! > GEGE GEGE GEGE > DAN HENG GEGE > come fast i want to kiss u > i'll die if u don't kiss me soon > i missed you!!!!!! > did you miss me??????

You can more or less imagine the expression on your (hopefully unharmed) boyfriend's face: deadpan exasperation. The first time you came out of seclusion during your relationship, you texted him no less than twenty times in a row from a new number, and he reflexively flagged it all as spam. He's since told you to tone down the double texting (and triple texting, and quintuple texting, and dectuple texting…), but always replies anyway.

> The Express is about to warp. We'll be there soon. > I'll do whatever you like, please just eat.

You watch as an ellipsis appears at the bottom of your chat window, then disappears, then appears again. When he finally sends his text, a smile stretches wide across your face.

> And yes, I thought of you the whole time you were gone.

With your return to the Express, you make Dan Heng engage in all your usual couple activities. Which is to say: you act disgustingly sweet with him and the other passengers experience varying degrees of shock and entertainment at his complacent behaviour.

You surprise him as he works in the archives, looping your arms around his waist and pressing against his back so you can whisper things into his ear: Gege, pay attention to me! or Dan Heng, can't you take a break now? or Heng'er, are you really going to ignore your lover like this? So cruel!

Dan Heng doesn't react during these moments, but he also doesn't push you away. Sometimes he'll shove a stack of books into your hands and say, If you have time to mess around like this, then you can work on digitizing these for me. You always agree, but wheedle a kiss out of him in exchange for your hard labour.

(Welt Yang walks in on one such kiss, coughs loudly, and walks back out. Dan Heng pulls away from your lips to stare at the door in abject horror.)

You give Dan Heng a number of books and films from your travels, and keep him company as he dives into them. He always gravitates toward the latest Xianzhou novels first, especially the ones that give mention to everyday life on the Luofu. You suppose that he's never been able to rid himself of his curiosity about the life that he'd been denied, enthralled by visions of night markets and starskiffs, teahouses and cross-talkers. You can see his longing in the crease of his brow, the softening of his eyes as he reads.

Seeing his wistful expressions, it is impossible to stop yourself from keeping him company. You press into his side, resting your head on his shoulder—something that will comfort him, you hope—and read alongside him. Sometimes the two of you fall asleep like that, wrapped up in each other on the archive floor.

(March 7th stumbles into one of these moments and can't help but snap a picture of the two of you. Dan Heng later pales when he sees your lock screen, where your slumbering, entwined forms are clearly visible.)

You often convince Dan Heng to have a proper, sit-down dinner with you in the dining car. He won't ever do it for food from the kitchens, preferring to eat in the archives instead, but he'll do it for food you cook together. The two of you enjoy your meals while watching the interstellar scenery roll by outside, stargazing at distant galaxies. Sometimes you savour the tangy-sweetness of tomato-egg stir fry (your handiwork); sometimes you enjoy the rich broth of delicately steamed xiaolongbao (your boyfriend's handiwork); sometimes the both of you sweat over the punishing numbing-spice of malaxiangguo (a combined effort and favoured couple's activity—right up there with building furniture).

The other passengers wave whenever they see you, impressed that Dan Heng has emerged from the archives. They joke as they greet you: I guess you're the only one that can pull him out of his cave!

(The older ones—Himeko especially—laugh and talk fondly about young love when they spot you. Dan Heng's expression stays as stoic as ever, but the tips of his ears go red and he accidentally burns his tongue trying to eat his own bao.)

You address Dan Heng with an astonishing number of pet names at an alarming frequency; your excuse is that you need to make up for the four months you couldn't call him anything. Mostly you call him 'Gege' in public, which he usually doesn't mind as it saves him considerable face relative to all the alternatives, but this changes when Caelus starts teasing him about it.

Morning, Gege, he starts saying at breakfast, drawing a long stare from Dan Heng. Gege, can you help me with finding these records? he asks whenever he strolls into the archives. Before expeditions, he starts turning to Dan Heng and using his most sugary voice: You'll protect me, right, Gege? And Dan Heng turns to Himeko to flatly state, I will not be held responsible if he dies.

Eventually, Caelus grows bold enough to join you both for dinner: Gege, he asks, do you want me to hand-feed you these noodles too?

Dan Heng replies by rising from his seat and walking straight out of the dining car.

(Your long-suffering boyfriend eventually says, during one of your reading sessions, that Caelus is quickly becoming unbearable with this new habit of his.

Well, you muse, since he’s just teasing you about the way I talk to you, I could stop calling you ‘Gege’.

Dan Heng stops. He looks almost hesitant, like he wants to protest, but his expression flattens into a deadpan when you continue: I could always call you 'baobei' instead. What, you don't like that? But Heng'er, you're my baobei, my xingan baobei, my little little apple and beloved husb—whoa!

You laugh hysterically as you dodge the book he chucks at you.)

Sometimes you do get him to reciprocate your actions. Shockingly—despite his reserved and conscientious disposition—you have the greatest success with this whenever you tease him while he's working. You find it works best to crawl into his lap and kiss at his jawline, whispering into his ear while he tries to focus on his screen.

I’m so pent up, Gege, you often start with. I've been trying to take care of myself, but my fingers aren't enough. You like to straddle his hips as you talk, grind a little if you think you can get away with it. You whine if you do, pressing your face into his neck—right beneath his clenched jaw. Won't you give me some attention? Just ten minutes on this desk is all we need.

Dan Heng can only ever endure about fifteen minutes of this before throwing you over his shoulder. You inevitably find yourself being flipped over in a fireman's carry, being lectured in a flat tone. I don't know where you get off lying like that, he usually comments as he makes his way to your room, ignoring your yelping and kicking. 'Ten minutes'? Every time you act like this, you end up taking up my whole evening.

(He does, in fact, spend the rest of his night in bed with you, making it clear that there is no need for you to ‘take care of yourself’ so long as he’s around.)

But despite all the grief you give Dan Heng with your public, grand displays of affection, your favourite moments with him are the private ones. The ones where you sit next to him on his futon, sharing a pair of earbuds and listening to the latest hits from the various worlds to which you’ve travelled. The ones where you make dumpling skins together during the quiet hours of the kitchen, flour dusting your fingers as you roll out the dough that Dan Heng has kneaded. The ones where you spend lazy mornings in bed together, Dan Heng holding you as you talk at length about nothing at all.

The ones where you pause in your long-winded ramble to find him staring at you, his gaze fond and fully attentive. Met with such tenderness, you have no choice but to lean in and kiss him, long and deep and smiling—and in the privacy of your room, your boyfriend is more than happy to return it.

Some weeks after you return to the Express, Dan Heng gives you a long look after one such moment and says, "You should spend more time with me."

You raise a brow. "Eh? I already spend plenty of time with you, Heng'er. I've been bothering you 24/7 now that I'm back on the Express… It's a wonder you aren't sick of me yet."

"Of course I'm not sick of you," he replies plainly. "I could never be."

The admission makes you blink. Heat prickles the back of your neck. It's not often that Dan Heng is so straightforward with his feelings.

"And I mean"—he looks away, the red paint along his waterline hidden by his lashes—"that it'd be nice if you didn't have to leave the Express so often. If you could stay here all year round."

You can't stop yourself from frowning. "You know I don't like leaving you, but I really don't want to compromise my training." Your fingers sweep gently at his brow, brushing away his hair. "I wanna be strong enough to protect you, Gege. After I get to that level, I promise I'll be around more often." Then you smile a little. "And if I'm lucky, I might even get a long life out of it!"

Dan Heng's brow dips. "A 'long life'? The whole point of cultivation is to achieve immortality, isn't it?"

"Sure, in theory. In practice, almost no human ever becomes immortal by these means. If cultivation were so easy, then people wouldn't turn to shortcuts like magical elixirs or blessings from Aeon Yaoshi." You purse your lips, voice starting to colour with derision. "Not that I'd ever be shortsighted enough to chase either of those things, mind you. I'd rather work hard, have a long and healthy life, and die and reincarnate properly if it comes to that. Immortality isn't worth the strife caused by any other method."

Dan Heng studies you closely, his eyes steadfast on yours. "Then… what do you consider a 'long life'?"

You hum, thinking. "If I don't slack off with my training, I have maybe eighty to a hundred years of youth before I kick the bucket."

"Eighty years?" Dan Heng's eyes go a little wide. You aren't used to seeing it.

"Yes?" You shift, fidgeting. "But that's only if I'm lucky. Pushing for anything more would be tough. I could undergo a qi deviation and die… or I might just not be talented enough to reach that stage of cultivation and pass away from natural causes… someone could also just kill me at any time, given my lifestyle. I've got a lot of options for dying, you know."

Dan Heng doesn't reply, nor does he look at you. It occurs to you that this whole conversation might be unsettling for him, given everything that's happened with the Xianzhou Alliance, with the matter of his past life and that vengeful monster he seems unable to kill. The mere thought of immortality must be painful for Dan Heng.

"I'm sorry, Gege," you say. "It's insensitive of me to talk about these things with you. Anyway—I'm not seriously trying to become an immortal, so you don't have to worry about me. I'm not looking to break any taboos."

Your lover gives you a long, unreadable stare before replying, "Right. Of course. Nothing good can come from the pursuit of immortality." Cinnabar paint flickers as he looks away. "Human life should be as morning dew—fleeting and ephemeral."

Dan Heng starts to behave strangely, after that. Quieter and withdrawn. Not just subdued in his affection, but absent in it.

When you bother him in the archives, he no longer scolds you or distracts you with any work—merely continuing with his tasks, completely immersed in them. When March 7th and Caelus tease him about his many pet names, he doesn't get flustered—only rolls his eyes and ignores them. When the other passengers catch sight of the two of you dining together and fondly comment on your relationship, he hardly reacts. He only continues eating, staring absently at his dish—usually something you've made, because he seems uninterested in eating anything else these days.

(Are you sure you don't want actual food from the kitchens instead? you ask once, studying what's supposed to be dough for fried breakfast buns. For whatever reason, you can't get the consistency right. The Express chefs are way better than me, you know.

No, he insists. You made it, so I want to eat it.

You don't need to be so polite!

I'm not being polite. He looks down at your fingers, dusted snow-white with flour. It's just what I want.)

You wrongly assume, for a little bit, that he's somehow lost interest in everything but your cooking. It only feels like the logical conclusion, especially when Dan Heng gets into the habit of ignoring you for most of the day despite your use of every trick in your arsenal—from kissing him to teasing him to begging him for sex. He simply tells you that he'll entertain you later, and is otherwise too deeply absorbed in his work to pay attention to you.

"Is something wrong, Dan Heng?" you eventually ask, voice small. "Is it that you don't feel the same way about me anymore? Do you want to break up?"

Dan Heng goes stock still when he hears this. Without saying a word, he puts down his tablet, locks the door, and kisses you long and hard. And then—for the first time in your relationship—he proceeds to actually fuck you in the archives. He rails you next to the terminal for the better part of an hour, forces an earth-shattering orgasm out of you that ruins the carbon-fibre surface you're laid out on, and then he fills you up to the point that his spend starts trickling down your thigh.

Hazy and fucked out, you wonder idly if it's dripping down onto the phosphorescent tiles below. Dan Heng will probably make a fuss about it, especially since this is technically a public space, and the terminal is its most high-traffic area. He'd have a stroke if anyone ever saw this mess.

When he stands up, you assume that he's getting right to cleaning, like usual. The guy can hardly ever relax.

You don't expect it when he gets onto his knees and puts his head between your thighs.

"Gege?" you say, solidly confused, but before you can ask him what he's doing, you feel the press of his tongue against your dripping entrance and then all you can do is moan.

By the time Dan Heng is done with you, the two of you are messy and breathless, collapsed and tangled up in each other on his makeshift bed.

You stare at the ceiling, mind whirring even in your exhaustion. It had been hard to process the situation while your boyfriend was railing every thought imaginable out of you—but now that he’s finally done, the shock is settling in.

Holy shit, you think, Dan Heng never gets this nasty. Something really is wrong!

You think of broaching the matter, but Dan Heng beats you to it. He turns to you, says, "I don't want to break up," and then gets back on top of you for another round.

You decide to put your foot down.

The next night, you invite Dan Heng into your bedroom. You're all business this time. There's no whining, no teasing, no Heng'er, you don't want to touch me? There are no desperate and indirect plays to get his attention while you simmer in anxiety about what he's hiding from you. (This change is not because of your own strength of mind—of which you have none, when it comes to your boyfriend—but because you're now sure you won't break up, whatever happens.) Instead, you seat him at your table and regard him with a firm expression.

You're careful to keep your voice gentle, but you still don't hesitate: "I know something's been bothering you, Dan Heng. Can we please talk about it?"

Dan Heng is prepared for the question. "I'm sorry I've been neglecting you," he says instantly. "It won't happen anymore. I'm very serious about our relationship, and I have no wish for it to end."

You know he's being earnest. After spending the rest of his night fucking you—slow and sweet in your bed, rather than the desperate way he'd done it in the archives—he'd woken up this morning and gone back to normal. Paid attention to you, paid attention to others, humoured your public displays of affection and initiated his own in private. Acted like the past two weeks never happened, and that nothing’s been weighing on his mind.

Were he anyone else, you'd assume that you're simply being strung along for sex, or perhaps being distracted by it. But Dan Heng isn't anyone else: he has absolutely no interest in physical intimacy without the emotional kind. He'd slept with you as an affirmation of his feelings for you. (He probably also did it because you kept begging to be fucked, but that's neither here nor there.)

Still, as much as you liked having your back blown out in the archives, semi-public sex isn't exactly a healthy way to deal with relationship problems.

"I know you'll be more mindful of my feelings now," you reply, "but I'd still like you to tell me what's been bothering you. I won't force it out of you, but if you did tell me, we could maybe fix it?"

"It is unfixable," he replies, "and not a problem to begin with. Simply the nature of things that I must accept."

His tone is neutral. Factual. Certain of the insignificance of whatever the issue is, even though you know that he's not the type to be bothered by insignificant things.

You frown, confused. "If it's the nature of things, then it won't hurt for me to know."

Dan Heng isn't looking at you anymore, instead fixated on the view beyond your window. Peering at the many moons of this galaxy, he finally relents: "'The night-blooming cereus flowers only once.' This is how Vidyadharas describe human life."

You consider his words, contemplating the bittersweet air of the idiom.

"Because human life feels ephemeral to you?" you discern.

"Yes. The lifespan of a human is but a fraction of ours. It's never bothered me before, but"—he's finally looking at you now, and his expression guts you—"four months without you feels unbearable. I can't imagine four centuries."

You go quiet.

Dan Heng is right: this is the nature of things. Skilled as you might be, you aren't likely to be one of those rare few humans who can ascend to immortality without Yaoshi's fruit. He’ll likely need to spend the better part of his life without you, and then every lifetime thereafter. Such is the reality for a Vidyadhara choosing to love a short-life species.

“...I’m sorry, Dan Heng,” is all you can bring yourself to say, but he shakes his head.

“There is no need for you to apologize," he says plainly. "I should have prepared myself for this eventuality when I chose to commit myself to you. It cannot be helped."

Dan Heng loves this phrase, you think to yourself. It cannot be helped that I had to live alone for so many years. It cannot be helped that I was exiled from my home. It cannot be helped that I was punished for the sins of Yinyue Jun.

It cannot be helped that you will someday leave me.

A splinter digs into your heart. You reach out, squeeze his hand, and wish that you could do more.

"It cannot be helped," you agree, "but that doesn't make it any less painful."

Dan Heng does not speak, but the way that he closes his eyes is enough of a reply. No matter how unfeeling he makes his voice, his pain is evident.

You wait for him to collect himself. Listen to his breaths—deeper than usual, meditative, reflective. There is hesitation in his eyes when he finally looks at you. A weakness that he only ever shows at night, after waking from a terrible dream.

"...I know it's a cruel thing to ask of you," Dan Heng eventually says, and the bitter edge to his words surprises you, "and perhaps a sign that this soul of mine will never change in its sins, no matter how many times it is reborn—but is there no way for us to spend a life together?"

You forget how to breathe.

What he's asking you is not just heretical for him—it's traumatic. An echo of the crime he'd committed in his past life, the tragedy that marked him for suffering in this one. He must be desperate for an answer if he's voicing the question at all.

You struggle as you think through your options.

"Seeking out the Peaches of Immortality is out of the question," you start. "And Sanctus Medicus is just a bunch of nutjobs—no way could they make me immortal. Demonic cultivation is another Path, but I don't think you'd like the thing I'd become by the end of it."

A brilliant river of stars streams past the window, like the one in that ancient folktale about the bridge of magpies. You can see the reflection of your lover's face in the window: muted, sorrowful, already mourning you. And of course he's mourning you long before your death, with how much he'd lost long before his birth.

Oh, Heng'er, you think, even if I drank from Meng Po's bowl and lost every memory of you, I'd still find my way back to you in my next life.

It would be too cruel to say aloud, so you remain quiet—merely staring at the galaxy before you, hoping quietly to see some kind of bridge.

Then a nearby sun flickers, and you remember something.

"...I guess there is another option," you say slowly, "but I can't imagine you being happy with it."

He straightens up. "What is it?"

"Well…" You take a deep breath. "Sometimes people practice dual cultivation as a way to extend their life. It's quite safe, but would be difficult given our relationship."

Dan Heng stares. "What exactly does it entail?"

"Well… it's basically cultivating by having sex. If I slept regularly with an immortal being with highly refined qi, I could probably exchange energy with them and achieve longevity that way." You make a face at the thought. "But it's not exactly easy to find an immortal who'd want a lifelong friend with benefits… and I'd really rather not have sex with anyone other than you, anyway."

It would probably make him miserable.

You're surprised when Dan Heng looks thoughtful, rather than disturbed. He studies you for a long moment, considering.

"Vidyadharas are immortal," he says, "and the qi of a High Elder is much more powerful than that of any other species. Is it not helping that we're already coupling so often?"

"Not really." You reach out across the table, hold out your palm, and he knows to give you his hand. You turn it over, tracing a finger along the length of his wrist. "Dual cultivation with you wouldn't be very useful. You might have extraordinary qi as a Vidyadhara, but it's sealed when you're in your human form."

You feel for the warm glow of his meridians, even though you already know what you'll find—an ordinary, unremarkable life force coursing through his body.

Dan Heng doesn't seem discouraged, though, when you look back up at him. Only curious.

"Then," he says, "what about my dragon form?"

It doesn't end up being very straightforward.

For a full ninety minutes, Dan Heng sits in your room and listens to you discuss the mechanics of dual cultivation, also known traditionally as the 'art of the bedchamber'. As its name would suggest, there are quite a few nuances and technical considerations involved: different positions enhance your qi in different ways; certain acts are more useful than others; mutual pleasure must be attained for the greatest possible benefit.

It isn't just a lecture that you give him. You take out one of your cultivation manuals and show him various diagrams and poses. You whip out your tablet and visit "questionable websites" for "video demonstrations". You quiz him intensively at the end of each unit.

At around the seventy-minute mark, you catalogue Dan Heng's expression—thousand yard stare, stiff posture, red ears—and decide that you're overwhelming him. So you tell him the most important takeaway, which is that one thing he must absolutely do is—

"—finish inside you?"

"Mhm." You sound completely unbothered. "As much as possible. And as many times as possible."

He gives you a long, blank stare, and then crosses his arms. "...all of this is just a ploy to get me to do one of your favourite things in bed, isn't it."

"What? No! I wouldn't lie to you about something like this, Gege!" You're being truthful. Though your sex drive can sometimes drive you to try insane things, it never drives you to be cruel. "I'm being dead serious right now. This really will extend my life. Those cultivation manuals were proof!"

Dan Heng considers you. "You're right. You wouldn't lie about something like this."

"Thank you."

"You're already so shameless about begging for it—I don't think you'd see the need to come up with an excuse."

Wow.

"...okay, yes, but you're also pretty shameless about giving in."

Dan Heng clears his throat, and you try not to laugh. "Well, I've never had a reason not to, since we don't need to worry about pregnancy…" He tries very, very hard to assume some semblance of dignity as he deflects: "Anyway. I think I understand the gist of it. You more or less want me to do the usual things."

"Yes—but while you're in your original form, of course."

"Right." His eyes narrow, and his expression becomes uncertain: something you've only seen a handful of times. "...I do need you to know that taking that shape… complicates things. There is a reason why my powers are usually sealed."

You nod. You've known for a while now that Dan Heng hates invoking his Vidyadhara powers—he considers it as taboo as much as a Xianzhou native would. Truthfully, it did occur to you some time ago that exchanging qi with a dragon would make your cultivation progress leaps and bounds, but after learning about how much he despises that form of his, you'd scrapped the whole idea and put it out of mind.

You're surprised that he's even consenting to this, all things considered.

Noticing the tension in his body, you leave your teaching set-up (tablet, an annotated cultivation manual, and smartboard with various stick figures you've drawn) to rest a hand on his shoulder.

"I don't know if we have to worry about that. The Alliance only sealed Vidyadhara powers due to historical reasons relating to the Sedition, right?" you try to console him. "Rather than anything to do with your nature in this lifetime, I mean. You aren't inherently dangerous."

You can see the conflict in his eyes; your words run exactly counter to everything he must have heard while imprisoned on the Luofu.

"I don't know," Dan Heng finally says, "but for better or worse, things are still different when I take my true shape. I'm no longer used to it." He frowns a little. "The amount of power feels overwhelming to me now. It's fine in normal circumstances, but—" He struggles for a moment. "...I don't know how I'll behave in… these circumstances with you."

"Ah, I see. You're worried that you won't be able to control yourself while fucking you're me, huh?"

He gives you a disgruntled look. "Do you have to use such crass language?"

"Sorry, Gege. I'll try to speak eloquently like you: Yinyue Jun may fall to his base instincts once he's crossed the threshold of the chrysanthemum gate, right?"

His expression turns from disgruntled to disdainful. Evidently, he's not a fan of your erotica novel slang.

"Please be serious for once. We need to be careful if we do this. I might behave impulsively—do something rash. Accidentally hurt you."

You hum, considering his words. "That's surprising. I thought dragons were generally supposed to be pretty calm and wise…" Then you think about how you couldn't walk this morning. "Though I guess you weren't particularly calm yesterday."

He snorts. "Well, I usually am. Unfortunately, I find it exceptionally hard to control myself around you, with how much you like to provoke me," he says plainly. "It'll just get worse if I switch forms."

You try not to stare at him, shocked at how unbothered he is by these admissions. You suppose that multiple rounds of semi-public sex might have forced him to cross an event horizon of shame, and now his face is finally getting thicker.

"It isn't just my behaviour I'm worried about," he continues. His arms cross again, and his brow furrows. "You might find my form… unattractive. You probably won't like it."

You frown. "I can't imagine that. I bet the real Cold Dragon Young is super handsome."

It's a testament to his anxiety that he hardly reacts to your stupid comment. He just studies you carefully, uncertain. Apprehensive.

"I guess we'll find out."

END PART 1

notes: for those unfamiliar, this fic is set in the same universe as fengyue. fengyue was actually based on this fic, but due to my inability to manage deadlines, it came out way ahead of this LOL

i'm sorry there was no dragonfucking in this part when i have been promising dragonfucking for ages on this blog. but i am 12.5k words into part 2 and i can assure you that there is an excessive amount of incredibly nasty dragonfucking in it, so please look forward to that

this was written way before 1.2 came out (and in fact, before I had even caught up to 1.1 content). hopefully the characterization still holds up ok!

big, big thank you to @petrichorium for helping me navigate canon lore and riffing w me on this piece. please go check out their works, they have banger star rail content!

cultural notes:

cultivation is the practice of using martial and spiritual arts to cultivate one’s qi, gain spiritual powers, and attain immortality

dual cultivation is the act of refining your qi through having sex

I will be honest. I cannot remember the other cultural refs I dropped because I just kind of blindly write them in so please let me know if you have any questions about things LOL

translation notes:

gege is a term meaning "older brother", though it is often used for non-familial relationships that are very close; it can come off as either flirty or childish. heng'er is a diminutive of dan heng's name.

“If paradise is but a dream, then I wish to sleep forever” - this was a reference to the chinese version of dan heng’s ult line. in english, he says “this sanctuary is but a vision”. however, in chinese, he says “洞天幻化，长梦一觉” which is closer to something like “paradise is an illusion, reveals itself to be a long dream”

"The night-blooming cereus flowers only once" - this is how I rendered the idiom "曇花一現", which describes thing that are short-lived

"Human life should be as morning dew" - this is how I rendered the idiom "人生如朝露", which describes the ephemeral nature of human life

yes I really made dan-gege break out the chengyu and poetic speech... I'm not sure how he sounds in english but my man has his super literary moments in chinese haha

[farewell-itoshisoup]

IMPRINT | dan heng x gn!reader

They say that moles are spots where your lover liked to kiss you in your past life. As Dan Heng is your lover in your current life, you can't help but suggest that the previous Yinyue Jun might be responsible for the mole on your inner thigh. (Or: You learn that Dan Heng hates the idea that he might have known you in his past life.)

3k words of fluff, comedy, some nsft. features an established relationship and imbibitor lunae cuddles. past renfeng is mentioned (dh is not a fan of df's choice in spouses). cultural/TL/lore notes at the end. nsft tags: monsterfucking (mostly offscreen), afab reader, onscreen explicit foreplay. dividers by @/cafekitsune. thank you to yyj anon for the hilarious idea!

Dan Heng has, in his true form, a small beauty mark on his throat.

You can see it now, pressed up against him in bed—your head resting on his shoulder, your bare legs tangled up with his, your whole body wrapped up in the furnace-like heat of his form. Azure scales glide along your skin as his tail curls around your waist, settling lazily against your thigh. You can feel a strange vibration coming from his vocal chords, from his chest—quiet, rhythmic, a sign of his complete ease. Whenever you reach over and run your fingers through his hair, he closes his eyes and the thrum from his throat grows stronger.

(Yes—it turns out that the great Imbibitor Lunae can purr. Dan Heng was mortified when the two of you first discovered this fact, but you've since reassured him that it is objectively the best part of his transformation.)

Ordinarily, Dan Heng isn't so clingy. It's only when he decides to couple with you in this form—something he generally avoids, given the… complications relating to his anatomy and stamina—that he ends up entwining himself with you afterwards. His expression always remains as neutral and unbothered as ever, so you think it must not be a conscious behaviour. (In fact, Dan Heng's face is so thin that he'd probably disintegrate if he ever noticed himself doing this.) Possibly it's an instinct that comes with his draconic features, just like his habit of nipping at your throat during intimate moments, or flicking his tail when agitated.

Normally, you'd be happy to bask quietly in his affections, but you're too distracted today. You keep staring at that tiny mole on the smooth, white-jade slope of his neck. It's placed right on the spot where you most like to kiss him, impossible to miss.

It isn't there when he wears his human disguise. You're very sure of this fact, because you're an avid fan of leaving marks on his neck, no matter which form he's in. (This behaviour is much to his chagrin. It's not like anyone will notice, you always need to reassure him. You always wear turtlenecks or high collars. Be careful about that chest window, though…) It's only natural that you'd notice such a detail.

You reason to yourself that there's no significance to this beauty mark. Plenty of Dan Heng's features arbitrarily change between forms—including his height, and even his makeup—but it gets you thinking about what it could mean. Particularly, you keep thinking about that myth claiming that moles mark the spots where your lovers kissed you in your past life.

You wonder about who'd have been kissing him, in his past life as Dan Feng—or who'd have been kissing you, whoever you were in your past life.

Of course, you were probably a total random in your previous lives. You definitely weren't getting kissed up on by any High Elders of the Luofu, nor were you leaving any hickies on their necks—or at least, you weren't doing that to Dan Feng, given that the intergalactic criminal trying to kill your boyfriend is actually the ex-husband of the previous Yinyue Jun. (Ever since this revelation, you have promised Dan Heng that you will never attempt to murder him, no matter how badly your relationship might someday implode.) But you'll take any opportunity to tease Dan Heng, and the perfect opportunity is before you now.

"Gege," you say, trying and failing to hide the mischief in your voice. He opens his eyes. His expression is still calm, but the slight arch to his brow betrays his wariness.

"Hm?"

"I'm curious about something."

"I can tell," he says. "What are you thinking about?"

You hum in a pondering tone. "Well, I know you don't like to think about your past," you begin, and you can feel his tail curling, "but I wonder if we knew each other at all in your previous life?"

Dan Heng studies you carefully. "I don't know. I try not to remember too much of Dan Feng's life, and it's hard to understand what I do recall. But you already know that." He tilts his head. "You've never asked about him before. Why are you suddenly so curious?"

"Well… you know what they say about moles?"

He gives you a blank stare. "That you should monitor them carefully for changes, in case of skin cancer?"

You snort. "No, not that! Or, I mean, that's true, and I hope you're doing that—but it's not what I'm thinking of!"

The corner of his mouth lifts very, very subtly. "Then what are you thinking of?"

"How they say that moles exist wherever your lover kissed you most in your past life. You've heard that, right?"

"Yes—it's an old wives' tale," he dismisses. "My species would have noticed it if there were any truth to that myth."

You frown. "You sure? Because"—you pull back just so you can tap gently at the mark on his neck—"you've got a mole right here when you're in this form. And I love to kiss your neck, Heng'er."

"I've noticed," he says dryly, with a distinctly long-suffering tone, making you grin.

"Then don't you think I could have given this to you?" you try again, but he shakes his head.

"It's not uncommon for Vidyadharas to mate across lifetimes, and in those cases, it's not unusual to record details about their lovers' various incarnations," he explains evenly. "Someone would have noticed it if this saying about moles were true. So I can guarantee that this was not left by any of Dan Feng's lovers."

A sour expression flits across Dan Heng's face. You recognize it as the exact look he wore when he pelted his jade belt piece into the vacuum of space—something he'd done as soon as he realised its origins. (Would you keep a wedding band from a divorced spouse? he'd asked flatly, when you bemoaned its loss. No? Well, it's the same idea with the jade token. If you also happen to have an ex-husband trying to kill you, please be sure to get rid of your ring as well—you are not allowed to wear it.)

Trying not to laugh, you sit up and kiss his temple in an attempt to distract him.

"Okay," you concede. "So the beauty mark thing doesn't apply to Vidyadharas. But what about humans?"

Dan Heng falters. "...I don't know. There's no way for us to tell. Humans on the Luofu far outlive the length of the average Vidyadhara's rebirth cycle. And it is very difficult to identify a human's reincarnation, as your species will change faces and birthplaces between lifetimes." He gives you a long look, strangely unreadable. "...why do you ask?"

"Well," you say smartly, "if you wouldn't recognize me across lifetimes anyway—isn't it true that I could have been one of your past lovers?"

"...the chances are slim, but"—his tail flicks—"yes, I suppose you could have been one of Dan Feng's lovers. In theory."

You pull away from him, careful to let him get a good look at your body laid out on the bed. You catch Dan Heng's eyes wandering, his gaze all over your bare skin. Maybe studying the moles scattered across your body, or maybe he's focusing on the ones on your chest, or maybe he's thinking about the one on your inner thigh.

You point at the one that rests right above your heart.

"Then—if it's possible that I was one of Dan Feng's lovers, and if it's possible that the beauty mark thing is true for humans—isn't it also possible that Dan Feng gave some of these to me?"

"..."

Dan Heng studies you with a complicated expression. You can hear his jaw click before he points out, "That's a lot of ifs."

"I'd believe it," you say. "I mean—you've seen the one on my thigh, right? It makes sense that you'd have given that to me. I'm sure that Gege loved eating pussy in every single li—mmph!"

Dan Heng's thrown his hand over your mouth. 'Tired' doesn't even begin to describe his expression.

"I do not want to think about what Dan Feng's preferences were in bed."

You wrestle his hand away from your face for the express purpose of saying, "Why not? Aren't you curious? Like, do you think Yinyue Jun got as nasty as you do when you're in this form? What do you think he liked to do with his second—"

You lose your speaking privileges again.

Dan Heng ignores your muffled whining as he rolls his eyes. You don't even know why he's so bothered by this joke—he's the one who spent the entire day fucking you in ways you simply didn't even think were possible before you met him! (All thanks to the unique anatomy and stamina of his original form, for which you'll always be grateful to Aeon Long.) You try to convey all this through an indignant stare, but he doesn't relent. Eventually, you give up on struggling.

Curiously, Dan Heng takes this opportunity (i.e., a moment in which you are finally quiet) to study you. His hair curtains around your face as he leans over you, his gleaming eyes heavy with contemplation. Noticing the intensity of his gaze, you give him a questioning look.

When he finally pulls his hand away, you ask, "Is something wrong, Heng'er?"

"Not exactly." He's still watching you. "I only realised—I don't think we knew each other.

You stare blankly. "What?"

"I don't think we knew each other in our past lives."

You raise a brow, giving him a funny look.

"So unromantic," you complain. "What, Gege—you don't think our love is fated?"

Another eyeroll. But this time, rather than putting a palm over your mouth, Dan Heng rests his hand against your cheek instead. You blink at the feeling of his thumb running over your cheekbone.

"It's not that," he says. His voice is gentler now. "I just don't think Dan Feng would have had such a sad ending to his life, had you been in it."

"...oh." You open your mouth, but for once, you have no witty remark. Your face feels a little warm when you ask, "Really?"

"Yes, really." You think you catch a hint of fondness in his otherwise plain, unaffected voice. "And anyway—fate has nothing to do with my feelings for you. I chose you in this lifetime of my own accord, and I will spend this lifetime with you of my own accord. Destiny will never have any bearing on the path I wish to walk with you."

You swallow, staring at his eyes. They're painfully earnest. It's making it hard for you to think, though you can't bring yourself to look away.

"...how can you be so sure?" is all you can ask.

"Because my life until now has been controlled by Dan Feng's sins," he says simply, "but I refuse to let the stain of his karma touch my future with you."

You go quiet at that.

Dan Heng is never one to talk about his own suffering. Even when describing the cruelest of punishments he'd inherited from the former Yinyue Jun, he uses unfeeling terms, not ones of complaint. Control, stain, touch—you've never heard such painful language before.

You wonder, for a second, if you went a little too far with your teasing about his past incarnation, for him to speak in such a way. But by the time you've found the words to apologise, Dan Heng's expression has become wry.

"So please," he adds dryly, "don't make me think of what Dan Feng could or couldn't have been doing in bed with you. I already resent him enough."

"...wait," you realise, "are you jealous when you think about me having sex with Dan Feng?"

He clears his throat, looking away. "Not exactly jealous"—he's definitely jealous—"but I personally feel that he would not have deserved to kiss any part of your body, let alone leave his mark on it." He frowns. "And in any case, I just don't like the idea that he has anything to do with our relationship."

"But…" Your mouth opens and closes. "But why? He was technically just you."

"In theory, perhaps. But in practice, we are still different people." His tail settles down again, wrapping around your thigh. "I intend to be born into my next life holding a jade token I chose with you. Not one chosen by Dan Feng."

You are rendered speechless.

Your reserved boyfriend, who can't even hold your hand in public without feeling embarrassed, is casually professing his intent to love you across lifetimes with lines that sound plagiarized from a Xianzhou period drama. You don't know what to say, and you don't know what to do. Maybe you want to scream. Maybe you want to kiss him. Definitely you want to blow all your credits on a pair of luxury jade tokens tomorrow morning, one for each of you. You'll vow to never throw yours out, even if for some reason his next incarnation should try to murder you. You'll make it work somehow.

But—you also find it insanely funny that he can't stand the idea of Dan Feng fucking you. You definitely want to tease him a little more before running out to get any jewellery for him.

"That's very sweet, Heng'er," you start, "but has it occurred to you that if Dan Feng didn't kiss me in these places, then someone else did?"

Dan Heng freezes.

"Someone else would have kissed me here"—you tap the mole over your heart again—"and also here"—closer to the peak of your breast, now—"and here"—further down, on your waist—"and also…"

Before you can spread your thighs and brush your fingers against the mark there, Dan Heng grabs your wrist. His slit pupils are dilated, his tail is flicking, and his purrs have turned into a sharp huff—one accompanied by an expression of deep annoyance.

"I guess you don't like thinking about that either?" you ask, smiling, and Dan Heng chooses not to respond. He simply narrows his eyes—and lowers his head.

You smile when you feel his fangs on your neck. Too easy, you think. He lingers on your pulse, lips brushing it as much as his teeth are, before moving further down.

He places a kiss over your heart, first. Then a trail of them, his breath tickling the skin of your chest. You blink when you feel his hands running along your sides and lingering on your curves, making you acutely aware of his intentions.

"Wait—are we starting another round because of what I said?" you ask, trying not to laugh. "I had no idea you had such a jealous streak in you, Heng'er."

Dan Heng still doesn't reply. He merely replaces his lips with his tongue—and then your smile fades.

The heat of his mouth on you is distracting. Makes your brows knot as his tongue swirls around a nipple, as his breath fans across it. His teeth graze it, too—teasing and a little mean, with how he doesn't give you a break. You're squirming beneath him soon, tugging at his hair, grasping his horns—Wait, wait, I'm too sensitive—but from the way he inhales sharply at your touch, you know you're only encouraging him.

He moves down to your navel. Presses his lips to your skin—peppers your waist with butterfly kisses. His hands slip to your thighs as his mouth trails its way down, parting your legs as he settles between them. Your breath hitches as his fingers touch your entrance, spreading you open. You're still sensitive from all the things he did to you earlier—from how he had you stretched out and panting underneath him, stuffed so full that you could hardly think as you came. From how he fucked you like that again, and again, and again, until you were on the verge of tears from how many times you'd cum—because Dan Heng finds it impossible to stop whenever he's in this form.

But even as sore as you are, you can feel yourself clenching around nothing right now, eager to have him inside you again. You shiver as his breath blows over your aching clit.

"Don't tease me," you whine.

"After all the teasing you put me through?" He sounds unimpressed. "No, I think I'll take my time. It's only fair."

"Gege, I was only joking. You said it yourself: it's only an old wives' tale! I'm sure no one was kissing me on the—ah…"

Your voice clips off into a whimper. Dan Heng is running a finger along your slit, and you feel yourself his spend from earlier leaking out from you. It's hot and it's thick, a mess running all the way down to the sheets beneath you, and there's so much of it. He just spent the whole day filling you up, after all—and you have no doubt that he wants to spend his night the same way.

(Really, you owe so much to the Aeon of Permanence. You'd worship Long if he were still around—may he rest in peace.)

You watch as he studies you, his eyes keen and pupils blown. His gaze lingers on a particular spot on your thigh—and it suddenly occurs to you that he's been kissing all your moles.

"Dan Heng," you breathe, halfway to a laugh, "what exactly are you trying to do?"

He glances up at you, arching a brow.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm making sure that any marks you have in the future will be from no one but me."

Dan Heng's gleaming eyes are set on your beauty mark. He places a soft kiss on it, and he almost sounds amused when he speaks again:

"I'll especially like looking at this one again in your next life."

END

lost my mind from stress this week so I cranked this out rip I hope you all enjoyed!! please leave a note if you did!!

some notes about lore details:

not sure if everyone is caught up to 1.2 content (I'm not lol), so I'll note here that the "jade tokens" being mentioned = Vidyadhara practice of taking matching jade tokens into their hatching rebirth, so they can find each other in their next lives

the relic lore for the passerby of wandering cloud bracer in chinese heavily implies that yingxing and dan feng were either engaged or married. it makes sense when you consider that dan heng and blade wear matching jade buckles. people theorize that these are jade tokens from their lifetime as lovers – hence that whole bit in this fic about dan heng throwing out his jade token 😭

cultural/TL notes:

gege is a term meaning "older brother", though it is often used for non-familial relationships that are very close; it can come off as either flirty or childish. heng'er is a diminutive of dan heng's name.

chinese language has a few different concepts/words for the idea of fate/destiny. the one that dh and mc discuss in this fic is the notion that your relationship with someone in this lifetime will go on to determine the nature of your relationship with them in the next one (缘分, this idea applies to all relationships but includes romantic ones). I tried my best to convey this idea in the dialogue for those reading without that cultural context, but quite honestly I feel like I failed LMAO and thus... you are getting this note.

I also want to clarify that 缘分 is not affected by karma in the Buddhist sense, even though I used the term "karma" within the discussion about fate/destiny; 缘分 is not a Buddhist concept. (the reason that I had dan heng refer to dan feng's "karma" is simply a play on the chinese term for "sins" used to describe dan feng's crimes, 罪业，which can have Buddhist connotations.)

other notes:

while I left the reader's backstory vague (so that you may interpret them however you want), I wrote this with tanghulu mc in mind, because that's who the original anon ask discussed!

yyj peg anon if you are reading this: I apologize for how deeply I botched your idea LMAOAOA this got heavily derailed from the basic prompt of teasing dan heng 😭 what 1.2 will do to a mf…

thank you to the 80% of people who agreed that danheng IL should purr in this fic. i truly do not think that he would exhibit particularly animalistic behaviours in his original form, but, listen........ I wasn't writing this with my brain.

I'm sorry that there was no tonal cohesion in this fic. we really went from dragon cuddles to bullying danheng to existential discussions of fate to monsterfucking foreplay. as I said above........ I wasn't writing this with my brain

[farewell-itoshisoup]

风月 (lit. wind, moon; pronounced "fengyue") — meaning "beautiful scenery" or "romance".

In which you drag Dan Heng halfway across the universe for a candied fruit skewer, and he gets a taste of the life that was once denied to him. (dan heng x gn!reader)

7.5k words of fluff and romance! Features an established relationship and many Chinese cultural elements. Cultural/Translation notes at the end. Note that "Yinyue-jun" is the Chinese for "Imbibitor Lunae". Reader's appearance is undefined, but they were raised on the Luofu and in the Xianzhou culture. Dividers by @/saradika.

Written for the Meet Fruit collab! Prompt: Dan Heng + Hawberry

It is absurdly difficult to find hawberries on this side of the Triangulum Galaxy.

Dan Heng discovers this after you begin a laser-focused mission to acquire some, scouring the grocery stores of three consecutive Astral Express stops for the elusive fruit. Why you're so obsessed with finding them, he doesn't know. He guesses he'd maybe triggered some kind of nostalgia for them when he'd made an offhand comment about tanghulu a few weeks back.

I’ve never actually had them before, was all he’d said. It had been such a brief remark; he's surprised it stuck with you.

He'd mentioned it in the archives, while sitting with you on the futon spread across the glowing floor. You'd been leaning against his shoulder, idly skimming the novella in his hands: a Xianzhou literary piece. Highly introspective, full of complicated relationships, blatantly romantic in its subject matter. The protagonist and his wife had been at a festival for lovers: Qixi Jie. It's a day widely celebrated throughout the Alliance, Dan Heng knows from all his books, and inspired by a myth about an ill-fated love between two immortals.

The couple had decided to share a skewer of tanghulu, and you'd been reading the scene when you sighed, Wish we could have one together. Then you gave him a teasing smile. You know, Heng’er—I didn’t think you'd be into this kind of story. Who knew you were such a romantic!

I’m not actually, he'd replied. But of course, you hadn’t believed him, and you ended up pestering him about his taste in romance novels for the better part of an hour. Apparently you were looking for a new one to read, but he had no trashy webnovel recommendations for you.

It is the truth that Dan Heng does not gravitate toward love stories. This novel is not his usual fare, and he'd likely have little interest in this sort of fiction coming from any other world. But he'd enjoyed the sentimental tone of this particular story, set upon the Luofu: he'd liked the way the text lingered on the golden warmth of its sun, on the frenetic bustle of its street markets, on the calm beauty of its starry nights. Even the smallest of actions, in the voice of this author, carried with them a quiet magic. The wind, the moon, the heavens and the earth—all of it had felt so palpable between those pages.

Of course, Dan Heng has never experienced any of that firsthand. For all he knows, everyday life on the Luofu might be as tiresome as it is on any other world. Certainly you’ve complained about it a great deal during your tales about your childhood spent there with your shifu: the traffic was terrible, the seaside markets were too crowded, and the fishmonger always tried to scam me! Supposedly, the air quality was going downhill by the time you had to leave, too.

Maybe Dan Heng would be equally disenchanted by it all. Maybe he'd hate the rush hour commute, the raucous streets, the ozone in the recycled air. Maybe the sun and the stars would simply feel like a backdrop to the mundanity of daily life. He can’t be certain that the reality of the Luofu is anything like the dream-like world painted within any book.

But he is certain about this: that for the fleeting moment he’d been allowed outside, Dan Heng had, for the first time, gazed upon the world on which he’d been born—

—and it had been beautiful.

Tanghulu Recipe:

Wash and dry 30 hawberries – substitute crabapple? gege allergic. will do strawberries.

Sterilize a bamboo skewer in hot water, and use it to skewer the hawberries

Add 150 grams of rock sugar to 150 grams of hot water; heat until boiling, then keep on high heat until all the sugar has melted

Once large bubbles start to form, turn to low heat and simmer until the mixture turns yellow

Roll the hawthorn skewers along the surface of the mixture until the syrup coats the entire skewer. – SHIJIE SAYS MUST BE QUICK! and not ugly!

Allow the skewers to cool at room temperature. – best to eat fresh, can freeze

“You seem disappointed,” Dan Heng remarks.

On any normal day, you'd give your boyfriend full attention at the mere sound of his voice: eyes set upon his features, diligently noting every microexpression and quirk of his lips. (In general, you pay an awful lot of attention to his lips.) But things are different today, and you hardly look at him.

Your gaze is instead occupied with the candied fruit in your hands: strawberries that Dan Heng had washed and cut a little while ago, strung up on a metal skewer that the Express chefs had donated to you. Each strawberry is glossy with a layer of syrup, a sugary concoction that you’d spent a half hour stirring. It had cooled by the time you sampled the fruit, a hard crunch between your teeth. The aftertaste is still in your mouth, sweet and tart.

It’s—it’s not bad.

“Did I say I was disappointed?” you ask, still studying your handiwork.

“You don’t have to say it. I can tell.”

Without warning, Dan Heng takes the strawberry tanghulu from your hands, and you squawk.

“Gege! There’s, like, ten other skewers!”

“Hm. That’s too bad. I want this one.”

There is not even a single trace of remorse in his eyes as he takes his first bite. He seems only contemplative as he chews, humming as he samples it.

"It's good," he says decisively. He raises a brow when he looks at you. "Why are you unhappy with it?"

"It is good," you admit, "but it isn't… traditional. Strawberry tanghulu is tasty, but, like—I grew up eating the haw ones, you know? That's the classic flavour. Like, when you read a novel and there's a Lantern Festival, the characters are having haw skewers. Not strawberry ones."

"Does it matter if I'm eating what I read about?" Dan Heng asks, and it takes everything not to say yes.

It's always been plain as day to you that Dan Heng is enamoured with the Luofu. He's always working his way through some Xianzhou novel, or trying to acquire an old film set on the Luofu, or labouring in the archives while a Xianzou drama plays in the background. At first you'd assumed that this was all motivated by some kind of nostalgia for his birthplace, a longing for a life that he'd been forced to leave—

—but then you found out that Dan Heng never actually had a life on the Luofu.

He'd been born and raised in a prison, he once confided in you. He didn't see the Luofu sun until he was an adult, and it was only for a moment before he was sent into exile. He hadn't been allowed a home, hadn't been allowed a family, hadn't even been allowed the privilege of breathing fresh air. The rich scent of bao being fried in the crisp morning air, the mad clamour of the streets at night, the act of sitting at a kitchen table and folding hundreds of dumplings with your loved ones: his childhood had been devoid of all those things.

All the things you once took for granted are things that Dan Heng's only ever experienced through books.

You've made it a mission to have him experience some of it now, of course. Taught him how to knead dough and showed him all the different dumpling folds you learned from your Shifu. Forced him to sit down for proper breakfasts and had him try youtiao and soy milk, which have now become comfort foods. Bought mooncakes for his first Mid-Autumn Festival and watched his complicated expressions as he bit into duck egg yolk for the first time (decidedly not a comfort food).

And—on God—you will also watch him have proper tanghulu made from hawberries!

"Eh. I guess it's not that important," you lie. "But I have a craving for it, Gege." You give him a killer pair of puppy eyes, and he visibly pauses. "Can we go to a market that might sell some? Or maybe find a street festival? Actually, you know—I don't even know the last time I went to a festival… Wouldn't it be fun to go?"

"I've actually never been to one," Dan Heng replies casually, and you gawk.

"You've never been to a festival?"

"Not a Xianzhou festival." He pauses, as if thinking. "Not any markets either."

"...how?"

"I've always avoided Alliance ships."

"But—but there's plenty of people with Xianzhou heritage who aren't with the Alliance?! Like—like on Xinghan Space Station! You've never visited?"

"Not aside from that one time we were there for business," he replies. "It's not like I ever go on vacation."

"Why not?!"

"Being constantly hunted for revenge makes it hard," Dan Heng deadpans, and he doesn't seem bothered, but you feel distinctly terrible about it.

"...okay. I'm forcing you to take a vacation on July 7th and 8th."

Dan Heng stares. "Why?"

"Because we're going to Xinghan to get some tanghulu."

He doesn't even blink. "Not a chance."

"Eh? Why not!"

"Because that's a silly reason to go so far out of our way." His eyes flicker, stress lines shifting and disappearing: possibly his most frequent microexpression around you. "And what if I'm recognized? We could be attacked."

"That's fine," you wave off. "If someone tries to kill Gege, I'll just kill them first."

"..."

"What? It'd be self-defense."

"...lethal violence should not be your first response to a threat."

"But it would be an effective one."

He gives you a flat look. Not for the first time, you wonder how a man who fights for a living manages to be such a pacifist.

"...okay, okay. If I promise not to kill anyone—will you go with me?" You latch onto his arm, pulling out all the stops and giving him your most pleading eyes. "I just want to have a romantic night together, Gege. We haven't been on a real date in so long."

It's nearly imperceptible, but Dan Heng falters. There are clearly two wolves inside him: one that wants to be responsible, and one that wants to spoil you.

It's obvious which one is winning.

"Qixi Festival is coming up," you add, a lilt to your voice, "and I bet we could find somewhere to celebrate it. Wouldn't it be nice to spend it together, Heng'er?"

He stares at the candied fruit in his hands: all strawberries that he washed and cut without a word, before you'd even thought to ask. Food that he'd made and tasted—like so many other dishes before it—only because you demanded it, no matter how troublesome it was to do it.

"...I'll go put in my vacation request with Himeko," he decides.

THE QIXI FESTIVAL is traditionally celebrated around the 7th day of the 7th month on the Xianzhou Normalized Calendar, with adjustments made for time dilation effects depending on distance between ships and proximity to large celestial bodies. Elsewhere in the universe, the Qixi Festival is celebrated in locations with significant populations of Xianzhou diaspora, such as the Xinghan Space Station and the Chang’E Moon Settlement. These settlements typically observe the Qixi Festival on July 7th per their local calendar dates. – Double check Xinghan dates; confirm ETA with Pompom. Has July 7th already passed on Xinghan's local calendar? CELEBRATORY PRACTICES vary significantly between different settlements, and even between the Xianzhou Alliance ships themselves. They may include street festivals, temple fairs, sewing competitions, and the worship of certain immortals and Aeons. In some places, people celebrate with a simple date night. Being the lover’s festival, many couples aim to get married on this day. – Search later: What do boyfriends get their partners for Qixi? DESPITE THESE VARIATIONS, all observances are dedicated to celebrating the myth of the Cowherd (personification of the star Altair; Bayer designation: Alpha Aquilae) and the Weaver Girl (personification of the star Vega; Bayer designation: Alpha Lyrae). IN THIS XIANZHOU FOLKTALE, the Cowherd and Weaver Girl were two immortals who fell in love and entered a forbidden relationship. The Jade Aeon tore them apart from one another, and they were shortly after banished to opposite sides of the Heavenly River (otherwise known as the Milky Way, within the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies). From henceforth, they lived separately, only able to watch—

“Wow, Gege,” you say, and Dan Heng nearly drops his book. “This is the most romantic myth in all of Xianzhou history, and you’re reading the driest possible textbook summary to learn about it? Why didn't you just ask me?” You lean over his shoulder, squinting at the page. “What the hell is a ‘Bayer designation’? 'Vega'?! Her name is Zhinü!”

Dan Heng is momentarily too bewildered to feel embarrassed about being caught with this book. "You don't know what a Bayer designation is? Don't you have a pilot's license? How on earth do you navigate in space?"

"Well, I have a tendency of getting lost…"

With significant horror, Dan Heng reflects on every moment he's allowed you to pilot the spacecraft the two of you sometimes use to get away for dates.

"...I am never letting you drive again."

"Fine by me, Gege! I'll rely on you from now on." You beam at him, pressing into his shoulder. Then—again, with significant horror—Dan Heng notices that you're reading his annotations in the book.

He instantly snaps it shut, but the damage is done: you turn to him with a wide, giddy smile, and start pawing at his arm with excitement.

"'What do boyfriends get their partners for Qixi?' Heng'er—were you trying to research this for me?"

Dan Heng considers lying for a moment. There are countless potential explanations as to why he decided to consult a textbook instead of going to you. He could easily say that you'd probably forget details in recounting the myth, and that wouldn't do because he'd wanted a comprehensive explanation (true). Or he was genuinely wanting to check the dates because he knew you wouldn't have accounted for different calendars (also true). He'd doubted that you'd remember that not everyone in the universe operates on Interastral Standard Time—a fair suspicion, given that you don't even know what a Bayer Designation is.

But seeing your radiant, pleasantly surprised smile—Dan Heng decides not just to lose face, but to practically obliterate it.

"Yes," he plainly confesses. "I wanted to know how to celebrate the Qixi Festival properly with you." He tries to ignore the heat prickling the back of his neck. "...and I wanted to surprise you."

You go a little wide-eyed, blinking—probably as surprised about the admission as him—and then peck him on the cheek, smiling. "Heng'er, you don't need to worry about celebrating properly or improperly. As long as you spend both days with me, I'm happy enough."

He hesitates. Truthfully, he's read probably an upward of a thousand novels and poems that mention the Qixi Festival and the associated myth—but nothing about how people on the Luofu celebrate it nowadays.

How you would have celebrated it.

"I just want to make sure you enjoy yourself," he explains. "And that I do all the things I should be doing. I have no experience with this… I didn't even know it was a two-day celebration."

"Huh? It's not."

"...it's not?"

"Well, I guess some places have events that happen over several days—but that's not a traditional thing. Qixi Festival is technically just one day."

He raises a brow. "Then why did you want the 8th off too?"

"Because I want to have a romantic evening with you on the 7th, and then a romantic night with you in the hotel, and then a romantic morning with you on the 8th."

"..."

"I'm talking many, many rounds of romance, Gege. That's the greatest gift you could give me."

"...of course it is."

You beam at him, exceptionally pleased. (Why or how, Dan Heng's not actually certain; it's not like you don't already have as many rounds of sex with him as the day allows.) But it still bothers him: the reality that he's never celebrated this before. That he won't know how to do all the right things, or what the right things even are.

The honey-sweet sesame taste of qiaoguo, which stars to look for in the sky, presents that he should gift you: he's never known any of these things, but will soon know them with you.

Or possibly fuck them all up with you.

"How did you celebrate the Qixi Festival when you were on the Luofu?" Dan Heng asks, somehow remaining expressionless.

You don't seem to catch onto his nerves, only pondering the question.

"Um… well, honestly, I didn't really."

Dan Heng stares. "What?"

"Well, like, Shifu took me to temple fairs and stuff. My friend participated in a sewing competition too, once, and I watched her. But I was a kid when I lived on the Luofu—they drove us out when I was still pretty young. I wasn't exactly going on romantic date nights at that age."

"...I see."

Lacing your fingers through his, you stare at your joined hands. Your voice is a little tender when you say, "The way I see it, Heng'er—I don't think we need to think about celebrating it the right way or the wrong way. We're gonna be lovers at the lovers' festival, which is good enough."

Dan Heng considers your words, his thumbpad running along the curve of your hand. "Is that right?"

"Yes! Like—who cares what lovers on the Luofu do with each other? It's much more important what my lover does with me." You pause, then, seeming thoughtful. "....as long as he tries some tanghulu while we're at it."

Dan Heng feels like he's drunk a nauseating amount of that tanghulu syrup—but also like his chest is going to combust. It's an unusual cross of emotions. He'll never get used to it, even though he experiences it nearly daily when you're around. And he'll never know the words to use, even though he's searched for them so often.

"...is food all that matters to you when you celebrate this?" is all can bring himself to say, voice dry.

"And the romance," you add neatly, not the least bit ashamed.

Dan Heng’s mouth twitches.

"Right, of course. The romance."

Thank you for booking with Xinghan Grand Hotel!

As one of this world’s finest establishments, we are pleased to host you for your stay on July 7th through July 8th.

Xinghan is a vast space station, remarkable for its terrestrial landscape and breathtaking countryside. Founded by Xianzhou natives several centuries ago, the beautiful scenery at the outer regions of the station mimics that of their various home worlds. Xinghan City itself is a vibrant and cosmopolitan metropolis with influences from planets all throughout the Pinwheel Galaxy.

You are encouraged to make full use of our concierge services to help you shape an itinerary for your stay. Our staff are happy to help you navigate the remarkable sights of Xinghan. Whether you are here for business or pleasure, there is something for everyone on the Heavenly River.

We look forward to your stay with us, Dan Heng Xiansheng.

Celebrating the Qixi Festival on Xinghan Station is hell.

The station itself is, of course, nearly idyllic in its beauty. And objectively, your romantic getaway with Dan Heng is lovely from start to finish. The two of you check into a gorgeous—and shockingly expensive—hotel in a quiet corridor of the city, not far from the outskirts of the station. The lobby alone startles you with its high ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and marbled floors. You don't know if you've ever stayed in such a nice place.

(When you ask Dan Heng how much money he blew on this trip, he merely shrugs and says not to worry about it. You’d be terrified if it were anyone else who'd done the booking—certainly, Dan Heng would be terrified if you had—but your boyfriend is too fiscally responsible for you to question it too much.)

The concierge at the hotel provides a sightseeing itinerary that would be “perfect for a honeymoon”, taking advantage of all the Qixi deals at restaurants and theme parks. Dan Heng, though, seems more interested in exploring all the everyday happenings of the station. He asks to go to the morning market (you’ve never seen a man so enthralled by cheap fried dough), talks you into hiking the mountains so that he can take pictures of the rice terraces (you cheat by using your flying sword to carry the both of you up), and asks to stroll around the seaside harbour. You lounge there for a little, sitting on a bench and watching the junks drift by, their sails fluttering in the wind.

You frown as you study the ships.

“Why don’t they just use pneumatic tubes for transporting goods? Or automated starskiffs?” you ponder. “Like—this looks like a planet. But it’s still a space station at the end of the day.”

“The ships are likely more appealing to tourists,” Dan Heng says smartly.

“Huh. Does it appeal to you?”

“It’s—”

Dan Heng’s reply is drowned by the high-pitched trill of a reed, then the thunder of a gong: the unmistakable sound of a wedding.

Laughter and cheering fill the pier as a procession of men file through, bearing a fire-red palanquin. Both of you turn to watch the spectacle, and—even though this is your tenth time hearing the suona since you woke up this morning, which is absolute hell for your ears, and decidedly making Qixi absolute hell for you—you cheer and yell your blessings as they pass.

Through the beaded curtain of the sedan, you think you make out a wave from the bride.

“That textbook wasn’t exaggerating about people wanting to get married on Qixi,” Dan Heng muses as they trail away, their song growing faint. “I’ve never seen a Xianzhou wedding procession before today. Now I’ve seen nine.”

“Ten,” you correct him. “And you’ll probably see ten more before the night starts. Ah, Gege, my eardrums are going to burst at this rate…”

When you lean against him and feign exhaustion, he rolls his eyes. “So dramatic,” he says, though his hand presses against the small of your back, as if to steady you. “You don’t find it nice?”

“It's fine, I guess?" You squint at him. "Why? Do you find it nice? Are you the kind of person that really likes weddings, Gege?”

“I’ve never been to one, so I don’t know,” he says simply. “But it seems like people are enjoying themselves, and that’s never a bad sight.”

You give him a keen look, studying the way he watches the procession disappear around the corner—clearly intrigued by it. For someone who so often says that they don’t enjoy love stories, Dan Heng has been oddly fixated on every celebration of love you've come across today.

How interesting.

“Say, Gege…” Your voice is teasing. “Wanna elope?”

Dan Heng visibly pauses, blinking twice before turning to stare at you.

“What?”

You stifle a laugh. “Many people have proper weddings during Qixi Festival,” you say, smiling, “but tons of people also just decide to elope. All the wedding registry offices are probably crazy busy right now, but I bet we could find one that could squeeze us in and tie the knot for us. What do you say?”

He shoots you down instantly: “No way.”

“Eh? Why?” You look at him all hurt, your lower lip wobbling. “You don’t wanna marry me, Gege?”

“No.”

“Wow! That hurts, Ge!”

Dan Heng snorts. He turns to you, and—in an uncharacteristic move, only made possible because the two of you are alone and on a world where no one from the Astral Express is there to gawk at him—he cups your face with his hands.

His voice gets a little soft when he says, “Not today.”

“...oh.”

Your mind goes a little blank as you stare at him, at the tender glint in his jade-like eyes, and the soft curve to his lips—and fuck, who gave your boyfriend the right to look so fucking handsome?

You breathe deeply. Another suona tremors in the distance, and against the waves of the sea, its echo sounds almost soft.

“Not today?” you ask faintly. “But some other day?”

“Yes. Some other day. And…” He looks away, glances at the now-empty street. “...it would be nice to do it properly. Instead of just eloping.”

“Properly,” you repeat. “Like, um. You wanna wear a suit? Exchange rings? Or…" Your eyes follow his line of sight. "Do you mean like that wedding party?”

His head inclines—so slight that you nearly miss it.

“With a palanquin?” you confirm. “And a tea ceremony? You want us to do our three bows and all of that?”

He watches you carefully. “Would it be strange?”

“Huh? No.” You bite your lip. His eyes flick down. You’re finding it increasingly hard to focus with the way that your blood is rushing in your ears. “Why would it be strange?”

“Well, it is a Xianzhou tradition, and we don’t have any Xianzhou family—or, well. We don’t have any family. So it might be… odd.”

“Who cares?” you say. You’re only half-listening to him, too focused on holding back from kissing him. “I wanna see you in red, Heng'er. I bet it's a good colour on you."

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Alright. But it'll look better on you, I’m sure.”

You blink, feeling as startled as your face is hot. Not a romantic, my ass! you can't help but think.

You also can't help but tease him.

“...Heng’er,” you say slowly, a playful edge growing in your voice, “I knew you had a romantic streak in you. Forget Yinyue-jun—I should start calling you Fengyue-ju—mmmph!”

Before you can start running your mouth, Dan Heng silences you the way he knows best.

IN THIS XIANZHOU FOLKTALE, the Cowherd and Weaver Girl were two immortals who fell in love and entered a forbidden relationship. The Jade Aeon tore them apart from one another, and they were shortly after banished to opposite sides of the Heavenly River (otherwise known as the Milky Way, within the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies). From henceforth, they lived separately, only able to watch each other from opposite sides of the river bank. Seeing their grief, every magpie in the world took pity on them and decided to form a bridge across the Heavenly River, allowing them to cross it. The Jade Aeon, also upon witnessing their heartbreak, decided to let them see one another for a single day. According to myth, the birds have since gathered once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month. On that day, the Cowherd and Weaver Girl meet each other at the cusp of the bridge. IN TRADITIONAL CELEBRATIONS OF THE QIXI FESTIVAL, people would look up at the sky at night and admire the stars of Vega and Altair. They would also search for Deneb (Bayer designation: Alpha Cygni), which represents the Bridge of Magpies.

When the sun falls on Xinghan, you and Dan Heng return to the harbour at which you’d been spending your afternoon. Beneath a foreign night sky—illuminated by two oblong moons and stars rippling in the pattern of mares’ tail clouds—the pier is lit by countless lanterns and smiles. Women dressed in traditional robes weave through the crowd, the flowing silk of their ruqun trailing after delicate steps. The fresh seaside air mingles with the spiced fragrance of lamb skewers, the sweetness of cooking dough, the rich scent of grilling vegetables.

And at the centre of it all: your hand clasped tightly in his, guiding him through the chaos to all the dishes and games you loved most from your childhood. To all the things that he’s longed to taste for weeks now, ever since the two of you made these plans.

Dan Heng finds it almost—almost—perfect.

“Dan Heng," a voice calls out from behind the two of you, "Dan Heng! Wait up! I wanna get some corn!”

“What? Why are you getting corn? You can get corn anywhere… C’mon, those lamb skewers were calling to us… begging to be eaten… I can still hear them...”

“You can what now?”

Dan Heng rubs his temple, looking at you.

“Remind me again why you agreed to let March and Caelus come with us,” he says, and you laugh.

“Because festivals are fun with more people,” you say. Then you tilt your head, studying him. “Don’t tell me you’re not having fun, Gege?”

“I’m enjoying myself,” he says honestly, and not even the incomprehensible word salad coming from Caelus' mouth can ruin the mood, with the smile you give him.

You lean in, bring your lips close to his ear. Your breath tickles him as you ask, “Is it just that you want more time alone with me?”

“Well,” he replies, “watching Caelus go through trash wasn’t exactly the night I had planned for us.”

You chuckle. “Okay, okay. I think I have a way of shaking him off.”

Dan Heng gives you a questioning look, but you only wink and tug at his hand. You lead him through the crowds once more, yelling at Caelus and March to follow.

He has a half a mind to ask you to slow down, with how much the two of you are missing at this pace. You pass by a shadow puppetry show, the silhouettes of Niulang and Zhinü dancing on a luminous screen, and Dan Heng wants nothing more than to see the myth play out before his own eyes—but your pull is unrelenting. You skip past a man crafting sugar sculptures, a group of dancers twirling with water sleeves, a rack of crisp potato skewers, and countless other sights that Dan Heng's eyes trail after.

It’s only then that you slow down—and Dan Heng wishes you hadn’t.

The four of you are assaulted by what must be the most horrific stench in the Pinwheel Galaxy. He presses his sleeve against his nose and tries not to gag.

“Is there no garbage disposal at this festival?” Dan Heng asks with plain disgust, while Caelus perks up and simultaneously says, “Smells like there’s a dumpster nearby.”

March pinches her nose. “Ew—let’s get out of here. I wanna see those sugar animals—they looked so cute!”

“No, no," Caelus replies. "We can go back in a bit, I wanna go take a look first…”

He makes a beeline for wherever that ungodly odour is coming from, and March, with a deep sigh, follows him. “I’ll go keep an eye on him,” she says, voice heavy with resignation. “You two enjoy your date.”

“Make sure he doesn’t eat anything weird again,” Dan Heng says, and that makes you laugh. He narrows his eyes at you, noting your completely unbothered expression, and asks, “What’s so funny?”

“That smell isn’t from garbage, Gege. That’s stinky tofu. Completely safe to eat—and it’s actually pretty good, too.” You tilt your head. “I thought it’d be a good way to distract Caelus—but do you want to try some?”

He thinks he might be going green. “Maybe later,” he says, somehow keeping his voice neutral. “Didn’t you want to find tanghulu?”

Dan Heng tries not to sigh with relief when you say, “Oh, true… let’s go look for some.”

Funnily enough, hawberries seem to be as impossible to find on this side of the Triangulum Galaxy as it was on the other.

The two of you have been walking through the stalls for at least half an hour now, on a focused search for the elusive candied skewers. The two of you find an assortment of qiaoguo, a variety of persimmon cakes, and delicately crafted sugar paintings. (“Look, Gege! Let’s request one of the Azure Dragon,” you suggest, triggering an immense headache in Dan Heng.)

But you don’t come across any tanghulu.

After you finally give up, you retreat to a quiet corner of the pier, biting into a peach-shaped qiaoguo while your legs dangle over the water. Dan Heng, himself, has the dulcet taste of bronze sugar melting on his tongue: part of the dragon you’d requested from the sugar painter, set on a bamboo stick. Despite the sweetness of your snacks, Dan Heng picks out a bitter air from you.

You don't say anything, though. The two of you only peer at an artificial sky as you eat, taking in its strange features. There is but a single, round moon within it, and its stars are unusually bright. They run across the black night in a silver river: a precise copy of the Milky Way, in the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies, as seen from Earth.

Xinghan Space Station is capable of large-scale atmospheric projections, Dan Heng had read in the hotel’s travel brochure. Apparently, they like to recreate Earth’s night sky during the Qixi Festival, as an homage to the original stars that gave birth to the myth. They'd only switched it on fifteen minutes ago, and the both of you had stopped to stargaze.

You squint at the constellations above you.

“I have… no idea where Zhinü and Niulang are," you remark.

“No?”

“No… the Luofu never did these atmospheric projections. And—I guess I should be able to figure it out since I've got a licence, but, well… you know I’m not very good at navigating the stars.”

Dan Heng bites off the last of his sugar dragon, then crouches down next to you. Without a word, he raises the bamboo rod and uses it to gesture at the constellation of Lyra. “Zhinü is the brightest star in that cluster over there—right next to those four stars making a parallelogram.” He then points above it, at the constellation of Aquila; your line of sight follows the bamboo skewer closely. “And the bright one over there—that’s Niulang.”

You rest your head on his shoulder, humming. “Does the Bridge of Magpies represent a bridge of stars?” you ask. “Or is that something people made up?”

“It represents Deneb. You can see it there”—the bamboo in his hands points westward—“forming a triangle with Zhinü and Niulang.”

You hum at the information, but otherwise stay quiet. When Dan Heng chances a look at you, he finds you contemplating the sky, staring intently at the Heavenly River.

Though you no longer seem upset, it bothers him that you aren’t glowing the way you’d been half an hour ago. You’d been so alive running with him beneath all the festival lanterns, looking for tanghulu. To an outsider, it might seem odd, how much it ruined your mood when you couldn’t find any—but Dan Heng knows that this isn’t about a simple craving for a candied fruit skewer.

This is about the Luofu.

This is about the food you'd tasted on the Luofu, the scenery you'd gazed upon on the Luofu, the festivals you'd observed on the Luofu—those are the things after which you’ve been chasing, not tanghulu. The ship was once your home, after all, and not a home that you’d willingly left. It’s obvious how much you long for it, what with the way you always ask to cook Xianzhou dishes and observe Xianzhou holidays.

Dan Heng puts an arm around your waist, pulling you against him.

"I'm sorry we couldn’t find you any tanghulu,” he murmurs. “Maybe Chang’E Moon Settlement will have some? I read that they have night markets regularly.”

“...it’s okay,” you say, in a voice clearly indicating the opposite. “I just thought it’d be nice to have at a festival, specifically… maybe we can head to Chang’E for the Lantern Festival.”

“That’s not a bad plan,” he says. “I’ve never celebrated the Lantern Festival.”

That makes you perk up. “Then I’ll have to make sure that Gege has a good time when February rolls around,” you say quite seriously. “I’ll do the trip planning next time—don’t worry about the hotels, or the travel itinerary, or the route to Chang’E—”

“I will plan the route,” he says decisively. “And I’m driving too.”

That makes you laugh. “Okay. You can do that. Ask for two weeks off from work, too. People on Chang’E take the Lantern Festival quite seriously, so—”

A familiar voice interrupts, calling out your names from a distance. You both look back and are met with the sight of Caelus and March running down the pier, waving at you. Caelus is holding what looks—and smells—like a container full of stinky tofu, while March has, in one of her hands—

“You found tanghulu?!” you exclaim. She nods excitedly as she bounces in front of you, two steps short of crashing into your bodies.

“Yeah! You were talking about wanting some earlier, right? So we grabbed one for you."

“I’ve got tofu too, if you'd like,” Caelus adds. March, shockingly, doesn’t berate him for the suggestion (Dan Heng considers it); she only points to it with a bewildered expression.

“It’s actually really good!” she insists. “You gotta hold your breath, but the flavour is great. You should both try it.”

“...I’ll take the tanghulu first,” Dan Heng says, rising from his seat to pluck the skewer out of March's hands. In a calculated move, he beckons you to stand and leads you away from March and Caelus—or, more specifically, away from the smell. While Dan Heng has no doubt that you’d like some of that tofu for yourself, you are predictably much more interested in a romantic moment with your boyfriend in a public space (your favourite type of situation in which to kiss him), so you happily wave goodbye to the pair.

When Dan Heng finally bites into the candied fruit—first cool and hard against his teeth, then sour and sweet on his tongue—he understands why you’d been disappointed with the strawberry tanghulu. It had been good, but it had also been different.

“How do you find it, Gege?” you ask, practically trembling with excitement. He feels his lip quirk.

“It’s good,” he praises. You smile, and Dan Heng finds himself thinking that none of the festival lanterns could ever compare to your expression. “Do you want some?”

“If you feed me,” you say, and Dan Heng rolls his eyes, but he humours you anyway, tilting the skewer toward you so that you can take a bite. The fruit colours your mouth red, and he watches as you hum and lick the sugar off your lips.

“Is it everything you’d hoped for?” he asks.

“Mhm. This is proper tanghulu.”

You seem content enough. You're eating, you're smiling—but something about your eyes bothers Dan Heng. Something about the muted quality of your voice. Something about the way you're studying the skewer in your hands.

Whatever bitterness was plaguing you earlier is still lingering, weighing down your words.

“I know,” Dan Heng says gently. He repeats himself: “But is it everything you’d hoped for?”

That makes you pause, blinking at him. Were you anyone else, Dan Heng is sure that you’d be mystified by the question—but you’re you, and you’re fairly attuned to the workings of his mind, and he’s reasonably discerning about whatever chaos is going on in yours. You have enough mutual understanding for you to stop and consider his question carefully, peering up at the sky.

Dan Heng waits patiently, watching Vega and Altair with you. Watching two stars longing for one another.

“...if it were up to me, Heng’er,” you eventually say, “I’d take you back to the Luofu, and we’d go sightseeing there. We’d visit the seaside town that I grew up in, and we’d go to the market I liked for breakfast food, and you…” You pause for a moment, struggling. “...and you could have met my Shifu. And you could have seen our home—how beautiful it once was. And I’d have taken you out for the Qixi Festival afterwards, and you could have seen the night sky there. Have I ever told you that it's the only stretch of stars I know how to navigate?"

The breath you let out is quiet, nearly drowned by the sighing tide. Dan Heng only hears it because he’s spent so often listening to the soft rhythm of your lungs.

“I wish I could have shown you all that,” you admit. “I’m sorry I can’t. I know you think about going back as much as I do.”

Dan Heng’s eyes soften. You allow his hands to cup your face, to shift it until he’s looking directly into the melancholy of your gaze.

“I don’t need to be on the Luofu,” he says quietly. “I am content to be here with you, I am content to live on the Express with you, and I am content to accompany you for as long as this lifetime will allow. And if you aren’t content with those things—then tell me what it is you long for, so that I can make you feel at home.”

You stare at him for a long while, bringing a hand to rest over the one on your cheek.

“Heng’er…”

“What is it?”

Dan Heng watches a number of emotions flicker through your eyes. He knows each of your microexpressions, because it is second nature for him to watch you carefully, with full attention to the state of your heart. He knows the way your brows lift when you’re surprised, he recognizes the specific quirk of your mouth when you try to stop it from trembling, and he notices the slow blink that you only do when you try to calm down. He knows, too, your instinctive response when you don’t know what to say:

You kiss him.

You kiss him, and it’s not the playful, fleeting sort of kiss that you use to tease him in public, nor is it the sweet and smiling sort that you drew him into earlier during the day, on this very dock. It’s long and deep, soft and tender against his lips, and he returns it fully.

After you pull back, you smile at him, looking more like yourself.

“That’s your second time kissing me in public today,” you comment. “What’s gotten into you, Heng’er?”

“Must be your bad influence,” he replies without a beat, running a thumb along your jawline.

“Oh?” You hum. “I’m not so sure. I think Fengyue-jun’s always been a little sentimental.”

Dan Heng snorts. “If I’m acting like it, then it’s only because you wanted a romantic evening.”

“I guess I did say that.” You link arms with him, pulling him back toward the festival. “Is our night going to be romantic too?”

“Our morning after as well,” he says. He feels his mouth curling at your excited little smile. “Would you like to spend more time here, or return to the hotel for your Qixi gift?”

“Whatever you feel like, Gege.” You press against him. "Just being by your side is enough to make me happy, no matter where it is you want to be.”

Dan Heng ends up choosing to stay at the harbour. It is partly because you’d seemed so keen on the tofu earlier, and he's a little curious about it himself—but it's mostly because he wants to see you in the glow of the festival for a little longer.

Dan Heng suspects that you feel that this night here, on Xinghan Station, is only a substitute for the life you've imagined having with him on the Luofu. Possibly it's inferior to it in every way. And he supposes that you might be right to think this way—that if ever he were given the chance to properly visit the world in which he was born, then he, too, might decide that Xinghan Station is nothing like it. That the lanterns hanging above the two of you right now pale in comparison to the Luofu stars. He can’t be certain.

But he is certain of this: that right now, Dan Heng has the privilege of hearing your laughter weave into festive song, of tasting sugar and berries on your lips, of seeing your smile awash in the light of the Heavenly River—

—and all of it is beautiful.

End

WE DID IT BOYS!! I am… too tired to do full cultural/translation notes but I'll try to hit the major ones 🫡

Translation Notes:

风月 (pronounced "Fengyue") literally means "wind, moon", but the characters taken together may actually mean "beautiful scenery", "romance", or "love making" depending on the context. When you call Dan Heng "Fengyue-jun 风月君", rather than "Yinyue-jun 饮月君", you're making a pun where you're calling him the Lord of Romance rather than the Lord who Drinks the Moon.

Gege is a term meaning "older brother", though it is often used for non-familial relationships that are very close. It has either a childish or flirty edge to it (Ge and Dage, also meaning older brother, are more common between friends).

Shifu means "Teacher", used in the context of a martial relationship. IIRC, Jing Yuan called Jingliu this.

Xinghan is one of the names for the Milky Way in Chinese, as an alternative to Heavenly River.

Chang'E is the name of an immortal who lives on the moon.

Cultural notes:

Qixi Festival is a real celebration that takes place on the seventh day of the seventh month on the Chinese lunar calendar. It is indeed based on the myth of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl. The version of the myth that I put into the story is a paraphrased version of the one I heard growing up, but there are many others. You may also recognise it as the myth of Orihime and Hikoboshi from the Japanese Tanabata festival.

I was researching different ways that people celebrate Qixi Festival around the world, and funnily enough, I actually found that (1) mostly people don't make a big deal of it anymore, and (2) it varies pretty largely between various diaspora communities. Maocity holds a night market festival where there are many foods that our Asian diaspora don't otherwise have the chance to eat (😔✌️), so that's the inspiration for the festival in this story. If you are Chinese elsewhere in the world, Qixi Festival celebrations may look different for you, and I want to acknowledge this in the notes.

There were some references to traditional Chinese wedding practices in this. Here is one video of a wedding procession and here is another (you can hear the suona in this one). Traditionally the palanquin is a "bridal sedan", but for my nblm and mlm readers, I want to note that usually whoever is marrying into the other person's household will ride it (in novels/fics I've read)—so you can imagine either yourself or Dan Heng in the palanquin

Also I couldn't fit this into the story, but I like to imagine that when you and Dan Heng get hitched, you do the tradition of racing each other to your house—but this is just the archives so you're literally just running down the Astral Express, fighting off Caelus and March and co LMAOO.

Thank you for reading! Please drop a line if you enjoyed this… truly I put my whole writerussy into this fic LMAOAO

tagging in @trailblazernet also!!

[farewell-itoshisoup]

there’s a bluebird in my heart  | chapter one 

hayakawa aki x f!reader

On November 18th, 1988, the Gun Devil kills 57,912 people in Japan and displaces thousands more.

In a gymnasium full of grieving, starving strangers, you meet a boy who is as alone as you.

He’s the only thing you have, and the only thing you’ll lose.

8k+ words of childhood friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, and codependent relationships. chapter warnings for female reader and childhood trauma. thank you to @kureyuki​ for her incredible beta-reading and support with creative ideation! 

please remember to read the prologue (available on the masterlist)! 

November 30, 1997

If you looked into Aki’s heart, you’d find this:

The dingy, cramped space of an abandoned bomb shelter, filled with decrepit artifacts of life: an old umbrella riddled with holes; two futons laid side-by-side; a thin blanket scarred with a child's messy needlework. Ants crawling over a watermelon split across a dirt floor, its rind decaying. The little ghost of a girl frolicking on her deathbed, and her older brother tucking her corpse into a basket. A tin of Sakuma drops, filled with ash instead of sweetness. Bass, woodwind, harpsichord, the flames of cremation—all layered over the sound of your quiet sobs.

Grave of the Fireflies comes out in 1988. In June 1989, Aki finds it buried in a pile of VHS tapes in the basement of his foster home and recalls that the title is critically acclaimed. He pops it into the VHS machine and rewinds, replays. The two of you watch the film at night, your bodies curled up against each other on the floor of a dark living room, faces lit only by the glow of amber insects and firebombs. In the last moments of the film, the spirits of two siblings—orphans of the Pacific War—sit atop a hill and study a view of modern Kobe. Its skyscrapers pierce a calm, blue sky, prosperous and indifferent to an audience of ghosts.

As the screen goes black, Aki hears a loud sniff.

“Are you crying?” he asks, and you freeze up.

“No,” you say, the denial blunted by your running nose, and Aki knows not to comment. He just lets you hide your face from him, tucked away into your knees.

After a moment, you ask, “Are you not crying?”

“Nope."

“How?” you ask, so baffled that you finally meet his eyes, scrutinizing his face. Salt trails, red eyes, dewy eyelashes: you look for all these things that you’ve seen on Aki in the past, all things that you don’t find today. "I can't believe you're not crying at all. Didn't you find this sad?"

He shrugs.

“Sure I did, but—” He tilts his head, staring at the credits. The bassoons swell; the strings croon. His chest aches a little, but it’s nothing like what it did in the Evacuation Shelter, where it felt like it was on the verge of collapse everyday. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Seriously?” You wipe at your eyes, which are lined red. “It was so depressing, Aki. They died! They both died. The kid—” You close your eyes, inhale deeply. Try to collect yourself. “The kid. The younger sister. I think she had to die; there was no way around that. But her older brother could have lived, couldn’t he have? He could have found a way to survive. Why didn't they let him do that? Instead they made it all so hopeless.”

Aki passes you a tissue, and you blow your nose. He contemplates your words, still feeling out the curious, dull pain enclosed by his ribs.

“I think it’d have been sadder if the older brother had lived," he decides.

“What? How?”

The movie is still playing, its music in a steep crescendo. Bass, woodwind, harpsichord, a body being burned in a wicker basket. Ashes tucked away in a Sakuma Drop tin, which are scattered by a stranger. Snow, firecrackers, windstorm, bodies at a rural crematorium. Ashes interred at his family grave, where his kid brother's name is carved in granite. It’s all there in Aki’s memories, preserved with film-like accuracy. It's never left his mind. It'll never leave his mind. It’s seared into his retinas, always interfering with his sight of the present. Always interfering with the sight of you.

“How, what?” Aki asks, suddenly dizzy.

“How would it have been a sadder ending, if the older brother had lived?”

The credits are done, Aki realises. The movie is silent, the screen is black, and he's left staring at his own reflection.

“Well," he asks, "what would he have left to live for, after all of that?”

April 1, 1989

In the spring immediately following 11/18, a new school term begins, and all Gun-Affected Children resume their education.

For Aki, nothing feels more ridiculous. He gets placed in some Sapporo middle school and acts interested in making friends with all the strangers there. In the back of his mind, he wonders which of his old classmates survived the Gun Devil and wonders which ones are now ash. He introduces himself as a transfer student during homeroom, his uniform pressed, his hair neat, and his bow precise. The whole class trades glances with one another, somehow able to tell—despite his best efforts—that he's one of twelve Gun-Affected Children who just enrolled today. He sits at his desk and feigns interest in the properties of the triangles being drawn on the board. The teacher talks about Thales' theorem and he pretends not to see the wreckage of his house, the sirens in the distance, the stillness of Taiyo's face in the morgue.

Aki's glad that math was one of his better subjects, because he doesn’t actually need to pay much attention to follow everything. When the teacher calls on him, he solves the problem on the board quickly and confidently.

“Very good, Hayakawa,” the teacher praises after class, pulling him aside. “I guess they were keeping pace with our curriculum in the country?”

“Sort of,” Aki replies. “They were a little behind what you're teaching now, but my mother was a math teacher, and she tutored me a lot at home.”

My mother was. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he sees the downward twitch of his teacher’s mouth. Sees the dip in his brow, fleeting but telling. Aki feels it too, on his own face, as he realises: was, not is.

He was a good student because his mother was a teacher. He was athletic because his dad thought it was important to stay healthy. He was mature because he had to be—he was the eldest son, and he needed to take care of Taiyo.

Aki was all of those things because it made them happy. And he doesn’t know who he’s supposed to be now, without the three of them. He stares blankly at the sheet in front of him—HOPES FOR THE FUTURE SURVEY, it says at the top, with three blank fields below for his ranked career interests—and spins his pencil with his thumb.

“Oh," you pipe up, hovering over his shoulder, "they're already asking about your career?"

"Yeah. I'm in my second year. It makes sense."

You tilt your head, shuffling away from your Japanese homework to press yourself against him and get a better view of his survey. "What are you thinking?"

Doctor, paramedic, or engineer, Aki recalls. Those were all the answers he'd determined last term. His parents had been so delighted when he suggested them over the dinner table; Taiyo said he'd make a great doctor, and he was sure Aki was going to cure him.

Then he smiled, waved, and the horizon self-destructed.

Aki swallows, feeling queasy.

"Dunno. I've never thought about it."

"You could probably just put anything, right? You don't really need to choose now. It's just so they can talk to you about senior secondary school, and stuff."

You should get good grades, his mother always used to say, so that you can get into any high school you want, down the road.

"I don't even know if I want to go to high school," Aki says.

"Oh." You cock your head. "Really? But you're such a good student."

Aki shrugs. "Doesn't mean I like it. I could always go work in construction, or something…"

"I guess." You go quiet, and Aki notices that you're staring at your homework. "Maybe I won't go to high school, either."

"No way," he replies, voice sharp, "you definitely need to go. You need to do it to get a good job after. Or to go to college. Or university."

Your brows shoot up. "But you just said you weren't gonna go!"

"That's different."

"How? You don't need a good job?" You frown, giving your homework a distasteful look. "If you can make a living without doing any more of this stuff, then I'm definitely not gonna stay in school after I graduate."

Aki's mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He just stares at your expectant gaze, and then at your blank worksheet, and he realises that you really might not go to high school if he doesn't. Taiyo was stupid like that too: I don't want to eat natto if nii-san won't. I want to try kendo since nii-san's doing it. I want to go out and play in the snow if nii-san is going.

I'll go inside and get my gloves, if nii-san tells me I should.

"Nevermind. I'll go to Minami High." He pauses, then adds for good measure: "University, too. I'm going to university."

"What? First you wanted to work in construction, and now you want to go to university?"

"Changed my mind," Aki says. He takes the sheet of paper, writes in order: Doctor, Paramedic, Engineer. Then he remembers that there aren't a ton of girls who become any of those things, so he scratches out the last field and writes Teacher. Just in case.

You scrutinize his answers, then nod. "Yeah, I can see you doing any of those things. Especially teaching." You give him a little smile, and it eases the guilt. "Guess Minami High is a good choice for you, if that's what you're interested in."

"It'll be a good choice for you too."

You look confused. "How would you know that? You don't know what I want to do." Pause. "I don't know what I want to do!"

"A good school will give you good options," he replies—just like how his mom always said. Then he adds, "Plus, we said we'd find a way to stay together. This is how we can."

"That's true…" You frown, but you turn back to your homework, signing a little. "I guess I better study for real, then. Minami High… that's really tough to get into, Aki. And I'm so bad at exams."

"You have a lot of time to prepare," he reassures you. "And I'll help you."

That makes your eyes go a little soft. He's never seen you so happy, looking at your homework.

"Yeah," you reply. "I know."

June 27, 1989

In the years following 11/18, devils become one of the biggest causes of death.

They've always been a blight on humanity, in the way that disease and war and hunger have been. But just like how vaccines and antibiotics have controlled disease, devils have been, for most of your life, a mundane threat. Someone sees a devil and they call in Public Safety, or a private hunter, or possibly a shrine priestess. Someone is attacked by a devil and it's because they were in an unpatrolled area, or somehow colluding with devils, or plain unlucky. Someone is killed by a devil, and it's a tragedy in the way of a fatal accident or cancer. Unfortunate, but a fact of life.

But in a post-11/18 world, people fear nothing more than devils, and nothing gives more power to devils than fear. Mortality rates skyrocket. Devil attacks, coronary heart disease, and stroke—the top causes of death in the country, in that order, for the entire decade that follows. The deaths start to feel random; start to feel cruel. In class, in public service announcements, in school assemblies, people all say this: Devils are the greatest threat to humanity. We are in a state of conflict with devils, like none seen since the Pacific War.

But for you, after the death of your family, it still feels mundane.

You start attending a new middle school, and you make friends with Satsuki, who is a cheerful girl that sits next to you. Two weeks later, she dies in an attack—by the Hedgehog Devil, you hear—and everyone mourns. You add a flower to the tribute that the class put together for her, and your classmates all cry while you stare at the floor. Two boys in the year above you die a month later—the Thunderstorm Devil—and a school assembly is held. Everyone cries while you stare into your lap. You feel sad for them, because you know how horrible it will be for their parents to go to the morgue and see their mannequin-still faces; and you know how long it will take to wait for a cremation; and you know how expensive it will be, having their names added to the family grave and getting the ashes interred. But you don't cry.

A child your age in the orphanage is killed—the Father Devil—and no one really talks about it. Most of the kids get sort of teary and quiet, but only a few people cry: some staff, and a couple of other kids who were close with the deceased.

And Aki. Aki cries, too.

He doesn't cry in front of anyone else. He's solemn during the small wake that the orphanage holds, and he's a little quieter than usual outside of that, but he still goes about all his business nonchalantly. He eats fine at every meal; he reminds you to eat, when he catches you picking at your food; he does all his chores, and picks up after the other kids who are too sad to do theirs; and he sleeps no worse through the night than he usually does.

The staff comment on his stoicism: That Hayakawa boy, he's being very strong about this, very mature. That Hayakawa boy, isn't it strange how he doesn't look even a little sad? That Hayakawa boy, he must not have cared very much about Anno at all.

That Hayakawa boy and all those other Gun Orphans, something must be wrong with them.

But Aki does cry. He's the only Gun Orphan who cries. You wake up because of it, one night. It's a whimper in your dreams at first, coming from him in the early days of the Shelter. He's sobbing quietly, curled up on the floor, and you're staring at him and his untouched carton of milk. He's your age and he's all alone and it makes you want to talk to him, but you can't catch his eyes, which are always hidden away in his palms, in his knees, in his arms. You try to reach for him, want to ask about why he never drinks his milk, and—

—and now you're staring up at the ceiling of the boys' dormitory.

Next to you, a bundle in the sheets quivers.

You never talked to Aki when he cried in the Shelter. And out of all the times you cried, he'd only talked to you once: right before you both got Relocated. But things are different now; you think you're close enough to Aki that maybe you can do something for him. So you lift your side of your blanket and shimmy until you've slid beneath it.

Aki freezes.

He's trying to look unaffected, you know. His expression is confused, and stiff, and strangely smooth, but he can't hide his sniffling. You shuffle closer to him, take one of his hands into yours. It's wet with his tears—or his snot, maybe—but you don't mind.

"Hi," you whisper.

He sniffs again. "Sorry—did I wake you up?"

"No. And don't be sorry." You squeeze his hand. "Are you crying 'cause of Anno?"

It's a full moon tonight, and the blanket is thin enough for some of the light to make into your little cocoon. You can see it when Aki's free hand comes up to his face, rubbing at his wet cheeks.

"I used to help him with his math homework," Aki whispers. His words are choked, all swollen with sadness. "He was so excited w-when he passed his test last week. And—" He inhales sharply. "And he wanted to lend me his f-favourite manga, t-to thank me. A Gundam manga, I th-think."

Aki doesn’t even like Gundam that much, you recall. He used to read it a lot as a kid, and he knows a lot of the Gundams because Taiyo asked his parents to buy the figurines, but Aki is no longer a fan himself. But he can barely get through his reply, and his words break off into another sob, so you shift closer to him, holding his hand with both of yours.

You don’t know what to say to him. I’m sorry, maybe. Your caseworker says that to you a lot. So did the staff, when you first arrived. And sometimes the Relocation Officers did, when they realised that you had no relatives who could take you in. You never really understood why: it wasn’t like they were the cause of the Gun Devil, and it wasn’t like an apology was what you wanted. And maybe if it were someone you didn’t know that well, you’d say I’m sorry anyway, but you think Aki deserves a little better than that.

So instead, you put your arms around him, and you whisper, “I know, Aki. I know.”

Aki pauses a little bit, going still, but a second later, he’s wrapping his arms around you and squeezing you as tightly as he can. Your face is pressed into his chest; he cries into your hair. And you hold onto each other like that—just like how your mom held your dad when your grandfather died; or like how your grandmother held you, that one time your dad got mad at you; or how all those women in the Shelter held their babies and children after they all lost their homes.

No one has held you like this in ages. No one has held either of you like this since the Gun Devil took away your families, erased your homes from the map, and maybe that's why your eyes are getting a little warm now. Even though you didn't cry when Anno died, or when Satsuki died, or when those two upperclassmen died, you're blinking rapidly here, wrapped up in Aki's arms.

But this isn't about you, you remind yourself. This is about Anno, and Aki, and how Aki is sad right now. You try to think of something else to say to him: I’m sad, too or I’m sure he’s in a better place, or It’ll be okay. But all of those would be lies—you aren’t nearly as sad as Aki, and you don’t know where Anno would have ended up because you didn’t know him that well, and nothing will ever be okay. Not after what the Gun Devil did. Not when you live in this kind of world, where over fifty-seven thousand people can die in twenty-six seconds, where thousands of orphans around the globe are created for no reason.

At a loss for words, all you can do is hold onto Aki. And he holds you back—tightly, like he’s afraid you’ll leave if he lets go for even a moment.

Both of you hold each other for the rest of that night, and every night after that.

July 11, 1989

Right before the start of summer vacation, Aki tells you this:

"Someone's thinking of fostering me."

And the world crumbles beneath your feet.

You're unbalanced, unsteady. It feels a little bit like stumbling over all that jagged cement and concrete debris in the aftermath of the Gun Devil, tripping and swaying and cutting your palms as you steadied yourself on broken brick and glass. You're looking at Aki now, standing in this deserted corridor of the orphanage, but in your head it's November 18th, 1988, and you're calling out again: Mother, Father, Obaasan, where are you? Please, please… And you're digging, and digging, and digging, and your hands are bleeding everywhere—

"She lost her family to the Gun Devil," he continues. "That's why she's so interested in fostering a Gun Orphan. I'm one of the best behaved, so the staff offered me."

You're in the gymnasium. You're watching other children, being comforted by their mothers. You're thinking about how no one will comfort you. You're in the gymnasium again, and you're all alone. It's your first week in the orphanage, and you're listening to the sound of crying girls and inhaling the smell of urine from the other beds, and you're all alone, all alone, all alone.

"I—" Aki looks down. "I asked if I had a choice, and the orphanage said no. I'm a ward of the state, so it's their decision, and they don't have money, so…"

But we might get separated? you're saying, looking at a lone boy through your tears, curled up miserably on your mat. He's shrugging at you. Guess we might, he replies, and you're shrinking into yourself and crying even harder.

Now it's July 11th, 1989, and you're standing with Hayakawa Aki in a deserted corridor of the orphanage, your eyes entirely dry. You're staring blankly, and all you do is say, "Oh."

Aki looks at you, waiting.

"That's great," you continue. You don't recognise the sound of your own voice. The person who's talking is so calm, so rational, so good. She's happy for her friend. "You can get a real home this way, Aki. You can have real clothes, and real food, and a real bed." The person who's talking is grateful for all those things, you notice. She doesn't mind that she'll be sleeping alone from now on. She's smiling at Aki. "I hope your foster mother is nice."

Aki's brow furrows.

"You… you're okay with this?"

You tilt your head. "Why wouldn't I be?"

He hesitates. "Because… well, we agreed…"

You're in the gymnasium, and you're saying, But we might get separated? And Aki doesn't care. Of course he doesn't care. You're strangers—you don't know each other, and you hardly even talk.

"What did we agree?" you ask, confused.

For a long moment, Aki goes quiet. He looks down, and you think he almost looks a little sad, except that must be your imagination. Getting adopted will be good for him. He won't need to endure the bad food or the dormitories that always smell a little like urine or the annoying girl that always sticks to him 24/7.

Hey, Hayakawa—bet you'd hate it if something happened to her, right? That other kid had said that right before Aki's fist smashed his nose in, but even if Aki was pissed at the time, it must not have been over that comment. Who'd be upset about losing some random girl that he met at an Evacuation Shelter?

You barely even know each other.

"...nothing," he says. "Nevermind. You're right—it'll be good for me." Uncertain look. "You'll be okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"I dunno, I just…" He reaches up to brush at his hair, which is getting to be slightly too long, too messy. He can finally get it cut. Maybe his foster mother will cut it herself, or maybe she'll take him to a salon. She'll take care of it either way. "...I just think it might be hard here? By yourself?"

You're in the gymnasium, and you're watching the younger kids cling to their mothers. You're listening to those mothers whisper to their children at night, even singing lullabies. There's no one singing to you. No one holding you. No one there for you. All you'll ever get is a quiet morgue with cold, recycled air, and a set of corpses covered in white sheets. And there's no one to tell you, You're alive, okay? We're both alive. Now let's watch some TV—your favourite show is on.

"I can get by."

You're in the orphanage, and you're still smiling at Aki. You're in the gymnasium, and you're crying into your knees.

"You don't need to worry about me."

Aki seems uncomfortable, but lets it go. He allows you pull him toward the dining room and the two of you eat breakfast together, like usual. The food is traditional today, so you don't get any milk and he doesn't get any extra bananas, but he gives you a bit of his tamagoyaki because he knows you like it, and you give him a bit of your soup in exchange. "I'm going to miss eating with you," he says, and you just give him a quiet little smile.

"Maybe. I don't think you'll miss this orphanage very much, though." You stare at the neat roll of eggs on your plate, savour the dashi aftertaste on your tongue. You always eat slowly, because you hate the realisation of having nothing left when you're done. Ashinaga doesn't have extra funds to spare for children with large appetites. "Anyone would be happy to leave everything here behind."

"I'm not happy leaving you behind."

"But that doesn't matter," you say firmly, and it makes him go quiet. It makes you feel a little bad, the way he recoils at your words, but you hadn't said anything wrong. At the end of the day, he's going to leave, and nothing else matters.

For the rest of the day, you talk to Aki like everything is normal: you sit beside him and eat breakfast; you walk to school together and back home together; you sit beside him and eat dinner. Aki shoots you strange, uncertain glances the whole day, but you only smile at him and ask what's wrong, and each time he asks if you're really okay, and each time you say, Yes, why wouldn't I be?

But when curfew starts and everyone goes to bed, you decide to stay in your own bed that night.

July 16, 1989

It takes Aki several days to talk to you.

It isn't for lack of trying. You always leave for school before him, and you're nowhere near the school gates when he waits for you to walk home. At meal times, you're already sitting with other people by the time Aki gets to the hall—which is weird, because you normally go there with him, and you always sit with him—and during leisure and study hours, you're nowhere to be found.

He tries, several times, to ask the other kids or staff where you are, but they only ever give him a confused look. You don't know where she is, Hayakawa? they'll ask, or, I was just looking for her, and I was going to ask you. And sometimes they'll look worried, but you always manage to resurface by curfew, and you always stay in your room the whole night.

Or Aki thinks so, anyway. He tries visiting the girls' dormitory after hours, but the kids there only give him a confused look. We thought she was sleeping with you, like always? And that's when the gnawing pit in Aki's stomach expands into a horrific cavern.

Aki tells the staff before anything else, but as soon as the director says he'll rouse the other staff, Aki's already bolting down the hallway. Doesn't even put on his shoes. He dashes outside, checks all the spots you like on the grounds—the corner with the bench where some of the girls play hopscotch; the spot behind the trees where the older kids smoke cigarettes when they figure the staff aren't looking; the spot just outside the gate where you like to feed the neighbourhood cats; the swings where you like to sit and watch the sunset in the evening.

Do you ever miss the countryside? you once asked Aki, staring at the silhouettes of all the highrises, behind which the red sun was falling. Sometimes I do. Sapporo isn't nearly as pretty.

Aki hates Sapporo, but he didn't want you to dwell on useless things. Sure, he'd said, voice matter-of-fact, but I didn't have you in the countryside. And you looked so happy that he couldn't help but smile back.

But the swings are empty now, and the sun had fallen hours ago.

Aki knows that he should wait for the police to search for you, but he doesn't know how long they'll take, or even if they'll pay attention to a missing persons report before 48 hours. And he can't stop thinking about what'll happen to you in the meantime, while the staff or police fumble around. Devils love virgin girls, he keeps remembering, and my mom always made me ride the Women Only cars whenever we went to the city, you know.

Aki decides to break the rules—just for a little, just for ten minutes—and he climbs the chain-link fence surrounding the orphanage. Races down the street right after, his heart pounding loudly in his ears, his slippers flip-flopping with each step.

He finds you in the playground down the street. On top of a slide, looking up at a full, clear moon, hugging your knees to your chest.

Why do you look so lonely? Aki wants to ask. But out loud, he just yells for you: "Hey!"

Your head whips around. "Aki? Why are you here?" you ask, but instead of answering you, he just runs over—sand getting all over his slippers and bare feet—and starts climbing up the slide.

As soon as he reaches the top of the ladder, he blurts out, panting, "What are you doing here?!" His voice is harsh, scolding; he'd have sounded like this to Taiyo too, if he'd ever pulled this kind of stunt.

But he realises he's made a mistake when you turn away.

"Nothing," you say. Your voice sounds small, watery. It sounded like this all the time in the Shelter, and now his chest is aching like how it always did back then. "I just wanted to be alone. How'd you know I was here?"

"You like to waste time here after school, since you hate going back to the orphanage." He still sounds curt, Aki notices. Too curt. Be kind, Aki, he hears his mother say, and he takes a deep breath and softens his voice. "How come you wanted to be alone?"

Why haven't you been sleeping with me?

You turn away. Look down the slide, so he can't see your face, but he doesn't need to. He can hear your shaky little breaths, and see the way your shoulders shrink, and feels the way his heart squeezes.

"Are you crying?"

"No," you say firmly, but your voice still sounds watery, and it's weak when you add, "No, I'm not."

Aki doesn't comment on that.

"But you're upset about something." He grabs the handles at your side, his feet at the top rung of the ladder. "What's wrong?"

"...it's stupid."

"No, it's not."

Frustrated noise. "You don't know that."

"Yes, I do." He climbs his final steps up, tries to seat himself at the apex of the slide behind you, and you let him. He holds you like that: you between his legs, with his arms around your waist. He wraps himself around you tightly, like that first time you held each other in bed—the first time he'd ever been held in the Post-Gun Era. "I know it's not stupid. So please tell me what's wrong."

He has a pretty good idea already, but he wants to hear you say it.

"...I thought." You hiccup a little, and he tightens his hold on you. "I thought—if you're gonna leave me, and I'm gonna be alone, then I better get used to being alone as soon as I can. It'll make it easier, y'know, if I do it before—b-before you leave—"

You whimper a little, and Aki sighs.

"I don't want to leave you."

"But you will!" you say, and your voice is so loud and so broken that Aki just doesn't know what to do aside from saying—

"I won't."

"Don't lie to me!"

"I'm not lying. I won't." He rests his face against your shoulder. "I'll be so shitty to my foster mom that she'll return me immediately."

"But you can't," you say, and you're fully crying now, almost wailing. "It's better for you if you're in a foster family. This orphanage is so shitty, and dirty, and the food sucks, and all the adults hate us—"

"Doesn't matter. I won't leave you. I don't mind eating shitty food if I can stay with you."

"No! Don't! Do that! I'll be so mad at you—I'll hate you—"

Ah. Aki used to throw tantrums like this, when he was a kid and his parents didn't pay attention to him because of Taiyo. Sometimes he still thinks about it when he can't sleep; it haunts him the same way that other embarrassing moments do. Immature, his dad always called him, and he was always so ashamed about it. And humiliated. His mind won't let him forget it, especially now that they're all gone and he keeps wondering why he used to trouble them the way he did.

He doesn't want you to feel that kind of shame.

"That's fine," he says. "You can hate me. I'll still stay."

You can't articulate a response. You just start blubbering and crying, and Aki has no clue what you're saying so he can't figure out how to reply. But he keeps holding you, and eventually you calm down, and you place one of your hands over his. That's when he knows that you're feeling better.

It's a relief, because his ass is starting to hurt from sitting on this slide for so long. He asks, once you're quiet, "Do you wanna go down now?"

Loud sniff. "...yeah."

So, like you're little kids—like he's eight years old, and Taiyo is three, and he has to help his baby brother use the slide because he's too scared to go down by himself—Aki shifts, pushes you forward, and the two of you slip down together, his hands on your waist. The moon dips behind the trees as you descend, its pale face hidden from view. Sitting with you at the bottom of the slide, Aki stares at the glow of the treeline, missing it. He watches the Sapporo sky—starless, unlike in the country—as he waits for you to wipe the tears away from your face.

"You wanna go back now?" he asks after you've quieted down.

"No."

"Okay," he replies, and he really is fine with it, but his ass is still hurting. "Wanna go sit on the swings?"

"I wanna sit on the bench," you mumble, and your grip on his hand tightens. You lean back a little too, like you want to press yourself into him.

"Good idea," Aki says, and the two of you get up, and he takes your hand and leads you to your seats.

The two of you stay there until the sky gets pink and golden, talking quietly the whole time. Aki comes up with a Plan A, and a Plan B, and a Plan C, and so on, to stay with you, and they get progressively more ridiculous—one of them involves running away together and renting out a place using his inheritance, as if any landlord would ever rent out a place to a couple of kids—but it calms you down.

In the end, one of the nightstaff finds you both, breathing a loud sigh of relief, and she looks furious until she sees your face. Until she sees Aki's arms around you.

"I don't want to be fostered," Aki says, as soon as she comes within hearing distance. And she gets a sad, tired look in her eyes, and that's when he knows she won't scold either of you.

"You can talk about that later with the director," is all she says. She looks only at Aki when she talks. "Let's go back to bed for now, okay?"

"Sure."

So Aki grabs your hand and leads you back to the orphanage, the both of you trailing after the caretaker. And on the walk home, when the moon is pale and faded, she turns to Aki and says, "You need to keep an eye on her, you know. She'll only listen to you, so it's up to you to keep her safe."

Aki nods, unaffected. He’s been expecting his lecture. He’s been delivering it to himself, already: it’s his job to keep you safe. It’s his fault you were out here, alone and upset. And if something had happened to you tonight—if you’d been snatched away by a stranger, or by a devil—then that would have been his fault, too.

It's always been his fault.

It'll always be his fault.

But it won't be his fault when it comes to you.

"Yeah,” he ends up saying. “I know."

July 18, 1989

It ends up being okay.

Aki is adopted against his will by Kasegawa Misaki. The orphanage simply can't justify keeping him given resource constraints, the director explains, and anyway, most orphans would kill to be in Aki's position. It would almost feel cruel to allow him to stay at Ashinaga. 

Kasegawa meets with Aki's caseworker, though, and will continue meeting her at least once a month. She's evidently briefed on your relationship, because she's immediately accommodating about it: "Don't worry about your friend," Kasegawa says, smiling lazily. "You'll keep going to the same school, so you'll see her everyday. And she can come over whenever you like, for however long you like."

Aki stares, surprised.

"However long?"

"Yeah. Your friend can come stay over for homework, or dinner, or sleepovers—" She waves a hand. "Whatever will make you happy."

Aki frowns. He doesn't know if it's kindness or neglect driving this—he suspects the latter, because fostering is good money, and money doesn't attract good parents—but he'll take it. He'll take anything he can get to stay with you, because let's find a way to stay together.

Both you and the director end up being right about fostering being good for him. Kasegawa's home is nothing special, but it's very clean and it smells very nice, so Aki no longer has to fall asleep while inhaling the smell of sweat and piss. He's figuring out how to cook, too—Kasegawa doesn't really cook, he learns, nor is she especially interested in cooking for him—so the food will be better than in the orphanage too. His sheets are thicker and softer than what he's used to, and the mattress is a fancy, foam one. Aki supposes that the whole bed must have belonged to the dead boy he's replaced. He bows to the black-framed photo of Kasegawa's son a couple of times, thanking him for the use of his space.

Because it's important to Aki, having this space. It's important to him that he waits for you everyday at the school gates, and that he takes you by the hand and leads you here every evening. It's important to him that you get to relax in the privacy of his room, that you can eat his food—still not great, but he promises he'll get better, and you always say that you love it anyway—and it's important that you can curl up in his nice sheets. It's important that he can tuck you away in them, hide you in folds of cotton where you'll be safe. Aki's body is easy and light when he sees you smiling in his bed, and even though everything is wrong and fucked up about the Post-Gun World, even though Mother and Father and Taiyo are all dead, even though the snow globe's shattered and the pieces can never be retrieved—it's not so bad when he can keep you next to him like this.

When, for once, he doesn't have only hunger and fear and grief to split up with you—but also comfort and safety and warmth.

You can have all of those things right now, being with him.

"You're so good to me, Aki," you whisper. You sound drowsy, your voice all airy and dream-like. "I'm so glad we started talking to each other in that shelter."

"Me too." He presses his face into your hair. He doesn't know what he would have done without you in the shelter, in the orphanage, in this home. Probably he'd be more lost than he already feels. And more miserable, too.

He looks at your sleepy, content smile, and feels his own mouth mirroring it. "You're really good to me too," he says.

"Am I?" You look up at him, eyes half-lidded. They look a little sad. "I don't know. I said I was gonna hate you if you didn't let yourself get fostered, and I meant it. Doesn't sound very good of me."

"But you'd have been right to."

Because if he weren't being fostered in this house, then Aki wouldn't be able to keep you here, where you're comfortable and safe and warm. And he'd be that useless kid on January 5th, 1989, trapped in that orphanage with you, where you could have been sacrificed to a devil just because some kid wanted to kill their dad. He'd have been that crying boy on December 13, 1988, with nothing to give you but milk and toothpaste and the jacket off his back. He could have been that fuck-up of a brother on November 18th, 1988, sending Taiyo to his death.

You sigh, eyes falling. Your breath evens out. You look more peaceful than Aki's ever seen before, drifting off to sleep here.

"You shouldn't talk about yourself like that, Aki."

Aki squeezes your hand, but he doesn't reply. It would be too hard. It would be too hard, and it would make you so sad, and wouldn't it be such a cruel thing if he ruined your happiness? Your smile is pressed into his chest, so precious, so glowing. He decides that he won't ruin it—not now, not ever.

Aki won't make you cry again.

November 30, 1997

If you looked into Aki's heart, you'd find this:

A twelve year old child wrapped up in thick blankets and the warm arms of a fourteen year old. A grey storm rages outside, and towers of snow collect on the city roads. The two of you will be snowed in tomorrow and school will be cancelled, so you'll crawl back into bed after you go downstairs for breakfast. You'll wake up comfortably, an hour later, and the two of you will chat and laze around on cotton sheets for twenty more minutes before getting up. You'll enter a private washroom that smells like potpourri, and you'll brush your teeth at a leisurely pace, and you won't need to worry about your toothpaste getting stolen.

Aki will make you both Milo later; he'll use real milk for you, and soy milk for himself. He'll make pancakes for lunch, because his foster mom is around for once—snowed in with the two of you—and she likes western breakfast food. It's a little too sweet for Aki's palate—he'd rather have annin tofu, if he's going to have something sugary—but he doesn't mind it, especially not when you beam at him and say that he should be a cook.

Over lunch, his foster mother lights a cigarette. Aki doesn't like her smoking habit, doesn't like how the acrid stench cuts into the warm fragrance of the kitchen, doesn't like how it'll invade your lungs and cut into your bones. He hates the thought that your decision to spend time with him might later make you sick. But Miss Kasegawa is his foster mother, and he has to behave or else he'll be disowned, so he doesn't say a thing.

She gives the two of you a little smile. "Aki's got a talent for cooking, huh? He'd make a great chef." Then she gets a funny, knowing look that Aki doesn't understand. "Or a great househusband."

Aki doesn't know if he wants to be a chef. He doesn't know if he wants to be anyone's husband. He doesn't know who he wants to be, or what point there is in being anything, in a world like this. But then he sees you laughing and decides not to think about such sad, grey things.

"Yeah," you say around your bite of pancake, considering, "bet he'd be a great husband."

Aki frowns. "Don't talk with your mouth full," he replies, ignoring you. You swallow and giggle, this time covering up your mouth with your hand. He's glad your smile's still there by the time your hand falls away; he'd already missed it during the time you'd hidden it from him.

So this is what you'd see, if you looked into Aki's heart: a fourteen year old boy who doesn't know what his life is worth living for, who doesn't know who he is or what he wants to do—only who he once was, and what his family once wanted for him. But he's a fourteen year old boy who gets to stay next to you, and he gets to keep you safe, and he gets to hide you in his arms, shielding you from the Post-Gun World.

And for a little while, that's enough.

For a little while, you're enough.

end chapter one

notes: sorry this took so long!! I went through the five stages of grief with this chapter, hence it took me forever to finish and post. I hope it wasn’t disappointing (and I hope that people are happy that Aki and MC finally hugged LMAO).

I already credited her at the top, but endless thank you to @kureyuki​ for being such a patient, helpful, and thoughtful beta reader. thank you as well to @dearesteria​ for sending me memes/vids about this way back when I posted the prologue - it was literally the only reason I found the strength to start writing this childhood arc!! 

[farewell-itoshisoup]

MEMORY TRACE | summary & preview

The Gun Fiend finds these sensations peculiar: the soft press of your fingers on its cheek, the contour of your heart line against its skin. You give it—give its meatsuit, the dead thing which used to be Hayakawa Aki—a strange expression. It looks like something close to pain, like you have an open wound even though you are unharmed. 

"Do you know," you ask quietly, "if he loved me at all?"

Canon divergence fic in which Makima decides that the Gun Fiend would be useful to the Public Safety Bureau, and you're assigned to be its handler. Gun Fiend/Reader, past Aki/Reader. Tags/Warnings: Gender neutral AFAB reader, angst with a bittersweet ending, lots of grief but there's love in there too, eventual sex with the Gun Fiend.

900w preview (SFW) below:

Wearing the skin of Hayakawa Aki, the Gun Devil learns about many things beyond destruction and control.

Take, for instance: when you are going through the motions of your morning routine. You get out of bed shortly after sunrise and put on a kettle of water before going to the washroom. When you return to the kitchen, you grind a handful of coffee beans by hand, releasing into the air a burst of caramelized, nutty fragrance. It mingles with the scent of you, and the air tastes familiar except for the sweet stench of incense.

The drink tastes familiar, too: black coffee from Colombia, poured through a filter and topped with steamed milk. You always make enough for two, as if guided by muscle memory. The Gun Devil thinks you only start offering cups to it out of convenience, rather than any goodwill.

“He’s already been dead for several weeks,” you tell it one day, peering into your mug, “but I’m still in the habit of grinding too much coffee for just one person… Before you came, I’d throw out the second cup, but it always felt like a waste.”

You take a sip. After staring at the drink for a moment, the Gun Devil does the same, and something in its body stirs at the bittersweet flavour, all milk and tannins.

“You like it, don’t you?” you say. It isn’t a question. “Aki was so picky about his coffee. He taught me to make it just the way he liked, for days he stayed over. His way of making it was a lot of work, but I didn’t mind. I think he found it comforting to drink every morning, so I was happy to do it.”

Comfort: the Gun Devil learns that’s what this body is feeling, when it breathes in your scent blended with the aroma of coffee at the start of each day, when it sits across from you in the morning sun and drinks your café au lait. It is being comforted.

.

Take, for instance: when you are on missions, and you are being threatened by other devils. To kill other living things is natural for the Gun Devil, but to protect them is not. Yet it finds itself stepping in front of you again and again, pulling you away from danger, shielding you from terrible things both human and monster.

Once, when a demon's maw digs deep into your side, the Gun Devil finds itself—with no command from you, nor from anyone else—taking you into its arms. It is an act guided by muscle memory, not dissimilar from the way your hands work the burr grinder each morning. Protection comes as easily to Hayakawa Aki as destruction does to the Gun Devil, and so the Gun Fiend is now cradling you in the wreckage of a battleground.

Half-conscious and delirious with blood loss, you press your face into the Fiend's neck and inhale deeply.

“Aki,” you whisper, voice weak, and the Gun Fiend feels its vena cava contract in a strange, violent way, “it’s okay, Aki. I’ll be okay. You don’t need to cry for me. I don’t want you to be sad.”

Sadness: the Gun Fiend finally learns a name for the persistent ache in its chest, the one that manifests for you and you alone. It's a sad thing, seeing you in pain and being unable to help. It's a sad thing, witnessing your tears and knowing their root cause.

.

Take, for instance:

The sight of you clinging to a framed photo. It usually sits neatly on the windowsill, right next to a censer with everburning sandalwood; now, it is being cradled in your hands while water droplets shimmer on the glass. Your tears distort the image beneath them: your form leaning against the body of Hayakawa Aki, which looks happy in its antemortem state—it is wearing an amused smile, and its eyes are soft on your face.

Your hands are trembling around the photo frame, as if reaching for something you cannot grasp. The sob you let out is inhuman, thick with mourning. The Gun Fiend recognises the sound of grief, because it's inspired it in countless swathes of people: a group of victims that now includes you.

"I miss you so much," you whisper to the photo, once the crying subsides. "Why did you have to leave?"

The meatsuit flinches. The pain in its chest stretches wide and deep, feels like a cavern. Hayakawa Aki died long ago, but his body still longs to reach out to you. For once, the impulses of this corpse are not a mystery to the Gun Fiend, are easily interpretable through the rapid firing of hippocampal neurons, through a violent surge of action-potentials. The Fiend knows what this body is trying to say with its hands, what it wants to scream at you: I never left you. I never left you. I'm right here.

Please don't cry.

But the Gun Fiend only has one human hand with which to reach you. The other one is a weapon, born for the sole purpose of killing. Of course you flinch away from it. Of course when you look at the Gun Fiend's face, gaze cutting into the place where Aki's eyes used to be, you seem full of hatred.

"Why did you have to take him from us?" you ask, your vocal chords flayed raw from grief. Your question is an open wound.

The heart of Hayakawa Aki aches. This time, it is not your words that teach the Gun Fiend the name for this feeling, but an echo etched into its body:

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'd take it all back if I could. I'd have spent a lifetime with you. I'm sorry.

Regret: the longing to undo mistakes; the wish to reverse time; the agony of being unable to give voice to things left unsaid. This is what the Gun Devil inherits from Hayakawa Aki. This is what the Gun Fiend feels, when it looks at you.

end preview

hi everyone I am fully aware that this is a very ✨weird✨ fic, and I’m not sure if it’s something that people would be super interested in LMAO, so please do let me know if you feel you’d want to read it!! 

I am also testing out some hyperlinks (tumblr used to shadowban my posts for having hyperlinks, I’m trying to see if that’s still true lol): [REMOVED cuz they definitely got this post shadowbanned lol]

also THANK YOU to @kureyuki​ for beta-ing this absolute travesty and helping me turn into something worth seeing the light of day!!!!

[farewell-itoshisoup]

selfish | aki x f!reader 

It'd be bad. No IUD, no condom, no birth control, no nothing, not to mention that the two of you were supposed to take things slow. This isn't what you had discussed when you talked to each other about your limits a week ago. But Aki can tell you're currently out of your mind, helpless with arousal—already fucked stupid even though he's barely fucked you at all, only giving you the tip. 

You'd let him do anything right now.

(Or: After a lot of persuasion, Aki finally learns to take what he wants.) 

8.5k words of pwp with feelings, cisfem reader, references to an established relationship backstory (this is set loosely in the Bluebird universe, but you do not need to read Bluebird to understand this fic — more details on this in the endnotes, if you’re curious). NSFT tags: vanilla sex, pussy job, 'just the tip', oral sex, unprotected sex, creampie. Warnings: While the sex is consensual, please be aware that the reader does beg Aki to ignore some pre-established limits (and he gets horny enough to agree). 18+ ONLY.

When you and Aki decided to take the leap from complicated friendship to even more complicated romance, it had been a hesitant, difficult decision. There were many things that made the idea of a relationship seem futile, with the biggest one being his imminent death sentence from the Curse Devil. Aki knows that you've been dreading his passing for a long time now, knows that it'd be cruel to ask for your heart if he can't give you a life in return. And as much as he's wanted you for a long time now—hasn't ever been able to kick the thought, not through cigarettes or work or even other women—there are few things he'd hate more than leaving you alone in two years, left with nothing but wasted time and a pile of ash.

So when you said to him that it'd hurt less to stay friends, Aki agreed. And he was ready to let you go then, because the last thing he'd ever want to do was hurt you. But you'd also been so close to him when you said this, watching him with tender, conflicted eyes as you brushed the hair out of his face.

Aki's not a selfish man, but it did something to him, seeing you like that: finally in his arms, but so hurt, so hopeless. And he knew it was unfair, knew he had nothing to offer you, but he still couldn't stop himself from pressing his mouth against yours and kissing you the way he'd been wanting to for years.

And you let him.

For better or worse, you're now feeling things out romantically. It's not anything like a relationship yet, because you're taking things slow: a date here and there, lazy evenings at home together whenever you get the chance, kissing each other long and sweet whenever Denji and Power aren't around. But there's nothing more than that. No labels, no expectations, and—very importantly—no sex. Sex with strangers and friends is easy, you'd said, but sex with Aki would feel different. Would probably mean more to you than it should, would mean something weighty and intimate and irreversible. And though he didn't say it, Aki felt the same way.

"That's fine," he'd said. "We can wait as long as you want."

Thinking back to that conversation, it confuses him what you're now doing, just over a week later: sitting pretty in his lap, your mouth soft and pliable as it moves against his. Wearing nothing but a set of ivory lingerie, your body is almost entirely exposed to him, and he can't stop drinking in the sight: the swell of your breasts covered in lace; your bare thighs straddling his hips; the playful smile on your face as you watch him swallow thickly.

He cups a breast in his hand, feels the delicate contours of the embroidery, and he can't help but run a thumb along over the material. You shiver when he lingers on the peak of your breast, your nipple hardening beneath his touch.

"You wore this for me?" he murmurs. Your mouth quirks up.

"No, I wore this for Kobeni," you can't stop yourself from saying, and it's a testament to how turned on he is that he doesn't immediately roll his eyes. You must notice his exasperation though, because you giggle a little and lean in.

"Yes," you concede, "I wore this for you—bought it new, actually."

"So no one else has seen you in it?" he asks, bringing up his other hand to your chest. He squeezes both of your breasts, enjoys the way it makes you arch into his touch. When you shake your head, Aki replies, "Good," and rewards you by leaning in to kiss you again.

Despite the sense of satisfaction, though, he can't help but feel bothered. "Why?" he then asks, and you blink.

"Because… I'd hoped you'd like it?" You tilt your head, curious. "Don't you?"

"I do," he says, his thumbs skimming the peaks of your breasts again. You bite your lip, moving your hips toward his own. Noticing the neediness in your eyes, he grabs your waist and repositions you until your core is hovering over the bulge in his pants. You eagerly press down against it, and he has to stop himself from groaning. Ironically, this all happens as he explains, "But I thought you wanted to take things slow. No sex."

That makes you pause. Or maybe it's the way that you're grinding against his lap that's distracting you from talking. Aki leans back, enjoys the sight of sheer, white mesh against the dark fabric of his pants. He can already see a wet stain beneath you, giving away how wound up you already are. He wonders if you had been thinking about this, while you were out on your date tonight, wearing this little number underneath your clothes. If you were thinking about it on the drive home, anticipating his touch. If you were already wet before you even stepped into this room tonight, or if you're just so sensitive that all it took was a little kissing and groping to get you into this state.

"I do want to take things slow," you say after a bit. Then you smile, reach up and start tugging at the elastic in his hair. "We don't have to have sex or anything. But you can touch me, if you want."

Aki lets you undo his topknot, run your fingers through the dark strands as they're freed. He contemplates your words, mildly confused about what your actual limits are, but then you drag your hips across his again, and his thoughts are abruptly cut off. All he can focus on is the friction from your core, and the sheer, barely-there fabric that's separating it from him. You must be able to feel a lot through your panties, because your eyes are hazy and—when he leans in to kiss you—he can feel the heat from your face. Your pulse is racing, too; it's fast beneath his lips as he kisses and sucks your neck, making you shiver.

"Aki," you whine. It's a pretty, needy noise, and he feels himself getting harder, just listening to it. "Touch me more—please?"

That makes him pause.

He places two hands on your waist, stops your grinding. You blink at him, confused, and he says, "What do you mean?"

"...what?"

"What do you mean, touch you? I need you to be specific, if sex is off-limits." He lifts a hand to one of your breasts, cups it. You breathe in sharply, your hips jerking instinctively, but his other hand keeps you in place. It leaves you squirming and biting your lip, unable to find any kind of relief. "I know you're okay with this"—he squeezes your breast, making you sigh—"and this"—he flicks his thumb across a nipple, and the lace is so thin that he can easily pinch it through your bra. A little whimper leaves you, and you're clearly now frustrated at not being able to grind against him. "But you need to tell me what else you want." His fingers tap at your waist. "I'll let you move after you do."

You bite your lip, thinking.

"Maybe we can just keep doing what we were doing?" you suggest. You run a hand through his hair. "Or you can use your hands, if you'd like. Maybe your mouth too, if you want."

Aki nods, and lets his hands start wandering again. One playing at your nipple, another squeezing the soft curve of your ass, fingers digging into the flesh. You lean into him, smiling as he grabs and kneads your body.

One of his hands comes to rest at your panties. You tilt your hips up, giving him a good look, and he's entranced. The translucent material, embroidered with flowers, shows nearly everything: the contour of your lips, your pretty clit, and the wetness from your core.

Aki's reaches down, tests his fingers by running up your opening. Finds your panties drenched even though he's barely touched you.

"You're so wet," he murmurs.

"Mhm. I was wet for most of the night," you admit softly. You start rolling your hips as he teases you, and you add, "Kept thinking about coming home and letting you touch me in this."

He sucks in a breath.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And I kept thinking about all the things I wanna do with you." His thumb rests on your clit. "I know we said take things slow, but I really want you, Aki. Been wanting you for a long time."

"Me too," he breathes. He starts rubbing you through the fabric, and even though your expression melts in a way that makes his cock throb, he finds the sense to say, "But we should go slow. Take our time."

Because taking your time is what you wanted, when you were rational and thinking carefully about what would make you most comfortable. Because taking his time, doing things properly with you, is what he wants to do, too. Wants to take his time savouring the taste of your mouth, take his time playing with your swollen clit and making you moan against his lips, take his time kissing his way down your neck, your collarbones, your breasts. He lets himself indulge in all of that, and then more: nips at the lace of your bra, blows on your nipple until you're squirming. Then he takes it into his mouth. He starts licking and sucking, drawing quiet, sweet moans out of you.

His mouth is greedy, wet and hot through lace while his tongue swirls around your nipple. You start grinding against his cock, rutting and desperate for friction. He feels himself getting harder beneath you, and he groans into your breast.

You start tugging at his pants, and when he glances up, your eyes are pleading.

"I wanna feel more of you, Aki."

Aki can't undress fast enough.

He removes every item of clothing that you pull at. First his pants, and then his shirt. You eye his body appreciatively after you do, apparently fixated even though you've seen him shirtless after countless missions together, helping him with his dressing his wounds while cussing him out for getting hurt. Now you're tracing the remnants of those cuts, your fingers ghosting the scars on his taut muscles before grabbing onto his shoulders.

You're eager when you finally straddle his hips and press your wet slit against the outline of his cockhead, maybe feeling the precum that's soaked through his briefs. He inhales sharply as the tip presses between your lips and right into your opening, which is hot and wet even through his briefs. If it weren't for his underwear, he'd be able to feel your entrance against his cock.

You start moving, and both of you moan at the pressure.

It's insane how much this is turning him on. He feels like a teenager, getting this worked up over some dry humping. Each time your pussy drags against his throbbing cock and presses down on the head, he feels himself getting harder, leaking more. You're getting desperate too, thighs trembling around him as you start panting softly, needily. All that just from grinding against his cock over his briefs, just from having his wet tongue move over your nipples, just from the way your clit is pressing into him with each glide of your hips.

But then you stop, and he feels a tug at his briefs.

"I wanna feel you more," you say. "It's not enough, Aki. I wanna feel you against me."

Aki stops, considering. It's not exactly what you'd been asking for earlier, but it's also not much further. So he pulls down his briefs, freeing his heavy, leaking cock. He catches you staring at it, eyes wide. He can't quite tell if your expression is hungry or intimidated or both.

"Something wrong?" he asks.

You swallow thickly. "No. You're just… really big."

"So I've heard," he says dryly.

You bite your lip, looking conflicted as you stare at him. "Maybe we should just fuck, after all," you comment as you hook your fingers on your panties, sliding them off.

Aki's cock twitches at the suggestion, while he stares at your exposed core. He has half a mind to spread you out on the bed and get a better look, but then you crawl back onto his lap and seat yourself on him. You press your heat against him, your bare pussy wet onto his cock, and you start rubbing yourself up and down the length of him. Your fingers sink into his shoulders as you groan at the wet, easy glide of his cock between your folds. With every thrust, he makes sure to press into your clit, and you moan at the sensation as he smears precum all over your bud.

Aki's fingers dig into your waist, helping you grind your pussy all over his length. Your movements become frantic, desperate and dripping as you try to seek your release.

Then the tip of his cock accidentally catches on your entrance.

Both of you freeze. His jaw tightens, feeling your pussy flutter and drip directly against his slit, and he holds back the urge to start thrusting up.

While he struggles with his self-control, you seem to throw yours out.

"Let's just"—you start pushing your hips down, clearly trying to fuck yourself on his cock and whining at the resistance, your hole too tight for him—"fuck, Aki, let's just do it. I want you inside me."

His grip tightens on your waist, stopping you again. A miracle, given how much he's thinking about pulling you down onto his cock.

"That's not what we agreed on," he points out. You give him a desperate look, pulling out all the stops: doe eyes, pouty lips, as cute as it is manipulative.

"You don't wanna fuck me, Aki?" you whine in a pleading voice—the same one you use to make him humour your most irresponsible demands.

"Of course I do," he replies. "But we're going to take things slow, remember? And anyway"—he wants to hit himself for this—"I don't have any condoms on me."

He'd run out a while back and never restocked, too overwhelmed with work to even think about it. And after the two of you started dating, he wasn't in a rush about picking any up, since you didn't seem to want to have sex anytime soon. But Aki should have known that he'd need them as soon as possible, given your shitty impulse control. Should have known you'd soon be grinding against the tip of his cock, begging him to fuck you anyway.

"I don't care," you whine. "It'll feel even better that way. Please, Aki—"

"No." He gives you a stern look. You don't let up, still squirming.

"I promise I'm fine with it," you whine. "We've taken things slow enough—"

Even this horny, Aki wants to snort. It's been nine days.

"—and I've gotten myself tested for everything, so I promise you don't have to worry about that either. It'll be fine."

"You're not on birth control," he points out.

"You can just pull out," you plead. He raises a brow, wondering if you're always this irresponsible during sex.

"That's not a reliable method of contraception," he says flatly, sounding like a textbook.

"But it's you," you say, undeterred. "I trust you to pull out in time."

Aki sighs, because he sure as hell doesn't.

"We shouldn't risk it," he says, but somehow still can't bring himself to pull you away. Already he can feel how warm and wet you are, and so close. He’s so close that it’d be easy to just slide into you.

Aki takes a long, measured breath, then exhales the same way. Maybe you notice the tension in his body, because you suggest, “How about just like this?”

He's finding it hard to think.

"Like this?"

“Yeah. Can I move a little?” You stare at him, and though you look no less pleading or desperate, you do watch him carefully. “Promise I won’t do much.”

Aki nods slowly, vaguely aware that this is a bad idea, but too curious to stop you. Slowly, you lower your hips, sinking down on him. He feels your pussy swallowing the tip of his cock and he chokes a little, instinctively tightening his grip on your hips. He’s going to bruise you at this rate, with how harshly he’s grabbing you, but he has to stop this. He doesn’t know who he’s trying to stop—you, from sheathing yourself on him, or himself, from just slamming into you—but the two of you can’t go any further.

He should lift you up, but you feel so good, tight and sopping wet for him. He just stays there, breathing heavily, letting himself enjoy the feeling of you.

"Like this," you say, and Aki remembers that you were trying to suggest something. Your walls tighten around him—fuck, you are definitely doing that on purpose—and he sucks in a breath. "Just the tip."

He's going insane, feeling you drip and pulse around him. Against his better judgement, he pushes up with hips, sinking further into you and giving you at least an inch of him. Even though it's just the tip, he already feels a stretch, your walls tight and hot. And shit, now he's thinking about how good you'd feel around the rest of his dick, but the two of you stay like that: unmoving, restrained.

Just like this. Okay. He can do just this. It'd be quick to pull out.

"Fine," he says, and you reward him with a slow thrust and a relieved, breathy moan. He joins you, groaning at finally getting to fuck into you—even if it's just a little bit. Your folds are slick, part easily for him each time you sink down on his cockhead. A sharp gasp leaves you when he takes a nipple into your mouth again, sucking and teasing you with each roll of his hips.

His head's spinning. Your heat is so tight and so wet that even though only the head of his cock is sunk inside you, Aki feels like he's losing his mind. On top of him, you look equally wound up, squirming and keening with every shallow thrust of your hips. You keep fluttering around him too, your pussy greedy for the rest of his cock. Every time you sink down and fuck yourself onto him, you do it with more force, more desperation, and every time he tightens his hold on your hips to stop you before you can take too much of him in.

"Aki," you start panting, breathing out with every shallow, agonising thrust, "Aki, I want you so badly, please, please just fuck me—"

Aki presses a thumb to your lips, cutting you off. Mostly he wants you to stop talking so he won't be tempted to actually fuck you properly—his self-restraint will snap if he keeps listening to your little pleas—but then you part your lips and take his thumb into your mouth. Your eyes squeeze shut and he feels the hot, wet slide of your tongue on his skin, the gentle vibration of your blissed out hum, and Aki groans low and deep, probably sounding as animal as he feels.

The remaining hand on your hip loosens, and you take the opportunity to wriggle down on his lap. Your cunt swallows maybe another inch of his cock, and even with the filthy mess of his prespend and your slick, you're still unbearably tight around him. The stretch has you moaning, eyes rolling back as you finally get more of what you've been begging for.

"Fuck," he hisses, and he immediately lifts you off his cock.

"Aki!" you whine, looking on the verge of tears. You clench around nothing, missing him. "Aki, why'd you stop!"

"Because you're not behaving," he growls, trying to ignore his swollen and aching shaft. "I said we aren't fucking, so stop trying."

"That was an accident," you deny, bottom lip trembling. "I was just too wet, okay? I slipped. I'll be more careful. I promise."

Aki looks at your pleading, teary eyes—the exact same spoiled face you make when you piss him off and feign innocence—and gets the strong suspicion that you're bullshitting him.

"I don't trust you," he says plainly, and you make such a pathetic, miserable expression that he nearly feels bad. But it's the truth, so instead of letting you stay on top, he pushes you off his lap and then onto your back. As soon as he settles himself between your legs, your face lights up again.

You spread yourself eagerly for him, opening your thighs and giving Aki a full view of your core. Your pussy—wet, trembling, pretty—is glistening with his prespend, needy for more of it. He takes the heavy weight of his cock into his hands, can't resist running its head along your opening, enjoys how you squirm in response. He only pauses to press his cockhead against your swollen, neglected clit, coating it with your juices. Your hips jerk immediately, body instinctively trying to grind your sex against his length.

"Aki, please," you beg again. "Hurry."

He raises a brow, feigns contemplation—makes the kind of expression that he would as your superior officer, after receiving a bullshit request. It clearly gets under your skin, because you give him a frustrated look.

"I don't know," he says. "Are you going to be good?"

"Yes."

"Not going to try to beg for more?"

"I won't, I promise." You give him wide, pleading eyes. "Just the tip. I won't try to go further than that."

"Good girl.”

He presses the head of his cock against your heat. Slowly, deliberately, he pushes past your entrance and feels the tight squeeze of your walls again. Listens to the wet, obscene noises from your cunt as he begins thrusting. With each shallow pump of his cock, he feels your pussy sucking him in, begging for the whole length of him—but he doesn't give it to you.

Instead, he moves his thumb to your clit—still slick with his prespend—and presses down gently on it. Your hips jerk up as he starts rubbing circles, and he feels your walls clench hard.

"Aki," you breathe, "Aki, I'm so empty, I want more—"

"Don’t beg,” he says harshly. “You're not getting it.” But he presses a little deeper with his next thrust, gives you another inch, and enjoys how your mouth falls open.

"Akiiii," you plead, and he leans down to kiss you briefly.

"Don't worry," he says. "I'll get you there. Just be good."

And you are. You listen to him. Your hips buck up against him, and he can feel you getting wetter by the minute—can hear it, too, the slick and noisy sound you're making around the tip of his cock—but you don't beg him to fuck you, and you don't try to push yourself onto his length. You just grab at the sheets and try to enjoy the feeling of his shallow thrusts, sighing every time your pussy is allowed to take him in. You're good enough that Aki feels alright letting go of your hip. His free hand instead wraps around the swollen length of his cock—the part of it that isn't inside you—and he starts fisting himself. Tries to find relief in the squeeze of his hand as he jerks himself into your needy cunt.

You groan when you realise what he's doing, and you take over for him in teasing your clit, let him watch as your fingers play with yourself. But you keep to your promise, and that's all you do.

He's glad. Aki doesn't know if he could behave if you tried more than that. He's always been so used to looking out for you, to being careful with you, to treating you gently even when you're being reckless with your own body. That's what he should do now, while he's got you so sweet and malleable beneath him. That's always how he's wanted your first time with him to go.

But truthfully, he wants nothing more right now than to pin you down and fuck you raw and hard.

He used to think about that all the time, when he was younger and the two of you were roommates. He tried hard not to, but he did: thought about it when he heard you fucking yourself in your bedroom; thought about it whenever you brought home flings from the bar and he noticed that your moans were synced with the squeaking of your bed; thought about it every time the two of you went out drinking with Himeno and she coaxed you into oversharing your sexual escapades. Thought about it as you drunkenly talked about how you loved it especially when men got rough with you, when they manhandled you and used you like a toy.

Right now, that's exactly what he wants to do, after all these years of thinking about it: use you so thoroughly and deeply that you'll be too fucked out to think. Hold you down and force the rest of his cock into your pretty, needy pussy. Keep going until he's bottomed out and pressed up right against your cervix.

It'd be bad. No IUD, no condom, no birth control, no nothing, not to mention that the two of you were supposed to take things slow. This isn't what you had discussed, when you talked to each other about your limits. But he can tell you're currently out of your mind, helpless with arousal—already fucked stupid even though he's barely fucked you at all, only giving you the tip. You'd let him do anything right now. You'd let him sink the rest of his cock inside you, and you'd let him fuck you properly, and you'd let him cum inside you too. And then you'd let him do it all over again, and again, and again until you're stuffed full. Until you're whimpering and squeezing your eyes shut the way you are now, your thighs trembling with the nearness of your release.

"Aki, I'm cumming, I'm cumming," you whine, but you don't need to, because he can feel it for himself: feel the way your walls clench and convulse around the head of his cock, desperately trying to milk him; feel the way you gush with your release, soaking him; feel the way your thighs tighten around his waist, trying to pull him closer.

Something snaps in his gut, and he curses. Aki only barely makes it when he pulls out of you. Less than a second later, he's spilling cum all over your quivering pussy, the head of his cock pressed flush against your lower lips and drenching them in his spend. It gets everywhere: all over your clit, your entrance, the sheets beneath you. It takes several, long moments for him to finish releasing, and he leaves the inside of your thighs a sticky mess once he’s done.

Aki sighs heavily when he finds the sense to pull away—not from bliss, but from relief. He hadn't come inside you, thank god. It was insane of him to do this with you without a condom in the first place; he's glad it worked out.

But then you shift your thighs, and he sees the way your creamy slit trembles, and then his mind goes blank.

"Mm, that was nice." You breathe deeply, and Aki's vaguely aware of your contented sigh. "Still wish you'd just fucked me—I can't wait for us to…" You pause. "Aki?"

Aki doesn't reply. He's distracted, just watching the way his spend shines on your sex. It's filthy how much cum there is on you, filthier that it's dripping all the way down your ass, probably filthiest that he feels like it's being wasted on the sheets. Which is what he wanted—for it to be on you, not in you—but without thinking about it, he reaches out and parts your lower lips, fully exposing your glistening pussy. Then he dips his fingers into his cum and smears it across your spread folds.

You freeze.

The tension in your body brings him to his senses—what the hell is he doing—but then you squirm, push your hips toward his hand. "Keep going," you whisper, and just like that, his senses go out the window again.

He knows it's bad. Holy shit is it bad. But he does it anyway: gathers his spend with his index, presses his fingers into your heat, watches how easily your cunt takes it all in. How needily it does. Before he knows it, he's fingering his cum into your pussy, and you're gasping at the sensation of being opened up and fucked until he's knuckles-deep in you.

"We should probably stop," he murmurs, even when he withdraws his fingers only to guide more of his mess into you. Even as his thumb starts teasing your clit the way you like, and even as he leans in and blows on it. He feels you shiver when you do, probably oversensitive, but you encourage him with a breathy little moan.

"Don't," you say. And when you spread your legs more, desperate to have more of his cum inside you, he gets a full view of your sex: ruined with his spend both inside and out, greedily sucking in his fingers. It's mesmerising and it's pretty and he can't help but pull away his hand and replace it with his mouth.

"Oh, god—" Sharp inhale. "You don't have to, Aki, you don't need to—"

But I want to, he thinks about replying. He's wanted to for ages—to taste you, figure out how to move his tongue so he can make you pant like he's heard through the walls. But he knows it'd be useless to say that. You're stubborn, and you like to argue with him, and probably worst of all: nearly all your male sexual partners have treated you awfully in bed, and now you're convinced every man is like that.

So Aki doesn't bother responding with words, instead choosing to interrupt you by flattening his tongue and laving it against your heat. Both of his hands squeeze your thighs as he does, keeping them pried open even as you try to buck your hips.

You whine for him, pretty and needy, when he starts fucking you with his tongue. He feels heady and almost drunk right now, doing this: tasting the salt of his spend, all mixed up with your slick; enjoying the sensation of your folds on his mouth, flush against his lips; feeling you grind on his face, dragging your clit over his nose. Most of all, it's driving him crazy that with each dip of his tongue into your tight, pretty cunt, he's pushing more of his spend inside you.

Fuck taking it slow. You've both waited years for this.

Aki licks deep, sucks at your drenched pussy until his own cum is on his tongue. Then he pulls away, ignoring your whimper, and uses his fingers to spread your folds again. Watching your dripping opening, empty and missing his mouth, Aki gets an idea.

"I need more," you whine. "Please, Aki—your fingers, or your mouth, or anything—"

You don't need to ask, because he's already leaning down and parting his lips to let everything drip back into you, covering your hole in cum and spit. You're going to need it all, because his fingers are brushing against your cunt again, and he's going to give you three of them this time. If you can take them all, it occurs to him, it'd also mean you could probably take his whole cock.

Not that he's going to fuck you today, of course.

A blissed out sigh leaves you when he slides two of his fingers back into your wet heat. When he starts adding a third, he feels your walls fluttering, notices your hips shifting. Your panting is subtle but gives away the effort of taking more of his fingers, the discomfort of the stretch. So he leans down, takes your clit into his mouth, and starts sucking. He's being gentle, but it's enough to distract you. Your whimper tells him that you're focused only on the swirl of his tongue, and he thinks you don't even notice it when he finally sinks all three of his fingers into your cunt.

But you do notice it when he starts curling and pressing them against your front walls.

"Akiiii—" He feels hands in his hair, threading through it, pulling. It makes him growl, press his mouth even flusher against your mound. His fingers probe you deeper, search for the spot that he knows you hit whenever you fuck yourself. You're loud whenever you do it, and you're good at it too, so he's heard the keening noise you make when you split yourself open on a toy and it hits your—

"Ohhh—" Loud, startled gasp, followed by a desperate, obscene cry.

Yeah, that noise.

Aki gives you no mercy. His mouth doesn't let up on your bud; his fingers practically abuse your g-spot. Your cunt gets even sloppier, starts gushing around him, and you press a hand to your mouth because you're getting so loud. You start warning him, sounding delirious, half your words gibberish: "Aki, please, please—if you keep doing that, if you keep going—oh god, I can't, I can't. I'm gonna make a mess, 'm gonna, if you don't—"

He uses his free hand to push down on your pelvis, forces your sweet spot against his fingers, and you practically scream when you cum.

Your thighs tremble. The hand on your belly is probably the only thing that stops you from convulsing as you gush all over his mouth. You soak everything—his face, the sheets, your thighs—and he greedily licks it all up. Doesn't let up until you're whimpering and begging him: "Aki, Aki, please, 'm too sensitive, you gotta stop…"

Stop. That drags him immediately out of his stupor. He glances up, eyes on your face, and he crawls up when he sees how exhausted and teary you look. Wonders if he maybe went too far.

"Are you okay?" he asks, and to his relief, you breathe a contented sigh.

"Yeah, don't worry," you pant out, winded. "I just need a breather."

You look fine, calmly blinking away your tears as you breathe deeply. Still, Aki stares at your face, searching for any signs of discomfort—just in case—and when you notice, you grant him a hazy, blissful smile. You look so pretty, so satisfied and fucked out, and he can't help but lean down and press his mouth to yours. Even though it's absolutely filthy, you part your lips and deepen the kiss. You even moan when he slips his tongue against yours, letting you taste the mess he's made of your cunt.

After he pulls away and wipes his face, you laugh a little.

"Geeze, Aki," you tease, "I always thought you'd be really tame in bed. I didn't know you had that in you."

"I didn't either," he replies quite honestly. He doesn't bother getting offended at your assumption either, because it's true that he's never cared especially for sex. It's always been clinical and a little dispassionate from his end: an easy high to de-stress for himself, but mostly a service for the other person. And it's always been something he's strictly rational about. Even with his most experimental and pushiest partners, he's never thought once about not doing things safely.

But he can't lie to himself and say that fucking you is anything like fucking anyone else. A lot of what he just did was purely for himself. He liked splitting you open with his fingers, he liked seeing his cum inside you, he liked tasting you as you squirted all over his face. He likes having you underneath him, honeysweet and blissed out and all his. And he feels addicted to it, would spend all night making you cum just so that he could keep hearing you make those pretty, obscene noises, would do it as many times as it'd take to make you forget every person's touch but his own.

He strokes your cheek. "I don’t know what you’re doing to me," he just says, and you hum happily, leaning up to kiss him again.

"You wanna keep going?" you ask, shifting your hips against him. He's hard again, pressed against your inner thigh and somehow aching more than before even though he came not too long ago. A wicked little glint enters your eyes, and opportunistically, you wrap your legs around his hips. The motion brings his length right against your sex, and he inhales sharply as he feels the head press against your drenched hole.

Even though he has reservations, he finds himself sitting up to grab his cock anyway. He nestles it between your lower lips, runs it along your dripping entrance, and then makes himself stop.

"We really shouldn't do it without a condom," he comments, and you laugh in disbelief.

"Aki, are you serious? You just fingered your cum into me. I think it's a little too late for that."

"Well, it'd just be making it worse if we kept going…" He frowns, trying to ignore his throbbing dick to think. "Shit. I don't even know what we're going to do about what we just did."

"Don't worry," you reply breezily. "I can get my hands on some Plan B. We can just keep going."

As if to convince him, you wiggle your hips, desperate for friction, and you sigh when you get it. It's driving him insane, the sensation of your folds slipping around the tip of his cock, and it takes everything for him not to shove the rest of it inside you.

"We can stop if you want," you say, an earnest ring to your voice. "...but all I'm saying is that if you want to keep going, I wouldn't mind." Your smile a little then, teasingly. "You can fuck me for real. Cum inside me, if you want—"

"I'm not going to," he says firmly, but you're undeterred.

"Or you can finish inside me elsewhere, if you're really worried…"

He inhales harshly, and even more blood somehow rushes to his dick at the thought. It's a tempting offer, but after thinking it through, Aki realises that he's going to go completely insane if he doesn't fuck your pussy right now. So he breathes in deeply, calms himself, and gives you a stern look.

"We can keep going, but I'm pulling out," he says. Your Cheshire smile only widens, and you angle your hips up.

"Whatever you say, Aki. We'll see what happens when you actually—nghhh—"

Your eyes go wide as he starts pushing inside you, giving you much more than the inch he did earlier, stops only when he meets resistance. He leans down, fully knowing that the girth of his dick is overwhelming you into silence.

"You talk too much," he tells you, and he ignores the dirty look you give him so he can sit up again and spit on his cock. He feels your walls tighten as you watch him, which makes him glance toward you. Your eyes are trained on the dripping length of his cock, expression dazed, and he catalogues it for later. Right now, all he wants to do is slide inside you and feel every part of you. To have every part of you—to fuck you so hard that you'll forget every other cock that's been inside you.

Aki's not usually a selfish man, but he'll let himself have this.

Even though his cock is heavy and aching, and all he wants is to snap his hips and make you take it all at once, he forces himself to go slowly. He knows he's big, big enough to hurt you, and that's not the way he wants to take you. So he enters you bit by bit, stopping every time he sees your brows pinch. Even with how wet you are, even with how he'd stretched you out with his fingers, you gasp with every thrust of his hips. But you're good for him, wrapping your legs around him and making your pussy take every inch of him. Your walls tremble around his cock, clearly struggling with the sheer girth of it, but you encourage him anyway: "Keep going, Aki, keep going, please—"

So he gives you more, and more, and more, until he's fully seated inside you. Your walls are hot and tight around him, and he grits his teeth at the squeeze. He's pressed right against your cervix too; he can feel the resistance with his cock. And he knows you're both being reckless, doing this raw, but he's glad he can feel every inch of your walls against his cock, and he's dizzy with the knowledge that you're feeling all of him.

After a long, quiet moment, he finally starts to move.

Your clench around him with each pump of his hips, drip all over him as your pussy swallows him again and again. It's not long until you're moaning again, voice joining the obscene noises from your sloppy cunt: the slap of skin against skin, the wet drip of all his cum and spit being fucked into you. And shit, he wants to keep being slow with you, but the way you take him so well is making him lose it.

When your hips buck to meet his thrust, he feels his restraint crumble.

The first snap of his hips against yours is loud, wet. Angled up so that his cockhead presses that spot inside you, the one that makes your eyes flutter shut, the one that makes you start gushing all over his length. His rhythm gets faster, deeper, more relentless, until he's properly fucking you and you're crying out with each thrust.

"Fuck, fuck—please, Aki, please—"

His cock throbs at your teary, helpless expression. At the sight of your mouth slack-jawed and drooling onto the pillow, just like how your cunt's drooling around his cock. He grabs your thighs and spreads you so wide that your legs are thrown over his shoulder. You gasp at the new angle, and all you can do is cry and whimper as you’re forced to take his cock even deeper inside you.

His eyes are hungry as they fix on the sight of your pussy—sloppy, fucked open. You're so warm and pliable and incoherent, and he remembers that you'd let him do anything to you like this.

And when you reach for your clit and start rubbing circles into it, making your cunt start squeezing him, he knows he's screwed. Because he'd do anything to you at this rate.

"Shit"—he grits his teeth as he feels his balls tighten, knowing he should stop but fucking into you anyway—"if you keep doing that, I'm not gonna last—"

All that seems to do is encourage you. You tighten around him again, thighs shaking, and he knows you're close to releasing, which means he's close to cumming, and fuck fuck fuck he said he'd pull out. He can't not. He finds the self-control to slow his hips, and now he's stopped inside you. He's still balls deep in your cunt but at least he's stopped, and he can take a second to collect himself and—

You cum on his cock. Hard.

As soon as you start pulsing around him, he's done. He's spilling himself inside you, spurting thick ropes of cum deep into your pussy. Desperately thrusting his hips again, fucking into you like an animal. Pumping his cum into your womb—your fertile womb, holy shit are you two ever fucked—and he can't stop himself, not when your cunt is milking him like this. He leans down, crushes his lips against yours, kissing you open-mouthed and sloppy as he empties himself into you.

He nearly collapses onto you afterward, but somehow manages to flip you over so you're lying on him instead. You sigh happily as he wraps his arms around you, apparently enjoying the feeling of his cock twitching inside you. It feels like it takes forever to stop—several minutes, probably—and you’re both so spent that when he finally pulls out of you, it feels like a chore.

After a drawn out, blissful moment, you finally speak. With your expression so hazy and tender, he makes the mistake of guessing that you might say something sweet, something along the lines of standard pillow talk.

Which he’s an idiot for thinking.

"Hey, Aki…" you start, voice mischievous.

"Don't," he warns, but all it does is make you laugh.

"What did I say?" you ask, voice sing-song. He groans.

"You're actually awful." He gives you a wary, long-suffering look. "Aren't you worried at all?"

You shrug. "Not really."

He opens and closes his mouth, speechless at the genuine shamelessness of your answer. "I can't believe you."

"Hey, don't act like you didn't enjoy finishing inside me." You frown a little, act like you're disapproving. "Who knew Hayakawa Aki could be so irresponsible? I can't believe it. Having sex with his subordinate and treating them like a cum—"

He slaps a hand over your lips. "Christ! You never stop running your mouth, do you?"

"Nope," you say, muffled by his palm. He gives you a dirty look, hesitantly removing his hand. He'd love to keep you quiet—maybe by putting his fingers back into your mouth and starting to fuck you again—but he has questions, first.

"Who's your supplier for Plan B?" he asks.

"Public Safety. Their physicians will prescribe it in extenuating circumstances."

He blinks, surprised. "But Plan B isn't legal here."

"So? Half the shit we do isn't legal." You sigh a little, now looking less relaxed. "The Bureau keeps it on hand to deal with cases of human intercourse with devils. Obviously devil hunters will preemptively get birth control or IUDs for contracts involving sex, but there are always unforeseen cases of intercourse. Like unauthorised contracts that civilians make. Or cases of devils attacking people and then… well, you know…"

Your brow furrows, and Aki feels you tensing up.

"Let's not talk about that," he suggests, and you nod. You let him kiss you, his lips gentle and chaste against yours this time, plying your mouth until you're sighing.

But even though he's got you distracted, Aki himself can't stop thinking about devils now. Can't stop thinking about what he's given up for his contracts, what you've given up for yours, what all of this is supposed to mean when he's got a death sentence hanging over his head. When what you deserve is the world, after everything the world's put you through, but Aki has nothing near that to give.

Now that he's sobered up from his desire, he feels his stomach drop. It wasn't only pregnancy that he was worried about.

Aki cups your face in hand, asks, "How are you feeling?"

You give him a confused, funny look. "Good, I guess? You made me cum three times. I have no complaints."

He snorts. "No, I mean—how are you feeling about…" He struggles with his words. "...moving so fast."

"Oh. I'm fine, I think." You give him a long, searching look. "Y'know, Aki… when I was out lingerie shopping with Power—"

Oh, god. Where are you going with this.

"—I wasn't planning on getting anything to, um, wear for you. But then I saw this set, and Power saw me, like, struggling over if I should buy it. Because I really, really wanted you to have sex with you while wearing it, but, y'know. I also didn't want to rush into anything, or fuck things up between us… So I told Power everything—"

You talked to Power about this? About having sex with him? Power knows you were going to seduce him in this?

"—and instead of, like, paying attention to anything I've actually been worried about, she said I should have sex with you as soon as possible—because I'll never know when you and Denji will get into another fight, and maybe he'd do permanent damage to your nuts then. If we wait too long and that happens, then I'd have missed all my chances to, um, be inseminated by you. Her words, not mine."

Aki's going to have a stroke. He's going to have a stroke and die.

"Okay. And?"

"And I thought she had a good point. Not just about your nuts—by the way, I'm glad you can still perform—but also… We don't know what'll happen tomorrow, you know?"

"No, we don't. But I'm pretty sure Denji won't kick my nuts again anytime soon," Aki says, thoroughly lost. You snort a little.

"Right, but I'm talking beyond Denji… like, we can't predict when we'll die, Aki. Even if you quit Public Safety, even if we left the country and ran away from all this bullshit, even if I could do something insane like break your contract with the Curse Devil—there's always going to be devils around. People are always going to die. Even though the Curse Devil says you got two more years, you could die next week. Or I could die tomorrow. We could be on the run with fake passports in The Galapagos, a year from now, and we could still die."

Even with the insane analogy, Aki understands that you're being serious. And he's also starting to understand where you're coming from.

"Right."

"And I realised that I'm not that afraid of dying, but I don't want to die without doing as much with you as I could." You give him a tender look, brush some of the hair out of his face. "I think I'd die angry with myself if I went out without making you as happy as possible."

He goes quiet.

You could have said many things just now. Knowing your personality, he wouldn't have been surprised if you'd said, I think I'd die angry at myself if I went out without ever getting railed by you. Or you could have simply said, If I died without ever getting the chance to date you. Or, probably what most people would be thinking: If I died unhappy, because we never got together.

But instead you're worried about his happiness.

Aki can't remember the last time someone's said something like that to him.

"And, um, I guess I didn't know if having sex would make you happy," you continue. An insane thing to say, given what just happened.

"It did," he reassures you, lip quirking.

"Oh, good!" You look pleased with yourself, which makes him want to laugh. But then you give him an earnest, vulnerable look, and Aki's eyes soften. "That's all I want to do, Aki. Even if it's going to hurt me in the future, I want to make you happy right now. So tell me how."

He gives you a dubious look.

"But it's also important what'll make you happy," he says. "I don't want to hurt you—"

You slap a hand over his mouth.

"Shhh. Don't worry about me. Be a little selfish for once, won't you?" You look at him reproachfully. "Tell me what you want."

He pauses.

Aki's not a selfish man. His happiness hasn't been important to himself for a long time, not since he's lost so many of his comrades. Not since he lost his family. Not since he got Taiyo killed. Happiness is impermanent, he'd learned long ago; guilt is enduring, and guilt is easier. It is familiar as it is fatal. Being a dead man comes more naturally to him than being a happy one, and there's nothing that a dead man wants from life.

But it does something to him, seeing you like this: finally in his arms, so tender, so hopeful. And he knows it's unfair, knows he has nothing to offer you, but he still can't stop himself from pressing his mouth against yours and saying what he's been thinking for years:

"I want you to be mine."

You break out into a smile, press your forehead to his and laugh. And then you tell him what he's been yearning to hear for what feels like forever:

"Okay, Aki. I'm all yours."

End Notes

I am not a smut writer by any means but I tried my best for the Aki fuckers out here 🫡 pls let me know if you enjoyed because oh god I know I'll want to delete my whole blog outta shame after posting

Fun fact also, I honest to god tried to write unprotected sex in the offhanded way that most people do with smut (e.g., little to no conversation about protection), but doing this from Aki’s POV made it completely impossible. Like, I actually had to filter out a lot of his panicked overthinking, and I still ended up with a ton of it. He is not a good character for pwp sdlfkjsf I’m sorry if it was unsexy

re: this fic is loosely set in the Bluebird universe—

This was originally intended to be a sex scene in there’s a bluebird in my heart after Aki and the reader finally get together, but then it got way too tonally and thematically inconsistent with the rest of the fic (as in, I used the word “cock” no less than 35 times by the halfway point, and that is simply not the writing style for Bluebird LMAO)

Since I'm 80% sure this scene will be scrapped or revised to be way less horny, I decided to re-frame it and post it as a self-contained and standalone piece.

Note that even though this is a standalone piece, many of the characterization notes, relationship conflict details, and worldbuilding ideas are relevant to Bluebird, so you'll see all those things come up there in a different form. (I figure that I'm allowed to plagiarise myself that way hahah)

[farewell-itoshisoup]

there’s a bluebird in my heart  | prologue

hayakawa aki x f!reader

On November 18th, 1988, the Gun Devil kills 57,912 people in Japan and displaces thousands more.

In a gymnasium full of grieving, starving strangers, you meet a boy who is as alone as you.

He's the only thing you have, and the only thing you'll lose.

10k+ words of childhood friends to lovers, slow burn, and codependent relationships. Chapter warnings for female reader, childhood trauma and one implied instance of predatory behaviour from an adult toward children. Please see the masterlist for full story warnings, as well as the companion fic. 

The Devil has blue eyes.

The Devil has blue eyes, and handsome features, and full lips that curl in an disarming, honeysweet way. Fear crawls up your spine when you look at it, every nerve ending pulsing with the same electric instinct: run. Some part of you—instinct, animal, buried in the hindbrain—knows that the smile is a deception, a facade of humanity that veers into the uncanny valley: like an android with false skin, or a wax model encased in glass. The Devil has blue eyes, and a forked tongue, and a beautiful, unsettling face, and you know you cannot trust it.

It bends down to look at you, dark pupils fixed on yours, and runs a pale finger along the ground, disturbing lines of white chalk—the same white lines that are sprawling out beneath your bare legs. The moon-white dusts your skin as you shift closer to the creature, your palms and thighs staining with it.

"Will it hurt?" you ask.

"It'll be worth it," it deflects. It looks into your eyes, and you feel transparent, all your insides laid bare. Made vulnerable. The Devil has blue eyes and a kind smile, and it knows every inch of your heart: every crevice of its chambers, every earth-shattering pulse. Atrium, ventricle, cortex, medulla—desperation, despair, fear, fear, fear—all in plain sight.

You think it is a calculated decision when the Devil says, "No one will ever take advantage of you again, with a power like this." 

You swallow. You look at its face again, and nausea rises from deep in your belly.

"Can—can you make yourself look like someone else? Something else? Anything else?"  

Its smile grows wider.

"But this is the face you want to see, isn't it?"

You go quiet.

You look into its eyes again, and you think to yourself—yes, there is a certain comfort in the familiarity of its contours. Maybe if you lie enough to yourself, you'll find some way to ignore the non-human shadow, or the wicked expression, or the pulse of ice-cold veins inside you. Maybe you'll be able to convince yourself that this is the face of someone you can trust.

In the end, you can only nod and say, "Okay." 

Your back smears with chalk as the Devil climbs atop you. It whispers sweet things into your ear, all the while lowering its mouth. The seal of its lips part to reveal row after row of jagged teeth spilling out from its beautiful mouth, and you suppress a flinch.

Pain cuts your innards like a knife. Beneath the Devil's gaze, your blood spills out onto the floor. The vulnerable bits of you are gutted out, bleeding out across ivory lines. The Devil watches with a feverish grin, and all you can think about is how you never want those eyes to see you like this again. 

On December 24th, 1993, you offer your flesh to a devil with blue eyes, and you receive its powers in return.

You are sixteen years old.

November 30, 1997 

Aki has a pretty good idea of what you'd see, if you ever chose to peer into his heart.

Winter day with a crisp sky, a scene like something from a snow globe that you'd buy in some ski resort in the Hida Mountains. Cold burn of snow in his face, and on his brother's hands. A white landscape that blurs as he blinks melting ice flakes out of his lashes. His little brother disappearing into his childhood home, smiling widely, bright like the Hokkaido country sky—

Blink.

—firecrackers. They're exploding in his ears along with the roar of typhoon wind, and the sound barrier shatters. Thunder. The horizon self-destructs, bursts into a white storm that covers the sky. Blinds him. Subzero wind lashes at his face, cuts into his wide-open eyes, his face, his bones.

When everything settles, the horizon's flat. The snow globe's shattered. Its broken glass is everywhere, seeded in the wreckage of his house.

Death etches into his eye like a gravestone, unforgettable. Most survivors of the Gun Devil have flashbulb memories of 11/18; those that don't likely have post-traumatic amnesia. When Aki was a teenager, he used to contemplate bludgeoning himself into forgetting it all. As an adult, he now holds these memories in a vice grip and revisits them all the time. Rewinds them before each mission, replays each time he draws his sword, cuts his own lifespan with the sharp edges of them.

Aki's pretty sure that you'd see these broken edges, if you ever chose to look into his heart.

Of course, you wouldn't need to channel your devil to know that.

November 18, 1988

On November 18th, 1988, the Gun Devil kills 57,912 people in Japan and displaces thousands more.

There's a name for all of those whose lives have been upended. A few names, actually. 11/18 Survivors. Terrorism Victims. Gun-Affected People. This last term sticks best, is a personal favourite of politicians and news anchors and philanthropists: a neutral, polite language, its objective quality masking all the stigma, all the poverty, all the loss. Raise money for the Gun-Affected People, they'll say for years to come. They're some of the most vulnerable people in the nation, the charities keep reminding the masses.

They're social burdens, is what everyone will come to think.

But in the days immediately following November 18th, 1988, people readily offer aid to the nation's greatest victims. Still—it feels meaningless, in the moment. You're a faceless body in a crowd of survivors, all funnelled into overcrowded stadiums and community centres and schools. All fed by emergency reserves and countless, generous donations. All with nothing left in the world.

They pick you up off the streets, like they would a stray dog: filthy and coated in a fine layer of debris, hands covered in cuts and blood from when you tried to dig through the broken glass and cement rubble to get to the bodies below. They'd treated you for the injuries—relatively minor, how lucky you were!—and then dropped you off at your kennel. It feels like the pits of hell, being trapped here with all the other animals without a place to go.

The elderly have the hardest time. You notice that they're all pale and sickly looking, all crying in silent and lonely corners. They don't have the stamina to stand in all the long queues for rations. They keep asking about their medications. Maybe because of your own grandmother, you grimace every time they do: Excuse me, nurse, were you able to get my pills? I'm so sorry to bother you, but my heart isn't doing so well, I can feel it. Then sometimes they forget to ask, which is worse. And in the dizzying noise of the packed gymnasium, of course their voices of pain and confusion are drowned out. It makes you think about your grandmother, how you'd definitely help her count her pills if she were here, how you'd chase after every volunteer to get her medication, and how she isn't here because of the Gun Devil, and suddenly there's a cavern in your chest so wide and painful and endless that you can't stop gasping into your hands.

Next to the old, you're pretty sure that it's the young who have it the worst. The ones who are alone, anyway.

A lot of the younger ones spend time crying by themselves or wandering like aimless ghosts. It's easy, you guess, to feel lost. No one is looking out for you. The other kids wail and their mothers cradle them; the orphans cry and no one does a thing, so you all start sobbing pretty quietly. There's no point in screaming, after all. Because in the dizzying noise of the packed gymnasium, your cries will be drowned out, and all of you know it.

No one will pay attention to your tears.

No one will help you.  

No one will help, so you handle everything by yourself. You brush your teeth alone and your toothpaste gets stolen; you bathe in the public showers alone, and you find yourself rushing in a space full of strange, naked bodies; you fill out your Relocation Papers alone, squinting at kanji you don't recognize and legal terms you don't know, and then you're wondering if any of your teachers survived the Gun Devil. If maybe one of them is somewhere here and if maybe they could help. But you don't spot any of them or anyone else you know, so you guess maybe they didn't survive or they had the money to go elsewhere.

No one will help you.

No one will help you, so you get your food by yourself. Your life now revolves around lukewarm, bland meals made from canned and rehydrated goods, and everyday you do everything you can to get your hands on one before the volunteers run out. 

You're sick of lining up in the queue for hours on your own; you wish you had someone to talk to while you wait for food; you wish you had someone to eat with in your corner of the shelter; you wish you had someone to hold you at night while you lie on the floor of the gymnasium, in a dark room full of warm, foreign bodies. And then you're thinking about how your best friend would have definitely done those things, or your mother, or your father, and then you're thinking about how your entire apartment building was smashed to bits before your eyes. Wiped clean from the Earth, and now you're all by yourself. 

No one will help you.

On November 18th, 1988, the Gun Devil kills 57,912 people in Japan, and in the aftermath, you are left all alone.

November 25, 1988

In the gymnasium, there is a boy around your age who is also always alone. 

He's got black hair, a lanky frame, and blue eyes that are lined with long lashes and a waterline that is always red. He's set up camp on the floor next to you, keeps to himself and mostly just spends his time hugging his knees to his chest and pressing his face into them. Probably crying. You're often doing the same thing, hiding your tears from the world, so three whole days pass and neither of you so much as make eye contact.

But on the fourth day, you catch him staring balefully at a little carton in his hands, and you find yourself opening your mouth. Before you can stop yourself, you blurt out—

"You don't like milk?"

His head jerks up. His eyes take a bit to focus, and when they land on you, they are uncertain. Like he's not sure that you're talking to him.

"I noticed you never drink any milk," you explain.

"I—" He pauses. Stares like you've got two heads, but he says anyway, "I'm lactose intolerant." 

"Oh. Makes sense." You glance at your meal, laid out on the floor: carton of milk, cereal bar, some canned orange. You consider offering some of the orange but hate the idea of letting go of any kind of fruit, which is so rare; instead, you say, "Trade you a cereal bar for the milk?" 

He blinks.

"That's a horrible trade. You're gonna go hungry." 

You shrug. "I like milk." You pick up the cereal bar, extend it toward him. "And I don't like seeing food go to waste." 

He casts you a suspicious glance, but passes you the carton anyway, and accepts your cereal bar. He practically scrambles back afterwards, like he's afraid you'll go back on your trade, but of course you don't say anything. You just open your second carton of milk and start to chug.

The both of you eat in silence—not like the families around you, with parents speaking to their children in hushed, soothing voices—but you don't mind it. You mind everything less than usual, actually. 

That night at dinner, you both head for the queue at the exact same time. It's not planned, but you stand next to each other and wait in total silence for fourty minutes. You walk back to your corner together, too, and after you sit down, the boy holds out his boxed meal.

"Trade you the spam for the pickled veggies." 

You raise a brow.

"That's a horrible trade." 

"You never finish your vegetables, so I figure I'd ask."

You can't help but try to defend yourself: "Well, they don’t taste great." 

"Sure. But I don't like seeing food go to waste, especially when it’s real vegetables.” He gives you a scornful look, as if you’re somehow to blame for the bleak food selection, but then he looks down and his voice goes soft. “And anyway… I bet you're hungry 'cause you didn't get to eat much earlier." 

Your stare is long, considering. You wonder if he'd heard your stomach growling earlier, or if he's just unusually good at reading you.

"I'm not any hungrier than normal," you say, "but I'll take anything over these carrots." 

Your chopsticks reach out and snatch his slice of spam, and then you let him take your shitty vegetables. He chews on them without complaint, his expression neutral. Meanwhile, you're staring at your spam with watery eyes. For some reason, you find yourself needing to blink. Once, twice, ten times, head bowed—then you wipe away at a stray lash. And then you breathe deeply, and try to focus on your meal. 

Halfway through dinner, he says, "Hayakawa Aki."

Your chewing stops.

"Huh?" 

"I'm Hayakawa Aki," he repeats, and he inclines his head.

You tell him your name, bow your head in kind. And you already know the answer, but you find yourself asking, voice small: "Are you all alone here? Or—" You glance around, look at the mothers with their children, or the elderly being reunited with their daughters and sons, and all the people fretting over their Relocation Papers, because they actually have someplace they can eventually go, and you finish, "Or are you waiting for someone?" 

His voice is equally quiet, his eyes downcast, when he says: "There's no one coming for me."  

"Oh." You curl up, holding your knees to your chest. He waits a beat, then looks at you.

"And you?" 

You shake your head.

"No one's coming for me, either." 

"So we're in the same boat." 

A nod.

"The exact same." 

Your voices die after that.

Your voices die after that, and you don't look at each other—not directly, not into each other's eyes. But Aki gets up to throw out his box, and you do too; and you get up to rinse your mouth before bed, and Aki follows you; and he sees that you've got no toothpaste so he offers you his; and he waits for you at the washroom door as you finish up your routine. And you both walk back together, quiet and unspeaking. 

You think that'll be the end of your time together for the night, for your strange little interactions. But then the Relocation Officer comes by again and gives you more papers to fill out, and Aki notices your furrowed brow as you stare at the forms. And without saying anything, he comes over and cranes his neck to look over your shoulder. 

He points at a character, which is so complicated that you can barely pick out the radicals, and starts explaining all the kanji you can't read. He's more patient and calm than any of the officers, who are all frazzled and exhausted from working around the clock. You follow his index finger, nodding as he talks.

He's two years older than you, apparently. Has good grades. His mother is—was—a teacher. He's the top of his class. 

"I wasn't anywhere near the top of my class," you say quietly.

"That's okay." He reads over your forms, no judgement in his expression. Not at your messy writing, nor all the blank fields you've left because you didn't know what to put. He nods at you and the officer, somehow knowing you've done your best and that the form's ready to go. "I can help you read things. Paperwork," he continues. "Talking to officers. Getting food. Whatever you need." 

You nod a little bit. "Okay. I'll help you too. With whatever I can."

Aki makes an affirmative noise, doesn't seem the least bit surprised. You guess you aren't either, even though you're strangers and you barely talk and hardly ever look at each other. 

None of that matters when you're both alone.

The two of you set up your mats next to each other that night. There's plenty of space between you still, but it's not the two metres that it used to be. You don't say a word to each other, not like the mothers who always whisper to their children at night, who always keep you up with that gentle noise. You don't comfort each other like that, not even remotely.

But you also don't cry.

November 20, 1997

Aki has a pretty good idea of what you'd see, if you ever chose to peer into his heart.

The Evacuation Shelter, thick with the stench of body odour, dirty mats, mildewing showers. Full of milling, lost people, whose spirits are wearing thinner by the day. It's starting to feel less like he's in a building full of people, and more like he's locked in a cage full of animals, and they're all starving and fearful and angry and ravenous. Sometimes when Aki can't get a meal for himself or when he sees another kid curling up in a corner, shaking with fear, he starts feeling like an animal too—because this is wrong, this is all wrong, this isn't fair, nothing is fair, he can't take it here anymore—

"Aki," he hears you say, and when he glances at you, he sees you holding out your rations and your disposable chopsticks, blunt ends pointed at him, "do you wanna share?" 

And suddenly he's not feeling particularly like an animal when he says, "But you'll go hungry." 

"You'll go hungrier, if we don't share. You didn't get any food at all today." You don't wait for him to reply, just tearing apart your chopsticks and rubbing the pieces together, blowing at stray flecks of wood. "I don't mind splitting up the hunger a little." 

So Aki splits up the hunger with you. He splits up the anger, too—not his anger, and not your anger, but other people's anger. Sometimes you'll get rations when others are left hungry, and when people glare at you with violent, resentful eyes, Aki says something to distract you while stepping in front of you. While shielding you, taking some of the heat so that you don't have to. And when Aki gets into it with grown, pushy men, who are always storming and furious for no reason, you tug at his wrist and wedge yourself in between him and whatever hostile pair of eyes he's attracted. You take some of the heat from him too, treat the hostility like it's canned goods. Practically gourmet, he hears you joking, holding up a wet piece of baby corn.

You split up the fear, too. The fear sticks out most to Aki, when he recalls the Shelter and all those memories lodged deeply in his heart. The both of you split up the fear, divide it into equal parts, chew on it, swallow it. Look at each other out of the corners of your eyes, as if scared to say out loud that you're both noticing the way that one of the grown men is starting to look at you and the other kids. You tell Aki that whenever you travelled into large cities with your mother, your mother would take you onto the Women Only cars to avoid certain types of men, and both of you know that this man is exactly the type that she'd wanted to dodge. You're two kids, after all—not too bad looking, either—and you're all alone and afraid. And this guy's probably stressed out and resentful. Probably wants to blow off steam.

So Aki knows what this guy's thinking when he notices that he's looking at him. He doesn't like it, but he likes it even less that this sick fuck is looking at you. It feels worse, somehow. You're younger and shyer and so much more fearful, and all he can think about is how much he'd want to kill someone if they looked at his brother like this.

The next time the two of you get ready to sleep, he puts his mat right next to yours, and the two form a tight seam. He makes you sleep against the wall, and he lies down on your other side—makes himself a barrier, so he can shield you at least a little bit from the man.

You don't ask him why he's suddenly started sleeping so much closer to you, or why he's suddenly so set on keeping to the wall. All you do is shuffle a little closer to him in the darkness and say, "Thanks."

"No worries," he says, and the two of you fall asleep like that, anxiety split between the two of you. It chases you both in your dreams, and Aki's just glad that every time he wakes up in the middle of the night, his blood pulsing in his ears, you're sleeping quietly beside him.

If you ever looked into Aki's heart, you'd see all these moments where the two of you shared everything—all the hunger and the anger and the fear and the grief—and you'd see those moments not only during the weeks spent in the Shelter, but in the month after that, and the year after that, and the lifetime after that. You'd see those moments that make him wish that he'd done more to shield you from all those horrible, fucked up emotions. Make him wish that he'd protected you better. Make him wish that—just like in his last moments with Taiyo, when Aki had the chance to save him but instead committed him to death—he could have just held you close and asked you to stay with him.

Maybe then, things wouldn't be as fucked up as they are now.

December 15, 1988 

People are starting to burn out.

The volunteers are tired and the government officials are overwhelmed. They simply can't keep up with all the loss and misery and Gun-Affected People, holy shit what are they going to do with all these victims? Especially the kids? The country had already been on a verge of recession—that's what his dad had always said anyway, and Aki had never listened to him very closely but he wishes he had now, or had at least taken enough interest to really know what the word 'recession' means—and so it takes the government forever to figure things out.

In the end, they settle on low income housing and 50,000¥ per person, per month. For the Gun-Affected Children, the stipend will be going to the orphanages that’ll take them in. That includes you, and him, and every other kid fending for themselves in this hellhole.

Aki might be separated from you. 

When Aki sets up his mat next to yours that night, he notices that you're quieter than usual. Your eyes are downcast the whole time, but sometimes they dart over to him, and they look so sad that he wishes he could figure out something to say. This sucks or I hope you'll end up with a nice family or—or, or something that he chickens out about before he can say it, his throat locking up.

Truthfully, Aki barely knows you—the two of you don't talk much about anything outside of meals and washroom trips and sleeping arrangements—so what would he say to you, anyway?

He ends up just staying quiet, staring at your sleeping form with such intensity that he worries about looking like a creep. But he can't stop studying you. He keeps imagining you sleeping like this in some dark, strange room, in some orphanage where they keep feeding you vegetables that taste like shit. And no one is willing to hold your place in the long line for food. And no one goes to brush their teeth with you and makes sure your toothpaste doesn't get stolen again. And no one is there to keep you company while you sleep, making sure that you're okay.

He stays awake the whole night. 

From the way you look the next morning, Aki wonders if you also hadn’t slept at all. The low droop of your head screams exhaustion, and you’re bringing your hands up to rub at your swollen eyes, and Aki notices that they look a little red. “Hey,” he says, leaning toward you, squinting. “Are you crying?”

“No!” you practically yell.

Then your voice shatters, breaks into a sob.

Aki’s heart squeezes.

Taiyo used to cry like this, sometimes, when Aki was much younger and meaner. His mother had once called him unkind when he snapped at his brother over something stupid—breaking a toy, or something. He can barely recall why he’d gotten so angry in the first place, but he does remember the violent drop of his stomach at the wail he’d managed to rip from his brother’s throat. 

And—it’s funny. Over the past two weeks, he hasn’t felt a thing at the sound of all the crying in this room. Not his, nor anyone else’s. But something about your whimpers at this moment is putting his stomach back into that agonising free-fall. Be kind, Aki, he can still hear his mother say. You need to be kind.

Aki swallows, shifting himself until he’s on your mat and right next to you. He tries to soften his voice, asks, “What’s wrong?” 

It’s a stupid question. Everything is wrong. The lukewarm, canned food tastes wrong. His spine on the gymnasium floor feels wrong. The grime on the floor of the public shower looks wrong. The cold hand of his little brother had been wrong. The wreckage of his house had been wrong.

The Gun Devil had been wrong.

“C’mon,” he prompts gently, “why are you crying?”

“It’s dumb,” you whimper.

“No, it’s not.”

You make a face, almost looking offended. “You—how could you know that? You don’t even know what I'm crying over!”

“I don’t,” he admits. “But I know it’s not dumb. So hurry up and tell me what it is.”

Loud sniff.

“...I don’t want to go to an orphanage."

He frowns.

“An orphanage is going to be better than this place,” he points out. And it’s true, but it makes you sob again, and the blood drains from his face. “Hey—I’m serious. This is a good thing. You’ll get real food. Or—better food than this, anyway. And you’ll get a real bed. Your own clothes… People to take care of you—maybe you'll even get adopted…”

His voice trails off, clipped by sudden nausea. And in the smallest voice possible, you fill the silence:

“But we might get separated?” 

Aki goes quiet. Doesn’t know what to say to that, because he doesn’t know you all that well. The two of you don’t talk much, after all—there’s nothing to talk about in a place like this, in a world like this. But you’ve stayed by his side this whole month, the first month of the Post-Gun Era, and your presence is the only thing that’s felt right ever since the snow globe shattered.

And never seeing you again would feel as wrong as everything else. 

“I told you it was dumb,” you sniff when he doesn’t reply. 

“No, it’s not,” he says, and he’s surprised by how harsh his voice sounds. His fists tighten, and he remembers the winter-cold touch of his brother’s hand. “No, it’s not dumb. I don’t wanna be separated either.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t.” 

A shudder wracks your little body. He waits patiently for you to wipe your face dry, to look at him again. When you do, he can’t stop thinking about the tears clinging to your lashes, or the tremble of your bottom lip, or the resolve in your voice when you finally reply:

“Okay. Let’s find a way to stay together, then.” 

December 22, 1988

Two new terms emerge to describe you, and they feel like a hot steel brand melting into cattle's flesh. Like a punishment, a condemnation—a life sentence.

The first term is Gun-Affected Children. Neutral, clinical, a natural extension of the most sanitised term for all survivors. As time passes, you'll start seeing it in newspaper clippings, in textbook histories, in the mouths of politicians talking about money and national debt and foreign aid. You and Aki and all the rest become a talking point in the next election, an exaggerated economic burden to justify foreign influence. You never see any extra money in the orphanage, though. You never get anything more than your 50,000¥.

The second term is Gun Orphans. It isn't offensive , per se, but it carries a sadder connotation, and refers to a more specific subset of Gun-Affected Children: not just the cohort who experienced catastrophe, but also the ones who had everything stolen by it. You'll grow to prefer this term over the years. You'll grow to prefer its dirty edge over the political correctness of Gun-Affected Child, its bitter intonation, its lonely aftertaste. Orphan. I'm an orphan. My mother and father and grandmother are dead. I had to identify their bodies when they finally dug them up. I saw their sunken, sallow faces and knew from that moment: I'm all alone.

They're all alone, the Relocation Officers say, pointing at you. Those Gun Orphans. They've got nothing.

That’s what the orphanage staff say about you too, when they think you aren’t listening in. Of the thirty-or-so Gun Orphans created on November 18th in small town Hokkaido, twenty-one are sent to live in Sapporo. The nine others had surviving relatives who reached out, so even if they are Gun-Affected, they aren’t burdens to society. They aren’t frowned at by adults; they aren’t talked to in baby voices; they aren’t constantly called problem children, maladjusted, we aren’t equipped for any of these kids. 50,000¥ is a joke—we need more food, more staff, nurses... 

Twenty-one extra children? What were they thinking?  

And to be fair to them: you don't know what the government had been thinking, either.

Of the twenty-one Gun-Affected Children who were sent to Sapporo, you and Aki require the least care. 

The others are younger, or more terrified, or more alone. They cry nonstop and they wet their beds and they can hardly stand to eat. Or they are completely catatonic: unspeaking, unmoving, unresponsive. Two of them were sent to the hospital a few weeks for psychiatric care, and you haven't seen them since. Rumours spread that they've been shipped off to sanitariums, that they need 24/7 care while they recover. Or maybe while they languish and die.

You're a little different—or you hear the staff saying so, anyway. You don't cry all the time, and you eat all your meals. You sit next to Aki in the dining hall and the two of you trade food with one another—any milk goes to you; pickled vegetables go to him, unless he gets aggravated and tells you to eat yours for once—and you stay at the table until you're both done. You spend your free time together in the evenings too, playing cards or watching TV or sometimes even just sitting side-by-side while reading different books, entirely silent—but always sane. It occurs to you one day that Aki would get bored if you ever got wheeled off some sanitarium; he never spends time with anyone else. 

When you point it out to him and tell him that he should maybe make some friends at the orphanage—"What'll you do if the nurses take me away too?" you keep asking—he gives you a funny look. 

"Why would I do that? I don't care about making friends here. Just don't go crazy and I'll be fine." He looks down at his cards, considers your last turn and furrows his brow. "Bullshit, by the way. No way in hell do you have a joker." 

So it isn't so bad during the day, when you and Aki are eating together and playing cards, and he's constantly calling you out on your bluffs, and he's always reminding you that you're not allowed to land yourself in a sanitarium, and you're always making him watch your favourite TV shows. 

But then nighttime falls, and things get harder.

You aren't allowed to sleep near Aki, of course. You lie without him in the dark, surrounded by warm, foreign bodies. The quiet breathing of the sleeping children around you sounds like the background hum of strangers sprawled out on a gymnasium floor. Your bed feels like floorboards, stiff and unyielding even through the dirty mats. And then the ground is being replaced by violent claws of broken cement, covered in the teeth of steel and glass. You're on your knees and your hands are bleeding into the rubble, but you're digging and digging and digging. Where are you mother, where are you obaasan, where are you father—and suddenly you're in that morgue, shivering because you don't have a jacket on you, and you're looking at your mother's mannequin-still face, almost-human and uncanny, and—

You scream a lot in your sleep.

You scream and you wake yourself up that way—hear the shrill pierce of it in your dreams, and then in the darkness of the orphanage dormitory, and then it's waking everyone else up too. 

This is the only time that the staff ever complain about you as an individual: I feel bad for them, they're all Gun Victims, but I don't know, they're so much more trouble than the regular children… they have special needs, you know…

Aki doesn't warrant nearly so many complaints. He actually goes two months without getting a single one, and of course he does: he's a well-behaved kid, straitlaced even after losing everything. Back in the Evacuation Shelter, Aki had been quiet and reliable, always calm as he talked to the Relocation Officers, as he stood between you and hostile adults, as he reminded you that he'd be waiting for you outside the shower rooms and you could give him a shout if anything funny happened.

And even though he's remained just as quiet and well-behaved at the orphanage, you've noticed him starting to slip. He's been a little more irritable every morning, a little colder with everyone, and his eyes are always bloodshot. When his eyes are at their reddest, he's curt even with you.

You're not surprised when he finally cracks.

January 5, 1989

You see it for yourself one day, when you round the corner on your way to lunch:

Two figures covered in white dust and black dirt, struggling against each other. Aki's knuckles covered in red, crushed against the bloodied wreckage of the older boy's nose. A crying face smeared across the windowpane, held in place by Aki's hand around his neck. Aki's face leaning in close, and the slow movement of his lips as talks calmly to the other boy and funnels the words straight into his ears. Aki sounds calm, almost like he's lecturing him over dining hall etiquette rather than beating the living shit out of him. 

Apparently the other boy had said something stupid about devils, you hear later on. He'd wanted to make a contract with one, or something, and Aki had caught him in the act: white lines of chalk snaking over concrete, his hand contorting into clumsy seals, and suddenly he was struggling in a headlock and getting dragged toward the staff offices. Supposedly he said something about you while he was fighting against Aki, trying to break free: that other kid you're always with—bet you wouldn't like it I messed with her, right? Bet she'd make a great trade for what I need. Plenty of devils love virgin girls, did you know? Bet they'd love yours. So leave me alone, you miserable, fucking—

Aki sends him to the ER. 

Up until now, the adults have all liked Aki. He's a good, quiet kid, doesn't cause any trouble. Sometimes even tries to give the staff a hand when the other kids get really sick, or really scared, and the adults get overwhelmed. Once he'd mentioned that his younger brother was chronically ill, so he got used to helping adults out with housework and caregiving—and of course that only endeared him even more to all the staff.

But then the ambulance pulls up in front of the orphanage and the other child is taken away, and everyone sees him laid out on the stretcher, all bloodied up and half-conscious. And everyone knows that Aki's a good kid, and no one's surprised when it comes out that he'd only acted the way he did because that other boy had planned to do some genuinely awful things, but of course the staff start to have their reservations anyway. These children are simply unmanageable. A nightmare. Cost much more than 50,000¥… Especially that one—we can't possibly handle him. Did you see what he did? All my years here, I've never...

"Don't listen to them," you tell Aki, taking his hands into your own. You run a thumb over the gauze wrapped around his knuckles, and give him a comforting look. "I'm sure they won't send you somewhere else. Not when you had a reason like that." 

Aki doesn't look scared, but his hand tightens around yours, and his downcast expression takes you back to the Shelter, where he was all alone until you started talking to him.

"You know my reasons might not matter. Not when I messed him up that badly." 

"Okay. Then if you get sent away, I'll come with you." 

He gives you a funny look. "I doubt they'd let you follow me." 

"I'll kick the shit out of someone else and then they have to send me to wherever you go," you say, tone flat. Serious. "Juvie or jail or whatever—I'd have to come." 

Aki snorts. "Like you'd be strong enough to do that."

"If your scrawny ass can manage it, then so can mine." 

He scowls. "I'm not scrawny!" 

Aki rolls his eyes and huffs, then blows the whole thing off. Acts like this is a joke, like nothing bad will happen, and that the worst thing to come out of this is that you think he's some kind of beanpole without any muscle. But his hand tightens around yours, and he gives you a long look before the authorities and staff come talk to him, and when he comes back you several hours later—out of handcuffs, escorted by orphanage staff instead of the authorities—he's clearly relieved. 

"They're fine with me staying here as long as I don't do anything like that again. And they had some Public Safety Officer come talk to me," he explains. "He wanted me to understand that I'm supposed to report devil-related crimes, not handle it myself—which I know, I'm not stupid, but when he started talking like that about—about…" 

His jaw goes tight.

"It was just wrong." 

"I know," you reassure him. You squeeze his uninjured hand, and he relaxes.

"They're gonna get me a caseworker too," he continues. “Dunno where they'll get the money from. They’re already always complaining that we’re too expensive." 

"I'm sure they'll find a way to sort it. They can't just give up on you." 

"Sure they can," he replies easily. "It'd be way cheaper for the orphanage to put me into jail. Or a sanitarium. Or something." 

"Okay, fine. Maybe the orphanage can give up on you, but I can't. And I don't want you to go to jail, or a sanitarium, or wherever else you think you're gonna end up." You frown at him, and unease settles into Aki's eyes. "So listen to your caseworker and try your best not to go crazy, okay? Don't leave me here."

Aki swallows, looking away.

"Right. Sorry." 

January 5, 1989

It is November 18th, 1988. You're in a pair sweats and a hoodie, and a pair of sneakers that are soaked through with snow. But even though the temperatures are subzero, you can barely feel the cold.

You're at the edge of the blast zone, the path of wreckage carved through small town Hokkaido by that devil. There are sirens in the distance, and you know you should hear them, but instead your ears are ringing with echoes of that monster's warpath. Your hands are bleeding into the rubble—when did you start digging?—and someone's now pulling you away. You're kicking, screeching: I have to find Mother, I have to find Father, let me go, let me go—

It is December 22nd, 1988. You're in the morgue. There's a white sheet covering something that seems vaguely human-shaped, but it's so still that it can't possibly be a person. Might be a mannequin. The coroner—you didn't know that term when they'd said it to you that morning, by the way; Aki had to explain to you what a coroner is—lifts the white veil and now you're looking at your mother's face. It looks a lot like her but mostly seems like an imitation, like a wax doll from a museum, a tourist attraction. Not the real thing. You tell Aki as much when you get back to the orphanage, and he says, I know. It was the same for me. I guess people just don't look like themselves after they die, and then you say, I guess I won't either, after I'm dead. And he gives you a stern, annoyed expression—a lot like when he throws your vegetables back onto your plate—and he says, Don't say weird things like that. You're alive, okay? We're both alive. And then you nod and you both go back to playing cards. You're stone-faced when you lie about your hand, but somehow Aki sees right through you—like always.

Bullshit, he says, and—

It is January 5th, 1989, and you're in bed.

The mattress is so hard and your spine is so mangled that at first you think you're actually back in the gymnasium, but then you realise you're cocooned in soaked sheets, and from somewhere else in the room there’s the familiar, foul stench of urine. You remember, then, that another girl wet her bed earlier in the night, and they'd only done a half-assed job on cleaning up the mess before giving up. Then the staff had left, shut off the lights and told you all to go back to sleep, and now you're surrounded by slumbering, familiar bodies—the bodies of other children, a lot of them just like you. 

But also that you're no less alone than you were in that Shelter.

And then you think, No, that's wrong. You're more alone now, actually. You had Aki in the gymnasium, had his mat pulled up right next to yours, had the sound of his breathing, had his silhouette resting in the dark. In the hours you couldn't sleep, you made yourself focus on his breath, the steady crest and exhale of his lungs. It made you feel grounded and safe, anchored in that sea of strangers.

But Aki's not here right now, so you have nothing. 

And you hate having nothing—hate being alone in the gymnasium, hate queuing up by yourself, hate having your things stolen, hate that no one will come for you—so you throw off your blankets and decide to leave your room.

You want to go back to the one thing you have.

January 5, 1989 

Aki doesn't sit up to greet you. 

It's surprising, because he seems alarmed to see you. He looks at you in a way that makes you feel like you've done something crazy. You feel like you're doing something crazy. But you sit down on the edge of his bed, fully committed, and you meet his gaze calmly, your eyes lit by a large moon. Maybe it's your expectant stare that makes him realise that you came here purposefully—that this isn't just some accident from sleepwalking.

"What are you doing here?" he whispers.

You're silent. There's a lump in your throat. It's stupid, you hear your own voice say, but Aki's words chase it: No, it's not.

"C'mon," he says, like he can read your thoughts, "you can tell me." 

You look down at your lap.

"I had a nightmare." Brief pause. Your hands are shaking, and the moon's so bright that you know he can see it. "I have a lot of nightmares." 

You feel his eyes on you. Aki sounds tired when he replies, "Me too." 

"I—" You bite your lip. It's stupid, you hear again. And then, once more: no, it's not. "I slept better in the Shelter." 

When you glance at him, you catch him staring at the ceiling, eyes looking hollow. His brows are creased.

"Yeah. Same." 

Maybe you still don't know Aki that well, but you know this much about him: despite the fact that he totaled that other kid's face today, he's still not much of a rule breaker. So of course he points out, "You should go back to bed. It's past curfew, so we can't stay together… We'll definitely get in trouble… we can't act like how we used to, back in the Shelter…" 

You stare at him, and your face takes on a pleading, probably sad look. And then Aki sighs. He tears off his own blanket, shuffles over to the edge of his bed.

"Just this once," he relents. He sounds exhausted, and of course he does. He hasn't slept right in weeks. "I'll wake you up at sunrise, okay? Go back to your own bed when I do. Hopefully no one will notice." 

You nod vigorously, and you're sure to stay quiet when you crawl into bed beside him. Like if you take up too much space, he'll kick you out, and you'll be alone again. And you don't want to be alone—can't be alone—so you don't spread yourself out, and you don't say anything at all.

Aki doesn't say anything, either. Just pulls his blanket up over the two of you, as if that'll somehow hide you from the rest of the world.

Cocooned in the darkness, you burrow your head into Aki's pillow. It's strange to share a bed with him instead of a couple of mats. Neither of you had pillows back in the gymnasium; nobody did. Your thin little blanket was stolen a couple of weeks into your time at the Shelter too, and the volunteers ran out of extras, so for a while you had to lie on your mat with only your clothes shielding you from the cold: a thin sweater and pair of thermals, because you'd run out of your apartment only for a quick trip to the convenience store before the Gun Devil blew through your town. All your winter clothes had gotten lost somewhere in the rubble, probably riddled with bullet holes.

You wish you'd taken your jacket to the store with you.

You wish you'd taken your family to the store with you.

You wish you'd stayed with them at home, instead of going to the store. 

Don't say weird things like that, you remember Aki snapping, dropping all his playing cards: King, Jack, Queen, Joker, Ace, all scattered. Thrown away. You're alive, okay? We're both alive. 

And it's true. You're alive in this bed together. You'd been alive in that gymnasium together. Even when you were freezing cold and miserable, you were alive, and Aki was with you.

After your blanket got stolen, Aki never said anything about noticing your shivering, never even glanced at you no matter how much you curled up and blew at your hands. But one night, as you waited for sleep, you felt a heavy weight being spread on top of you, still warm with the heat of his body. When you opened your eyes to take a look, you saw Aki's white jacket: one of his only possessions remaining from his home.

You felt so bad for him, tried to give it back because he'd never gotten his hands on a blanket himself, but he'd shaken his head and said it was fine. He was used to it, he'd said—his little brother got cold all the time because he was sick so often, so sometimes when they were out, Aki would give him his jacket and scarf. Built up a tolerance to Hokkaido winters in just his sweater—he'd be just fine, he promised.

But still, you'd insisted, that's different from sleeping in the cold the entire night?

Then if you're so worried, I'll just sleep a little closer to you. He made up some bad lie about how your body heat was enough to keep him warm, which obviously made no sense given the amount of space between the two of you. Still, he inched a little closer toward the seam between your mattresses, as if it would genuinely make a difference. As if closing that inconsequential space between the two of you would be enough.

But you're closer now, in this moment, cocooned under these sheets and hidden away from prying staff eyes and cold moonlight. You can hear his slowing breathing, feel the mattress shift with his every movement, notice the heat from his hand when it brushes yours on accident. You're barely close enough to touch, but you're close enough to feel each other's heat.

You're close enough to sleep.

February 29, 1989

After the incident with Aki, and yet another case of catatonia among the other kids, a decision is made: every Gun Orphan will undergo a mandatory psychological evaluation by a social worker, and this must happen at least twice a year. These evaluations will be critical for the social integration of the Gun Orphans; it is a very understandable thing that so many of you are having difficulty adjusting to your circumstances, but it is important that your behaviours are corrected, if you are to stay here. It's important for social harmony. 

This is what your caseworker tells you, anyway, although not in so many words. She dumbs things down for you because you're young, and she's surprised when you paraphrase them back with complex terms—all language and explanations that you learned from Aki the day before, which you hope will make you sound as smart and mature as he's often praised for being. Then you protest and say that you swear you won't be a social burden: your nightmares are under control as long as you're allowed to sleep with Aki; and you'll make sure that Aki doesn't do anything else stupid, even if someone threatens you again; and isn't that all they have to worry about with the two of you? 

"Please don't send us to a sanitarium," you beg quietly. "I promise we'll be good."  

She looks at you with kind, sad eyes, not replying. Instead, she asks if you ever feel unsafe here at the orphanage, and you lie and say no, and then she asks if it's an improvement from the Shelter, and you tell the truth and say yes. She asks about your sleep, about your eating habits, about your schooling, about what you want to do when you grow up. 

You try to give the answers that a sane person would, which requires only a little more lying.

"It must be hard being all alone," your caseworker remarks. She smiles at you, and you try to return the expression, but your mouth feels thin. Feels plasticky. "It's amazing how well you're doing in comparison to the other children. You're in such tough circumstances, without any family or friends to help you, but you're still doing so well."

"Well," you say, "That's not entirely true, about me not having anyone." 

"No?"

"No, of course not." Your words are simple, your tone plain. Matter-of-fact, because it's the truth: "I've got Aki." 

November 20, 1997

Aki has a pretty good idea of what you'd see, if you ever chose to peer into his heart:

An orphanage with beds pushed too close together, lined sheets that smell of mothballs, sweat, urine. A miserable, dark winter in Sapporo—the coldest on record since 1947—and mornings spent shivering in front of the stove, trying to light it up for some heat. The taste of bland food: plain rice, undercooked vegetables, meat that only comes out of cans, half of which he gives to you. Everything is flavourless, colourless, joyless—and Aki hardly pays attention to any of it, because his mind is always elsewhere, always fraying at the edges, kept together only by his flashbulb memories of 11/18 and their painful, grounding edge. He stays up at night thinking about them, wrapped in thin sheets, repeating: Everything is wrong. This orphanage is wrong. The Gun Devil is wrong. He grinds the worn soles of his runners against white chalk on concrete, crushes some kid’s nose with his fist. Blood rushes in his ears, all over his hands, and he keeps repeating: Everything is wrong. This orphanage is wrong. Devils are wrong.  

If you ever try peering into Aki's heart, you'd find a city that's bleak and these thoughts which are worse, but you'd also see the one thing that isn't grey and miserable and complete shit—

And that'd be your smile.

You'd see the two of you in a grocery store, the scene less flashbulb and more dream-like. Everything looks a little less grey than usual. He’s not shivering so much, either; he’s maybe feeling even a little on the warm side. You’re wearing his winter jacket, him in a donated one from some charity, thirteen and eleven years old respectively. His inheritance from his parents has just come in, so of course the two of you are now out shopping, trying to find something to eat other than the stuff they serve at the orphanage. 

Aki finds himself thinking about the kind of dishes his mom used to make and then realises he might never taste them again—and then he feels a little low, browsing the aisles and thinking about how he wouldn't know how to flavour his hotpot the way she did, or how to cook any kind of meat without risking food poisoning. But then you wander into the snack aisle together. He sees a tin of Sakuma drops and thinks, Taiyo used to love this stuff, and Aki grabs it immediately.

You can't even wait to get to the orphanage before digging into it. Right outside the store, you stand in subzero cold and pry open the tin with your bare hands, blowing on your fingers to keep them warm. Aki's giving you an exasperated look as he holds onto your mitts—donations from the Ashinaga Foundation—and says, "Are you serious? You're gonna get frostbite, y’know." 

He has a full lecture prepared—has a whole repertoire of them from his long hours spent babysitting Taiyo—but then a bunch of candy spills out onto your palm, and you pop a red one into your mouth. Your face lights up, and Aki forgets how to talk.

"Oh my god," you say, words clumsy around the Sakuma drop, "I haven't had any sweets in months." 

"I…" He can't find his words for a minute. "Me neither. Not since…" 

"Not since the Evacuation Shelter," you finish, and it's a sad thing to say, but you look so happy. He hasn't seen you look even remotely happy since the Shelter either, Aki suddenly realises. "You too, right?" 

"Yeah." 

"You should have one," you say, and then you pick out a dark purple Sakuma Drop. Offer it to him, drop it onto his palm. "Here—grape's my favourite." 

Aki hates grape-flavoured candy: it reminds him of medicine, which he never took as often as Taiyo did, but still enough that he can't stand the flavour. But he doesn't hesitate when he pops it into his mouth, and when you beam at him, it becomes the best thing he's ever tasted. Suddenly he feels like he wants to eat a million of these shitty, grape-flavoured old-person candies—and for better or worse, you start picking more of them out. And each and every time, he caves to your smile and eats them without complaint. He never mentions that he hates the flavour, just like how he never mentions that his new jacket is too thin for Hokkaido winters, just like how he never mentions that he hates pickled carrots. Talking about any of those things would be too hard, and too much work. It's so much easier to keep you smiling.  

Even when he gets older, Aki keeps up this terrible habit of indulging you. It's how you get him to drink for the first time when you both start living together—another memory he’s sure that you’d see. Yoyogi, Tokyo in 1994: you’re seventeen, and he’s nineteen, and you’re holding the stem of a wine glass between your fingers, pressing its delicate edge against his lips. Your expression is glowing, stark against the night sky in the window. 

He thinks about pushing you away, but ultimately doesn’t.

"We're both underage," Aki points out, tone severe. He swallows—you’re practically on top of him, playful and fragrant and sweet, and it’s making him feel dizzy—and he’s relieved that none of his nerves are affecting his voice.

"Yeah, and?" You look amused. "C'mon, Aki. You're in Tokyo. With me! Live a little!" 

"I'm living just fine without breaking the law." 

"Please?" You give him a pleading look, and Aki finds himself thinking that it’s adorable, and that it’s making it hard for him to care about obeying the law. "Let me be a bad influence, won't you?"

"I really shouldn't." 

"But you always do." Your voice sounds so sing-song. So happy, which you rarely are nowadays, ever since he joined the Bureau. 

Aki looks at the crescent turn of your eyes, and he sighs. 

"Unfortunately,” he relents. “Just one sip, though." 

You cheer a little, and he thinks, That's adorable, too. Followed promptly by, Oh, fuck. 

Before he can linger anymore on the thought, you tilt the glass, and he parts his lips.

Aki learns that he hates the taste of red wine. He finds it acidic and bitter and he has to stop himself from grimacing the whole time it goes down his throat. But then he watches your playful smile, and suddenly this merlot is the sweetest thing to have ever touched his palate.

He drinks the whole glass for you.

If you ever chose to look into Aki's heart, he thinks you'd find this: the bitterness of a dry red, the medicinal aftertaste of Sakuma drops, and the sight of your first smile in the Post-Gun Era, lighting up the Sapporo sky. You'd see it illuminating a lonely little apartment in Tokyo too, making it feel warm enough to be a home. 

His first home since November 18th, 1988. 

A home you now keep trying to leave. 

August 8, 1994

HAYAKAWA AKI: NEW RECRUIT, JUNIOR PUBLIC SAFETY OFFICER, the folder label reads. The first page hidden inside is an abstract of his profile, the broad strokes of his life bulleted out for him. Sapporo Ashinaga Orphanage, it says, and Hokkaido Sapporo Minami High School, and also, Hokkaido Evacuation Shelter 5, November 1988 – December 1988. The text is wrapped around a picture: a group photo of your cohort in the orphanage, dated 1989. Your grainy figure is on the far left, dwarfed in a white jacket that is too big for you, placed next to a lanky boy who is too close to you. 

His most distinguishing trait is written just below this photo, in prominent, bold characters: GUN-AFFECTED CHILD.

Aki's life has been pried open, the contents spread across the clean, neat sheets of your bed, which smell like fresh laundry with a hint of citrus. The scent blends with the perfume you'd spritzed onto your wrist earlier: Angel by Mugler. It's not something you'd ever normally wear, given the price, but it's a gift from Makima. The fragrance reminded her of you, apparently.

You breathe deeply as you sift through Aki's profile, inhaling praline, patchouli, bergamot. There's a lot of paper in his file—more than usual, because human resources decided to collate your background checks together. Apparently, Aki's past and psychological profile were incomplete without you, and the staff psychologists could only rule him as fit to work when they further investigated your relationship. You hadn’t been surprised when Makima had revealed this to you; after all, his single run-in with the authorities as a teenager had been caused partly by you.

You end up flipping to your own psych eval before looking at Aki's. You've been wondering, for years, what those orphanage social workers had been scribbling down on their clipboards during all those interviews: what the real purpose of those assessments were, what they'd been hoping to fix, what they were willing to let break. 

All the clinical notes are written in bullet points and bad handwriting. Aki's name comes up almost immediately: Subject appears reliant on Hayakawa for feelings of safety; his presence ameliorates psychosomatic symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Subject's behaviour becomes erratic when they are separated from Hayakawa, and is manageable when they are allowed together. Exhibits rule-breaking behaviour in relation to avoiding separation (violates curfew, sleeping arrangements). Recommendation to accommodate this behaviour; appears to regulate psychiatric symptoms.

Subject has career interests in pursuing senior high school and a postsecondary education; stated that they will “apply wherever Aki does”. Has expressed interest in a potential future family. 

And then, a Bureau assessment ten years later: 

Officer Soryu—you grimace at the surname, a brand from the adoption process—enlisted in the Bureau as part of their criminal sentence. At the time of Officer Soryu's sentencing, they displayed erratic behaviour and presented a significant danger to themselves and to others. Currently relies on Division Leader Makima for rehabilitation and social integration into the Bureau. 

Psychiatric monitoring recommendation: Strong.

Placement recommendation: Tokyo Special Division 4. 

Housing recommendation: Single apartment in Yoyogi with monitoring by Division Leader Makima or a designated buddy.  

You sort through more pages, leaving them scattered on your mattress, before you find Aki's file. Even though the abstracts of your profiles were eerily similar, his psych eval reads differently from yours. Your name does not come up as frequently as his did for you, which does not surprise you. 

More bullet points, characters all scrawled and smudged: Subject displays erratic behaviour when he perceives threats to another child from Hokkaido Evacuation Shelter 5—one incident of significant violence has been connected to a threat made toward them, which resulted in a third child being sent to urgent care for a concussion. Otherwise behaves stably, and shows limited emotional affect.

Subject is uninterested in socialising with children or staff, aside from the other Shelter 5 child. Subject expresses no interests or hobbies. Subject has expressed no interest in school, or a future career, or in having a family. 

Subject only shows interest in discussing the 11/18 incident.

And ten years later, his Bureau assessment in neat printer ink:

Officer Hayakawa cited the Gun Devil as his reason for enlisting. Hayakawa is likely to exhibit high performance behaviours in relation to his motives. Overall average psychological profile for a recruit, unremarkable.

Psychiatric monitoring recommendation: Low.

Placement recommendation: Tokyo Division 2.

Housing recommendation: Cohabitation with Officer Soryu.

You throw down his file and resist the urge to burn it.

end

notes:

The Gun Devil attack happened in 1984 according to canon; however, when I cross-referenced this with Aki’s age in canon, I realised that this date doesn’t make sense. (He is, at the most, 19 at the time of enlisting in 1994, but this would make him 6 at the time of the Gun Devil incident, and he looked like he was a preteen in the flashback.) As a result, I adjusted the Gun Devil attack date and made the year 1988. (I edited timelines in this like five times btw… please feel free to let me know if you notice any inconsistencies haha.)

HUGE shoutout to KW (@/by-kilian) for helping me with the perfume selection and ongoing symbolism revolving perfumes in the fic. I am allergic to perfumes and I also only have a single brain cell, so I could not have come up with the selection of Angel by Mugler without her.

I am fully aware that this is some of my worst writing to date HAHA please don’t @ me!! I have been in creative hell for TWO MONTHS with this story (it was the first thing I wrote coming out of a writer’s block) and this chapter is honestly only seeing the light of day because it sets up context for chapter two of scrapbooking. All this to say—please be gentle if you leave feedback!!!! (and THANK YOU IF YOU DO because oh god I do not know what I am doing here)

banner credit: this is an edit from the art of a manga called A Girl on the Shore by Asano Inio. (I totally recommend this manga, but please look up the warnings first!)

[farewell-itoshisoup]

scrapbooking (1)

When your apartment floods and your longtime friend offers to let you crash at his place for a couple of months, you gratefully accept and receive: one (1) curse of unresolved sexual tension inflicted upon your best friendship; and two (2) completely insane younger siblings who don't know how to act around you.

(Or: You become the older sister figure that Denji doesn't know he needs. Also, he goes insane watching you and Aki do the awkward platonic dance.)

Notes: 2k words. Implied Aki/Reader and pining from his end. Warnings for she/her pronouns, being frequently referred to as a girl, and canon-typical horny thoughts from Denji (eg, he talks a lot about your chest).

When Aki had first announced that you were going to be moving in for a couple of months, he'd looked Denji dead in the eye and said: "Listen. I know you don't know how to act around girls, but I need you to watch your manners around her. If not for her sake, then for yours." 

Denji thinks it had been a bit of an overreaction, because by the time you move in with the three of them, Denji's already learned a thing or two about girls. Mostly he's learned that the taste of vomit is beyond disgusting, and that he finds the idea of kissing Power about as equally revolting—but also, he's figured out more important things. Things like how it doesn't really matter if a girl is hot or if she's got an amazing rack or a face that's crazy pretty. What's more important is how well you know someone, yeah? And how well they know you. And if they've ever gotten your filthy ass off the streets and wrapped their warm coat around you, and if they've ever hand-fed you udon because you weren't feeling so good, and if they've ever held you close even though you were covered in blood and zombie guts. If they've ever touched you gently, more gently than anyone else in the world except for your pet devil and possibly your mom—though Denji doesn't remember her well enough to be sure of that—even though you had a fucking chainsaw for a head and should have been put down, according to the law. 

All that stuff matters more than a girl's face or body. 

So, yeah. Denji's figured out, based on all that, that he only wants to do naughty things with Miss Makima. Aki's probably wary of Denji because of his previous fixation on breasts, but he's now a changed man! A matured one! He's not interested in anyone's breasts besides Miss Makima's—no, sir. And he definitely won't be interested in yours.

But then your move-in date rolls around, and Denji encounters a problem. A pretty insurmountable one. That problem is you; or, rather, how you look when you roll in through the front door, dragging a heavy suitcase of luggage in after you—"Everything I could rescue from my apartment when it flooded," you pant out, right before Aki takes it from your hands—and bowing clumsily to Denji and Power. Denji hardly pays attention to the luggage, because you're wearing an unbelievably pretty dress that looks unbelievably pretty on your body and also makes your tits look unbelievably pretty, too. And. Well. 

Denji stares.

At them. At your tits. Pretty openly.

Hey—don't judge! Any straight guy would look! Bisexual ones, too! Any given one! You're cute, okay? You're painfully cute! All girls are cute (except Power), and you're no exception. 

So yeah, Denji stares at your cleavage. And of course Aki notices that Denji's staring, and of course he gives Denji a disgusted look when he does—because Aki's always disgusted when it comes to Denji. No shocker, there. Clean-cut, well-off people have always found him kind of gross; it's disdain that he's been used to receiving since he was a kid.  

But it's not just his usual disgust with Denji that's making Aki so judgmental; the guy also clearly wants you for himself. His eyes had lingered just a little too long when you bent down to pick up your luggage, giving both him and Denji a very captivating view down your dress. Which, like—what a hypocrite!

But Denji can't blame Aki for looking, even if the hypocrisy is annoying as hell. Like he's said: any guy would check you out. And apparently that includes guys even as respectable and proper as Hayakawa Aki: Senior Public Safety Bureau Officer with Three Certificates of Distinction and Many Important Medals for Acts of Heroism! But looking at Aki now, Denji's learning that even so-called heroes get territorial. And jealous. And bitter.

He more or less expects the lecture from Aki when it finally comes, partly because Aki is painfully obvious about hating it whenever Denji checks you out, but also because Aki lectures Denji on a daily basis, and Denji now has a sixth sense for said lectures.

As soon as Denji and Aki get a moment alone—on the balcony, airing out and sunning your sheets; Denji doesn't know how Aki had roped him into helping with this—Aki casually brings up the topic of you moving in. Talks about stuff like how household chores are now to be split up (between you, Aki, and Denji, because Power can’t possibly be expected to contribute), and what kind of routine you have in the morning (apparently catastrophic, so Denji should try to let you use the washroom first), and also what kind of food Aki's going to be making for dinner from now on (mostly stuff that you'll like).

Then he pauses and gives Denji a severe look.

"By the way," he says, "I saw the way you were looking at her earlier today. And I wanted to tell you—don't even think about it." 

Denji already has a response lined up.

"What, you jealous again?" He gives Aki his slimiest, most annoying grin. "First telling me I shouldn’t go after Miss Makima, and now getting all possessive over our new roommate? Isn’t that kind of sleazy of you?"

Aki’s brow twitches. "It's not like that," he firmly retorts. "We're friends, and I want her to be comfortable here. So stay away from her, and don’t do anything weird like trying to—" 

He stops talking, jaw grinding like something’s stopping him from spitting out the rest of his sentence. When he glances down at Denji's fingers with wary, judgmental eyes, Denji realises that Power must have told Aki about the groping thing, and that’s why he’s getting all pissy over you.

Which, hey. Denji’s different from how he was back then, alright? He’s no longer the type of guy who’d be happy touching any pair of breasts!

Denji holds up his hands, like Aki’s got him at gunpoint. "Dude, is that what you’re worried about? ‘Cause you can chill, in that case—I won't feel up your friend. I'm not interested in anyone other than Miss Makima, anyway." 

"Good," Aki grinds out, which—whoa, that's weird. It usually annoys the shit out of Aki that Denji’s got a thing for Miss Makima, but right now Aki seems genuinely relieved at the thought. The tension leaves his shoulders, and he even nods a little bit at Denji, like he’s approving of him. Satisfied.

Which Denji can’t have now, can he?

"But y'know, senpai," Denji says, voice sing-song, "it's not like I have a lot of female friends—but, like, I don't think you'd normally stare at your friend’s chest so much, would you?" His mouth curls. "Bet you just wanna feel them up too. I mean, I can’t blame you, ‘cause your friend’s really—" 

Something grabs him by the collar, and Denji’s whole body jerks forward. 

Then he's looking up at Aki, his eyes pinned by the other man's gaze—ice cold, unsettling. And Denji finally shuts the fuck up, because, well. 

Listen.

Aki had been insanely shitty to Denji in those first couple of weeks of working together, but he's actually been pretty decent to him otherwise. He hasn't since laid hands on him, and every reminder that he has full authority to kill Denji rings as a pretty hollow threat, given the fact that he has a seemingly unlimited supply of Hichew, konpeito, and gumsticks in his pocket for the sole purpose of getting Denji to behave (which, actually, is the only reason why Denji even feels like misbehaving anymore these days). The dude had taken a knife to the side for him too, so Denji figures that Aki genuinely tolerates him and doesn't want him to get hurt. The Alleyway Nuts Devil Incident is water under the bridge for them both.

But right now, Aki’s making the kind of face that he only gets when people (namely Denji) talks a certain way about devils, and he has the cold motherfucker kind of eyes he only gives to devils (not Denji) during missions. And Denji’s realizing, oh fuck, Aki probably would hurt him for real if he ever felt that you were being threatened. Probably would happily kick the shit out of him, and would do it way harder than during the Alleyway Nuts Devil Incident. Might even go for the nuts himself, this time around.

"I'm being serious," Aki says, voice low. It's menacing in its calmness. "Don't look at her like that. Don't talk about her like that. Don't even think about her like that. Just be a decent, respectful person, and we won't have any problems. Alright?" 

Denji nods. So Aki does, too, and he lets go of Denji's collar. Pulls away and starts folding up the sheets, like nothing happened just now.

By this point, Denji's got a pretty good sense of just how far he can push it with Aki (pretty far), and he knows he shouldn't push anymore, right now. Still, he can't help but ask, "Hey. Does this mean you're giving up on Miss Makima? Like, you're gonna go after your friend instead? 'Cause, y'know… I don't mind helping." 

Aki's mouth slants, and he tosses back a bewildered look.

"What? Who'd want your help?" 

Jackpot.

"So you do just wanna go after her!" A victorious, shiteating grin takes over Denji's face, and he fully expects Aki to get all pissy at him again, but—

—but instead he just gets all quiet and looks away. Which is weird as hell, and it makes Denji feel… not good.

"She's just a friend," Aki states simply. His tone is nonchalant, but something about how he's carrying himself feels… Denji doesn't know how to describe it other than off. "She has a boyfriend, so. Don't get weird ideas about us." 

And then he's sliding open the glass door before Denji can get another word in, but Denji doesn't even really want to get another word in, anyway. For once.

But even if Denji stops pushing Aki, he still doesn't believe him. It's obvious bullshit what he's saying about the two of you being just friends. Aki totally is into you, is always looking at your chest when you aren't paying attention—and also your ass, and also your legs, and also your face, and also your smile—and Denji can't really blame him for that. You're really cute, and you're really kind, and you have a nice laugh that anyone would be happy listening to all day. 

And, sure, all girls are cute, and things like face and body don't really matter that much anyway. But Denji figures it makes a difference the way you lay out a blanket over Aki every time he passes out on the couch from exhaustion, and the way you make him breakfast when he's not feeling so good, and the way you put your arms around him after he comes home from missions, even when he's covered in blood and devil guts. (You're gonna ruin your pajamas like this, Aki always says, and you always reply, I don't care, and I hate you and your fucking job, by the way. Denji feels a little weird, overhearing this obviously-private shit, but he also finds that he can't stop eavesdropping.) 

So despite the hypocrisy, Denji can't blame Aki for having a thing for you. He can even understand how you managed to sway him from someone as wonderful as Miss Makima—because you're pretty wonderful yourself. And not just in face or in body, but in ways that really matter.

Maybe if things were different, Denji would risk a little vomit for the chance to French kiss you. Maybe he'd even be kind of bummed out about the fact that you'll obviously only ever have eyes for Aki. (How the hell is he always getting all these girls, by the way? First Himeno, and now you? It's not fair. It's total bullshit.)

But with the way things are now, Denji doesn't want that kind of thing with you. 

Even if Miss Makima weren't around, he wouldn't want that with you.

end

notes:

This is actually a companion series to an upcoming Aki/Reader series that is a lot darker in tone, there's a bluebird in my heart, but I'll try to make this readable as a standalone series for anyone who doesn't want to subject themselves to that psychic damage.

FYI, Denji is an unreliable narrator and his greatest unreliability is his teenage horniness. He totally assumes Aki is focusing on your body, but Aki's gaze is polite, I promise!

[farewell-itoshisoup]

higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 4

dabi x f!reader, shouto x f!reader

When Todoroki Touya dies, it feels like a part of you goes with him.

(In ten years, you'll remember this sentiment, so pervasive for nearly half your life, and think, Oh, what a strange thought for a thirteen year old to have. I was so prone to melodrama. You will get your nails done at an expensive salon and file away your tax reports and put on your sunglasses and mask so that you can go to the grocery store unmolested and think, I'm living, aren't I? I'm living. This is living. I'm okay. Your latest therapist will reassure you that you are indeed alive and well.

You are doing so well.)

notes: 14.2k words of childhood friends to Stockholm syndrome, childhood romance, hurt/comfort, and psychic damage! Cultural notes at the bottom of the chapter. 

warnings/tags (PLEASE READ) for detailed exploration of childhood physical and emotional abuse (both for reader and Touya), survivor's guilt, grief, flashes to the non-con events of the previous chapters (all non-explicit through reader's POV), Buddhist themes, and very detailed reader backstory. 

YOU

i. (un)healed

(At the age of twenty-three, you will be trapped in a freezing, windowless room for months on end. You will forget what sunlight feels like, and you will shiver beneath your too-thin sheets, and you will miss that sweater that Rei got for you when she was released from the hospital and you and Shouto took her shopping.

The only time you won't feel cold will be when Dabi is on the bed with you, his body scalding to the touch. So scalding that he will burn several marks into you. Like a brand, but with more staying power than anything your agency could craft. You will hear your manager's voice, smell the stench of his cigarettes: Oh, he took away your quirk? You can’t heal anymore? Better cover that up with makeup, then. You've got a photoshoot with Sweet for their July edition, and they'll probably want you in a swimsuit.

Then you will hear Dabi's voice: "What, you mad about your modelling contracts? No more bikini photoshoots, huh?" 

"That's not it," you'll reply quietly. 

You will talk about how you do not mind the scars, and why you'd rather have them than not. Why there's nothing worse than having pain inflicted onto you and pretending that it never happened—a crime that Dabi will abhor more than anyone else, you'll know. 

"My parents did that," you'll explain, "all the time."

And he will ask, his voice ice-cold:

"What do you mean, your parents always did that to you?")

-

One summer evening, you bleed to death on your living room floor. 

There is nothing special about this death, or near-death, or whatever it is—you still don't know what happens to your body after a fatal injury—and like every other time you've died, you wake up soon enough. Everything is hazy when you do, like your skull is stuffed with cotton and your body is swimming in fog. The television is playing in the background, the noise of some variety show strangely muffled and distorted by the ringing in your ears. 

Seems like she guessed wrong! some announcer declares. You know what that means—punishment!

The distant crowd roars with laughter. Their clamour mixes with the screaming drifting in from upstairs, and with the cicada song from outside. You are dizzy, so dizzy, that it takes you a long while to upright yourself. The vertigo makes you want to throw up when you do, and the heat is not helping.

You wish you had A.C., but your parents don't have the money for it. So you sigh, take a deep breath, and try to lower your body temperature. Breathe in, breathe out. Make your heart slow, make your veins dilate. Wind down all the machinery of your cells, the chemical reactions that make your body so warm. Turn down the heat. 

Things become sharper after you cool off. You try to recall facts about yourself, because that's always what people do in TV shows when someone gets knocked out: pick them up off the ground, take care of them when they wake up, ask them questions to make sure they don’t have amnesia. 

No one is around to do these things for you, so you do them for yourself. You remember your name, and you recognise where you are, and you do not recall what happened although you can guess. You don't remember the date either, but you figure it's the middle of summer, because it is so hot. You think it is late afternoon or early evening based on the location of the sun. You don’t know how much time has passed since you died.

You think you are maybe ten years old. Or twelve. Who knows. 

You want to figure out more details, but your head is sticky with something, and you keep thinking about how gross it feels and how badly you want to shower. Your entire body is damp with sweat, but you think it is actually blood in your hair, because there is a red streak on the floor, browning on the wood. 

Your parents are going to be mad at you for the mess. 

Your parents are going to be mad about the mess, but it won't matter anymore. You won't be around to see their reactions, because you also remember this about yourself: you'd decided that if this happened again—if you died a second time, on this living room floor—that you'd leave this place. 

It'd be better for everyone if you disappeared, anyway.

(“Do you wanna run away, Touya?” you'll ask one day, as you stare at your best friend’s injuries and think about how you had those same ones just the night before.

"What?"

"Do you wanna run away with me?" )

The yelling match upstairs makes it easy to tiptoe through your house undetected, stepping around every creaky floorboard, as you make your way over to the kitchen. Once you get there, you run cold water from the tap and stick your head underneath the stream, trying to work the blood off your scalp and skin. It’s unpleasant trying to clean yourself like this—with your head upside down and right next to your father’s unwashed coffee mug—but at least you’re used to it.

Your head wound is gone, you notice. The concussion sorts itself too, as you clean yourself. Your body is getting faster at healing itself, which you think should make you happy—because thank god you have a quirk, your mother always says, thank god it was worth giving birth to you, thank god you weren't a complete waste of money —but instead it just makes you feel a little sad. 

("The pregnancy," you will describe to Dabi, exhausted, "affected her quirk. It’s rare, but pregnancy can do that sometimes, because quirks are just physical traits. It's just like how people can get gestational diabetes or postpartum depression." You will look tired, examining the bruises on your legs. "It never went away with her. She lost her powers. Had to retire. My father, of course, got injured without her support, and couldn't take as many jobs. Then the money ran out.")

There's a painful squeeze somewhere in your chest, and you have to check if any of your ribs are broken or bruised. But they are fine—no marks, no swelling, none of the familiar pain that comes with a fractured rib—so you guess maybe your quirk’s already repaired your bones. The pain doesn’t let up, though, the ache inside you lingering, and you wonder if you have some other kind of injury. Maybe one that you can’t see.

Maybe one that your powers can’t heal. 

(Some years after this evening on which you die, you will see a psychiatrist—your fourth or fifth one, maybe. You’ll have lost count, after cycling through so many of them. “I never sleep well. Do you think you could prescribe me something?" you’ll ask him. All you’ll want is a script for trazodone, or maybe prazosin, or some other medication that came up for you on Google, and then you’ll be out the door and on your way to your patrol shift. “I’ve tried everything else, but nothing’s worked,” you’ll say. “I always dream about…”

“About your parents?” The psychiatrist will watch you carefully. They all do, when they ask you this question. “Or about Todoroki?”

“Just my parents.”

Raised brow, skepticism.

“There isn’t very satisfying evidence to back up the use of these medications for nightmares or PTSD. Are you certain that you can’t just use your quirk to help you sleep better?”

“My quirk can’t help with something like nightmares.” 

You will explain—for the fourth or fifth time—that you can heal even the most fatal of wounds on your body, but you cannot fix the ones in your mind. You will be certain of this, because you'll have already tried countless times to rewire the circuitry of your neurons in a futile attempt to sleep better at night. In a futile attempt to stop feeling so sick at the smell of cigarette smoke. In a futile attempt to stop your heart from splitting open at the mere scent of sandalwood incense.

No, you will never be able to heal wounds of the mind. You will have failed to fix Touya’s, and you will fail to fix your mother’s, and you will fail to fix your own.)

ii. imprint

On the same summer evening that you die on your living room floor, you try to run away from home.

You’ve packed away a bag of things upstairs, buried it in the back of your closet, but you don’t think you’d make it there without your parents hearing, so you decide to abandon all your belongings—your clothes, your wallet, your snacks, and the strip of purikura photos that you forced Touya into taking with you. You even leave behind your shoes; they remain untouched as you tiptoe across the genkan.

As soon as you make it out of the house, you bolt.

You run barefoot, skin scraping against hot cement and stray debris. Pain slices deeply into your heel, and when you glance down, you notice that you are smearing blood against the pavement. You keep running anyway, despite the agony in your foot. If what you’ve left behind you catches up, it’ll hurt far worse than some stupid glass.

You have no choice but to keep going.

You have no choice but to keep going—but then someone calls your name.

You flinch, pausing only briefly. Probably it’s just some neighbour or a teacher or a relative, and they'll take you home. Take you back to that house where you always make everyone unhappy, where you're always hit, where you're always yelled at. And maybe it’s true that you deserve this, you deserve all of this, for doing this to me and for ruining my life, and maybe it’s also true that you have no reason to cry, you’re just going to heal anyway, stop crying, stop crying, but that doesn't change the fact that it hurts. You want to run until you are far from your parents, and your home, and maybe even this city, and—

"Please, dear."

You freeze. 

"Please, dear," the voice repeats, painfully gentle. You can hardly process the words, but you recognize her tone, so soft and reassuring. "It's just us. Just me and Touya. Do you think you can stop and talk to us?"

You look up, see white hair and kind, grey eyes—Touya's mom. Todoroki Rei walks toward you, slowly and carefully, like you're a feral cat instead of a person. Like you’re one of the strays that you and Touya like to feed in the morning, setting out dishes of food in the street. It’s okay, kitty cat! Come here! 

“It’s okay,” she coos. “We can help you.”

She will take you back, you think. She will take you back to your house, so you get ready to start sprinting again.

But then you see Touya.

You see Touya, and you stop thinking about running. Instead, you see the ever-growing white patch in his hair, and you think about how you always say it makes him look like a guinea pig, and how he always scowls when you do. You see his deep frown, and you think about how he makes this exact face whenever he tells off your bullies and loudly proclaims that he'll walk you home, 'so they better not try anything funny.' You notice the sneakers on his feet, the ones he always wears in P.E, and you think about how you always let him win footraces at school because he's supposed to be the Number One Hero someday, and that means he's always happiest when he's Number One in class.

You think about Touya, who’s always nice to you, who always looks out for you, who you can always trust. 

(When you lift your shirt to reveal the burn on your side, Dabi will make an aggravated sound because what the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind? Don't you know what any villain would do to you right now? What they'd do to any female hero?

"But Touya," you will reply, confused, "I wouldn’t do this in front of anyone else. You’re not any villain. You’re you." 

You'd never hurt me.)

Touya rushes toward you, nearly crashing into you before stopping. His teal eyes are wide with worry, and aside from their colour, are almost the mirror image of his mother's. 

"What happened?" Touya nearly yells, almost stumbling over his words, "Who hurt you? Who made you cry?" 

Crying? You’re crying? You touch your face and feel wetness on your fingertips, and you think, oh, you really are crying. No wonder your mother hit you so hard, earlier.

Rei’s voice comes from behind Touya: "Oh, sweetheart…" She reaches out toward you, and you see, for a split second, someone else's hand. There’s a cigarette held between a thumb and forefinger, and now the tip is pressing into your skin. 

You flinch. The muscles in your legs go taut, ready to bolt, this time wound up with the electric tension of your quirk—  

—but then Touya takes your hand. His touch is gentle and so warm that you can't help but pause just to draw out the feeling of it.

"It's okay," Touya says, and for once his voice is soft. "You don't have to be scared anymore. Mom’s right. We'll help you."

Your lip trembles. The spot in your chest that your quirk seems unable to fix quivers and aches, and you find your eyes growing wet. “I’m sorry,” you find yourself blurting out, without even really knowing why, “I’m really sorry.” 

Touya gives you a confused look, head cocking to the side, and he asks, “What do you have to be sorry about?” 

There are so many reasons, all obvious to you: For ruining your evening. For making you worry. For being a burden. But Touya just gives you that same confused look when you say this, and for some reason, this makes you tear up even more. 

On this summer evening, Touya sees you cry for the first time. And when he does, he pulls you close and holds you tightly against himself. You figure that he’s maybe never held anyone like this before, because his body is stiff and his expression is awkward enough for you to snort through your tears. You don’t really know how to react, not sure where to put your hands, because nobody’s ever held you like this, either. 

You stop.

Nobody’s ever held me like this, you realise, and now you’re melting right into Touya and clinging to his frame. The heat is oppressive, and Touya’s body is somehow even hotter than the sun, but after freezing up, he embraces you back.

You do not want him to ever let go.

(Eleven years from this moment, your entire body will be wracked in the pain of cauterization. You will writhe in agony, and Dabi will hold you tightly to ground you through the pain, and you’ll realise who he is. You will feel on your body the hands of a killer and think, I know this boy. I know this boy, and I loved him.) 

Touya waits patiently for your tears to dry. He rubs your back, lets you bury your face into his body, distracts you by asking for the names of your bullies—he’ll definitely kick their asses, no questions asked. He'll make sure they'll never touch you again, that they’ll never make you cry again. He holds you as he says this, keeps talking at you until your tears are being punctuated by smiles.

"They’ll suspend you if you set someone's backpack on fire again," you point out through sniffles.

"And?" Touya asks, frowning. "It'll be worth it! C'mon, tell me who did this." 

“No way! Your dad’s gonna kill you if you get in trouble again…”

The two of you keep chatting like this, and even when you’re feeling well enough to pull back from Touya—he’ll get a heatstroke at this rate, you say, although you shiver a little at the loss even despite the humidity—your hands stay linked together. Touya only lets go when his mother says that it’s time for you to go home, but even then, he doesn’t step away from you. Instead, he hops off the bench, crouches down, and tells you to get onto his back.

You stare at him in confusion, and he explains, “They took your shoes." 

"Yeah," you lie, glancing down at your bare feet. "So what?" 

"So you shouldn’t be walking!" Touya says, sounding exasperated, like he's saying the most obvious thing in the world. "You might step on more glass. I’ll carry you!”

“But I’ll just heal,” you say, not understanding him. You don't understand why you sound a little gloomy, either, and you hope he doesn't notice this confusing sadness as you add, “My quirk will fix me. See?” You lift up your foot to show him the bottom of your heel, covered in dried blood but otherwise unmarred. “It's like nothing ever happened.”

Touya looks almost annoyed. Eyes narrowed, lip jutted out, brows slanted.

“But it did happen, and it could happen again, and it’ll hurt you if it does." He frowns. "And I hate seeing you get hurt.”

(In the months you are trapped in Dabi’s hold, you will notice his eyes gravitating to all your scars: the one on your side, from cauterization; the ones on your shoulder blade and thigh, from your first rape; the ones beneath your breasts and on your hips, from the second one. His eyes will narrow each time, his jaw clenching tightly, and you will reassure him, It’s okay, Touya. It doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s already healed, see? You don’t need to be so sad.)

You let Touya carry you through the neighbourhood. You let him piggyback you even though you can feel him overheating through his shirt, even though you can see his neck glisten with sweat. Rei trails behind the two of you, and you see her smiling at every passer-by who gives the two of you a funny look. You feel bad for inconveniencing her, and you definitely feel awful for making Touya carry you despite the heat. 

“I’m really sorry,” you keep saying over and over. “I’m so sorry I’m making you do this. I must be really heavy.”

“Eh? Why are you saying sorry?” Touya sounds as confused as he was earlier. “You don’t have anything to apologise for. And”—he gives you a suspicious look—“you really think I’m not strong enough to carry you?! I could carry three of you! After all the training we’ve done—”

Touya sounds annoyed, keeps ranting about how this is nothing for Endeavor’s successor, thank you very much, but is abruptly cut off when you tighten your hold on him and press your face into his neck. He stiffens a lot, and you can hear him swallowing too, but he doesn’t ask for you to stop, so you cling onto him the whole time. And you notice something funny: that even though you are being taken back to a place where you keep dying over and over—life, death, and rebirth; cycle of suffering, as the monks at the temple say—it doesn’t feel so bad when Touya is the one carrying you there. 

At least you get to be close to him, this way.

(At least I get to be close to him, this way, some part of you will think as you lie beside Dabi, watching him dream. You will feel as though you are trapped in a Floating World—or perhaps a Sorrowful one?—your mind separated from your body, as your fingers reach out to brush against his.)

When Touya finally places you down before your home and you're staring into the maw of its entrance, you swallow deeply and your heart rate kicks up. On instinct alone, you press yourself back into his arms. He raises a brow, but pulls you closer anyway. 

"What's wrong?" he asks, but you stay quiet and just press your face back into his shoulder.

Touya's mother stays quiet, too. You notice her studying the two of you before going to the front door by herself.

(“That's when you figured it out, didn’t you?” you will ask Rei, in the quiet of her hospital room, many years later. "That's when you knew what they were doing to me.")

Your father is the only one to emerge from your house. His sleeves are rolled up and there's a pair of nylon gloves stuffed into his pocket, blue fingers spilling out. He uses his Hero Smile—the one he always shows on TV—and keeps his tone polite when he talks to Rei. Their voices sound nothing like they do when they’re screaming—when Rei screams at Endeavor outside the walls of Touya’s room, or when your father screams at your mother, or when your mother screams at you—and they are all smiles and pleasantries. 

Rei comes over, coaxing you away from Touya. “It’s okay, dear,” she coos again, in that voice for scared animals. “It’ll be okay.” 

You pry yourself away from your friend slowly. She takes you by the hand, but before leading you back into your house, she crouches down and gives Touya a meaningful look.

“Touya,” she says, “you must always protect her. Remember that."

Touya nods, expression grave.

"And if this ever happens again," Rei continues, her voice now hushed, "you have to keep her safe, and you have to let me know. You have to bring her to me. Do you understand?”

Touya straightens up, like he is a soldier. 

“Of course I do,” he says, voice earnest. “I’ll always protect her, Mom. You don’t have to worry about that.” 

He squeezes your hand, and you understand that this is a promise.

(When you are twenty years old, you will be sitting in Endeavor's office, meeting with a team of investigators from the Hero Commission. There's a serial killer on the loose, they will tell you. No one can crack his ciphers and no one understands how his quirk works, but they know his profile, his interests. They know that you are a high-risk target, and you will stare at the picture of the last victim—legs cleaved open, bruises on her hips—and you will feel sick to your stomach. Instinctively, you will press your thighs together and wish that you could throw a hoodie over your stupid hero costume. 

"We've already anticipated this threat," Endeavor will say, "and we are taking measures to address them."  

Another woman will be killed a week after that. You will get the sense that the Hero Commission is at a loss, as much as Endeavor is. 

But it will become a moot point. Later on, they will find the killer’s body in a six-tatami room full of trash—burned at 2000°C and distorted beyond disbelief, more charcoal than human. His face is indiscernible, impossible for any potential family to recognize. Even his very bones have been cremated, his jaw barely intact. But it is unmistakably him, because there are trophies from every heroine he’s killed and also a stack of photos tucked away in a shoebox. A ticking time capsule, filled with pretty objects.

Your picture is at the top.

Your picture is at the top, bright and smiling. From a feature spread in some magazine, your first gravure swimsuit photoshoot. You are a feature in this snuff fantasy too, but the serial rapist is dead, and the investigation into his murder feels like a joke, because the Hero Commission doesn’t care about dead criminals. 

You don't turn up very much in your own investigation, either. There are no leads—no evidence of any fuel or machinery involved in the fire, and also no fire quirk so powerful registered with the government. Not even Endeavor, the Flame Hero and prime suspect, is capable of this. And aside from the ashes, there are no other traces of the killer. Like he's some kind of spectre, the Commission lead will tell you.

Or like a vengeful ghost.)

iii. predestined (I)

(At age nineteen, you will sit in the leather armchair of some therapist and stare at the clock on the wall. It is analogue and fills the silence with its ticking, counting seconds that will mostly be lost in your memories. He will talk about some kind of psychotherapy, some technique that will possibly cure the loneliness in you, with an acronym that you confuse with the names of all the other therapies that you have tried. He will ask you about your family and how they treated you, and he will ask you about Touya and what he meant to you, but he will ask, more than anything else—

“What do you want?”)

You are twelve years old and on Sekoto Peak when, for the first time, Touya asks you about your home life.

“I’ve known you for so long,” he realises, “but you hardly ever talk about your family. And I’ve only ever met your parents a few times. What are they like?”

“My parents?” You hum, glancing up from his bruised rib. The shadow recedes under your fingertips, capillaries repairing of their own accord, macrophages carrying away old blood. It is a familiar process, one that you’ve repeated countless times on your own body. But Touya’s cells are not your own, are foreign and resist your quirk, and you find yourself straining to manipulate them. It is a struggle to answer while you are trying to heal him. “My parents, are, um. They’re strict.” 

“Strict,” Touya repeats. “But not like my dad? I know they’re heroes too.”

“No,” you decide. “Not like your dad. They don’t really care if I become a top-ranking hero, or whatever. They just want me to have a job that makes money.” You pause. "Though I guess that would be heroism."

You owe it to me, don’t you? your mother so often says, face twisted in agony, almost as distorted as the abnormal angles of your wrist. Her voice is always there, crawling at the edges of your mind: You owe it to me. Do you know how much I lost because of you? Do you know how expensive you are? Oh, god—here come the waterworks. I'm sick of your crying.

And you often hear your own voice, too, equally as intrusive: I’m sorry. I’ll stop. Just please don’t hit me. Please, pleasepleaseplease, it hurts. 

("I'm sick of your fucking crying," Dabi will snarl at you, so many times, and all you'll be able to say is, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for everything I've done. But please, Touya, it hurts.)

"So it's not like how my family is?" Touya asks, watching you carefully as his bruises disappear. "They don't, um… they don't train you like how my dad trains me?" 

You have to think about this, because sometimes your mother calls it training and talks about how it's good for you, will be good for your career in the future, but more often she says things like: It's your fault I'm like this. Tears leak out of her eyes; she is always crying. You did this to me. Why did I have you. Why did I keep you. You were a mistake. I didn’t want you. I didn’t want you. I didn't want you.

("You still want me, Touya?" you'll ask him, voice small—hopeful. "After everything I've done?")

"My parents aren't like your dad," you decide. "Things are different in my household." 

"Oh," he replies quietly, "I see."

You feel a little bad for disappointing Touya, but you are only telling the truth. Your situations are different, after all. Touya was born wanted, but you were not. Touya brings so many people happiness, but you only seem to make your parents miserable. Touya doesn't mind being hit, but you always beg: Please, Mom, I'm sorry for everything I've done. Please stop. Please stop. I don't want this anymore. It hurts. 

Touya's mother always tries to protect him, but your mother only ever replies: You think you're in pain? You think I want this? It doesn't matter what I want. It doesn’t matter what you want.

(Before your biggest interview yet, you will look at your script blankly, eyes lingering on the brand you're meant to promote: Asahi. You will think about how you once got blackout drunk and the taste of their beer was the last stain on your memory of that night, and how you haven’t been able to stomach their drinks ever since. 

You will turn to your manager and say, "But I don't even like Asahi."

"So what? Asahi paid more than any other brand," he’ll reply in between drags of his cigarette. "You've gotta learn, okay? When it comes to this line of business, it doesn't matter what you want."

You will deflate a little, thinking about all the revealing photoshoots, and that countdown clock that ticked toward your eighteenth birthday, and those stalker photographs that turned up the other day, taken through the window of your six-tatami room. All of them exposed your naked back, the contour of your spine, the colour of your bra strap. You will think about how you worked for so long under Endeavor. You will think about how well you worked with his agency, with his sidekicks, with him, and then you will think about how you peeled off your hero suit at the end of each day before checking your phone for messages from Rei. 

Some years later, you will lie on Dabi's bed and think about how much he made you bleed.

For all of these occasions, you will sigh in defeat and think that your manager is right: 

It doesn’t matter what I want. ) 

“What do you wanna do now?”

“Huh?” Your head jerks up as your memories are disrupted. You’re surprised to see that Touya’s gloomy expression has been replaced by a smile, which maybe seems a little forced. The longer you stare into his eyes, though, the more natural it starts to look. “Um, what?”

“I said, what do you wanna do?” He stretches. “I’m all healed up now, so let’s go do something fun. Do you wanna go to the arcade? Or go see a movie? Or we can go for ice cream—it’s pretty hot…”

That tugs at the corner of your lips. Even gives you the urge to laugh. “What are you talking about, Touya? It’s so chilly today.”

“Not with my quirk,” he grumbles. “But if you don’t wanna get ice cream, that’s fine.”

“We can get ice cream if you want.”

He shakes his head, taking your hand. 

“No, no. I chose what to do yesterday, so you should choose today. What do you wanna do?”

(“What do you want to do?” your therapist will ask repeatedly. What do you want out of life, what do you want to do with it, who do you want to be. You will stare blankly at him, and you will think about how you wanted to run away with Touya, to some place where the two of you would no longer have bruises or broken ribs, to a faraway town where you could go to the movies all the time and he could eat ice cream everyday and the two of you could become the top heroes of Japan, like Touya always wanted for the two of you. 

But Touya will be gone, and you will draw a blank.)

“Hm… I don’t really know.”

iv. predestined (II)

(When you are sixteen years old, you will wash the Todoroki family grave with Fuyumi. You will wipe away carelessly at your best friend's posthumous name, rendered by Enji's wealth and guilt. You will pour water over the contours of two characters, rendered beautifully in stone and sound— light as 燈, arrow as 失, 燈失 as Touya. 

You will recall, then, the contours of the burns you once healed, rendered with so much pain. You will think about how you always erased the wounds on Touya’s body—

—and how you always failed, each and every time, to fix the wounds plaguing his mind.)

You are at Sekoto Peak one day, repairing another bruised rib for Touya, when he says out of the blue: “I know you think my dad shouldn't be hitting me." He isn't looking at you. “Mom says that all the time, too. And Fuyumi. But you’re wrong. You’re all wrong.” 

You think carefully about his words, and how off they sound to you—because someone as good as Touya shouldn’t be hit, right? Why would he ever deserve to be in pain?—but then remember your mother’s words, and what she does to you, and then you aren’t so sure what to think anymore. 

All you know is, “But I don't like that you’re getting hit."

He frowns. "But I don't care if I am." 

"Doesn't stop me from worrying," you shoot back. But then your exasperated look fades when, with the gentle probing of your quirk, you realise that his rib is not bruised, but fractured. It must be hard for him to breathe, each expansion of his chest aggravating the swollen tissue and fissure in his skeleton. You know because you've had this injury too.

You suddenly feel very nauseous.

You feel nauseous, but you do not throw up. Instead of vomiting, a question crawls up your throat: "Do you really think it's normal for your father to hurt you like this?"

(Dabi will tell you, between slow drags of tobacco and poison, that he’s never loved any of the people he’s fucked before, that he never raped any of them either. You will wonder why you’re the only one he’s hurt like this, the only one he’s broken in like this, and you will remember—)

“Well, yeah,” he replies, shrugging. “Of course it's normal.”

You pause, quiet as you stitch the marrow of his bones back together. “...what makes you say that?”

“Isn't it obvious?” He frowns, almost scowls. “My dad hits me because he's training me. He’s doing it because he wants me to be the Number One hero when I grow up."

The skin beneath your fingers lightens gradually. The hematoma drains; the swelling goes down; the bone calcifies. The bruise on his flesh fades, just like all of yours have, but you're still eyeing him closely. You’ve healed Touya’s body so many times that you can easily do it in your sleep, but for some reason, you always worry that you're missing an injury, somewhere. Maybe someplace that your quirk cannot touch, like the strange wound in your chest, the one that aches whenever your mother says, It doesn't matter what you want. 

You pause.

“Is that what you want?” you ask Touya, still searching his skin. “To be the Number One hero?”

"’course it is.” Touya gives you a funny look as he pulls his shirt back down, hiding the spot where his father broke him. "I've been saying that forever. Why're you even asking?" 

"Was just checking," you reply, still studying him. Your gut churns; you feel restless. You cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong.

After long silence, Touya gives you a look, unnerved. He insists again, “I’m serious. None of you have to worry. My dad’s doing this to me because he cares about me—don’t you understand?”

He sounds a little desperate now, and that makes you seriously consider his words.

You think Touya is definitely right about at least this one thing. Someone can care for you, but also hurt you all the time. You can care for them too, even as you lie on your floor and curl up in pain, even as your body struggles to reverse the flow of blood pooling into your brain, even as you think about how this all happened because you ruined their life.

(“You’re the reason I’ll never go back. You’re everything that’s wrong about hero society. You’re the reason why I’m gonna burn it all down—” )

But then you think of Touya and how good he is, and you think of how his father is supposed to be proud of him, and you think about how much his mother cherishes him, and how happy he makes everyone in his life. And you try to imagine him lying on the floor like you, red leaking out beneath his skull, and your chest clenches so badly that you end up blinking away tears.

“Even if he cares about you," you eventually say, voice quiet, "I still don’t like that he hits you, Touya. I don’t like seeing you in pain.”

Touya’s mouth thins. You catch a brief shimmer in his eyes, but he quickly turns away, and he casts his eyes downward as he picks at leaves and wildflowers—bright red, just like most of his hair—and turns them to ash. His voice has a sharp, brittle edge when he mutters:

“You sound like my mom.”

(Touya will always keep this habit of his, of clinging to these bruises that his father inflicts upon him, of refusing compassion from everyone. You will think it is why he ran away from you as a child. You will think it is why he jerks back from your touch after you find him again. And you will know it is why he rejects your attempts to save him. 

Rejection, rejection, rejection. Touya will not accept refuge. 

Burning is easier than healing.) 

v. love

("Tell me more about Todoroki," your various therapists will ask over the years. He is the person they will ask about most, after your parents. “It sounds like losing him deeply affected you.”

"What do you need to know," you will ask tonelessly, staring at your perfect nails, which will be painted a vivid teal. "It's been so long since he passed."

"Whatever comes to mind," they will say, clipboard at the ready. “Tell me what he meant to you.”

“You’ll have to be more specific. He meant a lot to me.” You will look down at your hands, and you will think of Touya’s wet eyes, of his paling hair, of those red camellias on Sekoto Peak, and you will think about how all those things turned to ash and slipped through your expensive, manicured fingers. You will say, “I don’t even know where to start.”)

It is hard to describe your relationship with Touya. 

You tell your bullies that Touya is your best friend, so they better leave you alone or else he’ll send hellflames their way, the way he did to that one asshole kid who kept flipping up your skirt last year. You tell Touya’s mother that you’re his classmate, so it’s really no trouble for you to come over and help out with his homework. You tell Endeavor that you’re studying to get into U.A. together—even after Touya’s hair turns fully white, and even after he stops bragging loudly about his father and how he’ll be his successor someday. You tell Fuyumi that no, you are not Touya’s girlfriend, and you’re going to kill her if she tells him about your crush. 

You tell your mother that the two of you are just friends, so can she please stop talking about her delusional plans to put you into a quirk marriage with Endeavor’s son? Yes, you know that the money would be good, but you would like to marry for love, please. You will find some other way to make money.

(In several years’ time, you will look at your own paparazzi shots, at your Dior heels and Balenciaga dress, and at your hair that took an entire day to style. You are standing next to Hawks, who is wearing a suit by COMME DES GARCONS, which he spent the whole night calling obnoxious. You will not recognize the shape of your own face in this picture, nor will you recognize your smile. You will think to yourself, Are you proud of me, Mother? Are you proud of me for making money like this? Are you happy that I paid for the house? Father's retirement fees? Your hospital bills?

You will scroll down to the comments for this photo. Half of the comments will say you look beautiful. The other half will say you are a whore.) 

What you do not tell your mother is that out of all the people in this world, you are certain that there is no one you would want to marry other than Touya. (As if I knew anything about marriage at age twelve, you will laugh off in conversation with yet another therapist, years later.) You do not tell her this, largely because you do not know where you stand with Touya. 

So you turn to him one day, while he’s digging through his pockets for change for the arcade, and ask, “What am I to you, Touya?”

Coins cascade to the ground, clinking as they roll on the pavement. Touya is red-faced when he turns to you.

“H-huh?! W-what’s that supposed to mean?”

You look at him dead in the eye. “How do you feel about me, Touya?”

“What kind of question is that?!” He crouches to the ground, scrambling to pick up one-yen coins. “I feel like you're a weirdo, for asking that.”

The blush on his cheeks doesn’t escape you, and you try not to smile.

The next time you ask him this, the two of you are on a bridge outside your neighbourhood, one that stretches over a narrow river. A countless number of your classmates have dived from the apex of this bridge, mostly on dares. You haven’t, simply because you’re convinced that your mother would kill you if you came home soaking wet. You find yourself considering this fact as you lean over the edge, peering into the reflection of the sunset. 

Then you wonder what she would say if she caught you out here with Touya. It looks romantic, doesn't it? To be with someone alone like this, at sunset over a river.

“What am I to you, Touya?” you ask. “How do you feel about me?”

“I feel like you’re stalling,” he says, and then he pushes you over the edge.

You shriek the whole way down, even as Touya jumps in after you, his laughter ringing in your ears. It’s impossible to breathe, first because of the wind whipping into your face, and then because the water’s in your nose, and then because of the sun in your eyes as Touya pulls you up through the surface. Then you’re breathless when you look at his grinning face, framed by his dripping, white hair, and you think: Oh, I’ve never been so happy before. Who cares what my mother will do?

(When you recount this moment to Dabi some years later, he will snort and say, “You freaked out about your mom anyway. You made me dry your clothes off with my flames, remember? Took two fucking hours. My dad beat my ass when I got home because it was so late.”

“My mom beat my ass, too,” you will admit, and the two of you will trade wry expressions. Not smiles, but at least they aren’t frowns.)

You think you’re getting somewhere, when Touya asks if you want to go to Tanabata with him this year. His cheeks are as red as his hair used to be, and he can’t look you in the eye, and he keeps on kicking at random pebbles on the ground, but he manages to ask you and it makes something in your stomach flutter. You can’t hide your smile when you reply, “Okay!” and you can’t suppress your excitement when Rei helps you pick out your yukata, or your giddiness as she helps you with your hair, or the sharp staccato of your heartbeats when Touya sees you all dressed up and his eyes go wide.

You suddenly feel very shy.

What am I to you? What are you to me? What are we to each other?  

“What do you, um, think?” You gesture to yourself. “Of my outfit, I mean.”

“Nice,” he ekes out. “Your yukata’s really nice. And, um—so are you, of course. You’re nice too.”

You can see Rei holding in her laughter.

This is the most you get out of him the whole night. Nice. You try not to roll your eyes, and you wonder if Orihime had this much trouble getting a confession out of Hikoboshi, and if so, how they ever got to the point of being so in love that they forgot about their heavenly duties. Touya apparently cannot bring himself to forget about so much as his math homework. He keeps bringing it up for some reason, and rambles about school gossip you’ve already beaten to death, and can’t maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds at a time before going pink and looking away. 

"You don't have to be so nervous, Touya," you tell him. “We’ve hung out tons of other times—this date doesn’t have to be any different.” 

You'd hoped that this would help, but instead it just makes him choke violently on his somen and go bright red. This reaction is, you think, close enough to an ‘I like you’, so instead of feeling any frustration, you just find yourself giggling. It’s fine if Touya can’t get the words out, anyway—you’ll just say them yourself later. 

And anyway, even if Touya seems incapable at voicing his feelings for you, they are obvious enough from his actions, and are evident even in his wish. Even though he tries to shield your eyes from his tanzaku as he hangs it up, and even though he threatens to burn not just the paper, but also the entire goddamn tree if you try to look, you manage to catch the messy scrawl of his writing—

I want to be her hero.

燈失

(You will not say, of course, the fact that you’d seen what he’d written. You won’t mention the tanzaku at all. Instead, you’ll tell Dabi how much fun you had that night, and how much you miss festivals, and how badly you want to go stargazing again. He’ll listen with a neutral expression, but he'll glance away afterwards, unable to look at you in the face, and you’ll wonder if he ever still thinks about the dreams that Touya used to have for the two of you.)

You’re on the school rooftop the next time you get anywhere close to a confession. Touya is lying on his back, staring at the sky, looking distracted—likely thinking about your impending futures, because the homeroom teacher recently asked everyone to think about where they’d like to apply for senior high school. It’s probably on Touya’s mind as much as it is on yours. 

Ever since Shouto’s quirks manifested, Touya has talked about his post-graduation plans less and less. He’s stopped talking about how the two of you will get into U.A. together. He’s stopped reminding you that his father’s agreed to take you on as an intern, so that you can learn to partner together during your work-studies. He's stopped brainstorming hero pseudonyms, stopped looking at your costume sketches, stopped dreaming up new ultimate moves.

He’s stopped smiling, too.

You watch him carefully when you ask, “Touya, what do you think I should do after I graduate?"

It doesn’t matter what you want to do, your mother always says. You have to be a hero, don't you? You have to make good money. You're not good enough at anything else to make a living from it. All you can do is heal.

But what if you don't want to? 

Don't you get it? It doesn't matter what you want. 

Touya doesn’t look at you, probably doesn’t notice the uncertainty in your voice. “You want to go to U.A., right?” he asks, almost sounding detached. “That’s what you’ve always said. You’ve got a great quirk—my dad still talks about it all the time, about how useful it’d be at any agency. And… you’re really nice and good-looking, too, so people would like you.” He used to blush, saying things like this. Now he just looks sombre. “You’d make a good hero.”

You frown, watching his expression. 

“I don’t want to go to U.A.,” you admit. 

Touya looks at you, eyes wide. “You don’t?”

“No, stupid.” You lie down beside him, glancing at him with exasperation. “You’re the one who came up with that plan, remember? Go to U.A. Go intern at your dad’s agency. Go work together as heroes. Move out together. Actually—that last bit was partly my idea too. But you get what I mean.”

“Huh.” Touya frowns. “Then what do you want to do?”

You look away from him.

“I want to go wherever you go.”

“...why would you want that?”

You raise a brow. “What, does it bother you? I can leave you alone, if you want.”

“That’s not what I’m saying!” Touya sits up, and his shadow leans over you, blocking out the sun and forcing you to look at him. “I just mean, why would you want to follow me? Why wouldn’t you just do what you want to do?”

His eyes look pained. You think this isn’t really a question for you, but you answer it anyway.

“All I really want is for two things, Touya: to move away, and to be with you. Is that so strange?”

“Yes. Why do you want to be with me so badly?”

You sigh deeply.

“You’re very stupid sometimes, Touya.”

“Hey! ”

(In a year’s time, you'll sit across the table from Endeavor, feeling sick as he offers to recommend you to U.A. The top right of your head will tingle and itch with the memory of that crack in your skull, the blow etched deep into your neurons, into your brain. The wounds will have scarred there, just like they did for Touya. You'll still wish to be with him, but you don’t quite want to die, so you give up on that dream. 

You'll still want to move away, though. And you'll still need money to do it.

“Okay,” you'll say, bowing deeply. “I’ll accept your recommendation. Thank you so much, Endeavor. I am in your debt.”

“There is no need to thank me,” he will reply mournfully. “It’s what Touya would have wanted.” 

You will resist the urge to scream at him—on this occasion, and many others. This is nothing like what Touya wanted. This is nothing short of a betrayal to Touya. There will be no peace for his spirit after this.

There will be no refuge.)

Touya finally answers your question that autumn, while the two of you are on Sekoto Peak. It is late in the year, and the camellias are in full bloom, their fragrance mingling with the stench of burnt flesh. He is crying openly, tears rolling down the blistering flesh on his cheeks. It must hurt, getting salt into a fresh burn like that. You are gentle when you place your hands on his cheeks to heal him.

“You think I can still be a hero?” he asks through sniffs.

“I think you can be anything you want.”

“But I can’t use my flames without hurting myself.”

So what? you want to ask him. Who cares about that? Or what your father thinks? There will be support gear that can help with his flames. Or he can learn to control his quirk to avoid burning himself. And anyway, “I’ll be around to heal you, silly,” you murmur. He places a hand over yours, and you glance into his eyes. You’re struck by the intensity of his irises, cobalt burning brightly against his wounds.

“You’re the only person who believes in me,” he says. “You’re the only person who’s on my side.”

The blisters are gone. His skin is nearly healed, too—it’s now just a faint red along his cheeks. Or maybe that’s from his crying. 

“I know,” you murmur. 

“N-nobody else”—his breath hitches—“cares about me. N-nothing I do will ever be good enough for them."

“That’s not true,” he says, and he still sounds in so much pain despite your quirk. The wounds on his face and body are gone now, but you decide to wrap your arms around him, for the ones you can neither see nor heal. “That’s not true. You know your mother cares about you, Touya. And Fuyumi. And Natsuo.” You are careful to skirt around Shouto’s name. “But I do care about you a lot. As much as any of them.”

“More than any of them,” he says, pressing his face into your neck. “More than anyone else I know.”

You think of that summer evening where Touya saw you cry for the first time. You think of how you felt, wrapped up in the thin, awkward arms of this boy who wanted so badly to protect you.

“Well,” you admit, voice soft, “that’s natural. There’s no one I care more about in the world, Touya.”

You feel him nod into your shoulder.

“There’s no one I care more about, either.”

(In several years, Dabi will ask you, “Did you try to erase me, like everyone else?” You will look at him, this ghost of a boy who was once your hero, wearing all his accumulated wounds on his outsides. You will look at him and say:

“I would have never done that to you.” You'll look down, blinking rapidly as your eyes grow hot. "Don't you remember how important you were to me? Don’t you remember how much I needed you?" 

You will not shed tears despite the urge, because people hate it when you cry. They hurt you when you cry. Or maybe you cry when they hurt you. You can’t tell anymore which one comes first, like that English expression about the chicken and the egg. You can’t tell because you’re always hurting, these days. And you are always crying. Even when your eyes are dry, you are still crying.)

vi. death (I)

(Out of all the things that Dabi does to you, you will not be sure which you find most painful. There is the rape, of course. There are also the names—whore, sellout, worthless—but you will have been called those things your entire life, so you will find those bearable, in a way.

You think it is maybe the delusions that will leave the deepest scar: You lied to me. You never cared about me. You never needed me.

You will understand these assumptions. Were you in his shoes, you would be making them too. But they are false, and they fester in his mind until he is rabid enough to tear you apart, poisoning your insides. You are naked and bruised when you beg, You don’t have to do this, Touya. You can come back from this. We can come back from this. )

The last time you see Touya, he is thirteen years old and it is the middle of winter. 

Touya has always had an anger problem. His anger is why his first reaction to your tears is to declare that he’ll let loose his hellflames on your bullies. It’s why he’ll say horrible things about his mother, from time to time, which he’ll feel so bad about later that he’ll apologise about it in tears. And once Fuyumi and Natsuo tell you about the time that he attacked his baby brother, you know that it wasn’t done intentionally. He was only angry, and he was angry because he was hurt, and he was hurt because of his father. 

He even said it himself, Natsuo has told you—Touya admitted that he was in the wrong about it.

You understand it. Your mother says things that she doesn’t mean, all the time, and you think it's because it hurts her when you make mistakes, or when her husband is home, or when she looks at the bills and thinks about how much money it costs for you to be alive. She’s hurt and she says cruel things, and she always reassures you afterward that she didn't mean any of it: Oh, why are you still thinking about that other night? I wasn’t being serious about what I said. Of course it matters to me whether you’re hurt. You’re my child. I want you to be happy. 

Touya is probably the same, so you suggest that he repairs things with Shouto. Maybe then his mother would be a little happier, and Shouto could finally get the chance to go out and play, and things could be a little more peaceful for them all. You are confident when you suggest this to Touya—

“You were supposed to be on my side!”

—and he incinerates you. 

An accident. You know it’s an accident. You’ve seen Touya practice with his quirk enough to know that it responds to his emotions. When he cries, it’s a raging inferno. When he's angry, he loses control. You made him cry, and you made him hurt, so it’s your fault that you’re burning like this.

(Is that you, Touya? you will whisper to yourself, watching footage of the eerie, cyan glow of his fire. You must be in pain, if it is. You will remember how much he sobbed when he used those flames on you.)

You black out for a little bit, probably after the smoke enters your lungs. Or maybe you die when that happens. (You will learn later, training under Endeavor, that most victims of fire do not die from being burned, but from suffocation.) Either way, all you see is a violent azure, and then—

Nothing. 

Pure, painless black. Emptiness.

When you come to, you are sitting on a patch of charcoal and are assaulted by the smell of burnt hair and flesh. A jacket has been thrown over you, and you realise that underneath it, your clothes are in singed tatters. It takes you a moment to recollect, I was burned alive. 

There’s a strange, hiccupping noise that is overlapping with the ringing in your ears. Like the laughter from that variety show, but much more humane, more miserable. After a pause, you realize that it is the sound of someone crying. When you glance up, you see Touya, his white hair darkened with soot and ash. There are tears running down his cheeks. 

Your body acts mostly on its own when you reach out to him.

He flinches backward, staring at you in horror. You have to glance down at your hands, checking to see if you are done healing or not. Maybe you look like a burnt corpse, and that’s why he’s so scared of you. 

“Touya?” you ask, head cocked to the side. “Touya, what’s wrong?” 

It makes him cry harder, take in a breath so sharp that even you can hear its edge. 

“Touya,” you try again, voice soft. “It’s okay.”

“H-how can you say that?!” he finally wails in response, and you can’t tell if he’s angry with you or with himself. “I burned you! I burned you alive—how can that be okay! ”

Your eyelids droop, as if too heavy. You feel so tired, all of a sudden. “It’s okay, Touya. I’ve already healed, and it didn’t even hurt that much.” You show him your bare arm, its skin pristine. Then you run a finger over your cheek, to make sure that it is whole, and it actually feels even better than before he burned you. No more acne. “See?” you reaffirm. “I’m already better. It’s like it never even happened.”

His tears won’t stop. You guess maybe he’s still hurt by what you said. You look down, and tell him, “I’m sorry for making you mad. I shouldn’t have done that. It was…”

It’s your fault. It’s your fault that I’m like this—it’s your fault that I have to do this to you.

”...it was my own fault.”

Touya shakes his head, cheeks still wet. “Stop it, ” he says, each word heavy with pain. “Don’t say that. Don’t say things like that. You didn’t—you didn’t do anything wrong! It was me, it was all me, I—”

He rises to his knees, chest heaving. Hyperventilating. It’s not good, when the two of you are at such a high elevation: he could easily pass out. You frown, trying to get up and walk to him—but find that your legs will not obey you. You can’t even get up onto your knees.

Touya does not help you up. Instead, he shakes his head. “Don’t come near me,” he begs. “You should stay away—if you get hurt… If I hurt you again…” He bites his lip, silenced by his own grief. He never finishes this sentence. Instead, he just backs away, shaking his head.

“Touya!” you call out. You try to stand up again, but only collapse. You are left calling after him, chasing, chasing, not reaching. “Touya! Touya, come back! I’m not mad! I’m not!” And eventually, your screams fade to a whisper, then a whimper: “Please don’t leave. Please come back.”

(Touya will laugh at you in these moments, call you stupid. Blood will begin to slip out between his staples, running down to his jaw. Or sometimes it will trail down from his eyes, just beneath his irises. “You’re even crazier than me, y’know?” he will say. His breath will scald your neck as he mounts you again. “There’s no coming back from this. There’s nothing that can fix us. You can’t erase what I've done to you.”

He will carve you open, dirty your insides, and you will feel like you are being burned alive all over again.)

vii. death (II)

When Todoroki Touya dies, it feels like a part of you goes with him.

(In ten years, you'll remember this sentiment, so pervasive for nearly half your life, and think, Oh, what a strange thought for a thirteen year old to have. I was so prone to melodrama. You will get your nails done at an expensive salon and file away your tax reports and put on your sunglasses and mask so that you can go to the grocery store unmolested and think, I'm living, aren't I? I'm living. This is living. I'm okay. Your latest therapist will reassure you that you are indeed alive and well. You are doing so well.)

It sounds dramatic. You know it does. But when Todoroki Touya passes away, it feels like a piece of you goes with him. It’s the part of you that is used to cycling to his home every morning so that he can hitch a ride on the back of your bicycle, despite his father insisting that he can just drive you both to school in his agency car. It’s the part of you that is so used to training with him on Sekoto Peak, listening to cicadas in the summer and watching autumn leaves in the fall. It's the part of you that runs to him whenever you’re upset, because you want to be held by him and hear him say stupid things like he'll give all your bullies third degree burns—screw the rules! 

It's the part of you that keeps seeking him out to do these things now, but finds only an altar in his stead. 

This part of you goes with him when he dies, and it leaves a hollow space in its wake.

("I'm fine," you'll tell your therapist in ten years. "I'm fine." You'll have a great job. You'll have paid off your parents' mortgage. You'll never talk to them again after that. You'll have lovely friends, like Fuyumi and Shouto and Satoshi. You'll be close to no one outside of them. You'll go on a couple of dates with the Number Two hero. You won't go on a third. 

"I'm fine," you'll tell yourself.)

After Todoroki Touya dies, you attend his funeral in tears. You give his parents a silver envelope filled with money, and his mother crumples when she bends down to hug you. It is closed-casket, because nearly all of Touya has disappeared from this world, save for one jawbone. His empty coffin is covered in flowers, pointing west. You wonder if Touya will find refuge in death. You wish you could have provided it to him in life.

The priest's voice is low and steady in a mesmerising sutra, but you hardly hear it, too distracted by the spiced scent of sandalwood flooding your throat. Your head spins with vertigo when you perform your three bows, and you think that if it were not for your quirk, you would throw up. You are grateful that you do not. 

The priest calls Touya by his dharma name. It is so long and esoteric that you'll forget it despite your best efforts. You won't be too sad about it, because you hate the fact that he has been given one. Privately, you pray for his ghost to chase you home. 

"Touya," you whisper his name like a chant, hoping to summon him from the dead. Light and arrow, rendered so beautifully: "Touya, Touya." 

(Of all the selfish actions you will perform over the course of your life, this one is the worst.)

viii. grief

Todoroki Enji grieves for the bare minimum of seven days before he returns to work as a hero, even though he is careful to pray with his family for another six Saturdays in a row. It takes Fuyumi the full forty-nine days before she can smile for the first time after the wake. It takes Natsuo that same span of time before he can go and see his friends again, even more before he can stand to look his father in the eye. You do not hear much from Shouto, because Endeavor only isolates him more after his eldest brother's death. You wonder if losing one son is making him kinder to Shouto, or if his newest successor is also accumulating wounds.

You are not sure that Todoroki Rei ever lets go of Touya. You think she is like you: a part of her turned to ash with her son’s bones. She does not say it out loud, but she tells you as much. Her grief is obvious to you every time you visit their household with small gifts, lighting incense in Touya's room—which Rei always permits, because don't worry, dear, you're practically family. She tells you about her loss through the bags under her eyes and her thinning wrists and the way that her bottom lip sometimes trembles, when she's cutting fruit for you and Fuyumi. Or her tears when you go to Touya's room together, to place rabbit-apples and flowers before his photo.

(You will often have nightmares of standing by the river that you and Touya once jumped into, but it will always lack a bridge in your dreams. The sky is always a violent blood orange. Rei is there, and the two of you try to build a tower out of pebbles to reach the heavens, but the structure keeps toppling over. You will always wake coated in sweat, wondering: Is Touya struggling too? Is he unable to cross the river?

Is his spirit unable to cleanse itself of the past?) 

Her ongoing grief is evident from the way she talks to you, whenever you’re over. She serves you okayu in her kitchen and says that Touya would be upset to see you losing so much weight; he always asked her to make all your favourite dishes before you came over, did you know that? 

Even with your nonexistent appetite, your shrinking stomach and constant nausea, you try your best to eat for Touya.

(You will fall ill while you are locked away in Touya's clutches, years later. He will be furious with you, because how dare you try to die. How dare you stop taking care of yourself. He will feed you okayu, and it will taste just like the way his mother made it.)

Rei clings onto every memory of her son that you can offer her—smiling when you tell her about the first time the two of you went diving together; humming when you tell her that he used to attack your bullies; and tearing up when you admit that the two of you eventually did admit to your feelings for one another.

“Did he ever say anything about me?” she asks you, the grey of her eyes duller than you’ve ever seen. She is whispering, because Endeavor is on the other side of the wall—both of you know it, because you can hear him lecturing Shouto. “I tried to help Touya, but he always pushed me away. He said that everything was my fault.” She clutches the fabric of her pants, fingers trembling. “Do you think that he… did he hate me?”

You are not surprised that he said something so hurtful to her. Touya’s frustration toward his mother had been building up to a fever-pitch lately, and you’d noticed his outbursts getting worse and worse. In the months before his death, he’d told you that there was nothing he hated more than seeing her try to get in the way of Shouto’s lessons. With a quirk like hers, he used to say, voice tight and eyes shimmering, she could fight back. But she just lets him hit her. All she does is sit there and cry.

I hate seeing her cry so much. I can't do anything to help.

“You don’t have to worry,” you tell Rei. “Touya was just saying stupid things because he was hurt. He cared a lot about you. I know it.” You watch her try to wipe away her tears, and you desperately want them to stop coming. “He cared about all of you. He even cared about—”

Beyond the wall, a child cries.

Rei stands up. You do as well, but she glances at you carefully, eyes lucid now. “Why don’t you go visit Fuyumi?” she says. It is not a suggestion. “She’s in her room.”

“Okay,” you reply. You try to close your ears to the arguing as you ascend the stairs. Endeavor and Rei never used to fight so openly in front of you when Touya was alive, but the household has been disintegrating ever since his death. His mother has been disintegrating too, Fuyumi has told you—making desperate phone calls in the middle of the night, unable to look at the faces of her children, clinging to a thirteen year old girl whom her son may have loved. She's been wounded too many times, and Touya’s death was the final blow.

(You will visit Rei in the hospital much later on, and you will sit beside her bed and peel her an apple, which is something that she taught you how to do. She will watch the growing spiral of skin and say, "Touya adored you so much. He was always so happy near you.” Her mouth will curve up gently, in the suggestion of peace. “He never smiled at home unless you were visiting. Did you know that?”

Your hands will tremble, and you will have to put down the knife. 

“I'm so sorry,” you will say, “that I couldn't save him. I'm so sorry. I’m so sorry."

You will apologize on repeat, like a broken record, but you will already know that sorry will never be good enough. Sorry will never change how you pushed him toward a futile dream that destroyed him. Sorry will never repair the way that you hurt him, that you made him burn you alive. Sorry won’t erase your promises to heal him no matter what, all of which you broke on that day he burned to death on Sekoto Peak.

Sorry will never fix the fact that he is dead because of you.) 

Todoroki Rei loses a piece of herself after Touya dies, and the rest of her crumbles soon after. On the hundredth day after Touya's passing, she burns the right side of Shouto's face. She is placed into a hospital—willingly, she later confesses to you—and is largely confined to a one-person room. When you visit her, she looks so broken that you are afraid she will shatter like ice. She takes your hands into hers, grey eyes vivid with tears. 

"Please take care of Shouto," she begs. "That boy must hate me now, and that man won't let him see his siblings. Please help him like you helped Touya. Please. Please."

And because you cannot let go of Touya, and because Rei has always protected you, and because you cannot forgive yourself for letting Touya turn to ash and slip through your fingers—

“I will.”

ix. complicity 

After Touya dies and Rei is locked away, you begin to ask questions.

They are questions that you usually try not to think about, questions that you’ve always pushed to the back of your mind. But now you can’t ignore them, because you can’t stop thinking about where things went so wrong, how you went so wrong, how you went from holding hands with Touya at the Star Festival to holding incense between your fingertips at his altar. You can’t stop thinking about things you could have done, things you should have said. You can’t stop replaying that one conversation on Sekoto Peak, where Touya was on the verge of tears as he insisted that he was fine with his father hitting him. It’s normal, he’d kept saying. It’s normal, it’s normal, my father cares about me, that's why he hits me, and even as you looked at his bruises and felt nauseous, you’d eventually relented: Yes, this is all normal. I don’t like it, but it’s normal.

(You will never be able to stop thinking about how you should have been with him on Sekoto Peak, the day he died.)

After Touya burns to death, you start asking all those questions that you've ignored for so long.

You have no one to go to, and you don't know where to start, so without saying anything to anyone, you go on your phone, open a search tab—incognito mode, and you are doing all your browsing at school, not at home—and you start typing in your thoughts. 

Is it normal for someone to hurt themselves?

Is it normal for someone to cry all the time?

Is it normal for parents to hit their children?

How should parents discipline their children?

How should parents train their children?

Is it normal for a man to hit his wife?

Is it normal for your dad to break your ribs?

Every search result you get makes you increasingly sick. Makes you want to throw away your lunch, then throw up your insides, rabbit-apples and all.

What is neglect? 

What is emotional neglect?

What is abuse?

What is emotional abuse?

What is domestic abuse?

Your heart pounds as you skim the results, drowns out the sound of laughing schoolchildren and chirping birds as you continue to ask:

What do you do if your friend is being abused?

What do you do if you’re being abused?

What do I do?

What do I do?

What do I do?

(“Survivor’s guilt is a common response to situations like these,” your fourth therapist will say. “You have to understand this: it isn’t your fault that your friend died.”

His tone will be so gentle, so concerned, so understanding. He will sound so wise, and you will resist the urge to say that this all sounds like bullshit. He doesn't understand. No one will ever understand. No one will ever know that you—top-ranking student in all your classes, UA hopeful, future hero of Japan!—were a bystander.

No one will understand that you still are.)

x. unjust

After you answer all of your questions, you think of reporting Endeavor to the police.

You don’t understand how to make such an accusation. You do understand that no one will take you seriously, because you are a child and Touya just died, and just like the school counsellor, the police will write you off as grief-stricken. Too emotional. Coping with loss; she’s a child and her boyfriend just died, what do you expect? She's imagining these ridiculous stories about Endeavor to rationalize what happened. It's a tragedy. Of course she's confused. 

You also understand that Touya's mother could have maybe helped, but now she’s gone. So you ask your mother instead, and you get into an ugly fight over it. The two of you almost never get into fights—you simply don’t talk back—but this is important enough for you to try, and you think she understands that, because she lets you speak instead of just hitting you.

"Please, please"—you bite your lips, close to tears even though you know it will make your mother angry—"we can't let that man get away with this. We have to do something." 

Your mother looks away. “What goes on in Endeavor’s household has nothing to do with us. There's really nothing we can do.”

"We can report it," you say, almost begging. "We can expose him for what he did to Touya. And what he's doing to Shouto. And we can expose him for how he drove his wife to—how he drove her to—”

"Don't be so foolish ," she interjects. She crosses her arms, looking at you like you are a child spouting nonsense. Rei never looked at Touya like that, no matter how unreasonable he got with her. Rei has never looked at you like that, not even when you troubled her and her son with all your tears. “How would we even go about exposing him? Who would you report it to?”

"The police!" 

Your mother laughs. It sounds more bitter than it does cruel. “You think the police will investigate the Number Two hero? You think they’ll believe that Endeavor got his kid killed?"

You bite your lip. Fleetingly, you are worried you will draw blood. "Then,” you try, “we can report it to the Hero Commission! Isn't that their job in the first place, to regulate heroes?"

Your mother rolls her eyes. She reaches into her pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. You don't have to look at it to know that it's Seven Stars—the stench of that brand is forever burned into your memory, stinking worse than incense.

"You want to report Endeavor to the Hero Commission,” she repeats.

“Yes.”

She sighs. “The Hero Commission takes a cut of all profits from hero merchandising and advertising revenue. They’re also funded through the government, and budgets are ultimately slashed or increased based on public opinion of heroes."

You don't reply, too distracted by the pit in your stomach.

"Endeavor is a huge moneymaker," your mother continues relentlessly. "They won’t care about his kids, or his wife. They might already even know.”

(In ten years' time, Dabi will tell you: "She was right, you know. They wouldn't have given a shit about me." 

You will not say anything in response, eyes downcast. You'll only look up against when a hand touches yours, its fingers warm, but not scalding.

"They wouldn’t have given a shit about you, either," Dabi will murmur, and you will nod. 

No. They didn't care about either of us.)

The insides of your throat itch with a scream. There is smoke on your tongue, tasting like sandalwood and Seven Stars. You wonder if you are on fire, if you are burning from the inside, incensed by Touya’s flames.

“You’re r-really,” you stutter through your sobs, “just going to ignore the fact that h-he’s dead because of Endeavor?” 

“It’s not our problem.” Smoke blows into your face. A hand rubs your back, as if in an attempt to be comforting, but you only feel a wave of revulsion. “It’d only cause trouble for us, if you reported it. With some things in life, you really do just need to look the other way.”

You pull away from her comforting, lying hand. Before you can stop yourself, you’re screaming at her, tears ugly and exposed:

“How could you be so fucking cruel?” 

She slaps you across the face.

xi. unceasing hell

That day, you don’t cry because your mother hits you. You cry because there is nowhere to run. You cry because Touya will not be at the convenience store, or by the bridge, or in the garden of his home. You cry because he will not hold you and tell you that he’ll keep you safe. You cry because he will not bring you to his mother, who will crouch down and wipe away your tears and ask you what’s wrong.

“Stop wailing,” your own mother groans some hours later, when she finds you in the washroom, dry heaving into the sink. She is a broken record, and you’re tired of listening to her. “Why are you even so upset? I know you're sad about that boy, but there's nothing we can do about it.”

You stare at the still, murky water beneath you, trying to calm your breathing. You can pass out from hyperventilation like this—you've done it before—and you can't do it now, because you need to clean up here. Your mother will get mad if you don't. 

"B-but…" You try to stop your lip from quivering. If you cry, you'll only make things worse. "But it hurt." 

"Oh, don't tell me that upset you, that argument that we got into?" Her hands gesture toward the mirror. "There's no point in sulking over it. I barely even hit you, and you're already all healed, anyway." 

You glance up at your reflection, then look down on your body. No split lip. No cigarette burns. No bruised ribs. No broken wrist. 

It's like nothing ever happened.

"See?" your mother says. "You're just fine." Then she gets a little quieter. "No matter what happens to you, you'll always be fine. There’s no need to worry." 

("It doesn't matter what you do to me, Touya.")  

“Now go clean up,” she says, putting a hand on your shoulder. Her voice is so gentle, and you wonder why she does this every so often, this game of pretend where she acts like she never hurt you. You can never keep up with it, just like how you can never keep up with her endless list of reasons to hit you. “Dinner’s ready. I made your favourite, so try to smile a little, won't you? I'll clean up here, so you can go ahead and eat with your father."

(In ten years' time, Dabi will lock you up in his room and make you bleed, his mind brimming with delusions. He will tell you that he wants to drag you into hell with him, and you will think, I've already been living in it.) 

xii. nostalgia

(Dabi will listen to these memories in silence, staring at the static of his television screen. After a moment filled with white noise, he will ask, in a low voice, “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” His throat will sound strange. Strangled with rage. "Even if my mother was locked up, even if I was dead, you could have gone to someone else." 

You stare at the disfigured tissue on your thigh, touching it briefly. The wounds that Dabi gave you will be the only ones that will ever stay on your flesh. His marks will be the only ones that your body ever accepts.

"Nobody would have believed me,” you whisper. “You know that."

More white noise. You see Dabi’s pupils dilate, his eyes darkening by the second. 

“Do your parents still live in the same house?" 

Your breath hitches.

“Why do you ask?”

“You know why.” His breathing is irregular, sharp with adrenaline. “I’m going to find them, and I’m going to kill them."

Your eyes widen. "What? Why?" 

"Because I’d fucking kill anyone who hurts you. Even them.”

Your stomach flips. From nausea or something else, you don't know. Either way, you reply in a small voice: “Don’t. I—I don’t want that, Dabi.”

“Why the fuck not? ” he snarls. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you want to do something? Why the fuck did you just take that shit, for all those years? You could have killed them with your quirk, but you just—you just sat there and took it. ”

His eyes are dark with rage, but you catch the way that his wrecked tear line trembles.

“It wouldn’t help anything,” you say, voice weak. “Hurting them wouldn’t have helped me—wouldn’t have h-helped me feel better.” Your chest hurts, heart aching with accumulated scars. Your throat clogs with pain. 

“Then what the fuck would have helped?” he snaps. “What else could possibly make you feel better?”

“I don’t know!” you cry. You find yourself blurting out ridiculous, too-honest things: “I don’t know. You—you could j-just hold me instead.”

He looks at you, incredulous. “How the hell would that do anything? Why would that fix anything?”

“I don’t know!” you sob. You gather your knees in your arms and your voice pitches high with pain. “I don’t know! It helped when we were kids! I-it was the only thing”—your voice fractures—“it was the only thing that made me feel better.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he snarls. And after a final, derisive glare, Dabi turns around and unlocks the door. It slams on his way out, and he leaves you feeling lonely, anguished, stupid. He isn’t your Touya anymore. Of course he won't hold you. 

You collapse onto the bed, eyes squeezing shut. You cry in a way that rips your voice from your throat, the way you have so often wept in this cage. You cry in a way that you did on the floor of your washroom when you were a child, aching from the things that your mother did to you. You cry in the way you did after Touya died, when your loneliness became unbearable, when you no longer had a place to which you could run.

You are lonely, anguished, stupid. But later that night, you wake when the bed dips behind you. Someone pulls you into their embrace, their body warm with summer heat, and you wonder if you are dreaming. When an arm wraps around you, it feels so familiar, just like the gentle breath on your skin. You feel on your body the hands of a killer, and you think, I know this boy. I know this boy, and I loved him.

For the first time in ten years, you no longer feel so lonely.)

end chapter

notes: Thank you for reading this abomination of a chapter 🥲🥲🥲 I rewrote this no less than five times (with countless editing passes) but I still don’t love it. One particular point I was struggling to convey is that MC and Touya were both abused when they were kids, and they did serious cognitive backflips to rationalize the actions of their abusers—partly to cope, but also because they simply did not know better as they were so young. This led to their wires getting crossed in deeply wrong ways, with both of them learning to associate love with violence (among other things), which set them up for the ongoing horror show of chapters 1-3. I have ZERO confidence that I executed this chapter in a coherent manner though 💀 so I wanted to explain that here. 

Anyhow, if you liked this even a little bit, please do reblog and let me know what you think, or drop a line in my inbox. I’d greatly appreciate it! <3 

FYI, I’ll be taking a longer break before the next chapter, because I want to finish up to chapter 10 before I start posting again! I’m currently revising drafts for chapters 7+8... wish me luck! :-)

cultural notes:

Forms of address: I chose not to work this into the story because I tend to avoid honorifics overall (this is just one thing I tend to localize rather than foreignize in my writing), but reader refers to Rei as 'Touya no okaasan' while Touya is alive, and then switches to calling her 'okaasan' after he dies. Enji, on the other hand, is initially 'Touya no otousan', but is then distanced with 'Todoroki-san' after Touya dies, and then is further demoted to 'Endeavor-san' after the U.A. referral.

“...Floating World—or perhaps a Sorrowful one?” This is a reference to the terms 浮世 (read as “ukiyo” and means “floating world” in reference to the hedonistic culture of the red light districts in the Edo period) and 憂世 (also read as “ukiyo”, meaning “sorrowful world” and refers to the earthly existence, characterized by impermanence and suffering, from which Buddhists seek release.

Touya's name: I translated the kanji for Touya’s name (燈失) into "light" and "arrow". I think due to a meta post on Reddit, it’s quite common in the English fandom to translate 燈 into “lamp”, and certainly that’s the first thing that Google will give you, but I really dislike the "lamp" translation for a number of reasons (the foremost being that it does not preserve the poetry of Touya’s name). After consulting with some Japanese speakers/learners and the JP→CN dictionary, I instead translated 燈 to "light".

"rendered beautifully in stone and sound": this is a reference to both the kanji for his name, as well the reading of the kanji. For those unfamiliar, there are many kanji that can be read as "Touya", multiple kanji that can be used for "light", and numerous ways to read the selected kanji for his name.

Posthumous name: In addition to last chapter's notes, I would like to add that posthumous names cost quite a bit of money to bestow onto the deceased, with longer names being more expensive.

49 days: in many Buddhist traditions, the soul of the deceased is believed to pass into the afterlife after 49 days. Thus, 49 days is the grieving period, with prayers being conducted every 7 days. 100 days is when the final ceremony is conducted in many traditions.

"Unceasing hell" has popped up as a term a few times in this fic—written as 無間地獄/mugen jigoku in Japanese, it is a reference to Avici, the lowest level of hell. Full disclaimer that I actually don't know how the Japanese is typically translated to English; "unceasing hell" is just one way to render the Chinese reading of the same characters.

Terms like "refuge", "poisons", "suffering", "compassion", "delusions", and others that have popped up throughout the fic all have specific Buddhist connotations.

[farewell-itoshisoup]

higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 3

dabi x f!reader, shouto x f!reader

Even if you’re ruined for everyone else, you’re now perfect for him. 

chapter notes: 13.7k+ words of childhood friends to stockholm syndrome! warnings for repeated non-con (graphic and eroticized through Dabi’s POV), themes of abuse and trauma, and one conversation that touches upon suicidal thoughts. Please be careful if you choose to read this chapter!

please find the masterlist for this fic on my blog!

DABI

xxii. conviction

Dabi loses count of the number of times he fucks you.

He’ll never forget his first time with you, of course. It was a revelation, a turning point, his first act of justice. He used to think that he wanted to enact vengeance upon you, but your guilt-ridden expression makes him feel otherwise nowadays. What he’s doing isn’t revenge—it’s retribution. It’s your comeuppance, what you get for trying to erase the past, what you deserve for leaving him behind.

You must think so too, because you never get angry with him for doing this to you.

“I’m sorry, Touya,” you’ll say. Sometimes you’re looking at him; sometimes you’re staring at the ceiling instead. No matter where your eyes are trained, they are lined with tears. “You have every right to be angry.” You choke on your own shame whenever you utter these words, but eventually you learn to stop yourself from crying. You learn that’s the easiest way to get burned. 

You also learn not to talk about his younger brother. 

You're stupid enough to bring up Shouto a few times. Forgetting the burns on your back and hips, so raw and fresh that they still need to be bandaged, you sit up and crawl toward Dabi, eyes wide. 

“Please don’t hurt him,” you keep begging, like a broken record. “It doesn't matter what you do to me… but please don’t hurt him.” 

Because Shouto is innocent, you explain. Because Shouto is nothing but a proper little hero, who just wants to serve the public. Because you keep lying to yourself, saying that Shouto has nothing to do with Endeavor's crimes. Because you keep lying to him, saying that there’s nothing going on between the two of you.

(Dabi remembers the first time he saw you and Shouto together on the news, bright and dazzling even on the screen of his old laptop. It was for some international conference, where his brother was attending in his father’s stead, and you were attending on your own. You’d dragged Shouto onto the floor, put his hands on your waist and urged him to dance. His brother was fucking terrible at it, but with your coaxing, your feet eventually clicked across marble, your movements in time with the live piano, your bodies picture-perfect together.) 

Dabi rapes you after that. He rapes you a second, third, fourth time—all after arguments about his brother, all after your lies. And even though he tries not to burn you—because fucking hell, he hates the stench of your singed flesh—he slips up anyway, pressing more wounds into your body. One on your upper thigh. One just below your breasts. Brings the total count up to four.

During these nights, he often forces you to look at him while he’s inside you, squeezes your cheeks with one hand and turns your head until you’re staring at his ugly, patchwork face. “Why the tears?” he asks, taunting. “Sad that it’s me fucking this pussy, and not my brother?” He likes to lean in, threatening you with his disfigured lip. “Don’t wanna kiss me anymore?”

“No,” you tell him. “That’s not it.” Sometimes you’ll say it between whimpers, while he’s cleaving your legs open; sometimes you’ll say it through strained moans, while he’s seated deep inside you; sometimes you’ll say it quietly, lying on fresh sheets while he’s applying ointment to the imprints of his grip on you.

Sometimes he’ll ask what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, and of course you never answer.

“It doesn’t matter,” you inevitably reply, squeezing your eyes shut. You refuse to look at him in these moments, probably revolted by the sight of him. 

(On that night when your fingers brushed against Dabi’s scars and you told him that you were sorry that you could not heal him, he fled your room, even left the building. He spent a long time just wandering outside, peering into storefront windows. The seam of his scar tingled where you’d touched it, and the bottom ridge of his eye wouldn’t stop prickling. He spent the whole night feeling sick to his stomach, waiting for new skin to grow over his burnt flesh, like a mold.

Even after the sun rose, even after the irritation subsided, he felt uneasy thinking about your hands. Nobody had ever touched his scars like that before, after all. Nobody had ever touched him like that.

Nobody had ever looked at him like that, not since he was burned alive.) 

You try to reason with him, probably thinking that he’ll fall for your sweet words and pretty eyes, just like old times. But it's too bad for you, because he’s not a little kid anymore. Not your Touya.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” you always try, giving him a pleading look as he presses your spine into the mattress. “It’s not too late to go back.” 

How fucking dense are you, Dabi wonders. He tells you, time and time again, that there’s nothing for him to go back to, that he can't return to the hellhole life his father created. He’d rather burn to death. He did burn to death. He’s already been cremated—don’t you know? You’ve burned so much incense for him, offered so many sweets, scattered your memories of him like ash. 

Sometimes you'll argue back. Sometimes you’ll call him crazy. Sometimes you’ll beg for forgiveness. But it never lasts for long, because he’ll force you down and press himself into you, praying you’ll shut up and stop crying. Usually you go quiet because you’re freezing up in pain, face twisting unpleasantly, but sometimes he thinks he's just worn you down. Your demands gradually grow more pathetic throughout the night, each of his thrusts forcing weak little pleas from your lips: “wait, wait” or “slower, it hurts” or “not inside, please not inside.” 

Of course he never goes slow, and of course he always hurts you, and he usually finishes inside you too. Yeah, maybe it’s a little risky even with the pill, but there’s nothing he loves more than pulling out and watching his spend leak out of you. Nothing he likes more than knowing that he's spoiled you from your very insides.

You learn to stop reasoning with him. You learn to stop bringing up Shouto. You learn to stop crying. You only say, “I’m sorry, Touya,” and you spread your legs, trying to relax as he puts his hands on you. You look away, and even when he forces your line of vision in his direction, you’re not really seeing him. No, your eyes are glassy, and he can tell that your mind is someplace else while he’s fucking your body. 

He likes your passivity. He likes that you've succumbed to getting used by him. It's like you're a doll, but strictly for his consumption. 

You're no longer available for public use.

xxv. his

One day, Dabi gets your glassy, pretty facade to crack.

It happens by pure chance, when on a whim he's being less rough than usual and taking his sweet time with you. He isn’t motivated by rage tonight; he just wants to forget about work and the Liberation Front and whatever the fuck Hawks is up to. So he treats you as entertainment, as distraction. His hands are all over you, fingers dragging lightly across your hot skin. His teeth nip your neck and mark a trail all the way down to your breasts, and he can’t help but linger here, because holy fuck, they look good. You look good. It occurs to him that he doesn’t look at you too often when he fucks you, and he's not sure why.

(Dabi was rarely ever bothered by burn wounds. Not his own; and for a very long time now, not his victims’. But after his first time with you, when he looked at the shadows of his hands on your shoulder blade and hip, when he looked at the blood between your legs, when he listened to your kicked-puppy cries—he felt strangely ill.) 

You’re good for him tonight. You don’t squirm; you stay quiet, and he quickly feels himself getting hard as he touches you. His fingers and mouth play with the peaks of your breasts, and you do something new—

You moan.

You moan, and it’s quiet, but it's still one of those pornographic noises he used to imagine when he jacked off to pictures of you. He sucks in a breath, feels his cock throb . Maybe he only imagined it, confused reality with one of his fantasies. But no—he flicks a nipple once and you whimper. Your torso jerks up at him, body wanting him even if your mind doesn't.

His lip curls.

"You starting to enjoy this?" he says, his hands still working. They're rougher now, cruel, and they make your expression twist with conflict.

"No," you say quickly. "No, no—I don't…" You haven't done this in a long time, but you try to deny him: "I don't want—"

Your voice is cut off by a strangled moan when he pinches your nipple, and he feels himself smiling, staples straining to keep his expression together. He reaches down and runs a finger along your opening, finds wetness there for the first time.

(Dabi stood in that shower for long, just watching his black dye and your red blood run off his body and down the drain.)

"I don't know about that," he replies as your thighs quiver. Then he leans down and drops his voice into your ear. "Sure seems like you're liking this."

His finger starts to circle your clit, and you don't talk anymore, just whimpering as his hands continue to play with you. You're getting so wet, so filthy, he can hear it, and he can see it too: glistening in between your legs, and in the shame in your expression. It's more pronounced than usual, the distress you're wearing at your own body's reactions. This is a different kind of humiliation than before, after all. Before was him forcing you, violating some perfect girl out of a magazine. This is you giving in, yielding to him like a whore. 

When he pushes himself inside you, you cry. It's strangled and halfway to a sob, but he can tell you're enjoying it from the way you clench around him. He feels your wetness dripping down him with each one of his thrusts, coating his thighs.

(You had tried to walk afterwards, Dabi could tell, from the way that your inner thighs were now wet with blood. You had tried to walk, maybe even run, and probably you failed because you were still listless on his bed. You didn't struggle when he approached you, but you flinched at the brush of the wet cloth in his hands.)

"Holy shit," he groans. “You feel way fucking better than usual." His hips shift just slightly; you whine as his cock starts rubbing against a particular spot inside you—then you gasp when he keeps doing it. You're panting like a bitch in heat, desperate for his touch—desperate for him, despite the fact that he's hideous. That he's fucked up. That he's scarred up and rotting from the inside-out.

And he won't let you live it down. His thumb grazes your cheekbone after he lifts your head up, remarking, "Can't believe you're getting off to being fucked like this." He feels a grin cross his face. "Not much of a hero anymore, huh?" 

You whimper. "I don't," you try again, your whine punctuating the obscene sound of slapping skin, "I don't want, I don't want this—"

"Really? That's not what your body's telling me," he cuts you off. He grabs your hips for better purchase, starts pounding into you until you’re squealing and grabbing at the sheets. Dabi feels himself smiling at the obscene, wet noises coming from your body. "Nah, you're not a hero anymore,” he decides. “You're just my whore."

Just his whore. Just his toy.

Just his.

You shake your head, protesting, but he's relentless. He keeps going, keeps talking until there are tears rolling down your eyes. 

If only all those interviewers and fanboys could see you now. If only those countdown clock fuckers could. If only they could see how he's fucked your cunt loose and useless, and remember—he tells you this aloud, because this is important for you to know—if your cunt is worthless, then the rest of you is too.

And oh yeah, now he's just remembered something. Since he's recording that video of himself, he might as well film you too. Then the world can see what you've become, what he's made you.

"No, no no no," you protest, eyes widening when he says this. "Please no. You can do anything to me, but please don't…"

He grins, liking the sound of it the more you beg. "Your career would be ruined, huh? And just imagine—" Shit, you're tight. He reaches down to where you're joined, thumb on your clit, and now your hips are bucking up. "—just imagine what my father would think, seeing you getting fucked like this. He wouldn't want his masterpiece getting my sloppy seconds, now would he? Nah, you're too dirty for his precious little Shouto now." 

No, you'll never be good enough for Shouto now. But it's a different story with him.

Dabi starts thrusting harder, pounding into you until your eyes are rolling into your head, until your mouth is open and your lips are shiny with drool. You're wailing and your fist is curling into his sheets and now your pussy is clenching down hard around him, pulsing around his cock—and oh fuck, his nails are digging into your thighs and now he's spilling himself inside you, right into your womb. There's so much that he feels it seeping out around him, when he shifts.

"Holy shit," he mumbles, letting himself collapse on top of you, because you've never felt so good before. You don't reply, just panting heavily into his neck, your lips grazing against his mutilated flesh. His body must feel hot like this, pressed up right against yours, but you don't squirm. You just let him lie on top of you, catching his breath.

You feel soft underneath him. Soft, yielding, not pushing him away. Almost peaceful.

When he finally glances at you, he notices that your brows are knotted. Your breathing is slow, uneven. You look dazed and confused, like you’re not sure what happened. It’s not like any time before this, when you’re glassy-eyed and your mind’s gone. No, you’re clearly struggling to process something right now. He stares at your dumb expression, the seconds ticking by, and then he realizes—

“Was that your first orgasm?”

You stiffen, going so still that you stop breathing. His eyes widen and he finally sits up.

“No fucking way—”

But then you’re tearing up, and you’re looking so ashamed, and now he's laughing.

Dabi stops being so rough after that, because he wants more of those out of you—wants your body to want him, even if you don't. He starts taking his time with you, until his hands and mouth are familiar with every curve and crevice of your body. He makes you come every night, forces out orgasms even when you're just staring vacantly at the ceiling. He doesn’t care where your mind is, as long as you’re wet for his enjoyment, as long as your body eagerly accepts him. 

Sometimes, while he's lying next to you afterwards and just listening to your breathing, you'll come back to him. And you panic when you do, your empty eyes filling up with shame, so wet and pretty, and you'll say, "I'm not. I’m not—not any of those things y-you call me..." 

But eventually, you stop protesting. Eventually, after being used so many times, you learn your place. 

(Touya died a long time ago, but his ghost clings to this dream of you. It's a dream where he runs away with you, where he goes to school with you, where he is good enough for you.) 

Eventually, you accept that even if you're ruined for everyone else, you're now perfect for him.

xxiv. tenderness 

After you stop crying, it gets easier. 

For a long time, you couldn't completely suppress your tears in the aftermath. So of course, Dabi ended up getting unbearable headaches each time. No amount of painkillers could undo the throbbing in his skull, each pulse set off by one of your sobs. He didn't stick around for long when you did that—he always zipped up his pants, gave you a once-over to make sure you were in decent shape, and left.

("Some hero you are," his mother often said. "Always running away from your problems." )

But it's easier now that you stay quiet. The long silence after the sex doesn't give him a headache, doesn't ignite any nausea. Dabi lies beside you in bed, listening to your breathing, grateful that it's no longer punctuated by your sobbing. It declines from panting and moaning into a slow, peaceful rhythm, and his body melts into the mattress. Relaxed. Sometimes he even lights up a cigarette, and you'll make a small noise of complaint at the smell, but he tells you that you'll get used to it. 

"But it isn't good for you," you say softly, once, and Dabi's eyes narrow.

"And I'm sure this isn't good for you either, princess," he says. "Worry about yourself a little more, why don't you?" 

He's not talking about second-hand smoking. He thinks you might not be talking about the cigarettes either, because you get this sad, pathetic look in your eyes. On a whim, his thumb will sometimes run along your cheekbone in these moments, sometimes might drift down and brush against your mouth. He doesn't really know why he does this, but he can't stop the impulse. Probably it's a habit from the rare occasions he fucks your face and leans down after he finishes, smearing his spend across your lips.

("Who keeps hurting you, huh? Was it that asshole Takahashi?" Touya frowned as he held your face in his hands, his thumbs brushing at the fat tears rolling down your cheeks. Then he wiped away the blood on your lip too, careful and featherlight because he didn't want to hurt you. "Just tell me who, and I'll send my Hell Flames at him.") 

He is not being gentle when he touches you. Your eyes still flutter shut. 

Also on a whim, he sometimes asks questions. All stupid, inane shit that keeps surfacing in his mind. Things like, How many people have you dated? Did you ever fool around with them? How come you were a virgin?

You're evasive for a long time, but as the nights pass, you let slip your answers. I've only dated a couple. I never got far with them. I never liked it when people touched me.

(But you liked it when he touched you. Or your body liked it, always pressing into his hands, always so wet for him, always opening up for him. And after a while, it started making him feel good, knowing that he was the only person who could pleasure you like this, could dirty you like this.)

Sometimes you're bold enough to ask questions too. How many people have you slept with? Did you love any of them? How many did you rape? 

Dabi's usually a lot less evasive about his answers than you are. I've lost count. I never loved any of them. Only you.

That last answer makes you go very quiet. Your expression becomes strange, and he can't detangle the emotions.

One night, you turn onto your side and give him that tired look you once did at Sekoto Peak. Instead of the smoke of your smouldering flesh, you look at each other through the drifting poison of his cigarette. 

"You've never raped anyone else," you whisper. "So why me?" 

He doesn't look at you when he replies, "Felt like it." 

"That's all?" You sound disappointed. What you could have been hoping for, Dabi doesn't know. 

"That's all," he repeats, still turned away.

There's a long, drawn out silence, where your question keeps echoing in Dabi's mind and it's driving him crazy. Impulsively, he tries to drown it out with his own:

"Why didn't you like it?" 

Your gaze jerks to him. "Huh?" 

"Why didn't you like it," he repeats, "when other people touched you?" 

Your breathing is so slow now, inhaling his poison at a leisurely pace. 

"I just never felt like having sex."  

"That's all?"

A long pause now. He's looking at you, but you've turned away.

"That's all," you confirm, and he accepts the answer readily, not bothering to question it. He doesn't think about what-ifs, after all. He doesn't do daydreams.

Dabi never presses further than that in these moments. He just turns toward the ceiling and listens to your breathing as his lips touch his cigarette. Smoking always relaxes him, so sometimes he'll even fall asleep like this, on his back, laying next to you. 

None of his questions really matter at all, he always thinks as he drifts off. You don't matter to him. You don't. It's just the post-fuck endorphins that make him so relaxed, so talkative around you. It doesn't matter who you've dated or how far you got with them or why you were a virgin. It doesn't matter that it never felt right for anyone to touch you but he can make you cum with his fingers alone. It doesn't matter that out of everyone he’s slept with, everyone that he’s ever felt anything for, you were the only one he raped. 

(I never loved any of them. Only you.)

You don't matter to him. You don't. But he still stays, sleeps, and sometimes even dreams.

xxv. denial 

Dabi doesn't think too much of what you do when you're alone. In the beginning, after he first captures you, you do a bunch of idle things during the day: you watch TV, flip through magazines, try on all his shirts and sprawl yourself across the bed like you own the place. You eat whatever meals he brings you, usually finishing all of it. You take care of yourself, changing out your bandages and showering often enough that he runs out of shampoo.

That's what you do before he starts fucking you.

He doesn't keep track of what you do after. 

He's too busy with other things to keep an eye on you. The Liberation Front is on the move, and he's in charge of the final preparations before they act at large. He has to recruit. He has to train people. He has to take care of security. He does this over the course of his long days and long nights, and he doesn't bother to seeing you beyond using your body and the occasional post-sex conversation. There’d be no point.

(Before he started raping you, he sometimes spent slow afternoons in his room with you, listening to you talk. You never mentioned heroes or villains or anything in between. You'd say things like, What's your favourite movie now? I really enjoyed Helter Skelter, have you seen it? Or, Do you watch any shows? I watched a bunch of Terrace House last night, while you were out. Or, I had such a bad dessert craving earlier today. Say, do you still have a sweet tooth? And once Toga had ordered a crepe cake and dumped the leftovers on him, which was annoying since it was way too sugary for him. And the way your face lit up when you saw that leftover slice of cake was just stupid. Why the fuck were you so happy when you were trapped with a villain? 

And why the fuck did he keep going back to hear you talk?)

Even though he doesn't bother talking to you anymore, he notices some changes. You don't smile anymore. You don't cycle through his clothes, just sticking to the things he bought you. You're always curled up on his bed, as if trying to take up as little space as possible. Your takeout boxes are never finished; sometimes, they look entirely untouched. He has to drag you into the shower at times, and he's always the one dressing your wounds now. You sleep for an absurd amount of time, and always deeply. 

One day he comes home, and you don't wake up.

He's halfway through pulling off your shorts when he realizes this. He's touched you so much, but your body is perfectly still, and that's unusual—he can usually make you squirm in such a way that you'll wake up. But you stay asleep, unresponsive, and it leaves a coldness in his stomach despite his body always running hot.

"Hey," he snaps, "wake up." 

Silence. 

"Hey." He climbs on top of you, leans over you and taps on your cheek with a hand. "Wake up, princess. Don't you hear me?" 

Still no reply. 

Dabi keeps talking at you, starts to shake you, but it's useless. He even snarls at you: "Hey, when did I say you could fucking die?" But you just lie there, eyes closed and not moving.

His fingers dig into his palms. 

No, no, no. It's not supposed to be like this. You aren't supposed to pass away. You can't be put in your place if you're immortalized as a martyr. 

You can't be his if you're dead. 

Dabi only trusts Ujiko as far as he can throw him, but the thought of you staying like this—doll-like, a corpse, trapped in the death process—clouds his mind. He can't let it happen. He can't let you leave him, now that he finally has you in his grip. 

His scars start to itch beneath his eyes. He wonders if he overdid it with the flames last night, if they'll start to bleed, but he doesn't have time to check. He has to take you to that doctor.

When Dabi picks you up, he loops one arm beneath your knees and puts the other against your back. He presses you against his chest, and he maybe feels you shift, leaning into him in your sleep. (You have to be asleep. Not comatose. Not dying. You're not allowed to be anything but asleep.) You're so soft, practically melting into his body. It feels strange to him, but oddly familiar. 

("I figured out it was you from the way you held me," you told him after he revealed his identity to you. Your gaze was so soft that he felt himself squirming underneath it, disgusted.) 

He's not holding you. He wouldn't ever. You're crazy. You're delusional. He's not holding you, because he's not your Touya anymore. You're just dead weight when you're passed out like this. That's why you're in Dabi's arms right now.

xxvxi. split

Dabi's eyes are hawk-like on Ujiko. He hovers over your sleeping body, watching the lines running into your arms. He makes sure that it's only saline dripping into you, and not some experimental drug. 

"Hey, doc," he says, voice low. "Don't think I won't light this place up if you do anything funny to her."

Ujiko doesn’t seem perturbed at all by Dabi’s presence. "Empty threats," he dismisses. "You can't destroy this place, and you can’t destroy me. You need the Nomu. You need the PLF. Shigaraki and Re-Destro would kill you." 

Dabi’s lips twitch down in a quiet snarl, and a million thoughts run through his head: that he doesn't give a fuck about the Liberation Front; that Re-Destro could burn for all he cares; that his only real priorities boil down to his father and to you. He wants justice for your betrayal. He wants vengeance for his father’s abuse. And he wants to invert society and make it hostile to you both.

But the Nomu and the Liberation Front are all means to his ends. So is Ujiko. Dabi reins in the heat of his flesh, hot with coals of rage, and settles for giving Ujiko a cold stare. “Don’t worry, doctor. As long as I don’t let you die, Shigaraki will be fine.” For the briefest of moments, his fingers flicker with red. “If I survived 2000°C, I’m sure you could manage a cool 150.”

Ujiko glances at him through his thick glasses, but doesn’t say much after that. With how Dabi glowers as he sits in front of your bed, he can probably tell that Dabi is crazy enough to attack if he's provoked, even if it's short of total destruction. Ujiko keeps his actions clean and transparent: draws your blood, runs some tests on it, checks your saline drip. No injections. No quirk usage. 

He sits there for a few hours. He doesn’t take his eyes off you, because who knows what kind of psycho might breeze through Ujiko’s lab? There’s a lot of them in the Liberation Front, after all.

He starts to feel like a guard dog. Or maybe just a mad, vicious one. 

(“Touya,” his mother told him, crouching down in front of him, “You must always protect her. Remember that.”)

Twice comes around once. Even Toga. They both seem surprised at his behaviour.

"Is she your girlfriend?" Toga asks, peering curiously at you, her voice giddy. "Say, she's really cute. How come she fell for a guy like you?” She looks up at Dabi, tiny quirk in her lips. “If it’s working out between you two, do you think Izuku and I could get together?”

Dabi refrains from rolling his eyes. “Sure, the first step is to kidnap him. Then lock him up in your room. It’s real romantic, I promise.”

He’s humouring Toga right now, but finds none of what she’s saying even remotely funny. For one, you look ugly as fuck like this, covered in bruises and burns and—Dabi's now realizing—looking a little bit like your muscles have wasted. There are bags under your eyes, so severe that it looks like you haven't slept right in weeks. Nobody could possibly find you cute like this.

And calling you his girlfriend. What a fucking joke. Between her crush on Stain and now her obsession with Izuku, Dabi’s always known that Toga is delusional about personal relationships, but calling you his girlfriend has to be a joke. Everyone in the League knows why Dabi asked to keep you in his room. Everyone knows what kind of person he is. 

But Twice keeps saying the same kind of shit as Toga.

"You have to take better care of your girl, Dabi!"

“She's not my girl.”

“Aw, you don’t have to be shy! She seems like a sweetheart, and you’re a great guy. How come you don’t treat her right?” Then Twice splits, and Dabi feels like he's splitting too. "This is your prisoner, right? Shigaraki said you were just using her to blow off some steam. If she dies, you can just get another one. How come you’re so sad?”

“I'm not sad,” Dabi snaps, but then he goes quiet. Both sides of Twice wait for an explanation, but Dabi has nothing to offer. He just stares at your sleeping form, not knowing how to answer. 

xxvii. fear

“Touya?”

His head jerks up, his fragile dream disturbed by your whisper. He sits upright in his chair, looking down at you. You’re dazed and confused, in a way that’s different from how you are during sex, when your mind is still collecting itself. Right now, you seem alert even if your body is still—you’re simply disoriented and frightened. 

“Touya, where are we?”

He puts a finger over your lips, and you stiffen.

“It’s Dabi,” he whispers. “Dabi when we’re in front of other people.”

You find the energy to nod, and he lifts away his hand.

“You passed out on me,” he says. “Weren’t waking up, so I had to take you to the doctor.” His eyes narrow. “What's wrong with you, huh?”

You stare, giving him a stupid, wide-eyed look. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

He snorts. “Yeah, you did a lot wrong. Why the fuck haven’t you been eating or drinking? And—why the fuck did you overdose on so many pills?” Drewell and Tylenol, mainly. He frowns—not out of concern, but simply because that’s the most pathetic possible way to die. Suicide? Touya didn’t kill himself while he was living with his nightmare of a father, and Touya didn’t kill himself while he was starving on the streets, and Dabi’s only wanted ever wanted to die to drag Endeavor down with him. His life has been absolute hell on Earth and he's fine. So why the fuck would you try to off yourself?

It takes everything for him not to scream at you.

When he starts voicing his thoughts, though, your face just sours. It makes him stop, because—well, he's just never seen you so annoyed.

“I wasn’t trying to die,” you say quietly, strange tension in your voice. “I was just in a lot of pain, and I wanted it to stop. That's why I took all the Tylenol.”

It's true. It's true that you've been in a lot of pain, because you haven't been taking care of your injuries. 

“And,” you add, “The Drewell was to make me sleep better."

Right. Because of the nightmares. They were an unpleasant discovery for him when he started falling asleep after fucking you. Once or twice, he's been woken up by pained breathing and familiar crying, the sound of you babbling in your sleep and begging for him to stop. I'm sorry, Touya. I'm so sorry. You have every right to be angry. But please, it hurts. 

You seem unaware that he knows about these nightmares, because you don't explain anything to him. You simply finish, "So I took more Drewell than usual." You glance up at him with uncertainty, as if assessing whether he'll snap again. After a moment, you shrink under his stare and say, “I’m sorry, Tou—Dabi. I'm sorry, Dabi." 

Even though you're staring at him with such discomfort, a suffocating tension has just been released from his chest. He slumps against the back of his chair. 

"Fucking hell," he gripes. "And—what about eating and drinking?" 

You shrug, glancing away. "I don't have much of an appetite these days."

"Why." 

You look at him, confused. Or maybe you're looking at him like he's confused. You sound exhausted when you say, "I just... haven't been feeling well." 

Ujiko had floated the notion of PTSD or catatonia or some other kind of severe neurosis to him. We can't be sure unless I arrange a full psychiatric assessment and treatment, he had said, but to be honest, I'd rather spend the money on converting her into a High End. Getting a psychiatrist will be difficult with her circumstances, and we'll be killing her soon anyway.

Dabi tries to imagine some doctor probing you about your trauma—which is, well, probably him—and then locking you up into a psych ward. Or he imagines Geten icing you, locking you into suspended animation forever. Or he thinks about your body floating in a glass tank, distorting more and more every day. 

He looks at you, and replies, "Fine. We'll figure it out." 

Your brow furrows. "What?" 

"We'll figure something out," he says, "so that you don't kick the bucket." Before you can do anything else, he's already pulling you up by the arm and ripping the IV drip out of your veins. You wince and, too surprised to be scared, send him an incredulous look. 

"What are you doing?" 

"Getting you out of here. You need to be back in my room." He glances around. "The League wants you to be their latest Nomu, remember?" You just frown, staring at the blood welling up where he'd just torn out the needle. Why you're acting so overdramatic, he doesn't know—he's inflicted much worse pain on you. "C'mon," he urges. "Let's move."

And you do try to move, face scrunched up in concentration as you push yourself off the bed. But it's like you've forgotten how to walk or something—every step is unsteady, like you're a newborn deer. Completely defenseless. You nearly trip, and Dabi feels his jaw clenching.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." 

You make a small noise when Dabi picks you up, clearly not expecting it. This is the first time you've been fully conscious while he's carried you, and he tries to ignore the way your eyes have widened or how intently you're looking up at him. He doesn't have time to correct whatever ideas you're getting, because he just wants to get you the fuck away from this laboratory. 

"Hey."

He freezes midstep. Looks up, sees Ice Bastard, and tries not to curse. 

"What're you looking at?" Dabi says, voice cool.

"Your chew toy. What else?" Geten's hood is down today, so Dabi can clearly see the careful study that he's giving you. "Not done playing with her yet? I know Ujiko wants new material." 

"Shigaraki gave me free reign with her," Dabi drawls. "So I can do whatever the hell I want." His voice sounds calm, but for every step that Geten takes toward the two of you, his eyes narrow, and his insides burn. He doesn't want this bastard to even look at you. 

Geten seems to detect the malevolence, backing down. "If that's what the leader says, then so be it," he says, frowning at you. "Be as depraved as you want. But don't make it a problem for the rest of us. She's a waste of valuable resources." He waves at your treatment bed. 

Ice Bastard leaves before Dabi can retort, leaving him snarling. A waste of valuable resources, he keeps hearing in his head. Without even realizing it, Dabi's grip tightens and he presses you tightly against his body. 

After a minute of fuming, he reminds himself that now’s not the time to pick a fight, and he proceeds with carrying your dead weight toward his room. After the two of you are far from Geten and the halls are empty except for yourselves, your body shifts in his arms, melding itself into him. Why it’s doing that, Dabi has no fucking clue. 

"You sure are clingy," he remarks, voice dripping with annoyance even if it's quiet.

A pause. 

"Sorry," you whisper into his chest, voice frail. "Force of habit."

(The next time Touya saw you barefoot and running from your bullies, he didn't feel so awkward about holding you. He knew to wrap his arms around you, and he knew to let you press yourself against him and put your face into his shoulder. He knew to stay like that, to let you take your time crying, and that if he said things like, I’ll protect you, and, I’ll kick Takahashi’s ass for you! then your sobs would eventually soften and maybe even give way to laughter.) 

What a stupid thing to do, to cling so strongly to someone who routinely rapes you. What a deranged act, to lean into someone who doesn't even view you as human. Don’t you remember all those names he’s called you? Don’t you remember how much he’s made you bleed? 

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Dabi drops you onto his bed, revolted. 

xxviii. omission

When Dabi pressed Ujiko for a way to make you better, the list of treatments he'd prescribed had been nothing less than ridiculous. His first recommendation was basically spitting in Dabi's face: For something like a suicide attempt? Therapy. 

What a joke. He's not going to get you therapy for the trauma he gave you. He'd given the doctor a dry look, and Ujiko had continued, knowing that it was a lost cause: Well, she is severely dehydrated and has several vitamin deficiencies. So eating and hydrating.

Okay. Okay, food he can do. He can force feed you if he has to. 

And she has a vitamin D deficiency, so sunlight. 

No fucking way, he'd said. Being locked up in his room means no sunbathing. So Ujiko shrugged and told him that you could get vitamins for that, but they wouldn't be metabolized quite the same way as actual sun. Dabi goes to the store anyway and picks them up. When he tosses them at you, along with several other bottles, you fumble to catch them. Mostly you miss, letting them drop and roll across the mattress. You stare blankly at each container, face still set in slow disorientation. 

"These are for me?" 

"Who else?" He gives you a dry look, even as he empties his grocery bag onto the nightstand: a disgusting number of protein bars, and several bottles of Pocari Sweat. "I'm not the one with fucking scurvy." 

Slow blinking. "I have scurvy?" 

"Well, you haven't been eating." He drops onto the chair by his bed. "What do you expect?"

"Oh." 

You don't reply after that, just turning over the bottle in your hands. Dabi grimaces when he notices how thin your fingers have gotten, at least in comparison to what he remembers from your arrival. "Why haven't you been eating?" he asks again, even though he already knows the answer. 

You're still staring at the label. 

"I haven't been feeling well," you reiterate quietly.

("I haven't been feeling well lately, Touya," you told him one day, rubbing at your eyes. There were dark circles under your eyes, and even though you had healing powers, you seemed so frail in that moment.

He held your hand, asked you—) 

"How come?"

You don't look at him, still just studying the bottle.

"You remembered," you comment.

"Remember what?" Dabi's eyes narrow. 

"Remembered what supplements I used to take," you whisper. "When I was a kid, I mean." You glance at a package on the mattress, with a picture of green candies and a handful of grapes. D3, it says. "You even remember the flavour of the vitamin gummies I liked." 

(Touya always peered curiously at you after joint training sessions, watching you grab bottles of Pocari Sweat out of your knapsack. Power bars too, often, and various bottles labelled with all letters of the alphabet: D, E, Fe, C... "My quirk burns through a lot of energy and vitamins," you once explained. "So I have to eat all the time."

"You can't heal without them?"

"That's right. I'd get sick or pass out.") 

"They were just the first things I saw," Dabi dismisses, and you choose not to comment. "Answer my question. Why won't you eat?"  

A long silence. You put down the bottle, shrugging.

"Takeout just doesn't sit well in my stomach." 

Fine. If you don't want to say it, that's fine.

"I'll sort that out," he says brusquely. "Don't die in the meantime." 

He stands up, turns toward the door. There's no point in staying any longer.

"Dabi." 

He stops.

"What?" 

"Why don't you just let me die?" 

Even though your voice is weak, your eyes look a little hopeful. Dabi feels a wave of disgust. 

Because isn't it obvious? It's the same reason why his father can't die. Dead heroes are immortalised. Living ones can be disgraced. Death would be too good for you, after what you've done to him. 

It's not because he cares about you. Don't be delusional. 

"Okay," you say. You look down again, not exactly looking sad, but definitely resigned. "I understand."

He leaves the room without further comment, but this last interaction keeps replaying in his head. People have been calling him 'Dabi' for years now, but to hear it from your lips is something else altogether. It doesn't sound right in your voice. It doesn't sit correctly in his ribs. His teeth grind together the longer he thinks of it, and his flesh aches where his jawbone used to be, before he was cremated.

Whatever. Who cares what you call him?

He stays away from his room for a long while after that, somehow unable to circle back. 

xxix. want

Dabi doesn't touch you for a long time after that.

Mostly, it's because he's now increasingly busy. The lieutenant title doesn't come without its obligations, especially since the PLF is currently posturing for an uprising. But he also feels absolutely no desire for your body. He's entered your room a few times fully with the intention of fucking you, but he never even got as far as undoing his belt. The sight of you, wrapped up in his sheets and feebly trying to get okayu into your mouth just kills his sex drive without fail.

But he still visits routinely, mostly to drop off food. Nobody else is allowed in and out of the room, after all.

Sometimes he'll check over your body too, to make sure that you aren't dying. He'll take your temperature with a thermometer, because his body runs at 39°C so his hand would be useless—but sometimes he finds himself pressing his palm against your forehead anyway. Sometimes his fingers press against your wrist, just over your pulse. Sometimes his thumb skims your lips, while he thinks about how much he misses fucking you. And also while he thinks about how bizarre it is to touch you without having sex with you. 

Sometimes he talks, too.

"You feeling better?" he asks one day, lingering by your bed on some strange impulse.

You pause, staring down at the porridge in your spoon.

"Sort of." 

Sort of, so not actually. Still unfuckable, then. You don't look remotely like that shallow, vapid hero in the magazines anymore. Now you just look like the ghost of a girl he once knew.

He plays with the cigarette in his fingers, even though it's unlit. The silence in the slow, syrupy moments after sex had felt so comfortable, had been so easy to fall asleep blanketed in. But this silence is suffocating, feels like smoke is in his lungs.

"I'm making a video," he says.

You look up, waiting for him to finish. 

Dabi thinks for about two seconds before he decides, "I want you to see it."

Careful regard. "Okay." 

"Not now," he adds, "but later. I have to leave for a while. Got PLF business to handle." At your uncertain expression, he adds, "I'll get someone to bring you food."

It doesn't dispel the tension on your face. "How long will you be gone?" 

"A few days." When you exhale, he can't stop himself from sardonically adding, "Don't miss me too much." 

He expects you to look tired or maybe even annoyed again, but you just wilt a little. Something complicated is in your expression. It's halfway to pain but also tinged with something soft.

"Okay," you say quietly. "I'll be waiting for you. Stay safe." 

"Stay safe?"

You cannot be fucking serious.

He ends up laughing in your face, but the words make him feel strange. It's not like your crying or begging, which sets off immediate headaches. No, his body is echoing with something else. He's thinking of how your frail body felt when he carried you to Ujiko's bed. He's thinking of those calm moments in bed with you. And he's thinking—

("You're gonna be away for so long!" you exclaimed to him, sitting on the floor of his room. Touya was going to leave for a family trip to Hokkaido in the morning, so this would be your last time seeing each other in a while. "I'm gonna be so bored without you."

"Nah, you got a lot going on right now. You won't even notice that I'm gone!" 

He stopped. Touya had meant to comfort you, but for some reason, the words came out sounding sort of sad instead.

You frowned. "That's not true." You lowered your voice, like you were embarrassed someone might overhear the two of you. "I'll be counting down the days 'til you're back, so text me as soon as you're home, okay?" 

You get a little quiet then, running a thumb over his burn.

"And take care of yourself, please. I won’t be around to heal you while you're gone.") 

—and now he's thinking that he should fuck you one last time, before he goes.

Not violently. Not to humiliate. He wants to fuck you with the slow kind of pace he uses when it's for leisure. He wants to feel you shaking underneath him, sighing and moaning into his ear, so warm and wet for him. You accept him so easily in those moments, body soft against his.

But he looks at you again, still wasted and ghostlike and defeated, and the desire fades. 

xxx. doubt

Soon enough, Spinner's driving a couple of the Liberation Front members north and Dabi's trying not to throw up on Hawks' wings. They're chasing some lead on a medium-time villain that they'd like to either recruit or assassinate, depending on how negotiations go. All the while, Dabi tries to keep his mind off you, but he finds you at the periphery of his mind at all moments, ever-present. Lingering.

And it's different from how you lingered in his mind before. As a teenager, every image of you sent him into a spiral of resentment, so violent that it made every part of his body burn. After he caught you, if he thought of you while on the clock, it was usually about how he'd like to be in his room fucking you, rather than doing Shigaraki's bitch work.

But it's different now. Nowadays, there's no resentment and no lust. He's wondering instead if you're doing better or if you're wasting away and what a pain in the ass it would be if it were the latter. He doesn't want to take you to Ujiko and watch over you like a dog. He doesn't want to carry your dead weight ever again. 

He tries to stop having these distracting thoughts, but it's impossible with Twice's constant texts.

Dabi, Toga and I met your girlfriend today. Like you said, she's under the weather, but she ate everything we gave her! We’re taking good care of her.

Dabi, your girlfriend asked about you today. I think she's worried about you. I gave her an update but do you just want to talk to her on the phone instead?

Dabi, this girl is crazy! Nuts! Why the hell would she like a guy like you, huh? How'd you land this sweet piece of ass! 

Dabi, man, I gotta give you some advice as a friend. You have to treasure your girlfriend, okay? She's hurt pretty bad but I think she'll give you a second chance. I know you like her a lot, so it'll work out if you just try!

Dabi, your broad is so annoying. She cries all the time when she talks about you! Why do you even like her?

Mostly Dabi ignores the texts about you and only replies about other things—more important things. Twice is a bad judge of character anyway, so he's probably falling for your act the way that he's falling for Hawks' lies. There's no way you care about him. You’d probably be relieved if he died out here.

So he doesn’t reply about you. Doesn’t talk on the phone to you. Doesn’t send any messages for you.

Then one day, Hawks holds up his phone and says, "Yo, Dabi! Let's take a selfie together."

A flat stare. "Why?" 

"Your girlfriend wants to know if you’re doing okay. Twice is telling her that you are, but I think a picture would be better so she could see that you’re fine." 

"No." 

Hawks frowns. "Why not? You're so cold to her! You should stop ignoring Twice's texts about her too, y'know—her feelings are being hurt."

Dabi snorts. "I've hurt a lot more than her feelings." 

"Why?" Hawks flies over and puts an arm across Dabi's shoulder. He leans in conspiratorially, like they're buddies, and Dabi tries not to make a face. "Between you and me," Hawks says quietly, "if I were dating the Number Twelve hero, I'd be a lot nicer to her."

Dabi's eyes narrow and he pulls away from Hawks, but he's careful not to look as pissed as he feels. "I guess Twice told you who she is?"

"Mhm. I mentioned I'd worked with her a few times, and that I was worried since she's gone missing. Who'd have guessed that she'd be with you this whole time?"

"Yup." Dabi feels his mouth curl at the opportunity. "You can tell your hero friends to stop looking for her. She turned to our side, same as you.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Hawks sounds surprised, but his gold eyes look too sharp for Dabi to fall for that act. “I’d love to meet her, then. I’m sure we’d have a lot to talk about.”

“When she’s feeling better, sure.”

“She’s unwell?” Dabi starts walking, wants to catch up with Spinner and hopefully turn the conversation back to work. But Hawks trails after him, not shutting up. “What happened? Did she get hurt? That shouldn’t be possible with her quirk.”

“It’s not.”

“Ohh. Wait, I get it—trouble in paradise, huh? You guys are arguing?” The two of them are matching footsteps now. “What happened? Y’know—I took her out on a couple of dates. I’m sure I could give you some advice.”

A flash of heat.

“Huh.”

“What?”

“She’s always said that the two of you never dated.”

“Oh, yeah. We would have only gone public if it got serious, but it never did. I don’t think she liked me much—not in that way, I mean. As friends, we get along well. But I think she only gave me a chance because her manager thought it would be good PR if it worked out.”

His fingertips cool.

“I was talking with her stylist once,” Hawks continues, “and he told me that she’d never been in a real relationship before. Apparently she could never get over some ex from her teenage years."

Dabi is careful to keep his face neutral.

"I figured she was just emotionally unavailable," Hawks finishes, "but here you are." 

“Guess I lucked out.”

“Sure did.” He tilts his head, eyes predator-sharp. “Say, how’d the two of you get together, anyway?”

Dabi smiles, and he's sure it looks hideous.

“She was charmed by my good looks, obviously.”

His phone buzzes in his back pocket. It vibrates for only a moment before going dead, so it’s only a text, not a phone call. All text messages are considered non-urgent communications by the Front, so there’s no reason for him to check it. But he does, and it makes him feel strange, what he sees. 

Dabi, I think you should hurry home soon. I can tell she's real lonely without you.

He feels like he’s losing his mind all over again.

xxxi. chances

After Dabi returns to Jaku, it takes some time for him to go back to you. Spinner drives him there directly, but his feet refuse to carry him to his room. Despite being exhausted and injured—he just aggravated one of his old wounds, so it hardly counts anyway—Dabi ends up spending the better part of the evening fucking around in some nightclub. He only contemplates going back when his tongue is deep in some guy's mouth and he feels himself getting hard, and he remembers—oh, he hasn't fucked you in ages. Might as well do it tonight.

There is no greeting when he returns. There is no I’m back, no Welcome home. Dabi just opens the door, closes it, then drops onto his empty bed. He tries to steady himself, sitting there. He can hear the shower running, the sound of faint humming. Dabi tries hard to listen to you, because he's never heard you singing as an adult before and he wants to know if you're as off-key as you were when you were a kid. 

But he can't really focus on your voice. His heart is pounding in his skull and it’s hard to hear over that. The sharp pain running below his collarbone is distracting him too. The staples beneath his shirt are red-hot and loose, threatening to melt and let his skin slough off.

“Dabi?”

He looks up. You’re in a towel, wrapped around your body and held up by your tight hands. And you’re shaking. 

You're afraid of him.

He ignores it. Nods at you and says a simple, "Hey." 

Eyes studying him carefully, your gaze eventually drops down. 

"You're hurt." 

“I noticed.” He sounds dry and nonchalant, even though he can feel the collar of his shirt getting soaked with blood. He doesn't care much, and he guesses he never has. You spoiled him when you were both kids, with how often you healed his burns. You were as nearly as bad as his mother, who always iced any blows dealt by his father—first for himself, and then for Shouto, after Touya stopped mattering to his parents.

Dabi doesn't think he'd have ended up so reckless if it weren't for the two of you.

(Every time he saw you visiting his grave, he felt the blackened tissue under his bandages itch. Whenever you left, he contemplated following you home, to ask you to treat him. But your father was always there with you, and his expression was so severe, and he always took the long way home, as if knowing that a ghost was on your heels.)

“You should go see that doctor.”

“Nah. I hate that guy.” 

He looks up at you. You’ve been sleeping well, he can tell. And eating decently. You don’t look like how you do in the magazines—you look better. His absence has been good for you. If he weren’t in so much fucking pain, he might feel something about that, but he doesn’t know what. 

“Wanna heal me?” he asks.

Your jaw tightens.

“I can’t. I'm on that suppressant.”

“Right, right.” He parts his lips and breathes in deeply. His head is killing him. “Force of habit.” 

He hadn’t apologized, but after a moment, you sigh and reply, “It’s okay.”

Dabi doesn't reply to that, too distracted by the heat from his body. His throat still burns from that whisky he downed several hours ago, and his skin is still singed from those anonymous hands from the club—

Right. The club, those hands, that kiss. He remembers why he came back here. 

"You feeling better?" 

Something in your eye flickers.

"...yeah." 

He hums, looking at you up and down. Your cheeks have started filling out again. Your eyes are no longer weighted by shadows. He can see, from this angle, the thumb of the handprint he burned into your shoulder blade—it's scarred terribly, but healed. Aside from that ugly brand, your skin is flawless and dewy, and your hair is wet, and he can see the shape of your body underneath that towel of yours. 

You aren't wasting away anymore.

"Good. Take that thing off and get on the bed." 

You freeze—with the exception of your curling fist. You look like you're in pain, even though his hands aren't anywhere near you.

"What's the matter?" he drawls. 

Your jaw trembles, like you have something to say. You have that expression that you get before you try to deny him, but he isn't bothered. He knows you'll give into him. You always do. 

You aren't looking at him when you reply.

"Before you rape me," you say, voice quiet, "can I at least clean your wound? You're bleeding through your shirt." 

He glances down. The staples beneath his collarbones, the ones running across his chest, are dripping with blood. There's a red streak blooming across his shirt. 

"Sure," he decides. 

"Okay." 

You know where the first aid supplies are from all the times that Dabi's had to treat you, so you're pretty quick about gathering everything—even while wrapped in a towel. He lets you lead him into the washroom and in front of the sink. 

It's a tight fit, having two people in there. There's hardly any space between the two of you.

"I need to wash your wound," you say.

"Obviously." You're close enough that his breath sweeps across your lips. You blink, glancing at his eyes.

"You've been drinking." 

"Whiskey."

You make a face. "Of course."

He scowls. "What? What do you drink?" 

"Whatever's put in front of me," you say. Dabi notices that you sound calm, which is strange—you were just shaking with fear when he first arrived. But you seem at ease in front of him now, standing before him and wanting to help him. Hazily, he wonders if you would scare if he put his arms around you.

Instead of trying that, he asks, "What, you don't have a preference?" 

"Not really. It never matters what I want."

"That's a lie," he identifies. "You said in an interview, a few years back—you like Asahi." His voice is slurred, but he's confident. 

"I said that because Asahi offered to pay more than any other brand." You sound tired. "I told you—it doesn't matter what I want." 

You take a half-step toward him and give him a long look, which he returns. He realizes, with a start, that his face has never been so close to yours. After all, he's lost count of the number of times he's fucked you, but the two of you have never kissed. 

He stares at your lips. Chapped and bare, but he bets they're soft. 

"Dabi," you say after some time, "you'll need to take off your shirt."

He stiffens. 

"No." 

"I need to do it to treat your wound." 

"No." 

"You're bleeding through it anyway—"

You reach up, and he jerks back until he's pressed against the wall.

"Leave it alone." 

"But you're hurt." 

His head's in more pain than his wound, actually. It's pounding now, probably because he's sobering up and he hasn't had any water. He'd been wanting to get some, but then he started humouring your strange request to help him. He doesn't know why he played along. It's probably part of your big act that you care about him, which you've now roped Twice and Hawks into. 

But you're a great actress. You look at him with those pretty, concerned eyes, the way that you did when you were both kids. So much compassion, kindness, and—and something else.

He wants to throw up.

"Why the fuck would it matter to you if I'm hurt?" he says after a beat. 

"Don't be like that. Of course it matters to me." 

" Why? " 

"...force of habit."

You look sad now, like you want to curl into yourself, or into Touya. Your lip is trembling, and Dabi's dreading the inevitable flood of tears. His head is already killing him.

"Just—" He breathes in sharply. "Just get out."

"...fine."

"And don't fucking cry. It's annoying as hell." 

You squeeze your eyes shut, wincing. Standing together in such a tight space, he can clearly see tears welling up at the corners of your eyes, shining like pearls—but you don't let them fall. You're good at following orders and acting pretty and lying, after all. After a moment, your breathing evens out and your expression flattens, and it's like this never happened. You never tried to clean his wound. He never asked you about your favourite drink. Twice never texted him about how lonely you are. Hawks didn't tell him that you've never dated anyone. You never got sick. He never held you.

And he never thought about kissing you.

"Wait for me on the bed," he says, as you're leaving. "Face-down. I don't want to look at you tonight, when I fuck you."

Your shoulders drop. You look disappointed, but not surprised.

"Alright." 

xxxii. cycles 

Dabi starts raping you again.

He's not forceful about it, but he's not gentle or slow either. He doesn't have to be anymore. Your body is always eager to take him now, wet before he even touches you. He easily makes you come once, twice, sometimes even three times before he undoes his belt. Whenever he lines himself up with your entrance and starts sliding into you, there's barely any resistance. He wonders, while his hips are slotted against yours, if you missed him being inside you as much as he did. If you missed the marks that he always leaves on you. If you missed the feeling of being possessed by him.

From the way that you soak his thighs, your body certainly did. 

(Dabi, I think you should hurry home soon. I can tell she's real lonely without you.)

The two of you fall into an easy routine this way. He visits you when he's high-strung, and he fucks you until the stress is gone. After he's finished inside you, he'll maybe lie down and talk to you, if your mind clears up. Nine out of ten times, you don't comment on the filthy things he's said to you, and you seem to be surprised about how much time has passed. He often catches you counting new bruises in the mirror, studying each one like it shouldn't be there. 

He isn't sure, but thinks you remember very little of the sex nowadays.

It's convenient when you can't recall any of it. You finish all your meals. You drink your water. You dose your pills appropriately. You talk to him and you're coherent when you do. 

Often, you tell him about what it was like while he was gone. 

"Your friend Twice," you say, "is really nice. Toga, too. She's very sweet." 

Dabi opens his eyes specifically to give you an incredulous look. 

"Sweet? " he says, appalled. "Toga is a brat. Rude as hell." 

"She's just a kid," you write off, voice soft. "She bought me some clothes while you were gone. A dress and a sweater. It was thoughtful." 

Dabi remembers this. You have ugly taste in clothes, Dabi, she texted him while he was gone, so I bought your girlfriend some new outfits. They're way cuter. ♡

"They probably both felt sorry for you," he says. You stare at him, looking a little surprised. He raises a brow at the confusion. "Twice is nuts and Toga is annoying, but they're not bad people. They have a conscience." 

They both definitely think he's a piece of shit for keeping you here. Twice, when the unhinged shard of his personality was in control, told him as much once. Told Dabi that doing this to you was a new low for him.

Dabi doesn't disagree.

You don't comment on any of it—their pity, your misfortune, his crimes on your body. All you say is, "Then, I'm glad you have good people around you."

He goes quiet. 

"I worried a lot, you know," you say quietly, "when I figured out you were alive. I kept wondering if anyone had been looking out for you, after you ran away." 

"No one." After a pause, Dabi clarifies: "No one before, and no one after." 

("Touya, you have to stop letting your flames run so hot," you sometimes scolded him, making him lift up his shirt so you could check his burns. "You'll worry your mom." 

He scoffed at that, a strange anger curdling at the thought of her. His mother loved to fuss over him, even though he wasn't a kid anymore. She loved to berate his father, even though he never did anything that bad—he was just teaching Touya how to become a hero. She loved to interrupt his training sessions with her wailing and her crying, too.

Don't cry, his father always snapped, after shoving her to the floor. This is your fault. You got in the way. 

"Who cares what she thinks," Touya grumbled. "She's so annoying.")

"That's not true," you murmur. "Your mother always took care of you."

For a moment, he says nothing.

"It doesn't matter," he reminds himself, eventually. "She was weak." 

"She tried her best." 

A long pause. 

"You know why she ended up in the hospital, right?" 

"Yeah. She burned little Shouto, and Endeavor couldn't have that." Dabi's smile is wry. "He should have admitted himself too, with all the shit that he did to us." 

You sigh a little. 

"As long as it's called training or discipline, parents get away with a lot," you say quietly.

Dabi glances at you, brow furrowed. Your own parents were strict—it's why you'd always wanted to run away—but you always said that it was nothing like his household. It couldn't have been, not with how much you rave about your parents in every interview, about them and their hero careers. They had to have been good to you in some way, for you to end up so successful.

"You always had people taking care of you," he says, almost accusatory. 

"Sure," you say, voice faint. "Your mother did, a lot." 

You sound a little sorry for yourself, which deeply annoys him. Before you can say anything, he cuts in, "And my father too, after I left?" 

You stop. Any peace that he'd been enjoying is quickly broken, his drowsiness replaced by searing heat. 

"I'm sorry," you whisper. Your body is still, bracing itself for either pain or violation, because you know what happens when you fuck up like this. He'll take his anger out on you; he'll leave a fresh set of marks for you to count; and then he'll depart for the night, not feeling like seeing you any longer. And hopefully this will be one of the nine out of ten times that you'll get amnesia about the whole thing.

But you end up remembering, and it's a pain in the ass. 

"Why are you even so fucking sad about it?" he snaps, glaring at your untouched food. You're not crying, at least, but the hollowness of your eyes is starting to get on his nerves now. "I wasn't that rough with you last night."

("Don't listen to your mother, Touya. She doesn't think that you can be a hero, but we'll prove her wrong." 

Touya shifted uncomfortably, his mother's body still crumpling before his eyes. He could hear her crying from the other room. "But you didn't have to hit her." 

"I barely used any force when I did," his father dismissed. "She's being dramatic.") 

"It's not about that," you mumble. 

Dabi rolls his eyes. "No. I guess it's not. You just love feeling sorry for yourself." 

That's what he hates the most about his conversations with you, regardless of your mood or your memory. The self-pity. The kicked-puppy eyes. The broken-woman tears. It's a complete and utter joke that someone like you can look at someone like him and have the gall to ask, Why did you leave me?

Why are you so hung up over that? You never needed him.

"That isn't true, Dabi." 

"Yes, it is," he snaps, his false name ringing in his ears. "None of you needed me. That's why all of you forgot about me."

"I never forgot about you. You know that." Your voice is so weak. "I still needed you." 

(“Do I know anything about her ex?" Hawks hummed. "I heard the guy died when they were both teenagers, and she never got over him. Sad, isn't it?")

Dabi wants you to tell you to stop lying, but he can't find the words. 

xxxiv. apologies

You're the first person to see Dabi's video. 

He's known, from the first time he decided to film this, that he wants you to see this. After all he's done to you, he figures that none of it will surprise you. But he needs you to see it, because without it, you'll never really understand what you did to him without it. You'll never really get the full extent of your betrayal. 

("I owe so much to Endeavor," Dabi watched you say, at—of all fucking places—your annual little charity event for children's aid. "Everything I've accomplished is only because of him. So now that he's the Number One Hero, please support him!") 

He chooses a day where your mind is clear. He makes you sit up, on the edge of the bed, tells you to pay close attention. He's sitting on the edge of his seat too, knee bouncing as he studies your face. 

You watch Dabi's video in dead silence.

He documents each microexpression that flits over your face. Your brow knots immediately, seeing his shirtless form, all his scars laid bare. Your eyes flicker as he recounts the abuses of his childhood, and maybe you're remembering all the burns you had to heal and all that screaming that you heard between his parents. The lines of your face soften when he mentions how Endeavor also laid hands on Shouto, and that sends a wave of heat into his palms, even though he doesn't have the urge to burn you.

And then comes his plea for critical thought.

"I cannot forgive them! They're packaged and sold to you in the name of justice when they don't even have an ounce of empathy! And on top of that, they dare call themselves 'heroes'!" 

(“People like you are exactly why I follow Stain’s ideals, did you know that? You’re just a fucking sellout.”)

Your eyes fall to your lap at those words, your hands trembling, and your face overflows with the kind of shame that brings him indescribable joy. Not even fucking you can bring him this kind of bliss—the knowledge that you know you hurt him, and that you'll never forget it.

The video cuts out at the end. Static, with white noise, all reflected in your pupils. It dominates the silence for a long time.

"I'm sorry," is all you can say. 

"Sorry's not good enough." 

(Won't be. Not ever. How could an apology repair what he'd done to you? Touya knew that you hated him now, hated him the way that his family did. Hated him how his mother hated Endeavor. 

That day on Sekoto Peak, when he set fire to your flesh, was the last time he saw you before he died.) 

"I know." 

A long pause. You turn to him, watching carefully.

"What will you do?" 

"Change how things work. Change how hero society works." He stops, then decides to make himself extra clear: "And I'll start by destroying Endeavor."

You hesitate.

"Then, what will you do to Shouto?" 

His eyes narrow.

"He's Endeavor’s successor. I have to kill him."

You can't, he knows you want to say. But you swallow the words, bitter in your throat, knowing what punishment will await you if you try to defend his father's greatest work.

Hesitation. 

"What will you do to me?" 

"What I've already been doing."

His hand rests upon the brand he inlaid upon your thigh. He wants to burn into it again, like an affirmation. You stare at it, blank-faced.

"What is it that you've been doing?" 

Your face is so close to his. Dabi has lost count over the number of times he's fucked you, but he's still never kissed you. Never bruised and dirtied those lips, which bloomed with gloss and eroticism on all those magazine covers. Lips that were never meant for him, a genetic failure that shouldn't exist. Lips that were too good for him, until he forced them around his cock.

"Been dragging you to my level." He doesn't press his mouth to yours. Instead, he leans in, and his voice is hot in your ear, "Been making it so no one will want you except for me." 

He expects a look of disgust. He expects fear and betrayal. But instead you pull away to look at him, with those sad, pretty eyes, and you ask:

"You still want me, Touya? After everything I've done?" 

Don't be stupid. Of course he wants you. He's wanted you ever since you asked him to run away with you. He's wanted you ever since he realized that you were too good for him, with your perfect genes and glamour and glitz. He's wanted you since the day you turned his back on him and started eating out of his father's bloodstained hand, spoiling yourself with the greatest vices of society. He's wanted you since that first time you gave into the pleasure of being violated by him. He's wanted you since you told him, I'll be waiting for you, despite it. 

He wants you. He's always wanted you. He'll want you forever. That's why he ruined you.

Your eyes go soft.

"I understand," you say.

Tears gather in your eyes when he pushes you down into the bed, but you do not struggle.

xxxvi. collapse 

The sex takes a strange turn after that. 

In some ways, it stays the same. Your body wants him. Your mind does not. You're broken when you remember what he's done to you. You're put together when you don't.

But regardless of whether or not you're in tatters or if you're intact, it's different in the aftermath now. Dabi cleans you up, tallies up the bruises in his head and makes mental notes to be gentler next time, if there are too many. A few times it gets too much for you, and you cry uncontrollably, but he never tells you to stop—even if it annoys the shit out of him, and even if it makes him feel sick. He just waits for you to finish and then brings a tissue to your face, cleans off your tears the way he cleaned off your blood.

He never runs out afterwards, also. He always lies down next to you, and he talks if you're in your mind and he listens to your breathing if you're out. He stays close to you either way. Close enough to count the lashes on your face. Close enough to trace the lines on your face. Close enough for him to feel your breath sweep his nose. 

You're close to him when you ask your questions. 

Do you really want me? 

Isn't that what he said? Don't make him repeat himself. 

Do you believe me now, when I say that I never forgot about you?

Sometimes he buys it; sometimes he doesn't. Depends on his mood, really. 

Why did you rape me, but no one else?

Isn't it obvious? He's never wanted anyone else. Not like how he wanted you. 

If you wanted me, then why did you leave me? 

You should know why already. This answer always comes as a snap, so you look at him, with your soft, pretty eyes, and you say, I'm sorry, Dabi. He reaches over and swipes a thumb over your cheek, coming away with a stray, wet lash.

It occurs to him that besides his mother, poor Todoroki Rei, no one else has ever apologized for all the garbage in his childhood. When he tells you as much, your frown deepens and you say, "You deserved better than that." 

Dabi doesn't know what to say to this, so he always derails with his own questions, asking things like—

How come you never forgot about me?

"Because I needed you."

Why didn't you date anyone, after I died?

"I just didn't know how." 

Why did you sell out?

"I had no choice." 

"Bullshit," he snarls, and you look guilty.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." You sigh. "It's because I was weak."

Did you try to erase me, like everyone else? 

"Never." 

You would never do that to him, you tell him. Even when you thought he was dead, you didn't want to let go of him. Even when you knew he was alive, you wanted him back.

It makes him want to fuck you again. Why something like that would ignite the desire to rape you, he has no clue. But he forces himself on you, and he plies your body with his filthy touch until it's keening for him, and he'll never get over the feeling of having you finish around his cock. Or the pressure of your mouth against the scars on his neck. Or the sweep of your breath across an open wound. Or even just the closeness of it all.

You still entertain his questions after that.

"Do you hate me for what I've done," he asks—no question mark. 

You don't reply. You shudder, a little bit, when he traces the handprint that fucked up your perfect legs. 

"Do you hate me for leaving these on you?" he murmurs. 

"I wish you hadn't done it," you admit. 

His mouth slants—not angrily, but not kindly, either. "What, you mad about your modeling contracts? No more bikini photoshoots, huh?”

You don't smile at his joke. 

"That's not it." You look down at where his hand is. "I wish you hadn't done it, but I'm not sad about the scars. I'd rather have them than not."

His hand squeezes your thigh, right over the ugly tissue.

"How come?" 

You hum. 

"There's nothing worse than someone hurting you and pretending that it never happened. Don't you think so?"

("Say it! Say what you did to me! Say what you did to me, just because you wanted a replacement for Touya so badly! Say what you did to me! ") 

Nausea creeps into Dabi's belly. 

"What makes you say that?" he asks, voice stiff. 

You stare at the ceiling. 

"My parents did that to me," you whisper. "All the time." 

His body runs at 39°C, and suddenly his clenched fist is flaring with heat, but his blood feels fucking frigid.  

"What do you mean, they did that to you?"

You seem confused now, looking at him with a puzzled expression. 

"Dabi," you say, "don't you know that my parents used to hit me? Your mom never told you?" 

("Let's run away together, Touya.")

"What?"

(One summer evening, on their way back from the convenience store, Touya and his mother caught you running away from your bullies, barefoot and red-eyed.)

"What do you mean, they hit you?" 

("You must always protect her, Touya. Remember that.")

You look tired now. So, so tired, and he's thinking about watching you on the big screen in your UA tracksuit, standing without him at your side. Dark circles under your eyes, so deep that Touya wondered if you were okay.

"Quirks are physical abilities," you say quietly. "They get stronger with use, just like muscles. And my quirk is so strong that I'm nearly immortal."

("My parents used to think I was quirkless," you mentioned once, after you learned about how proud Endeavor was of Touya's flames, "until I fell down some stairs and they watched my bones heal on the spot! They were so excited.")

"How do you think I got so good at healing myself?"

end part 3

I apologize for the existence of this entire chapter :’))) thank you for reading it all!!!! 

HUGE thank you to @mengdus​ for beta-reading this travesty, also. This chapter would not be up right now were it not for her help!

a quick note on posthumous names, which were alluded to in the first chapter, and now play a role in this one: in Japanese Buddhist funerary rites, the deceased will be assigned a 'kaimyo' (a precept name; sometimes translated as ‘dharma name’). Based on what I've read, this posthumous name indicates the deceased person's entry into the Buddhist path and rebirth into the Pure Land. There are also some who believe that the posthumous name must be given to prevent the soul of the deceased from being summoned when someone says their name in life.

Some people, when returning from funerals, will intentionally avoid going directly home afterwards as a means to prevent the deceased from following them.

[farewell-itoshisoup]

higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 2

dabi x f!reader; shouto x f!reader

Touya watches you stare feebly out the window, your fingers curled around those useless flowers he bought, and he finally understands why his pathetic excuse of a father could never find the words to apologize to his mother.

chapter notes: 12k+ words of childhood romance gone very wrong! Warnings for non-con, themes of misogyny, general distorted perception of reality from Dabi. Please do not read this chapter if these themes will make you uncomfortable. 

please find the masterlist for this fic on my blog!

DABI

x. uncertainty

Dabi doesn’t know what to do with you.

He’s been stuck in a cycle of death and rebirth for the past half hour. He flicks his wrist and the alleyway is swallowed by a burning, violent cyan. The body before him howls and writhes like a worm, so carbonized that its features are unrecognizable beyond the vaguely bipedal quality of its form. The thing in front of him is more charcoal than human at this point, but like magic, it always comes back to life after Dabi switches off the heat. It’s a gruesome process, watching tissue immolate and regenerate spontaneously, and the smell is fucking unbearable. But Dabi’s well-accustomed to creating burn victims at this point, so the death process isn’t what’s upsetting. It's the recovery: soft tissue rehydrating; muscle fibres spinning from nowhere and knitting together; skin growing like a blanket of mould over raw flesh. 

(Touya was thirteen years old when he saw, for the first time, a burn wound healing itself spontaneously.)

It makes him pick at the stitches on his cheek. Really, this just isn’t fair. He has to pay a fortune to his surgeon to keep his body in working order and this thing can just heal itself without a single cent or even a moment’s delay? Unbelievable. 

Looking at the sight before him, Dabi realizes he doesn’t know what to do with you. 

“I really can’t fuckin’ kill you, huh?” He tilts his head. “Maybe if I had a gun and blew out your brains. Or maybe I’d need a cannon. It’s a crapshoot with regeneration quirks, ain’t it? Sometimes it’s like cutting a tail off a lizard, and sometimes it’s like Jesus of fucking Nazareth. Complete resurrection."

The man—number two on Shigaraki’s list of High End Nomu ingredients—wails brokenly, and it’s the most irritating noise that Dabi has ever heard. 

“Please, please, I’ll give you anything—money, I swear I have money! You burned all the cash I have on me, but I’ve got—”

“Don’t worry about the money,” Dabi says, smiling generously. “I stole your wallet before I started lighting you up. I’ve got more than enough. But hey—” He takes the opportunity to shove a bag over the guy’s head, then draws the strings tight. “—luckily for you, I’m done with frying you anyway.” 

His burn victim kicks and struggles, violently defying him, but it’s nothing that a choke hold can’t fix. Dabi counts to thirty and the guy is out cold. He doesn’t know how long it'll take for him to come back to, since—well—regeneration quirks are a crapshoot. 

(Touya was sixteen years old when he saw various iterations of this obnoxious headline just about everywhere: STUDENT HERO AT THE ENDEAVOR AGENCY SAVES CHILDREN FROM BURNING HOME! He couldn’t escape that story, because the imagery was so riveting that every news outlet wanted to cover it. A teenage girl subjecting herself over and over again to fourth-degree burns, running in and out of a fire to save every last kid stuck in it, smiling every time she delivered another child to safety even though she’d just died —what were you, some kind of martyr? A fucking Buddhist monk? Touya was well-acquainted with fourth degree burns himself, so he knew that smile on your face was fake as fuck. Knew that without the cameras and spotlights, you’d be crying and screaming, just like him.)

You are his to ruin, but Dabi doesn’t actually know what to do with you. He’d entertained, for a little bit, the idea of capturing you at Shigaraki’s request, then killing you at his own discretion and just dumping your toasted corpse in front of his family home. It might have been a little tacky, a little uninspired, but it wouldn’t have been a terrible improvisation now that there’s a target on your back anyway. But...

“I can’t kill you with my fire, huh?” he says out loud, even though his target is unconscious and bagged up. He’s thinking about you instead, thinking about the pretty smile you gave to those children even after dying four times. “Geten could maybe kill you, or at least put you into a state of suspended animation. Shigaraki definitely could.” 

But he wouldn’t let any other man touch you now, would he?

Dabi decides to sit on the problem. 

xi. ownership

Dabi had known, from the moment he saw that image of you in that magazine as a seventeen year old, that he'd never let anyone else hurt you. It wasn't just about random men and women wanting to fuck you, either. Nah, it extended to every facet of violence—sexual or non-sexual, physical or psychological.

(There was one time, when he was twenty, that Dabi caught wind of a villain who loved to go for pretty hero women. Liked to tie them up and have his way with them, then promptly kill them afterwards. And you were on his list, and so was that BDSM chick, and so were those ridiculous fucking pussycats.

Dabi couldn't give a shit about the cats or the dominatrix, but you? For you, he tracked that serial killer down and made the guy's skin boil at 2000°C. He wailed and squealed like a dying pig the whole time, until he didn't anymore, until you were safe.

When the reporters asked Endeavor if he was the one who killed that murderer, Dabi wanted to smash the TV to bits. As if his sham hero of a father could protect you like that. Nah, pros were all pomp and circumstance, justice without conviction. A villain like him, though? He could punish the ones deserving of it. He could kill every single fucker who looked at you the wrong way.)

So when he sees the state that Geten has you in, he damn near loses his mind. 

He doesn’t realize that it’s you, not immediately. Even if you weren't cloaked in the darkness of Ujiko's laboratory, illuminated only by the eerie glow of incubator tanks, he'd still have difficulty identifying you. Ten years ago, Touya was used to seeing you in your middle school uniform, backpack hanging around your shoulders, your cheeks cursed with the occasional zit. Nowadays, Dabi’s used to seeing you in magazines and on TV: full-grown and fully matured; dressed up, made-up, airbrushed to hell. Half the time you're in designer spandex; the other half, in some red carpet dress.

The thing kicking and whimpering on Ujiko’s floor, on the other hand, looks like neither incarnation of you. It's haggard, smeared in blood, and covered in dirt. Unable to move because its hands and feet are tied. Unable to speak because there's a cloth gag in its mouth. Undignified. Unrecognizable. Dabi only figures out it's you when Shigaraki compliments Geten: “You caught a big fish, huh?” Scratch, scratch. “Good job.”

Out of the eight people on Shigaraki’s list, only one had been a professional hero. Dabi stops breathing for a little bit as he saunters up to this small group of people: Shigaraki, Ujiko, Geten, and this thing that is supposed to be you.

He dumps his own victim on the floor. Then he looks down at you, checks over the colour of your eyes, the curves of your face, contour of your lips, and—oh, fuck. That's definitely you. You look like shit, but Dabi would know those lips anywhere. Those eyes, too, which are leaking tears down your cheekbones and onto the floor. Your pupils are hazy, dilated; your expression is empty. Your breathing is audible even with the gag, wheezing and irregular.

Something is wrong with you, and Dabi wants to kill whoever broke you.

But he doesn’t let himself react. He just turns to his fellow lieutenant and starts, "Hey, Snowman—”

“Iceman,” Geten interjects.

“Sure. I thought we agreed to not go after the most conspicuous fucking person on the doctor's wishlist?” He kicks his own victim from the alleyway, who twitches and moans through the sack that’s still encasing his head. “This guy will work fine. I test drove his quirk myself: fried him up six times and he’s good as new, as you can see.” 

“Don’t blame me. This dog of the state,” Geten says, his voice heavy with disgust, “came along sniffing in parts of Deika City that she shouldn’t have been. She doomed herself to this.”

Fucking of course you did. Dabi can’t help the twitch of annoyance in his face as he looks down at you. He tried so hard to get Shigaraki to back down from kidnapping you, and you just had to go fuck things up anyway. Always sticking your nose into places you shouldn't be.

(Touya was ten years old when you noticed his burns for the first time. You didn't seem horrified like his mother or disappointed like his father; you just looked at him with big, concerned eyes that he'd never seen on anyone before and said, "Is someone hurting you?") 

Dabi refrains from glaring at you. Whether he's pissed at you or Geten, he can't tell anymore. Trying to talk business, he asks, "She had no backup?" 

"It appears not."

"How gutsy. You underestimatin' us, Miss Top Twenty?" He leans down, uses the opportunity to mock you as a cover to check over you. You're looking at him directly now, but your gaze is unfocused. Your temple and hairline are dripping with sweat. And then Dabi realizes: the blood on your shirt, on your upper thigh, is shiny and thick. He touches your side gently, is quiet when his finger comes back covered in sticky crimson.

Fresh blood.

Dabi wants to burn Geten alive. Wants to see all that ice melt into water, for that water to boil with Geten's soft tissue, for it to steam and choke up his lungs. 

But he can't let that show. 

"I think your catch is a dud," Dabi says. "She isn't regenerating." 

"Had to shoot her with suppressants to stop her from running." Geten clicks his tongue. "It's the middle of summer. Not enough ice to immobilize her without it." 

"A shame!" Ujiko moans. "We'll need to wait for the suppressants to wear off before killing her. Otherwise the Nomu won't inherit her quirk…"

Well, nevermind. Dabi could just about kiss Ice Bastard, in that case.

"Tell you what, Doc," he says, sounding pleased enough for Geten to narrow his eyes from underneath that hood of his. "Let's do a trade. My guy is unsuppressed and ready to go—" Another kick, followed by another moan. "So I'll give him to you. In the meantime, I get to spend quality time with Miss Top Twenty here. How does that sound?"

Geten tilts his head. "Why would you want to do that?" 

He often forgets that the guy was raised under a rock, but it's blatantly obvious now. "I’m gonna take her to dinner and a movie," he says dryly. At Geten's blank expression, he adds, "Why d'you think, Geten? What, you wouldn't wanna fuck her?" 

An argument follows, of course. Ice Bastard protests, because he 'captured you for the glory of the Paranormal Liberation Front', not so that Dabi could use you as his ‘personal sex doll’. To this, Dabi replies that he's part of the Paranormal Liberation Front, so Geten would still be serving the cause by handing you over to him. He just gets called a degenerate though—which is true, so he can't say shit to that. And Ujiko, who doesn't see the point of letting such a precious reagent leave his laboratory, is unfortunately siding with Geten.

But Shigaraki, who has a soft spot for members of the original League, who might have started out childish but has at least learned to recognize loyalty over the years, shockingly goes to bat for him.

"Do whatever you want, Dabi." Scratch, scratch. A lazy handwave. "Just remember not to throw out her body once you're done." 

Dabi decides that Shigaraki is a great boss, actually.

xii. compassion

Dabi hates the fact that you are bleeding all over him.

He can't do much about it, of course. He trusts Ujiko about as far as he can throw the guy, and super strength isn't his thing so he can't exactly toss him particularly far. Dabi's personally seen some of the experimentation he's put upon his test subjects, so he doesn't trust Ujiko not to fuck around with you if he's allowed to treat your wounds. No, he'd probably inject you with some kind of test chemical as soon as Dabi looked the other way, then beg for forgiveness that Shigaraki would grant.

So after Shigaraki had given him the green light, Dabi lifted you up—his arms under your knees and shoulders, your head curled up against his chest, just like old times—and took you to his room. It's a soundproof, windowless space, because he prefers keeping a low profile away from prying eyes and ears. 

It's perfect for keeping you hidden away.

There's a half-hearted kind of struggle from you as you're carried toward your cage, but it's so weak that he can ignore it. The worst thing about it is that the more you squirm, the more you bleed, and his entire left forearm is now sticky with blood. He's glad when he's finally able to toss you onto the bed and be rid of you, though you're not nearly so happy, with how you moan and how your face pinches. 

It does not take long before red begins to seep into his sheets.

Dabi's own face twists in annoyance. He'll have to do something about those stupid wounds of yours or else his entire mattress will be unsalvageable within half an hour, and you will be dead instead of ruined. He hits a light switch and then raids his drawers for first aid supplies, which he keeps out of habit. Before he fell in with the League, Dabi had always lived on his own and, aside from his plastic surgeon, took care of his own injuries. He couldn't exactly check into the hospital—even beyond being a criminal, being dead meant that he simply lacked the insurance. 

("If you don't want to go to a hospital," you told him, "why don't you let me heal you? I've never never had to heal burns before… but I'll try my best for you. I promise.")

"You're a real piece of work, you know," he starts, not bothering to keep the irritation out of his voice. Even in your pained stupor, it makes your eyes snap to him. They widen as they roam over his face, his body. His scars and crude staples are on full display for you now, and he suspects that you must know his villain persona well, because you let out a noise that sounds very distinctively like a whimper.

He ignores your fear—he's used to that reaction by now—and just continues talking as he throws his first aid supplies onto his nightstand. "Of all the people they could have wanted," he says, gritting his teeth, "why'd it have to be you?" 

He glances at you, as if expecting an answer, but only finds a pair of pupils blown wide in fear. Typical. He thinks he sees a bead of sweat building at your temple when he withdraws a pair of scissors, and the whimper behind your gag builds into a cry when he finally walks toward you. And holy fuck does he hate the sound of your crying—it's fucking grating, like a kicked puppy that won't stop whining, or a child being beaten by its father. Shut the fuck up, he wants to scream at you.

(Touya was eleven years old when he saw you cry for the first time. One summer evening, on their way back from the convenience store, he and his mother caught you running away from your bullies, barefoot and red-eyed.

His mother acted before he did. You stopped when she called out your name, flinched and then froze up. But his mother kept walking toward you, slowly and quietly. "Please, dear," she said, using the same tone of voice that she often used on Shouto whenever he threw his tantrums or Fuyumi whenever she got scared, "it's just us. Just me and Touya. Do you think you can stop and talk to us?"

You stared at the both of them with big, watery eyes, your bloodied lip trembling all the while. When it split open, you gave a little sob, and the sound made Touya's chest hurt.)

Of course it doesn’t take much for you to start panicking, soon after the waterworks start up. It only takes him grabbing the hem of your shirt before you start squirming again, as if you somehow might be able to escape by doing that.

What a joke.

"Hey." A single hand grabs your face, squeezing your cheeks harshly before forcing you to turn toward your captor. Dabi must look as pissed as he feels, because just seeing his face makes you freeze. 

Good. 

"Stop fucking moving," he warns, nodding to the scissors in his other hand, "unless you want me to cut you instead of your shirt."

You are well-behaved after that. You just lie on his bed as he undresses you, entirely still beside the heavy rise-and-fall of your chest, lungs weighed by pain and fear. Even when he begins to cut through your clothes, you don't struggle. Undressing you is a slow, irritating process; the fabric of your shirt is unfortunately durable, so it takes Dabi some time before he can peel the bloodied cloth away from your skin. 

Even when he starts to unravel you, you don't move. 

"Didn't think you'd be so meek in real life, Miss Top Twenty," he remarks lazily. "Guess all that strength and speed on TV are for show, huh? You were weak enough to lose to Ice Bastard, after all." Another wave of irritation rolls through Dabi, and he has to will his fingers not to burn you both up with flames. "I hate that guy. I'm gonna roast him alive someday, after all this Liberation Front bullshit is over."

You just stare at Dabi with those wide, fearful eyes. Even with your body steeped in blood and dirt, your eyes are still unnervingly pretty. Yours is the type of face that, even in a state of terror, a photographer could capture and win awards with. Your tearful expression is the kind of thing that could simultaneously be displayed as art on exhibit walls, or feature in the top-rated videos of Dabi's favourite porn categories. Either-or.

It's shocking, then, how disgusted he feels when he looks at you like this. He's finally got you half-naked and tied up on his bed, and it's somehow the most revolting thing he's ever seen. 

Better get this over with. 

He crawls on top of you and shoves you firmly against the mattress with one hand, not with any intention except to pin down your body and stop you from flailing everywhere as he treats you. But it makes you scream. You wail and you sob through your gag, and the noise pierces him, worms into his ears and settles in his brain like a parasite. Dabi has made so many people cry and beg, but none of their screams were as irritating as yours. 

He gives you a flat look. 

"Yeah, yeah, I know I'm nothing to look at. Not very kissable with these scars anymore, huh?" He refrains from rolling his eyes, focuses on placing his fingers just over the leaky wound at your side. "Fortunately for you, I'm not trying to fuck you. Blood play—not my thing." 

The news that he's not about to rape you finally gets you to shut up. Now you're just frozen underneath him, mouth blissfully quiet and eyes wide on his face. It's a damn shame that the silence won't last. 

"This is gonna hurt, by the way," he says. "Try to be quiet, yeah?" 

And then he burns. 

Blue flames devour the wound on your side. It's during this cauterization that Dabi's suspicions are confirmed: all your smiles for the camera had been deceptions. In every single fire rescue you've performed, you must have cried and screamed the whole time, unsightly tears rolling down your cheeks. They'd probably boiled off your face as you ran out of each disaster zone, evaporating just in time for you to slap on that plastic smile for your gullible audience. What a con artist.

But on Touya's bed right now, as he's sealing your body shut, you can't lie to him. 

By the time he's done, he's got a headache from your wailing. Nothing is as irritating as the sound of kicked puppies or upset children or crying women—crying women especially, weak and defenseless and submissive—and you sound like all three. He'd do anything to get rid of this headache. Anything.

(As you cried in front of Touya on that summer evening, he didn't quite know what to do. You'd never done this in front of him before, but Fuyumi was a crybaby, and she really liked having her back rubbed whenever she was upset, so maybe that would help? And Touya had seen through half-closed doors, that whenever Shouto cried, he'd stop eventually if their mother held him for long enough. 

Touya felt awkward about it, but he gave that a shot. He pulled you in even closer and started rubbing your back, and—well, he guessed he was holding you.)

Your injured form trembles in Dabi's arms, your face pressed against his chest as you hyperventilate through the pain. His hand is smearing your own blood across your back, but you don't seem to mind. Maybe it's soothing you, because your screams are slowly dissipating. The sobs are still grating for him, but he'd take them over your shrieking any day.

It's a good thing you're getting quieter now, because he'd lose his shit if you kept screeching. Probably, he would smother a pillow against your face if you did that. Probably, he would suffocate you until you choked and died. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Stop fucking crying.

xiii. human

Dabi doesn’t know what to do with you. 

You sleep for a full day after Dabi cauterizes your wounds, and he’s grateful for the peace and quiet. There’s no more kicking or screeching from you anymore—just pure, blissful silence when he dresses your burns properly and deals with the bloody sheets. He’s able to hear himself think as he works away at cleaning up your mess, and he finds that all his thoughts are disorganized.

Dabi's always had a vision when it came to his father, and he’s even outlined the fates of his other family members as collateral in his plans for vengeance. But he still doesn't know what to do with you. Death isn’t an option, at least not after he worked his ass off to stop you from bleeding out. He did consider fucking you, like he told Shigaraki he would, but he arrived at the conclusion that it really wouldn’t do very much to hurt Endeavor, so what would be the point? And anyway, it's not like he'd be able to get it up when all he can think about is the sight of you steeped in blood and squealing like a dying pig. Holy fuck does he wish he could forget that image. 

At least you’re clean and human-looking now, all wrapped up bandages and sheets. You cried off a great deal of your makeup too, so your face is mostly a clean slate now: closed eyes, quiet breathing, wrinkles between your brows as you frown in your sleep. You no longer look like a doll for public consumption, and it's a lot easier now to see traces of that middle schooler that Touya once knew.

(Touya saw you sleep once upon a time, when you were headed somewhere for a school trip—to a planetarium, Dabi thinks?—and you were sitting together on the bus, with you next to the window seat in case you needed to nap and him in the aisle seat in case he needed to run outside and puke from motion sickness. This was always your arrangement on school trips.

You were exhausted. You never slept well, you’d often tell Touya, because you were prone to nightmares, so it was pretty common for you to get tired during the day. But he’d never seen you pass out like this before: head lolling against the window, mouth hanging open, more or less dead to the world. Touya spotted a bit of drool at the corner of your mouth, and it was funny enough for him to laugh despite his motion sickness.

The bus swerved, and your body jerked the other way. Shockingly, you remained asleep even as you swayed and leaned unknowingly against Touya. Your head fell onto his shoulder, and your breath swept across his neck. The sensation tickled, but Touya staunchly held in any laughter. He very badly did not want to wake you up.)

Dabi is surprised by how human you seem after you wake up, too. Movements groggy and slow, eyelids still heavy with dreams. There's not a hint of glamour in your face or voice when you scrunch your brows and moan in pain. No grace when you struggle to move your hands and find them bound. 

"What…?" Rapid blinking. Your nose wrinkles, Dabi suspects because of the cigarette between his lips. Your eyes dart around the room, and he watches the slow process of recollection occur in them. You sit up as it happens, and that's when you spot him sitting across the room, studying you from his chair.

"Morning, princess," he says, even though it's two in the afternoon and he doesn't feel even remotely like spoiling you. Dabi takes a long drag of his cigarette while he waits for you to start panicking at the sight of him—

But there's nothing. No fear, no crying. You only glance at him briefly, then look around, quietly observing your surroundings. 

Dabi raises a brow, leans in and asks, "What, no more crying? You sure did a lot of that yesterday."  

No reaction. You just stare at him, eyes lingering on his scarred face. There's probably a lot of fascinated disgust in that pretty little head of yours right now, looking at his patchwork skin and crude staples. You tilt your head and part your lips, and he waits for whatever insult is sitting in your throat, almost a little excited. How far above him do you think you are now? How disgusting, how reprehensible do you think he is? Because that's what you think of him, right? Like any other hero, any other hypocrite? 

But when you open your mouth, you just sigh and ask, "You smoke now, Touya?" 

xiv. longing 

As it turns out, Dabi is the reason why you've been investigating Detnerat in the first place. 

Dabi's been watching you in the news for a long time now, but he's never considered that you might have been doing the same. At first, you kept an eye on his movements strictly for professional reasons: ever since the kidnapping of Bakugou Katsuki by the League, Dabi has been considered one of the most wanted villains in Japan, and is a frequent topic of discussion among heroes. (Dabi is quite pleased to hear this, although he doesn't let it show on his face.) You're well-suited for handling fire quirks, given that you cannot burn to death. Naturally, he's always been on your radar. 

And then Kyushu happened. 

The entirety of Japan saw Endeavor take on that nightmarish monster in the sky, and it also witnessed Dabi at the center of attention for the first time. Cameras from every angle captured his blue flames, his movements, his precise forms during the two attacks he managed before Mirko intervened. You've watched every single clip you could find, played them on repeat until you had his body memorized.

"I thought I was going crazy," you say quietly, looking down at your lap, "but it really looked like you were on the verge of performing Flashfire Fist. And…" Your eyes move up to his face. "Endeavor never saw your flames before you disappeared, but I did. And I never forgot their colour." 

(Touya was thirteen years old when his flames burned blue for the first time. You saw them too, watched them dance and warp the winter air with their heat. 

It frightened you.)

But you were never sure, you are careful to emphasize. You were never sure, and that's why you've started your own investigation in secret. Tracking his movements, detailing his network, and now even gathering intel on the PLF. Yet even after watching him so closely, you couldn't be sure. You weren't sure until he pinned you to the bed and made that stupid joke—'I'm not so kissable with these scars anymore, huh?'—and not until he burned you. 

Not until he held you, either. If there was any doubt left by that point, it had been dispelled when you felt his arms around you as you cried.

(Dabi thinks you must have been fucking delirious with pain to think that he held you. Sure, he restrained you so that you wouldn't squirm and make a mess of the bed. Sure, he didn't let go even after he was done cauterizing your wounds. But he hadn't held you. He'd never do something like that.

You're deluded.) 

There's a softness in your eyes that Dabi would ordinarily pin as sentiment, if you weren't tied up and captive in an enemy stronghold. But given that you are, he attributes it to exhaustion, and chooses not to comment.

"So, you figured me out. Good for you, Miss Top Twenty." Dabi tilts his head, running through the implications. "Did you tell my old man any of this?" 

You frown. "Of course not," you reply, sounding so offended that Dabi actually considers that you're telling the truth.

Huh.

"I didn't tell anyone," you add. "Since…" 

"Since?" he coaxes, voice casual even though he's watching you carefully.

Hesitation. Slowly, haltingly: "...since I wasn't sure."

("I won't tell anyone," you promised Touya as you placed a hand just above the burn marks on his arm. His wound began to tingle as you continued, "I don't want you to get in trouble, so I'll keep your secret. But come to me, okay? I don't want you to be hurt all the time.") 

Dabi realizes that you truly came here alone, without backup, just to seek him out. The knowledge doesn't sit right, feels disorganized, disjointed, dishonest. 

He tries to look you in the eye to gauge your story (you had a terrible poker face when you were both kids; Touya won nearly every card game), but you’re still looking down in your lap, gaze soft and exposed. No makeup, no glamour—just exhaustion. 

"I'm glad I found you, Touya." 

You look nothing like in the magazines, he notices.

xv. excuses

Dabi doesn’t know what to do with you.

In all his years spent watching you, he wouldn’t have been able to anticipate your reunion being like this: with you held captive in his room, wearing his shirt, sitting happily in his bed, eating takeout for the third meal in the row. For every hour that passes, he feels unease building in the pit of his stomach, irritation prickling at the staples holding together his face. He keeps running through options, plans, possibilities—he’ll kill you when he feels like it; he’ll keep you trapped until he’s killed Endeavor; he’ll use you as bait; he’ll throw you to Ujiko—and suddenly it’s evening, and he’s back in his room, and you’re opening a plastic container with your freed hands and saying, “Touya, you remembered that I liked katsu curry?” And Dabi wants to scream, because Touya committed every single detail about you to heart after he died, treating each one as if it were a priceless gold coin. Of course he fucking remembers that you liked katsu curry. 

He should just burn you alive.

Dabi should just burn you alive while your annoying quirk is gone, but he’s busy with keeping an eye on Hawks, with recruiting men now that Shigaraki is back at full power, at working on tactical strategies with Geten. Killing you is on his neverending list of things to do, and he’s got all the details figured out, too: he’ll keep you helpless on suppressants, fry you to a crisp while you can’t heal, then put your body in a bag and toss it into an alleyway. One-by-one, he’ll do this to all his father’s former students, until Endeavor will realize that Shouto is next, that his legacy is fragile, that his career is at the behest of a serial killer. Dabi’s finalizing the details while you’re picking out pieces of vegetable tempura, trying not to spill the sauce on his bed. 

“Touya, do you only ever eat takeout?”

“What?”

He looks at you, at your irritatingly pretty eyes, and notices that you look concerned.

“I said,” you repeat, “do you only ever eat takeout?”

“What, you don’t like tempura? Hand it over, then.”

“No! You know that’s not true.” You lean away from him, as if he’ll reach out and snatch it at any moment. "It's just… do you ever eat home-cooked food?"

"Always," Dabi replies before he can stop himself. 

You blink. "Really?" 

"Yeah, sure. Shigaraki packs Bento lunches for us all in the League. Didn't your mole tell you that?" 

"We don't have a mole in the League," you reply, frowning. "And I'm being serious."  

"About the mole?" 

You look a little frustrated, now. "No, about the food. I’m worried about you, Touya."

He stares.

"Worried," he repeats. You look away, as if embarrassed.

Dabi wonders if Ujiko slipped some kind of experimental hallucinogen into his last meal, because this shit can't possibly be real. Out of all the fantasies about you he's ever constructed, drug-fueled or otherwise, this must be the least convincing one: that some girl from his childhood is looking at him now, knowing that he's a villain, cataloguing all his scars, and is worrying about him.

No one's worried about him in at least a decade. 

His contempt must be showing up in his eyes, because you wilt a little under his gaze. "I'm sorry," you say quietly. "I know it's silly, given everything that's happened… but I've been wondering if you've been, you know, eating okay."

Dabi gives you a long look, tries to collect his thoughts. He grasps at them, looking for the usual threads of rage, but there's only emptiness. No searing heat in his palms or his brain. No desire to pick at his stitches. 

And for some reason he can't fathom, he replies, "I eat fine. I just hate cooking." 

"You hate cooking?" you ask, openly curious. You've gotten this way with him several times now, hanging onto every bit of his post-death life that he lets slip in front of you, no matter how mundane. "Me too," you say, as if the two of you are at all similar. "I live alone... cooking for myself feels like a chore, you know? But I like cooking for other people." A deep breath. "You know, I could…"

Your voice trails off. Dabi raises a brow, just looking at you. You can't be fucking serious right now. 

"What?" he asks, voice flat.

Your shoulders fall.

"Nevermind," you say quietly. "It's nothing."

Dabi should laugh in your face. He should stop wasting his money on your favourite foods. He should wrap his hands around your neck and squeeze until you die. 

He should do those things, but then you're standing in front of the bathroom sink, pulling up his shirt by the hem. You're showing him the bare skin of your abdomen like there's no problem with that, like you're safe around him, like you trust him not to push you against the counter and tear off that fucking shirt. So goddamn stupid, he can't help but think. Nevermind your degenerate fans—do you know what villains would do to you, what they would do to any female hero they could catch like this? The thought of you being so vulnerable, so exposed, in front of someone else drives him up the wall. Would you be stupid enough to do this in front of Re-Destro? In front of Shigaraki? 

"I wouldn't do this in front of anyone else," you tell him when he points this out, looking at him like he's grown a second head. Looking at him like he never died, like—

(Touya understood for the first time, looking at your rapidly healing lip and the tears that kept welling up in your eyes, why anyone would become a hero even if they were not born to a father like his.

"I promise I won't let anyone hurt you again.") 

—like you can still trust him.

You strip the gauze away from your wound and trace the outline of the mark he left on you. There's no disgust in your expression, no resentment about the discolouration or pain—just a lot of sadness. He thinks you must be mourning your perfect body, the bikini photoshoots, the sponsorships.

But then you're asking, voice fragile, "Did it hurt this badly, at Sekoto Peak?"  

Dabi tries to ignore the quiver in your voice.

"No," he says, glancing in the mirror. "It was worse. The flames I used on you weren't as hot as the ones back then." 

You tilt your head at him, watching him carefully. "Why not?" 

"'cause I didn't need to make them that hot. It would have just…" 

He stops. 

You're staring at him now, and he wants to leave the room and make a beeline for Ujiko's lab. What did that freak slip into his last drink for Dabi to say those words? 'It would have just hurt you unnecessarily'? Why the fuck would that matter—he's going to kill you.

Now he's the quiet one as he finishes, "Nevermind." 

Dabi should just slit your throat. No carbonized agony; no struggling; no screaming. Just one moment where you'll bleed all over him and then it'll be done. He's even got the knife in his hands, hidden behind his back as you flip through one of the magazines he'd thrown under the bed. You study the picture of yourself intently, not realizing at all what he's done with it. 

"Did you think about me often, Touya?" No reply. His fingers tighten around the knife. He's thinking about your internship with his father, all the sponsorship money you've made, the increasingly provocative costumes. But then—

"I never stopped thinking about you." Your voice is so quiet now, almost shy. "I missed you." 

You look up at him, and the expression on your face is so tender that it would rend Touya's heart. So tender that his grip slackens. So tender that there's a moment before he feels stupid for believing your lie. 

Because you must be lying. Must be. Must be trying to get him to warm up so he'll let you go. You probably think he's still that thirteen year old kid who believed all your confessions, that he's gullible enough to fall into another betrayal.

Dabi should just kill you.

Two weeks pass before he knows it, and he doesn't touch a hair on your head.

xvi. sentiment 

Dabi starts to think that maybe killing you isn't the way to go.

There are other, better ways of ruining a hero. Just like how he's never wanted to kill his father so much as break him, Dabi thinks that there are worse fates for you than death.

The most obvious option is just erasing your quirk. Some nights, while you're locked into a medication-induced sleep—he gives you pills to help with the pain, Dabi has explained to you—he sticks a needle into your arm and doses you up on Overhaul's drug. It's only a temporary effect, removing your power for several days at a time, but Dabi starts thinking of switching to the permanent version of the drug. Ujiko is getting pissed at him anyway, for burning through so much of his stock.

It would be perfect, wouldn't it? That quirk of yours just makes you so fucking valuable.

("My parents used to think I was quirkless," you mentioned once, after you learned about how proud Endeavor was of Touya's flames, "until I fell down some stairs and they watched my bones heal on the spot! They were so excited.")

It's kind of funny, actually. Your quirk isn't especially flashy, but it's desirable. It makes you desirable as a hero, because you're so hard to take down. It could make you desirable as a doctor, if you ever decide to go that route. It would make you desirable as High End material, if Dabi ever changes his mind about killing you. 

It even makes you desirable as a woman. Or—no, not a woman. More like an animal used for breeding, kind of like his mom. That's what his father used to think, anyway.

("Think about it, Rei. Her father said that it's almost like she's immortal, the way she heals. Could you imagine if someone had her quirk combined with firepower like—"

"They're children, Enji! Children, not dogs or lab rats!") 

Yeah, your quirk is most of your value. Without it, you're aren't posing in magazines or featuring in newspapers or working for his father. Without it, you aren't saving burning children or healing other heroes or getting quirk marriage offers. Without it, you're a normal girl, sleeping peacefully in his bed, human and vulnerable and breakable. 

Without it, you're worthless.

("I don't think you're worthless, Touya." Your voice was so gentle when you told him this, and your hand felt so kind as you brushed the blistering skin beneath his eyes. Already, the pain was ebbing away, almost like when his mother used her ice quirk to calm his burns. "Just because you can't use your quirk the way your father wants you to, doesn't mean you're worthless." 

"You think I can still be a hero?" 

Two little hands on his face now, cupping his cheeks. He always felt hot, but his face burned underneath your fingers, even with the autumn wind. He stared at your eyes, noticing for the first time how pretty they were, even when you looked so worried.

"Mhm. I think you can be whatever you want."

His face flickered with pain.

"But I can't use my flames without hurting myself…" 

"Then I'll be around to heal you, silly.")

"Touya?" 

Dabi freezes, his hand curled around the syringe in his pocket. He can barely make out your face in this darkness, but he can imagine it: the grogginess, the confusion, the mindnumbingly stupid trust.

"Touya, why—" A yawn. "You're almost never here at night. Is something wrong?" 

He doesn't move, just keeps staring down at you, keeps fingering the syringe. Dabi is so focused on its shape, on the thought of erasing you, that he nearly jumps when he feels a couple of fingers brush his cheek. 

("I don't think you're worthless, Touya.") 

"Are you not sleeping well?" you ask, voice still soft from drowsiness. "I'm sorry I've stolen your bed from you… I can sleep on the floor, y'know…"

"I'm sleepin’ fine." 

"Then… are you in pain? I saw you were bleeding here, earlier today…" 

Your thumb brushes against one of his staples, and he stops breathing. You do, too. And after a long silence—

"I'm sorry." You withdraw your hand, sighing in frustration. "My quirk hasn't come back yet. I can't heal you." 

Dabi figures you're probably wrong about that. His skin is tingling where you just touched it, like it's about to start growing back. All along the border of his scar he feels this, and all the way up to his disfigured tearline. He feels it there especially.

Overhaul's drug is definitely about to wear off. He should dose you with more of it sooner, rather than later. 

His finger plays with the syringe. He wishes you were unconscious, so that he could keep this charade longer, but he can't risk—

"Do your scars usually hurt?" 

Dabi's mind goes blank, because now you're leaning in. For a second, he thinks you're about to cup his face with both hands. 

He jerks back.

"They're fine," he says. "Unlike you, princess, I can take a bit of pain." 

"Don't call me that," you mutter, and you sound so irritated that Dabi has to stop himself from laughing. Three weeks in captivity and this is what gets you pissed at him? Incredible.

"Sure, sure. I'll go back to 'Miss Top Twenty'. Or do you prefer 'Number Twelve'?" 

Another sigh, equally frustrated. You give up on him, just sitting back and, thank fuck, putting more space between the two of you. He hopes that gap won't close again. He hopes that you're annoyed enough to leave him alone, that you'll keep your hands to yourself and go back to sleep.

You don't, of course. 

"Do you know how long it'll take, Touya?" 

"For what?" 

For you to escape? For him to hurt you? 

"For me to get my quirk back." 

"Dunno. A few more weeks?" He narrows his eyes. "Why? You got an idea about how to get out of here? I told you I got that covered."  

You shake your head. 

"It's not that… I was just hoping that I could start healing some of those scars." You look up at him, and even in this darkness, he can see the sadness in you. The magazines, the tabloids, the news channels—they've never seen your sadness. But he saw it often as a kid, and he's surprised to see it now.

"You know I hate seeing you in pain," you whisper. 

Dabi ends up forgetting about the syringe. 

xvii. betrayal 

You're a good actress. Really, you are. But eventually you slip, and Dabi feels a sick kind of joy when it happens.

Your little ruse comes to an end after three weeks of captivity, of easy living in his room and of vivid delusions that he's still your Touya, that stupid kid who went red every time you held his hand, who was gullible enough to believe that you gave a shit about him. Your Touya who, had he grown up to become an even remotely sane person, definitely would have wanted to protect you and see you back home. As the days pass, you start to ask about the specifics of his plans for helping you escape from the PLF. You often thank him, too, for locking you up in his room—because he's doing this to protect you, right? To keep you from getting converted into a Nomu? Right?

Dabi nearly can’t believe how stupid you are.

One day, you're lying in his bed and staring lazily at the ceiling, rambling about what you'll do once you're freed. He’s sitting a few feet away, as usual, on the chair, listening to you talk. You list the usual things: breathing fresh air, which will feel so good after being cooped up in this room; having home-cooked food, which will be nice after all this takeout; seeing your friends, who all must be terribly worried. 

And then you add, "When we get out of here, Touya, I'll take care of things for you too." 

"What?"

("What?"

"Do you wanna run away with me, Touya?") 

He stares at you, frozen for a second. He must have misheard, had that old concussion from Sekoto Peak creep up on him again. Or he must be on one of Ujiko's drugs still, brain clouded by chemically induced delusions. But you're looking at him with those earnest, pretty eyes, and you're saying, "When we get out of here, I'll make sure that you'll be protected."

The words are out before he can stop them: "What the hell do you mean by 'we'?"

Your face twists into confusion. "When we get out of the PLF together, obviously? I'm not leaving you behind." 

What the hell are you saying? 

"You wanna take me with you?" He raises a brow. "Yeah, I can see that going over real well. I'm sure the police and other heroes will be real happy about letting me go scot-free—"

"They will." 

He stares again, waiting for your face to crack. But your expression doesn’t waver, completely serious. 

"That's why I looked for you in the first place, Touya. Because I want to bring you back…" You breathe deeply. "I'm glad you saved me, because it'll help me get a deal for you. If you cooperate with the authorities and provide intelligence on the League and PLF, it’ll definitely help avoid prison time too. If we can get you a minimal sentence, then I can help you get back on your feet."

He can’t listen to this anymore. “Are you fucking insane?”

Your eyes widen. He can’t help but scoff at your dumb stare, your obvious shock at his derision. Your Touya would have never spoken to you like this.

Still, you remain calm. “I’ve thought about this a lot. A deal like this isn’t crazy—it’s been done before. And… I’m well-liked by the Hero Commission. At the very least, I can make sure you stay out of Tartarus—”

“I’ve killed over thirty people.”

You stop. Your mouth hangs open, your sentiment killed mid-sentence by his remorseless words. Dabi feels the corner of his mouth lifting. You look thrown off, but not shocked. Not scandalized.

“I’ve killed over thirty people, but you knew that, didn’t you?” 

You don’t say anything to that, just waiting. He tilts his head, studying you, studying the hypocrite on his bed.

"I’ve killed so many people, but you want me to avoid justice. That's not very heroic of you, Miss Top Twenty." 

You sit up now, body filled with unmistakable tension. “I don’t want you to avoid justice. I want you to avoid cruelty. The law...” Dabi watches your teeth work over your lip, your brows knotting with uncertainty. His fingers twitch with heat as you try to cobble together a defense. “...the law views people like you as irredeemable. You’ll get treated like an animal if you get captured on your own. But I don’t think you deserve that.”

“Oh?” He tilts his head, genuinely curious. “And why wouldn’t you?”

“Because I know you, Touya.”

“Nah. You knew me when I was a kid.” 

"Sure, and I’ve been living in your room for three weeks, so I think I know a little bit about you now, too.” You study him carefully, genuine confusion on your face. “Touya, don’t you want to get out of this life?”

He can’t help it—he laughs. He laughs, and it’s cruel, and he sounds more like a barking animal than a human. "Get out? And do what?" Dabi watches anxiety creep into your eyes, your jaw tightening with anticipation, and he feels a strange thrill. “What, should I get a 9 to 5? Try to get an office job with a face like this? Or should I move in with my mother at that psych ward, and you can visit me every other month too?”

Confusion flickers across your face. “You know what happened to your mother?” Then the cogs in your brain start turning. “...how do you know that I visit her?”

“How do you think?” His lip twitches down, and your eyes zero in on the movement. “I know what all of you have been up to.”

Your chest is still. You’re holding your breath, and your body is stiff. He’s surprised when you eke out, “It’s not too late to go back, Touya.”

“Go back? Are you that slow?” He’s smiling now, and he’s fully aware how terrifying it must look on such a disfigured face. “Here, let me explain it in a way you’ll understand, Number Twelve—I’m a different person now. It’s been ten years; I’ve killed dozens of people; I’m a lieutenant in a fucking terrorist organization. There’s no going back, and I wouldn’t want to anyway.” 

You’re quiet for a long time, just looking at him—and holy shit, your expression is driving him nuts. He’s this unhinged, and you’re still looking at him like that? Like he’s some kid who burned himself and needs to be healed and told he’s worth something? Fuck off. 

Quietly, you ask, “Why did you run away, Touya?”

“You know why. You know why I couldn’t stay in that fucking house any longer than I did.”

“No, Touya. I mean—why did you run away from me?”

Your eyes are red, tearing up. He feels a headache coming on, because god, is it annoying when you cry.

“Does it fucking matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

He can’t stand looking at your face, at your self-pitying, pathetic expression. Like you just ran into Touya’s arms with a bloody lip and red eyes. Like he’s the one who betrayed you.

His mouth twists. “You don’t have to lie like that. I know you barely cared about me anyway.”

“That’s not true, Touya. You know I missed you.”

“Yeah, you missed me so much that you went to work for Endeavor, huh? Missed me so much that you asked for that sweet UA rec? Missed me so much that you interned at his agency? Missed me so much that you just forgave everything he did to me?”

You freeze, not looking at him in the eye. And Dabi’s never seen this expression on you before, but he figures out pretty quickly what it is: you’re ashamed of yourself. His lip curls and he thinks, fuck all those photoshoots, because he likes you most looking like this—eyes down, shoulders hunched, face trembling with guilt. His heart rate kicks up; his eyes feel like they’re burning. Dabi smiles.

“People like you,” he says, voice measured now, “are exactly why I follow Stain’s ideals, did you know that? You’re just—” He’s out his chair now, walking to the edge of the bed, “—a fucking sellout. You spend all your time posing in that stupid fucking outfit, whoring out your face for sponsorships and cash, while turning a blind eye to the fact that your mentor is an abusive prick who beats his wife and kids, huh?” No reply, but you visibly wince, and he feels a sick pleasure when you do. “Hey, tell me—does the money make it any easier to live with the guilt?”

You shrink up even more, looking extra small, not saying anything. And god, it feels so good to see you cower like this. This is what he should have been doing with you all along. 

“You’re the reason I’ll never go back. You’re everything that’s wrong about hero society.” His grin splits even wider on his face. “You’re the reason why I’m gonna burn it all down—you, Endeavor, Shouto—”

“What?”

You’re looking at him now, eyes wide. And wow, you have the gall to look confused, like he just said something wrong. His eyes narrow. 

“Oh, that’s right. I never told you, did I?” Dabi leans down, so that he’s eye level with you. You try to jerk back, but his hands dart out and his grip is iron on your shoulders. Without your quirk, you can hardly fight back, so you’re forced to look at him as he says, “That’s the biggest reason I’m a villain now. I’m going to destroy Endeavor and his little doll. And you know what?” He looks at your terrified expression, finally satisfied with himself. “I think I’ll end you too.”

You swallow. “You can do whatever you want with me, Touya,” you say quietly. “I can’t blame you for wanting to hurt me or your father. But please,”—your eyes seek him out, red and begging—“please leave Shouto out of it.”

(What Touya hated most about when you visited was seeing you trying to talk to Shouto. His annoying, kid brother—his father’s little doll—was always the center of attention, so of course he caught yours, too. Whenever you saw him staring down at you all from the balcony, you waved at him from the yard, your smile glowing. Sometimes, he’d have just long enough to wave back before Endeavor pulled him indoors.

“Why isn’t Shouto allowed to play with us?” you always asked, looking at Touya. And Touya would always roll his eyes and answer truthfully: Endeavor said that Shouto was different; Endeavor wanted Shouto to succeed as a hero, unlike his defective siblings; it was Endeavor’s fault.

And then one day, Natsuo ran his mouth and told you about that one time Touya attacked Shouto.

“Did you really attack him?” you asked Touya, while the two of you were alone on Sekoto Peak. You were frowning at him, and sure, there were times that you had been unhappy with Touya before, but you never looked like this. You looked at him and Touya thought of his father looking at him after discovering a fresh set of burns, or Fuyumi after Touya called her a crybaby, or Natsuo after getting yelled at by his father, or his mother right after being hit. “I was thinking... if you apologize to your parents about it, and say that it won't happen again, then maybe they’ll let you all start seeing Shouto again."

Touya stared at you, his face inexplicably hot—but it wasn’t the kind of heat he felt when the two of you held hands, and it wasn’t the kind of heat he felt when you asked if he wanted to kiss. No, this felt different, felt like it was going to burn him inside-out.

“Why would I do that?”

You looked at him, confused, as though he had just asked something wrong.  

“Because it was wrong to attack him, and you won’t do it again?”

Touya yelled at you a lot after that, and you tried your best to reason with him, but every reply was met with another scream. Why do I have to apologize? Why am I always the one in the wrong? Why are people allowed to hit me, but I can’t hit them? Father burns us all the time, so why can't I burn Shouto? Why does everyone only care about Shouto? Why doesn't anyone care about me?  

Weren’t you supposed to be on my side? 

All the questions blend together in Dabi’s memories. Mostly, he just remembers his throat stinging, his chest aching, his eyes burning. And then his hands burned too, scorching as badly as his heart while his fingers dug into your shoulders, and then the world before his eyes shone like pure cobalt. The stench of burning flesh and fabric suffocated him, and through the flames and smoke, you shrieked and begged, “Stop, stop, Touya, please, it hurts—”)

“Shouto is innocent,” you continue. “Please don’t blame him. Your father put him through so much pain too. That’s…” Your throat warbles and quivers through your next words, trembling with grief. “That’s the only reason I stayed close to your father; I was worried about Shouto, and about Fuyumi, and—”

Worried about Shouto.

Of course you were worried about Shouto.

Everyone cares so fucking much about Shouto. His father, his mother, Natsuo, Fuyumi, the entire fucking world of pro heroes. Why would you be any different? After all, Shouto won the genetic lottery. Shouto is perfect by his father's design. He isn’t a complete fuck up like Dabi, not wrought with in-born errors or hideous scars. Shouto is the son that Touya was supposed to be. 

Your Touya was just a mistake. 

He was a mistake, and that's why he's been erased from everyone's memories—because you all have Shouto. That's probably why you'd stopped mourning Touya so damn quickly, actually; you had Shouto instead. Hell , now that Dabi thinks about it, his father’s probably setting up an arranged marriage between you and his little doll. Good stock for breeding heroes, the both of you. That’s the real reason why you hang around that household like a fly to rotting meat, why Endeavor allowed you to stay so close with them after Touya's death, why you’ve turned into a sellout and a sycophant. You’re not a hero—you’re a whore in both your public and private life. Your value is defined by your good genes and what’s in between your legs, what your fanboys want to fuck and what Shouto is going to have.

What Dabi is going to ruin.

“What are you saying, Touya?” you ask, eyes full of tears. “Have you lost your mind?”

Dabi laughs. 

What a stupid question.

xviii. betrayal (II) 

(Touya was thirteen years old when he saw, for the first time, a burn wound healing itself spontaneously. 

His flames had consumed your entire body, so it was not just a superficial injury stretching on your shoulders or hands. No, your entire body was wounded. You were a wound. You were in front of him, wailing and crying, your entire being vulnerable and blistering and in pain. The wind blew, carrying your ashes across Sekoto Peak.

Touya had realized, holding you on that bench in front of the convenience store, that you were the first person that he wanted to protect. And you had told him, a blubbering mess, that nobody had ever told you something like that before, that they would protect you. 

So how did it come to this? 

Why did he burn you? 

Why did he make you cry?

His eyes stung, his face wet and steaming as he watched your skin regenerate. You were whole again before he knew it, looking good as new, yet you were still in pain. 

Your sobs died down eventually, and you were left staring into nothing.)

xix. mistake

Dabi's finally figured out what he’s going to do with you. 

He doesn't know why it took him to get here, doesn't know why it took him so long to pull down your shorts and tear his shirt off you, doesn't know why it took him so long to restrain you. When he finally has you subdued on his bed, Dabi takes a moment to look at your trembling, vulnerable form—properly, this time, not smeared in blood or blistering with heat—and he finds himself enraptured by it, more than any photoshoot or broadcast, more than any fantasy he's ever envisioned.

Dabi's always known that pictures of you in any magazine have been filtered through camera angles, tailored outfits, countless manipulations. He's often thought that, beneath it all, you wouldn't be much to look at. But holy fuck, you're beautiful. You're beautiful in a way that those tabloid assholes wouldn't understand. You're beautiful in a way that would have been beyond Touya’s imagination. You’re beautiful in a way that makes Dabi run his hands up and down your body, drawing out quivers and shuddering breaths out with his fingertips alone.

You are beautiful, and Dabi is going to ruin every inch of you. No amount of crying or pleading will make him decide otherwise, though you don’t seem to realize it. 

"Touya—Touya, stop! Stop! Please!" 

Even when he's so preoccupied with pinching and grabbing at your body, he can’t stop himself from laughing at your words.

"Are you fucking with me? 'Please'? Are you always so polite to all the villains who attack you?" Dabi’s lip curls as he pushes your face down into the mattress, adding, "Or just the ones who fuck you?" 

You go quiet at the question, fear suffocating your sobs before they can bloom. Your whole body goes stock still, remains that way even as he forces you on your knees and re-positions your hips, like you're a ragdoll. But even if you aren’t resisting, you’re shaking when he lines himself up with you, inhaling sharply when you feel the press of him against your entrance. And when he finally pushes himself inside—

(After your three bows and grief-stricken prayer, your father clicked his tongue and dragged you away. The anguished noises you made as he manhandled you hurt Touya so bad that he never visited again.)

—Dabi can’t help but grunt, because holy fuck are you tight. Too tight to take him all at once, he realizes. He settles for splitting you open slowly, forcing his cock inside you a bit at a time. His fingers dig into your hips as he tries to ground himself through the tight squeeze of you around him, tries to stop himself from just shoving himself into you like an animal. He wants to savour this act of degradation, of spoiling your innocent charm by making you his whore—but it's hard to control himself because god, this really does feel better than his hand.

(Dabi didn’t feel any guilt when he wrapped his hand around himself and imagined fucking you. Imagined how tight you must be, and how pornographic your moans must sound, and how you'd stop struggling and eventually just succumb because it felt so good, getting fucked like this by your childhood friend.)

By the time he manages to bottom out, you're gasping into the sheets and soaking all over him. His lip curls at the wet slide of his thrusts, and he can't help but say, "Not as innocent as you look, huh, princess?" He snaps his hips into you with extra force at that, feeling his cock twitch at the way you groan into the mattress. "How do you think your fans would react if they found out that their favourite heroine is a slut who likes taking villain cock?" 

You turn to look back at him, staring at him through your tears. "I… I don't like…" 

He thrusts into you again, and your words dissolve into a moan, a broken sob.

"Sorry, what was that? What don't you like?" But he doesn't wait for a reply, just keeps moving his hips until you're whimpering and breathless, clenching around him with each thrust; just pounds into you into the mattress until you're a fucked-out mess beneath him; just uses you, and uses you, and uses you until there's nothing left.

There will be no sponsorships after this. There will be no modeling contracts or interviews. There will be no more nights with your faceless boyfriends or his pathetic brother or any other man who might have fallen for you.

There will be no glowing smiles or pretty eyes. No one will want you after this.

(The stench of burning flesh suffocated him, and through the flames and smoke, you shrieked and begged, “Stop, stop, Touya, please, it hurts—”) 

"Fuck," he hisses, his hips going still with his cock pressed against your cervix. It's all the warning you get before Dabi finishes inside you, filling you up with his spend, stuffing your cunt so full that he can feel it leaking out around him. You're so fucked out by this point that you barely stir even with his cock twitching inside you, just staring glassily at the wall as you passively take it all, breathing slow. You don't move when he pulls out, either, your body just slumping quietly against the bed. 

You don't even react to the faint smell of burning flesh.

"Hey," Dabi thinks to say, after he's caught his own breath, "are you alive in there? I know I just fucked your brains out, but"—he inhales sharply as he pulls out—"that's only an expression." 

No reply—not in words, anyway. Your eyes do flutter shut, and there's a quiet, shuddering breath that slips through your mouth. For some reason, the noise settles in Dabi's stomach, nauseating him. 

Then he looks down between your legs, and oh fuck.

(Dabi hates the fact that you are bleeding all over him.)

xx. regret (II)

("I… I'm…"

I'm sorry, he wanted to say. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I was just so sad. I burn when I get too emotional and I don't know how to—

The words were stuck in Touya's throat, all still-born apologies. They sounded so stupid in his head, because he had just burned you alive.

"It's okay, Touya." Your voice was so hollow. "I've already healed." You looked at your own hands, skin smooth once more. You held them up for him to view. "It's like it never happened, see?"

Touya gasped for air, tears boiling like water in a screaming kettle. 

"I…" 

You looked down, voice small. 

"I'm sorry for making you mad. I shouldn't have done that. It was…" Your voice fractured a little bit. "...it was my own fault." 

Stop it. 

Don't say things like that. 

You didn’t do anything wrong.

You didn't sob anymore after that, didn't wail or scream—your tears were now passive and silent, quietly carving tracks into the thin layer of ash on your skin. Still, the sight was unbearable for him.

Because Touya always hated it when you cried. Always. 

What was he supposed to do, now that he had pushed you over that edge? A sorry would never be good enough. Touya knew, because apologies never fixed anything between his parents. There was nothing he could do for you after inflicting a wound like that. 

There was nothing that could fix what he'd just broken.) 

xxi. dissonance

Dabi feels relieved. 

He's standing in the shower, water raining down his back and all over his hair. He usually keeps the water cold, to help with his full-body wounds, but today the temperature is scalding hot. The edges of his scars are itching, the heat is making his nausea worse, and dye is running off his hair in black rivulets, making a mess of things—but he feels at peace.

He's feeling good because things are finally clear, finally simple. You never gave a shit about him. You'd betrayed his memory and sold out without a second thought, eating out of the hand that had once struck him. You ignored his pain in favour of wealth and status, just like his father. Just like his mother. Just like the rest of the world.

You'd tried to erase him like the rest of his family, so he's destroyed you like he's always wanted. 

Bonus points that you'd been virgin until today—he ruined that, too. 

And it had felt good to do it; you were tight and hot, and violating you was everything he'd ever fantasized about. Exactly what he's always wanted to do.

The water is boiling. The spray is starting to feel heavy on his back, like bullets. He should turn it off soon, probably. But if he does, he knows he'll hear your wailing again, and he's tired of it. He has a throbbing headache because of your shrieking. 

And anyway, he still feels filthy. 

He lets himself stand there a while longer, thinking about what he will do with you next. What he did just now was good, but not enough. No—he's gotta make you pay for ten years of betrayal. You were so quick to ignore him, but now you won't be able to do that anymore. 

His eyes start to feel hot. The temperature must be getting to him. Even if he still feels disgusting, he turns off the tap, listens to the water drain, and he frowns after it all slips away and unmasks the sound of your sobbing. 

So fucking annoying.

His face is sour when he steps out of the washroom, now fully clothed. Just looking at you, just hearing you so clearly, is making his skull pound even worse. Just looking at the mess you made on his bed makes him want to jump back into the shower and drown himself in it. Makes him want to pull out his staples and have his flesh fall away. Makes him not want to be in his own body anymore.

And then there’s the stench. He likes it, the look of his greedy handprints branding your body, but the scent of burnt flesh is unbearable. Reeks worse than any other time he's sniffed it, including Sekoto Peak. It permeates the air, inescapable, same as the sound of your tears. 

Dabi runs back into the washroom and throws up.

end chapter

notes: after writing this chapter i felt like dabi had traumatized MC, himself, and also me! ;-; I am sorry if he also traumatized you. Thank you so much for reading!! 

[farewell-itoshisoup]

higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 1

dabi x f!reader; shouto x f!reader

Touya watches you stare feebly out the window, your fingers curled around those useless flowers he bought, and he finally understands why his pathetic excuse of a father could never find the words to apologize to his mother.

chapter warnings: obsessive behaviour, sexual content, childhood friends gone wrong, dabi's character in general

please find the masterlist on my blog!

TOUYA

i. death

After Todoroki Touya dies, Dabi watches you grow up through broadcasts, newspapers, and magazines.

He’s fifteen when this begins. It’s been two years since he passed away, an entire year before he’ll adopt his new name. He’s nothing but a phantom at this point, a thin ghost wandering the streets and begging for money, scrounging for shelter, stealing when no one gives him either one. Todoroki Touya had thought so long about ending his existence and running away, but he had never figured out the details. Never thought about the gnawing hunger, the cement beds, the burn scars that won’t heal.

Never thought about the loneliness.

So of course when he sees you on the big screen hovering over the crosswalk, a familiar face featured on TV, Touya’s ghost stops.

Even after these past two years, you look strikingly similar to the image in his memories. Still nice, still pretty, still the kind of face that had once sent the temperature of his own skyrocketing. 

("You like her!” Fuyumi had always yelled gleefully, and Touya always yelled back that she didn’t know what she was talking about, but of course she did.)

But there are pieces of you that have changed, too.

Your face is slimmer than he remembers. You’ve got bags under your eyes, and Touya still thinks you’re pretty despite them, but they’re bad . Not as bad as the purple scarring beneath his own pupils, but it makes him wonder if you’re okay. 

(For the first several months after he burned at Sekoto Peak, he kept circling back to see his own grave—who wouldn’t?—and often saw you there, eyes red and exhausted. You'd offer him apples and wagashi each time, their sweetness spoiled by the stench of incense. 

Once, your father got impatient with you. Sick of this, Touya heard him say. After your three bows and grief-stricken prayer, he clicked his tongue and dragged you away. The anguished noises you made as he manhandled you hurt Touya so bad that he never visited again.)

Then again, Touya feels a little silly worrying, because you look strong now, too, even with the shadow of fatigue on your face. The UA tracksuit makes you look powerful, outlines your shape in a way that Touya doesn't recognize, surprises him like how he sometimes is caught off-guard by his own reflection. You've both grown, even if in opposite directions. 

He watches you stretch before the preliminaries, lithe and confident and magnetic. He imagines himself warming up beside you, also a first year student. You’re classmates, like you’d promised each other you’d be. He looks strong like you, like an entire human instead of a half-burned corpse.

He watches you run.

You’re jetting across the obstacle course before anyone else. The announcer’s voice is blasting from the speakers, whistling at your speed. Touya never understood your quirk—he didn’t have the brain cells for it when he was a kid, to be honest—so now his ghost is listening closely. Something to do with controlling cellular metabolism. Regeneration of yourself and others. Hysterical bursts of strength and speed that will tear muscle apart, but not so badly that you can’t heal it. Once you’d given Touya that boost, and the way the fibres in his calves had snapped had been agonizing.

But not as agonizing when they’d burned away altogether.

You crush the prelims. Touya feels a thrill when he watches your body cross the finish line—not first place, but close enough. He thinks he would have beat you if he were there, but you wouldn’t have faulted him.

(“Of course ’m not sad that I lost that race to you, Mister Number One,” he remembers you saying. You punched his shoulder, fist light and smile beaming. So full of faith, like little kids are.)

But Touya’s not there beside you, because Touya died some years ago. He’s never regretted running away, but looking at your lone figure on the screen right now—he feels a little hollow, like he hadn’t eaten enough that morning. Maybe that’s why he listens so attentively to the running commentary, keeps imagining what it’d be like if he'd never died and stayed in school with you. Kept racing with you. Kept holding hands with you.

Do you ever think of him? Do you ever imagine what it’d be like if he’d stayed?

Part of Touya hopes that you're thinking of him right now, watching you on that screen.

“Just as expected!” the commentator finally cheers. “That’s the power of a student who got in via recommendation, huh! Got in on the recommendation of the Number Two hero, no less!”

And then Touya feels unbelievably stupid. How’d he forget that he died? Why did he bother imagining what it would have been like to keep existing?

And why did he think you’d still be mourning him?

ii. ghost

Touya learns quickly to stop thinking in terms of what-ifs, hypotheticals, daydreams when it comes to you. Sure, your image continues to haunt him as the weeks roll by, showcasing the newest darling of the hero tabloids, but he stops any wishful thinking in its tracks. If you’ve ever given a damn about him, you sure as hell wouldn’t be coasting through life on the recommendation of Todoroki Enji at the moment. You wouldn’t be playing into a system that you both know is rotten to the core.

But that face of yours—that nice, pretty, exhausted face of yours—pulls his mind back to past summers with you, back to the thin walls of his childhood home. Most of the time he spends there, in his head, is loud and painful and swollen with heat. But when he thinks back to the moments he spent there with you —well, those memories are a little better. 

Those memories, he doesn't mind thinking about.

(Endeavor never blew up at his mother when you were around, Touya recalls. But that didn’t stop him from yelling at her when the both of you were out of sight, squirreled away in Touya’s room to do homework. You handled those moments exceptionally well. Fuyumi and Natsuo trembled whenever they overheard their parents fighting. Both of them scared way too easily, a trait that they probably got from their mother. Touya himself kept a straight face—he was better than to let the yelling bother him. He was going to be the Number One hero someday, after all.

But you handled things with more composure than any of them. More than even Touya. Even when it was his mother's screaming, broken voice—

"Why do you keep making him do this?! This is hurting him—you’re hurting him! He can do other things, he can have a normal life!”

—you just kept your head down and pretended not to hear it, staring hard at the arithmetic problems on his desk, like they were the most interesting things in the world.)

You must have been embarrassed, Touya decides now. Embarrassed witnessing all that dirty laundry getting aired out. Too embarrassed to acknowledge what was going on in his house. He feels embarrassed now, just thinking about Endeavor’s pathetic temper, unable to stay intact even for the few hours that Touya’s only friend visited.

Still, he thinks it's strange, how a kid like you managed to keep such composure in such a shitty place. And how you managed to charm his mother despite the circumstances was really something else.

(You always relaxed visibly when the screaming stopped, but Touya would stiffen, because he always hated what would come next. The wood floors creaked with his mother’s distinctive footsteps—frail, uncertain, like she was scared that someone would hear her—and then she’d slide open the door to Touya's room. Usually she’d have some sort of snack for the two of you, something like fruit. Nothing too decadent, because god forbid that Endeavor’s successor should ever get to have processed sugar.)

Touya feels extra delight, today, in pulling out a box of Seven Stars from his pocket. He lights the cigarette with his finger, paper and ash burning blue, and inhales deeply. This is a nice little ritual of his before he works nowadays—consuming something that his father would have hated, right before doing jobs that Endeavor would have despised.

He only smokes a little before putting it out. He'd like more to stave off the hunger, but Touya decides that he'll just deal with it. Still, it's a shame he ran out of food earlier. He'd have liked to eat something before working, but food is scarce nowadays. 

Not like when he was at home with you.

(Often, his mother brought apples and sliced them up specifically to look like bunnies, which you always found adorable. Touya thought it was pointless, actually, but he liked seeing you smile, so he told his mother that he liked the rabbits too. And all this seemed to make his mother so relieved, seeing her eldest son do something as normal as eating rabbit-apples and solving math problems with his classmate. 

“I’m always so glad to see you here,” she said to you, smiling at you in a way that she never did to any of her own children. “You’re always welcome to come over, okay?”

You thanked her for the food and for having you over, and talked about how lucky you were to be able to visit Touya whenever you liked. Touya thought you must have been spouting bullshit from that pretty, angelic mouth of yours, because who would feel lucky listening to his parents fight? 

His agitation dissipated when the two of you were alone and the house finally quieted down. Endeavor was training and his mother was doing whatever it is that mothers do when they're alone. You and Touya did your problem sets and traded answers, and once you were finished, you rested your chin on your palms and smiled up at Touya.

"With grades like ours, we can definitely get into U.A.,” you often said, voice soft. “And—and after we graduate, when we’re both pros, we’ll both be making money and we’ll both move out from our homes, and we’ll get away from our parents—”

“We’ll move out, but we’ll still be close to each other, right?” Touya always asked.

“Don’t be silly, Touya. We’ll be next door neighbours.”)

Touya tries to shut it out now. Shuts it out because it's pointless. It's pathetic that he thinks so often about those memories with the rabbit-apples and the arithmetic problems, about all your little promises to one another. It's pathetic that Touya keeps thinking back to a time where his life could have been anything other than this —

“What the fuck! What the fuck! Fucking ugly demon—” The man in front of him screams as blue light crawls and dances all over his flesh, another addition to the string of burning bodies in the alleyway. His latest victim gurgles something that might be “Why are you doing this?!” and Touya just shrugs.

“Don’t blame me. You’re the one who was late on your payments.” 

One of them whimpers. 

“Oh, don’t be such a baby.” Touya leans against the brick wall, waiting for them to finish crying. “That fire’s not hot enough to kill you. Look at me.” He gestures to his scars, his entire body. “I’m living proof.”

Right. Living—that’s what he’s doing. It’s not much of a way to live, but he was reborn, and now he’s living. He’s eating like shit and he’s burning people to eat, but you know, it’s a life. It’s a life without you or Natsuo or Fuyumi or his mother’s rabbit-apples, and it’s not any kind of life where he’ll be a hero. Not a life that he ever envisioned with those what-if daydreams. But it’s a life away from Endeavor. 

It’s a life where he’s allowed to exist.

iii. posthumous names

It takes Touya another year to realize that you never gave a shit about him.

He’s sixteen when he recognizes this truth. It’s a month before he’ll settle into his new identity, a year before he’ll watch you graduate from the hero course. He’s still being followed around by your image wherever he goes, and it normally doesn’t inspire anything further than minor nostalgia or annoyance in him, so Touya is surprised by the malignance of his own thoughts when he reads the newspaper headline—

STUDENT HERO AT THE ENDEAVOR AGENCY SAVES CHILDREN FROM BURNING DAYCARE!

—and when he sees your nice, pretty face on the front page, absent of any fatigue. You're smiling—not at the camera, but at the young child you’re cradling in your arms, calming him even as a fire rages in the background. 

His fingers tremble when he picks up the paper. The seams of his skin burn and sting as the newsprint collapses in his fist, your perfect expression crumpling into smoke. Touya hates it, but he could have forgiven Endeavor's recommendation to U.A. academy. It had been your dream school, after all, and sure, your parents were both pros, but they were small-fry in comparison to his father. No one could turn down a recommendation from the Flame Hero.

But a work-study? Really? If Touya could get by collecting cans out of garbage bins and begging for money as a thirteen year old, would it kill you to separate yourself from his fucking father and make a career for yourself? Especially when you know what kind of a psychopath Enji truly is, when you once claimed to hate the guy because of what he was doing to his kids, to Touya—

(“I’m sorry, Touya,” you whimpered as you held his fractured hand, running your fingers along his scarred flesh. His skin grew back before his eyes and his bones stitched themselves back together, but you kept crying all the same. “He shouldn’t have done that to you, he shouldn’t keep doing this, and—do you wanna run away, Touya?”

“...what?”

“Do you wanna run away with me?”)

Someone whistles behind him. 

“Wow.”

Touya glances behind him, even as the kindling burns steadily in his hands.

“You’re the kid that Giran was tellin’ me about, right? Y’must be—blue flames like that are rare.”

“And you must be the villain.” Touya tilts his head, sizes the guy up. He always thought that his first, bona fide villain client would intimidate him a little more, but he feels fuck-all looking at this crime magnate. It’s just some guy in an expensive suit, which looks only slightly less tacky than the one that Giran wears. “You got any details for this job?”

“All business, huh? Sure, let’s talk. You got a name?” 

Touya’s been thinking about this one for a long time, probably longer than you spent thinking up your shitty hero title that’s burning up between his fingers. Infinitely longer than what it took for you to throw him away.

(A long time, but not nearly as long as the years that it took for the ashes of your smile to drift away from Touya’s palms.)

“Dabi.”

iv. hunger

When Dabi is seventeen years old, he makes peace with his appearance.

After he died, there was no need to look too much at his own face. The only mirrors he had were storefront windows, from which he was often chased because people knew he was a little street urchin who would probably steal. In public washrooms and shelters, he didn't linger for too long on his own reflection. But now he's seventeen, with a steady income and his own place, and he forces himself to look at his scars as he brushes his teeth every morning.

He looks particularly hideous today. His fake jaw bone had shattered a couple of nights ago, so now the bottom of his face is a throbbing, shapeless mess. He hasn't eaten solid food in twenty-six hours.

His plastic surgeon, hired through Giran, is due to operate on him today—but only for the jaw bone, and to fix up his stitches. Once she'd offered to perform a full-body skin graft and get rid of the burns, but Dabi had declined. He has no desire to return to the veneer he'd lived with in his previous life, a part of the Todoroki family with their good looks and glamour and rotten-sweet cores.

But you're still living that life. Living it better than he ever could, actually. Dabi flips through the magazines laid out in the empty waiting room of his surgeon, and of course his eyes linger on you. If the sight of you in a high school tracksuit had made him pause a few years back, this new version of you makes him stop entirely. Makes him short circuit a little, actually. Dabi remembers all the hero outfit designs you'd doodled when you were a kid—you drew multiple for yourself, and also for Touya—but none of them looked like this.

Your suit, with how tight it is, should be fucking illegal. It covers your whole body, but leaves very little to the imagination. Dabi knows how it works in the pro world: you need flashiness and audience appeal to really make it, because it's never about heroism so much as smoke and mirrors. But Dabi's never considered that you'd go the sex appeal route to achieve that. He can see the contour of your body, the slope of your hips, the swell of your tits. And holy fuck, do you have a nice rack. You grew up way too fucking well.

He grabs the magazine on his way out from surgery, still fixated on it despite being on laughing gas. Or maybe because he's on laughing gas. But even after a couple of days, while he's completely sober and lying on his mattress, he's still thinking about you. Still staring at this magazine photo and, speaking honestly, getting some pretty criminal thoughts.

It's your fault, not his. The pose they've put you into—the one that you must have agreed to, to boost your popularity, leading up to your official debut—accentuates every curve in your body. The face that you're making to the cameras, to him, to every slobbering consumer of this hero tabloid garbage, is so innocently obscene that it shouldn't be allowed. He can't stop staring at your mouth in particular, slightly parted in suggestion. 

Touya often thought about your lips against his own when he was a kid, long before your mouth had bloomed with makeup and shine. Now he's thinking about them wrapped around his cock. 

Again—your fault, not his. There's not even the slightest ounce of guilt when he realizes he's hard.

Dabi's been done thinking for a long time about what-ifs and alternate realities, ones where he's still Todoroki Touya and about to be a pro alongside you. But this fantasy is different, because he's completely himself in this one. He's scarred and ugly and a complete animal when he tears at your costume and pushes your face down against his mattress. He'd have liked to look at you pretty mouth as he begins to fuck you—but, well, you'd honestly squirm even harder if you were looking at his Frankenstein body held together by staples, scaffolded on fake bones. And it's already tough enough to pin you down, with that fucking quirk of yours.

Yeah, you're struggling a little in this fantasy. After all, he's not your Touya anymore—he's a villain.

Dabi still doesn't feel any guilt when he wraps his hand around himself and imagines fucking you. Imagines how tight you must be, and how pornographic your moans must sound, and how you'd stop struggling and eventually just succumb because it feels so good, getting fucked like this by your childhood friend. You take every inch of him willingly, and even confess that you've always wanted this. Confess that actually, you did care about him. Confess that you really meant it when you said you had feelings for him, back when he was still Touya. And—fuck, it feels phenomenal when you come around him, screaming his name while he's still pounding into you. It feels much better than his hand.

Dabi tosses the magazine to the floor when he's done. No shame, no remorse. You're the one who's spoiled your dignity, not him.

v. resentment

For all that Dabi jacks off to images of you in that criminally tight suit, he sure finds it infuriating when he finds out that other guys do the same thing. 

There is a countdown clock for you, ticking down to the day you'll turn eighteen and become legally fuckable in every prefecture of Japan. That's just what you get for doing all those photoshoots, but instead of feeling pissed at you, Dabi's instead enraged at these predatory degenerates. It's hypocritical, given how often he thinks about fucking you in various positions, but he doesn't give a shit. If anyone's going to ruin you more than hero society did, it better be him. Not these pieces of trash. 

But maybe this is what you want, all these strangers jerking it to your image and preparing themselves to devour the merchandise that'll inevitably be released after you go pro. Maybe this is how you measure success: sex means publicity, and publicity means money. That's how a lot of heroes do it—female heroes especially.

("What kind of hero do you wanna be?" Touya once asked you when you were younger. He knew exactly what he was going to be—Number One, the most powerful in Japan, the pride and joy of his father—but you never talked much about your own ambitions.

"Oh, I don't know. I don't need to be popular or rich. I just want to be the type of hero that can help everyone, no matter who they are or what's hurting them." A pause. "But I guess I'd like to make enough money to move away with you, too.") 

Still, Dabi can't help himself when he overhears some guy in this bar talking about how you'll be the hottest teenage heroine to debut that year. This middle-aged, sick fuck talking about how he'll miss all the tabloid shots of you in your U.A. uniform, with that tiny skirt and those cute thigh-high leggings, but he can't wait to see your final, pro-hero suit…

"Shut the fuck up."

"Eh?" The guy looks up, brows slanted downward. All of the anger on his face dissipates once the two of them make eye contact: he's momentarily too shocked by Dabi's burns, probably. The guy's still trying to posture, but his voice tremors when he replies, "What the fuck did you say to me?" 

"I said shut up." Dabi doesn't even pay attention to the man, gaze instead wandering up to the bartop, where a collection of photos are scattered in front of this creep's hands. You aren't the only U.A. girl he's got pictures of—all clearly taken without consent, from across the street and around corners, zoomed in on faces and cleavage and thighs—but Dabi only grabs the photo of you.

"Huh." Dabi turns the image around in his fingers, holds it up to the light. "Now where'd you get this from?" 

"Hey!" The guy swats at the photo, makes a move to grab it back, but one razor-sharp glare from Dabi sends him sinking back down on his seat. "I paid good money for these, you know."

"Good money to who?" 

"None of your business! Fucking give that back!"

"Hm… nah." 

He gets why this picture was so expensive—it's a flattering photo of you, even beyond the fact that your skirt's getting flipped up by the wind and exposing just about everything between your legs. The photographer must have been persistent to have followed you around like that, waiting for the perfect shot. You aren't outside your school in this photo; you're walking through his old neighborhood, on your way home. In fact, you're passing by his childhood home.

Dabi squints. No, actually—you aren't mid-stride here; you've stopped in front of his house.

The man makes another swipe for the picture, and this time, Dabi lets him have it. The photo starts to burn moments before his greasy little fingers can snatch it back, so in the end, he gets a screaming pervert dropping a melting photo into a glass of possibly whiskey. The swell of blue flames burning through alcohol makes him yelp and scramble backward.

"I'll ask again," Dabi says—patiently, because he's suddenly in a good mood. "Who took that photo?" 

vi. regret

Touya's family, Dabi learns, still loves you. 

At least once a month, you go to the mall with Fuyumi, and Natsuo will join you both on occasion. It happens rarely, but sometimes you will go visit Touya's old home to see them both. The three of you spend time in the backyard, as you all once did with Touya, though there are fewer games of pretend and generally not as much laughter. Dabi imagines that if his mother weren't locked up in a psych ward, she'd emerge from the house with a plate of fruit for all of you,  wearing that gentle smile that she only reserved for her children. 

("My, it's been a while since Touya's had you over! Were you always this tall?" ) 

Endeavor, for whatever reason, allows Shouto to see you too. Shouto, who is too good , too special to interact with any failures of the household. Shouto, his masterpiece who he needed to protect from the mediocrity of other children. Shouto, who is supposed to be locked up into the most miserable corner of the house and made to endure the abuses of his father, like Touya once was… is for some reason allowed to step outside and play in the yard whenever you're around. You're permitted to greet him, talk to him, and often even touch him. Dabi notices that you have a habit of ruffling his hair, to which Shouto often makes an annoyed face. 

It's a little fucked up, but it's almost like you're allowed to be more of an elder sister to him than Fuyumi is. 

Fuyumi never gives any indication that she minds, though. (And why would she? Fuyumi never had a spine, never had ambition nor any concern for the way Endeavor devalued her. "Don't you ever care that he ignores you?" Touya had once yelled, and Fuyumi had only looked down, fat little tears at the corners of her eyes. No anger, just resignation.) No, Fuyumi sees no issue with how Endeavor accepts his little heroine protege more than his own daughter. She only smiles at the sight of you playing with Shouto, and continues meeting you once a month to catch up.

She takes you to see his mother, too. 

It doesn't happen often, which is why Dabi's never noticed until now. He goes to see Todoroki Rei—watching from afar—every couple of weeks or so. It has nothing to do with sentiment, and everything to do with gathering information until he has enough to destroy his father's life. To that end, he checks on his mother most frequently, even if only to watch her staring feebly out the window of her cage. Every time her thin fingers brush those flowers that Endeavor sends her every week, Dabi feels a wave of disgust.

 (“Of course my mother doesn’t do anything,” Touya always used to tell you, whenever you listened, with trembling hands, to Shouto’s cries from the other side of the wall. “She’s so weak . She doesn't even try to defend herself, even though she's got such a strong quirk.”)

But despite all the time that Dabi spends watching his mother, he's only realizing now that you visit her too.

Every time you visit, his mother seems delighted. That doesn't surprise Dabi much. Her existence is probably lonelier than even Touya’s used to be: the only regular visitors she gets are Natsuo, Fuyumi, and her own mother. 

(Never her father. Some years back, Dabi found out that his granddad—the fucker responsible for pressuring her to stay in her marriage after it started falling apart—started treating her as the shameful secret of the Himura clan after she landed herself in a psych ward.) 

In comparison to Rei's other visitors and their guilt-ridden expressions, you probably feel like a breath of fresh air. You always barge in with flowers and pastries and what might be makeup? Or skincare products? Dabi can’t tell, because his mother never actually uses any of it, but she always seems pleased to receive your gifts all the same. Gives you the same smile that she always gave you when Touya was still your best friend, would probably cut you little rabbit-apples or tako-sausages if the hospital staff would let her anywhere near a knife.

Sometimes, Rei will get a sad look in her eye—one that she often showed her children, but never you—and put a hand on your cheek. 

Dabi’s got no talent for reading lips, but he’s got a pretty good idea of what his mother is saying: It’s been so long since you last came over. Were you always this tall? How are you doing in school? You’re always welcome to visit whenever you want. I’m so glad that Touya had at least one friend. He liked you a lot, could you tell? He was always so happy around you. 

I’m sorry that I let him die.

Dabi wants to tell his mother to quit it with the apologies. He doubts that you lose any sleep over him.

vii. doll (I)

Just like how Dabi religiously consumes every bit of news coverage around Endeavor, he starts to track every single one of your media appearances after you go pro. This time, it’s got nothing to do with loneliness or fantasies. This time, it's got to do with destroying Endeavor's protege. This time, it's got to do with revenge.

You play the media game better than Endeavor ever could, Dabi notices. You’ve got a remarkable track record of heroic feats to pull in the hero-worshipping bootlickers; you have a stunning face and parade of tight outfits to pull in sponsorships and middle-aged men; you’ve got a squeaky clean personality and innocent charm to win the hearts of the general public. If heroism doesn’t work out for you, you could probably go into the idol industry instead. 

You're only nineteen years old when you skyrocket in the Hero Billboard Chart. Being one of only two heroes to make the "Top Twenty Under Twenty" category, a new wave of media buzz surrounds you. Dabi watches a livestream of one of your many interviews on one of his burner phones, already wondering what kind of inane bullshit you’ll say in this one. Maybe you’ll go on your spiel about how much you admire Endeavor, or how much you owe to your former hero parents, or how one of your most favourite parts of your job is being able to help children. You know, the standard PR bullshit.

The interviewer—a bubbly woman with a bob cut and high-pitched voice that makes Dabi want to tear out his staples—takes the conversation down a tackier route, though.

“You recently worked in Kyushu with the Number Ten hero, Hawks, didn’t you? What was that like?”

“It was incredible," you reply, smiling in a way that looks particularly plastic. "He’s a year younger than me, but I’ve learned so much from him… I’m so grateful for the experience.” 

“There was a really amazing photo that went viral of the two of you—” The interviewer pauses as the screen’s taken over by an image that clogged up your Twitter hashtag for fucking days : a mid-flight shot of that skinnyass bird carrying you away from a burning building. You’re cradled in his arms, holding a broken arm and clearly wincing in pain. The injury explains the intensity of Hawks' stare on you, but of course nobody on social media paid attention to that. They were too busy losing their shit over two very popular, very young heroes being caught in such an intimate moment. The interviewer does too: “It looks like you two are really close!”

“I’ve only met him that one time,” you reply without a beat, composed. 

“What an exciting first meeting! Would you say that sparks flew?”

“I mean… only the sparks that started that fire.”

Dabi can’t help it—he snorts. At least you’re not playing into this particular kind of media circus. Any shred of respect he might still have for you would disintegrate if you did.

“Really? If Hawks held me in his arms like that, I would just die!”

Your smile looks sheepish now, although your giggle sounds impeccably good-natured. “Well, that would defeat the purpose of him rescuing me, huh?”

The other woman laughs nervously, clearly realizing that she’s getting nowhere with this. “Well, I guess that settles a lot of Twitter's speculation about the two of you. I wonder, though—is there some other lucky man in your life?”

Dabi tilts his head, finding himself fascinated by the uncomfortable expression on your face. 

“There’s no one, actually. I’m just focusing on my career right now.”

This painful, push-or-pull interview continues for an excruciatingly long time. Dabi forces himself to watch every minute just in case you do admit to dating anyone—he’d want to burn the guy to a crisp and throw him through the front door of Endeavor's agency—but you just give an impressive string of non-answers. No, you don’t care about height. No, you don’t care about income. Dating a hero might be convenient, but it’s not a make-or-break type of thing for you. Maybe you’ll get married someday, but it’s not something you’re thinking about right now. Personality matters more than anything else. Oh, but it would be nice if he liked animals, because you'd like to have a pet.

Your answers are too prompt and sanitized to be off-the-cuff, Dabi figures. Your publicist probably knows that half of your brand appeal is being an innocent, untouchable girl that your male audience members can imagine themselves dating. A confirmed boyfriend would ruin the fantasy, destroy your value and marketability. Dabi wonders if you'll remain like this for the rest of your career: a pretty, sexless doll for public consumption until the day you die, hiding your desires from the world.

Dabi wonders about those desires, too. 

You liked him when you were a kid—or at least, you told him as much. Dabi’s figured out now that was probably a lie, just like all that crap about how you cared about him or how sad it made you that Endeavor treated him like shit. But it was a convincing lie, and Touya admitted he liked you too, and you asked him once if he wanted to try kissing. If he’d had any balls at the time, he would have said yes and gone through with it. No such luck, though. 

Did you ever lie to anyone else after Touya? Did you ever tell some other sucker that you liked them, that you wanted to run away with them? Did you hold their hand, did you become their girlfriend? Did you meet their parents, and did they adore you the way that Rei adored you? Did you ask them out, did you let them kiss you? Did you let them fuck you, the way that Dabi thinks about fucking you now? Do you get on your knees and suck them off, or do you like it better when you're getting eaten out? Do you make them wear a condom or do you let them fuck you raw? Do you like it when they finish on your tits, or do you beg them to cum inside you? Do you say their name, and if so, do you ever slip up and scream for Touya instead? 

Do you ever think about Touya while you're fucking your boyfriend, imagining that he's the one ruining you?

viii. doll (II)

There's only one other up-and-coming hero that Dabi pays close attention to other than you, and that's Shouto. Endeavor's successor has always been the centerpiece of Dabi's plans, actually: focus on Shouto, watch him grow, then kill him just when he's on the cusp of success. Do it in a way that will break Endeavor, turn him feeble and hollow before killing him too. Even if Dabi's always had plans for you, Endeavor and his heir will always remain the priority. 

Then Dabi joins the League of Villains, and that fucker Shigaraki keeps distracting him with his bullshit agenda.

First he's told constantly to keep an eye on that plain-looking kid in Shouto's cohort. Midoriya Izumi? Izutsu? It takes Dabi the longest time to gather the fucks to remember the kid's name. Eventually he figures out that it's Izuku, mostly since Toga doesn't shut up about the guy after meeting him. Dabi also pretty quickly learns Bakugou's name too, since he kidnaps him on Shigaraki's whim. It was a fucking joke trying to convert him into villainy, but hey, at least it led to All Might's demise at Kamino. And Dabi shits on the guy a lot, but Shigaraki did eventually get it together, taking over the Meta Liberation Army. It feels pretty fucking good to be a lieutenant, Dabi's gotta admit. 

But all that is just business. Midoriya, Bakugou, All Might, the Liberation Front—that's all business. It's different with you and Shouto. Dabi keeps a closer eye on both of you than the League will ever know. He carefully observes all your feats during the first few years of your pro career, watches you leave his father's agency and establish your own. 

Dabi also watches Shouto go through U.A. in that same time, and Dabi swears it's like the kid is copying you. He interns at Endeavor's agency, makes headlines several times, somehow gets featured in magazines despite the uglyass scar on his face, and makes a huge splash at his debut after graduating. While he did fuck up with Touya, it seems that Endeavor has now figured out the hero pipeline: you were the prototype; Shouto is the masterpiece. Dabi gets to watch the assembly line in action.

Dabi is pretty sure that he's watching Shouto develop a raging crush on you, too.

("Is she your girlfriend? Are you gonna marry her?" Shouto asked Touya once, and their mother laughed, cradling him closer to her body. She was so caught up looking at Shouto that she probably missed the blush on Touya's face. 

"Now where would you get an idea like that, Shouto?")

It is probably the most pathetic thing that Dabi's ever witnessed, aside from that guy at the bar who cried after he burnt up that photo of your flipped-up skirt. Every time you visit the Todoroki household, Shouto follows you around like a fucking puppy. Sometimes you spend hours together in Touya's old backyard, even when Natsuo and Fuyumi are not at home. You still like to mess up his hair, but instead of getting annoyed, Shouto now looks away and blushes so obviously that even Dabi can see it. 

The first time you hug Shouto goodbye, it is among a rainfall of cherry blossoms. Shouto's hands tremble a little before he allows himself to hold you, like he doesn’t know where to put them. Your bodies stay locked together like that for several moments before you come apart, leaving a tenderness in your eyes that would rend Touya's heart.

Dabi almost abandons his lifelong plans for vengeance to kill you both right there. 

In the end, he stays his hand, even as it boils with heat, even as the scar tissue beneath his eyes sting with irritation. He reminds himself of his death and rebirth, all the cans he collected as a child, all the scheming that he did as a villain, all for the purpose of ending his father. He's invested too much time and effort to fuck up here, over his brother's pathetic feelings for you. 

Why does he even give a shit about what's going on between the two of you, anyway? Shouto is one in about a thousand guys who've thought about holding hands with you, kissing you, fucking you. He's just another sucker who fell for your PR campaign.

("I think I like you, Touya." You'd told him this on Sekoto Peak, maple leaves falling around you as red as fire. You swallowed, eyes big and shy and so, so pretty. "I've never liked anyone before, but... I like you." 

"No one else?" 

"No one else. Only you.") 

This could be a blessing in disguise, he tells himself. If his brother's got feelings for you, then he's sure to break whenever Dabi gets his hands on you. 

And if Shouto breaks, that means Endeavor will too.

ix. haunting

Shigaraki spends a long fucking time in that glass tank, floating and fermenting like a goddamn pickle. He spends years like that, in fact. He emerges shortly after Shouto goes pro, and the first thing he wants to do is crush the hero society of Japan. Dabi is glad that his boss finally has clear goals, but he's also forgotten how Shigaraki has a habit of throwing wrenches into his plans.

"We need material for more high end Nomu."  

"Okay," Dabi says lazily. He's flipping through hero magazines, as usual. Gotta know your enemy, he tells everyone else, but his eyes always linger on pictures of you. Your most recent PR event is a charity function for children's welfare, which is very funny as you never gave a fuck about his. 

Shigaraki distracts him when he adds, "You need to get me more." 

"Since when is that kind of shit my problem? My job is recruiting." 

"Your job is also to be the Commander of the Vanguard Regiment. So go command and kill some heroes." Shigaraki scratches at his neck, a habit that he's retained even after his long dormancy. He slides a sheet of paper across the table, and Dabi stares blankly at it. Your name is at the very top, and for the first time in his life, his blood runs cold: did Shigaraki find out about his fixation on you? 

"What is this?" he asks, voice tightly controlled.

"The hardest material to find—and kill —for the high ends are people who can regenerate. Not just heal, but grow back entire body parts. These are all people who can regenerate." Scratch, scratch, scratch. "Do you see what I'm saying?" 

Shigaraki taps impatiently on the page, and Dabi wants to set it aflame. He's itching to burn it like he did those newspapers and magazines, like that photo of you with your skirt flipped up. He wants to terrorize Shigaraki like that pathetic man who whimpered as that picture of you smouldered in his whiskey, like that photographer who stalked you in the first place, like all those countdown clock fuckers Dabi hunted down and made beg for their lives.

He's supposed to be the one to turn you to ash. Not the League. Not Shigaraki. Not any other man. Him.

You're his to ruin.

x. remorse (what-ifs)

(Touya died a long time ago, but his ghost clings to this dream of you. It's stupid, but it comes up a lot when he's especially tired and hungry, cold and emaciated. 

In this dream, the two of you run away together like you always wanted. He still burns at Sekoto Peak, but he comes to you afterward, and of course you hold his hand tightly and heal him. No blood or bandages or staples or pain. No surgery or avoiding mirrors. Just a tingling feeling all over his body, and then he's alive and whole. You sneak out of your house together with a rucksack filled with food and water, and you run away and never look back.

You find a way to thrive in this dream. You find a little place to hide in, where neither of your parents can touch you. You get into U.A. together, get your provisional licenses together, graduate together. Touya makes headlines with you, features in magazines with you, is handsome enough for you. He works up the courage to ask you to be his girlfriend. He works up the courage to kiss you. He works up the courage to hold you, to sleep with you. You're each other's firsts so you're a little nervous about the pain, but he's so gentle with you that it doesn't hurt at all.

"What kind of hero will you be, Touya?" you ask him one day, both on the cusp of your debuts. He's thought about this long and hard, because his father only ever taught him how to ruin women, how to break children, how to burn and burn until his very bones turned to ash. 

That's not the kind of hero he wants to be. 

Touya smiles and replies, "The kind who can protect you."

He has this dream all the way until he's reborn as Dabi, and then he lets it go.)  

[farewell-itoshisoup]

A River of Three Crossings: Part 2 (Levi/Reader)

Part 2 of 8 → see #a river of three crossings tag on my blog for more!

Summary: Levi doesn’t know what to do with you, this loyal waif of a soldier who reminds him so much of home. He comes to think that you are beautiful, but his mother taught him that beautiful things do not last.

Notes: Slow burn relationship, angst, fluff and hurt/comfort in the future. Warnings for canon-typical violence and themes of prostitution/sexual violence (no explicit depictions). Please see end of chapter for characterization and world-building notes. 

Thanks again to @gr-ywaren for being the best beta ever!!

Of all the reactions that Levi had been expecting from you, it had not been acceptance.

“I’m not upset,” you reassure him. “I just want to know why, so that I’ll know how to help.”

Levi is thirteen when Kenny brings a whore into their home for the first time.

He stays in his room the whole time, but the walls in their shitty, little house are paper thin. After a short-lived childhood of repulsive men and bruises on his mother’s skin, the tone of the woman’s voice is enough for Levi to recognise the nature of this interaction—of this transaction. There’s a clicking of heels, a little giggle as she swats away what must be Kenny’s wandering hands. The laughter is an obvious veneer. It hides a quiet calculation, something that his mother had always done after inviting clients into their home. Will he threaten me? Will he hurt me? Will he hurt my son?

Levi had been too young at the time to realize what was happening, but he’s more than old enough now.

“…love blondes…tip ya real well, honey,” Kenny says to her, voice slithering through the cracks in the walls. Levi feels a familiar wave of disgust running through his stomach. “…if ya do a good job for me.”

Another laugh. The two of them stumble into Kenny’s room, and Levi closes his eyes. He lets himself fall onto the bed, stuffs his head beneath the pillows. His mother had always told him to cover his ears, and he does it religiously.

Levi’s grateful when he feels himself drifting off. But it’s a dreamless, uncomfortable sleep, and he wakes up again in the dead of night, when nothing but silence fills the Underground like it’s some big, hideous tomb. He doesn’t want to get out of bed, but his throat is parched dry and sticky with dust. The Underground air does that to people. It’s not uncommon to hack up blood in the morning, bright red and revolting.

Personally, he can’t stand the sight of something so filthy. He needs water, he decides. Levi rolls out of bed and steps out of the door, oil lamp in hand—

Only to run straight into the prostitute leaving his home.

The two of them stay still for a few moments, just staring.

She ends up being the one to break the silence.

“He never said he had a kid.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Levi finds himself replying. “I’m not his. Just someone he’s babysitting.”

In the dim light, he can see her face twist despite the words. It’s thin and gaunt, mostly cheekbones and angles. The blonde hair that Kenny had been praising is listless, more dust than gold. She’s been eating worse than him.

“That doesn’t make it any better.”

The guilt is interesting. He wonders if she’s a mother.

“I’m older than I look,” he offers again. But he doesn’t like it, this thought that she regrets this action. And he’d rather her get out of his home. “...anyway, you should get out of here. I can’t imagine you’d want to stick around and see more of that.” He glances at the door to Kenny’s room, left ajar. He can hear him snoring like a pig.

She’s quiet.

He turns around. She can take care of herself, he thinks. This is her profession.

But before he heads for the kettle, he says, “Kenny’s a fucked up guy. If he’s hurt you, there’s gauze and alcohol on the table. Painkillers too. Whiskey if you’d prefer that instead.”

She leaves without speaking, and he feels himself exhaling, relieved. It’s not that he wouldn’t want to help an injured woman fix herself up; it’s just that he isn’t sure if he’d remember how to. When his mother had been alive, he’d been a balanced enough kid to help her out whenever she got injured. But Levi’s not sure if he’s balanced enough to do that anymore, especially not for a stranger.

After all, Kenny teaches him a lot of things, but healing isn’t one of them. Comfort isn’t one of them. In the Underground, there’s no room for relationships or intimacy or lessons that would lay the foundation for such things. The closest thing he gets is Kenny tossing a wad of bills at him over the counter after he completes his first job, eyeing him carefully.

“Never seen you with a woman. Go out and get yourself one.”

Levi studies the bills. They’ve been through a lot of hands, are probably peppered with miscellaneous drugs. Dirty as hell—he doesn’t want to touch them.

“Or a man,” Kenny adds. “I don’t give a shit.”

Levi does not reply. He does not take the money, and vows never to step foot into a whorehouse. They are people’s homes, and while he has no issues terrorizing the scum of the Underground, the people living there aren’t scum. They don’t deserve the extra edge of fear he’d probably give them, the intimidation that Kenny had instilled into him. 

And because he never learns any better, it’s a logic that will continue to dictate his actions. It controls him through his teenage years, makes him push serving girls off his lap. It mostly keeps him honest in his adult years too, when he’s running his own gig with Farlan and there are people eyeing the most powerful thugs of the Underground. It kills any attraction he might feel for his admirers once he establishes himself in the Corps, all of them fawning over Humanity’s Strongest. Whenever younger girls giggle at him, he makes sure to glare at them with an extra edge. Don’t bother, he tries to communicate with his eyes. He has no time to learn softness, relationships, intimacy. There’s work to be done, Titans begging to be killed.

But for all his skepticism, Levi eventually does learn. It takes a while, though.

It doesn’t happen until he meets you.

Eren’s eyes shine in the way they used to in his childhood, whenever he watched the Survey Corps return through the gates at Shiganshina.

“What was your first mission like?”

There is no room for fear during your first mission.

All the new graduates follow the veterans out on the 49th expedition. The fear is visible on the faces of most of your peers from the 103rd, but there are a couple of you with mask-like expressions. You are one of them. You’ve talked to the others before, although you do not know them all that well: Elias from the village east of your town; Lottie from south of you, straight in the heart of Shiganshina.

Your resolve does not make you special. It is the natural consequence of trauma, of being forced to adapt. It’s a curse from knowing the odour of Titan’s breath, of having seen the spaces between their teeth.

Still, it is useful during the expedition. You do not waver when Titans near your flank, and your horse does not flinch, running at a steady gallop. Your hand is steady when you raise the signal gun, pitch black smoke climbing the sky. When the two men leading your squad seem overwhelmed by the abnormal, you are quick to assist them.

You learn that Titan flesh is denser than it has the right to be. You throw your entire body into the momentum of your wires, but you still feel resistance to your blade as it runs through the nape. You remember what Captain Levi looked like four years ago, cutting down giants as though they were made of paper, and you do not know how he managed it.

When the Titan falls over, a shaky sigh escapes your lips.

Afterward, you and a few others are approached by the captain. He doesn’t give the chance to rest from your expedition, simply tells you to line up in a row and face him. He recites each of your achievements: an assist, a kill, and a kill.

When he looks at you, you hold your breath, entire body tensing. I tried my best, you think. If it doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t.

“I heard you killed an abnormal,” he remarks. “It put up a fight, but apparently, you were lightning fast.” There’s no praise in his tone.

“Yes, sir,” you affirm, voice equally neutral. “With assistance from my team. It would never have happened without them.”

He pauses at the reply, and you think you catch a slight nod. The captain looks thoughtful, but when he speaks next, there’s no change in his tone.

“Take off your gas canisters.”

You lift a brow, staring blankly. Did you hear him correctly?

“…sir?”

“The canisters,” he repeats, an edge of irritation to his tone. “The big metal things attached to your waist? I’m sure they mentioned them in training.”

You can feel the incredulous stares from the two other privates. You try not to blush. Captain Levi isn’t the type to humour slowness, you note silently.

“…of course, sir.”

They clatter to the ground, ringing hollow. He stares at them for a second, then kicks one.

It goes flying.

"Way over half empty,” he observes. “If another Titan had approached you, you would have been in trouble. Another one after that, and you'd be dead.”

Guess I’m not getting that spot on his team. It takes effort to keep your gaze steady and to nod with poise, but you force yourself to do it anyway. You will not waste his time with a tantrum. There are worse things in life than not getting to join the Special Ops team, you tell yourself. There is worse in life than public criticism from Humanity’s Strongest. There is worse than running out of gas on a mission. There’s starving. There’s abuse. There’s dying.

This perspective is enough to check the disappointment in your voice.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll do better next time.”

“You better.”

He turns around.

“I won’t tolerate pointless death on my team.”

“…but don’t listen to him.” Petra sounds worried, and when your eyes connect, there’s an instant understanding. “You can’t let him get to you. Are you okay?”

The Special Ops are not what you expect.

Eld and Gunther carry themselves with the quiet gravitas of the Survey Corps. They aren’t exactly intimidating—not the way that Captain Levi is—but they’re on the gruffer side when they first meet you, clear veterans sizing up a trainee.

If those two have the authentic air of the Corps, then Oluo walks with the terrible imitation of it. You stare blankly at him as he speaks at you, condescending and derisive. In a different world, you might have been taken aback, but he’s nowhere near as bad as the Garrison soldiers of your childhood. He’s nothing like the ridiculing boys from the 103rd. And he isn’t anywhere near as abrasive as Keith Shadis, anyway. Shadis hadn’t bitten off his own tongue nearly as much.

Petra is by far the most open of all of them. She has a warm smile, talks about how she’s excited to finally have another girl on the team. And even though there’s an unusual camaraderie between her and Oluo, she has no tolerance for his shit.

“Why did you even join in the first place, huh?” His words are stilted because his swollen tongue is in the way. You hope your expression is professional; it’s hard not to laugh. “Don’t tell me you're part of Captain Levi’s fanclub.” He sighs long-sufferingly. “We’ve got no time for girls with silly crushes.”

You lift a brow, eyeing his cravat. If anything, you’re the only one in the captain’s fanclub. But you stay quiet, acutely aware that you’re a rookie.

Petra snaps on your behalf.

“What, you think that she’s here because of a crush? Why? Because she’s a woman?” She scowls. “Maybe she’s just passionate about protecting humanity. Try getting that idea into that thick skull of yours.”

You nod vigorously, relieved at the opportunity to prove Oluo wrong, even if it's not the whole truth.

“That’s exactly why I joined—to protect humanity!"

“See?” She shoots Oluo a bitter look. “Now leave her alone.”

“Tch.” He gives a little half smirk. “You don’t have to chide me like that, Petra. You’re not my wife—”

“Ugh!” She throws up her hands, sounding so tired that you know this isn’t the first time he’s said that. “I’m tired of this. Let’s go, rookie.” Unlike everyone else, she says the title with some fondness, like it’s a nickname.

She’s got a hand on your shoulder, urging you away from your bully. Perhaps eager to redeem the professionalism of her team, she turns quickly to talking shop.

“I’ll go over the tactics that our team uses, figure out where you might fit in on the field… Oluo’s more of an offensive type, for example, and I tend to assist more. Both are important, and it makes it easier to be consistent so that we can predict each other’s movements. I know you killed a Titan on your first mission… do you think you’re more the offensive type?”

Petra smiles the whole time she talks strategy. You cannot help but smile back.  

“I regret a lot of things, but regret is a natural part of mourning. Do you think that's so wrong of me? To mourn?"

In your first mission with your new squad, you are meant to restock supply lines in Wall Maria. You end up facing hostiles in a city you know well.

Shigawa is south of your hometown: a hub of activity on the other side of Trost, the perfect place for you and your mother to buy fine clothing for special occasions. You pass by unkempt gardens and storefronts, overgrowing with the herbs native to Wall Maria, spices that you have not tasted in years. There’s a store that used to belong to an elderly cobbler, all its windows shattered. He'd always fixed up your favourite pair of shoes.

But the shoes were stolen off your feet in the refugee camps, and the whole town is in shambles now, overrun by monsters.

Facing Titans here is different from facing them elsewhere. You don’t know if it’s the memories or the obstacles; you can’t help but watch all of your teammates worryingly. Captain Levi looks like he's moving particularly recklessly today, and you keep wondering if something's wrong, or if you're just inexperienced. Your feet shift on the roof, sending old shingles clattering to the ground. The muscles of your legs twitch, anxious. You keep on telling yourself to obey orders, to act in a supporting role when called for. You keep on telling yourself that someone else on the Special Ops will intervene.

But no one does, and you do what you were rewarded for in your last mission: you act.

It’s a mistake.

You suppose that it’s natural for you to fuck up like this, with your actions spurred by fear and muted by hesitation. Obey orders. Do not waste his time. Do not let him die. Disobey orders. The thoughts scramble in your head as you fly—

Your wire throws you back, plucked like a lyre string by a massive finger. You hurtle straight into the waiting palm of a Titan, whose hand curls around your body like a coffin. It’s slick with sweat and unnatural heat, and your blade digs straight into the flesh, but the monster does not let go. You squeeze your eyes shut, waiting for the smell of copper—

It’s Eld who ends up saving you.

When you return to the barracks, your tail is between your legs. I’m going to get kicked out. I fucked up! I can’t even listen to some fucking orders. He must regret choosing you, you think.

When the captain finally pulls you aside, you expect him to tear into you about your disobedience, but it's worse. Instead, it’s about the fucking gas canisters.

“Take them off,” he orders, nodding at the tanks.

You wince. Oh fuck. He’s going to chew you out for this. The whole act plays out again, like a bad joke: you’re over half empty, and the metal goes flying when he kicks a vessel. It clatters, hollow. He’s glaring at you by the time it lands.

“You’ll have to learn to manage your gas better. You were top for this sort of shit in the training environment, but that’s not enough on the field.”

You swallow, trying not to let your embarrassment show.

“Yes, sir. I’ll try my best to improve.”

His scowl deepens.

“Don’t try. Do it. Next time I catch you wasting gas like this, I’ll make you pay for it—and this shit is expensive as fuck.”

And that’s all he has planned, apparently, because he’s turning to leave, and your clothes are still soaked in Titan sweat, and all the punishment you’ve gotten for your disgraceful performance is this?

“Sir?”

He glances back.

“What?”

“...I wanted to apologize for disobeying your orders, and for endangering the team.”

Captain Levi stops.

“I’ll do better next time, sir,” you continue. “I’ll take full responsibility.”

When he circles back to talk to you, it’s not with any sort of anger. His voice is carefully neutral, almost sounds casual, even when he’s deriding your apology for its emptiness.

“Full responsibility is death, and that would be useless to me.”

You go quiet.

“I didn’t chew you out for that, because I know you’re chewing yourself out enough. You almost died. That’s punishment enough, isn’t it?”

“...but the disobedience…”

“Tch. Do you insist on feeling sorry for yourself?” His eyes narrow and he crosses his arms. You tense, expecting humiliation, but the captain surprises you. The lines fade from his expression when he continues.

“...I understand why you disobeyed orders. I was in danger, and you didn’t trust me to save myself. You didn’t trust the team to support me either, because you haven’t worked with us before. In a situation where you had no information, you had to make a judgment call. Soldiers will always have to do that beyond the Walls, Erwin’s formations be damned.”

You stay quiet, just listening. You don’t know if you’ve ever heard the captain talk this much before.

“I never know whether relying on others is the right decision,” he continues. “Neither does my team, even though they’ll always opt for trust.” For the first time, Captain Levi pauses, and you think you hear a subtle shift in his tone. “...but trust can sometimes be the wrong choice. You can never know the outcome until it happens.”

You look down. Your boots are filthy, covered in mud. You don't understand the words now, even though they’ll come to haunt you in the future, chasing you after every loss. You'll come to miss this day, when you were too young to understand the captain's words.

For now, you will simply remember them and vow to trust his judgment.

“...I see. Thank you for that insight.”

He glances up.

“Tch. Don’t thank me. I’m not done with you yet.” The captain doesn’t exactly scowl at you, but he certainly doesn’t look happy either. “I can accept your judgment call, but what I didn’t like was the hesitation I saw. Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you made a decision that you wouldn’t have regretted? No matter what?”

Silence. The answer’s stuck in your throat, but Captain Levi seems to have figured out the magic words when it comes to you: “Answer me. That’s an order.”

You breathe in. Deeply.

“...if the outcome had been different, I would have regretted things,” you affirm, voice quiet. “If you had died, I would have regretted not acting sooner. If I died, I would have considered my death pointless. If Eld had died rescuing me, I would have considered his death my fault.” And isn’t it normal, you think defiantly, to regret painful outcomes? Isn’t that the human thing to do? Why shouldn’t I feel regret?

Why shouldn’t you, Captain?

But there must be a piece to him that is stronger than human nature, because his mouth thins and his eyes narrow.

“You’re in the Survey Corps,” he says. “You have to be less half-assed about your decisions. But I won’t hold it against you this time, rookie. You’re fresh without much experience. It’s my job to train you. It’s your job to learn quickly.”

You straighten up. You're not even thinking about the implications of what he's saying, simply reacting to the tolerance.

“Yes, sir. I won’t fail you, sir.” You pause, hesitating, and then you decide to explain yourself, at least a little bit. The truth worms its way through your lips, defiant. “...but I have to say this: I was worried about you. I didn’t want you to die. If I hadn’t done anything in that situation, even if I survived, I think I would have regretted that even more.”

A nod. For the briefest of  moments, he looks pensive.

“...nobody ever wants their comrades to die, but it’ll happen to everyone, eventually.”

Captain Levi looks up, his eyes a little less opaque than usual, but no less hard. For a moment, a memory intrudes upon your conversation: an image of the stranger who’d lied to you, who’d taken your hand and told you to run. When he continues, his tone rings the same as in your memories. The heat in your face dissipates along with the guilt in your chest. You are safe under his guidance.

“You’re young, but you’ll have to learn to cope with that inevitable loss. You can’t let it cloud your judgment.”

His eyes are still beautiful, you catch yourself thinking, even when they’re cutting into you.

“...yes, sir. Thank you.”

You end up taking his words to heart, but not blindly. While you will eventually learn to handle loss, you will never learn to cut out regret.

Erwin always asks for updates about the selection process. He’s always on the lookout for talent in the Corps.

“How is she doing? What do you think of her?”

As time passes, Levi becomes pleased with the rookie he’s picked out from the 103rd.

You aren’t a full-fledged member of the Special Ops, but your training is coming along nicely. You don’t fuck around; you’re a professional on the field. You seem to have reflected on his lecture after your initial fuckup, which is almost a rite of passage for every Scout. He certainly remembers making a similar mistake his first time on the field: full of hesitations, spilling over with what-ifs and if-onlys afterward.

But unlike you, he’d opted for the other direction and chose to trust his family, and he remembers the loss to this day.

Still, he got over it, and you’re getting over it too. You don’t waste gas anymore. You commit to your decisions. And while he still catches you watching him from time to time, tracking his movements during particularly dangerous maneuvers, it no longer distracts you from your objectives.

You’re improving.

You come to work exceptionally well with Petra, who sings high praises about your performance in battle. After you get over the initial nerves common to the first couple of missions, Gunther and Eld also report that you’re growing quickly. Even Oluo is starting to warm up to you. It becomes clear after a couple of months that you’ve cemented your position in the team.

The other squad leaders take notice of this as well. One by one, they introduce themselves to this new soldier in their ranks.

“I met your rookie the other day.”

Levi glances up at Mike, who is likely peering at him from beneath that wild hair. While he trusts his own judgment, he knows that Mike can get absurdly keen readings on people. Maybe there’s something to be said about his freakish habit of sniffing newcomers, Levi thinks wryly.

“What was your impression?” Levi asks, genuinely curious.

“She has a good smell.”

“You sound like a creep.” His voice is dry. “Please don’t sniff my subordinates. I’m not helping you if they report you for harassment.”

Mike ignores him, just continues on as usual.

“Full of honest intentions and loyalty. She’ll be a good soldier.”

“Forget interviews and character assessments.” Levi’s mouth quirks. “Your nose is all we need to screen candidates.”

As always, Mike moves swiftly past his jabs.

"...I’d be worried if I were you.”

“Oh?”

Another nod. This time, Levi can see his eyes. And he understands the look.

“She seems like someone who’s likely to become a casualty.”

Fuck this. “I didn’t know that nose of yours could predict the future too,” he remarks, this time with more of an edge to his voice. “We don’t need Erwin’s strategies. You should just sniff out intel for him.”

Mike shakes his head.

“It’s not my nose telling me that. It’s what I know about her.” He looks at him, eyes connecting. “A loyal soldier who shows no hesitation on the battlefield—she’s the type that’s most likely to end up a casualty.”

Levi goes quiet. There aren’t many Survey Corps members who have lasted as long as the both of them, and he knows that Mike must be as equally haunted by it as himself. But their comrades' deaths do not weigh Levi down; he cannot have the luxury of grief. He must forge his path forward, and he will do so by throwing himself into the present, into decisions he will not regret.

And he will not regret taking you on.

“Tch.”

His eyes narrow.

“She won’t die—not if I have anything to say about it.”

A finger runs along his upper arm. A smile touches the skin of his cheek.

“When did you start to warm up to me?”

 Eld and Gunther are steady drinkers, probably with tolerances to rival Levi's. They’re vets, after all—you don’t last this long in the military without learning how to drink like a fish. But Petra and Oluo are a couple of years fresher, and they quickly redden in the face.

You aren’t a lot better off.

“Ugh!” You grimace every time you take a swig. “This is so bitter!”

Levi raises his own mug.

“Cheers.” His voice is exceptionally dry, even for him. “It’s the Survey Corps’ best.”

You make a face, but clink glasses anyway. More beer goes down your throat, and another whine leaves it. “No wonder you usually drink tea instead.”

Eld and Gunther lean over, clicking tongues. “Listen up, rookie,” Gunther says, the utmost gravity in his voice. “If you’re going to be part of Squad Levi, you’ve got to learn to swing a mug.”

“And the captain doesn’t drink tea because he hates beer,” Petra adds in, voice slightly slurred. “It’s because he’s so straitlaced. He doesn’t like to party.”

Levi’s expression doesn’t crack. She’s not wrong, after all.

“That’s right. Consider yourselves lucky that I’m out with all of you.”

Oluo leans in, barking at you in that irritating way of his. “Look at you, making the captain go out of his way to humour you! Tch! We wouldn’t be wasting our time drinking if we didn’t have to babysit you!”

“Yeah, right. You drink all the time, whenever you’re not pretending to drink tea,” Petra kicks back without missing a beat. “You’re practically an alcoholic.”

The two of you tag team it, with you performing a beautiful assist.

“I mean, you can leave if you want.” Your voice is innocent. “None of us mind. Please, feel free to go.”

Levi snorts. Watching the two of you take the piss out of Oluo is quickly becoming his favourite pastime. Apparently, it comes as naturally to you as killing Titans.

But for all your ridicule of Oluo, Levi notices that at the end of every drinking session, you’re as concerned about him as everyone else. Petra is always the first to cave, holding her mouth as you help her back to her quarters. Incredibly, you come back for the rest of them, somehow working through your own alcohol-fueled daze.

“You good?” you slur at Eld and Gunther. They say yes blearily, and that leaves you rounding on Oluo. “Okay. I know for a fact that you’re not good. Get your ass to bed.” Unfailingly, Oluo groans, forehead on the table, and unfailingly, you grab him by the scruff of his collar and force him out of his seat. “Come on! Let’s go! And don’t die in your sleep, okay? Petra would never forgive you.”

And after Oluo’s staggering away, you always round on Levi when everyone else is gone. Levi, somewhat infamously, has the constitution of an ox, and he never feels anything more than a slight buzz when you do this. Still, you check in on him, and while it is incredibly silly, he has to admit that he doesn’t mind it.

“What about you, Captain?”

His voice is flat, but he deigns to humour you every time.

“What about me?”

You wave at him, and at the seven empty mugs in front of him.

“You good?”

“Obviously.” He’s brisk when he stands up, watching you carefully the whole time. You teeter slightly on your feet, and he doesn’t miss it. “But you’re clearly not. Get your lightweight ass to bed. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir!” You giggle a bit. As always, you turn around, and he feels satisfied watching you go. A headache crawls into his skull as you leave, the alcohol pounding in his head. Maybe you'd been right to check on him this time, he thinks wryly. It's time to call it a night.

He turns to the mess on the table, ready to clean everything up—

But you yell.

“Ugh! Let go of me!”

It’s your voice. He whirls around, hawk-eyed. No one fucks with his team, especially not with his rookie. Levi’s eyes narrow instinctively when he sees some grimy brat grabbing at your arm with one hand, his other swatting at your lower back.

“Come on! You’re highest rated on the list… after Ral, I mean.” The offending soldier smirks, clearly shitfaced. “How ‘bout I take you back to my barracks and show you a good time? We could die any day, you know…”

Disgraceful. Levi feels nothing but contempt in this moment, but stops himself from intervening. You’re a professional, he reminds himself. Catcalling in the military is common. You can probably handle it.

But your gaze is unfocused… how much did you drink? His hackles rise when he sees you sway on your feet…

“You…”

Come on, rookie. Get it together.

You look up at the soldier.

And then you pull a lightning fast maneuver, and when you’ve got the brat stumbling, his hands behind his back and your arm pressed up against his Adam’s apple, Levi feels a sigh escaping his mouth.

But he stiffens again when he hears you.

“You’re revolting.”

And Levi will never forget the tone of your voice here: quiet, heavy with contempt. He’s never heard this voice on you before, ringing with disgust, and he hasn’t seen this expression on your face in a long time, not since your first interview with him. You’d sat across from him and recounted, in the most polite terms possible, the disgraceful behaviour of the soldiers running the refugee camps. He knows the look. He knows the voice, too, even if he’s never heard it from your lips. He’s heard it leaving his own. He’d heard it often in the Underground as well, this desperate and shell-shocked response to pain.

His mouth twists.

It’s time to intervene.

“Then? That night? Why?” You frown, looking away from his eyes to glance at your forearm. You still his remember strange touch from that night. “If anything, you just seemed upset...”

He rolls his eyes.

“I was talking about seeing you warm up to the team. Obviously, I didn’t enjoy seeing you getting manhandled by that shitstain of a soldier.”

Your hand brushes the hair out of his eyes.

“I know you didn’t.”

You hate this boy for ruining your night. It had been going so well: Eld, Gunther, and even the captain were beginning to warm up to you. Even Oluo had taken your joking in stride. Petra had been sunny to you as always, giving you brilliant smiles all the way through her drunken haze. The whole night has left you feeling sunny and warm, like you’re finally in a better place, with people whom you can call comrades.

But the minute this soldier lays hands on you, fingers rough and almost abusive, the memories of a colder and lonelier time resurface. Even as you keep him in a chokehold, you are revolted by the press of his body against yours. He's just like the Garrison soldiers. Hey, pretty thing, would you like a meal? It’s infuriating, hearing about your rating among the 103rd boys. It’s disgusting, knowing that they’re ranking your friend. It’s like being cattle. It’s like being a hungry mouth.

A voice breaks your fugue state, pulls you back to the mess hall. Captain Levi’s hand is steady on your shoulder.

“Hey, rookie.”

You glance back, surprised.

“Let go of that brat.”

You frown, uncomprehending.

“But…”

“Don’t worry. I know his name. He’ll be punished appropriately.” He physically tugs at your hands, and they fall away from the trapped body. Captain Levi’s actions are as much of a command as any other, and you loyally follow it. You’ve resolved to trust him, because you know that he is a good man, and that beneath the prickly veneer, he has everyone’s best interests at heart.

“...and anyway, I don’t want you getting your hands dirty with this filth,” he finishes, as if echoing your judgment.

Hesitantly, you step away from the offending boy. He stumbles off, mollified. But this alone does not satisfy your captain, and he attempts to herd you to your quarters.

“Tch. I ordered you to get to bed, didn’t I?”

Levi grabs your arm, intent on moving you along, but it stings, and it’s repulsive to have this hand tracing the imprint of that revolting boy, of all those Garrisoner men.

It’s frightening, even if it’s the hand of someone you now almost unconditionally trust.

The both of you pause.

“…he hurt you,” Levi realizes.

“...just a bit,” you say faintly.

“Well, come on, then. Show me.”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Don’t be obtuse.” He rolls his eyes. “I need to know when my team is injured. Could fuck up our performance on missions if I don’t account for it.”

“I’ve survived Titans,” you shoot back, nearly grumbling. “I’m sure I’ll be fine sleeping on this.”

What you are saying is logical. Surely, Captain Levi knows this too. Still, the twist of his mouth does not relax, and the knot in his brow does not detangle. He stands his ground, and it is so irrational that you must wonder at his reasoning.

You end up with a hunch. As he beckons you along, his face is possessed by a look that is vaguely familiar. You’ve seen it in the refugee camps: on the faces of mothers fretting over crying babies, on children trying to take care of their sick parents, on a grandfather who starved himself to feed his grandchild and his friends.

You allow yourself to be moved by your captain, who brings you to a first aid kit. You allow it because you owe it to him. You allow it because you hate this expression on him.

Captain Levi crosses his arms, looks at you expectantly.

“Come on, then. Roll up your sleeve.”

You hesitate.

“But…”

“That’s an order.”

“You seemed really…” You struggle to find the right word. “...off?”

Silence is Levi’s most used crutch, and he is filled with it right now.

“...you can tell me what was going through your mind, you know.” Your voice is soft. “I’ll listen.”

You'd never turn down an order from him, so Levi isn’t surprised when acquiesce and tug up at your sleeve. The marks on your skin make him pause: discolouration on your forearm, blood drifting subcutaneously. A sickness crawls beneath his own skin, concentrating at his throat.

He's just had too much to drink, he tells himself. That's all this nausea is.

Then, for a moment, he’s drifting… There’s a pale arm in front of him, slender fingers running over her bruises. The candle light dances across the marks, and the vase in the corner—their most expensive possession—is shattered on the floor. Mother’s face is wet, and there’s a redness blossoming on her inner thigh. He hates the MP that’s torn through their little home. He’s never been able to wrap his mind around the violence of the brothel, though this will be the event that forces him to learn.

“…sir?”

Reality swims before Levi, your voice reeling him in. The memory dissolves.

“…really, sir. It’s fine. Just some bruising.”

You’re right, he thinks hazily. It’s just some bruising.

Levi finds himself grabbing your wrist, staring intently. His fingers are pale against the dark spots, tugged along by some long-forgotten habit. Some part of him thinks, his touch is so gentle that it can’t possibly be his own. He’s not balanced enough to do this anymore, not for anyone outside a battlefield, not for someone who’s been hurt like this. Your skin is so warm that this must all be in his head.

“Sir?”

Levi pulls away, remembering himself.

Yeah, he's not drinking again for a fucking while.

“…you’re right. There’s no serious damage. You can return to your quarters.”

Levi is careful to keep his voice level. He doesn’t want to let you in on the confusion; he just needs to see you get to your room. You’re the most vulnerable member of his team.

It’s his job to care for you. That’s all this is.

And when your door closes after you, he pushes the moment out of his mind. It was a fluke, he tells himself. Nothing special. He will move on, focus on other things. There is work to be done, Titans waiting to be killed.

His fingers curl at his side, painfully empty, and he does his best to ignore it.

Eren’s voice is quiet.

“You miss her a lot, don’t you?”

 It’s a slow day in the barracks. The paperwork is winding down in preparation for the approaching Harvest Festival, a holiday that leads most of the soldiers back home to their families. All of your chores are finished, and you and Petra are spending time in her room, basking in the cool autumn breeze drifting in through the window. Petra’s made the both of you tea. The cup is warm in your hands, steaming heartily. It feels like home. It’s easy to talk freely to her like this, about war and about family and everything in between.

“...Captain Levi’s a bit of mystery, huh?” you muse.

“He is,” Petra agrees. “No one really knows about his past, besides the rumours that he’s from the Underground. He’s not the type of share freely, either.”

You nod. You’ve heard about the Underground, about the shambles and the crime and the destitution. Maybe it has something to do with his strange behaviour some months ago, the night he refused to let go of the bruises on your arms. His expression had looked familiar to you, reminding you of the camps in Trost. Maybe the Underground hadn’t been so different from that hellhole.

But most likely, you’re just projecting. He’s your boss and your comrade, but you don’t really know him at all.

“He’s too professional to talk about that kind of thing, huh?” you observe. And then, playfully, you add, “He’s nothing like you. You’ll be the least intimidating squad leader ever.”

Petra laughs. Putting down the tea, she lets herself fall onto her bed, and the springs bounce beneath your legs. She smiles, and it’s lovely seeing her so happy.

“Do you think I’ll manage it? Sometimes it feels like a dream.” The brown of her eyes soften. “My dad doesn’t approve, I think. He says I’m too devoted to my career, that I’m missing out on my youth. But there’s nothing else I want to do so badly...”

“You can do it,” you say immediately. It is the truth: you know her passion will get there, you know she will be an inspiration to her followers. If the captain will allow it, you will never stop following him, but if he ever wants you off his team, you know that you will follow Petra instead.

She practically glows at your words.

“Thank you!” She can’t stop grinning, even when she chooses to turn the attention to you. “What about you, though?”

You blink.

“What about me?”

“What do you want to do? What do people back home say about it?” She rolls onto her belly, her chin propped up by her hands. “You don’t talk about yourself much.”

A silence passes. It’s true: you have not divulged your intentions or your past to many people, not even Elias or Lottie. Only Eren, Mikasa, and Armin understand your thought process, and it’s vaguely at best. Hell is not something you want to relive, nor is it something you want to inflict on other survivors. You have mourned it, and now you want to move on.

But Petra is different from the others. She’s not a fellow refugee, and she’s not a child for which you must care. She’s your comrade. She wants to know you, and you suppose you must return the courtesy of her opening up.

“I don’t have a long-term goal in mind. I just want to follow Captain Levi,” you admit. “I don’t really want to become a squad leader, because I’m happy enough to support him.”

Petra nods.

“I understand that. He is a great man… even if he’s so sour all the time.”

You laugh.

“I know he’s sort of your role model, but you actually couldn’t be any more different from him in some ways... And thank God for that. I don’t think I could stand another person yelling at me about the laundry.”

Petra breaks out in giggles, temporarily distracted as she recounts her most mortifying experience under his mentorship. But eventually, she asks about you again.

“What does your family say about your goals, though? Does your father approve, or is he more like mine?”

“...I don’t have anyone back home,” you confess. “I’m from Wall Maria. None of my family survived it when…"

Petra’s lips fall. Her eyes widen.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasps. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine.” You wave a hand, and she falls silent. “I know you meant well.”

Her eyes linger on the ceiling, thoughtful.

“If you don’t mind me asking… is that why you joined the Corps?”

“Yeah.” You go a little red at your next confession, remembering Oluo’s derision when you’d first joined the Special Ops. Are you part of his fanclub? But it feels natural to tell Petra about this, because your feelings aren’t romantic, and she’ll understand that. It’s deeper than a crush, you think. It is a debt, priceless and inexplicable. “It’s why I wanted to join this squad, too. I definitely would have died back then if the captain hadn’t saved me.”

Surprise flickers into her gaze. “He was there?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes soften. She looks up at you, voice a whisper when she asks:

“What happened on that day?”

And you have never told anyone any of this, but you tell Petra everything. You tell her about the way the roof of your house had already caved in by the time you'd gotten home, your lungs burning and eyes stinging. You tell her about your mother pulling you away from the front door, screaming that your father and siblings were now just bodies beneath the rubble. You tell Petra about the Titan who’d picked up your mother, about how he’d grinned down at the lot of you as he opened his mouth.

You tell her about the stranger who told you to run, about the Wings of Freedom on his back. You tell her about joining the military, about glimpsing him in the crowd for the first time, relieved that he had survived. You tell her about wanting to know him, to thank him, to follow his lead.

She is quiet for a long time.

And then:

“...you should tell him.”

You look away.

“I want to. I just haven’t found the right opportunity… I don’t want to waste his time with things that don’t matter, you know?”

Her fingers tug at your sleeve. When you glance at Petra, she’s smiling at you.

“Any time is the right time for this. These words will matter to him. Trust me.”

Her hand brushes against your forearm. The bruises have faded, and it doesn’t hurt at all. A little tickle remains where his fingers brushed you.

“...yeah, you’re right.”

Erwin’s voice is sombre.

“It’s always hard, but it’s a lesson we need to teach them.”

Levi hates pointless death, and he loathes it when his subordinates must experience it for the first time. It is painful to teach his soldiers to swallow grief whole on the battlefield, to ignore the pain and carry out the mission, but it is a rite of passage.

It is especially important that members of his team know this, because they are the best of the best, and they will see many of their comrades fall before they do. And he will train you to be the best of the best, and that includes the skill of moving on.

The first time you see a comrade die in his arms, you are quiet. His eyes are curious on your form: you aren’t crying, the way that Petra did the first time, nor are you angry, the way that Oluo was. You aren’t getting up. You aren’t speaking. You’re just on your knees, staring at the still boy, completely blank.

It's denial.

Levi puts a hand on your shoulder. He keeps his voice steady, because he is Humanity’s Strongest, and he must set an example for you and all the others, the way that Erwin and Kenny set examples for him.

“You can’t let it stop you,” he advises you. “You have to keep fighting.”

“Right now?” you whisper. Suddenly, he is reminded of how young you are, how hard this must be. Something twinges in his chest, but he does his best to trap it in his ribs.

“Yes.” His voice is hard. “Especially now. You can’t let your regret cloud your present judgment. If you can manage it, don’t regret at all. It’ll only dull your decisions in the future.”

You do not respond. He offers you a hand, eyes softening.

“Can you walk?”

At the words, you stir. When you finally look up at him, eyes focusing, Levi feels a knot unraveling in his chest.

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

The last time he held your hand was several months ago, gently inspecting the bruises on your arms. This moment is entirely different. This time, your fingers are desperate around his, your hands hot and slick with blood. He helps you to your feet, his grip solid and unyielding. There is no room for fragility here. He must stay strong for you and all the others.

You pause before leaving the scene. He hears you whispering to the body, “I’m so sorry, Elias.”

You still remember how she stared up at you from her spot on the bed, her hair splayed out across the mattress, coloured like autumn leaves.

You whisper, “It never would have happened without you, hm?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come home with me?”

Petra peers at you, not even bothering to hide her concern. You’ve tried your best to keep your grief private, but she’s good at reading people. She’s probably noticed it all: the bags beneath your eyes, the distant stare, the slimming of your cheeks. You keep dreaming about Elias’ half-eaten torso, about a boy from Wall Maria who could not escape Hell after all.

She’s worried about leaving you like this.

“My family would be happy to have you over,” she insists. “We make a ton of food for the Harvest Festival, and we always have leftovers… my mom would love it if you came over.”

You smile at her, hoping that it’s not weak.

“Thank you, Petra… but I think it’ll be best if I stay in the barracks when the Festival rolls around.” You look out the window, thinking. Petra is kind to you, but you’ll be a stranger to her family, and they won’t be able to help your grief. But your time in the camps have taught you that there are people who can help, and that you can help them too. “I have plans,” you add faintly.

She seems unconvinced.

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. There are a few kids in the 104th I want to visit. They’re from Shiganshina, and I took care of them when we were in the refugee camps together.” You lean back, the numbness ebbing away a little bit when you think about them. “They don’t have any family either, so I wanted to do some cooking and have our own dinner together.”

“Oh!” Petra smiles, looking relieved. “I’m glad. I just didn’t want you to spend the Harvest Festival alone here.”

“Thanks for worrying about me.” You smile again, and this time it doesn’t feel as forced. “I guess you’re right, though—I’ll be alone. I’ll have the Special Ops barracks all to myself, huh?”

“Almost. The captain usually stays here during holidays too, I think.”

At this, a thought occurs to you. You should tell him, you remember Petra saying. These words will matter to him.

Well, you’ll both be on holiday, and it will be a day to meditate on thankfulness. This is your best chance, you suppose.

You roll onto your side, studying Levi carefully. Looking back on it, you don’t remember why the special treatment started, the reason as to why he’d carved out a space for you at his side.

But you do remember when it started. 

“Remember that night before the Harvest Festival? Why did you ask me to stay?”

Levi is in his office with you, staring at your impeccable salute, your earnest words ringing in his ears. But he is also elsewhere: four years in the past, in a town that has been abandoned by mankind.

Levi remembers that day in Wall Maria, soaring above a town in shambles. He remembers it as the rapid-fire succession of hellish imagery, captured from a bird’s eye view. Looking down, he’d seen: the bodies of Garrison soldiers and civilians alike; Titans smiling at trembling, broken flesh; refugees swimming desperately in the channel, giants picking them out from the river like apples at a carnival. Levi had been drenched in blood that day, steaming and filthy and fighting until all his blades ran dull.

Despite his efforts, so many people had died.

In his recollections, the ghosts all blend together: the soldiers grabbed by their wires; the girls grabbed by their hair; the boys picked up by their necks. They’ve all become one.

Still, there had been something so unsettling about seeing a girl crying over her mother’s corpse that he remembers it amidst all the carnage. He’s known from a very young age what that’s like: to stare at your dead mother and not know how to move, frozen by denial, trapped by grief.

It’s why he’d known what to say.

It’s why he’d known to lie.

I’ll do everything I can to help her.

Can you run for me?

Levi does not remember the girl’s face, but he remembers the lie. He has never shared this story with anyone else, so it is unmistakable: you are the girl he saved that day. You’re her, and you’ve forgiven him for lying, and you’ve moved on from your mother’s body, and you’ve moved on because of him. You’re talking, eating, laughing, and fighting because of him.

Plenty of soldiers have sung him praises for being Humanity’s Strongest, have thanked him for his valour and his violence, but this is different. It’s always been easy for him to kill, but the people he manages to save are few and far between. And they always slip out of his hands, sooner or later.

For a moment, he finds himself grasping at words.

“…you don’t have to thank me. It was the least I could do.”

“It was the most you could do.” Your eyes are soft, and despite the terrible, shared memory, there’s a smile kissing your lips. “Nobody else stopped to help me—not my neighbours, not my friends, not the Garrison soldiers. But you did. And now I’m here.”

He finds his eyes mirroring yours.

“I’m glad.”

You nod, satisfied. Confession over, propriety sets in once again.

“Well, then… I’ll give you some peace. Thank you for listening to me, sir.”

But as you turn around to leave, something occurs to Levi. His team’s papers are already out on his desk, details that he must review and update by protocol before and after every expedition. He grabs them quickly, hones in on the profile you filled out for the military when you joined nearly five years ago.

Please name your next of kin:

  It’s blank.

This is why you’re staying in the barracks tomorrow, he realises. This is why you aren’t going home.

“Wait.”

You pause, eyes curious when you glance back.

“Sir?”

Right then, he makes a decision.

“I’m spending the day here tomorrow as well.” He keeps his expression neutral, but he doesn’t remember the last time his voice has sounded this soft. “I had plans to organize the Survey Corps’ records. It’s a disaster, and I could use a hand.”

For all his good intentions, the offer coming out of his mouth is shittier than intended. His lips thin. He’s always been shit at this.

But despite his wording, you seem to understand him.

“I’d love to help out. I’ll see you tomorrow at 0800? I know you like to get an early start on your cleaning.”

He feels a pull at his lips.

“I do. I’ll see you then, rookie.”

“Yes, sir.”

Before you leave, you pause at the threshold. There’s your smile again. He catches himself thinking that he should make you smile more.

“…thank you, Captain.”

End Part 2

World-building note: SnK never really goes into details about holidays, but it’s a good bet that they’d have some sort of harvest festival because they have an agrarian society, and harvest festivals occur cross-culturally in real life agrarian societies (e.g. America, Germany, China, Korea, etc. as Thanksgiving or Mid-Autumn Festivals).

Characterization notes:

Petra’s characterization is based on the manga, where her father emphasized her excitement over her career (as opposed to the anime, where he basically only focused on her marriage timeline) 

I understand that Levi’s characterization in one of the scenes here might require a suspension of belief, but it’s based on what I think is a reasonable extension of the psychological consequences of Levi’s childhood. I hope it’s understandable and that it wasn’t too jarring for people! 

Tags: @midnights-song