Chapter 1: when dabi and shouto's single braincell get on the same wavelength
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Oh my God.”
“Did he run away? He took his chance to escape us, and he did.” Jirou appears glum. “Wish I could relate.”
And Todoroki would agree with the others’ concern, if not for the fact that he’s literally still here , and nothing appears to feel different except now he can’t feel the cool wind fluttering underneath his uniform, paired with the warm sun seeping through the glass ceiling, soothing the goosebumps of his exposed wrists.
“I mean. He’s not necessarily dead , at least.” Tokoyami comments lightly. "We haven't found a body, except for that one guy."
"That guy wasn't even dead." And Todoroki feels mildly concerned by Mina's groan of disappointment. "He just overdosed on Bendaryll because he was addicted to Cherry Coke flavouring."
"Cherry flavouring is gross." Kaminari says at the same time Kirishima inputs: "you know. My mom used to feed me Bendaryll when I couldn't sleep as a kid."
"Same." Bakugou mutters, surprisingly contributing in a conversation. "When I couldn't sleep, my mom would stir alcohol into my apple juice."
No one replies to that, the actual silence itself rather uncharacteristic and sudden from the class as a whole, considering everyones' ability to amplify each others' levels of entropy. Todoroki narrows his eyes at Bakugou, who appears impassive towards his classmates' judgmental squints.
“So. Todoroki." Aoyama clears his throat, his tone normal for once. Then, in seconds, he reverts back to his throaty theatrics: "where could he have gone, though?” Aoyama whines, draping himself over a chair without a leg, looking like a failed IKEA construction.
"Here." Todoroki waves his arm, mumbling, lackluster after being ignored for probably the fifth time.
“Yeah, where is he?” Iida repeats, looking as if he’s going to redo the headcount that had skipped over Todoroki earlier, even though he was right there.
“Um, I’m literally here?” Todoroki begins, tilting his head slightly, his eyebrows pinched at Iida’s statement. A forgiven one, though, since Iida’s glasses were crushed underneath the stampede of frightened customers that started running the moment the couple gunshots were fired into the air.
He didn’t know Iida was that blind.
However, no one pays him attention.
He feels slightly insulted.
“Fuckin’ dumbass. Probably got carried by the wave of people. Stupid,” and Bakugou, for emphasis of his Bakugou-ness, harshly spits into the mall’s waterfountain. Todoroki silently agrees with Mina’s loud gag at Bakugou’s action. “He fucking disappeared on us, irresponsible and inconsiderate, even though it’s not like I want to see him.” And Todoroki glowers at how Bakugou is literally making jabs at him while he’s right in front of him. After all, it is Bakugou, the type who’d do infuriatingly immature things to try and garner a reaction from him. However, Bakugou’s also not the type to be so passive aggressive- if he didn’t want Todoroki to be around, he’d make it happen, rather than pretending. “Oi, you guys,” he jerks, rounding over to the only conscious robber who’s restrained by ropes Momo conjured around him and his unconscious pal. “Waluigi looking-ass, you seen a personified Canadian flag?”
“He means a kid with white and red hair,” Midoriya supplies helpfully, dodging without looking at Bakugou’s unsuccessful attempt to take off his head with his forearm. And Todoroki stares at Midoriya, who’s looking in his general direction, but not seeing and Todoroki stalls, staring at the rest of his classmates lounging around in the debris resulting from multiple quirks going off from pedestrians terrified by the sudden threat of a shootout. “He’s approximately a-hundred-fifty-two point nine centimeters, has heterochromia that resulted in brown and blue eyes-”
“Midoriya, out of genuine curiosity, do you have a Wikipedia kink?” Kaminari asks, not necessarily unkindly.
“How did we manage to lose Todoroki and not you?” Jirou scoffs, and at this, Kaminari sticks out his tongue. Before Jirou can pinch it in half with her emo nails, Tokoyami quickly steps between them, something tired in his gaze.
“I mean. It’s not like he could’ve gone far, ribbit.”
“I mean, Todoroki gets lost in our own hallway. God forgot to build in Google Maps into his system,” Uraraka sighs, cracking her neck.
And Todoroki would’ve expected such a statement from Bakugou if it was riddled with explicit vocabulary and at least one illiterate threat, but not from Uraraka. He squints. He’s onto her.
Maybe he’s just invisible. Earlier, blinded by multiple quirks going off at once and at least two fire alarms going off and one threat of explosive diarrhea from a frightened man held at gunpoint, it wouldn’t be that strange that maybe one of the citizen’s activated quirks touched him.
Todoroki’s actually quite amazed he’s the only one affected. The rest of his classmates earlier stood around, watching silently as Bakugou easily took out the robber with a wooden cafeteria chair after Mineta freaked over whether or not they had to step in and illegally use their quirks. They were literally in a line, Uraraka eating popcorn they bought earlier, as Bakugou, despite all his dramatics, anticlimactically put a stop to the robbers threats with a resounding thwack. And only Todoroki got hit by an unintentionally activated quirk.
Wild.
An invisibility quirk, perhaps. He frowns- but they couldn’t hear him, either. A quirk clearly more complex, thn. Slowly, he lifts his hands, and attempts to instigate the familiar mechanisms of his quirks, waiting for the telltale warmth flaring in one palm and childhood freshness stirring in the other.
And for the first time since he noticed his condition, does something paralyse the beat of his lungs. A beat he doesn’t even know exists.
His hands are still, heat change nonexistent in general, rather, a fuzzy, static temperature coating his body like grease.
His heart racing (is his heart even racing? He can’t even hear the blood thrumming through his veins, existence of living ) he quickly rounds to the others.
“Ah, Aizawa-sensei texted me.”
“You have his number?”
“Yeah, after I made a business transaction with him,” Sero replies coolly, without looking up from his phone. At the lack of response, he looks up, and Todoroki blinks furiously, realising that he’s staring at Mina, who he was talking to, and not Todoroki, who was immersed into the familiarity of everyone else, forgetting that they can’t see him. “What?”
“Business transaction?” Kirishima echoes.
“Oh yeah. That one time I bribed him to bail Bakugou out of jail with promises of sleeping pills.”
“Isn’t drug dealing illegal?” Tokoyami begins illegally, only for Mina to unintentionally talk over him.
“I mean. You gotta be more specific?” Mina begins, screwing her face. “Like, I’m pretty sure all of us called him before to do that once.”
“Oh, yeah.” Sero looks up once more. “I specifically got his number that one time I bought a Great Dane off of Craigslist and realised I couldn’t keep it, and asked Aizawa-sensei about it. Apparently, Aizawa-sensei is a dog person.”
And through the thickening sense of panic that was overriding Todoroki’s sense of reality, that one statement, due to its shock factor, snaps him back into the modern world.
Modern world that he’s not a part of.
The quirk will wear off, it’ll be fine.
“You bought a dog?”
“Sensei likes dogs?” Iida blinks. Or maybe he’s squinting because his glasses are officially deader than Todoroki is at the moment.
“‘Zawa likes animals?” Jirou appears genuinely startled. “I didn’t even know he liked things that breathed.”
“I mean. He’s gotta like animals, he seems fond of Bakugou, despite what he says,” Kaminari shrugs.
Everyone politely pretends as if the blur of Bakugou doesn’t crash into Kaminari, causing an instant K.O.
“But, where’s Todoroki?” Midoriya inquires, and Todoroki feels pseudo-mental-warmth calm his disturbed state, because at least they’re not forgetting about him, and of course Midoriya wouldn’t let them leave him behind. They’ll eventually figure things out. “He was just here, next to me.” And he doesn’t appear nervous, more so concerned.
“He’s a big boy, he’ll be okay,” Kirishima beams.
“Yeah, crazy. It’s like I’m right here.”
“We should dip before the police come.” Bakugou’s expression darkens, his spine stiffening and consequently tightening the arm hooked around Kaminari’s neck. Kaminari has utterly disassociated from his situation, his entire body limp and eyes wide. He’s gone into the light. “Or, before Dorkoroki finds us.”
“Um. But we really shouldn’t like. We should wait for Todoroki.” Midoriya sighs, unbothered by Bakugou’s middle finger.
“Yeah, he might’ve gone to the bathroom. Sounds like something he’d just do.” Uraraka shrugs. “And besides, we all knew Bakugou had the situation under control, it makes sense Todoroki wouldn’t feel the need to stay and watch Bakugou’s display of hormonal masculinity.”
“Not even masculinity. It’s just his internalized psychopathy talking,” Kaminari grumbles, and Todoroki has to look away, and he hears a sob from the boy, indication that Bakugou has most likely glitched his entire respiratory system.
“No, I think we were all internally scared, and all of us had to supervise. There was at least a fifty-percent possibility that Bakugou would’ve actually knocked the guy’s head clean off,” Kirishima wilts, and Bakugou just grumbles. The tied and still awake prisoner ashens upon the realisation of how close he was to having dinner with Satan.
And Todoroki finds himself utterly enraptured by Kirishima’s boldness, and immunity to Bakugou. Not like Todoroki himself isn’t unafraid of his irritating persona and inconsiderate acts, but the thing is Bakugou ultimately likes Kirishima, or at least enough to not start premeditated murder for Kirishima’s voiced disagreements or humble public scorns of his behavior.
Todoroki simply visualizes helicoptering Bakugou out the window by his ankles and expresses it through a single dead glare, and Bakugou by this point already has his permanent retirement plan planned out.
“Okay, guys, Aizawa-sensei tells us to come back, and stop being dumbasses,” Sero informs loudly.
“Did he actually say that?” Mina inquires with a snort.
“It’s implied,” Sero finishes. “Through his statement of: ‘come back. Stop being dumbasses’.” Mina promptly slaps him. “I told him Todoroki’s gone, and he told me he’ll come to clean things up, talk with the police over them possibly suing Bakugou for attempted murder, and find Todoroki himself. For now, we have to go.”
“Ah, I feel bad if we leave without telling Shou, though.” Momo blinks, and Todoroki realizes that Fuyumi’s cheesy Disney movies were true when it came to family despite what life taught him, because Momo is a literal godsent angel of Bambi’s mom. “Let’s leave a note!”
“Yeah. A scrap piece of paper that he’ll totally see amongst all this,” Bakugou gestures wildly towards the torn mall with the arm still crooked around Kaminari’s throat, effectively killing his friend classmate. “The dumbass can barely find his will to live, there’s no way he has enough common sense ot look for a note.”
“We could tell the cops outside to inform Todoroki when he shows up,” Kirishima advises, setting the course to ignore Bakugou’s snide remark, to Todoroki’s smugness. At this, the others nod in various murmurs of agreement, before slowly standing up to disperse.
Looking around wildly, Todoroki begins to rush with the others, ready to see if he could maybe later find a notepad or something, something that he could communicate to others with.
The the others head out the door, and Todoroki waits reluctantly at the very end, and once he gets to the front as one of the last students, Mina lets go of the door. Aoyama, who’s currently asking Jirou about shoplifted nailpolish (a habit of hers that Todoroki greatly disapproves of, though he’s otherwise indifferent to the activity as long as she continues to randomly return home, bloated with stacks of instant soba stuffed underneath her jacket), does not push to keep the door open after him.
Todoroki reaches out to block the door from closing. It swooshes right through it. Through it.
He pauses.
Slowly, he reaches towards the door, and flinches as his hand is swallowed into the door, the numbing nothingness still intact where his elbow disappears into the material.
This cannot be happening.
Then, awkwardly and hesitantly, he throws himself through the door, no indication of actually doing so because nothing’s hitting him, his face isn’t exploding in bruising pain from stupidly slamming straight into a door.
“-eah the son of Endeavor, that one.” And Kaminari’s voice practically boxes him in, and with a start, Todoroki realizes that he jumped through the door and straight into Kaminari. Pretty gross, he supposes. He looks down to see his knee jutting out of Kaminari’s stomach, the intercept where his intangible body touches Kaminari’s tangible one appearing nothing more than clean lines, cutting between their bodies.
Light-headed, he slowly stumbles out of Kaminari, who appears unphased by the fact that Todoroki literally Danny Phantomed his way through his stomach.
Danny Phantom . An American show that Natsuo was obsessed with as a kid, and would always force him to watch it, and the show that Touya would call ‘bullshit’ when Fuyumi wasn’t around to throttle him for his language that Natsuo was rather susceptive to.
“Okay, so this kid needs to stay for questioning and procedure, since he interacted and hit the villains,” the police officer begins, jerking a thumb over towards Bakugou, who stares, eyes wide by the sudden spotlight, before bristling, frothing at the mouth. To the side, Momo indifferently conjures a can of Febreze, and without warning, sprays it directly in Bakugou’s face.
Another reason why he respects Momo: because somehow, she earned Bakugou’s too, to the point where their relationship is an indescribable professional transaction of blunt and often surprisingly aggressive (surprising because it’s Momo ) actions, meant to better each other in the form of constructive criticism with no filter.
He watches as Bakugou claws at her wrists, Momo’s eyes uncharacteristically cold, their usually glittering retinas muted like dead fish’, her finger still jammed on the trigger of the Lavender Honey spray.
Nice to know Bakugou can bring out anyone’s sadistic side.
“I mean. To be fair, the robbers acted like they came out of Home Alone ,” Kirishima shrugs. And Todoroki wonders how Kirishima knew they didn’t have any other partners or household members. “Thank you, officers!”
“Eccentric, they are,” a female officer mutters, staring at Bakugou whose eyes are now an angrier red and probably now dosed in the scent of backwashed perfume (and something rots in Todoroki at the realisation he can’t smell ), sulking next to Momo, who’s now appears slightly sympathetic, indicating her inherent kindness cannot be held back even by default disgust for Bakugou Katsuki.
“Yeah. See that kid with like, twenty arms?” And Todoroki whips at the leering tone, narrowing his eyes. Strange. Maybe they’re not very good at counting? “A freak.”
And at this, Todoroki’s mouth parts in disgust by the unprofessionalism and inherent rudeness from the cop’s judgemental tone and words. Stepping forward, Todoroki’s ready to snark at the man, before remembering his current problem. That he can’t interact with others.
“Shut up. You’re just jealous that he has muscles that don’t look like rippable Twizzlers,” the female officer retorts, her words clipped from obvious scorn. Todoroki decides that not all authority-figures are questionable, anymore. “Anyways,” she sighs. “Let’s wait for this Todoroki kid, and later, go drinking. My husband is telling me he hasn’t been sleeping around. Again.”
“Divorce!” Another office from the sideline shouts, something bloodthirsty in her features.
And Todoroki agrees.
The officer appears dismayed. “Okay. But, consider, who else would indulge in my catfood addiction?”
Todoroki stills.
And silently, he steps away.
Groaning, he watches from afar as his classmates begin to walk away, towards the direction of the bus stop. He would join, but knowing that Aizawa-sensei would eventually arrive, he supposes maybe, if he ever uses his quirk, Todoroki can step in front of it and somehow dismantle the one that’s screwing up his entire existence right now.
For now, he can just wander around.
Where no one can see him.
Where he practically does not exist.
Todoroki does not delve into the idea of this quirk being irreversible. Can’t be. It’s impractical. No way.
Sulking, he slinks around the corridor of the mall’s brick wall, slouching into a dark alleyway. Sighing, he stops in front of an empty crushed can decorated with a scratched label about black beans.
Gross. Beans.
Then, the anxiety bubbling in the pit of his stomach cranks, heat flaring through his body except he can’t feel heat and he’s not even real and he suddenly feels isolated and lonely once more and that’s fucked up and he screams, knowing no one can hear him, and he slams his foot against the ground, ready to punt the pathetic tin can and hear it crunch against the other wall-
His ankle phases through the cement floor, his sneakers flickering through the unmoving can. Can of fucking black beans.
He screams again. Todoroki does not scream. He hasn't screamed in years. The last time he did, he was a child, and in his mom's presence, and because of pain. Never because he just could, and he doesn't know if it makes him feel worse. Bakugou does it all the time, there has to be a reason as to why.
Screaming just reminds him of the flame stirring smoke in his lungs, and he doesn't know if he's happy about that.
Todoroki didn't even know he could scream. Usually, emotions washes over him, and no matter the intensity, he could block it out, allowing the world to move on as he cleanses himself of stress because he can't afford to feel that way. The sting of welding a rotten cavity of emotions shut with a hot torch, is better than the hollowness and wasted time resulted from attempting to clear out the decay.
But he can't iron this shut. That is not an option, and Todoroki has never been taught any other way. He stumbles around, screaming like an humiliating idiot, because, doing something a normal child would've done as a kid (or now, as Bakugou), because he has never done it before.
His hands slither over his face, as if making sure it’s still there because at least he can touch himself , because if he couldn’t he might as well truly not exist, because how would he ever know if his consciousness counts anymore as real in this realm without at least something physical? His fingers card into his hair, and he can’t really separate the touch of every strand, but at least it’s there. And he lets his hand falls to his side, and he stares ahead because no more sulking, fuck this shit, fuck beans, fuck swearing because he’s not Bakugou and he’s not going to lose his chill like him-
His eyes clap with the electrically blue ones frozen on him, the host of those eyes hunched over a trashcan.
And Todoroki nearly chokes because he just screamed in front of a villain who’s just less than a block away from a pair of police officers who happen to have a rather exciting private life, and then he stops, his jackknifed shoulders lowering at the prospect that he’s literally invisible.
The only time he’ll feel remotely grateful for that, not like he wouldn’t mind facing off Dabi.
Curiously enough, Dabi’s eyes are coincidentally still on him, his typically hooded eyes capable of conveying shock through his irises shrinking into blue pinpricks.
Laughable. It’s almost like he’s looking at him. Todoroki glances down grimly. He’s invisible.
“Hi.”
Todoroki takes a second. He himself did not say that.
He squints, his eyes slowly sliding to peripheral of his visions. He takes another second.
He nearly screams, again.
“I was really going to cremate you, ya know. I didn’t even hear you come in. And then you screamed, looking like you were five seconds away from an existential crisis. A midlife crisis- which says a lot about your potential life timeline.”
And Todoroki is not here to converse, rather, his mind is currently zipping through thoughts about when Aizawa-sensei’s going to arrive and how to trick Dabi into meeting him, and then stalling over the entire package of Dabi being able to see him and that’s a whole other taped Amazon box to rip open-
“Kid, don’t look so surprised. Villains gotta eat too.”
And Todoroki’s brain barely tears away from its own speeding and colliding train of thoughts and theories, to cling onto Dabi’s words.
“I’m kidding,” Dabi scoffs. “What the fuck do you want? I don’t care if the cops see my fire, I’ll still use you for kindling.” And Dabi’s flippant attitude disperses along with the crooks of a wicked smile, his eyes inking into its usual size after his initial shock, amusement filtered out into apathy. His voice dips into a line straighter than his lips, no sense of undertone highlighting it. “What? Cat got your tongue?” And it’s not a taunt- it’s too flatlined to be one, any sense of mockery hammered out into danger.
“You can see me.” Todorok blurts out, and nearly winces. He doesn’t need to let Dabi know anything right now- it’s more advantageous to keep things hidden.
Dabi doesn’t appear to have even a slight reaction towards this, but then again, he looks practically dead to everything. In the limited times he’s seen Dabi, Dabi’s stalkerish image appears lackluster, and perhaps not intentionally too. Simply on motor, a machine on autopilot and standby.
He kinda reminded Todoroki of himself, back before he really explored life past the influences of his father. He wonders if Dabi’s any different with the League, or alone.
And he stares at Dabi,’s angular figure, devoid of humanity and manipulation because he’s too candid, too honestly cruel and fatally so to understand others to puppeteer them, this unintentional hubris being his downfall because he can never belong. Todoroki does not feel bad for him.
“I mean. If you want, I can also not see you too.” Then, to Todoroki’s surprise, Dabi smiles. It’s messed up. All bent staples, sinking into his living flesh from the jerky mouvement, engulfed in the little fat stretched across his gaunt face. “Look, watch this.”
And Todoroki quickly reverts into a fighting stance, because sure, Dabi might not set him on fire, but to Dabi’s knowledge Todoroki still can interact with the rest of society, and might act out because of that.
Nothing happens.
Todoroki waits.
Still nothing.
At this, almost impatiently, Todoroki steps forward. “You’re out in the open. There’s no way you’d be on the surface with your ugly mug unless if you’re doing something important- not just food.”
Dabi does not respond, still surfing through the large trash bins.
“Oi-”
“Do you hear something?” Dabi suddenly proclaims loudly, startling Todoroki to retract himself from his bold proximity with the villain. “Well. It’s not like I can see anything-”
And Todoroki is tired. He’s done with life and he’s not even sure if he’s a person anymore, and he reaches forward, utterly irritated by the fact that he just ran into an A-Wanted villain in this state, a state that provides him a certain sense of immunity so he can feel annoyed without any fear. He can act out without fearing Dabi because Dabi is mortal and Todoroki is something. He doesn’t know if he counts as powerful, probably not considering his limited interaction with real life, but they’re on different planes and Dabi cannot touch him.
“Listen, boy- ” And Dabi suddenly rounds to him, so sudden, that Todoroki can’t do anything but observe him, the way his body concaves on itself. And he realizes, with a start, that Dabi, Dabi is not that much taller than him. The villain that hunches over him in the dark, when he’s alone on the couch with only the silent furniture and flickering lamp to witness his existential crisis haunted by shadows of Shigaraki and Dabi, Dabi, Dabi who stole Bakugou right in front of them.
Dabi is not that much taller.
But Dabi’s grotesque, macabre expression designed with popped staples and quivering eyes whose pupils wink like dots of an airplanes’ landing lights from the sky, make up in intimidation where his height could not.
“I don’t care if I get caught. If the police shoot me, and leave my body strewn out here like a disassembled Frankenstein, I’ll have you know I would’ve done it to myself gladly if not for my resentment and hate for you, for heroes and for your family.” And Dabi’s voice steeps into something gravelly, like an Undertaker’s shovel dragging across a buried grave, and Todoroki knows that it wouldn’t be irrational if villains in general were mentally ill, but there’s still something so haunting about Dabi’s shadowed visage, jammed so far up to his face that with each breath out of his nostrils, Todoroki can practically see steam escaping in curling wisps from flared nostrils.
Todoroki cannot see his reflection in Dabi’s eyes.
“Frankenstein’s monster.”
The gauzy steam halts its rhythmic pattern of escaping out Dabi’s nose.
“What?”
“It’s Frankestein’s monster.” He pauses. “You uncultured soggy beef jerky.” Todoroki’s not cultured enough in random 7/11 foods to come up with that himself, but Bakugou, a self-proclaimed artist of randomly throwing together words that only work because the confidence he exerts while saying them stuns others into awkward silence, had used this term before.
Todoroki’s dazed, staring, lost in the glassy surface of bloodshot eyes.
“I would pull at all of my seams and let my guts cover your body, boy . Beef jerky? Good. I hope the dogs come out and eat my skin in front of you. Woof woof. ”
“Don’t call me that,” Todoroki, because Dabi is so damn irritating and edgy and thinks Todoroki is easily scared which he’s not , quickly claws his way out of the vortexing blackholes of Dabi’s eyes. “First off, that was weird, I. I don’t know. You barking just made me feel a nonexistent emotion, I think I blacked out from your weird need to sound cool.” Todoroki doesn’t even know what he’s saying, everything he’s saying now doesn’t even sound like his words. It’s like he channeled his inner-Bakugou, a rather offensive and scary thought. He can’t believe the ‘fight’ option of his fight or flight response was to scare off opponents with the voice of Bakugou.
Then again, Todoroki supposes if he had to deal with another Bakugou, he would instantly run as well.
“And. I don’t care if you shot yourself dead.” And these next words sound wrong, sound like something that Bakugou would carelessly spit out, and Todoroki curses that he’s still in a random and untapped Bakugou mode, involving his need to get the last word. Last couple dangerous words. Even if it’s to Dabi, Dabi who’s burned villages, and is selfishly aggressive and apathetic to everything around him but himself, Todoroki manages to allow them escape past his filter of ethical reason. “I’m pretty sure everyone wishes you would.”
This stops Dabi, Dabi, whose lashes clumped from pollution and dust flutter downwards, their silhouette highlighting the startling blue of his eyes, filtered through the lashes themselves like moonlight.
They kinda look like his dad’s. It’s not like blue eyes are uncommon- Midoriya literally has the aesthetic of Oscar the garbage puppet from Sesame Street (one of the only shows he was allowed to watch underneath Fuyumi’s supervision), so yeah. Not strange.
It’s just that he hates it.
His dad has those eyes- and he has one of them.
Dabi has both of theirs, combined into a luminescent blue, light underneath the sun to the point where it’s pale and reflective, almost like clear gelatin that sees nothing but galaxies unseen to Todoroki. As if he sees more than him, this sensation conveyed through the way his eyes express nothing but his smirk says ‘I-know-more-than-you ’. Todoroki wants to gouge out his screw it up more than it already is, finish what his mother started because he’s come to terms about how he’s stuck forever underneath his father’s image, no matter how hard he tried no matter how hard his mother tried-
But to see in the mirror, and not only see his dad’s outline, but also Dabi’s ?
Dabi smirks, as if Todoroki’s dawning horror is filtering onto his typically perfectly impassive expression.
“God. Imagine saying that shit, thinking you’re some damn good person. All heroes think that way. You turned out disgusting.” And his lanky body angles back upwards, and Todoroki blinks, before digesting those words. The moment Dabi’s freakishly similar eyes flicker away, snapping their line of gaze, Todoroki returns to earth, plummeting from the skies that Dabi lives in.
“I’m not always a good person. But I know for a fact that I’m a better one than you’ll ever be.”
Now, Dabi has reverted back to his cold persona, his lips slack into flippancy, returning to not giving a shit.
“Mhm. At least I acknowledge I’m a bad person. Good to know that you vaguely did that too.”
“Are you suggesting that I’m anything like you?” Todoroki scowls, feeling something intense bundling his words and forming them, even if his emotions lack indication through temperature or headaches. “I’m nothi-” And Todoroki’s feels his fingers claw at Dabi’s shoulders, exposed through his unfitted shirt, ready to make the villain look at him because Dabi has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about and how dare he judge him with such a pretentious attitude?
But, the moment his nails dig into the purple rocky landscape, he feels something, something past the flaky texture and surprisingly if not scarily pliant creases despite the hardness of dead skin. Coldness. Cold, like melted glaciers showering over him in powerful streams, and Todoroki gasps, because he’s shivering , and his shoulders rack violently as frost gathers across his fingers and he sees a sudden glow of red from his other hand-
“Are you having a mental breakdown? Don’t do it here. It’s disgusting.”
And Todoroki furiously blinks, his stomach searing with hot aches, and he’s feeling things and suddenly, he realises he feels heavy, his toes curled into the soft material of his worn out shoes, flat across the cement floor.
He puts out his fire, his body still warming nevertheless to compensate for the deadman’s chill that had flooded his veins.
He blinks.
Dabi stares, unimpressed.
“I thought you were going to have a panic attack. Like you really just had self-induced astham right there.”
“Huh?”
Dabi just scrunches his facial features at that, into one of judgement. “Anyways, I’m busy, go away.” He pauses. “Or I’ll make you.” He turns to his trashcan, and Todoroki watches, mind barely processing what’s happening next, as Dabi’s hands goes straight through the decayed banana peel.
Dabi felt weird. The moment the brat’s chill and grossly ice-block of a hand fucked up his body temperature, his entire body went numb. However, he ignored it, because for one, fuck that, secondly, fuck that.
Let the kid have his weird bodily-apoptosis.
Then, Dabi cannot touch things.
Something that he could not just conveniently not give a shit about.
“Oi, kid what the fuck did you do-” he whips around, furious, because what the hell is Shouto trying to pull, and how dare he-
Shouto’s shouting something, completely ignoring Dabi’s presence.
“Aizawa-sensei, over here!”
And Dabi hesitates, knowing for sure what that name entails.
A teacher with a stick up his ass.
Rushing forward, ready to use Shouto as a meat shield, he watches as Shouto ducks, quickly staggering backwards with the grace of a drunk Twice, before slamming into a figure that has appeared literally out of nowhere.
Dabi narrows his eyes, readying his stance. Maybe he can set this entire alley on fire, blind all of them and escape through the balcony ladder in the very back.
“Aizawa-sensei, I was just here.” Shouto begins after murmuring a quick apology, and Dabi stares at Aizawa, who’s glancing around the dark alley that Dabi was shifting through for Giran’s promised package. “I thought I heard something.” Shouto blank countenance suddenly turns to him, his eyes fixated straight at him. Dabi pauses. “Turns out it was just a disease-infested, crispy rat with no manners and body odor of marinated sockwater.”
Dabi takes a second.
“Okay, you little shit-”
“Yeah. Okay.” Aizawa says, his voice conveying something similar to judgement that’s faint enough for Dabi to assume that Aizawa does not care. Dabi pauses. Aizawa’s talking as if Dabi just didn’t say anything.
If anything, somehow, Aizawa cannot hear him.
Probably not see , either.
Aizawa’s still wallowing in his own hate for mankind. “I. You know what, just. Just go home, Todoroki. I can’t deal with this right now I have.” He pinches his oily nose, his entire face wrecked with sleep-deprivation. “I have Bakugou to take care of.”
And Dabi does not feel sympathy, nor does he frankly care about whether or not Aizawa is suffering, even though it does induce some sense of pleasure. That’s what he fucking gets, for attempting to work in the hero world.
However, the murderous undertones of the teacher’s dry voice is disturbingly relatable.
“I see.” Shouto pauses, then, his eyes shift over to Dabi once more.
Dabi, who’s still unnoticed by the teacher. By this point, Dabi has a suspicious feeling that Aizawa can’t see him. Not even a feeling- a fact, evident through how Aizawa hasn’t tried to smite him with pent up rage of dealing with a lawless student body.
What did Shouto do.
“I think. You might run into Dabi around here. I heard people running out of the mall say something about seeing him around.” Dabi sticks his middle finger out. Shouto then grins .
Oh. A sadistic bastard.
“Probably just rumours,” Aizawa dismisses. “I’ll keep an eye out for him, but there’s no way Dabi would be out in such a public area, unless if the rest of the League is planning a terrorist act. These robbers had the brain energy of Kaminari and Kirishima in group projects- the League may have questionable figures, but at least they have the ability of forethought.”
And Dabi whistles lowly, and he sees the way Shouto’s ear twitches, yet, Aizawa remain utterly passive. He wonders if this fucking thorn can feel the heat of Dabi’s glare that he’s furiously trying to burn into his skull, too.
“Yes, okay.” Shouto says, implying that Aizawa’s unexpected jab towards his students is such a common occurrence, that it’s practically unremarkable by this point. “Also, can you. Can you do your quirk-ridding thing on me?”
“What?”
“Yeah. I feel like. One of the citizens touched me earlier, with a quirk, and I’m not sure, but better safe than sorry.”
At this, Aizawa furrows his eyebrows. “You should check out Recovery Girl, then. I’ll make sure Midoriya makes you go-”
“Sensei .”
“Your inability to take care of yourself is frankly frightening, and I do not know how you are alive at this age nor if you deserve to be alive if Mother Nature so wishes you were dead,” Aizawa says bluntly, and Dabi chokes. “At the very least, Midoriya who is somehow even more self-destructive than you are, does not have the memory nor motivation of a legless goldfish.”
“Sensei, all goldfish are legless-”
“ Recovery Girl ,” he continues, absolutely indifferent to Shouto’s input. “Or else I’ll have you try and teach Iida your generation’s slang again.” And Shouto goes silent, much to Dabi’s delight. Then, Aizawa’s eyes flare in Shouto’s general direction, his quirk signalling its activation through a glow of red.
At this, Shouto’s eyes go wide, flickering wildly to Dabi, and Dabi somehow knows that this is related to what’s happening to him now, and Jesus the moment this quirk or whatever goes away, he’s going to invert this kid’s stomach and have him drink his own stomach acid-
His thoughts halt into a crash, at the absent of change despite his sudden hope. He’s still fuzzy. Numb. He glares at the kid.
Shouto then gestures for him to come over. Aizawa appears to find this weird, but probably used to the fact that Shouto is probably a literal cryptic, does not stop his quirk to instigate a well-needed case study. Dabi sighs, and stiffly, walks towards him, underneath Aizawa’s gaze.
Aizawa does not reach forward and try to incinerate Dabi on the spot with nothing but pent up stress and resentment of his life choices that have led him to have Shouto as a student.
Therefore: Dabi must still be invisible.
He glowers at Shouto, and grabs him by the shoulder, not caring that he flinches by the sudden grasp. “What the fuck did you do? Like? hElLo? What the hell did you do? How did you do that?”
At this, Shouto glowers. “I don’t know , I was in your state earlier, and then somehow you were the only one who could see me, and I touched you, and now we’re switched.” He eyeball’s Dabi’s knobby fingers curled around his shoulder. “And somehow, you’re unable to push things onto me,” he says haughtily, a sneer sharpening the consonants of his words.
Dabi watches his knuckles splinter underneath his skin, as his grip tightens into a bruising grip. He can at least touch something. He’s real. He’s touching something.
God. Life would be so much easier if he just wasn’t real.
Then, Shouto smiles. A cutting smile, resembling one that Dabi sometimes see in the mirror, and he feels something resentful bubbling in the depths of his mind, swampy and sloshy with acid and hate and God is Shouto’s arrogance is genetic, is from Endeavor, and Endeavor’s influence fucked him up-
He stares at Shouto’s frozen gaze and unseeing eyes and he wants to kill him on spot-
“Todoroki, please stop talking to yourself. Principal Nezu is willing to overlook Midoriya’s habit because he knows he had a past with Bakugou and if we had to pair a school therapist with every kid who’s traumatized by Bakugou then we’d be in bankruptcy and probably headlining the news. But, he’s going to start questioning my teaching abilities if he finds out the rest of my students happen to think they’re communicating with unseen audiences.”
“Okay. But. I think Midoriya is you know: just like that.”
“Okay. But consider: the source of one’s questionable habits is not my concern, but rather, the extent of it and if I should ask about your family’s genetic mental health history.”
“You can do that later,” Shouto says impatiently, and Dabi inwardly scoffs, the mental sound of his ribs creaking by his dry laugh. If Aizawa really wants evidence of genetic mental illnesses- he should simply look through his file. Aizawa appears to do a double take from Shouto’s words, however. “Aizawa-sensei, there’s something I have to tell you-”
And Dabi does the first thing he can think of.
He screams.
Shouto flinches, hard, before whipping around at Dabi, a scowl on his face.
He stops.
Shouto squints. Then, slowly, opens his mouth.
Dabi mimics.
Shouto hesitates, staring suspiciously. “Aiz-”
Dabi screams.
“AIZAWA-SENSEI, I EARLIER GOT HIT BY A QUIRK I THINK-” and foolish of Shouto to think he can scream over Dabi.
Shouto screams, but Dabi screams louder.
(In childhood, this was a tested and proven hypothesis as well.)
Dabi quickly leaps in front of Shouto, blocking his view from Aizawa, and shrieks even louder, over Shouto, who’s voice is crescendoing to a prepubescent crack as it heightens in pitch. Weak. Dabi’s throat might be lined with scar tissue and permanent consequences of abuse, but he’s also the embodiment of rage and the incessant need to be a constant minor inconvenience with the survivability of a cockroach.
And Dabi turns around, watching as Shouto attempts to shift his face around Dabi’s body, still screaming, his words now jumbled and slurred due to his strained throat and distracted mind. Dabi continues to scream, his mind suddenly floating into peace at the fact that Shouto looks five seconds away from having a heart attack.
Then, he sees Aizawa’s expression.
There’s nothing.
Absolutely nothing in his eyes, and Dabi can see that behind his gaze, he has exited the chat.
Then, Dabi realizes that there’s only one voice in the screaming choir. He blinks, turning around, to see Shouto, flushed red from shouting, trying to shove Dabi away, his hand surprisingly meeting his hip, capable of physically touching him.
“Aizawa-sensei?”
At this, Aizawa doesn’t even blink, clearly having lost the ability to do so years ago, turning to Shouto. “A-are you okay?”
“Ultimately, yes. It’s not like I don’t hear the screams of Bakugou at night.”
Shouto’s expression crumples. Sort of. Dabi’s sure to an outsider, his features would’ve appeared impassive, cold. He sees the way the crinkle in his eyelid deepens. “I’m sorry-”
“Don’t be foolish. Not literally, Bakugou’s not the one suffering, me . I am suffering.” And now, Aizawa’s voice pitches uncharacteristically uncomposed. “Every single night I wake up to a set alarm clock in my mental mindset from Bakugou’s hooligan call of bloodshed, and I’m sick of it. ”
Shouto appears to not know what to say.
Frankly, Dabi does not know what to either.
“If you want to act possessed, and if your head spins three-sixty next past your charades of playing as a grandfather’s clock pendulum, I advise you to not do it here.” Aizawa pauses. “Actually, in general, just do not talk to me. I. I cannot handle Bakugou’s existence, and your possible descent into psychosis, both at the same time.”
And when he says that, he marches away, clearly preparing himself to deal with another questionably okay student.
Dabi’s mouth mentally goes dry.
“Wait. What about me?” Dabi whips around to Shouto, eyes flashing.
And Shouto, the little shit, turns to him, and shrugs.
"Why are you following me."
Dabi pauses, and has the gal to look insulted. As insulted as his burnt cracker of a face could. Todoroki would pity him, on the basis that he relates to a physically inexpressive visage, but the truth is, Dabi failed the vibe check the same way Iida did when Uraraka used that term after he reminded Aizawa they had homework the other day.
"This is literally your problem," Dabi begins. Honestly, Todoroki is rather surprised by Dabi's ability to express, much less feel, more than like. Two-point-three emotions.
To be fair: Bakugou had once told him the exact same thing before, before Todoroki promptly up-heaved the pot of cooling pasta water off the stove and over his head.
And when Todoroki doesn't immediately respond, Dabi impatiently continues.
"Like," he gestures towards his head stuck through the door, separated by his body still behind it. "I am pulling Casper the ghost here, this is your fault. My head is through your door right now."
Todoroki pauses. Then shrugs. Fair enough.
Dabi takes a second, as if to process Todoroki's apathy.
"My HEAD is through your door right now."
Todoroki sighs, and looks up from the pillow that he was promptly staring at for the past forty-five minutes in his inescapable antinatilism-induced crisis. "Listen. I don't know what you want me to do. Do you want me to get rid of the door, huh?" He narrows his eyes. "Huh?"
Dabi's now staring, unabashed of his obviousness. "I'm going to kill you."
Todoroki side-eyes the door. "You know. I'm not the dead one who's having a teenage angst crisis of Danny Phantom."
Then, because this is clearly what Dabi does best, Dabi unhinges his mouth, and screams.
"Okay, LOOK," Todoroki shouts over Dabi, because he is not doing this again. "I don't even know how to fix this, and I'm already risking a lot being on school grounds, with you here."
"What are you going to do?" Dabi inquires flatly, the sudden death of his volume frighteningly controlled. "Lock me out?" He gestures towards the door of Todoroki's dorm room, where his head is dipping through the wood, his body still in the hallway.
"I didn't know you could even understand sarcasm."
"I mean. Same? You looked socially inept." Dabi stops, his eyes rolling upwards to give the appearance of musing. "You are socially inept."
Todoroki sputters at that, the insecurity of his lack of social awareness broiling his skin into what he knows is an embarrassing shade of red. "Listen," and his anger overrides his common sense, the same way it does whenever engaging in an argument with Bakugou, exploding the way he does when he used to shout with a cracking voice at his father, the only time he ever felt truly angry, the only time his emotions blistered past his iron ribcage and leather heart. "I'm risking a lot with you here, we could change states any time, and having you in U.A. ground, I'm already placing trust in you to not to do that-" and he shouldn't give Dabi any ideas, but he's pissed, and frankly, stressed from the cold but sweaty guilt packing his mind with cotton and frontal lobe with battery acid.
"Well. It's not my fault you're selfish." And Dabi's tone is ironed out into a thin sheet of disgust. "Don't blame your problems on me, hero. If anything, all of this is your responsibility. My current state is yours, too. And I didn't ask you to trust me. Don't expect shit from me, and don't blame it on me because I never promised you anything." His tone is brittle, his sauntering attitude withering into spite, his voice hollow the ways his eyes are, the way his eyes cave into nothingness. "This is your responsibility."
And if this was anyone else, Todoroki would agree.
"Maybe so, but someone like you doesn't deserve an apology. Shouldn't you say the same thing towards your actions that costs the lives of others'?" He challenges, revolted by Dabi's narrow-mindedness, victimising state.
Dabi grimly smiles, and Todoroki hates himself for it, but his eyes flicker away to shed some of the intensity of seeing Dabi's floating head, viscerally terrifying in spite of how he's not afraid of a punk like him because ultimately his anger should override any sense of fear.
Dabi's head, wearing a physically and mentally strained smile, the corner of his cracked and pruney lips torn into irreversible blisters, his dead skin held like a shower curtain by tarnished metal rungs against his flesh.
Due to years of purposeful apathy, Todoroki is able to repress his shudders almost unconsciously, but he knows that Dabi saw the way his eyes averted for a second. Dabi latches onto others' reactions, a shallow asshole who relies on his appearance and bravado to frighten others, others who are undeserving of his haunting, crooked figurine festering in their nightmares.
"I don't know how to fix this." Todoroki confesses, though it really shouldn't be surprising, since it's not like he hasn't implied he literally has no idea what the fuck is happening for the past hour. "Besides, why should I help you out? It's better for you to remain like this, hopeless and weak the way you usually are, except this time, you have nothing." He refines his statement. "You are nothing. Just look at you. I've seen the way your fires sputter- your quirk's strength is all bravado without stamina or technique behind it. You act all cool and tough with your quirk, but without it, what are you?" He stares at Dabi's burns. "Without it, maybe you would've actually been happy."
And Todoroki doesn't regret his words, despite how objectively out of line they were, because this is Dabi. Dabi, who justifies all his actions, all his spiteful ideologies with a sense of justice that he forces onto others, forcing innocent lives into supporting, and even if Todoroki is stepping too far, pushing too cruel, Dabi does not deserve any sense of sympathy. He may be in the wrong- but Dabi is never in the right.
No remorse, for sure. Except, he watches Dabi's fixated stare, clapped and unblinking, his entire countenance blank. There's an estranged and unrecognizable emotion marbled across his screwed skin, which somehow appears much more unnerving than Dabi's typically apparent madness.
His heartbeat stills as Dabi slowly, stands up to full height, his neck sliding against the wooden door, and then, he puts a foot forward, phasing through the door and into his room, implying he's now coming in, and Shouto can't help but flinch-
"Oi, what the fuck are you doing."
Dabi pauses, as a door literally flies through his body.
Todoroki watches, unsure how to respond, as Bakugou steps in without permission, his entire body flickering into Dabi's.
"What."
"You were talking with someone. About their quirk. Sounded rather critical, got curious." Bakugou admits gruffly, glancing around. "But there's literally no one here. So, you disappear for like two hours, and now you're losing your shit?"
Todoroki, his mind too disturbed by Dabi who's still staring at him, quietly, still and waxy, something broken in his gaze, broken and dangerous in sharp jags and edges, does not think his words through. "I mean. Yeah."
Bakugou gives him a look.
"You talking to ghosts, now? Is that what type of yeehaw bullshit you're on now, Todoroki Shouto?"
"I-"
"Here I was, expecting some assbeating and I walk in on you having an existential crisis with your door? You gonna makeout with your elbow, now, too? The fuck is this? Get your damn shit together you, you fucking life virgin. Acting like you haven't lived yet. Shut up."
And Todoroki stands up, ready to defend himself, because Aizawa-sensei could tell him he has the personality of a tape dispenser and he'd accept that with an apology (anyone who has no fear for his father and ultimately no fear of God should be acknowledged)- but Bakugou? Bakugou Katsuki giving him crap when he literally has the self-awareness of a funhouse mirror?
"Listen," Todorki growls, stalking forward. "I wasn't-" and as he gestures slightly, his actions barely expressing his piling feelings, his fingers dip into the cold pool of Dabi's body.
A frighteningly familiar waterfall of icy water washes over him.
Fuck.
Bakugou takes a second.
Dabi blinks. Dabi, who literally spouted out of him, like a growth defect, stumbling out from behind Bakugou.
Dabi's mouth opens, then closes, glancing around, before slowly landing on Bakugou. Something akin to clarity, concocted with variables Bakugou cannot identify, flood Dabi's eyes the moment their eyes clasp. "Hey."
And it's not fear, it's because Bakugou is a badass with ultimate reflexes, that instantly releases a chain of explosions, that sets Icyhot's dumb carpet on fire.
Todoroki watches, utterly useless in this intangible state, as his carpet catches on fire.
He sighs.
Notes:
i was tlaking to my friend inky about dabi being a vsco girl and i guess that's why the relationship tag is the way it is. i'm not sURE how i'm going to make dabi into a vsco girl, but it's so firmly embedded as a personal headcanon that i literally cannot like. nOT include that.
i do not know whta im doing but that's okay bc we're all havig fun here :>
the days before the duedate of my common apps are shrinking faster than my gpa :((((
literally NO ONE:
me: haha wanna hear about my school stress problems even tho literally no one asked >:) me??? looking for attention??? ne Ever
also!!! i'd really appreciate if yall would drop a comment! i really enjoy reading/responding to them (ofc, don't feel pressured into doing it!! thanks for reading yall :)
oh!! and if you wouldn't mind, i'd really like feedback on how dabi's written here? idk i feel like. he has different vIBes than canon dabi or like the dabi i write in my other fics? like i'm wondering if he's too tame, or apathetic towards everything and i had a harder time trying to express dabi as dabi through the visuals of others'.
and same with todoroki- idk. i usually don't hav that hard of a time writing todoroki since in most of my fics he's interacting with bakugou, and i feel like i'm able to touch on his mindset the easiest through that way, but this time i didn't get to that so like ajsdkflsdf. i feel like it's good practice though, writing todoroki from first pov!!! good practice :)
Chapter 2: dabi and his meta crisis.
Summary:
hi!!!
okay:
- dabi: having an existential crisis and is genuinely not okay bc of it (me: projecting my fears of existence onto him)
- todoroki: moral dilemma and unsure how to deal with this like always. also is not good at math.
- bakugou: not okay. dabi is literALly his sleep paralysis demon.
- aizawa: also very not okay
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Um. Bakugou, why are you in Todoroki’s room?” Kirishima asks.
“Just visiting,” Bakugou replies casually, from where he’s sitting alone on Todoroki’s bed, utterly expressionless.
Kirishima squints, and creaks the door open even wider.
Bakugou is never placid, especially when it concerns Todoroki.
“I heard screaming.”
“Did you now.”
“Yeah.” And Kirishima slams the door open, barely able to remain calm when he sees the way Bakugou’s left brow jerks harshly, as if wanting to return to its usual furrow. Oh . He’s definitely not telling Kirishima something.
Sure, when he heard his bro’s string of insults ringing down the halls just seconds ago, he automatically identified it as Bakugou- he didn’t even need to wait for the puttering blasts of his quirk that’d solidify his suspicions.
After all, literally no one else uses the term ‘cunt’ as graciously as Bakugou would ever.
Bakugou watches as something hardens in Kirishima’s expression, visible through the creases of a squint conveying nothing but suspicion.
Then, Kirishima throws the door open, and Bakugou can’t help but twitch as the doorknob is pillowed by Dabi’s gut, and the man nearly doubles over from where he’s hiding behind the door.
If Kirishima came perhaps less than five seconds earlier, Bakugou would’ve willingly called out the man. However, since he didn’t , and instead subjected Bakugou to witnessing Todoroki suddenly step out of nowhere alone, Bakugou doesn’t have enough time to properly gather whatever the hell is going on to decide whether or not he should expose Todoroki’s fucking ass. Literally, Todoroki appeared out of thin air , before whipping to Bakugou with a vicious snarl that’s nothing more than a slight scowl across his strained features, gesturing wildly to his carpet, clearly having an issue with Bakugou’s rational response of flipping out.
Then, Todoroki had disappeared, and Dabi tumbled out of nowhere, like literally just blipped into exist existence, doing acrobatics across the charred rug, seemingly disorientated, and looking five seconds from strangling someone, before hearing Kirishima’s footsteps and quickly ducking next to the door.
Bakugou barely had enough time to process it himself to even think of what to do now that Kirishima wandered in. Like what the fuck sort of reality TV show bullshit is this? It’s like he’s the only one without a script, and everyone’s randomly walking in on their cues while he’s left improvising.
“Where’s Todoroki?” Kirishima inquires slowly.
“The fuck should I know?”
“You’re in his room. And the carpet’s on fire.”
“Todoroki could’ve done that.”
“But he wouldn’t .” Kirishima folds his arms, and suddenly, he exhales. “Listen, Bakugou, I know you and Todoroki have your differences, but you can’t just decide to commit property damage every time you’re repressing murderous intents. You need to find a better coping mechanism.”
Bakugou stares at him dryly. “Saying we have our differences is an understatement,” he says flatly. ‘Differences’ do not result in mutual homicidal tendencies against one another.
Kirishima, who has already speedrun through all the evolved stages of parenthood within the past two years of dealing with Kaminari, easily steamrolls over Bakugou’s input the way his own Old Hag does as well. “And I heard you screaming-”
“I do not scream-”
“And Todoroki’s not here. Clearly, you’ve done something to him.” Bakugou pauses, and narrows his eyes judgmentally at the lack of amusement contorting Kirishima’s face into anything other than an unironic seriousness.
“That underdeveloped Santa Claus could eat his own dick while it’s still attached to his shattered pelvis in a variation of the way Marilyn Manson did, and I would still not clap for him,” Bakugou says.
“Bro that has nothing to do with this conversation nor any conversation that deserves rights; Do Not Ever Say Those Words Again-”
“I’m trying to fucking say that I don’t engage with extras! I didn’t do anything to him!”
“Then what are you doing in his room? Isn’t sneaking into his room too far?”
And if Bakugou was trying to be discreet, firstly he wouldn’t be shouting ‘candycane cunt’ quite loudly in Todoroki’s room. At this, he bristles, ready to retort because either way, he’s above sneaking around- if he has a problem with Todoroki he’ll confront him with characteristic unabashment. However, his breath punctures his words into an incoherent gag, as background mouvement captures his attention.
He nearly chokes at the sight of the not-very-discreet lanky-ass scarecrow with worms, who’s attempting to creep around in the very pristine, sad room and behind Kirishima to clearly escape the dorm.
And Kirishima, perceptive of Bakugou to the point where it’s annoying - begins to turn around to follow his line of vision.
Flubbering, Bakugou sees the way that even Dabi, supervillain Dabi who Bakugou’s blood shattered from brittle cold the moment he saw him standing in UA , stiffen, characteristic annoyance flickering across his stale countenance. Right. Of course someone like him doesn’t feel panic.
“Kiri-”
“Kirishima.” The dryness that plagued Bakugou’s mouth suddenly unclogs the cotton lodged in his throat. Todoroki steps out of the corner of the room, appearing considerably composed despite the fact that Bakugou literally saw him stumble out of nothingness, as if he was scrambling onto his feet, like he was literally physically somewhere when he wasn’t-
“Oh. Todoroki, there you are!”
“Sorry, I was discussing with Bakugou about classwork.”
Bakugou whips his head over to the door.
Dabi’s not there anymore.
Kirishima chokes out a laugh of insulting relief at that. “Ah, I see. But, Todoroki, we didn’t know where you went since we went to the mall! We were really worried!” At this, Todoroki winces, clearly feeling apologetic, and Bakugou scoffs, unable to process any other response because what the fuck is going on here. And he scans the deceptively normal Todoroki standing right there, standing , just.
And Bakugou feels something nauseating plunge deep into his gut, threatening to rip his intestines inside-out.
Dabi was just standing right there.
And Bakugou already sees enough of him in the middle of the night- he’s starting to see him in the daytime too? He barely revokes a gag.
“Sorry. I accidentally got lost.” Bakugou pauses his midway existential crisis, dumbfounded that Todoroki used that excuse. For seven hours? He pauses. Todoroki being lost for seven hours in an open and normal public space. Actually that sounds rather in character.
“Don’t worry! I’ll let the others know you’ve returned,” Kirishima chirrups. “Though, what about Bakugou screaming?”
Todoroki side-eyes Bakugou, and that simple acknowledgement alleviates the pressure clamped across his respiratory system. Because that simple wide-eyed expression that conveys internal screaming and probably five Thanos stone crisises is literally mirroring what Bakugou feels; so good-fucking-riddance he’s not alone and going fucking off his rocker.
“Spider. Bakugou saw a spider.”
Bakugou takes a second to digest Todoroki’s utter bullshit , and he whirls around, ready to fucking rearrange Todoroki’s limbs to make him into a spider himself-
But then, Kirishima barks out a laughter, effectively interrupting Bakugou’s string of swears for Todoroki’s slander that he’s going to one day sue him for. “Oh! Okay. Well, nice to see you two opening up to each other-” And Bakugou is now confused: does he want to decimate Todoroki first, or Kirishima?
Kirishima is already out the door.
Bakugou snaps his neck to face Todoroki. Todoroki first, then.
Headbutting the unsuspecting boy hard against his fucking hollow cranium, is satisfying despite the stinging of his own forehead as Todoroki, startled into buckling onto his knees, groans.
“Hey, you -” And Bakugou plants a shoe against Todoroki’s slouched shoulder, the other’s intense and sharp glower uneffective. “You have a lot of fucking explaining to do. What the fuck . Why was Dabi in your room.”
“...I’m cosplaying Dabi.”
Todoroki fails at escaping Bakugou’s second headbutt.
“I swear I just saw Dabi.”
“No you didn’t.”
Bakugou isn’t even deadpanned, pressed at Todoroki’s obvious and very blatant denial when just five minutes ago before Todoroki somehow phased back into a tangible presence and hereby locking Dabi into the ghostly layer, Dabi literally greeted Bakugou with a horrifyingly casual “‘sup”, and got indirectly suckerpunched by Kirishima and a door.
Instead, Bakugou is staring at Todoroki as if he’s leaking melted ice out of his brain.
“Are you stupid.”
“No.”
“Yes.” Dabi says, and Todoroki has a threatening and terrifying thought of how Bakugou would’ve said the exact same thing.
“Todoroki, I'm being serious. Don’t fuck with me here-” and Todoroki already knew Bakugou was losing his patience- he’s not really discreet. It’s why their class established a swear jar, which actually fills up with concerning rapidness, (mostly due to Bakugou, who abides to laws quite tamely for the sake of righteousness despite having an overall disorientated self-entitlement). It’s used to pay snacks, Kirishima and Kaminari’s tutoring lessons with an upperclassman after Bakugou kicked them out of his sessions because they clogged the shower drain with a stapling gun, and mostly, fund whatever property damage bill the school sends to the Bakugous. “This. This is fucked up, and if you’re hiding something about a villain or-” and there’s something feral in Bakugou’s starlight eyes, intense and vibrating with inhumane entropy that only primal fear can ignite and for a second-
Todoroki can’t breathe. He wonders if it’s because clearly, Bakuogu can’t either, uncharacteristically choking on his thoughts. Guess we have to empty the swear jar again for my hospital bills after Bakugou’s done with me. “Todoroki, I swear , if you are hiding something without reason I will turn you in-”
“So. If I have a reason then-”
“This is a villain you fucking dumbass, even with reason I’d probably tell the authorities.” Ouch. “Not like I don’t have faith in you to be so fucking stupid to do this without a good reason, but it can’t be something that you can handle on your own- at the very least Aizawa should know.” And for a second, the dryness scorching his throat eases at the clarification that Bakugou does ultimately trust him to not be involved in sketchy business.
And then there’s the unspeakable fact that Bakugou, surprisingly, does not have a good relationship with Dabi.
Being kidnapped by him and a group of immoral villains who aren’t above the questionable act of torture and murder tends to become a dealbreaker in most healthy relationships.
“Okay. I do have an explanation. It doesn’t make sense though.” Todoroki says slowly. “And...I don’t know how to deal with it properly,” because if word gets out, Dabi will probably try and kill everyone the moment it’s his turn to be Present, and I don’t know how to stop that from happening.
“That’s stupid,” Dabi comments casually from where he’s scratching his elbow.
And Todoroki, miffed, cannot deny this.
Dabi, who cannot be heard by people of the tangible reality, appears to actually have a lot to say, but incapable of being acknowledged.
Todoroki makes brutal eye contact with Dabi, being sure to demolish his ego by indifferently breaking it from his figure. Currently, Dabi’s only grasp of reality is through Todoroki- therefore, Todoroki knows he’s pulling a powerplay and probably something with ethical controversy, by purposefully denying Dabi a sense of reality and validation of being existent.
Because fuck him.
“Okay. You can’t. Let me just say,” Todoroki struggles to begin, because there’s something vaguely terrifying of having the responsibility of explaining the unfathomable, because he doesn’t want to be seen as batshit crazy for one, and secondly, it’s simply weird .
Then he reminds himself that Bakugou’s opinions about anything Todoroki says is essentially irrelevant, and that Bakugou is quite frankly the least of his problems and even Dabi can’t blame him for this current predicament. Suddenly, saying things monotonously with little sympathy is rather easy: “Dabi and I are tied by a quirk that allows only one of us at a time to be visibly seen and tangible in our perception of reality, while the other of one of us is stuck in a ghostly state.”
Bakugou stares.
Todoroki does not bother to wait for Bakugou’s instant and unfortunately understandable denial of his words, and instead, continues elaborating his theories: “even though it really doesn’t make sense, because I wasn’t even near Dabi when hit by this quirk, and I don’t know why this quirk tied me with him , you know, since I was hit by it way before I ran into him in the alleyway while he was digging through trash-”
“I was trying to find food, you spoiled daddy’s boy-”
“Because I’m not out here trying to catch the black plague through mouldy bread smeared with rat shit.”
Todoroki has little trouble flattening any smugness out of his stony countenance as he watches Dabi take his anger out by trying to demolish Bakugou’s head like a watermelon, only for his kick to pathetically phase through his skull.
“I.” Bakugou then smothers his anxiety with a sudden grasp and pull of his fingers, clearly trying to pull himself together. “ What?”
“I said what I said.”
“Well what you said was stupid . What the fuck .” And Todoroki has a sudden and odd realisation that this is what a normal person must feel like, trying to explain logic to a flat earther. He’s someone backed with physical evidence supporting their theories, only for an anti to remain in consistent denial; Bakugou literally saw Dabi himself, twice that is, and his instantaneous reaction of setting things on fire is indirect proof that he saw him. His room literally still smells like California bonfires and his rug looks like someone lit cat vomit over it.
“I agree. It was stupid,” Dabi says, even though No One Asked.
“So you’re literally saying someone pulled a Disney plotline on you two and that’s why you guys are suddenly, you know, the way you are , with no real reason or explanation.”
“I mean. Bakugou, you have flammable sweat. I tend to believe that quirks really do change the nature of logic and natural laws of science to the point where they overturn a constant sense of human limits, and therefore, this isn’t that magical nor strange.”
“Stop talking like you’re the shit. You think you’re Bill Nye? Huh? You think you’re the fucking shit, talking about biology and quirks and using scientific words like ‘science’ and ‘magical’, huh ?”
“‘Magical’ isn’t a scientific word.”
“You think you’re suddenly Ms. Frizzle with a mutated school bus huh, huh -” Todoroki’s very lost by this point.
And Todoroki absolutely despises the way he makes confident eye contact with Dabi across the room, who appears equally unimpressed and as well as momentarily not self-aware of how in-sync he is with Todoroki.
Both of them quickly avert their eyes upon that dawning and terrifying realisation.
“We gotta tell Aizawa.” Bakugou finally concludes from his incoherent ramblings.
“Tell him that it’s not like I want to be here, and that if they try and do that, I’ll literally set fire to a bitch. I don’t trust you motherfuckers to not pull shit if you force me into such a disadvantaged situation,” Dabi snarls. “I’ll eat your eyeballs like peas in the pits of your mashed brain like potatoes, dickweed. You think you have control over this situation more than I do? Let’s see you have control over your fine motor skills once I’m done with you-”
“Dabi says ‘no’,” Todoroki summarises.
“Well, of course he’ll say that, dumbass.” And Todoroki thinks that level of aggression is unwarranted. “Do it anyways, while he’s still a ‘ghost’ or whatever.”
“Yes, but, I also don’t know when he’ll stop being a ghost,” Todoroki grits out, impatient due to Bakugou’s unnecessary rudeness. “Meaning if I sell him out now, what if he suddenly stops being a ghost, or becomes ‘Present’? I don’t know how this quirk works, and neither does he, and I can’t guarantee things won’t go drastically wrong because of that.” And he doesn’t want to mention that there’s a chance Dabi will know if Bakugou tells on Aizawa-sensei himself without their knowledge, as it won’t only make Bakugou aware of this possibility, but Dabi himself. “He can also go wherever he wants while as a ghost- he’s not tied to me by measurement or distance.” He pauses. “At least I don’t think so.”
“Good, because I don’t want to fucking be near you, anyways,” Dabi is now sulking, and Todoroki is going to fight him- he’s like old , he has no right to act this way.
“You were the one clinging onto me. If anything, I didn’t think you’d require so much human contact as your nature would suggest,” Todoroki retorts bitingly. Dabi doesn’t even seem irritated, and somehow, that makes Todoroki even madder . He hates his face.
“You’re talking to him right now?” Bakugou inquires, voice strangely unemotional, eyes darting about in literally the most non-discreet way.
Todoroki ignores him. “This is stupid.” He grunts. He then sits upright. “Stop it.” He snaps at Dabi, who’s now trying to casually place his entire face through Bakugou’s chest. Dabi then stands right in the middle of Bakugou, giving Todoroki the impression of Midoriya’s Sim characters melding together in a normalised glitch of an abomination.
Dabi’s crooked smile flashes through Bakugou’s face.
In other words: Bakugou looks like he’s smiling.
“Hurk.”
“What the fuck,” Bakugou cringes, “disgusting bitchboy, stop vomiting-”
“So, Dabi is here right now?”
“Yeah.”
Todoroki appears somewhat tolerant of this fact, too engaged in his own homework to seemingly really know what the fuck his words indicate.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I know, I said earlier that it’d be a bad idea, but I’ll tell Aizawa-sensei because I don’t know what else to do,” and no wonder Todoroki appears calm in such a situation, of course. Aizawa can fix this. “Yes, I’m aware I’m saying my plans out loud, it’s to purposely piss you off,” he randomly says, probably to Dabi who’s just here apparently. Then, Todoroki suddenly breaks concentration, irritation sketching scores across his wrinkles, dragging his countenance into something fierce. “Shut up , no I know Aizawa-sensei can’t cancel this quirk-” And Bakugou watches Todoroki scream into air.
Great. So this bitch who’s going to solve the situation of a grade A+ serial killer , talks to himself.
Or to Dabi, who is the grade A+ serial killer, so that’s really just another tally underneath reasons as to why Bakugou should launch this motherfucker into the sun.
“I- what do you mean?” And Todoroki glances back at the study guide he was filling out. “No, I didn’t do it wrong-” he pauses, obvious surprise laxing his glare. “Oh.”
“What?” Bakugou blinks, growling. No doubt this has something to do with Dabi.
Dabi.
And suddenly, Bakugou feels dirty. Something grimy sludging sewage up his throat, overwhelming his kidney with toxins and debris.
Dabi is in this room with him right now, and though Todoroki reassured him that Dabi can’t touch him, can’t interact with him physically or verbally-
Bakugou has seen Dabi. Saw the way he tumbled out right in front of Bakugou, close enough to plant his palms against Bakugou’s nape and crank up the heat if he simply wanted , close enough to exhale a puff of sooty hair into his face.
Todoroki clearly can’t control these sudden switches.
It’s only a matter of time till the man has his turn being Present, and Todoroki can’t switch them back.
And either way, Dabi’s here . Bakugou can’t guarantee that Dabi won’t wander around, won’t be here , watching Bakugou, and Bakugou would never know that he’s there that he isn’t standing in the corner of his room or beside his bed with no indicator of being there and-
“-kugo!”
Bakugou chokes as a pressure slams between his back sinews. Coughing, a string of phlegm slithering out of his airway, he rounds to Todoroki, who’s now standing above him, ashen and eyes wide.
“The fuck?” He croaks.
“I don’t know. You. I think you were panicking? I don’t.” Todoroki scrunches his nose. “Nevermind. Just.” And he’s staring at Bakugou, something unreadable in his expression, but Bakugou can detect the underlayer of fear quivering the last syllable of his words. “I just. Just wanted to ask about this question-” and his voice is composed, and nothing seems wrong anymore, just something missing- “is it wrong?”
And Bakugou, recollecting himself quickly, glances over. “What the fuck are you doing.”
“It’s wrong.”
“No shit.”
“Is the answer twenty-eight?”
Bakugou cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah, but you didn’t write that down?”
Todoroki purses his lips, and slowly, slides his eyes across his vision, no longer focused on Bakugou.
“See, see .”
Todoroki refuses to look Dabi in the eye.
“I told you it was twenty-eight.”
It’s weird. Not just the fact that it’s Dabi . It’s the fact that he’s a fake-ghost, some bullshit apparition, and apparently for a guy who claims to be a high school dropout, is good at algebra.
It’s the fact that Dabi is oddly tolerant of this situation; sure he was initially pissed, and attempted to try and flip over the bed to only fall straight forward into it-
He now has calmed, and has the tendencies of an aggressively bored house cat.
He slowly skips over the terrifyingly electric blue of Dabi’s eyes (and god they’re just like his family’s and blue eyes aren’t uncommon but it’s unnerving to see the smoldering blues peering just slightly out the slits cut deep into scarred sockets, like if Todoroki reached forward and pried the leather apart- he’d see something underneath he never wants to see).
“Oi, rotten Canadian flag-” Bakugou snarls.
Dabi snorts from where he’s lounging over the table, his translucent body clouding over Bakugou’s image that’s right across the table that they’re seated on.
“He always says that?” Dabi jerks a thumb over to Bakugou, too casually for his position right now.
Todoroki has learned within these past ten minutes that Dabi, despite having zero will to socialise nor really exist, cannot sit still and has way too much energy for a guy who looks like his muscles are pull-apart like string cheese. He’s also shown to have zero sense of spatial recognition, as he doesn’t seem to think that maybe, his body is too long to properly fit on the tiny coffee table he’s splaying out across. And it’s weird, because it’s like Dabi’s unconsciously floating above the table, since he technically should go right through it if he actually comes in contact with it.
“Also,” Dabi points to another question on his paper. “This is wrong, too. Damn I literally can’t remember anything past geometry solely because my teacher brought mac n’ cheese to class that one time, and I’m still catching more mistakes than you.”
Bakugou self-sabotages his breathing once again, as he chokes at Todoroki’s sudden scream.
“Okay, I had a really trying day.”
At this, Bakugou’s gaze shifts, trepidation locking his features in place, as his eyes skim over Todoroki. Todoroki winces, and wisely does not mention that the right half of Dabi’s body is currently merged into Bakugou’s due to poor positioning.
He doesn’t necessarily get along with Bakugou-
Doesn’t mean he has to remind Bakugou of his sleep paralysis demons.
Then, he watches Dabi attempt to bat the clock off the wall.
His stupid sleep paralysis demon.
“So. He’s in this room right now? Still?”
“He hasn’t left.” Unfortunately. “Just like you,” unfortunately.
“Just making sure he doesn’t like, you know, appear and kill all of us, but yeah, sure, give me shit for staying here,” Bakugou snaps flatly.
But Todoroki can see the way anxiety latches onto Bakugou’s figure, trauma reliving through the twitchiness of his legs and darting of his eyes. Todoroki waits for Bakugou to begin swivelling his head around the silent and unanswering room, before Todoroki directs a nasty glare of resentment and blame at Dabi, who catches it with the grace of any sadistic killer.
Then, Dabi flips him off.
Todoroki squints.
Todoroki turns to Bakugou. “He left the room.” And he wonders if he’s supposed to feel guilty for lying, but there’s something terrifying about being the one to relish the responsibility of burdening Bakugou with the truth. That Dabi, his kidnapper and probably sleep paralysis demon, is currently breathing(? Living? walking?) in the same air as him.
“You’re lying to me.”
“Nah.”
“Todoroki Shouto does not use slang terms such as ‘nah’, unless if he’s under pressure.” Bakugou leers.
“Bro, what? I don’t recall.”
“You sound like a millennial is trying to communicate through Google Translate. Just shut up.”
Dabi hates it.
Hates it hates it hatesithatesithatesitihates.
All the thoughts of his words are auditory and written in comic sans at once, tumbling out of the doorways and through Shouto’s body at once, none of them seeing because even if Shouto is keeping a wary eye on him, he’s not seeing. Because Dabi is not there.
What if Shouto dies?
Does Dabi turn back?
And the concept of existing without an expected nor assumed future is terrifying . As a human he can always rely on death, on the sole fact that there’s death, even if the afterlife is a mess and all conceptual and no one can ever really know because you just can’t - death is a certainty.
Can Dabi die like this?
Can Dabi ever leave ? Is there a set limit on this ghostly state? Even if he’s stuck like this for years (already, it’s a purgatory, one that he’d probably go fucking crazy in), if he could at least have a reassuring fact as to when the timer goes ding and he’s released, he has the idea of hope.
Dabi, entwined with a monobsessive fate and no real identity outside of his situation working in the League, only having a singular goal in mind, has the hope that death can help him unjustly escape his consequences.
Dabi looks at Bakugou, who knows he’s there, but can never see him, and Dabi wants to vomit.
He’s never felt fear this intense. Touya thinks his household is hell? Like this, his world is its own unique hell, squared off in this realm of time and space that he can see but never access, and he’s utterly alone . And it’s not the fact that he has no one that bothers him- he’s always been alone, ever since birth he just never realised it then, it’s the fact that no one knows he’s there . This isn’t even about whether or not he’s alive or living- this is about if he exists .
He wafts his hand through Bakugou’s head again, ignoring Shouto’s incessant hissing and Bakugou’s shouted retort towards his own little brother’s stupidity.
Dabi has little fear. There’s never time to stop and process his emotions, never time to understand what to do with fear, nor is there any real stimulus that can ignite anything similar to fear. Perhaps a chill, perhaps trepidation and unease- but never fear. Fear is something gradual for him: something that spawns in the depths of the rot encased in his brittle ribcage, existing and growing into existence and acknowledgment solely through time. He never has time to coexist with anything that’d cause that (he never lets anything last long enough for him to really develop cognition fear).
This is not a problem that he can kill, not a problem he can truly understand and freakily enough, the world can understand.
The sprout weighed deep in the pulpy mulch of his shaky chest grows a little taller.
“I’m surprised he didn’t storm out earlier,” Dabi comments.
And Todoroki stares at his flailing door, charred with the doorknob half screwed out its hole. “I mean. Yeah, thought he was going to kill me and run from the crime scene.” Todoroki shrugs.
“I mean. You would’ve deserved it,” Dabi determines.
Actually, Todoroki isn’t entirely sure why Bakugou reacted the way he did, but he reasons that it’s Bakugou, therefore any dramatic response is by default, fitting.
“All I did was ask if he was going to stay overnight because of how long he was sitting here,” Todoroki blinks.
“It’s probably because he hates you.”
“He hates everyone,” Todoroki nods amiably.
“Think he’ll tell your teachers?” Dabi narrows his eyes. And Bakugou’s no snitch, but, strangely enough, he’s also just not stupid. Therefore, making this inquiry plausible. “I bet he would. I’m following him.”
“Uh no .” Todoroki stands up. “You having free-reign to go wherever you want in places you shouldn’t be able to access is dangerous enough, what if we switch? If we switch and you’re somewhere else, you could pull a stunt without me knowing.”
At this Dabi scoffs, almost appalled, though Todoroki thinks he’s being very rational.
“Dabi. You kill people.”
“But you’re alive!”
“Yeah! And you might make a lot of students not that way, if I let you just wander!”
“Listen. Buddy. You’re alive !” Dabi echoes. “I’m not right now! Well, maybe. But I’m not here . You can’t just try and limit me more than my own current state already has-” And Todoroki’s taken back. He pauses, licking his lips at Dabi, whose eyes are swallowed by something, and there are tendrils of something black and foggy, like watercolours dispersing into the air, fuming from his feet, out between his scars, and Todoroki’s mouth goes dry. “ You do not get to tell me what to do. You are here . You are considered here by everyone else, even by that asshole who apparently cares about you.”
Todoroki normally wouldn’t care , Dabi’s reputation as a literal unjust murderer adding onto that indifference, but there’s still something very human about Dabi’s words that make him analysis them solely for context. “Are you lonely?” He conspires, and the black clouds engulfing his figure billows into smoke, charring the ceiling, staining the room with black.
“No.” And Dabi sounds so confident, so placid, not even mockingly condescending with the aura of ‘are-you-stupid’, that Todoroki believes it instantly. Dabi looks like he barely has the energy to exist (maybe that’s why he’s the ghost here), much less act. “But out of everyone, you should understand what it’s like to be in my position,” and the fog clears, but the stains remain.
Todoroki takes a second, looking at the black soot blemishing his walls.
“Are you lecturing me?”
Todoroki cannot believe Dabi lectured him.
Dabi, who’s currently floating on his back near the living room’s ceiling lamp gazing above, making Todoroki feel like he’s at the pits of a deep sea and Dabi’s some dead body that’s drifting along the surface.
What the fuck.
And then Dabi has the gall to act like he didn’t try and force Todoroki to revise his entire moral perspective on what’s humane and Dabi’s damn feelings, when he’s a literal arsonist with an authority problem.
The thing is, Todoroki does understand Dabi’s point of view. Sure, he basically exposed to Todoroki that he actually can feel things and is not above basic emotional reactions to the traumatising (something that makes Todoroki pissed because then that only adds onto the fact that he’s fully capable of knowing the emotional pain he causes )- but he’s also Dabi . Dabi, a villain who’s done crimes that Todoroki has no right to justify nor to excuse, and it’d be disrespectful to not acknowledge, either. It’s like an obligation, to feel angry and hateful towards Dabi, because it’s not like the dead could do it for their own sake.
Yet Todoroki still headed downstairs into his grade’s common room, assuming Dabi would follow without him implying for him to do so (if anything, if he did ask him to follow Dabi, being the absolute brat he is, probably wouldn’t just to spite him). He can’t feel at ease being alone with Dabi. It’s a clammy feeling, something watery and sloshing in the ravine of his guts. It’s a small grace, that at the very least, if Dabi becomes Present, Todoroki will be safe as a ghost- it’s not like Dabi can kill him in that form.
However, this subjects Todoroki having to watch in sweating anxiety of Dabi’s stupid hovering over his unassuming friends, and he doesn’t even know if this is just Dabi having zero sense of boundaries, or officially believing that being of a different subspecies(?) of their kind, does not need to follow basic social constructs such as personal boundaries.
At least if they switch, it’s around people . Especially Bakugou, who’s seen it happen and can explain to their classmates.
However, Dabi’s a little shit , and he’s bored. That jerk is basically harassing his oblivious classmates.
Todoroki takes another long drink of his Gatorade, eyeballing. He fixates his gaze on Dabi, who is now awkwardly hanging over Iida’s shoulder, watching him trying to not spill hotpot everywhere in the inhumanely large pot Yaoyorozu conjured to be the size of Bakugou’s ego. “What is this?” It takes Todoroki a moment to realise that Dabi, who refused to look in his general direction after his weirdass blow-up, is talking to him.
Well. Obviously. Who else would Dabi be able to even engage with?
And Todoroki swears he becomes a completely different person around Dabi- it’s frankly quite terrifying, as somehow, it feels as if he disconnected and unplugged from his familiar and rational temperament, and somehow, got possessed by Bakugou’s anger that’s cultivated by Mina’s impulsiveness.
“Dumbass, you don’t know what hotpot is?” Todoroki leering through a flat expression, before pausing, catching himself and nearly falling off the couch that he’s seated in.
“I. Are you talking to me? ” And hearing Kaminari’s incredulous and shaky tone, he realises, that he spoke rather loudly in the middle of a living room full of lounging students, and that he just swore. Todoroki is rather not fond of swearing, nor drawing attention to himself.
And he’s about to deny , though there’s a split-second of automatically saying ‘yes’, since when it comes to Kaminari, the unexplainable can happen without question. “No. I was talking to myself,” Todoroki strains his ears, hoping he’s not shouting over Dabi, who’s either being difficult on purpose or solely just dumb , is currently talking at the same time.
“I never had hotpot,” and Dabi doesn’t even sound miffed, just factual. “Wanted to know what this shit was.”
Todoroki recalls how his first meeting with Dabi today, resulted in him watching Dabi try and search for food through garbage. People don’t necessarily throw liquid waste into bags, he guesses.
Todoroki pauses. He actually never had hotpot either, before he moved here. Father disliked soup, believing it didn’t have enough calories necessary for muscle building, and that liquid food was baby food.
“Todoroki?”
“Huh?”
“I. You just sorta stopped talking.”
“Oh.” And everyone’s quiet, glancing at him. And though Todoroki wants to promptly throw himself out into the nearest ocean, he desperately seeks for Bakugou’s presence, because hey , despite never really caring what misconceptions others thought of him, he also needs at least one other person than someone like Dabi, to be aware that he’s not acting out of order.
Bakugou jerks his eyebrows up, eyes widening as Todoroki somehow tries to cram fifteen gigabytes of information and the sensation of panic and internalised screaming through maintaining bland eye contact for five seconds.
“Yeah. I was thinking,” Todoroki says as he realises the common room is waiting for an explanation that he does not have.
The others stare at him.
He does not elaborate.
“What the hell is this?” And Dabi’s now prodding a finger through the Nintendo Switch that Uraraka is viciously curbstompping her opponent’s ego with, and Tokoyami, the said opponent, appears almost paralysed with fear as he watches his character shatter into pixels. “Nintendo?” He reads aloud, and Todoroki sincerely does try and not latch his eyes onto Dabi, well aware that Kaminari appears vaguely terrified by his current attitude and is now moving off the couch, but he can’t help it. It’s weird. Dabi, a wanted villain and essentially an emaciated shadow of an cynically deranged personification of their society, is currently talking like-
He pauses.
“Hey, Kaminari,” he begins, fully pretending like he didn’t shout in his face just seconds ago.
“Y-yea?”
“What was that word you always used? On Aizawa-sensei? When he couldn’t figure out how to use the new dishwasher the other day and follow the IKEA instructions?”
“To validate him, no one can understand IKEA instructions,” Yaoyorozu murmurs.
“Oh. A ‘boomer’?” Kaminari answers, blinkingly.
Ah. Yes.
“They can attach ?” Dabi whispers, watching as Tokoyami, partially sobbing, clicks his remote back to the screen.
A boomer.
Todoroki sighs.
See, Todoroki’s view of Dabi hasn’t necessarily changed. At core, he still resents him, believes him to be inexcusably awful despite the obvious redflag that’s going to trigger a sudden unravel of some tragic backstory that Todoroki wants zero part of, and that Dabi looks like he only eats canned food.
But he also assumed Dabi to be more talkative, in the sense that he’s the type of person with a wicked tongue and an arsenal of harrassing phrases, cruel tones, and sadistic humour, ready to torture and humiliate Todoroki while he’s surrounded by people who can’t witness his influence.
So far, he’s learned drastic differences: Dabi has (1) tone that conveys the sentience of an A.I., Dabi has little shame but not in the cruel, ‘not-care-how-I-affect-others’ way, but more in the ‘I’m-oblivious-towards-the-lack-of-subtlety-I-have’, and that Dabi actually does talk a lot.
Talk in the sense that he doesn’t seem to actually like holding conversation, and if anything, appears more comfortable not engaging in a meaningful conversation, but, that he also has zero sense of common, socially-induced pride that prevents him from not suddenly asking Todoroki very loudly, how come Kirishima walks around only in boxers and socks and a red tie with nothing else on.
Todoroki does not know. He doesn’t not want to know. He doesn’t know why Dabi believes he would know. Kirishima bothering to only wear three articles of clothing that obscure only a miniscule surface of his body is not something he questions, nor does anyone else, as they’ve all adapted.
Todoroki chokes, steaming soup jetting out his nose as he looks up and sees Dabi’s head bobbing in the middle of the large hotpot filled with bubbling soup.
“Todoroki!” Midoriya, a godsent saint in troubling times, looks on cautiously. “A-are you okay? Isn’t. Isn’t that hot?”
“Is he allergic to soup?”
“Kaminari, shut up.” And that’s probably the first time Dabi’s ever heard Bakugou bother to make Todoroki’s life a little easier.
Todoroki, whose body thankfully automatically tempered the steaming broth into room temperature, still has to pretend like he didn’t just snort an entire line of salty water up his nose and into his brains.
“Yeah,” he somehow manages to get out without stuttering over the fact that he feels like he’s dying inside. “I’m okay.” And he glares at Dabi, who stares back, utterly unbothered.
“Well I’m not okay. Bastardised child, this is absolutely unfair, as well as inconvenient.” Dabi says, even though, once again, Nobody Asked.
“You’re just bored.” Todoroki grumbles under his breath.
“Exactly,” Dabi nods solemnly, his chin dipping into the rice cakes.
“What?” Midoriya murmurs from his side. Todoroki shakes his head, waving a hand noncommittally at him, gesturing away any notion of concern.
And Dabi’s a villain . If anything, he should be seeping through the walls, peeking through their lounges for any conveniently already pre-opened files, skirting through unwatched documents, trying to grab a layout of their building-
Dabi’s now perched somewhere in the air right above Uraraka who’s on the couch, watching her failing to grab the lengthy noodles with her chopsticks.
And Todoroki meant for his next words as a joke, but then he inquires grumpily, pissed at Dabi’s presence even though technically it’s not his fault but can anyone blame him for feeling so unease with Dabi’s presence there, and so unstable because he could just become tangible at any given time-
“Do you want some?” And he’s sure his tone sounds snarky. In his head, at the very least. Todoroki’s not the best at conveying his feelings unless if it’s extreme anger.
And Dabi looks at Todoroki, and Todoroki pauses. Sure, Dabi in general is very passive, his placidness actually amping up Todoroki’s unease as he feels too vulnerable, not on-guard enough as to what could come in the future, but that’s also just his personality. Dabi does not seem very emotionally reactive, nor does he seem to really care, past being generally obsessively upset and angry over the hero world.
“Yes.”
“I was joking.”
“Yeah, but you asked and I answered,” he sneers.
Dabi looks like he wants it. Todoroki doesn’t know how he knows: Dabi’s face literally does not change at all, past the usual leers and grimaces of hate. But it’s the way that Dabi just looks . If anything, Todoroki has a feeling that this is exactly how he looks when he wants something, but everyone doesn’t appear aware of it.
Dabi doesn’t say anything after that.
(Next to Todoroki, Midoriya who overhead only one-side of the conversation, squints as a blurry background character at his friend in clear judgment.)
“Don’t eat in your bedroom, you’re going to make a mess.”
Todoroki glares at Dabi. “I’m not going to eat, and don’t tell me what to do.” He bites bitterly, storming into his bedroom. This was an awful idea for an ungrateful, undeserving asshole. He still slams the bowl onto his desk, along with a clean pair of chopsticks. “I’m going to wash up, don’t follow me. Don’t go anywhere else, either.”
“There’s nowhere to go,” Dabi snarks. “Your life is literally boring, and there’s nothing to do.” And he sounds like a kid.
“Fine! Then just go ,” Todoroki leers, his temper short-circuiting, something frosty chipping his tone. “Whatever. You’re not restricted to here, you’re the one who doesn’t want to leave.”
“You’re the one who, fairly enough, didn’t think I’d be trusted.”
“And you’re the one who stayed! Why are you staying?” And Todoroki doesn’t raise his voice- he lost the ability to do so. Rather, annoyance freezes his sympathy until it’s brittle enough to snap like his patience. “I don’t want you here, either. No one does.”
“No one can see me! Except for you.”
Todoroki stares at him. It’s not like anyone sees you in this society, anyways. But then Dabi would turn that into some self-victimising nonsense, if Todoroki said what’s simply the truth. It’s not like Dabi deserves to be heard from a society he consistently hurt and killed within, anyways. “So you’re scared?” And Todoroki may be exaggerating any emotions within Dabi’s rationalisation, but something about Dabi gets under his skin . He crawls and resides there, laying maggots to fester on the ends of his damn nerves, and he wants Dabi to feel the same way from him, too. “You’re here, hanging out with children, because you’re scared, and you only have me to rely on,” and he just wants Dabi to feel humiliated ; Dabi’s so unashamed, loud despite his withdrawnness, and all his offenses and defenses are just himself, who’s made up of contradictions.
Dabi looks unimpressed. “Of course I don’t want to leave you. You’re the only person who knows I exist. That’s like the third time I said that but just rephrased.”
“Is that vulnerability, I hear?” And seeing the way that the littlest of Dabi’s genuineness shuts down, something darkening in his gaze, almost makes Todoroki feel doubtful about his confidence, about whether or not he wants to push Dabi to the edge.
Dabi doesn’t say anything else.
And now the tension isn’t even just anger and uncomfortableness: it’s awkward and grating.
“Fine. Whatever.” He shrugs ruthlessly. He’ll skip showering tonight- he doesn’t want to leave Dabi out of his sight for too long. Because even if Dabi can’t touch anything or interact with any of the other senses, he doesn’t know if that’s a constant or if there’s nothing he can truly do in that state.
When Todoroki comes back, Dabi isn’t there.
Then he opens his closet to pack away his uniform and finds Dabi lounging out in the back of his hung clothes, vibing alone.
He shuts the door again.
“You’re going to sleep?”
And Todoroki frankly doesn’t want to, because what happens if they switch and suddenly Dabi’s allowed free-reign within the school while everyone’s asleep?
But then there’s the fact that there’s nothing he can really do about it, and sleep-deprivation does nothing for his health. “I mean. I have to sleep. Do you ?”
“Nah. Even as a human, don’t gotta sleep often.”
“That’s not good for you.”
A large eye that almost seems to glow in the night, rolls over to him, dull. “Wow. Really?”
“You look like someone dumped baby powder all over you. Also, turn off your brightness. You make it hard to sleep.”
“I- do I look like a phone to you? Do you think I can just stop glowing?”
“You physically look like a cracked glowstick. Like. I bet your bones all cracked and that’s why you’re glowing.”
“What the fuck.”
Todoroki scowls, and pulls his blanket over his head to try and block out Dabi’s inner glow.
See, the thing is, Dabi didn’t think he was going to turn back. Of course, he reasonably hoped and assumed it would happen eventually, but he was not prepared for it since the real nemesis of his chaotically evil life isn’t his father, but actually, life itself. Dabi is practically synonymous to every nameable issue he’s ever encountered, and by transitive property, should be called An Issue, too.
The spidermans pointing at each other meme template provides an understandable visual display for this paradox, as well as a Venn Diagram if one has the time and effort to bother defying himself and An Issue as the same thing, and listing the parallels to support the given theory.
So when life actually grants him mercy, or, more likely God felt tired of his bullshit, he was floating near the ceiling when suddenly, gravity acknowledges that he exists, as well as reality.
He slams against the floor, too numb to any actual sense of danger by this point (or maybe it’s because his nerves are fried by his physiologically ungreased mechanism nicknamed his stupid body), that he doesn’t even scream despite falling in the darkness, having no sense of light, and probably thinking he was being dragged down into the depths of hell.
Instead, he was dragged onto a rather shaggy and smoky smelling carpet, with probably a concussion.
“Oh my god.”
And that exclamation aligns perfectly with his own thoughts, that it actually takes Dabi a moment to realise it wasn’t his useless inner conscience voice, but rather, a literal voice. He sits upright.
To his side, Shouto is glowing through the covers lying in a crumple around him.
“Uh. Me too.”
“Oh no.”
“You’re like a literal lava lamp, can you turn on the lamp?”
“Dabi, I can’t touch things.”
“Oh. Imagine being a loser.” And Dabi stands up, seeking for a lamp, before stopping, his hands squishing into something vaguely lukewarm. “I think. I think I just put my hand in your soup.” And he nearly gags, but using his clean hand, finds the actual lamp, and flicks it on, successfully brightening the room while blending away Shouto’s unnatural glow.
“Why is your hand still in the soup bowl.”
“Shut up.”
Dabi slowly takes out his hand, ignoring how the soup seeps into the cracks closed by his staples, how it stings and almost burns, despite being relatively mild. Nonchalantly wiping away the soup onto his pants, he glances about.
And he’s so relieved .
A shaky breath nearly squirms past his lips, but he quickly locks his mouth into a firm line. And for a second, Dabi contemplates quickly killing himself right here, burning himself into seriously nothingness with whoever’s caught in the flames to go down with him, to consequently avoid any possibility of becoming a ghost again.
He can’t handle it.
The idea of not existing but still being forced to be some subset of alive.
He takes a second to realise his hands are twitching, fingers jerking an untuned rhythm of keys and notes, and he turns to Shouto to try and shove aside how scared he was. Dabi didn’t know he could even feel scared at times.
“What are you going to do now?” And Shouto’s voice sounds steely, determined, and his face literally the same expression he wore earlier while annoyed, as well as passive and just standing by. Kid needs more potassium- it’ll stop his muscles from cramping up.
Dabi indulges in the obvious self-loathe in the boy’s voice, though. Clearly, he has some weird obligation to feel like he’s Dabi’s babysitter: both infuriating, condescending, and overall hilariously and irritatingly a clear ego-jerker for the boy. Good. Feel like a failure for a task that he called onto himself even though literally no one asked him to.
“I don’t know. Pull the fire alarm.”
“I- that’s so petty. And childish and immature. I expect better from you.”
“Hm. Well. I have zero expectations for myself, so,” Dabi replies indifferently. “I’m pulling the fire alarm.”
“No, don’t-”
“It’d be pretty funny.”
“No it wouldn’t -”
And Dabi’s totally going to pull the fire alarm.
“These noodles were for you.” Dabi pauses. He’s still going to pull the fire alarm, but he's also curious. “Here,” Shouto gestures roughly at the bowl that Dabi earlier marinated his hand in like a dead sardine. “This. This was for you.”
“Why?”
“Because you looked like you wanted it.”
Dabi narrows his eyes. He hates this development. Shouto clearly hates him, for good reason, and this must be his pretentious self-righteousness. Wanting to do the “right” thing. It’s insulting. “Fuck off,” Dabi spits.
“I’m trying to at least be considerate -”
“No you’re not.” Dabi says calmly, attempting to reign in any anger, and he cannot afford to be emotional right now but everything’s been happening at once and at the very least he’s existing and he’s not a ghost and his life really wasn’t a pathetic spiral of nothingness and even if people don’t miss him nor know he’s gone or understand that he existed as both Dabi and Touya-
He jerks himself out of his thoughts. “I don’t want to be force-fed your morals.”
“I’m sure that’s what all the victims of your actions thought, too.” And oh Shouto’s mad; fine by him.
“At least I don’t play it off as being a good or righteous person,” Dabi spits. “Even if what you’re doing is objectively beneficial towards me, if I don’t want it, isn’t that just you disrespecting my preferences for your own sake of morals, just on a smaller scale?” Dabi scowls.
Shouto stares at him, and for a second, through the smallest twitch of Shouto’s eyelids, he can see understanding in his gaze. At least it’s not sympathy. “You don’t have to eat it,” and he doesn’t sound condemning, and Dabi doesn’t know if that makes it worse. “Just if you’re hungry. I wasn’t thinking about being righteous or anything, I just thought that pho was good.”
And Dabi is hungry.
But first-
“Fire alarm.”
“Dabi, no .”
Dabi had a legitimate reason to pull the alarm, actually. Then everyone would be in disarray, and leave. He doubts that U.A. doesn’t have massive security that’d prevent him from successfully breaking out, as there are probably cameras outside of the school and on the field property, as well. Then again, even if cameras catch him, it’s not like he’d be stopped immediately- most likely the teachers and students alike are asleep anyways.
But, a massive part of him really wanted to pull the fire alarm, even if it might cause more harm than good for his case.
He wants to return to his apartment, even to the shitty League base. Shigaraki’s probably going to verbally flog his ass when he finally does return. When he becomes a ghost, at least his clothes and items on his body do as well- therefore his cellphone is actually touchable. However, when he earlier flipped the burner phone open, nothing showed up, and there was no cellular connection.
It doesn’t interact with the outside world, just like him.
Seeing it made him feel anxious, almost as if everything wasn’t real, so he buried in his pocket.
Taking it out now, he can see at least eighteen missed calls, a good quarter of them from Toga, and a bunch of angry frowny emoticons from Twice, who he swears he blocked earlier.
“Someone sent you a picture.”
“I can see that.” Dabi still opens it underneath Shouto’s floating gaze, anyways.
He regrets it.
“Isn’t that the hero Hawks? Why is he sending you pictures of popcorn?” An asshole. Absolute asshat.
Dabi, not wanting to elaborate that the other day he engaged in a derisive and biting argument about why they shouldn’t try to shove kernels up his nose to see if his already abnormally high body temperature could pop them when he got pissed, shoves his phone back into his pocket.
“He doesn’t know I’m Dabi. Thinks I just exist.” Dabi elaborates, and he knows that Shouto’s going to be a fucking snitch about it, probably tell a teacher and think he’s helping out Hawks, but that’ll just cause issues for animated KFC bucket here, not him. He knows Hawks isn’t enough to be a part of their team. He vindictively follows his own moral compass, just willing to dirty himself for what he believes to be the better good.
A fool.
Shigaraki will permanently crush him once he gets too close, and Dabi will watch it happen.
Dabi slowly takes the bowl of hotpot. It’s cold now.
Instinctively, he heats it up with his quirk.
He doesn’t miss the sudden sharpness in Shouto’s gaze, and the way he flinches.
Dabi keeps the flames in his palm longer than necessary, though, not to rub it in Shouto’s face or frighten him.
He just misses it.
He used to hate his quirk. It fucking ruined his life. Then he determined maybe it wasn’t inherently his quirk’s fault it was so incompatible with his body, and that in the end, he’s so screwed up probably due to personal choices. Even if he didn’t want his quirk anymore, as sometimes he wished since it’s always veering him to the cliff of death in every single situation because his body is literally so unsuitable for breathing at times, it’s literally a part of his identity.
Dabi’s useless without his quirk, and useless with it. Both produce essentially the same type of person he is, it’s just that they each hold varying levels of worthlessness.
His quirk manifests every single thought and opportunity he could possibly have: without it, he’s nothing.
And as the treacherous flames nearly catch his chopsticks on fire, Dabi realises exactly how fucking grateful he is towards it, as even though it isolated him from ever being normal, frightened his family and twisted anything good that couldv’e come from his life- it showed him how awful his father was, how corrupt society became, and that he’s nothing without it.
“Isn’t it warm enough?”
“Nah.”
“Your chopstick is burnt.”
“Blame it on Bakugou when you bring them down,” Dabi shrugs, and stirs his soup.
It tastes good.
Like. Really good.
Dabi never cared much about starving. His body is practically limitless, refuses-to-die sorta way.
But he doesn’t remember the last time he had food that tasted this good.
Then he looks up, and accidentally makes the worst mistake of his goddamn life, which was making eye contact with Shouto. Because now Shouto knows that Dabi knows that he knows what Dabi looks like right now: desperate and pathetic. Now, if Dabi didn’t give any acknowledgement of awareness, then that means he could scrape by with his awful mannerisms and choking down food by pretending like he just doesn’t know.
But, Shouto is clearly staring at him with a paralysed expression of “oh” seen through the slightest arch of his otherwise placid brows, this look clearly surprising him.
Well, fuck him. Now Dabi has to pretend like he’s not grateful (which he isn’t, because he never asked the damn kid to fork him a bowl), and he’s not desperate for it, especially after his semi-indignant rant.
Goddammit.
Whatever.
He ignores how a noodle smacks his cheek by the strength of his slurp. Might as well play it off because it’s not like in general he ever gave a shit about how embarrassing he looked. “I’m hungry.”
“I can see that. There’s. There’s more food in my drawer. They’re all just snacks, though.” And Dabi inwardly snorts. Shouto eating carbs other than healthy foods and straight up spoonfed protein powder stirred with his baby formula ever since he was young, is weird. Then again, being starved of a childhood of chocolate provides an inevitable future of sudden binging.
“I’m good,” he replies with nonchalance that doesn’t match the stiffness of his insides. He hates this. This weirdass relationship.
“We’re telling Aizawa-sensei.”
“No we’re not, ” Dabi snarls.
Todoroki thinks of his previously sleepless night and how Dabi was a consistent inconvenience of a tumorous thought in the back of his mind, effectively killing his sense of peace. And the fact that Dabi has zero table manners, too.
“Yes we are. Also, I could get in trouble if I kept it a secret-" he nods at Bakugou, who looks equally sleep-deprived and angry, "you too."
“And you’re telling me this because…” Bakugou trails off, punctuating his annoyance with an arching brow. “I’m trying to cook breakfast and here you are telling me some deep shit. It’s way too early.”
Todoroki’s pretty sure that’s relief he detects in Bakugou’s gruff tone. Good. That reaction is the genuine answer to Bakugou’s question, actually. “You’re the only one else who knows,” Todoroki answers, though. “Come with me. Without Dabi showing up to actually prove his existence, it’d be good to have a second eye-witness, even if Aizawa-sensei would consider my words heavily without one.”
“Bitchass.”
Bakugou still stands up, though.
Todoroki looks over his shoulder, and nearly does a double-take, startled by the unreadable expression on Dabi’s stitched visage. And if Todoroki didn’t know any better, he would’ve read the man’s surrounding mood as almost melancholy- resigned.
(When Bakugou heard the words that finally stupid bitchass was finally going to tell an authority figure, was going to do something, Bakugou blanked out from his cooking and nearly burned his eggs. Not like it would matter. His hands were already trembling faster than his breath, a combination of sleep-deprivation and fear that lasted throughout the night wrecking his nerves and closing his throat.
He couldn't sleep- wasn't allowed to after he heard Dabi was near.
Monthly, he'd wake up near three in the morning, where he sees Dabi, stiff and scarred, any facial features smoothed over into faint depressions and shadowed by the darkness of the night, standing by his bedside, still and unmoving like a faceless mannequin. And Bakugou, frozen and dragged below of his quicksand bedsheets, would internally scream because he locked the doors- like he does every night sacrilegiously, and now he's trapped with the man in the room, his ritualistic affirmation for safety failed him like everything else did, turned against him and it's his fault he locked the doors and he's locked with a man who does not speak and just watches and each time this happens Bakugou wonders if he's finally going to do something, if his looming figure would finally kill him for once and for all-
But last night, Dabi's face changed: warped from its usually blank canvas of scars and sutures.
He had two black smears, indicating the gouges of his eyes, staring blankly ahead of the space above of Bakugou's frozen body. Like a husk of a ghost).
"Bitchass," Bakugou finally replies to Todoroki, his grip on the spatula deadly and his tone tight, restrained from revealing the unraveling of his body and mind in the oily waters of his unconscious fears.
“-nd that’s how come Todoroki is haunted by two ghosts instead of just one.”
“I’m not haunting him! I am literally not here by my own violation!” Todoroki ignores Dabi’s shouting.
“Wait.” Todoroki pauses Bakugou’s seven minute summary which was mostly Bakugou just shitting on Todoroki. “Who’s the second ghost?”
Bakugou stares at him. “Did you not listen to anything I said?”
“No.”
“ You , dumbass. You’re the technical second ghost.”
“Language,” Aizawa-sensei grunts, holding up a hand.
Todoroki profusely refuses to make eye contact with Aizawa-sensei, who at Bakugou’s flat explanation, slowly set down his shuffled stacks of papers, and lowered his head into his folded hands.
Todoroki and Bakugou slowly clasp gazes, before individually rotating back to Aizawa-sensei, who’s stuck in a variation of a prayer pose.
“Aizawa-sens-”
Todoroki’s concerned tone is cut off sharply and rather abruptly by a sudden, undignified scream rattling out from behind Aizawa-sensei’s clasped hands.
“Damn. See. Told you we shouldn’t tell him.” Dabi says indifferently from where he’s pretending to be the lamppost in the teachers’ lounge.
“Stop pretending to be random furniture objects.”
Notes:
ha ha
yeah sorry i didn't like. know what to do ya feel. like plot wise i was like "hhh," bc i wasn't sure how to go about this.
next chapter i'll probably include (let's be real i never follow through with these LMAO)
- aizawa: realising he has to legally report dabi's current siTuAtion
- endeavor: "excuse me what do u mean there's a ghost attached to my son"
- todoroki: goes home to visit and dabi follows. dabi: sweating bullets as he enters his old home and sees his old siblings
- midoriya: smells bulLShit coming from kacchan and shouto. he's going to verbally fight them.
Chapter 3: i have no concept of measurement so here's a 40 page chapter in the units of size 10 comic sans .
Summary:
-?? idek
- aizawa written as the aizawa i always write him as: disappointed but not surprised
- uH unhinged dabi aAgain bc that's the ONLY Dabi i know how to write LMAO
- shouto having a weird emotional breakdown on the inside in front of dabi but the thing is he's literally expressionless but dabi's like "dw fam i gotchu with my objective advice delivered bc i also hate ur dad"
- fuyumi has a weird emotional breakdown except on the outside for the first time in her life and shouto's like "pikaface"- i literally just wrote natsuo doing a variation of what i've done in my life. i love natsuo.
- i lowkey characterised natsuo and fuyumi weirdly? like they follow their canon personas, but the thing is, i literally make fuyumi out as a lowkey compulsive liar while natsuo's just. idek what i did man
Notes:
uh less comedy more um. just todoroki family drama ig??
did i really edit this chapter lmao nO
i updated bc i wanted to avoid reading my ap literature teacher's constructive criticism on my hamlet essay that i also turned in written in comic sans bc i'm a coward and afraid of disappointment and flies.
disclaimer: i love scene and emo kids like yall out here stylin' and i'm HERE for it so im sorry that i randomly reference you guys and eboys as an insult.
:(i'm just going for the rawr xd vibes not yall, yall are COOL and if you use rawr xd then so be it just remember your fashion sense will have its come back like silly bandz and flannels.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Please don’t alert the authorities.”
Aizawa stares at them, hands clasped into an unheard prayer over his stern lips that curses a god that would allow him to coexist in a world with Bakugou and Todoroki. “I don’t even know what I would even say.”
“...Does that mean you’re not going to tell them?”
“Yes, I’ll definitely not tell proper and trained adults about the presence of a villain lounging around in a hero school, around children with zero experience,” Aizawa deadpans.
“See Bakugou, I told yo-”
“Shut the fuck up you dumbass.”
Todoroki stares, lowering his brow slowly over his eyes until it develops into a soft-boiled glare.
“See, I should be condoning him,” Aizawa motions lazily at Bakugou. “But he’s right.”
Todoroki has literally never felt so betrayed.
He also completely ignores the way Dabi doubles over next to Aizawa, buckling so hard that his head slams straight through Aizawa’s desk.
Not for the first time, Todoroki recklessly wishes they'd switch roles right now, to see if Dabi's head would end up partially melded to the desk like a modern art spectacle constructed by a college student who gets angry if someone doesn't know the university they went to (karen core tiktok aesthetic).
“Wait, Bakugou has personal experience,” Todoroki begins, realisation hitting with the subtlety of Bakugou's ego.
“Okay, that was not an experience." Bakugou spits, and Todoroki pretends like saliva isn't painting his cheek right now. "I was kidnapped from my world of knowledge and inputted like a SD card into purgatory that encapsulates the mood of Cash Cab where all the questions are impossible because they’re built on a completely different set of universal laws and realm of reality,” Bakugou snarls. "It was like I was trapped in Animal Crossing except everyone was Tom Nook-"
“You wanna know something about Firecracker?” Dabi suddenly says, effectively K.Oing any shred of attention Bakugou had from Todoroki. “One time Toga was feeding him to make sure he doesn’t just starve , and that’s when we learned he’s allergic to artificial red food colouring.”
Todoroki has to take a second, realising the world he's living in is one where he can be Danny Phantoming a literal serial killer with an arsonist aesthetic, while simultaneously coexisting with the possibility that his own classmate would spit on him like he's weakened stomach bacteria that he's trying to build immunity for. “What type of food were you feeding him to have that?" He finally says, his brain finally computing the stimulation he resides in with the Free Will of a rogue Sims character.
“Kool-Aid powder.”
“Todoroki, are you speaking to Dabi right now?” Aizawa intervenes, completely unaware that Dabi’s crooked elbow is jabbed through his head like a failed rhinoplasty.
“Yeah. Um,” he says absent-mindedly, too much occupied on his mind right now to focus. He turns to Bakugou. “You’re allergic to Kool-Aid?”
Bakugou flushes to an unholy degree of red. Mildly, Todoroki figures that was probably the same shade of juice he drank before breaking out in hives.
“Yeah. It wasn't severe, though. He only had rashes all over his skin, so unfortunately his throat wasn’t closing up,” Dabi drawls.
“Oi, Dabi, listen the fuck up, I’m not scared of you,” Bakugou growls explicitly, standing up so fast his chair topples down. Aizawa's now picking up paperwork, as he always does during class whenever he feels absolutely no desire to reel in Bakugou's twenty-minute explication as to why they're all idiots, while simultaneously explaining to them with the most patronising yet efficient summary of what they learned that day in math. it's a win-win for Aizawa: first his class is aware of their stupidity, and they end up understanding their classes.
“You’re looking in the wrong direction.” Todoroki directs Bakugou, pointing to where Dabi is currently trying to read the documents on Aizawa’s desk.
“He’s right next to me?” Aizawa begins, sounding less shocked and more disgusted.
"Screw you!" Bakugou snarls at Aizawa's general direction, and Aizawa looks up, unamused.
“He's not really next to you. He’s kinda in you?” Todoroki corrects. He tilts his head. “Or maybe vice versa? Like. Gelatin. You know those fruit jello things? You’re the fruit and he’s the jello.”
“Dabi, you think I care if people learn I’m allergic to red food dye and that’s why I never got to enjoy a single Gogurt in my life? Huh?” And Bakugou’s still shrieking.
“Okay. I can’t keep this a secret, this is out of my hands.” Aizawa shakes his head, grimacing, sounding absolutely not at all apologetic, and effectively shutting them all up. “I can’t be the only person dealing with this. It’s been like five minutes and already I feel my nervous system malfunction.”
“Wait, we can’t though. Dabi says he’ll purposefully screw with things if you tell proper authorities. Because you know, he doesn’t want to be automatically arrested.” Todoroki reasons.
“Hey, hey, stop fucking using my name for your own shit,” Dabi suddenly snaps, no longer dazed in his own world.
“But you literally said that earlier.”
“I did,” Dabi confesses. “I just hate that you’re speaking for me.”
“Oh.” Todoroki understands that. “Well. What are you going to do? Shoot me?” Todoroki finally says in response, oblivious to the way Aizawa squints slowly and Bakugou looks visibly discomforted if not disgusted. “Aizawa-sensei,” Todoroki begins, still looking at the same space because by this point Dabi and him are essentially one, like a Lego man with an identity crisis, “I can reassure you that Dabi will know if you tell anyone, because he’ll be hanging around you at all times-”
“Like hell I would. I have better things to do than hang around someone I can’t talk to.”
“Shut up, not like you want to talk to me either,” Todoroki hisses, before nodding apologetically at Aizawa, who’s now pinching the bridge of his nose- hard. “Sensei. Dabi didn’t mean to be caught in this situation with me, he doesn’t want to be here. If you tell anyone about this, they also might try and handcuff Dabi or take him away, and the issue with that is you know they’ll act without thinking about the consequences. I could switch with him at any time, so if he switches while they’re handling him, it wouldn’t do anything and he’d just float away. And what if they take me with them to try and keep some constant leash on him?”
“What the hell? Why are you talking like this is a dystopian reality? You’re overreacting,” Bakugou leers, looking vaguely concerned and Todoroki feels a mild urge to delete him permanently.
“No. He’s right. I don’t trust the Hero Commission to handle this properly,” Aizawa begins, interlocking his fingers and groaning. “God why did you have to tell me this?”
“...Did you not want to know?”
Aizawa clasps eyes with Todoroki, eyes wide and capillaries strained. “I could’ve gone my entire life not knowing.”
“Isn’t that illegal in some sense-”
“I was giving out suggestions, none illegal. I am also advising not ever bother me with stuff like this, ever again.” He sighs. "If you really have an issue," and they lean closer, "tell Present Mic."
“You know. I knew heroes were fucked up. At least he’s honest,” Dabi says, with condescending appreciation.
Todoroki throws him a nasty glare, one that he easily deflects.
Aizawa on the other hand, looks viscerally disturbed to be caught on the receiving end of the look that wasn’t meant for him.
“You have to do something!” Bakugou flips, voice crackling like sandpaper folding in on itself.
“Dabi says if you do something he’ll cause more trouble than it’s worth. Says he’ll wreck the entire plumbing system of our school,” Todoroki counters.
“I don’t even know how I would do that,” Dabi admits dryly.
Aizawa right now, looks as if his kidneys stopped working and is therefore suffering from an internal toxic buildup. “This is stupid."
"You're a teacher, should you be allowed to say that?" Todoroki flatlines.
"I'm the teacher, do not question my teaching abilities." Aizawa reprimands sharply, before exhaling heavily. "Okay. We need to take you to a specialist though. Figure out if there’s any possible quirk tracing. You really don’t know who touched you?”
“We were in a mall. It could’ve been literally anyone,” Todoroki confesses, slightly distraught by the hopelessness of such a situation. There are many stories of people being caught by random quirks that become maladaptive, disturbing their daily life. If anything, the statistics of things like this happening are already high, and should be even higher since Todoroki bets lots of these cases went unreported. This could be a common occurrence, for all he knows.
“Okay, we’ll search here and the surrounding towns for any citizen with such a quirk profile. However, I doubt we’ll find someone like that. People with those types of quirks and have reported their quirks as they legally should’ve, would’ve been labeled and already have certain accommodations to make sure stuff like this shouldn’t happen. Most likely, if their quirk was used in public even on accident, they probably are illegally left out of the database.”
“Goddammit,” and Todoroki actually thought it was Dabi who said that, but it was Bakugou, who has yanked his chair back into a backwards position, straddling with one foot propped on its base.
Todoroki genuinely does feel bad for Bakugou, being burdened with the knowledge that his own nightmare personified is now literally a ghoul, invading his school, a place where the people deemed safe.
As safe as a building housing semi-suicidal children who can’t tell the difference between sweat and hormones could be.
Todoroki takes another peek at Dabi, who appears collected and unreadable as ever.
He scowls.
“For now, I can’t do anything about this. We’ll eventually have to contact officials of some sort if we can’t find a solution. Though, I’d prefer to not have the entire world find out. Hero Commission is out of the question-”
“Why not? Wouldn’t they know best how to deal with this? And have the most information?” Bakugou gripes.
“Hero Commission is questionable enough due to enough internalised corruption,” Aizawa shakes his head. And Todoroki normally would avoid looking at Dabi at any cost (and Todoroki’s not oblivious or dense, no matter what Bakugou says. He’s well aware that in any society, usually large, popular organisations can’t be entirely good- especially if their HQ is some tall corporate building. He’s seen enough animes). But he stares at the way Dabi observes Aizawa, which for one, is really weird because then Dabi’s body is melted halfway into Aizawa as he cranes his head from a vulture-esque angle to get a good look at his teacher’s face. But secondly, there’s something strange about Dabi’s inscrutable countenance. Something suspicious colours Dabi’s unchanging expression, which vaguely confuses him because if anything, he thought Dabi would agree with Aizawa’s words. “Besides.” Aizawa sighs, twining his fingers into a clasp, before gazing over them and making terrifying eye contact with both of them. “I would rather fling myself straight into the sun than willingly cooperate with the Hero Commission.”
“Seriously?” Flinging yourself into the sun seems overly excessive to Todoroki.
“Oh. A hundred percent,” he confirms dryly.
“That’s just petty,” Bakugou finally says.
Aizawa, with a characteristic lack of shame, does not deny it.
“So. Leave the research to me, of course, feel free to do your own work.” Aizawa narrows his eyes. “Because that’s what good students do.”
“Are you saying I don’t do my own shit?” Bakugou growls.
“I’m talking about Todoroki,” Aizawa calls out with little regards as always.
And Bakugou gazes at him, clearly affronted. “Half-assing shit again, I see,” Bakugou says, except there’s something more intimately disgusted with his tone, that Todoroki can’t usually brush off and chalk it up to Bakugou being unreasonably pissed. Todoroki inwardly leers. He doesn’t like the unwarranted judgment from the boy. It’s too self-entitled.
Todoroki automatically schools his emotions however, as he realises Dabi is looking at him.
And the thing is, Todoroki is well aware that he’s not expressive. How others never fail to remind him of such, believing it’s parallel to how he must feel inside. The latter is definitely presumptuous of them, but Todoroki is fine remaining with such a blank countenance- it typically works in his favour more than it doesn’t.
However the way that Dabi’s eyes are trained on him, unblinking and glassy, stimulates unease within him.
As if Dabi’s eyes unconsciously peer deeper into him than he could staring at a mirror, and it’s not pretentious understanding glossing Dabi’s eyes that people typically do when they think they can get a read on him-
It’s the peculiar amusement flittering across his expression. Cruel and entertained, as if he could understand exactly how Bakugou got under his skin, and how Todoroki feels in response.
He tightens his lips, and Dabi’s stale smile creaks wider.
“Anyways. Go. Leave.” Aizawa sighs, gesturing a hand. “I’ll think of something,” and Todoroki figures that Aizawa probably already has a blueprint of what to do, just is withholding it since he doesn’t want Dabi to overhear. “Close the door, and if you ever encounter anything like this again, I’ll disown you.”
“Don’t you mean ‘fail us’?” Bakugou mocks.
“Same thing. I don’t house failures,” Aizawa retorts, unamused. “Get out.”
“Why are you packing up?” Dabi inquires. And Dabi’s not talkative. Either it’s because of pride or because he just truly has no will to converse (and Todoroki suspects both), he doesn’t normally initiate conversations.
When he does, however, it’s usually due to uncharacteristic curiosity, that probably only exists out of boredom.
And Todoroki hesitates. He had pondered over this but, “I’m heading home.”
He reaches through Dabi to grab his math textbook to stuff into his backpack, and in turn, glances up at Dabi, whose head is tilted, and face impassive as usual.
“You’re going to head home, knowing I’m here? You’re not worried about your family’s safety at all?” Dabi arches a brow, not sounding at all accusatory, and if anything, contemplative. Todoroki hates that. It makes him sound less impulsive to jump to conclusions, which is a type of person Todoroki would relatively dislike, and instead he almost appears mild- patient. Sort of like Midoriya. His eyebrows pinch together into a look of disdain at that.
The atmosphere is different, though. While Midoriya unconsciously comes off as accepting and non-judgmental when he uses the tone, Dabi remains unreadable: impenetrable and untouchable by anything. Like an alarming false sense of security, one that everyone is terrifyingly conscious of, keeping one tense and strained even when nothing's seemingly happening.
“I thought about it a lot,” Todoroki admitted. “But when I called my sister to let her know that I wasn’t going to come, she told me she was going to tell mom that I went MIA due to a late rebellious phase and that I got four belly button piercings.”
Dabi pauses. “You have one belly button, right? You can’t get four piercings.”
“Not with that attitude,” Todoroki says impassively, unbothered by Dabi's shrewd look. “Hm. See. You’re pretty scary,” Todoroki finally notes, not in a form of admittance, but rather in one of mockery. “But you haven’t met my family.”
“Bet.”
“Bet.”
Dabi turns lazily towards him, his gaze droll and glassy. “I’m vaguely surprised you understand modern-day slang. You seemed as boring as a rock, but twice as dense.”
“I will cave in your skull.”
“I’m literally intangible.”
“I’m never leaving food out for you again,” Todoroki replies hotly, now slightly irritated. He zips up his backpack. “Besides, you know my father-”
“Intimately.”
Right. Dabi nearly killed his dad (and every time Todoroki rewinds that memory, that fact that his father truly would’ve rot and died at that moment, something cold always encompasses his vision while frost grows across his sternum and preserves his breath; and Todoroki didn’t want to offer his father another chance the way Fuyumi did. Didn’t think his father understood what he put them through, how in the end, no matter how sorry or compassionate he became what he's done was ultimately irreversible and can't be displaced by apologies. But the concept of possibly never seeing Dad again, and just placing himself in his shoes of having unfinished goals had terrified Todoroki. He certainly had no sympathy for the consequences of his dad's actions, he had in fact felt sardonic amusement that's only grim because it would never be enough- but it was scary. He could understand the terror of it, whether or not it was deserved).
And Todoroki swivels and eye towards Dabi, and not for the first time-
Breaks out in cold sweat, ice cracking over his skin. His body automatically flares up in response, and flame licks off his body in an attempt to warm his dangerously dropping body heat.
“Uh.” Dabi stares.
“No. Nevermind. I’m not going.” He says, lips numb. Embarrassed, he forcefully tames down his quirks, refusing to meet Dabi’s eyes. “I’m staying here.”
Dabi shrugs at that. “Didn’t know what I’d do if I saw your father, so fair enough.”
And Todoroki considers telling his father. His dad certainly has gotten more family-orientated. He’s trying , and whether or not his dad is capable of empathising to the extent they deserve, he isn’t sure, and he doesn’t even know if his dad has the intuition to really see past his own ideals and desires to prioritise him over them. That thought eases him out of telling his dad about Dabi.
Aizawa already knows.
He doesn’t want to let his dad know: he’s less predictable. And though Todoroki will begrudgingly admit he cares about him, he does not trust him.
“It’d be irresponsible of you to bring me alone,” Dabi says, and it’s factual, but Todoroki can’t help but interpret it as a challenge- almost as a taunt. Ignoring it, he reaches for his phone, ready to tell Fuyumi that he can’t come, and just bitterly resign himself to the fact that his mom is going to think that he dropped off the face of the earth and disappeared to the Middle East where he’ll open his own illegal underground tattoo parlor. “You concerned about me killing your family?” Dabi croons.
“You tried before, you’ll definitely try now.” Todoroki inclines his head slightly, pausing in the midst of his whirring musings. “At the very least, you’d try and take two-fifths of it.” It’s comforting to know that Dabi at the moment, would only purposefully target him and his dad.
At this, Dabi stares at him, something indecipherable in his gaze, almost confused. Then, a cracked smile shatters any sense of composure he had, and Todoroki stalls, his breath hitching at the maddening smile splitting the volcanic earth of his skin.
“What?” Todoroki snaps, and inwardly curses at the waver in his voice.
“Nothing. Just thought of something funny. It’d be funny if you knew, too. ”
“Wow.” Todoroki replies, and somehow, his overwhelming annoyance towards Dabi, who embodies that one stupid, e-boy, headass, who thinks he’s so quirky for dissecting that dead crow in his backyard and wears its beak on a necklace made of stripped pipecleaners, overrides any possible fear he had for the Grade A murderer. “Your entire personality literally encapsulates that one edgy kid with sociopathic tendencies you always see in mangas, who has badly dip-dyed hair.”
Dabi gives a bark of laughter, and Todoroki grimaces. “Badly dyed hair with the personality of a scene kid. Must run in the family.”
“What?”
“Nothing! It’s just the irony is funny.”
Todoroki stares. “See, I thought I had issues with normal conversation-”
“You do.”
“But I don’t think you understand the meaning of ‘irony’.”
“Nah.” Dabi disagrees liltingly. “You would get if you knew.”
“That literally means nothing to me,” Todoroki deadpans, unamused. “Anyways, I’m calling my sister. Can you try and not be annoying?”
“Your sister?” Dabi scrunches his nose, and Todoroki looks away at how such a minuscule action could yank at the seams of his skin. Dabi's now standing upside down, feet hovering close to the ceiling.
“Yeah.” Todoroki says shortly, not wanting to share anything precious to him with someone like Dabi. And he opens his phone, ready to inform her when the notification on its home screen captures his eyes.
lice: guys. Dad’s coming home.
Todorokis’ only braincell: Oh. I’ll prepare extra food, then. Natsuo, please keep your cat in your room.
lice: okay, but no.
Todoroki nearly flings his phone out of his sixth story window.
“Oh. Something went wrong,” and Dabi’s not inquiring, he’s stating. And he doesn’t know how Dabi’s able to get such an easy read from him when Todoroki was literally just staring at his phone blankly while his internal soul screamed into the vöid where his phone belongs.
He can’t leave his siblings with his dad. Natsuo can’t reign in his temper, and is the most resentful towards Dad, while Fuyumi constantly grates on Natsuo’s nerves due to her consistent pressure for them to reunite.
And Todoroki is really no better than Natsuo in terms of mild and confused disdain, but Fuyumi considers him more civilised, solely because his father can’t identity the burning homicidal rage flickering in his eyes while Natsuo has no qualms against outwardly stabbing the table with his ice cream fork.
“Just go,” Dabi says dryly.
“And if we switch?”
And at the very least, Dabi’s above empty promises. “I’ll probably go after your dad,” he confesses lacklusterly. At least he’s honest.
“And my siblings?”
Dabi scoffs at that. “Be careful. You say that and I’ll think you have nothing against me killing your dad.” His trap, wired into a grin with bent paper clips, creases the stapled wrinkles underneath his eyes. His expression cobwebbed with scarred tissue and misery, but Todoroki looks past that and understands that Dabi wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of his siblings if he simply felt like it.
“That’s so irresponsible. Using your own goals to justify taking the lives of others,” Todoroki leers, using disdain to disguise the panic and unadulterated revulsion pulverising his emotions into a vat of mystery meat. “And forcing other people into your plans. What validates you dictating others’ lives by killing them?”
Dabi just hums. “I think you’re looking too deep into it, Todoroki Shouto-” and Todoroki’s spine clacks in disarray, bristling at the usage of his name. Dabi never really speaks: his words are just gasoline and tar that leaks between the prison bars of his teeth, oozing all over the floor as inky drool. “I’m probably irresponsible, maybe unjustified in my actions- but I think the fact is that I simply don’t care if I am or not.”
Todoroki falls quiet, and zips his bag back up, refusing to allow the dangers of such an implication to get to him.
“God. If Dad finds out I’m hiding a secret like you from him,” he mutters hoarsely, his lips tangled between a wry smile and an obscene lour. A secret. A dangerous, explosively unpredictable, secret.
“Then tell him. He hates me, right? Wouldn’t he monitor you until we switched, and Nerf me dead on the spot?”
Todoroki shakes his head slowly. “You wouldn’t understand.” His dad would instantly regress back to who he was before, in such a drastic situation.
At this, Dabi slowly lowers himself to the floor, eyes fixated on Todoroki. “I wouldn’t understand,” he echoes, and there’s a snark in his tone, one unexpected and startling that lashes at Todoroki’s nerves, before righteous anger overwhelms the initial anxiety. Because what does that imply? How would Dabi ever understand what it’s like, to be forced into heroics underneath the compressing pressure to be perfect and to be composed in his father’s image? To cry every time he entered their home’s judo, understanding that if he throws up while training, that he would have to continue with stomach acid scoring his nostrils and tears swimming in his throat? Because if he stopped, his father would drill into his young mind that in real life, he would be dead, the villain would’ve killed him, because he wasn’t strong enough to keep going.
And in the end- that's fine. What's not fine was that his mother's been in the hospital for years and she's never been okay never been happy and never been really a mom after he turned four, that Fuyumi and Natsuo could never recover even though they're adults now and one of his siblings is dead-
“Shouto, I think it’s you who would never understand,” Dabi finally says, voice terrifyingly stable, contrasting the way his eyes quiver in their sockets to an entropic rhythm of their own.
“No you don’t! You-” and Todoroki gnashes his teeth into a paste, because he can’t because if he confessed to what his father has done, how his father had no qualms against pushing him and hitting his mom and scaring all of them, then it’s all over because Dabi would use that against him. Taunt him with it.
And people in general won’t understand; it’s not the physical training, wrecked nerves and splotchy bruises or crippling overexertion that upsets him the most.
It’s the fact that people don’t know what it’s like to never be seen as your own person.
His father never wanted Todoroki Shouto- he just wanted another Todoroki Enji.
Nothing was more devastating to him than growing up, believing he could become something past his father's unfair standards, past everyone believing that his achievements and efforts were due to him, but only to realise he was always manipulated by his father’s shadow. Even when he attended the hero school thinking he had his own personal goals, in the end everything was dictated by his father’s influence. The worst part was his father wasn’t even in reach of him by that point- Todoroki was just blind and convinced himself he was happy while personally measuring everything by his father's reactions, and looking back on that, the situation was terrifying.
That no matter what he did, he’d always be captive as his father’s audience, and it wasn't even due to his father's influence- it was because Todoroki was conditioned into chasing for his attention, striving for every action to have a reaction.
And then there's what Dad did with his family. And it’s not just about Rei, who catalysed the split in their family after being driven to the edge: Father has ruined them as individuals. Them as a family. Touya is dead , was dead before his actual end. Natsuo was distance, estranged during high school and he only recently came home and before that Todoroki always wondered if he lost another brother, if Natsuo was going to be gone forever as well, but it was worse because he didn’t want them while Touya was just dead (but Todoroki couldn’t even be mad because Natsuo never felt wanted by them in the first place).
And Fuyumi .
A rasp rattles in the rotten cavity of his ribcage, like something buried and forgotten underneath years of apathy and denial has awoken at the scent of his tears.
Todoroki stares at his math textbook as if it could answer all his questions about life, happiness, and possible family counseling.
“Right,” he answers to his unspeaking math textbook.
“Uh.” Dabi says, effectively reminding him he’s still here, witnessing Todoroki staring at a picture of a calculator in stale silence for a minute. His sudden noise also reminds Todoroki of Dabi’s ignorance in this situation. Because of course Dabi wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t frankly care , and would compare Todoroki’s unsaid problems to Dabi’s without knowing the full situation.
“You wouldn’t get it.” Todoroki finally finishes lamely.
"...Math?"
"No I-"
"Because I was the one who caught all of your wrong answers."
"Dabi," he respires the name out in one go, because he refuses to lose his cool, and he knows Dabi's just awful and vindictive and wants to see others suffering just for kicks. Composing his tone, he redefines his previous statement: "you wouldn't understand what my family's like." He wouldn't understand Todoroki's own emotional turmoil over his father, about how to feel about him and whether or not it's valid in terms of justice. What if he wants to forgive him even though he's frankly undeserving of it because he'll never truly know the weight he's applied onto his family for the past decade? Does that just mean this entire journey of recovery is ultimately hopeless and maybe Todoroki's being too nice and he knows he's not a nice person but he's certainly making light of all his dad's done and Dabi- not just Dabi, no one will- "understand what my family's like," he echoes. "You wouldn't know exactly how it feels when it comes to making morally dubious decisions or the consequences of it."
Dabi looks at him. Then, almost at once, his tone wavering and bloodshot gaze blinked away, he casually says, “I guess I wouldn’t.”
“And I know that people have it worse than me, that I got lucky in some way-”
“Nah,” Dabi suddenly intervenes, his legs folded underneath his lap, appearing almost like he's meditating upside-down. “Be honest here. Do you think you’re lucky because of how your life turned out now? Because if you think that, then doesn’t that just mean your life sucked to begin with?”
Todoroki shoots him a nasty glare. “It could’ve been worse.”
“Was it not already worse?”
“You’re really not optimistic, aren’t you?”
“And you’re really just wallowing in self-pity without even really giving yourself the amount of self-pity you deserve, huh?”
Todoroki stares even harder at his precalc accel textbook, as if it’d tell him why Dabi’s playing therapist with him right now. “I. Why are you saying these things?” He finally sputters, realising how weird this entire situation’s become. “I was having a good relief breakdown of self-pitying. And then here you are, making random assumptions, though granted they're not the worst I've heard, and it’s just. What is happening?” And Todoroki does not outwardly lose composure- if anything, it’s an impressively difficult feat for him because more likely than not, when out of his element, his brain shuts down except for one braincell that functions as the mitochondria for his basic fine motor movements while the rest of his mind lags like him trying to watch a two minute YouTube video in the subways.
“Eh,” Dabi shrugs.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is, you just hate it.”
“No! I mean, for a moment, you said something that was vaguely sympathetic-” and before Dabi can rock his shit through verbal abuse since physically flinging him down the stairs is out of the question right now, he quickly adds, “not like you sympathise with me at all, it’s just that you’re factually stating things that aren’t rude,” he struggles to really describe whatever he’s saying by this point, “so this is really weird for me.”
“I’m just saying, your life sucks, and you should take credit for it.”
“You sound like I should be proud of my past,” when it literally ruined his childhood and was a major inhibitor on his social abilities and constant, longterm mental state and happiness through relationship with others including his family; but then again, he doesn’t feel that pissed because it’s Dabi, who probably eats earlobes as Flintstone vitamin gummies and therefore would not be saying this in a weirdly patronising, pitying way.
“Nah. I’m just saying you gotta confront how bad it was for you to really wanna serve justice about it. Like. God, what did the other one say? You half-ass things?"
"Bakugou?"
"That's the motherfucker," Dabi snaps and fingerguns at him. "You're literally half-assing this right now, by being way too nice about your whole situation. Listen, I'm placing my bets Enji had some shit to do with it-"
"You referring to my dad by his first name makes it sound like you guys are drinking acquaintances who aren't really friends outside of the bar and during the bar you guys are even less of friends and instead have a dick measuring contest judged by the bartender."
Dabi nods slowly, amiable towards his description. "Exactly, that's why I'm throwing him under the bus."
"Also because he's a hero."
"Hm, more like because he's Enji and that's the first and foremost reason, but you are technically not wrong," he corrects, and Todoroki doesn't have enough time to really analyse how that doesn't conceptually make sense in a way, because Dabi continues talking. "But c'mon. You wanna be a hero and serve justice? Or just serve justice in general for yourself or family or whatever? Here's a tip, don't be half-assed. Cutting him corners or giving him slack isn't out of the kindness of your heart or because of some naive humanity bullshit," and suddenly, his voice lowers while the heat in eyes crank up, "it's because you're afraid of the impact of your actions. You're too scared to go full-in, too scared you'll regret something. Compromise is for suckers."
Todoroki, taking in a dialogue that frankly belongs in an overly cynical Batman film, licks his lips and allows his eyes to wander, before he narrows them and clasp eyes with Dabi. "I mean. Perhaps," and he admits it in the most nonchalant way possible because Dabi is wrong on many counts when it comes to ethics or decision-making (clearly), and he really doesn't want to inflate his deformed blob of an ego. "Partially. But also, maybe it's because I vaguely feel bad for him."
"Undeserved. Guilty. I hate that and you are wrong."
"You have an Easybib source for your statement?"
"My common sense."
Todoroki, having half the mind to casually drown himself in the nearest toilet, moves on. “Okay. But the thing is, I don’t want to serve justice,” though, he feels as if he really does, by being difficult with allowing his father back into his family. Which simultaneously hurts him, and in a darker, grossly sadistic part of him, pleases him.
“Oh. Boring. If you’re a hero, you shouldn’t let injustice slide,” and Dabi’s words suddenly sound sharper- cutting. Almost acerbic.
“I’m a boring person," he says, almost apologetically. “And ultimately, I think my sister wouldn’t want me to be a just hero in this situation, but a kind one.” Foolish one , he hears Natsuo whisper into his ear. “Not like I’ll be that way when it comes to other situations,” he admits tightly.
Dabi hums at that. “Interesting. But boring,” he yawns, and Todoroki knows it’s rude to stare, but it’s also pretty damn rude to kill people, so he watches shamelessly at the way the staples jerk the fresh skin underneath his cheekbones, pulling the skin taunt as his mouth widens, and tears away from its flesh. “What?”
“...You’re so unsanitary.”
“Your mouth is unsanitary.”
“Shut up.” And though Dabi does, the unabashed smirk jerking his features leaves Todoroki rolling his eyes. "Kid-"
"Don't call me kid."
"You really want various well-thought out perspectives from a wide range of people to give you a big outlook until you can narrow what you want to do?"
Todoroki, not one to accept help from losers, pointedly continues staring at the edge of his textbook.
"Post your lifestory on Reddit. You'll get every response you'll ever need, as well as constructive grammatical criticism."
“Tell me why you’re heading to see your family?” Aizawa sighs, looking very tired and very unimpressed.
“I didn’t want to, but after I told my sister, my mom called me asking me why I had detention for an entire weekend, and when I told her I didn’t, I couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough to think of another reason as to why I couldn’t visit the family and her over the weekend.”
“You’re an awful liar,” Dabi says sagely from where he’s lounging inside of Aizawa’s desk, looking like Lady Gaga’s personalised IKEA furniture.
Aizawa glances at him. “You know, I’m going to command you to stay at school for the time being, right? You are linked to a killer .”
“Yes.” Todoroki agrees. “But this also has the appeal of a plot conceived in a spinoff story of our main lives, feeling like everything is constructed through an external force of our universe, playing with us like Sims.”
“This is not a story posted on '4chan',” Dabi grumbles.
“In other words, I think I have a pretty good feel of this. And that you’ll eventually succumb to my invalid and dangerous request, solely because of the will of an outside force.”
Aizawa stares at him.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Dabi says, as if expecting Shouto to answer him while in a bus full of people.
Shouto, being Shouto and having no qualms against appearing like he’s talking to himself even in the eyes of the public, meets those expectations. “I did.”
“How?”
“Plot progression?”
Dabi takes a second, and after processing that information and coming up with absolutely nothing and his mind remaining V̯͈̱͠O͚͙̹̯̞ID͙̜̱̤̼͇̥, squints. “What?”
“Basically,” Shouto begins, sounding superificially wise for spouting bullshit. “The more I talk about nonsense, the more likely Aizawa-sensei will give in because he wants me to go away.”
“That sounds irresponsible.”
Shouto sighs, and glances up from his phone, appearing oblivious or simply indifferent to the man beside him who’s staring with wide eyes at his seemingly one-sided conversation. “You think you could handle a class of twenty students who while vary in units of chaotic, are still all on the spectrum of spiraling havoc?”
And Dabi imagines having to deal with twenty alternate variations of Bakugous.
He already had enough trouble handling one of them, who would always take the liberty of using him as a spitbucket every time he walked by his bound figure.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. ‘Oh’.”
“Should you really be letting me know where you live?” Dabi inquires, slouching.
“The media already does, you can probably Google my general neighbourhood,” Shouto shrugs carelessly, walking out of the underground subway and into the bustling city. “We live nearby,” he adjusts his ballcap and backpack straps, before continuing to walk.
Dabi was dreading this.
At least in the metro, it was too crowded and inconvenient for them to talk, and it was just weird talking through a guy’s back because Dabi was glitching through him, his face melded into his shoulder blades. Not like it really bothered Shouto, but overall, he wasn’t keen on discussing things in general.
“Why are you even here?” Shouto suddenly asks. “I thought you’d just. Zip off. You can fly anywhere, right?”
Dabi sighs, scratching his jaw, and shrugs.
Shouto narrows his eyes.
The thing is, Dabi did try that. While Shouto was asleep, he had attempted to leave and find the League, so that when they switched randomly, he could already be there and at least inform them of his situation.
That was when Dabi realised he was tethered to Shouto with what’s essentially an invisible leash. He could at least wander a radius of what he estimates to be a mile, before he feels something lock around his ankles, tightening and preventing him from going farther.
“Just wanted to see Endeavor. Curious, I guess,” Dabi shrugs, unwilling to tell Shouto about his findings. Might as well let him believe that Dabi could run off whenever, up until he finds out for himself. It’s not his problem, and if anything, works in his favour.
“Are you sure you’re not like his biggest fanboy?” Shouto comments while crossing the road. “If you really want, I can always ask him for an autograph-”
“I want his head on a stick.” Dabi says.
Shouto, looking up at the traffic light, scrunches his nose in response without looking at him. “Mm. I’m not close enough with him to ask for that yet.”
“Wrong answer.”
“This entire conversation was already wrong,” and Dabi doesn’t know when Shouto got so irritating , but clearly, he’s gained enough balls to spout bullshit without fear. “We’re here,” he presents lacklusterly, gesturing to the grossly familiar estate.
Dabi remembers this place.
It felt weird. It feels weird.
Always disconnected from society, as if there was something viscerally off and detached about the Todoroki estate. Always quiet in the mornings, tranquil almost, haunted with cut childhoods and stale silence.
Whispers in the household died as rumours, words as meaningful as the people inside.
He watches as Shouto opens the mailbox, and the moment he steps onto the lawn, a loud bark alarms him.
A dog brushes past Shouto.
“You have a dog?” Dabi asks, dumbfounded. A big dog. Uncommon in Japan, where smaller pets with a cuter aesthetic is the population's favourite.
“Her name is Sandals. Don’t kill her.”
“Sandals-?”
“Shouto!” A gleeful shout intervenes, and Dabi watches, falling mute, as Todoroki Fuyumi rushes forward, looking older than she does for her age, maturity creasing her neat countenance. “You’re home!” She gasps, and crushes her younger brother in an embrace, and Dabi slinks farther back. “Natsuo will be here soon- he’s visiting Mom right now. Feed Sandy and help me prepare dinner, please,” she croons.
And Todoroki Shouto smiles slightly, before heading inside.
Dabi stands still in the front yard.
The Todoroki estate was always quiet- interdimensional and disconnected; a presence left unreal and hollow, like the missing Garden of Eden, echoing only the sentiments pasted onto it like talisams, chasing out ghosts and emotions, or maybe locking them inside.
But he watches Sandals run circles stupidly around Shouto’s feet, large enough for him to nearly knock his knees over her back, with Fuyumi catching him before he falls. She laughs.
He didn’t know Fuyumi could laugh. Didn’t think she’d be able to, either. Something relative to disgust molds on his lungs.
The Todoroki estate should be quiet- they’re breaking the rules and it’s rude that they don’t follow them when Touya did religiously-
Or maybe it was just Todoroki Touya that was the ghost haunting the grounds, and really, there was nothing wrong with the household except for him.
He remains still out in the front yard, as the wind beats a rhythm through the heavy sways of the planted trees, leaving him as the only thing unmoving and unbreathing, leaving him out of place with the nature of this land.
He does not belong here.
Two minutes later, he feels shackles yank at his ankles, and though he has no will to move and no will to dance along with god's puppet strings knotted around his joints, the universe still drags his cadaver back into its coffin.
“Don’t touch anything,” Shouto hisses in the bathroom, glancing nervously at his sister who’s in the kitchen, waiting for Shouto to finish washing his hands to help her out.
“I can’t touch anything.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I don’t. I can’t touch anything,” Dabi replies, monotone. Shouto just shakes his head darkly, before drying off his hands and heading towards Fuyumi, probably expecting him to lounge near him.
Whatever. Dabi already knows his way around- doesn’t need a guide and he doesn’t need permission to make himself feel familiar when he’s here unwillingly.
Or maybe willingly.
It’s not like it ultimately matters to him. Everything’s really nothing to him, by this point.
He toes his way through the hallways, hands still collected in his pockets, opening and clasping his phone, despite knowing it’s useless.
He pauses by Touya’s room, and walks through the door.
It’s empty.
Great. So nothing’s changed.
He stares, almost impressed that Endeavor even kept artifacts of a disgraced past. He barely glances at the cowboy bedsheets ashy with dust, as he focuses on the desk in the corner of the room with only a lamp and a small shelf of books.
And while he has no intentions of searching too deep into his memories (sentiments for Dabi are nonexistent, but he doesn’t trust someone as weak as Touya who might reopen them-), he peers at the photographs of Touya’s life, overlapping it with the scenery of the present.
They don’t align.
The books’ orders have been switched, and the spines lack the same blanket of dust and old memories clinging onto it. Someone’s touched them recently.
He sticks his head through the closet door, before scowling, the darkness of it preventing him from seeing anything, and it’s not like he can open the doors to let in light.
He pauses by the old, creaky and lonely bed, staring at the wooden floor below it.
Right there.
Touya would stomp hard enough, and the wooden floor panel would unwedge from where it broke back when he was five and his father slammed him against the floor before smashing his foot down in anger, splintering the old, traditional floor of his bedroom.
Dabi wonders if anyone discovered it, and found the diary that's been abandoned once Touya turned twelve, pieces of caramels that Touya used to nick for himself and Natsuo, and old paintings he drew alone and hid before his father could find him slacking off, down in its dirt cavern.
He nearly laughs to himself.
Can caramels expire?
He sticks just his face deep enough through the wood to have enough space to peer into the gap between it and its cement foundation packed with soil that Touya had dug out, but his vision is blinded by the darkness underneath, so he just pulls back.
He snorts, mildly disappointed because he really was curious, and returns to glancing at the room before him, wondering if it should evoke any emotional response other than revulsion, anger, and overwhelming amusement because it’s hysterical, (almost. This time, it's different. He doesn't know why).
Until it isn’t.
He stares, quiet, and feels nothing in this room.
He leaves.
Natsuo’s room is packed, but clean.
He must be in college or something, given how it’s actually neat and not strewn with daily liveliness. Or maybe he developed a sense of responsibility, who knows.
Dabi scowls.
Natsuo used to be fun for Touya. Touya liked him back as a child, but then Touya didn't. Natsuo didn't like Touya either.
Now, to Dabi, he’s just one of those people he’d find annoying. Loud. Irritatingly overemotional out of a sense of self-righteousness.
He hates this room. How basic it is. How lacking, in spite of all the athlete posters, all the textbooks. The fact that the walls are painted, something that startled him and wondered if Endeavor beat him for it (and Dabi remembers he wouldn’t- Endeavor probably doesn’t even know Natsuo exists! Pretty funny.).
It’s so normal.
Boring.
And Natsuo is neither boring nor normal: he’s forgotten. Perhaps not anymore, after Touya overtook that role. But there’s something deceitful of all the colours in his room, and Dabi recalls that Natsuo was certainly bright, fiery, and terribly and pathetically emotional, really, no better than Touya but at least Natsuo was never wanted like Touya was (and Touya wasn’t really wanted, either, but he was needed at least). It’s as if he’s purposefully screaming ‘ look at me ,’ in a pitifully desperate attempt to be wanted or even just spat at.
He rolls his eyes at the room, and leaves.
Fuyumi’s room has changed. A lot. If anything, its layout and the fact that there are clothes folded on the bed, pages still scattered all over the table, a laundry basket filled in the corner of the room, suggest that she still lives here.
Foolish. And didn’t they all secretly wished, the three of them, that they’d leave? That they’d never return?
Seemed like only Dabi was strong enough to do that.
Or maybe Touya wasn’t strong enough to stay.
Maybe things just happened and he never cared enough to stop it.
Dabi tries to cling onto the frustration of that thought, the unease of it, and yet, he can’t. It vanishes with the strange reassurance that at least Touya’s dead.
Her room almost looks like it came from a Home Decor catalog. Modern in such a traditional household. He’s surprised Endeavor kept this up. If anything, he didn’t think either of his siblings would have a chance to do so, without getting hit.
Dabi tilts his head, and the unease has returned, but he can’t locate it. Endeavor never really hit Fuyumi. And that’s strange. He always associated beatings with Endeavor, but Natsuo was never even on the man’s radar no matter how much trouble Natsuo purposefully stirred, and if anything, every time Natsuo attempted to argue with him, disagree and scream about how Endeavor had to leave Touya alone because Touya was pitiful and weak and couldn’t watch over himself and his own little brother felt the need to step up because of it- Endeavor would shove him away. That was the extent of any physical contact he’d have with Natsuo.
He slapped Rei.
He never touched Fuyumi. Fuyumi was smart enough to avoid his gaze, though.
Huh.
And he expects for the heartburn to siphon away, for it to disappear with no hopes of returning but-
He realises with mild concern and almost confusion that the heat flaring near his sternum is gradually rising- something broiling and blistering along his inflexible skin.
He chokes, and coughs, and god , the unidentifiable emotion feels akin to his typical rage, the anger he always felt and relied on to remind him that he’s human, but it’s not the same and it’s something melancholy and forgotten and he hates that he’s feeling it because what the fuck -
It bubbles over in the form of black mist and grey fog, and he inhales, wheezing as the feeling strangles him alive.
He doesn’t hear the door burst open and Shouto’s incoherable shout.
“What’s going on, I- is it a fire-”
Fuyumi’s voice is like an ice pick to these emotions, and suddenly, something shuts down in the face of a threat, of the unknown, of the possibility of being vulnerable.
He shudders, the emotion washing over him with something slimy and nostalgic and it’s not just that- it’s temperamental and disordered as well, leaving him twitching and breathing when he doesn’t even need to breathe, yet something humid moistens the pits of his tonsils, almost like vapor.
“There was smoke,” Fuyumi whispers. “What was that?”
“Uh.” Shouto blinks, glancing at him. Oh. “...Must be my. Vape. Pen?”
Dabi stares through his watery vision.
Fuyumi stares.
“Todoroki Shouto-”
“I don’t think vape pens work like that.”
“They sometimes explode,” Shouto explains flippantly. “Ever read that article about it combusting in some kid’s mouth?”
“But why would they produce black smoke? She literally thought it was a fire.”
“Fuyumi wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between weed and cocaine. And you were the fire, by the way,” he hisses. “Also why are you here?”
“Y-” Dabi gapes. “You literally told me to follow you and not wander off on my own, and here I am, humouring you!”
“I am using the bathroom.”
“No, you’re looking at BuzzFeed articles on your phone.”
“You ever use your phone on the toilet?”
Dabi thinks to his phone with its eighty notifications from Toga, whose IQ is how many shits Dabi gives, and Hawks’ stupid spam of lasagna photos or whatever can capture his interest when he has the attention span of a Goldfish cracker.
“No.” Dabi says resolutely.
At this, Shouto looks up from his phone, looking mildly disturbed. “Okay. Psychopath,” he mutters.
And if Dabi was capable of touching him, he would dunk Todoroki’s head into his own toilet bowl of pee.
After a lapse of silence, Shouto looking less stressed after Fuyumi pounded into him the dangers of nicotine addiction and how vape pens and somehow, smartphones, should never be placed in your back pocket due to radiation (and he swears she’s getting these from WeChat articles), Shouto suddenly says out of nowhere: “I’m apparently marble rye bread.”
Dabi blinks.
And he looks over at his phone screen.
It's a BuzzFeed Quiz.
Right underneath the article title of “Which Type of Bread Are You?” says ‘No Knead to Worry.’
“Did you know there are different types of flour?” Shouto continues, about to close the tab.
“Hey,” Dabi barks, stopping him. “Pick my answers for me, let me try.”
“...you got marble rye.”
“We had different answers though,” Dabi blanks, cold seeping into his bones. “How?”
“Maybe it’s because when it asked ‘how do we quench our thirst’, we both chose ‘with our own saliva’.”
“Yeah. Because I’ve lasted days like that. You’re just lazy, different vibes, different yeast,” Dabi argues.
“Don’t be bitter.”
“I’m not bitter.”
“Keep this up and you’ll end up as whole wheat bread, arguably the worst type ever.”
“They had cornbread as an answer and you’re going to say whole wheat is the worse-”
“I mean. It’s nutritious if it has vegetables.”
“You’re the type of guy who thinks cornbread has pieces of corn in it.”
At this, Shouto slowly looks up from the newest quiz he opened. Dabi takes a second to interpret his silence. “Oh my god.”
“Cornbread doesn’t ha-”
“Shut up.” Dabi hisses. "Just shut up."
Just 5,870 miles away from Japan in the London, Gordon Ramsay feels a sudden and inexplicable tidal wave of anger flush through his system, injecting his feverish bloodstream with overbroiled lamb sauce.
He can't bloody elaborate the unexpected barbecue brush of anger. However, he rips open his laptop and has an urge to publish a cornbread recipe as if there's a possible wanker of an idiot who would need a fookin' article on the driest and most blasphemous genre of rolls in existence, that isn't even suited for eating and is more fit as a stale urinal cake.
Todoroki feels like he should feel something off.
If anything, he knew something would’ve happened- nothing good could’ve come out of Dabi’s presence and when Fuyumi looked up, looking into the hallway and running and he glanced after her and saw black fumes billowing out between the doorframe of her room and its shut door-
He felt something hot and scorching flare up and scald his throat with regret and guilt because he instantly knew Dabi was at fault and how could he have been so stupid and he even knew the consequences-
Dabi was slouched in his own smog of black, and Fuyumi was fanning away the smoke and asking as to what could’ve caused it.
And Todoroki wants to know how . How did Dabi produce tangible smoke? It wasn’t his quirk- no flashes of blue and steel. If anything, when he peered hard enough through the wall of smoke, it almost seemed to escape only from his mouth that uttered soundless words, his jaw unhinged and like a fog machine, chugged out clouds of grey.
“You know,” Todoroki says from where he’s washing his hands, looking over at Dabi who’s now ‘not’ pouting behind the shower curtain. “When you were fogging up there, you kinda looked like a Thomas the Tank Engine cosplay, but emo.”
“See,” Dabi finally croaks. “I thought you were going to try and pull detective work so I was soundly ignoring you, but what the fuck?”
Todoroki pats his hands dry. “Just in case you wanted reference of how you looked.”
“I don’t. I literally did not ask.”
Todoroki soundly disregards his presence, and heads out.
Dabi’s less of a danger, and more like a general nuisance.
If anything, this unexpected turnout freaks Todoroki out. Because he knows that Dabi isn’t doing this to purposefully trip him- rather, it’s because Dabi’s a mess and overall, has no consistency to his general personality. Therefore, Dabi himself doesn’t even have an ulterior motive: he’s just happens to be as put together as Aizawa’s plan to survive another day is.
“Shou? Is something wrong? You’ve been. Staring off into the distance for a while,” Fuyumi finally sets down her cleaver, and Todoroki hums in agreement, eyes still fixated on Dabi who’s currently trying to see if Sandals can sense him.
Sandals in general, is somewhat of an idiot, and Todoroki thinks that whatever results Dabi gathers from his last-minute arts n’ craft science experiment that even Bill Nye wouldn’t approve, wouldn’t be applicable to the general healthy population of animals.
Meanwhile, Dabi has also met Natsuo’s cat that he dropped off earlier, who his dad really despises but tolerates if it means Natsuo’s willing to stay for the weekend. The cat has not moved from his position of the lampost, staring at Sandals’ general vicinity for the past twenty minutes.
Elbow looks vaguely distraught, and Todoroki is more curious as to whether or not he’s fixated on Dabi, or on Sandals.
Because if Todoroki can see Dabi just fine- then it wouldn’t be that strange for possibly Elbow too, right?
“Shouto?” Fuyumi inquires once more, and Todoroki peels his eyes from the strange scene and finally returns to battering the shrimp. “Is something wrong?” She asks gently.
“Just surprised Dad actually let us keep Sandals for so long.” If anything, over breaks, he always walks in, half surprised to see Sandals hanging and still advocating for the anti-potty-training movement.
“It’s only been a month.”
“Dad used to kick us out in less than a week,” he snarks, and to the side, Fuyumi purses her lips, clearly finding his remark less amusing than he did. Sure, after an hour Dad would chase them down whether they wanted to be found or not (and Todoroki didn’t have friends like Natsuo did to crash at, so he was always caught wandering in the nearby 7/11 or public park), but still- for a man who can barely tolerate his family, it really speaks volumes that now he’s able to house a nuisance who on her arrival, treated their shoes as newspaper.
He used to wake up, anxious at night, that maybe dad really did dispose of her somewhere in the night, and deposited her in a box on a faraway street where he could never locate her.
“I was joking,” Todoroki finally says when Fuyumi doesn’t say anything.
“I know,” she sighs. “It’s just. Shouto, I don’t think you knew about this, you probably were too young, but Touya used to run away all the time. And I get you’re joking, but I can’t help but think of him when you mentioned that.”
“Family tradition, I guess?”
This time, she does smile, snorting slightly. “Yeah. I used to hit him when he returns-” And Shouto blinks, and turns to her. He can’t imagine Fuyumi even raising her voice. “Listen,” she says coolly, probably noting his expression. "He was only a little bit younger than me- so I just treated him as my age. You can ask Natsuo, we used to argue all the time,” she laughs, and Todoroki slowly lowers his chopsticks.
“Really? I mean. You argue playfully with Natsuo all the time-” and Fuyumi was always nicer to him, she had essentially mothered him for most of his teenage years, but now she’s certainly more sarcastic to him (and it’s like now that he’s a certain age and has found more of himself, she’s cracked into more of the role of a sister than a mom). So maybe it’s not that strange to visualise Fuyumi whacking his eldest brother on the shoulder.
“No, but we would argue argue. Like, I would always tell on him because he got in trouble- only to Mom, though,” she clarifies quickly, almost panicked, despite her steady smile, “and he would steal my stuff and I would get mad at him for it. This one time, he drowned my stuffed animal because I threw his favourite blanket into the mud because he ate my cherry flavoured chapstick."
"Oh. There's a lot going on there." And it's not because there was a lot to digest, but also because Touya's so different. Todoroki’s recollections of Touya weren’t. Great.
If anything, they were slightly soured. “I just remember Touya was angry," he finally admits, hesitant since he knows Fuyumi preserved a good image of Touya. "And quiet,” but loud . Natsuo was definitely loud and fiery, but Touya was aggressive .
Todoroki used to almost have some sense of unease, almost dislike towards him, sensing almost an antagonistic vibe from him as a child.
Now that he’s older- Todoroki’s just sad. Touya for sure was definitely all those things, but Todoroki suspects a major part of that is due to the fact that Touya grew up lonely from them. They all definitely fell apart after his mom burned him, but something fundamentally changed in Touya after that. He was already self-isolating from them, wary, especially of Shouto- he personally always felt that there was something Touya had against him. His brother could never meet his eyes, never really look at him the way he did with Fuyumi and Natsuo, but he treated him nicely as a child, would take him out and sneak him stuff from FamilyMart.
Then his mom burned him and Touya's entire personality flipped from his quiet, almost cautious demeanor that was always loud around only Natsuo and Fuyumi, and then he became almost mean, unstable and constantly distraught.
“Yeah. When he was a teenager," Fuyumi murmurs, hushed like they're sharing a secret (and in Japan, they don't talk about the dead. Ghosts shouldn't be summoned; but he still leans closer). "When you were old enough to really remember him, he had. He wasn’t. He already wasn’t treated well and he had a lot of mental issues, especially because he was the one Dad was hardest on-” and Todoroki remains quiet, because he sympathises with Touya.
If Touya was still alive, Todoroki wonders if they would’ve been able to really connect over their specialised training from Dad. Or if Touya would’ve simply spiralled down his own darkened path of anger and resentment, that Todoroki nearly went down, but was tame in comparison to Touya.
Touya by a default was a husk of hate and it showed and blotted any previous positive memories Todoroki had of Touya, around the year before Touya died.
“But. He used to channel all that intensity into courage, he was a very brave boy, even up until the last minute. Touya was always the bravest.” Fuyumi says, and she’s composed. Collected. And Todoroki feels less nervous of finally discussing the taboo of their household that Natsuo would click his tongue at and Fuyumi would nervously shut down all the time.
Todoroki stills, wondering if he’s prepared though.
He turns around to grab more milk for the batter, when he hesitates, seeing Dabi standing by the fridge. And he wants to tell him to go away - because this is private and intimate and Todoroki is finally learning something so distraught and smothered in his family history and no outsider has right or passage into knowing (and this is about his brother, a brother that Todoroki barely recalls past his spite and fire and misery stirred with anger and Dabi needs to leave any outsider has to go-)
He clenches the fridge handle, not wanting to disturb Fuyumi’s final willingness to talk, and makes the mistake of looking at Dabi.
And Dabi's similar enough to the stereotypical ghost. Practically dead, haunting and an ill omen. He almost looks like one, too.
“Touya would run away, but not the way that Natsuo or you did. Dad would kick you guys out for a short while, but he never wanted Touya to leave. It was terrifying, you know. Seeing a small boy running while someone bricks heavier and huge in comparison, chasing after him.” Then, quietly, as a sinner in a confessional booth would admit, “Dad used to drag Touya by the ankles. And Touya would always hit the floor and he’d be dragged along it and it was the most terrifying thing ever and it must’ve hurt and been scary-” and Dad would force Shouto to come home but he never laid hands on him outside of training purposes and Shouto flinches, jaw tightening. “Do you remember Touya's walk in closet?"
He smiles meekly. "Barely. I remember Touya used to always hide me every time training came around." Back before Touya locked himself in his room all the time, locked him out of the closet.
"Yeah. That's because Dad never though you'd be there, because that's where he used to lock Touya in if he got too disobedient." And Todoroki's smile drops instantly. "And every time Touya would run away, Dad would lock Natsuo in a room because Natsuo always wanted to follow him.”
And Todoroki didn’t know that.
He slams the fridge door shut, and he recalls every time Natsuo would take a step back each time they locked a door, appear distraught whenever the doors would even close-
“And since Touya would disappear for days, Natsuo would get locked in for days. Though, Dad knew that we snuck him out all the time, so he never really stayed in there for more than a couple hours in total, so I think that's the only reason why he would keep him there for so long. Not like it makes that okay, but still.” Fuyumi confides, her eyes darting to him. “Don’t tell Natsuo I told you. I don’t. I don’t think he’d want you to know.” She says, ashamed for mentioning something she felt she had no right to.
"I didn't know that." And he doesn't have any other words to unstick from his throat because he always felt angry at his dad and resentful but he never thought about his siblings past the extent of what he knew. Never really delved deep into their history and he feels sick and gross with guilt and he's just a child but they're all adults (except for Touya) and know infinitely more than him, been through more than him, and he never bothered to ask, while they always understood him. “And every time Touya would get found if he ran away or hid for too long, Dad would punish him if he was really angry."
“Training?” He knew Touya used to be trained by Dad, until Dad turned his incisors onto him.
Fuyumi ashens.
“...Fuyumi?”
“Shouto. Dad was awful to you and you went through so much physical and mental...trauma from his behaviour," and she seems sick by admitting it was 'awful' and he knows that they're in the same boat, wondering if they're right for wanting to forgive Dad, "but the way Dad was with Touya? I thought he wanted to kill him sometimes- thought he was going to.”
And Shouto wanted to forgive Dad. He also wanted to dangle the hope of being forgiven over his Dad’s face, but he had thought about forgiveness actually being granted, especially after Dad nearly died. Because there was the acidic doubt that maybe, the lack of closure, the lack of knowing what they could’ve been was worse than allowing Dad back into their lives.
Shouto cannot forgive Dad now. Kill him sometimes. And Shouto always had the notion that maybe one day he’d face an accidental death, perhaps because Dad went too far or pushed him too far, or maybe his mom would broil his brain alive like those steamed eggs Natsuo loved to eat, or one day he or Dad would accidentally set fire to their surroundings during an argument-
But he never once thought Dad would’ve directly wanted to kill him.
“Are you sure?” And he almost feels awful for asking that, for questioning it.
Fuyumi remains silent, before her head jerks into a quick series of nods, her curtain of hair obscuring her expression.
And he can never forgive Dad. He almost feels terrible for the slow disappointment stewing in his gut, the semblance of regret, because he almost wanted to understand what it’d be like if his Father finally acknowledged him as his own person, as a son-
And he instantly kills it dead because that same person had wanted to murder his brother.
His gaze flickers over to Fuyumi, and he softens enough for his anger to leak away. She wasn’t ready. Todoroki should’ve known. She never would be ready. He walks over to his sister, almost a decade older and yet still shorter, and encases her in a stiff hug. “Sorry,” he says.
“No, don't feel sorry.” And she doesn’t sound like she’s crying, and right.
Fuyumi barely cries. Out of all of them- she never cracked. Shouto would always finally collapse into the circuits of pain, the pathetic downfall expressed through involuntary and humiliating tears, while Natsuo’s own anger and bitterness would wash over in briney tsunamis and spittle glossing a tearing snarl.
“It’s fine.”
“No it’s not . Shouto, how much longer is Touya going to be forgotten?” She wheezes, and her words sound more directed at herself than at him, and he’s never heard her sound so cracked and sharp before. She was always sad, remorseful, wearing guilt like a crown.
He wonders if this anger was always there, hidden beneath all that.
“I’m weak.” And she pushes him away for the first time in her life, returning back to her cutting board.
“No you’re not.”
“Touya was always so, so strong, and he was always the one who kept us together. Yet I can’t even talk about him? ” And her voice is stale, faint, and papery with remorse, yet she’s mashing the garlic with its skin still intact, her grey visage steely.
Todorokis should not cry- do not cry, and Fuyumi is no exception
“You only remember him as angry , you said so yourself-” she continues muttering, viciously dicing her tomatoes. “How could I let you continue thinking that for all those years, knowing you didn’t know any better because we never told you about Touya I never told you about Touya and I’m his twin-”
“Yeah, but.” And Todoroki licks his lips, shakily stirring the egg batter absent-mindedly. “I know he’s more than that, even if I used to think that. And I feel bad for him,” he admits. “Being angry and upset, I feel bad that he never got to live happily.”
“He was born unhappy, raised unhappy, and died unhappy.” Fuyumi summarises. Then, something cracks through her flat tone, a pitch of indignation and melancholy shattering its stability: “it’s not fair. He never got to live happily once in his life and. I want to forgive Dad and forgiveness is something we need in life-”
“I disagree.” Todoroki says dryly, despite the seriousness of the situation.
“But. I can’t because I can’t disrespect Touya more than he already has been,” she confesses, and Todoroki’s in uncharted territory. He has never been the target of her worries. He doesn’t think Natsuo ever was, either. Fuyumi probably is new to this, as well.
She was always quieter than both of them.
He stares, helpless because he has nothing more to offer than an ear.
“Dad can pray for forgiveness, apologise to Touya every day. And maybe he’s done that since he died but what good does that do? That doesn’t change that he’s gone and he’ll never know how sorry we feel and how much more he deserved and that we’re sorry we drove him to the brink-”
And Todoroki doesn’t remember what happened to Big Brother Touya.
He knew he died in a mental facility, one that his father forced Touya into, claiming he was just like their mother.
Todoroki doesn’t know if Touya was born mentally unstable as his father told him when he was young.
He just knew that the general and unspoken consensus was that this household was what cultivated his mental downfall.
“It’s not your fault,” Todoroki claims numbly.
“I was never there for Touya when he felt isolated and abandoned.” Fuyumi hisses, and Todoroki takes a step back because Fuyumi has never been so angry. Perhaps she had been such towards Father, and he knows she has definitely been outwardly frustrated before, but now she appears tortured, distraught (and for a second with her white hair and glittering eyes, she looks just like Mom back when he was young and terrified because Mom looked lost and unseeing-).
Fuyumi has carried ghosts since childhood, and it shows.
“You don’t. You don’t get it, Shouto,” and she doesn’t sound accusatory, just sad. And what did he say- "Dabi, you wouldn't understand what my family's like?" Todoroki's realising maybe he didn't understand it as much as he thought he did, either. “Touya scared us, for sure, and at one point he really was mean, he really was caught up in his own anger and sadness but who could blame him? Dad just dismissed and invalidated all his emotions by saying it was insanity and we let it happen, and it wasn’t like he ever had anyone to rely on before,” she mumbles. “Continue battering the shrimp, won’t you?” She says, clear with her instructor tone he’s heard her use when making children line up for carpool pickup.
Glad to have an excuse not to look at her anymore, but terrified that she would close up after this and he’ll never be allowed in once more, scared that she’ll never be able to confront her thoughts after this and will just seal it like she did for the past six years, he turns around to fill up the batter once more with milk and eggs.
He pauses, staring at Dabi, and nearly drops the carton.
Dabi doesn’t terrify him- it’s just the shock.
Has to be the shock.
Dabi’s almost a statue- inhuman in his corner, and there’s something stricken across his gaze but it’s terrifying and contorted, warped with unidentifiable emotions that remind him too much of his father back then, but worse because there’s a quality of instability cranking whatever’s fueling such an evil and deprived gaze in the wrinkles of his scars-
For all the emptiness and terror his face creates, his eyes are lively and cracked like window panes.
His breath hitches, and he quickly turns away and begins to beat the batter once more, abandoning the new ingredients.
“I think. He was happy around you.” Todoroki says, voice shaky after seeing Dabi. Truthfully, he would not know if Touya was happy, but he thinks about how Natsuo prays by Touya’s alter every time he comes to visit, how Fuyumi always connects Touya’s memories to certain songs on the radio or old movies that even he recalled watching on Natsuo’s old videoplayer underneath his bed, and has a feeling he’s right. They loved him enough to remember those times, and he believes that would’ve been mutual at the time. “I think he had moments of happiness. I just wish we could make more with him.”
Fuyumi chokes out a laugh, her knuckles trembling against the bell peppers. Todoroki reaches over to remove the knife from her other hand before she can slip and cut herself. “You can reassure me all you want, Shou,” and she sounds like Teacher Fuyumi again, Mother Fuyumi once more, and Todoroki stares, stricken because they’re reverting back to their old relationship and he’s losing her-
“But in the end, opinions can’t change fact.” She turns to him. And he was too slow and Todoroki wasn’t aware of it but he was scared- he didn’t know what to do when confronted with emotions, with learning a history that grew a sensitive bundle of nerves that entwined between his siblings. He wanted to untangle the knot, but he just stared at it with trepidation ribbing his heart and doubt clamming his palms. And it must’ve shown, and Fuyumi, always sympathetic and sacrificial, closed herself off for him.
“‘Yumi, it’s fine, I want to hear-” and she’ll never do anything unless if he acts selfish, because she would never act on her own accord and he suddenly wishes he just went in with the pliers, shown bravery shown courage (and she said Touya was always the bravest) but he didn’t - “I want to know more. You wanted to respect Touya’s name by talking about him, right?” And he’s awful , using Touya against her but there’s something disturbing about seeing the inherited family blankness smoothing out her expression, hiding the secrets behind the image of Fuyumi Todoroki, a sweet and kind and a preschool teacher who loves dogs and looks just like the beloved Rei Todoroki (and oh , scandalous! Rei Todoroki apparently hasn’t been living in the Todoroki household for years - get your tabloids NOW-).
“No. No more,” Fuyumi whispers, despite its concrete undertone.
And he stops, wilting.
“I’m not just doing this for you, I’m doing this for me.” She confesses weakly. “Forgive me for being selfish.”
And something unexpected happens: a dry sob tears out his throat, and he doesn’t know who he’s crying for: himself, for Fuyumi, or for Touya who’s a lost memory and a tragic figure of a story that’ll remain unheard underneath the shadow of the glamorous Todorokis who spawned two amazing heros (and where’s the third?).
“You’re not selfish.” He stakes. “If anything, I think you’ve always given more of yourself than others deserved,” himself included.
Fuyumi gives a weary smile at that, disbelief evident on her folded expression, as if he’s one of her students saying something idealistic and false about the world, and she has no heart to break the truth to him. It’s not condescending, just too tired for pretenses.
“Shou,” she sighs. “Don’t forget to feed the cat.”
“Wait.” And Todoroki nearly makes the terrible mistake of physically responding to the sound. He scowls, atmosphere cracked by Fuyumi’s purposeful disregard, and by Dabi’s inability to read the mood. “That’s it? Damn."
Todoroki roughly grabs the tray and the rack stacked on it full of battered shrimp, and walks over to the stovetop, and he makes the mistake of glancing over at Dabi. He makes involuntarily and unfortunate eye contact with him, who appears normal now. His usual, casual self with his hooded gaze, lazy smile, and default sloppy demeanor.
Todoroki can’t help but watch him, as if waiting to see if whatever he witnessed will return.
It was creepy.
For once, Dabi really felt like a monster. He was always human before: just evil. At that moment, Todoroki felt candid fright at the sight of Dabi. Now he's just blathering, normal and mortal with humanity's fatal flaw of stupidity.
He narrows his eyes, his heart still flipping like a pancake at the presence of Dabi, unable to shake off whatever aura he emitted earlier.
“Wait,” and he viscerally reacts, confused by Fuyumi’s sudden voice as it mixes in with whatever bullshit Dabi is spouting.
“Huh?”
“Shouto. I know. I know you want to prove yourself,” Fuyumi says gently. “But I really don’t think you should be using the stove.”
“-y’all just pulled a total Brooklyn Nine-Nine on the entire plot with your sudden wisecracking BS using to avoid serious plot development-”
“You’re not going to let me use the stove because of that one incident? It’s been a year,” Todoroki grits out, attempting to not instinctively shout over the noise Dabi’s blathering in the background.
“Yes. And it’s been a year since Natsuo lost a finger,” Fuyumi retorts, not unkindly.
Todoroki stares, his lips knotting into a scowl (and he’s not pouting- he’s not) and finally, shatters his grip at the sight of Fuyumi’s reddened gaze and relinquishes his hold on the frying pan.
“-eally just going to ignore what just happened I guess but then again I’m not surprised since your family seems to ignore literally every dark incident that happens in the household-”
“Thanks, Shouto.”
“Yeah. Thanks , Shouto,” Dabi leers, and Todoroki gives a small smile towards Fuyumi, before whirling around and silently but viciously flipping off Dabi.
“There’s a stalker out the window.”
“That’s my brother.”
Dabi doesn’t even flinch as the window slides open, and Natsuo eases himself over the frame with zero trouble, walking right through Dabi who was peering out of it.
Todoroki glances up from his math homework.
“...What’s that?”
Natsuo blinks, shifting the raccoon closer underneath his armpit. “Mom’s sweaters,” he lifts up the plastic bag with his other hand.
“Oh.”
Natsuo flips off Elbow who lazily flicks his tail in response, before bending down to greet Sandals, who sniffs the creature clawing his forearm, anxious at the sight of the German Shepherd.
Sandals stares, before bristling and pouncing back, ears flat and tail alert as the raccoon gropes her nose.
Todoroki sighs, and silently curses Ectoplasm. The only general reprieve in his class is that his tests are always easier than his homework, and that he only checks homework for completion and at least signs of individual work.
“That’s wrong,” Dabi says from where he’s floating over the kotatsu.
Todoroki pointedly ignores him, burying his legs deeper underneath the table's blanket, before continuing onto the next question.
He waits for Dabi to turn his attention to Elbow, who glowers in response, before quickly erasing his previous answer and recalculating it until he finds a new sum to scratch down. They’ve decided after a quick pitstop in the bathroom (where Todoroki glanced at him suspiciously and told him to forget what he saw in the kitchen, to which Dabi replied weirdly with his complacent silence, but then again, Dabi’s not the most normal guy ever), that Elbow probably see him or sense his presence to an extent.
“That’s still wrong.” And Dabi has lost interest in Elbow despite Elbow looking like he wants to rip all the scars out his face, and is now looking over Todoroki’s shoulder. Again.
Todoroki this time, snaps his mechanical pencil in half with his grip, before resigning to his fate and using its still intact end to smear away his second answer.
“The answer should be ‘no solution’. Or undefined. I don’t remember which one is which.”
Todoroki doesn’t even look over, deciding that Dabi is a smear on his perfect life the same way Question 35’s space for an answer is now permanently grey.
“You okay there, bro?” Natsuo blinks from where he’s tying a miniature bucket hat that Todoroki recognises from one of Fuyumi’s very old dolls, over the terrifyingly plient raccoon.
Sandals’ tail slowly gains traction once more, as she pads cautiously closer, only to whine as the raccoon snarls at the proximity, bounding away.
“No.” Todoroki says glumly.
“This is why you don’t go to public school,” Natsuo finally says, as if he doesn’t embody the vibes of public school himself.
“Better than being homeschooled by dad,” Todoroki jokes, thinking back to a time when his dad threatened to do so during middle school if he continued being difficult about training. That promise eventually came true, but for other reasons.
At this, Natsuo stops rustling through his paper bag. “Yeah. Touya can attest,” he adds casually, and Todoroki nearly drops his abused pencil, and looks up. Natsuo doesn’t appear to notice his reaction, and is now emptying the contents of the giftbag. “Look, she knitted us sweaters,” and he unfolds a large red one with a dinosaur crocheted on its front. “And here’s yours,” he pulls out a smaller blue one.
“Why is there a family sized jar of Skippy peanut butter on it?”
“‘Yumi told her the reason why you couldn’t visit last time wasn’t because you ended up gastritis due to eating a gallon of peanut butter.”
Todoroki sets down his pencil. “Can that even happen?” He asks incredulously. “Did Mom even believe that?”
“Who knows. Touya though,” and Todoroki winces, “once ate an entire rice pot of ghee.”
"Ghee?"
"Clarified butter," Natsuo elucidates.
“Why?”
Natsuo looks him dead in the eye. “Glory,” he says.
Todoroki, feeling lost and mildly betrayed, does not verbalise a response, yet expresses all the emotion he possibly could through his face.
“This is why he was homeschool,” Todoroki says grimly.
Natsuo nods solemnly.
And it’s weird, how Natsuo always casually mentions Touya, with no real sentiment of sadness or longing, but not in a disrespectful way. It’s just that Natsuo’s very present. He always randomly referenced Touya- it’s nothing new. It’s just that earlier had made Todoroki more sensitive to the topic. Natsuo would have in no way known what transpired.
“Dad actually homeschooled him?” Todoroki questions nonchalantly, for once pursuing Natsuo’s random train of thought that he’d usually never bother to really think of trying to understand.
“Ohh yeah,” he snorts. “Touya hated it- I hated it for him too, I mean,” and his default smile falters into a knowing grimace, and Todoroki just nods back in understanding. “But it was fun having him at home all the time, even though it definitely wasn’t good for him to not get out of the house for most of his childhood.”
At this, Todoroki raises an eyebrow. “Seriously? Childhood?”
“Yeah, he never left the house daily, except for when Mom took him grocery shopping or all of us outside.”
“Huh.” And Todoroki at least went to middle school and junior high. To not meet other kids his age at all? Even if he wasn’t the most social child, at least he got out of the house up until his father took him out because the teacher asked too many questions about his training bruises and constant fatigue.
“Yeah. Dad mostly just trained him, though he hired tutours for actual subjects. Touya really hated one of them, Shinozaki-sensei. He was an ass .” He mumbles through a mouthful of crackers that he’s snatching off the kotatsu.
“Preach,” Dabi mumbles from the sidelines, where he’s now engaging in a staring contest with Elbow, always having to randomly invade Todoroki's private life because he has nothing better to do.
“Stop stealing my food,” Todoroki slaps away Natsuo’s hand, and at this, Natsuo gets his gross, crumbly fingers into Todoroki’s hair, carding it back. “Stop.”
“Hey, hey, I gotta eat and so does Jerry,” he retorts, jerking a thumb at the raccoon who’s now trying to eat the string of its bucket hat.
“You named him ‘Jerry’?” And that foreign name sounds familiar.
“She,” he corrects. “And yeah. Remember that show, ‘Tom and Jerry’?”
Oh, and Todoroki loved that show as a kid. He had CDs of those, with random Japanese dub referencing something completely unrelated to the mostly nonverbal show, always advertising foot cream. He wonders where they are now. “Is that why the crow that always visits is named ‘Tom’?”
“Nah, that’s because I found him nearly getting chopped by some brat’s tomahawk.”
Todoroki stares.
Natsuo fails to elaborate. “Does Tom still visit?” He asks.
“I don’t know.” Todoroki hasn’t been home enough to be sure, but he remembers back when his father insisted he returned every weekend (not like he followed that after a month or so), he remembered being terrified since his first meeting of Tom was when the crow flew straight into his window.
He later learned from a disapproving but resigned Fuyumi, that Tom was essentially Natsuo’s change collector, who would cash in shiny stuff in return for nuts, sparkly beads, and the occasional shredded chicken nugget
“God, I miss Tom. He’s going to love Jerry.”
“I thought in the show they hated each other?” Todoroki bats away Natsuo’s large hand again. “These are my crackers- get your own.”
“Yeah, if they hate each other then it’ll be like IRL Tom and Jerry,” Natsuo says, unperturbed. “Also, these are our crackers, we’re a family -”
And despite the sudden and unexpected aching warmth that blossoms within his chest because family (and he didn’t think that was possible, didn’t think Natsuo would return after he cut contact but Fuyumi tracked him down and pleaded with him to come home, and Todoroki thought he hated him but Natsuo didn’t and instead reciprocated Todoroki’s hug the moment they saw each other for the first time in three years-), Todoroki doesn’t hesitate to freeze Natsuo’s hand to the table, who squawks in response. Todoroki looks him in the eye and snaps another cracker between his teeth.
“Oh Nat-” they both look over, eyes wide at the third-party.
Fuyumi stares back at them.
“Don’t use your quirk on the kotatsu, you’ll damage it,” she scolds, pretending like there isn’t a raccoon currently dominating over Sandals by clambering on her head, like an unproportional Ratatouille. “Also, Natsuo, one day we’re all going to end up with lice and it’s going to be your fault.”
“Sorry, just taking care of my clients.”
“You’re a doctor. Not a vet.”
“Humans are animals,” Natsuo replies flippantly, casual about the frostburn crawling up his wrist.
Taking pity, Todoroki places a cracker into Natsuo’s mouth as he’s still talking, and he just chews it in accordance all the while maintaining eye contact with Fuyumi.
“Hey, Natsuo,” Todoroki begins rigidly, his pride already chipped away for him to ask for help. “What’s question thirty-five?”
At this, Natsuo barely glances at his paper before saying “There’s no solution. It’s impossible.”
Todoroki barely hears Dabi’s vocalised smugness before his entire left side combusts into flames.
“Wait not so close -”
“Shouto not on the kotatsu!”
“See. I sincerely thought you’d have way more control over your quirk. You have proven me wrong twice in a single day.”
And Todoroki decides that even if his two siblings weren’t here, making final preparations for dessert in the same kitchen, he still would have pretended like Dabi does not exist.
"Aren't you a Todoroki? The perfect one, too?" And that came off too snide, too targeted for Todoroki to not glance back, startled by the suddenness of his edge. Not like he should be surprised; Dabi appears to have the aptitude to snaking under others' skin, to purposefully rile them for personal gratification. But Dabi's also rather insouciant to things, he didn't appear to be one to take a random piss at him if he wasn't actively thinking of doing so.
His jaw locking and his teeth clacking, he quickly returns back to his batter, refusing to acknowledge Dabi's presence and give him any satisfaction.
“I did this wrong,” Natsuo blinks, glancing at the rice cake, and Todoroki's muscles that were taunt from Dabi's sudden jab, loosen as he focuses his attention onto him.
“Why does it look like that.” Shouto judges tonelessly. Slowly, he prods the holey and shriveled dessert.
“It’s okay, it probably still tastes fine,” Fuyumi smiles warmly. No it won't.
“You look like you’re going to kill me.” Natsou observes out loud.
Her tight-lipped smile simply widens.
“You know what, I’m just going to ice the strawberry cake.” Natsuo clears his throat, quickly ditching the ruined rice cake in their hands. Fuyumi scowls, but begins to jab a butter knife into the thick and horrifyingly hard cake, trying to scrape it from the pan's bottom.
“As long as it’s not Shouto who's icing it,” Fuyumi chirps light-heartedly, her voice strained from exerting all her strength into basically Natsuo Frankenstein's crimes against humanity part two.
“I made one mistake-” Todoroki begins, and they never let him live anything down.
“You iced the cake literally with your quirk, Shouto,” Natsuo snorts.
“ One mistake-”
“You iced the cake with your quirk?” And Todoroki continues to pretend like Dabi is not there, listening to everything . And though the earlier Touya conversation he invaded was definitely worse-
This is just frustrating.
A healthy silence settles between the three of them (and Dabi isn’t one of them), and Todoroki finishes the castella batter, so he begins to dump it into the already pre-lined pan.
“Wait, wait-” and Natsuo leans over, and before Todoroki can stop him, swipes a finger through the cake and licks the batter off.
“Natsuo,” Fuyumi scorns, though she’s smiling, even though Natsuo deserves no sympathy and Todoroki will beat his face with his electric mixer with no mercy.
“Just making sure he put in enough sugar.”
Todoroki inwardly gags. “You’re going to get cavities larger than your skull,” he gripes. And he thinks of Iida, who has a surprising sweet tooth and always bakes with Sato. He grimaces. “You could puke enough sugar to ruin a batch of wet cement.”
“See, I feel like I should be surprised by your random knowledge that always connects to vigilante terrorism-”
“Stop it.”
“But I’m not.” He finishes, clearly remembering how Todoroki once read aloud a snippet of information off of the internet about how in the 80’s, French anarchists would kill cement with sugar to prevent prisons from being built.
“Boys,” Fuyumi begins. “We have an hour before dad arrives.”
“Can't it be longer?” Todoroki grumbles and Natsuo barks out a laugh at that, in spite of Fuyumi’s click of her tongue. But even she’s grinning. And Todoroki knows he promised Fuyumi to bite back on his rebellious streak, especially around Dad, but he feels as if he’s already done more than Dad deserved. Back then, Todoroki would aggressively rebuke everything: pointedly ignore him, shame him, and argue to the point where his father would even lose his temper, enough to shatter an object or two.
Now he’s toned it down to blunt passive-aggressiveness, something that he thinks is merciful, and his father just has tortured tolerance for his existence.
He thinks it’s a rather stable relationship. If anything, he could be Natsuo, who’s stony and quiet every time their father returns home, inversing his entire personality in the most terrifying way. The first time Todoroki witnessed it, he was used to Natsuo’s flaring nostrils and sudden arguments at the dinner table that’d always shake with pounding fists and slammed mugs- the sudden and uncharacteristic coldness scared him at first.
He thinks his snark is probably considered durable progress in his father’s eyes.
“Also, you have to hide Jerry when dad comes home. He already tolerates Elbow, you bring in another wild animal he’ll flip,” Fuyumi advises helpfully.
“Nah, how’s she wild?” Natsuo gestures towards Jerry, whose hat is skewed off her head and dangling under her chin. She sneezes into the pile of flour that she decorated the floor with, before scratching her way back into the supply drawer for more ingredients. “Besides, Sandals will babysit her.”
Todoroki glances up from where he’s smoothing the batter down, and into the hallway, where Sandals has been standing for the past ten minutes in the darkness of their living room backdrop, with two reflective eyes staring unblinkingly back at them.
“I hate it here,” Todoroki finally decides aloud, as he opens the preheated oven to slide the pan in.
“Shut up, you love us,” Natsuo says in unison with Fuyumi, who pats him on the head.
And Todoroki blinks, glancing up at Fuyumi. “Yeah. I guess,” he finally answers nonchalantly, his throat burning as Fuyumi giggles cheerfully and Natsuo croons tauntingly. And everything seems fine all of a sudden.
Alright.
Except for the fact that he has a villain as his personal shadow and their positions could be easily reversed at any given time.
The sudden remembrance trips his heartbeat into a palpating stutter, and he whirls around as if seeing Dabi would reassure him that he’s still tangible and will be for hopefully most of the weekend if not all of it, only for another heart attack scare to send him into a seizure as he realises Dabi’s nowhere to be seen.
He mechanically rounds back to his family, limbs heavy and nerves sparking like cut wires, absorbing the happy scenery of his family.
Whatever.
Dabi can wander, of course he’d be bored just seeing something domestic and sweet- the man practically feeds off of drama and negativity.
Besides.
This is his family. He doesn’t want anyone else to witness the recovery that they're finally owed.
Notes:
(me: treating this like my instagram finsta and ranting in the caption about something utterly nonsensical)
(also yall should totally talk to me on twitter if yall want >:) @strawbrained https://twitter.com/strawbrained)i forgot what a pipecleaner was called guys. i like. couldn't even search it up i was like. "????"
also i don't rlly understand englihs grammar like i don't. i don't know how to use commas very well. ilke i just don't use them LMAO and this is why im going to fail my lit exam.
also i realise i use "at this" for starters a LOt, and that i use "entropy" and variations of that word after biology bc the first time i learned it my teacher did it by throwing a ball at a student, and then throwing another one but harder. and was like. "entropy." said student was one they always fought with too (aka me.)
---
so was anyone going to tell me that 'unphased' and 'unfazed' were two different words and i've been using them interchangeably the entire time?or that "approuve" wAsnt english? like. as a kid i used to take french and now that lowkey fucked up with my english bc i can't tell if using a 'u' is british english and therefore acceptable or just a whole ass other language. bc i suCKed at french like i can barely even string a sentence in english and since i was a dumb kid i didn't know they weren't like. the same thing and that messed with my spelling as a i grew up??
deadass???HALF OF MY VOCAB ISNT EVEN REAL WORDS IT"S JUST wrong
LIKE IM NOW LEARNING "moutive" AND "moutivator" JUST ARENT REAL WORDS ?like apparently it's JUST motive and motivate? but ever since taking french in high school it messed me up bc i can't tell my vocab a part so i would just rAndoMLy shove in 'u's assuming that it'd be chill??? bitch??? no french didn't mess me up- french is chill, I"M JUST STUPID LMAO
i am NOT okay i look like a CLOWN i-
like,,, my english was fine,,, up until i was like "damn. i mean. my dad learned english in the british way so it wouldn't be too weird if i use 'u's and like,,, i can't rlly tell if there's meant to be 'u' here anymore after taking french again guess i'll just. do whatever i want"
THIS IS EDXACTLY ME WITH CHINESE TOO??asdjk??
like my mom's from taiwan so she uses "l" instead of "r" (think 'human', instead of ren for me it's "len"??? idek i never learned pinyin), and no one deadass ever bothered to tell me that this was a thing until like i was OLD and my friend was finally like "why the fuck do you speak that way"
i do not have a SINGLE language that i can generally write and pronounce and use grammar correctly im,,,? ?? like can i be literate?/ for once in my life,,, blease,,, i am b e g g ing
like GOD challenge me okay. God you may have separated the languages so we all can't communicate in treason bUT some of yall are out here speaking in tongueS and i can barely speak in a tongue like,,, girl,,,
Chapter 4: fuck me
Summary:
what the actual FUCK is happening right now
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Todoroki is in the middle of texting a very unresponsive and very rudely uncooperative Bakugou (why can't he at least pretend to care about Todoroki's situation? It's not like any of his actual friends know that he's soul-bound to a needlessly murderous pet villain) when he feels a familiar pull in his nerves, like a trickle of melting ice that pools into his gut-
"Shi-" is the only warning he croaks, weak from panic, eyes rolling around in their sockets to find Dabi glancing up from where he's floating above of Natsuo's head to peek at his phone.
Their gazes click, and the last thing he properly sees before the telling light flickers across his gaze, scanning his entire figure and x-raying his bones, is Dabi's typically impassive expression pulling into one of exhausted resignation.
And honestly-
It should be more or less unsettling that they've adapted so quickly to this pattern of ghost and human that they barely react with anything but shared annoyance to the unceremonious feeling of an oncoming swap, both of them fighting for position of tangible and interactive human like two brothers fighting for their turn with the remote, but all Todoroki can feel as he sees Dabi's annoyed expression is: good.
He hopes this becomes a chronic source of accumulating mild annoyance for him.
fucker.
The only warning Dabi gets before he knows Shouto is pulling a Danny Phantom and he's getting pulled back into reality, is Shouto's panicked hiss that's louder than the softened dialogue of Fuyumi's KDrama.
Barely hearing Fuyumi's tone of concern or seeing Natsuo glance up from his phone, he zips towards Shouto's room, cutting through walls to reach there faster, ignoring the rush of blood and fear that he's going to end up transforming with half of his body through the living room drywall (oh god, he does NOT need a 'hey step-bro, why are you stuck in a dryer?' but in a wall scenario with a biological brother right now-).
His toes nearly just make it through Shouto's bedroom wall right as the violent tear of the fabric of the universe fractures the fissure melding together his skull, mercilessly dividing every atom bundling whatever the hell creates Dabi and his casting in his unpredictable, two-rate Sci-Fi movie.
His body, heavy and concrete and physical, tumbles onto the floor from where it generated itself in the midair like a Super Smash Bros avatar, his chin scorching across the squeaky floor of Shouto's bedroom.
He groans.
"Shit."
Weakly, he plants his palms against the floor, rolling himself onto his back, only to see Shouto glancing at him with his body dipped through the wall.
"You should hide," Shouto adds, peering over his shoulder, swimming his body back through the drywall. Dabi, through the fuzz of reality clotting his ear like chewed-up lint, is able to hear the muffled shouts of Natsuo and Fuyumi, probably because Shouto suddenly went transparent between the two of them.
He feels like there's definitely a metaphor right there shitting on teenagers and their habit of just disappearing from the house with their Snapchat map turned off.
Staples denting the floor and cutting into his skin, he pushes himself back into his sore knees, and clambers up as quietly as possible. Normally, he rarely cares about the consequences of his own reckless actions (witnesses mean very little when the dead can't talk), but even he doesn't want to play janitor with the fucking mess of killing a two of a pro-hero's spawns, either.
Deciding that locking the bedroom door will only alarm Shouto's siblings, he quietly creaks open the boy's tiny-ass closet door, slipping in, hissing as the hangers smack against his head and the coats catch onto his skin and gangly limbs.
"Seriously? The closet?" Shouto grumbles, enacting as an impromptu nightlight as Dabi crams himself farther into the closet until he reaches Narnia, while dragging the door shut behind him before he shuffles behind old boxes on the floor. The closet itself can barely fit more than three Dabis, but it's enough to at least hide one. Its door that's slit with ventilation and shutters, cast light against the wall of dusty clothes swaying in front of him like choppy curtains designed by a ripoff Sims' game mod. "This is probably the first place anybody would look for an intruder." He grunts.
"It's not like your siblings are looking for an intruder," he hisses.
As he settles in, he hears Shouto's bedroom door slam open, and he goes rigid.
Dabi's suddenly very aware of his own breathing, and even Shouto reflexively smothers his faint complaints, as if he forgot he was invisible to everyone else but Dabi. As footsteps and muttering leaks into the room, Dabi watches as Shouto phases through the closet door, presumably to see what's going on.
Dabi hears a continuing conversation from where he's hidden.
"-houto?"
"He's not here. Did he get kidnapped? Didn't that happen to his classmate once? We should call Dad-"
"No, maybe he just teleported or something. 'Yumi, you're just being paranoid-"
"-he definitely didn't leave for his friends, his phone was left on the couch!-" Dabi grimaces as Fuyumi's tone pitches hysterically. Well. Fuyumi's concerns aren't unwarranted; Shouto really did just unforeseeably dip out of existence right in front of them.
"Does Shouto even have friends?"
"You." A pause (and the silence is loud). "That's not the important thing here-"
"Shit." Shouto sighs, slipping back in, glowing body intersected with clothes, dust, and misery. "...Dabi...we have to tell them." He says, determined. However, his sentence barely sinks into Dabi's throbbing brain as his senses are overloaded with the slightest rustle of the hangers, of the gradual ache of his bent knees. It's only when he hears the rest of the household's residents exiting the room, concluded with the quiet creak of a closing door, does he bother processing Shouto's pleaded command.
Oh.
And if Dabi was not trying to hide from Shouto's siblings like a fucking trespasser (which he always was; he never belonged in this house anyways-), he would've found a shaman to bonk him on the head because bitch, what the fuck?
As if sensing his blatant disagreement, Shouto scowls, adding, "listen. I'm staying here for the whole weekend. You have two more days of playing what? Hide-and-seek with my family? They're going to notice that I keep randomly disappearing. We have to let at least one of them know. If we tell my brother, he'll probably help hide us." Dabi notes how he doesn't include Fuyumi.
Fair.
Fuyumi would automatically snitch on them to Endeavor; Dabi doesn't blame her. He's technically a killer (and he'd be lying if he said he had any moral conflict over his own existence because by this point, he's seriously just going with the flow of wherever his ✨Criminal Core✨ takes him), and even if he wants to argue that once Endeavor gets here he won't be the biggest villain underneath this roof, there's no way she'd accept an IOU from someone with a rap sheet like his.
Clearly trying to persuade him, Shouto boldly uses the tactic of evaluating Natsuo's main flaw, probably in hopes of showing that he's not blinded by his relationship with his siblings, and instead, making a strategic maneuver with exposing their shitty-ass, irl example of a fantasy soulmate trope: "Natsuo's recklessly capricious; trust me when I say that you can believe he won't make a smart nor sane move especially concerning me. You might not believe me, but I'm mean it when I say that he'll keep our secret if he knows I'm asking seriously."
And wow. Friendly fire.
In a fit of insanity where everything's funny to him (and honestly, that's like every second of his living life since his pre-natal existence, excluding the moments when he takes five minutes to suck his soul out of a half-spoiled Gogurt as a little treat for inexplicably surviving this long), he nearly laughs at the thought that being a self-sabotaging unit is a very on brand Todoroki Trait™.
"Listen. Natuso can't use common sense to save his life, because it's clearly god's miracles that are-"
"You can stop." Shouto can pull up a Powerpoint presentation, wild transitions and all, and he still won't change his mind.
Like. Dabi's already known that Natsuo is a ride-or-die booze buddy, being stupidly stubborn, willing to do the littlest of things that could be interpreted as rebelliousness against Enji no matter how irresponsible they may be- he's a very 'live in the moment' sort of guy.
(Though, unlike Shouto, he honestly thinks that Natsuo is definitely less of a wildcard as people would interpret his spontaneously unreasonable decisions to be, and more of a stable source of stupidity; one can always depend on him to make the most irrationally reckless option out of all of the given choices. Being uncontrollably unpredictable is paradoxically a pattern and expected outcome within itself, and Natsuo is reliably and consistently off of his rocker. He would hide Dabi, not just because he knew it'd piss off his dad, but because he would want to. After all, he has a thing for housing wild pets as if they aren't a petri dish of every STI battling to the death in their bloodstream. What's one more straggly and diseased urban rat bastard hiding out in the corners of his house?)
Even so, Dabi mouths "no," to Shouto.
He doesn't want to place himself in a disadvantageous position by outing his vulnerable situation to even more people.
Eraserhead knowing about his predicament is already an unsettling variable that can become a real obstacle in the future. Same with Bakugou, but at least the prepubescent prat feels more restrained by his own age and character- as much of a little shit he is, he's more likely than Eraserhead, who's independent and capable of reaching out to powerful people, to make a move on his own.
"It's better if less people know about our situation," he says, providing a logical reason for his disapproval. He's not going to fully admit to someone who's literally on the opposing side of his whole existence, that the main reason why this shouldn't get out, is because it'd definitely fatally compromise him more than Shouto.
"But Natsuo can help us-" oh god. Whiny.
"It doesn't matter if he would," he impatiently interrupts, hearing everything he has to hear to think that Shouto's just being childish. "What matters is that the smaller the circle of potential gossipers know, the better!"
"He wouldn't gossip." Shouto retorts defensively.
"I don't care if he wouldn't," Dabi leers. "We want to control this situation, and it's easier if less people know. Even if he's not a gossiper, it's true that the only way we can confidently know our situation doesn't get out, is if people don't know anything in the first place." Of course, if Shouto's people know about their situation, it actually might be an advantage for the brat, because he'll have the legitimate backing of other heroes, while Dabi won't have the luxury of any potential lifeline. Sure, could ring up Bossman, but Shigaraki wouldn't sacrifice the rest of the League or their resources to help him if the cons of doing so outweigh the pros, which is an outcome that's more likely to happen than the other way around.
And there's the fact that Dabi just doesn't.
It's just.
It's just a shit idea to let anyone from the darker side of society to know about the helplessness of his situation.
Because just because they're all villains, doesn't mean they're Dabi's allies.
Meanwhile, Shouto's set in terms of support, because heroes are all allies since they're in the same line of work.
Villains, aren't like heroes whose actions are limited and directed by public opinion on what justice should entail; rather, they're less cohesive and have zero guarantee for overlapping similarities amongst one another. What the public tends to forget is that the label 'villain,' is a very vague umbrella term that can usually be defined by anyone who consistently attends to illegal activity and uses it to sustain their lifestyle.
Meaning that unlike Shouto, he has no real reliable support if shit hits the fan. The League and perhaps a few villains might be on his side (and that's a hard 'might'), but ultimately they can't compete with a hero, a title backed by a legitimate career. A villain can be anyone whose activity ranges from hardcore drug-dealing to murder, but the specifics of a hero is an actual job description, so everyone in the same line of work at least has to share the same goal, image, and morals on a surface-level viewpoint. A rising hero is supported by the public, legal organizations, and other quirk-using coworkers, while Dabi is on his fucking own. Being a hero isn't a personality trait. In this society, it's a political image and a financial livelihood.
A villain however, can choose to be one of those things, or even all three. There's no obligation to being a villain, and there's no limitations, either.
Honestly, it's not even the inconsistencies amongst villains' loyalties that matter much to him; it's the fact that Shouto is a hero. Because as long as he's one, Shouto will always have the upperhand; and Dabi, while he has the self-preservation skills of a sensorally challenged cockroach, he really can't afford to make shit harder for himself, so he's really trying to pull through with smart decision-making skills for the sake of his own mental health.
"Natsuo is a normal citizen. He doesn't have strong ties with heroes. He's not someone you have to be wary about," Shouto snaps. "I. I don't want my siblings to worry." And he's doing that stupid thing where he unintentionally guilttrips you with his typical blank countenance and equally flat tone, both of those qualities making the expressive implications of his words somehow more genuine.
However, Dabi has faced people who's pled for their lives at his feet without flinching, therefore, rather than feeling a remote salt granule of vague understanding towards Shouto's position, he only gives him an incredulous glare. "And you think letting them know that your life is seesawing with the fabrics of space and time with a serial killer is going to lessen their concerns?"
"I think I can't cover you for the whole weekend without getting found out," Shouto retaliates hotly. "I don't want to let them know about you either, but the problem is that I genuinely don't think I can hide you."
"You don't gotta worry about that." He gives a thumbs-up, before pulling it back as Shouto glares at it as if he's going to eat his thumb if he stares at it for a second longer. "If your brother finds out, then we'll deal with that when it happens. For now, let's just shut up about it," he suggests flippantly.
If shit gets out about him being tied with Shouto, not only will things get unnecessarily complicated, but Dabi might actually be in seriously hot water. Even moreso than when he engages in life-or-death encounters in battles.
The main issue is that he can't fight his way out of certain shit while as a ghost, but Shouto can do whatever he wants while he's like that. There's no way the heroes won't take advantage of their unstable situation, a situation that can be influenced by Shouto, who on all pretenses should be on their side, and therefore help them exploit Dabi's vulnerability.
He and Dabi might have the same issue, but the heroes can compensate for any weaknesses on Shouto's behalf, while Dabi only has himself. And for a 'lone-wolf,' Dabi is not very independent. Like. He is the most inefficient Urban Dictionary definition of 'ostracized Hot Topic child.'
Yeah. So he has to start apocalypse-prepping right now before things really get out of hand.
"Why can't you just lock me in this room?" Dabi suggests, realizing that he has to seriously persuade Shouto or else that brat will just do whatever he wants when he regains a physical form. It's not like he has any reason to be considerate of Dabi's situation, meaning Dabi has to sugarcoat his solution to convince him it's better than his plan fitted for an act by the Cirque du Soleil. "And later tell your siblings that you got hit by a quirk that causes you to randomly teleport to...I don't know. One of your classmates? You don't have to mention me in particular- it'd cause more trouble for the both of us. If your sister finds out, she'll never rest easy from what I can tell, and your brother, while he will hide things for us, if we can take a more precautious way out, we should. Your teacher definitely wouldn't want more people knowing about us, after all," he says that last part with total confidence.
Eraserhead really looks like he'd rather not deal with all of this shit. Like. He literally looked like he was going to shit himself if Shouto said just one more thing- one more.
The twerp makes a noise of displeasure. "...you're so. God. You're so paranoid, it's just my brother who doesn't even care about the hero world!"
"People can usually go about their lives not caring about heroes. Villains are usually a different story," because people tend to pay more attention to dangers, therefore taking for granted their current state of safety. "And I'm kind of a big deal." He continues slowly, startled when he's interrupted in the middle of his WikiHow explanation (because Shouto can't make appropriate conclusions on his own without being hand-held, clearly-).
"Wow. You killed so many people. Hur-dur, you're a serial killer-"
"I never thought I'd hear you say 'hur-dur'," and the jarring, cultural impact of this shot Dabi in the fucking face, due to how contradictingly in and out of character it was, since while it was spoken with a painfully blunt and viscously straight-face, it's simply just juxtaposingly illegal going off of context and the speaker's character himself.
"-wow I've killed so many people!" And he doesn't know how Shouto manages to just implicate an exclamation point (and he knows Shouto included one, probably because of his innate comprehension of emotionally constipated peoples' methods of expression) while having the intonation of Siri's cousin who was locked in the basement for the past eleven years with Demi Lovato's sister. "Not a flex."
"I just said I wasn't." Dabi kisses his tongue, frustrated. "It's just you can't tell people who I am, since as you've perceptively mentioned, I am an active serial killer! And I don't know what's up with you," and Dabi does know actually: trauma, "but most people would have a harder time digesting that. It's surprising, I know. It's just how mentally stable people feel." He releases a broiling sigh when he finally shuts Shouto up with logic, and immediately moves on because they have bigger fish to fry (and god, he hates fish, and he hates problems-). "Listen. You're thinking of short-term relief. Trying to stop news from getting out is a lot harder than not putting it out there in the first place."
"You're very pessimistic." Shouto comments flatly, as if Dabi isn't dragging onto the table very sound logic.
"Fuck you. It's not like I'm not sacrificing my own sense of comfort by refusing to ask for outside help. I'm the one who's going to have to be trapped in a goddamn closet for the rest of the week." He pinches away a sneeze as dust tickles his nose. "God. Reminds me of my teenage years," he leers absent-mindedly.
"Oh. That's me right now." Ah. Looks like Endeavor certainly hasn't gotten more creative with his disciplinary methods over the years. Most people live and learn; Endeavor clearly just lives. "I'm not straight either," Shouto finishes.
Dabi squints at that, confused by the sudden proclamation that he's never asked for or related to.
As he takes another full minute to play hacky-sack with his braincell between him and Shouto, the pouch finally makes it into the hole- "oh wait." He makes eye contact with Shouto: "mmmmm. So. Yeah. No. I was talking about how my old man used to lock me in my unventilated closet for days if I misbehaved."
They both stare at each other, the braincell completely forgone, tossed, abandoned, and probably making its way back to Fuyumi, who's the only person underneath this godforesaken roof who has an atom of appropriate comprehension skills.
"I feel like you just said something really concerning right now." Shouto unnecessarily comments.
"As if you have the qualifications to judge." Dabi retorts, reminding Shouto that he's literally sat through an entire Fuyumi Todoroki character arc where she had an episodic revelation of trauma that'll surely last for a week before the entire family glosses over it like nothing's wrong.
"Can we pretend like I didn't say anything?" Shouto finally asks, tone mildly strained.
"Awe. What? Did you think that I don't already do that?" Dabi says blandly, massaging out the ache in his bent knee.
However, Shouto is still just watching him, face contorted like he drank too much of his weekly stomach acid.
For a moment, if Dabi didn't know better, he'd take his disturbed expression as one of worry.
"Why would you care about your sexuality?" And no way Shouto actually cares. "Shouldn't the fact that I know too much about your family be more of a problem?"
"My family is a problem." Is all Shouto says to that, and well. Dabi guesses that that's that. "Also. I don't care about your opinion. It's very hard to do so when you have no qualifications for basic human rights."
"First off, we're minorities, we already don't have basic human rights." He immediately interjects.
"Why are you being so difficult-"
"You're the one who wants to tell everyone about our intimate relationship!"
"Say it like that again I'll make it intimate by kissing your face with my fist."
"What are you? A jock from an American nineties suburban high school movie?"
"A what?"
"You know. Like. Those films." He gnaws against his tough lip. "The Breakfast Club? Those particularly sketchy ones where they reflect their times as well as their period-based lack of knowledge on safe sex?" A pause. "And mental illness, I guess."
"I just." Shouto looks peculiarly flabbergasted by his rather straightforward example and analysis. "Why are you like this? What brought this on? What the heck is...breck-fes kurab?"
He clicks his tongue. And damn. Dabi hasn't touched English in years after he escaped the grasp of Duolingo (and Enji, he guesses), and yet he comes back to see that Shouto is slacking? And whatever happened to equality underneath this household?
Shouto definitely was never grounded for hours at the dinner table past 10pm trying to spell a whole sentence with a thick-ass pencil that's barely making a mark on a tear-stained worksheet while his dad was screaming at him from behind asking why he can't understand a simple sentence.
"Breakfast Club is a movie about like an offbrand Scooby Doo gang who made out a couple times." He frowns. "Or maybe I watched the rip-off version. But how dare you ask why am I like this?" Dabi snorts dully. "You're the one who looked like you were going to shit your transparent pants because I found out you weren't straight."
This time, it's Shouto who's staring at him like he's stupid, which is utterly offensive especially since it's coming from him. "I wasn't- that wasn't what I was." He groans out an exasperated and overly dramatic sigh that tells Dabi that Shouto would be a great Disney channel child actor. "That wasn't it." Dabi inclines his head, nearly fucking braining his skull against the sharp plastic drawer he's shoved up against. "I just felt. I just felt if you really want to, let's go with your plan." He snaps, and Dabi blinks, taking a moment to try and reason what the hell he's talking about. Oh. "We can lock my room and keep you here. I'll just." He combs his translucent fingers through his hair, and Dabi glances in amusement at his greyscaled figure that looks babypowdered to the high heavens. The red part of his hair looks like off-branded white in comparison to its paper-white counterpart. Like ash right next to snow. "I'll just make something up. That I got hit with a quirk that randomly teleports me to places for an unforeseeable amount of time."
He glares at Dabi, glancing up from where he was glowering at the boxes by Dabi's knees crunched up to his chest. "But the moment things go to shit, I'm telling them in any way possible."
Dabi looks at him, amused. It's clear that the two of them have disastrously low standards as to what's considered "fine" before either of them decide that they probably need a responsible adult and functionable healthcare at hand.
In other words, things are in his favour.
"Deal."
Bakugou stares at his phone. And squints.
He has absolutely no fucking idea how Todoroki, that half-Brazilian waxed overgrown Elmo, got his number.
Then again, he has no idea how literally any of his other classmates got his number, past Kirishima who he unwillingly relented into confiding, because it was either that, or his school email continues to end up clogged with fifty Minecraft YouTube walkthrough links from that bastard who definitely as a kid had hotwired his brain to a Razor scooter.
Last thing he needs is to be called down by the secretary again, to receive another warning to not inappropriately use the school online domains or services, as if he fucking asked Kirishima to randomly send him indescribable links that he never asked for.
So yeah.
Only Kirishima should have his number.
His thumb hovers over the 'block' option of fucking Todoroki's unsaved number on his phone.
But. But. Todoroki also didn't say anything for the past five minutes. Which, absolutely good-fucking-riddance, but also, concerning, given that he was in the middle of telling Bakugou what's going on between him and Dabi like Bakugou is his goddamn therapist when Bakugou is barely qualified to acknowledge peoples' emotions on a good day.
That pissboy didn't even finish his story. Something about Buzzfeed, bread, and ricecake?
He glances at his phone.
Something must've happened.
Because Albino Clifford here is an absolute force of nature that relentlessly pursues being a public disturbance for everyone who's spared him more than a single ounce of positive attention that his father has given him his whole life, and while Bakugou isn't entirely sure how he ended up being an involuntary affection donor (probably since he listened to him spout nonsense about having a questionably parasitic relationship with Dabi for the past day, when Bakugou didn't want to know jack shit if it meant he had to deal with Todoroki's emotional consequences in this manner-), Bakugou knows that Todoroki wouldn't have just randomly stopped telling his story midway.
He looks at his phone once more.
Well.
He snorts, and pockets his phone.
Not his problem.
Natsuo doesn't have major expectations for life, including all the puzzle pieces that make the bigger picture, the deeper implications of 'Live Love Laugh' decor, the larger meaning of death conveyed through overly saturated Instagram posts with their matching hippie caption, or the absolutely scuffed graffiti messages left as prophecies translated from a forgotten Old Testament on abandoned subway walls.
But most of all, he didn't have major expectations for his family.
Which is why his entire heartbeat stuttered the moment he was trying to herd the population of wildlife he's acquainted with in his backyard to create a search party for his missing baby brother, only for Shouto to randomly appear behind him while he was in the middle with arguing with Sandy the Squirrel v.4.0 about how he knows which side of Shouto's face the scar is on, because he's not like Firelord Ozai who can't be bothered to tell his left from right on their family member's traumatic memento.
"Shouto?" He chokes, ignoring the way that Sandy 4.0 pisses on his flipflopped feet out of anger.
To the side, Ginko chitters scornfully, probably for wasting her time. Or because she's a raccoon, and all raccoons were bitches in their past and present life.
"Hey." Shouto listlessly waves. A pause. "Shouto here."
Natsuo scoops up a clump of dirt, and flings it into Shouto's face.
"...you just. Randomly teleport?" Fuyumi's face twists in displeasure.
"Damn." Natsuo mumbles, unable to clear the envy in his tone. "Free travelling." Shouto can just do it without caring for passport or transportation problems. Though, he could probably accidentally bring over like eighty new diseases and five new invasive insects to some remote area if fate so willingly decides to drag him there, but still.
"What if you just teleport into the middle of the ocean or something?" Fuyumi's hands are shaking, and at this concern, Natsuo sits a bit upright.
Shouto, to his credit, appears utterly unbothered by this potential predicament, and instead, is more focused on flipping through a tween's magazine to finish the quiz as to what type of best friend he is.
"No. I always teleport to someone I know. Like. By their side," he reassures. "Sometimes we'll...do a little switcheroo," Natsuo's browline arches at that (and he doesn't know if Shouto's WonderBread vocabularly is worse than whatever this middle-age white woman dictionary is), "or some displacement." Then, he freezes, words abruptly cutting short. Fuyumi stiffens, and Natsuo's eyes flicker to where Shouto's gaze is intensely fixated at.
Shouto, to his credit, tries to slam glossy and stapled together pieces of paper as hard as he can.
The magazine awkwardly smacks him back in the face as retribution.
"So. What type of best friend did you get?" Natsuo finally asks when Shouto continues to stare emptily at his hands.
"...it said I didn't have friends."
"You got the joke answer that's not meant to actually be received by anyone unless if someone purposefully aims for it?" Natsuo gapes, unsuccessful in his endeavor to suppress the astonished amusement in his tone. To be fair, he's not trying real hard in the first place. "...I'm sorry."
"No you're not." Shouto deadpans, passive tone pinched with accusation.
"Either way," Fuyumi clears her throat, tone strained with stress. "Shouto! Why didn't you tell us about your problem?"
"Didn't want to worry you," Shouto lies through his teeth. He sees the way Fuyumi looks less hurt, and more offended that Shouto would believe she'd just take his blatantly bad lie at face value. Then again, Shouto's a notoriously effortless liar. 'Effortless' not because lying comes so easily to him, but instead, because he literally doesn't bother trying, and it shows: that the clear obviousness of his lie is just straight-up direspectful instead of bad.
It's mostly because Shouto's perception of rebellion doesn't even include trickery or denial: he just straight up says 'no,' and if he's too lazy to deal with the backlash, he monotonously gives a crapshoot and obvious excuse or fib. And honestly, this method unintentionally angers Enji more than Natsuo's discreet trickery. Then again, Shouto was always a natural prodigy at everything he does; such as pissing off Enji. Natsuo's almost jealous.
"Real reason?" Fuyumi demands wanly, cutting through the bullshit.
"...felt like too much work to explain." Shouto admits shamelessly. "When is dad coming home?" He asks, clearly unperturbed by his siblings' distress, enough to ditch the conversation as it is with little to no conclusion.
"He's coming home in around twenty minutes," Fuyumi relents after giving Shouto a hard, observatory lookover. "Or earlier," she reiterates with a sigh, glancing at the living room clock. "Shouto, you have to tell him about this."
"Mm," Shouto responds with an amicable tone, which tells Natsuo that he certainly will not be filling their dear old dad in about his space and time predicament.
Fuyumi, who while does not have the same instinctive intuition that Natsuo has (but to be fair, he considers himself to be the 1% of the Japanese population who can probably last five minutes into the apocalypse), is still someone who grew up as a replacement mom for Shouto the best way any dysfunctional fourteen-year-old who has no frame of reference for parental love possibly could. So even she could pick up on Shouto's shiftiness that's almost unnoticeable given his normally unexpressive demeanor.
"...you're not telling us something, aren't you?" Fuyumi squints.
Shouto, who fears no god much less any authoritative figure, stares her straight back in the eyes. "No." He blatantly lies through his teeth.
"Is it dangerous?"
A pause.
"He's definitely dangerous." He finally concedes, and Natsuo leans forward, interested. And if Shouto is willing to tell them something after just lying about it, it can't be something clear-cut or good. "Yeah. He'd kill someone."
"Who's he?" Natsuo cackles, laughing as Fuyumi simply looks more and more distraught.
Shouto doesn't respond to that, and ignores Natsuo in favour of gathering Sandals into his arms. Brat.
"It'll be fine," Shouto finally states firmly as Sandals happily gnaws on his forearm, and because he has no respect for his elders like the little shit he is, he's now digging the television remote out of the couch cushions as if he's the decisive voice as to whether or not this conversation is over.
Fuyumi looks over at Natsuo with a helpless expression.
However, Natsuo, who always embodied "careless estranged uncle who reappears only for large-scaled family dinners while responding with 'war criminal' to any questions about his evasive background and missing twenty years of his life," is way less concerned about Shouto's distressing behaviour.
"When are you guys picking up mom?" Shouto asks, eyes never leaving the screen as he flicks through Food Network.
"Dad said he'll check her out for the weekend," Fuyumi mumbles, digging her phone out of her back pocket. She glances at the notification screen, and adds: "yeah, he already picked her up."
"And she's letting him?" Natsuo scornfully sneers, ignoring the way that Fuyumi looks over with obvious disdain. She can kiss-ass with Enji or mom, it's not like he's stopping her; if she wants to play delusional dollhouse with Enji, then that's her choice, the same way his reaction is his. "I'm going to my room," he mumbles, any humour he found in his baby brother dissipated by the reminder of the rest of his family (and it's hilarious- the living family member that he knows the least about, the one that he feels the most estranged to simply due to their age differences and how they grew up, is the only one that he pisses him off the least these days-).
He marches down the hallway leading to all their bedrooms, his stomps faltering by a blank door.
He peers in.
It's so empty.
But unlike his room that gathered a thin layer of dust since his departure to college-
The hardwood floors are clean, relative to the dust clinging onto the patchwork bedsheets with cowboy hats; relative to the eggshell white walls textured with cobwebs that are just as abandoned as this room.
The desk is empty (he doesn't remember how it was filled, anyways).
Emptied of one's existence not because someone chose to clean it out-
But empty because Touya never grew into a character that had enough individuality to leave imprints of himself in even his own life.
(cant clean whats not there)
He steps across the floorboards, the ones patching near the middle always creaking underneath his weight.
And only the floor is clean, because of how often people step across it (and Fuyumi whispers to him, about how her father religiously and daily walks the same path that Natsuo does each time he comes home, but Natsuo really can't give a shit about what Enji does-), and knocks on the large doors of Touya's old wardrobe.
Touya always hated this stupid thing. This stupid little wardrobe that 'Yumi told him used to be Touya's little punishment box.
Seems only fitting that their dad built Touya's shrine in it.
Natsuo presses a dry palm against the door, hesitating. "Hey. Touya." Touya? And he doesn't remember Touya well past that he was a real asshole even as a kid (but there was a sense of solidarity between them, cemented through their resentment for their dad. Cemented through poorly dubbed western movies, cemented through their old love for football). "Nice to be back."
A pause.
"Yeah, no shit I was being sarcastic," he mutters. And it should be a bit awkward, a bit unnatural how he communicates with nothing but a projected belief of who he believes Touya to be (and he'd like to think that Touya was a nice person underneath all that trauma and questionable coping mechanisms. Someone nice enough for him to laugh with, someone who fought on his side against their dad not just because they had a common enemy, but because they had a bond deeper than that. He used to pray, but now he just wishes). "Dad's 'boutta be back. Bet he'll like. I don't know. Pray for you again. Try and summon you and like ask you for forgiveness because he's doing that whole 'character development arc' you know," he grunts.
A draft flows in from the jammed bedroom window, the frame scuffed and lock jimmied from rebellious tween nights and sibling gatherings underneath its outside ledge as they run to the nearby drugstore.
"Shouto grew up nicely, you know," he clears his throat. "He grew up into someone a lot like you- like us," he tacks on the ending pathetically. And god, does he want to scrabble and take any opportunity to reassure himself that he and Touya had similarities (a connection-). "You know. A rebellious little shit who realized that it's not worth trying to get a sliver of affection from Dad." And they were so pathetic.
Him, the most.
Who felt simultaneously resentful yet worried for someone like Touya, Touya who grew up as a quiet child (and Natsuo can't remember when his personality did a 180- he can't really remember much about Touya in general, after all), Touya, someone who his dad obsessed over.
It's shameful, how envious he had felt in spite of knowing the consequences of being the target of Enji's fixated affection.
Really, a dad had them all fighting for scraps of his validation and love, his mom not excluded (the concept of loving each other was lost on all of them). The idea that they could've loved each other was unthought of: they were unable to see each other as anything but competition for Enji's attention. Even Fuyumi, who later grew up coddling Shouto with as much as care as she possibly could, was always too uncertain; too reclusive to try and reach someone who was as angry as Touya, too meek to know how to calm down Natsuo's tantrums. She knew their dad was the solution, the skeleton key (the problem) to fixing their family. To her, if their dad was a good dad, then everything else would fall into place.
Because of that, even Fuyumi cared more about their father's affection than her siblings.
"It's okay," he imagines Touya to say, as if Touya would know his thoughts.
The real Touya would never say that. The real Touya would either laugh at him, or scream. Or at least the real Teenage Touya.
The Child Touya, who was just as pitiful but much more likeable (and Natsuo feels gross, like he betrayed Touya's existence and character through this awful yet unshakeable belief), probably would've told him to not feel bad about it.
"I think you'd get along with Shouto." He finally swallows the suffocating sense of nausea clogging his throat. "I miss you," he awkwardly mumbles (and the concept of loving each other was lost on all of them). And what he said was true. He misses the idea of Touya, he regrets not having more than just fuzzy memories and an outlined concept of who his older brother was or could've been. He'd like to think that's love, but he doesn't know if it is. "Bye." He clears his throat, pivoting on the heels of his indoor flippers, eyes darting away from the wardrobe.
The middle of the floor dips and groans, and the draft continues to wheeze in.
(natsuo knows that he loves touya. he just hates that touya died before either of them could figure that out.)
"...your brother. He kept talking about Touya."
"And what about it?" Todoroki stiffens, remembering his conversation with Fuyumi back while they were prepping dinner. Touya. It's weird, thinking about how Dabi out of everyone, is the one who's had the farthest peek into the Todoroki household's secrets.
Dabi however, is wearing a strange look. There's something akin to morbid amusement rearranging his awful face. "Nothing. It's just ironic," his voice creaks out in a lilt, as he continues floating above the katsudon, ignoring the way that Elbow keeps gazing at his position, as if she could see him. "It's really funny. You'd laugh too, if you knew." Dabi hums, indulging in his cat's attention, reaching over and freaking out Elbow who bristles at his approaching proximity.
Todoroki scowls as Elbow leaps off the table, hissing, squirming her way underneath his arm.
Dabi cackles at her reaction.
"Stop harassing the animals." He snaps, annoyed that he keeps freaking out not just Elbow or Sandals, but also the backyard animals that keep magnetizing near their windows because they're aware that Natsuo, their personal scrap feeder, is home.
Because crows are absolutely emo and can probably sense their own kind, Tom(ahawk), Natsuo's personal Hedwig with a kleptomania problem, refuses to stop staring at Dabi's general position, puffing up her body whenever Dabi flies through the sky. And while it's an understandable response, it's getting tiring trying to focus on a dismembered corpse of the drama he's watching, while listening to Tom screech from his side because Dabi decided to do downwards dog in the middle of the living room ceiling.
"I'm not harassing them," Dabi lies like the absolute villain he is. "They're just cowards."
"You're a floating human whose bottom half of the body is glitching through the coffee table that they can directly stand on. You being an anomaly to the laws of the reality that they know and live in, is at the very least, worth a doubletake." Todoroki dryly retorts, flinching as Elbow fights his way out of his arms, bitten and scrappy ears flattening at the sight of Dabi who's coming closer.
Sandals lifts her head, snout pointing at Jerry the Raccoon (who Todoroki stopped trying to chase out of the house, since he's learned that everytime he trebucheted her out the window, he'd coincidentally find another pellet of shit on his bedroom rug the next time she broke her way in through Sandals' doggy door). At least Sandals is quiet; she's too dumb to perceive Dabi's presence, unlike every other animal here including the wasp that flew in earlier.
"You having daddy issues and your dad being the Number One hero that contradicts the image and concept of a hero in the society that we know and live in, is also worth a doubletake," Dabi shrugs. "You haven't heard me rubbing it in your face, though."
Todoroki stiffens, uncomfortable by the truth in his words: Dabi really hadn't mentioned anything about Endeavor. It's weird, in retrospect, how quiet Dabi was after the inferred bad blood between him and his pro-hero of a dad (and wait until Dabi knows exactly how awful Endeavor was to the rest of his family, how he essentially drove their mom insane and killed his firstborn son; Todoroki is sure he'll have a field day with that).
Actually, he's starting to learn that Dabi...Dabi doesn't seem like a real person with the way that he feels scarily disconnected from reality. He's either so reclusive or just so unimpressionable that he feels like nothing more than a supposed list of traits shoved into a malfunctioning human body.
Todoroki thought him to be a sadistic psychopath, which he is, but not once has he gotten a glimpse of that alleged character; he hasn't really seen much of anything but indifference and irritation from this man. Dabi rarely makes small-talk even after prompted, and lacks any real imprint of the world around him and him in the world. He's not invasive at all despite his advantageous situation, and even people as unsociable or shy as Shinsou, Bakugou, and Koji, all of them at the very least, through their limited interactions with others and short replies, have very distinct mannerisms, but Dabi doesn't.
Dabi doesn't even seem remotely interested in anything around him past things that he draws entertainment from, such as making fun of Todoroki (but even so, why does he not use Endeavor as ammunition for mockery? His criteria of humour is just as inexplicable as his personality). Dabi, being a human, a species who's self-perception is largely mirrored off of their interactions with others, feels very two-dimensional.
Todoroki doesn't like being made aware of this, though; it makes him feel like Dabi is just a mimicry of what he thinks a human should be.
It also makes it sound like Dabi's doing him a favour by avoiding controversial topics or any reflection of Todoroki's personal life, when he knows it's nothing but Dabi's eerily shallow character.
"Yeah." He finally speaks up when he realizes he hasn't replied to Dabi, too caught up in his weird and undeserved deepdive of trying to dissect the very little character that Dabi has. "So? It's not like I'd care what an outsider says about my family problems in the first place. There's a reason why none of us take joint family therapy," he snorts.
Dabi rolls his eyes. "As if that would work. If you guys did attend a family shrink, your father will finally learn talk things out instead of beating them out, good for you." Todoroki hates that he almost laughed at that. "Change the channel." Dabi gestures towards the television screen, doing a backflip in midair. "This drama is boring."
"No, I wanna know who the killer is." Todoroki sneers. Actually, he's not that invested either.
He just doesn't want to change the channel now that Dabi had brought it up first.
"It's the cousin," Dabi scoffs.
"You don't know that."
Dabi's unconscious bobbing pauses, and he swivels in the air, body cutting through the kotatsu as he stares with condescending judgment. "Yes I do." He squints slightly, as if in disbelief. "I am literally a killer. This is my profession- no, actually, you-" he scowls, as if Todoroki is being difficultly incompetent, "reviewing and analyzing figures of questionable moral grounds to see if they have what it takes is my profession, there's a reason why I'm the filter for the League's recruits."
"No wonder your League members are all weird." Todoroki can't believe he's joking about the League. Well. Here he is.
"Hey. I didn't recruit the originals- Toga, you know Toga?"
"The blonde girl?"
"Yeah. The one whose brain is made out of half-eaten Play-Doh? Yeah. I didn't pick her, that was on Boss'man." Dabi scoffs scathingly. "The cousin is the killer." He mumbles confidently.
"...you don't know that," Todoroki repeats indifferently, inwardly smirking as he sees Dabi toss him a disdainful expression.
"Just wait. You'll see." Dabi finally gives a dreary sigh, his wry body curling like a nuked shrimp on the table that he's floating above of.
"...the cousin wasn't the killer."
"Shut up."
"About what? That the cousin wasn't the killer?" Todoroki says smugly. "All this talk as a professional psychopath profilier, and the cousin turned out to really be nothing more than an innocent noodle vendor." He stretches, loosening his muscles as he sinks into the couch. "...no wonder the League is so understaffed if you're the filter for recruits."
"...the cousin would've been a better killer. They just pinned it onto the mom to make things more dramatic and as an emotional plottwist for the main character, when really, it falls flat due to the lack of logic of her being a killer." Dabi says, miffed, glaring at the television as if it has personally offended him.
"Okay, CinemaSins," Todoroki scoffs. "What do you wan-"
The sound of the front door creaking open interrupts his thought.
Ah.
He shuts off the television.
He glances at the hallway to his front door, and smiles wainly. "Hi mom," he greets, ignoring the figure right behind her.
"Shouto, it's been so long-" Rei takes a step forward, only to halt, arms raised. "Is the kotatsu malfunctioning?" She asks, tone strained, eyes widening, and Todoroki twists around, and freezes.
On the top of the kotatsu, Dabi stares back, wisps of smoke curling between the gaps of his staples, the fissures of his burns. And Dabi was fine just seconds ago, why does he have to be so dramatic? Is it over a television drama?
Todoroki clicks his tongue, thinking about how Fuyumi thought he vaped because of Dabi's inability to not try and set off their fire alarm every once in a while. "It's nothing, I'll check," he finally replies, not even bothering to glance back at his mom as he storms over to the living room, Elbow scattering across his legs in obvious panic, while Tom is cawing, flying circles around Dabi's head.
"What are you doing?" Todoroki grits out of his teeth, glaring at Dabi. And Dabi doesn't look like he was losing the way that he was back in Touya's room-
Rather, his gaze is clear of emotions, almost sharp with them instead. There's something tense in the crinkles in the corner of his eyes, near the clench of his jaw. "Dabi!" He hisses, his hackles rising as he hears his dad start yelling in the background, clearly distraught about the fact that there's smoke rising from their furniture.
"What?" Dabi snaps loudly in return, eyes drilled over Todoroki's shoulders, stapled onto the view behind him.
"You're smogging up the living room!" And is it-
He follows Dabi's line of vision. Is it because of his dad? It's the only explanation Todoroki can believe to have sound logic, after all.
Dabi's wiry shoulders jerk up to his withered earlobes, his skewed expression contorting even farther. "Good."
And before Todoroki, exasperated and irritated (because at the very least, can't they cooperate since they share the same problem-), Dabi vanishes.
As a form of a delayed reaction, he jerkily recoils, blinking fast, staring through the thin mist that stings his eyes (and it's weird, how something intangible and not really a part of the materialistic dimension that Todoroki walks in while he's not a ghost himself, can produce matter that other humans can see, that can burn his eyes and clot his airway).
"Is the problem fixed?" He hears his dad asking from the background.
Numbly, Todoroki realizes his father must've been calling for him for a while, now.
"...yeah." He replies shortly, staring at the smoke that's beginning to fade, now that the source of it is gone.
He glances around.
Tom flutters, flapping and landing on the kotatsu. He hears his father exhale loudly, clearly restraining himself from telling off Natsuo for turning his house into a daycare center for feral animals who ocassionally tear through all of the raw meat in their freezer.
Jerry lowers her head, no longer interested in her surroundings, and now, more focused in trying to burrito their rug for safe keeping and easy stealing.
Elbow hesitantly slinks out from between his legs, batting at the remaining smoke that curls into nothingness.
None of them are pointedly glancing in one area.
Meaning Dabi isn't in their vicinity anymore.
He swallows, and turns around to seek his mom to properly finish their greeting, though, his mind is creaking.
Dabi just. Vanished. And as ghosts, it's not hard for them to escape even each others' line of sight; but Dabi was right in front of him and he just disappeared. Shouto hasn't done something like that before, and he didn't see Dabi fly out of the house- he simply blinked out of existence.
Well.
It's not like either of them really know what quirk they were hit with in the first place; it really shouldn't be that unexpected for it to have certain aspects that neither of them were originally aware of.
He uneasily glances around him.
Maybe Dabi is just invisible, even to him and the animals?
As his mom hugs him and pats his back, her plastic hospital bracelet catching onto his shirt, he uncomfortably ruffles her dry hair, letting his arms fall to his side. She steps away, and he takes this moment to whisper as she returns to her husband's side: "Dabi?"
No answer.
He glances at his dad who's staring at him weirdly, probably because he's been glancing around him dazedly rather than glaring at him deadpannedly from his peripheral vision as he usually does like they're the cast of The Office. Forcing himself to act normal, he follows his parents to their dining room.
And as Fuyumi cheerily talks to their mom, trying to drag one of her brothers or their dad into conversation, and as Natsuo excuses himself to return to his room after stonily finishing his meal, all Todoroki can think of as he shovels another wad of sticky rice into his mouth, is that if Dabi truly has the upperhand against him, being a step ahead in their shared delusion, then that means this situation is a lot more dangerous than he initially thought. This isn't involuntary companionship if there's a possible advantage for one side at the end of their shared time- it's a competition, if that's the case.
He sets his chopsticks down.
Well.
Fuck.
"What." Dabi begins. "The fuck." He finishes, voice cracking as his eyes stare long enough at his surroundings (which is nothing).
Nothing responds to him.
Fair enough.
His breathing uncomfortably hitches, stuttering in his throat.
And a morbid whine thins through his ear, flossing through his brain like piano wire, and to his distant horror, he realizes that it's from him. That high-strung and wispy noise is coming out of his mouth out of all things-
His eyes flit around him, but once again, it's nothing but black.
Except for the thin capillaries that are stark white in the timeless eye of the blackhole that he's standing in, there's nothing. The white veins run above him, like rivets of paint against 2D blackness (and it's too dark for there to be any shading, any implication of walls or ceilings or even a floor that he's standing on-), like roots.
Like there are white roots burrowed in the darkness above him.
For a ghost, he's too aware of his body, of his breathing, of his heartbeat and clammy skin and pinched nerves (and he's a ghost so it's not like he can feel those things but he can. He can hear a rush of blood flushing out of his ears, like he's a functioning ecosystem and not a portrayal of the undead-).
He curls in on himself.
One moment, he was glaring at Rei, her sudden appearance buzzing his bloodstream and dragging claws against the smooth and unthinking of his brain (and there's Enji, good ol' Enji. He should've aimed harder and faster the last time he ran into him), and the next, he found himself here.
Hesitantly, he unfolds his crunched body, and begins to walk.
As if there's anything around him.
For a delirious moment, he reminds himself of that old game he used to play with one of the neighbourhood kids he would occasionally run into; that Slenderman game on their old iPad. In the forest with a limited first-person view, seeing really nothing but decay and abandoned lands.
Here, there's nothing.
He thinks about Shouto.
Awe, fuck. For a moment, he wishes to see him again. Yeah. Well, it's not like Dabi has a lotta pride to cling onto; dignity doesn't save you or gather scraps on the table. So fuck yeah, he'll crack a beg with his fried voice to have someone else right next to him.
He thinks about Shouto's extremely punchable face, and craves to see it if it means he can leave. He can't even hear his own breathing anymore (and oh god, he can't hear anything, can't feel and can't- he can't- because he's a fucking ghost or something whose guts can go through solid matter no shit he can't hear his own existence-), and he's-
Dabi gags, the noise lost in the vacuum of nothing around him, and he wishes he was in the fucking living room he despised for most his childhood, and wishes he was watching some stupid serial killer drama with Shouto bitching about it again and again and again as irony and trepidating doom slowly fills the living room-
He's not even floating.
He can't feel the floor beneath him (then again, he can't see it, either), and yet he's trudging along.
Then, the white roots are beneath his feet.
He blinks, as if his vision was blurry when it's not like he can be physiologically shaken since he has no body to function. He wonders when the white roots, when the dendritic branches of pulsating neurons have cracked the inky space beneath his boots.
The white aggregates like a tumor, before molding itself like clay into a humanoid figure.
Oh. Okay. Guess this is happening now.
Near the head, the white caves in, like a hole, and rows of teeth sprout from its matter.
Suddenly, it takes shape in the form of details; the humanoid figurine clumsily carves clothes onto its body, and strands of hair split from its pale forehead.
Eyes peer back at him, unseeing and dull.
And then-
An echo.
Dabi jolts at the suddenness of sound, of a sense that was lost to him (and how do you describe and understand the complete and utter loss of a sensation? The emptiness it leaves, he could barely comprehend it, and the return of it shatters something in him).
"How did you get here?" A discombobulated voice rattles the depths of his ears, the mouth of the figurine syncing to the words that don't seem to rattle from the figure, yet, clearly, are their words.
"Huh?" Dabi croaks, absently astonished that he can suddenly hear his own voice.
"You don't belong here." And it's not a distinctly feminine or masculine voice talking to him; if anything, it sounds off. Like both the voices of a male and female entwined into a distorted melody, interrupted by their lack of rhythm yet tied by the harmony of their negative tones.
"No shit," he mutters, syllables rattling as he stares uneasily at the sentient being watching his every move. It hasn't shifted once, its blobs of feet still melted into white streams, bifurcation of its ownself that stretches for miles around them. Like. Like mold. Like a channel, an entire network of cells and life pulsating around Dabi.
He wants to vomit.
"You're a regular mortal. How did you cross dimensions? You should not know that layers outside of realities exist, especially as an egocentric creature as a human."
"You think I want to know past my cushy life of leisure and moldy bread?" Dabi snaps, glaring at the figure who seems to have holes for eyes. Depressions in its pasty body, like sockets for eyes with no real pupils or fillings. "What are you?"
Sounds of scraping forks and shrapnel in a trash disposal grates against Dabi's eardrums like someone's trying to shave his cartilage in a hand-held pencil sharpener.
He groans.
"-is my kind," the insidious brand of ASMR finally stops, finishing with that sentence.
"That's your name?" He grits.
"No. My kind." The creature tilts its head, almost curiously, but it looks more like its head was crunched in a right angle, and the fact that the jerky movement was accompanied by a sharp snap certainly doesn't help the view- "you do not compute my kind. Dimensional firewall certainly does do that," it says factually. "Though, I think most of your kind calls me 'god'."
"Uh, no. Absolutely not, I refuse to acknowledge you and give you more power as a real thing in my head," Dabi hisses, feeling an oncoming headache on the premise of having a goddamn religious epiphany out of everything at the moment. Like. Jesus Christ- religion is such a crapshoot. "Take me back to Shouto," he snarls.
"You brought yourself here," the thing rebukes. "I do not know how you crossed into the godless land as mine, but you can bring yourself back."
"Fuck you. As if Japan already wasn't a godless land," he sneers. "Don't be edgy, how can you be considered 'God' if this land is godless-" he mumbles, eyes darting about.
"i am not god. there is no god here. i just said that mortals consider me as god."
"Listen, you can give a group of us humans a goddamn clear rock and we'll feel emotionally connected to it and believe it can spiritually upheave our future." Dabi pinches his nose bridge in an effort to stave off his mental exhaustion on trying to explain to a yeasty deity that humans just like to create cults out of absolutely nothing but willpower and boredom and probably a handful of ecstasy. "Where. Where is this?" He asks throatily, realizing that while this questionable mental delusion isn't malicious, they're basically borderline useless if they're not going to send him back to Todoroki's damn living room.
"vo̘̹̼͉̊͛̆̒î͔̟̬͝d̳̰͗̎."
"Great. Thank you. Like I can't tell that this isn't the fucking Matrix of the Recycling Bin desktop function with just my own two eyes," he seethes, glaring at the figure who remains still in the emptiness.
"i told you. a godless land. you are absolved from the laws stitching together the fabrics of the universe. you have...you are an impossible existence. in every unvierse i have met you, you are the same. I have met another quite like you, so similar in all thats important to you, but the slightest difference between you two is what makes you eons a part. He runs a McDonalds now."
"You're literally a resin mold of Elmers glue. I don't want to hear this coming from you." A pause. "So the multiverse theory does exist?"
"you are exempt from concepts that simply exist even without a name or definition." the creature continues, and Dabi doesn't know if it's trying to continue its previous conversation, or if it's replying to him, since Dabi can barely comprehend what it's even telling him. "such as time or space- you can move in all directions of any plane. i am certainly different from most interdimensional beings- i can mess with the flow of time, i can tear through the spatial fabrics of realities as long as i stitch it back together. you however, you don't mess with it. you are exempted from them. you should not exist. you are like this in the other worlds, too. which is unexplainable, because if it was just one of you interfering with the other universes, it'd just be you. however, it is every single version of you born in every alternate timeline, that is a glitch in the world. the possibility of that is impossible."
"Cool. I don't have enough life insurance for this. Let me out."
"You Should Not Exist."
Dabi glances at them, hesitant, something cold being drip-fed into his bloodstream.
And for a moment, his idea that this was a harmless species of little malice feels foolish (so insignificantly naïve), and Dabi feels a certain sense of Doom washing over his bones like his skeleton is just cracked remaints of ivory, abandoned in the depths of the cold and cruel ocean.
"dabi."
"Oh my god," he mutters underneath his breath. "Of course it knows my name," he hums, air whistling harshly out of his nose. "I need sleep," or a drink. Preferably both.
"shouto todoroki."
"What about him?" He grunts. Okay. This creature can start talking about his entire background like the FBI dug through his search history and lifestory, and he wouldn't care. He's literally in the middle of the vøîd while having a heart attack as an intangible spirit in front of a mortal-proclaimed god built out of expired milk; he's accepting everything at face value by this point.
"what do you mean? he is a part of dabi's soul. you two are one."
"Oh great. Couldn't figure that out with everything going on these past days."
"days. you should go back, it's been days."
"What? Yeah, no, that's what I was saying." Dabi looks up from his nails, confused by the cryptic proclamation-
"Dabi?"
He blinks.
"Dabi? What the fuc-"
Darkness continues to shroud his vision, but it's a darkness with depth; through the filter of dimness, Dabi can see the shape of his surroundings, and the rustling of blankets beside him.
Blankets.
Bed.
He blinks.
A sudden burst of light like god with words sting his surroundings, washing the cold grey shadows with a buttery glow.
He looks over.
"I thought you disappeared for good," a boy says blankly, entire face taking up Dabi's view, mismatched eyes wide and fixed in front of him. With ruffled hair and sticky eyelids pertaining to drowsiness, it's clear the child was sleeping.
Dabi's mouth goes dry.
His feet touches the ground.
He feels the ground.
His eyes swivel wildly down, and he sees his translucent hands, and glowing feet.
"...Dabi?"
"Huh?" He makes a noise of acknowledgement out of reflex rather than choice.
"Where did you go?"
"Hell."
Todoroki (Shouto?) makes a face. "...right. How did you do that? I blinked and you just disappeared." Then, his odd expression that's not really one akin to concern, but more so confused annoyance at being woken up so abruptly, hardens into a sharp twist of anger. "It's..." a pause, a glance to his bedside and glowing digital clock, "it's one in the morning. You were gone for almost two whole days, you jerk! How could you leave without at least telling me?"
"Huh?"
"You can't just leave! Especially knowing that we're on different sides and we're intruding on both of our lives; I know our moral standings are very different, but you leaving without saying anything is such a dick move."
Dabi refocuses his fleeting attention when he hears a discontented gargle escape the child, and as Dabi struggles to fixate on Todoroki's face, the boy's expression shifts: less amusement and irritation, more seriousness.
Todoroki. A sound bubbles in his throat, and maybe it escaped, maybe it didn't, but the pressure remains pulsating beneath his eyes and underneath his tongue. Shouto.
"Dabi? Dabi."
"What?" His mouth tastes gummy. Were his senses always this sharp as a ghost?
"Where did you go?" Shouto's words clog his ears, flushing aside his thoughts like a stream of water.
"I think I met God." Dabi says, words clutting in his mouth like Lego bricks and he stares, fascinated by the way that carbonated lint fizzles away on the tip of his tongue from an eagle's eye perspective in the sky (and was there even a sky? Or just darkness-).
Todoroki's frown impossibly contorts farther.
It takes Dabi a delusional and shallow moment to think that maybe, Todoroki's solemn and hard glare can be substituted with words such as 'concern.' Oh. That's fitting for Shouto, even though he knows better than to think that someone like Shouto could feel something like that.
"...did you go into the light?" Mister Todoroki-kun-san finally asks, eyes skirting across Dabi's whole figure.
"It was all darkness."
"I mean for you I wouldn't be surprised." A sigh. "Dabi. You. Don't talk to strangers."
"What am I? A child?"
"I think you literally were about to pass into the afterlife or something. If you just suddenly disappeared, I'll probably be next. You can't just leave- or, at least, try and not suddenly disappear."
"Awe, you anxious?" He croons, watching the sound emit from his mouth, waiting to see if they'll take form or disperse like ripples or just exist the way that god's sentences had, like lumps of static that Dabi could feel exfoilating the neon pink surface of his fingers.
"I-" an exasperated sigh, then, a hardened stare. "Are you high?"
"God I wish."
"Ohmygod." And Dabi reflexively frowns, irritated by the familiar emotion dirtying Shouto's words. Anger. Disappointed. "You. Did you take form or something when you blinked away? And the thing you do is go get high-"
Dabi reaches over, itchy. Distantly, he dully realizes that he's simultaneously annoyed and bothered by Shouto's words. "Hey, hey," he addresses. "Don't be mad," he offers placatingly. He's not the type to play mediator the way that all firstborn girls are in dysfunctional families, but he doesn't want to deal with the temper tantrum of an emotionally stunted child.
"I-" a strangled exhale, "are you trying to comfort me?" A sharp intake of air. Breathe, Dabi thinks almost incredulously. He should probably tell him that. "Are you sure you're not high? You're acting high, too-"
And if Dabi was a bit more alive, a bit more here, he'd immediately correct him; Dabi could care less about Shouto's current state of emotions as long as they don't bother him. However, with numbed down pride and the feeling of darkness swallowing up his joints and carving a home in his bones, he gives a macabre smile instead, and nods creakily.
A laugh of astonishment.
"Great, you're completely out of it, and I can't believe you disappeared like an asshole for almost twenty-eight and I thought you- you-" a pinched whine that guzzles out into a groan of absolute frustration leaks out of Shouto's mouth.
"Don't be mad," he echoes, patting a hand against Shouto's head. The boy freezes in his grasps. "Don't be mad," he repeats. "Nothing good comes out of being mad." Oh. Maybe he's not mad. "Don't be worried." He sounds more worried, after all.
Something hard smacks away his hands.
He blinks, a slow revelation of shock seeping into his bones.
And everything feels a bit slow.
He feels slow.
Tired.
"How are you touching me?" And Shouto's words are drops of molasses, runny as glue and thick as smoothies. "You- you're still a ghost how-"
A ghost.
Is he really a ghost?
He thinks about god, and their view on the fabrics of space and time and the milky rivets pulsating to a forbidden heartbeat at the bottom of his soles-
What?
Dabi didn't really process half of the organic chemistry or physics shit they said.
Space and time.
And time does feel a bit slow-
He glances at Shouto who's wearing a frazzled expression, and for a moment, Dabi's heart withers. He doesn't like that very much; the expression of panic is one he can't be bothered to dissuade, one that annoys him to no end.
He steps out of his dimension, and this time, as he steps across the hardboard floors, he can hear his footsteps.
Todoroki has absolutely no idea what was going on.
One moment he was eating dinner with his family, anxiety playing his ribcage like a particularly demonic glockenspiel (because Dabi, a fullblown domestic terrorist, is completely out of his sights), and the next, he was sitting in his room complaining to Bakugou about his predicament (and Bakugou, that bastard, isn't a particularly helpful confidant since his only response to Todoroki's obvious panic was indifference with mild annoyance and amusement), and the next-
Actually.
There was no next.
At least, not for many hours as he spent a day wasting away with his siblings, unable to fully enjoy his time with them as they went grocery shopping together, because he struggled to figure out how to tell Aizawa-sensei he lost his rabid pet.
Even while trying to fall asleep for the second night after losing Dabi like a particularly irresponsible babysitter, his nerves was thrumming with fear up until the next moment when he fell asleep.
The, next next moment, Dabi appeared.
Appeared at the foot of his bed, ghostly as usual like a person battered in glow-in-the-dark flour, with glassy and unseeing eyes.
Which is like.
Yeah, okay. Asshole move, to disappear for the past day and leave Todoroki wondering if he failed his duties as a hero because he basically unleashed a feral dog into society that's armed with unstoppable and new escape tactics and at least a good handful of Todoroki Household secrets that he seriously will get his ass beat if they end up on the front page of some hero tabloid-
But then he touched him. With a heavy hand, tried to lazily pet his head like his hand is a square of American cheese, staples combing through his hair.
Todoroki watches with distant horror as Dabi stares at him emptily, before taking a step backwards.
And the muffled thud of boots accompany the step, lagging behind the actual action like Dabi's existence hasn't truly processed in the mechanics of the materialistic and mortal coil, like thunder following lightning seconds later. Like Dabi isn't supposed to be here.
Dabi seems dazed, and that scares Todoroki even more because at least a conscious Dabi is one that he knows and interacted with before.
This Dabi, that doesn't seem all there in the brainpan, feels more dangerous.
"Shouto?" A muffled voice comes outside of his door, and Todoroki's brain sputters as a buffer clogs his reaction time because his siblings never knock before opening the door and he staggers up.
"What? Don't open the door!" He reflexively snaps, eyes darting over to Dabi, who's standing on his floor, eyes wide and fixed on the door. For all his dissonance, even Dabi is clearly against being found out in a household directly full of enemies, but it's too late-
The door carelessly swings open, and he freezes.
"What are you doing in here?"
Natsuo doesn't even glance in Dabi's general direction.
Shouto's heart rate simmers back into a dull throb as he casually looks over to that direction, and sees nothing in that place but-
Dabi.
Dabi, swallowed by a fuzzy outline of nothing, translucent and ghost-like. Holy-
"What are you doing in here?" Todoroki finally gathers his wits and mirrors back Natuso's words.
"No, I just never heard you tell me to not open the door," Natsuo smirks. "Why? You were talking to someone, right? Was it a girl?" A friendly, fratboy, douche-canoe timbre rewires Natuso's expressions and tone.
Todoroki fixes him with a desolate glare.
"A boy?"
Uh.
Todoroki fails to immediately reboot his thought process as he's hit with an intrusive and definitely downfall of a thought that technically, Dabi is a boy.
However, Natsuo immediately interprets the flicker in his gaze as nothing short of admittance, because his irritating, annoying, older illegaly unlicensed zookeeper of a brother, jumps up, cackling. "Who? I knew it! You were never interested in girls-"
"Or boys," Todoroki stresses with an irritated sigh.
"Romance is overrated," Dabi inputs from the side, and to Todoroki's relief, Dabi seems more like himself; replying to the stimuli of his surroundings, his gaze clearer than it was earlier when he acted like his brain was melting all over Todorki's carpet like Modge Podge.
He glances at him once more, and his eyes are now lazily focused on his nails that he's picking at. You don't pick at your nails with such clean intensity if you were completely out of it.
He's definitely back.
And for his mental state, Todoroki is just going to file away Dabi reforming the laws of this universe (once again) via touching things when he's not supposed to be touching things (also once again, since this just applies to him in general since he prowls around like a particularly vindictive house cat) as nothing more than a single-instance anomaly that's going to stay as an unexplainable phenomenon up until he forcefully has to deal with it again.
Todoroki's palpitating headache lessens just a little.
"Okay, they don't have to be a boy or a girl," Natsuo easily sidles over.
"I don't like anyone," Todoroki grits. He truly doesn't. He likes a lot of people, for sure, such as Izuku, Tetsu, Ochako, most of his classmates, Natsuo, Fuyumi, his mom-
He even somewhat likes Bakugou and Aizawa-sensei, both of them who on most good days, probably wants to see him eat a manhole cover to the face-
But liking people? Todoroki's never understood the concept of a crush, never really processed it. He likes boys as much as girls, which means he likes neither at all, which to be fair, could just be an extension of his childhood emo phase when he decided that he quite frankly hated most of humanity for the most part.
"Sure, sure," Natsuo's now squirming onto Todoroki's bed that cannot fit a young adult and a growing teenager. He huffs, but still shifts over to make space for him. It's only been a year or two ago when Natsuo started being physically affectionate with him, and it's been a year since Todoroki has tried to kill him for it.
Even now, he can begrudgingly admit that he somewhat likes it.
"But who were you talking to?" Natsuo cinches, and Todoroki clicks his tongue.
"Bakugou." Kind of. Well. Bakugou was the last person he talked to before Dabi unceremoniously showed up next to his bed like a sleep paralysis demon.
"Bakugou?" A shriek of disbelief. To Todoroki's horror, it's from both Natsuo and Dabi, though, Dabi's voice sounds more wheezy out of mockery, while Natsuo just sounds downright shocked.
"That brat?" Dabi chokes.
"That brat?" Natsuo says in unison with Dabi, and Todoroki hates that. "I saw him on TV with you during your...fighting thing!"
"Oh." Dabi blinks at Natsuo's statement. "So did Shigaraki." And if Todoroki was a lesser being, he would've laughed.
"Oh." Is all Todoroki can muster in reply to Natuso, thoughts empty after Dabi's sudden injection of dark humour. But to be fair, Todoroki can barely remember most of that day to make a remark about it. He was having a Friendship is Magic epiphany back then, so he didn't really process much of anything else past his newfound revelations of socialization, and his first unholy encounter with Bakugou Mitsuki, who was basically more or less everything that he expected out of Bakugou's mom. "Yeah. The one that frowns a lot?"
"You like him?" Natsuo's obviously trying to sound casually, which isn't working giving the strain in his words.
"You like him?" Dabi rephrases judgmentally with zero regards for Todoroki's feelings.
"Not particularly." He answers to both of them, vaguely offended that Natsuo thinks his standards has fallen low enough to romance someone like Bakugou. To be fair, he does fundamentally like him in the way that undomesticated and dangerous animals grow on the rest of the Todoroki siblings. So if anything, Natsuo only has himself to blame for fostering this condition of his by habituating Todoroki to the presence of rabid animals from a very young age.
But Natsuo makes it sound like Todoroki actively likes Bakugou, when he's pretty sure he had no say in his attachment to Bakugou at all, because people just naturally gravitate to Bakugou's main character halo whether they like it or not.
He also hates how Dabi and his brother are eerily in sync with all their responses, yet, the way they emphasize their statements is what individualizes the direction of their same-worded replies. It's like. The harmonization of the echoes purgatory conveyed through the thousands of screams of feral cicadas awakened during the limbo between summer and spring.
"But you've been talking to him a lot, right?" Natsuo hums, and oh. He guesses that's just his fault for mindlessly telling Natsuo each time he was preoccupied with his phone, that he was texting Bakugou.
"You've been talking to Bakugou?" Dabi gapes. "Willingly?"
"Well. Yahoo Answers has no advice catered to the ghostbusting business." He snaps, irritated.
"Wow, no need to get defensive," Natsuo snorts while peeling off his socks on Todoroki's bed, like the jerk that he is. He pauses his actions, head snapping over. "Ghostbusting busi-"
"Why not talk to your teacher? A hero teacher who has legitimate connections with people who deal with quirks?" Dabi scoffs, floating over, voice smothering Natsuo's statement. "Why would a student know anything about this?"
Todoroki refrains from snapping at them to shut up, because he's having difficulty processing who's saying who because he has the multitasking skills of a two-year-old with zero object permanence. But at the same time, he doesn't want to be yelling at his brother, either.
He decides to ignore Dabi the same way he ignores Bakugou's unnecessarily aggressive commentary that's always in the background of all of his and Midoriya's interactions.
"Ghostbusting," he repeats Natsuo's statement, as if preparing to explain himself.
Natsuo looks at him expectantly.
Todoroki does not meet those expectations.
"You..." A pause. A squint. A sharp tilt of his head. "...is this like. Buzzfeed Unsolved?" Natsuo finally clarifies.
"The what now."
"You were always into conspiracy theories, after all." Natsuo says wisely, as if that means anything.
"...true." They're not conspiracies, they're legitimate theories on solid evidence, but okay. All Might being Midoriya's dad is more than just lore, but okay. Natsuo being a cryptic who's probably a little less human than most, is practically a fact by this point.
"And now you're into ghosts."
"...unwillingly."
"So Bakugou's into the occult as well?"
"Yes?" He had no choice after witnessing Dabi using Todoroki as an impromptu spawnpoint.
"I see." A sigh. "And here I was, so excited at the possibility that you'd finally start dating."
"You wanted me to be dating Bakugou?"
"You wanted Shouto to be dating Bakugou?"
He and Dabi make unwarranted eye contact, both of them freezing.
Dabi scowls.
Todoroki scowls harder. He doesn't want to be synchronizing with him now, too. He also doesn't want Dabi to be using his first name.
Then again, Dabi's an inexplicable force of nature, metaphorically and literally by this point, so him choosing to use Todoroki's first name is probably the least weirdest thing he's done.
"Hey. Just because you have...questionable tastes, doesn't make your romance life any less real. Here I was hoping you'd socialize normally," Natsuo yawns flippantly. "Don't look at me like that," he only realizes he's still glaring at Dabi when he feels a calloused finger massage the spot between his eyebrows. "You're literally willing to fraternize with someone like Bakugou on a good day. I have the legal right to be worried."
Todoroki gives him a look of disbelief.
"Well. I'm just saying. Bakugou...well, his...TV spotlight was interesting...but if you liked him, I'm sure he'd match you in terms of competitiveness. Give you something to do. Keeps you busy." He thinks about how every Saturday, he and Bakugou duke it out in the hallways, becoming such a phenomenon that Kaminari's TikTok audience asks him to narrate and record them for their weekly dose of bloodthirstiness, and that the school has begun to classify any Todoroki/Bakugou related property damage underneath their own file.
He glares at Natsuo who blinks innocently in response, because he's more or less miffed about how accurate Natsuo's hypothesis on the dynamic of his and Bakugou's relationship is.
"I'm not dating Bakugou." He grunts, stretching out his legs. "We're not even friends." It's more like sudden and startling homicidal companionship out of unforeseeable and niche circumstances. In other words: Bakugou walking in on his bedroom to find Dabi killing his favourite IKEA carpet while Todoroki looked on as a complex projection of one's spirit.
"Oh. Well." Natsuo shrugs. "As long as you don't date the Izuku kid-"
"Are you mad about the comment he made about me forgiving Dad?" His exhale is sharp enough to sting his nose, and he's distracted by Natuso's disapproval to even tell him he's not thinking about dating anyone.
"He did what?" Dabi snorts, resting his chin into his palm, fingers scraping over his lip. Then, more acceptingly, "he seems like the type to say that," he mutters with a deprecating snort. "Optimistic bastards. Hate them the most." A pause. Then, with a lower voice, "asshole."
Todoroki shoots him an exasperated glare, majorly frustrated because he can't argue with him with Natsuo in the room, but also because Dabi doesn't have the right to make a judging opinion on Midoriya or on Midoriya's right to talk about his family, when Dabi himself has no business in it, either.
"He's grown up underneath different circumstances, and he's the type of person to constantly forgive others who may not deserve it," Todoroki says hotly, ready to defend Midoriya. "And he doesn't do it because he's a pushover or because he's the type to justify their actions and overlook them, he just sees that people genuinely change and deserves the right to."
Natsuo gives a breathy laugh, and stretches, refusing to look Todoroki straight in the face. He scowls.
Then, to his surprise, Dabi, who's at his bedside and picking at his nails, makes accidental eye contact with Todoroki.
They maintain it.
Dabi sighs (and ghosts don't even have to breathe. Really dramatic of him-), and with a begrudging drawl, says: "who cares? If I were in your brother's position, I wouldn't give a shit if someone wants to genuinely change. I wouldn't care if they become better people. It's better if they do and if they do, good for them, but why would I have to validate or give a shit about it?" He yawns, and Todoroki stares at him, stunned that Dabi even has a response that requires empathizing with another perspective outside of his own. Or maybe this is just how Dabi thinks, so it's easy for him to reknit it to Natsuo's favour. "What? I mean. I hate that, and I hate your friend, what's the big deal? If your Veggie Tales caricature of a classmate cares that much, then why should that become your brother's problem?" Dabi says with such casual finality, that Todoroki wonders if Dabi really does hate Midoriya as much as he says, or if he just tosses the word 'hate' around with little thought.
Meanwhile, Natsuo is starting to speak, finally gathering his thoughts. "Nah. I get it. I don't dislike him, he's like if Oscar the Grouch converted and found Jesus or something-"
"Midoriya." Todoroki inputs, knowing that Natsuo's memory with names is shit.
A casual gesture, "yeah, him. I don't dislike him. Looks like a good kid. But..." a wrinkle of his nose, "that wasn't his right to say."
"See, listen to your older brother," Dabi points, words cutting into Natsuo's, watching their conversation as if he's not an intrusive bystander, but instead an audience member of the peanut gallery.
"He talked like someone who has never been through what we've had. Naïve, and entitled because of it," Natsuo says casually, and Todoroki scowls.
"Midoriya is not entitled."
"I- okay. I didn't mean personality wise-"
"Then what did you mean by that?"
Natsuo gives him a look by his sudden interruption, but to his internal relief, his brother doesn't look remotely taken back by his backtalk- if anything, he looks almost proud. "Nah. He doesn't look like an asshole. But it was entitled of him to say something like that with so much confidence."
Todoroki exhales theatrically, before flopping onto his back that rebounds off his bed, the sleepiness from earlier lapping at his outline in the form of his rumpled blankets and mental exhaustion. Lots just happened in the past five minutes, and he doesn't know if he can prep himself to argue with his brother. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Whatever." Todoroki relents, kicking the back of Natsuo's leg as an offer of friendly truth. Might as well drop this conversation.
"He's not naïve, either."
He blinks, taken back as he instantly notes that it's not his brother's voice.
That was Dabi who just said that. He looks up. Dabi doesn't look like the type to defend others, much less Midoriya Izuku out of all people. As if sensing his inquiring gaze, Dabi concedes with an annoyed tone of voice: "he's not stupid to give leeway to others simply because they're truly sorry, or because of his own emotions." He narrows his eyes full of judgment and reckless contempt. "He's the type to give leeway to those, even if they hurt others or himself, because he thinks it's the fair thing to do. Kind of like absolute justice in a way where certain baselines and moral limits are almost like law. He would do it because he believes that people should have the right to more than one chance, not because he thinks that particular individual deserves that."
And sometimes-
Sometimes Dabi speaks, and Todoroki's genuinely surprised that the man knows more than than three, two-syllable words. It's strange. Dabi carries himself like a lowlife, like he was born out of pondscum, and none of his emotional intellect implies he's been raised outside of it- and Todoroki is emotionally constipated 25/8, yet he's aware of this. Dabi offers no indications of high-level academics, and yet he sometimes starts spouting shit like a college student skeletoning their newest analytical essay.
Whatever. Todoroki simply molds his mouth into a disapproving sneer, because just because Dabi thinks he's hotshit for sounding so put together, doesn't mean he agrees (but the last thing he needs is for Natsuo trying to force him into getting a MRI scan for possible indications of schiznophrenia). Midoriya is the type of person to sympathize with a crushed bug, and he doesn't know how Dabi doesn't see that.
Then Dabi continues, to much of Todoroki's surprise. "He thinks like if Bossman was shown two-percent more affection as a child from a responsible adult who knew how to do taxes."
Todoroki's throat convulses on an inhale as his bodily functions reboot to properly download an understanding of who 'bossman' is, and what that contextually means here.
He nearly gasps.
"Listen. He's an easy read because your greenlight friend has an undertone of psychopathy, I've seen the way that he looks at that Bakugou kid." Dabi casually muses, having zero respect for Todoroki's friends. "He's really similar to Shigaraki-"
"Do not compare the two-"
"What?" A third voice intervenes.
His jaw clicks. He turns to Natsuo who's still on his bed, scrolling through Twitter while rummaging through his stash of chips that he kept in his bedside drawer. "...I was having an argument in my head."
Natsuo gives him a weird look. "Glad you have legitimate thoughts in your brain, bud." He finally says, and knocks him on the forehead.
"I'm tired." Todoroki announces after batting away his hand, wanting to kick him out so that he can have a proper conversation with Dabi. His body nearly protectively triggers its own gag reflex upon realizing that he cognitively and willingly thought that he wanted a genuine discussion with Dabi, like Dabi's capable of one.
"Go to sleep, then." Two people say at once. Natsuo tonelessly suggests that while Dabi advises it like Todoroki is being unreasonably whiny.
"I can't. You're in my room." And though while saying that, he was looking directly at Natsuo's face that's illuminated by his phone screen, he inwardly curses both of the men in his room.
"What are you? A kid?"
"Yes."
Natsuo looks at him, unimpressed. "You don't have kids sleepover in your room?"
"Why would you want others invading your space?" Dabi groans while Shouto unintentionally speaks right over him to Natsuo: "why would I want others invading my privacy?"
Todoroki and Dabi share unimpressed eye contact again.
"Boring." Natsuo grunts, but, he does kick himself off the bed, flipping over his sheets and nearly dragging them onto the floor. Todoroki scowls. "You're heading back tomorrow, right?" Natsuo asks without looking up from his phone.
Todoroki nods.
Without even seeing the response, Natsuo continues: "you really can't stay another day? I'll take time off work to stay."
"It's Sunday. You don't have work anyways." Todoroki says.
"Yeah. But I'd spend my day with you," Natsuo winks.
Todoroki makes a disgusted face, though, inwardly, he wishes he could remain another day. But he plans on heading back early afternoon so that he can talk to Aizawa-sensei who's already sent emails discussing what they should do about Dabi once school starts.
"I can't," he says, almost apologetically.
Natsuo groans, as if this is somehow Todoroki's fault.
Which, in retrospect, it kind of was, but like, 60% is Dabi's responsibility. Or 70%, because he has the cooperativeness of an aloe plant.
"You're lame." Natsuo finally decides, while heading out of his room.
Todoroki looks at his leaving back with a yearning gaze.
He then glares at the doorway. "Close the door!" He says, raising his voice, ignoring the way he hears rustling from down the hall, either because he woke up someone else or because Natsuo is flipping him off from the end of it.
He hears the shutting of a door.
It is not his door.
He yanks at his shirt collar, irritated, glaring at the slight gap between his door and its frame.
"Ha." Dabi gives a tonedeaf, one-note laugh. "Can't believe someone in this household grew up right."
"'Yumi did."
"Nah. She's weird," Dabi scoffs.
"My other brother, Touya did," Todoroki says stubbornly, thinking about Natsuo's few yet casual descriptions of Touya, of Fuyumi's tight-lipped yet insanely fond recollections of the eldest Todoroki that he barely remembers.
Dabi begins braying to the side, laughter vised into a choked and painfully grating cackle. Todoroki stares, mesmerized by the clamp of his jaw, wondering if in his physical form, he wouldn't be able to laugh without ripping his staples and their accompanying flesh.
With unaware morbidity, he thinks that it kind of reminds him of a baseball cap.
"I mean he died before he can turn out like the rest of us," Todoroki says weakly, still fixated by Dabi's countenance. He pauses, fully processing what he just said. Nah. Todoroki knows that out of all of them, Touya was always the most unstable out of all of them. But honestly, mental instability is probably the only child development plan for any of the Todorokis; if anything, he can argue that Touya's the best for following that to a T. "Well. At least, from what I heard, he's always been the best."
Dabi fixes him with almost a mocking glance. "Cute." He says, tauntingly.
Todoroki rolls over to his bedside, and closes the light, knowing that Dabi is basically a personal nightlight while in ghost form.
"I'm always cute," he says something he's heard Jirou use in respond to Kaminari saying something similar.
Dabi, if possible, laughs even harder upon hearing that.
And Todoroki never thought he'd be entertaining a mildly psychopathic villain through ordinary jokes, but he also never thought he'd be housing and holding an unwarranted slumber party with the said mildly psychopathic villain who's easily entertained through ordinary jokes in the first place.
"...so you're all good now?" Todoroki asks uneasily. There's some sort of relief in knowing that Dabi's the type of person to not enjoy affection, to never initially interpret things as innately kind, so there's no concern that Dabi might mistake his question for anything of that type; but he also hates the fact that he enjoys that part of Dabi in itself, as if there's any redeeming qualities to someone like him. Even if Dabi didn't have the moral keenness of a State Farm employee.
Dabi gives him a long blank look, as if trying to dissect his sentence. Finally, he asks flatly: "what?"
"You disappeared for more than a day."
"Awe? Missed me?" He sneers.
Todoroki glances at him, distraught. "You tried to comfort me after you showed up out of nowhere after disappearing for so long." A pause. "You tried to comfort me after you showed up out of nowhere after disappearing for so long!"
Dabi's no longer smiling.
Good.
Petty Bitch.
Clearly, his weakness is emotional vulnerability. Or like. Being a decent human being with average amounts of empathy from time to time. Either way, Todoroki is no stranger to either, therefore he can identify Dabi's ineptitude with uncharacteristic accuracy.
"You had a whole religious conversion while you were gone." Todoroki continues lathering it on to get it through Dabi's metaphorically and literally transparent brain that things went down, and Todoroki is Not Happy about it. "You were like a cult follower. You grabbed me as a ghost!"
Dabi freezes, and Todoroki would laugh at his stricken expression, if he wasn't feeling weirdly conflicted. Because Dabi doesn't seem confused. Rather, he looks vaguely irritated and embarrassed as he reflects upon his behaviour, but this sort of reaction only leaves Todoroki reeling. So it's not like Dabi forgot anything, and it's good that it doesn't seem like Dabi did anything weird while he was gone (since he looks equally shocked by his own actions as well, meaning he probably didn't go commit hate crimes while he was away. Or at least, not purposefully, since his personality is basically criminally offensive all on its own).
"Yeah. So. I'm pretty sure I just met the creator of earth and every single universal concept attainable." Dabi finally says, seemingly coming to terms with his own existential crisis.
Todoroki stares at him.
"So this wasn't just you being high-"
"I was never high-"
"Sure you weren't."
"I think...I just had a lapse of reality for a couple minutes," Dabi gives a casual shrug.
Todoroki stares at him even harder.
"You just said something really concerning right now, you know that, right? Like you know that-"
"Dude I'm a ghost. I'm too cool to have problems." Dabi waves away Todoroki's worries, which if anything, only makes him more concerned.
"What do you mean by you met 'the creator of earth' and everything else you just said?" Todoroki presses.
To his annoyance, Dabi looks more or less unbothered by what might just be the most important thing he's said since his reappearance.
"I can't explain it." Dabi yawns, even though he's a ghost who doesn't have to sleep. Dramatic. "...Todoroki-"
"And that," Todoroki gestures wildly, too tired to compose himself, and honestly, too uncaring to cater to Dabi to bother hiding his irritation: "earlier you used my first name. What was up with that?"
"Why? Does it annoy you?"
"Yes!"
"Then there you go," Dabi nods tonelessly.
Todoroki huffs, and yanks his blankets over his head.
He looks up, and sees Dabi glowing through the blanket.
Somehow, that ticks him off even more.
"So. You met god."
"Yeah." A tilt of his head. "Well. He...she...? They? They said they weren't god. Also called my whole being as something that shouldn't reasonably, logically, or even conceptually exist, which is great and all," in spite of the condemnation in his voice, Dabi doesn't look particularly moody about being even invalidated by god themself.
And wow.
"By this point, even god doesn't like you," Todoroki summarizes, mildly stunned. And damn. Being problematically and unconditionally loving despite everything is supposed to be the whole sthick of most religions' divine figureheads, right?
"Yeah." Dabi shrugs. He looks up with a curious look. "Maybe because I hooked up with a guy before."
"I don't think a nonbinary god is going to be the type to hate your sexuality."
"I never said they were nonbinary." Dabi retorts. "It's just...they didn't sound like one person. Like they sounded like two distinct persons, but they were one." He looks at him. "You know?"
"No, not really." Todoroki's never met god, and he's at least seventy-four percent sure that god doesn't want to meet him, either.
"Like. Two-in-one shampoo."
"God is two-in-one shampoo?"
"Well. One person, two voices? You know, like that absolute nightmare of a video about about two cups and o-"
"What?"
"Oh fuck. You're a minor. Ignore what I just said."
Todoroki stares at him. "You kill people." And he's not comparing the immorality of two activities to prove a point, but what he is saying is that Dabi's probably the last person to start discussing ethics like they matter after everything he's done.
"Doesn't mean I'm going to catch a case with a child." Dabi looks at him with mild disgust, like Todoroki's being the irrational one. And to be fair, Todoroki surprisingly agrees with Dabi, but that doesn't mean his highschool AP psychoanalyzation doesn't hold some form of validation, either.
"You kill people." Todoroki repeats, albeit, a bit more pressing.
"Can't you let it go? Stop bitchin' about it," Dabi says, clearly more aggravated than anything by this point.
"You kill people."
"Shut up before I meet god again and ask them to scalp your existence as well."
"...didn't you say that they said it was you who shouldn't exist? But you're still fine and here, right?"
Dabi looks at him like he told him he was going reconstruct his organs like a Build-A-Bear teddy. "You know what. It's past your bedtime, kid. Go to sleep."
Todoroki yanks down his blankets so that his glare can be more effective than if it was over his head. "I'm sixteen."
"Yeah. So a kid. Why? Do you need melatonin gummies?" Dabi leers. "Kiddo. Time to knock out."
"I don't need a bedtime or a curfew, and I don't need health advice from you out of all people. You look like you inverted your body like a flesh puppet."
"Yeah. And yet you're shorter than me because you stay up this late."
"You woke me up!" And wait- "you're older than me by a lot." Or at least he has the qualifications to be an elder, given that his body literally looks like it's going to cave in on itself from either liver failure or the complete disintegration of his bird-thin bones, "and you're only taller than me by," he squints, eyeballing Dabi who's upside and in the air, "a little. At least I'm going to be taller than you in months, I swear."
"Not if you don't sleep." Dabi retorts in tandem to Todoroki's biting pace, "at least I'm proactive from running from the cops. You just sleep in and watch dramas."
"Your proactivity includes murder."
"Oh my god won't you let the 'killing' part go-"
"I morally cannot, and I definitely will not," it's just too good of a rebuttal to pass up.
"And you physically should not stay awake at around one- actually, it's now two, two A.M., no matter your age." Dabi chides. Todoroki rolls his eyes. "Don't roll your eyes at me, you know I'm right," Dabi drawls.
"I'm ignoring you."
"Oh. So you are going to sleep, you just want to get the last word."
"I'm. Ignoring. You."
"Yep. Goodnight."
"Shut up."
"Sure. Sleep tight."
"Where's Shouto?"
Natsuo thinks about his baby brother, and the conversation they had last night (this morning?) that resulted in him getting kicked out. "Who cares?" He grunts, dabbling his dumpling into his plate of soysauce. His sister props her hands on her hips after hearing his tone.
His mentality immediately withers underneath his older sister's gaze. "I'll wake him up," he grunts, backing out of the table, unsticking his bare thighs from the plastic covering of his chair. He consoles himself with the fact that if he leaves now, he could distract himself with Shouto before his parents wake up and inevitably join him for breakfast.
"Wake up mom and dad while at it!" Fuyumi adds, cranking the stovetop's broiling heat a bit lower, the dumplings in the pot bobbing along the surface of the water.
"No!" He yells back, as he stalks over to Shouto's room.
He doesn't even give a warning as he swings the door open.
"Hey, Sho-" he freezes.
The lanky man sprawled on Shouto's unkempt bed also freezes the swinging of his legs.
Natsuo Todoroki, at 7:00 JST in the morning in Musutafu Japan, has found a stranger just lounging on his teenage baby brother's bed, flipping through the newest Weekly Shounen Jump magazine.
Said stranger is eerily familiar.
"Oh what the shit."
"Sup."
When Natsuo doesn't say anything, the man's gaze slowly creeps back to the magazine in his hands.
"You...you're-" Natsuo slowly lifts a finger.
"Uh." The stranger says, and instead of looking ashamed, panicked, or-
Or something (really, Natsuo might be tripping, but he seriously thought that there must be at least some intense reaction that fits this scenario), he looks more or less put-off-guard by this situation.
"Touya?"
The man chokes so hard, the vibration ripples through his entire body that he nearly rips apart his magazine.
"What?"
"My brother if he was still alive."
And now the man looks vaguely offended, staring at Natsuo with wide eyes and obvious disbelief. "You are hearing yourself right now, right? You sound absolutely batshit with the sequence of words you've just said." The man says steadily and wholly judgmentally.
"...am I seeing a ghost of my brother right now?"
"Well that's an ironic statement," the man mumbles. "...do you compare everyone you run into with your passed brother?"
"Well- no-" and in the back of his mind, Natsuo's kind of comprehending that it's probably weird of him to tell some random stranger that they look like his deceased brother- and holy shit, isn't it also kind of weird that he's in his brother's room, on his bed right now as well- "you look just like my older brother, but Frankensteined." His eyes train on the man on the bed and somewhere in the back of his mind, there are tinnitius-inducing alarms (well, he is a random stranger in his brother's room), but the man just seems so familiar and he can map the slope of his nose and cheekbones, the intensity of his darkened eyes and the shape of his hair and face and holy crap-
"I know you from somewhere." He says with terrifying confidence.
"Yeah." The man surprisingly agrees. "Probably on the daily news." He purposefully strains the word as if Natsuo's too slow to comprehend important points and context clues. "FBI's most wanted list."
"Who watches the news?" Natsuo frowns, confused.
"I can't tell if you're joking right now," the man exhales. "Do you not recognize me? Do you not even know the top five heroes?" He mocks.
"No. I don't know anything about the hero world." He admits shamelessly. Though, it's inevitable that some titles slip in past his reluctance to check. This man must've came from it. Hero? If he brought up the top five heroes, he must be a hero himself, as well. "You're a hero?"
The man loudly stumbles over a cough again.
"Oh, so you're Shouto's friend?" He snaps his fingers, placing the puzzle pieces together in a clumsy fashion out of feigned stupidity (because Shouto clearly only has friends because he's encountered a group of extroverts and is getting shuttlebused through a bootcamp of socialization- there's no way he made an unrelated friend outside of highschool).
And-
Don't tell me when Shouto said he made a texting friend, it was this man. Shouto's still a kid, and this guy is most definitely not a kid.
(Natsuo always ran cold and his body never ceases to remind him of it, but the chill that swarms from the tips of his fingers and into his vulnerable gut, punches his entire diaphragm with a frosty exhale.)
"You're a hero. Oh. Are you Shouto's mentor?" Mentors don't break into their clients' rooms in the morning and use their bed as a coffee table for morning magazines.
"You are literally a menace." The man deadpans, startling Natsuo with his abrupt and unexpected response. "You're going to get your whole family killed one day or another because you keep saying the most offensive things." Natsuo shrugs. They told his dad that, and yet only one of them died in his entire career as a parent. Hearing that warning from a stranger doesn't really do much for him.
With such finality, the man says: "I'm not a hero."
"Sure. And you're also my dead older brother." He snarks.
"I'm seriously not a hero." The man grits.
"Yeah." Natsuo rebukes, mockingly mirroring his earnestness, "and you're seriously my dead brother."
They stare at each other.
"I am not a hero-"
"And you're also my dead older brother."
The man makes an intensely distressed noise in the back of his throat.
And Natsuo, in spite of the bad vibes he's getting from all this (like, bruhhhhhh none of this looks good-), wants to laugh at the man's reaction.
"Where's....Shouto?" He asks casually, glancing around the room.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, he's pretty sure that this entire situation warrants at least a discrete phone call to the police, or at least a giant shout to alarm the number one hero of Japan who's literally just a couple doors down-
But he also grew up in this same household where usually more or one kid went or was missing for hours (days, years, a lifetime-) where the police are useless and the number one hero of Japan was the perpetrator of danger.
If anything, this just feels like another day out of his childhood.
"He's here." The man replies jerkily, now flipping to the other page, glancing at the glossy sheets before immediately flipping to the next. Natsuo has a suspicion he's only looking at the pictures. "I'm just being his stand-in, you know." He replies dully.
"Oh." He nods, not exactly relieved, mostly because unlike what the man just presumed, no, he does not know what he means. "Okay." He then has a sudden and uncomfortable thought. "So. I'm assuming you're one of my dad's coworkers? Acquaintances? Friends?" He asks uneasily. And Natsuo doesn't dislike all heroes because of his dad, but that doesn't mean he has a good first impression of them because of it.
The man looks more affronted than anything. "Absolutely not, how dare you. In my line of work, I usually try and kill your dad more often than not," he lours, brows crinkling down, shifting his eyes in a way that yank at the burnt patches underneath the fragile skin. Natsuo grimaces as blood bubbles out of a crack made from just that slight movement.
"Oh. Okay," he says acceptingly. "...you want breakfast?" He offers when the man doesn't appear interested in continuing the conversation out of his own initiative.
"Nah. Don't wanna see your dad. He'll try and murder me on the spot. Been like that for years," the man shakes his head, glancing over his shoulder for a moment. A strange emotion flashes over the man's face, before he sighs, and looks directly at Natsuo.
And with him staring at him directly in the eye with such electric blue intensity that mercilessly bolts him down on the sopot-
Natsuo nearly flinches.
He really looks like Touya.
And he never ended on good terms with Touya; honestly, never been close with Touya for the last two years they shared together (and this keeps him up at night more than Sandals or Tom could ever-), and maybe that only lessens the sentimental remorse he's felt for his brother.
Unlike Fuyumi who visibly ashen and cringes at the mention of her twin-
Whenever someone asks, he can easily and nonchalantly talk about Touya. Doesn't mind dragging Touya's name through the mud for being a little shit, and doesn't mind cushioning his image with praises and genuine affection he's held for that boy.
To him, Touya was like a distant childhood friend.
He just never wants to talk about Touya, because he doesn't have much good to say about him, which is so unfair because he'd like to think that he definitely loved Touya.
This man is like a trace of his old memories of his older brother. They never had pictures of him when he grew older, as they stopped snapping photos after the burns reached too deep to heal without ragged scars and traces of disdain.
For a moment-
Every single memory of Touya he has, is suddenly replaced by the ghostly visage of this man. And Natsuo doesn't know if he's infuriated or scared that he's forgetting his brother's face (and on good days, he can barely remember the limited feelings he's had with and for his older brother and now he's losing this too and-) and he has to look away first before this guy overrides the little remains of data he's had on the eldest Todoroki.
"...your brother...if he was theoretically here right now in this room and saw everything that just went down, would tell you that he was very disappointed in your conduct, and that you're stupid." The man on the bed drones tonelessly, clearly reluctant on talking to Natsuo (just like Touya!). "Shouto Todoroki would also tell you that you're being dumb, and honestly, your lacking sense of danger is so inconceivable to the point of unbelievable stupidity."
"Well, Shouto will never find out about this," he shakes his head.
The man, if possible, looks even less amused by this.
"You want me to bring you breakfast? You don't gotta see Enji if you do that." He pushes, realizing if he gets derailed with conspiracy theories about his own younger brother, he'll immediately lose all sense of rationale thought for the next two hours.
"Yes." The man slinks upright like he has the spine of a new species of fungi that was found growing in the pits of the ocean's apothetic zone. And he doesn't even seem to notice nor care that Natsuo refers to Enji by his name rather than as a father.
Natsuo, against his common sense (or more accurately named, Fuyumi being his inner-voice of conscience), finds himself not disliking this man's personality too much.
"You're way better than your little brother," the man adds. And he doesn't sound excited (and honestly, Natsuo wonders if this man can ever sound excited-), but there's a certain glint in his eyes that reminds Natsuo of that Crested Honey Buzzard hawk that he pavloved into liking him using strips of animal flesh.
He wonders if this man likes raw meat.
"Of course. I'm the best Todoroki, after all," Natsuo says seriously. "Besides, you're Shouto's friend and you hate our dad, so you can't be that bad of a guy." Though this man's age, and just the fact that he's been suck into Shouto's room at the early stages of dawn when Natsuo went back to his room to sleep, leaves him itchy and disgusted and he has to know. "Where is Shouto, anyways?"
"...so do you know about your brother's uhhhhhhweird predicament of teleporting to his friend's side-"
Natuso snaps his fingers, immediately getting it. "Yes."
"Yeah. The quirk had hit both of us, so sometimes me and Shouto switch spots." The man explains. "He's probably where I was before I teleported here. I was at the mall."
And suddenly, everything makes sense.
The tight coil at the bottom of his brainstem, incessantly ringing his mental alarms to the point of tinnitus, unravels, and he nearly goes boneless on the damn rug. Great. Shouto is okay.
"So. You're like, Shouto's partner-in-crime?" He elaborates breathlessly.
"Partner?" The man says incredulously, like Natsuo's stupid.
"Oh." His lips scrunches his lips to the side. Maybe they weren't close. "How did you meet Shouto, anyways?" He asks curiously, still skeptical about his identity (still vaguely freaked out that he's starting to subconsciously think that Touya looks like this man rather than this man looks like Touya-), yet more so interested in what type of relationship he could possibly have with Shouto. They're totally not classmates, and this man literally looks like a stale stick of breaded mozzarella that developed a bioculture of mold spores that's regional to the NYC sewers.
"Well. I met him at a garbage dump." The man replies.
They look at each other.
He doesn't elaborate.
"Okay, but how?" Natsuo repeats pressingly.
The man, if possible, appears even more disdainful despite not a single inch of his relatively unimpressed expression changing at even a microscopic level. "...Let's just say that we're currently struggling through an unfortunate and shared situation that nobody but us can currently comprehend and experience, and the only thing that's preventing yellow-on-yellow crime between the two of us is fear over how it could consequentially backfire on either one of us." He finally sighs in one go.
Somehow, the lofty man, whose facial muscles barely twitch and his expression barely conform with each word, literally looks like he hates working with Shouto.
For some reason, this specific bluntness is refreshing.
What an honest man. Especially since it's hard to be honest in the face of the Todorokis, not when Enji has undeserved prestige, and Shouto is an upcoming hotshot.
"Your honesty is good," Natsuo compliments, ignoring the way the man looks confused, distraught, and overtly irritated by his tone, all conveyed through a single flinch of his right eyebrow (and it's so ethnically apprehensible, how Natsuo reflexively read it the way he would've read Touya back then).
Now that he feels a little bit better about Shouto's condition- though, not entirely since he wants to hear it confirmed by Shouto's words and not from some stranger, no matter how hilarious (how traitorously familiar) he is, he finds himself absorbing in the rest of the setting, not just the cranky centerpiece.
He takes note of the man's grimy boots strewn on the floor (and they have to be his, unless if Shouto's foot size went up by one), and then at his matted pants that's dusted with discolouration and worn to the point of tangled threads and paling material.
It's getting all over Shouto's blankets.
And damn. He really does remind Natsuo of that human-adverse hawk he's slowly befriended over the years.
"Do you want a change of clothes?" Natsuo finally offers, unsure if he's doing this because he truly feels bad for this man, or because this man is reminding him too much of his neighbourhood's wood inhabitants. But either way, seriously, this man clearly needs to get hosed down and a new set of clothes.
The man gives him a strange look, as if Natsuo asked him to eat his toenails.
He grimaces, puzzled by the strange man's background and just overall circumstances. What hero is poor? And it makes more sense if he's a hero, given his alleged connection to Endeavor and Shouto, but he looks basically homeless with his greasy hair and crusty scars. Maybe he really was just some random bystander dragged into Shouto's mess. Or Shouto was dragged into this random bystander's mess.
He frowns. "Do you wanna take a shower?" He sticks a thumb over his shoulder.
The man blinks, his grumpy countenance clearing just slightly, a familiar loosening of his crinkled left eye that seem to strain against its staples as if he's never bothered nor taught himself to modify the habit (and lots of people convey contentness through a twitch of their left eye. 7 billion people on earth, the odds are stacked against his haunting imagination, Natsuo tells himself).
"Oh. Don't mind if I do," the man leaps off the bed, nearly kicking off the blankets while at it, his oversized and oddly rumpled duster crinkling and crumpling in the nooks of his elbow with his actions.
"You can use anything in the bathroom," he adds, wondering if he should pack up an entire kit of toiletries for when the man leaves, unsure how to gauge if the man has necessities at home. He really doesn't look well maintained. "I'll bring you new clothes. Want a toothbrush?"
"If you're offering," the man accepts straightforwardly, and Natsuo laughs, finding himself enjoying the man's blunt demeanor. It's hard to meet someone who's as forthright as him in Japan, unless if you're a quirk-user, because from Natsuo's experience, all quirk-users' lack stuffing in the brain box. Which isn't an awful thing, since that makes for some really interesting company, especially since worrying about first-impressions and overly courteous mannerisms make things roundabout, and Natsuo is too impatient for something like that. "I'm stealing your bathroom." The stranger informs.
"You know where it is?" Natsuo asks good-naturedly, liking the inconsiderate attitude of this man, while digging into his phone to try and send a message to Shouto. Firstly, to check up on him. Secondly, because if his brother is in the middle of somewhere new, he wants souvenirs.
"Yeah, I know the basic layout. Took a Buzzfeed quiz on your toilet, as well," The man stretches, loudly ironing out the cricks of his joints. The man, while slouching, is around his height. And he can't gauge his age due to his extensive scarring, but the back of his hands are smooth and taunt, free of the inevitable wrinkles of age.
So...around twenty to mid-thirties? He inwardly snorts. What's the point of trying to guess with such a large range?
"Okay. I'll greet you when you get out!"
"Don't," the man grunts, swiveling on a pair of disgusting socks to round to him before adding, "hey. you know Eraserhead's number?"
"Who?"
"Your brother's homeroom teacher. Wait. Ask him to send a ride, he's gonna collect me later," he casually whistles.
Natsuo shrugs. "I don't know who that is." He admits.
One of the man's thin eyebrows twitch upwards, yanking at his lids almost painfully. "Here," he holds out his hand, and Natsuo, like the stupid man he is who's very weak to fun personalities like a himbo fratboy on the weekends, hands over his phone to the stranger in his room. He watches as the eccentric, urbanized drowned oppossum begins to open up a new message, slowly typing in a number, hesitating every second or so as if he has to struggle to rethink what comes next. He then clumsily sends out a message, before carelessly tossing the phone back.
He reads it.
It really is a message, telling the recipient to pick him up at a nearby shopping square that they live nearby, with the ending signature of 'D + S'. He stares, amused. Like Nintendo?
"Okay. Well. Before you leave, I'll drop off a plate of food for you in the bedroom." He says, dumping his phone back into his sweatpants.
"Sure," D.S. responds lacklusterly, peeking out of the doorway.
"My parents aren't awake right now," he tacks on, remembering that the man doesn't get along with his father.
"Yeah, I know," the man says offhandedly, as he takes a step in the direction towards where Natsuo knows the bathroom's at.
"I'll leave the clothes out on Shouto's bed!"
The man gives a wave of acknowledgement without even looking over.
Natsuo huffs, smiling.
What a rude guy.
No wonder he gets along well with his brother.
It's only when Dabi's unbuckling his ratty belt does Todoroki, who's politely staring at the toilet seat instead of at the mirror or at Dabi, says: "you don't look like him."
"Uhhhhhh," Dabi attempts to reel through the past ten minutes of dialogue, only to remember that he's too mentally and physically fucked up to even remember which is his dominant hand, and promptly gives up on it. "You're really going to have to specify. Do you mean Touya?" He knows that while spouting all that shit he said to Natsuo, he definitely felt the dull, throbbing ache in his diseased molars as he ground his teeth down into their plasters of excitement and anxiety.
Anxious, because this secret, buried in Touya Todoroki's grave, was never going to have an appropriate time to be exhumed with the corpse of Touya. This isn't a secret kept by Touya, it's kept by him, Dabi. Dabi doesn't do this shit for Touya, doesn't do this for Touya's family.
He does this for himself, and for this secret of his old identity that has aged like fine wine, he can only savour it by swishing and spitting it back at Enji's face; taking it out too early would diminish the flavour, disappoint his expectations and the effort and years he had preserved for this long haul surprise.
Though. When Natsuo basically K.O'd him in the Adam's Apple with his terrifying claim, while the angry anxiety had cracked open his eyes, he almost felt excited by the unexpected exposure. Excited, because for a moment, he could taste the mortification in the way Shouto watched him with each second the conversation stole; he may not remember what Natsuo exactly said because he was too busy dying from getting shot with his terrible and very stupid perceptiveness, but he remembered his own feelings in response to Shouto's growing coldness, the way that Shouto stared with a strange and stranger look, as if not knowing how he should feel.
The way that Shouto grew increasingly freaked out, while Natsuo remained oblivious to it all (and it's powerful, it really is, to watch people realize the severity of their predicament, the potential of the reality as they know it collapsing, without being able to do anything about it, especially because of him. There's a reason why he's saving the residues of his decaying life just for Enji to see the last of it-). It felt powerful, in a way. A semblance of control in the mechanics and dynamics of this family, a sensation Touya never got.
In a way, he can honestly see why Boss'man with a stick up his ass who looks like someone dug up his dead household pet and started beating him with it, gets off on this puppeteering shit, obsessively so.
"We have a picture of his old childhood self. You don't look like him at all past your hair type, which isn't that uncommon." Shouto says tightly.
"I didn't even say anything," Dabi snorts.
"I know. I just. You don't look like Touya." Shouto's teeth gnashes. And oh my god. Dabi's trying to enjoy his shower and Shouto's corrosive attitude is literally giving him bone nausea.
"Okay. I don't. Why are you so pressed?" Dabi asks sharply, yanking off his musty-ass socks. He weighs the pros of burning them rather than trying to salvage their poor state.
At the end of his contemplation, he decides to do it not in the bathroom, one of the rare places of this household that he remembers to have a fire alarm installed.
"...do you know what Touya's quirk was?" Shouto asks, and his tone is hard like plexiglass, transparent for Dabi to see the current of emotions in his undertone. He clicks his tongue. Shit. No wonder Shouto's more emotionally distraught than he expected.
"How the hell would I know?" Dabi lours, dumping his shapeless coat to the side, away from his radioactive socks.
"...he has a quirk just like yours."
"Wow. So does like. A third of the quirk-user population," Dabi says flatly. "It's almost like elemental quirks are basically the starter Pokemons of humanity." He snorts.
Shouto shrugs. "Yeah. It's just...the power and high temperature of his quirk was almost unmatchable from what I remember. Like his flames were the same colour as yours, so it must be as hot."
"And? At the end of the day, we're all Firebenders. There can be more than one Azula in this world." Next, Shouto's going to say 'what a coincidence, you also mentioned bad dads too' and Dabi's going to have to tell him the great and international truth that there are shit fathers everywhere you go, all aggregated in communities since they naturally gravitate to every nearby shopping square with a Home Depot.
"You watched Avatar?" Shouto says instead.
He thinks about how he was forced to sit through seasons of that English show with French subtitles occasionally mixed in with the Japanese ones. He truly doesn't understand why Toga doesn't just use 123movies, but maybe the charm comes from the fact that watching an entire stack of CDs she dug out of the pits of a garbage bin is nothing short of an unpredictable surprise.
Honestly, they started making a guessing game of whether the next CD will be a random milestone within Zuko's four-season long character arc, or if it'll be another handmade film of heteros (derogatory) doing questionable acts that were taped over the CDs. "Unfortunately," he answers hollowly.
He shimmies out of his ratty slacks that hold no shape as they fold above his ankles, uncomfortably tight near the thighs as he's outgrown them long ago in terms of height. It's not like by this point the League can't afford new clothes, or can't just shoplift them, but for some reason-
Dabi just-
He's used to burning through his clothes if he has to juice up his quirk for group operations. And given how their plans always unintentionally end up with potential murder and large-scaled arson, he prefers to shimmy into janked-up clothes that hold no value. He just doesn't see the point in wearing nice clothes when their spontaneous plans have zero magical transition scene where they can Sailor Moon themselves into wearing criminal cosplays.
Seriously. Team Rocket is a scam and cartoons are a lie.
"Anyways. Don't watch." Dabi warns as he unhooks his underwear that had caught onto the staples outlining the perimeter of the burn on his thighs.
"Why would I?" Shouto sounds offended that Dabi would even warn him of this.
"Would you prefer me to ask you to watch?" Dabi sneers at his tone, before immediately whistling a jaunty tune to himself as he yanks aside the shower curtain. And what a win, because it has no mold, not even in the creases ends of the plastic. Must be Natsuo's doing- always a slob, but he's the clear example as to why there's a difference between 'dirty' and 'messy'. He cranks the heat of the shower up high, and the water pressure to its lowest.
"...is the shower broken?"
"Huh?" Dabi barely processes Shouto's question, way too caught up in the idea that he's having a legitimate shower (and yes, the League can always scrounge the public bathrooms or break into ratty motels. But fifty percent of those restrooms will probably give him a STD the moment he marinates himself in the water like a raw piece of chicken, and the other fifty percent probably doesn't have a low enough water trickle to not slough off his problematic and dramatic bitch-of-a-skin. Most of the time, it's better to just wet a towel and wipe himself down).
"I think something's wrong with the shower," Shouto warns. "It sounds weak, the water flow-"
"Nah, that's just me. If the water pressure's too high, I'll end up scraping both my scars and healing skin off," he replies, voice clear over the low trickle of water. He hums one of Shigaraki's dumbass video game OSTs, puckering his lips into a whistle that nearly tears a new hole in his cheek (a shower. He has a nice shower-). and ignores the way the scalding water basically flushes out the coagulation within the cracks of his skin, unclotting patches of scarring burns to the point where fresh blood dribbles from the spongy and fresh flesh.
He's always bleeding somewhere-
At least now he's clean while his body's layer of subcutaneous tissue has a spontaneous and synchronized menstrual cycle.
He glances through the limited toiletries. Lame. Toga would shoplift multiple shampoo scents and give most of them away as gifts. She and Magne used to categorize specific scents for all of them, as if Dabi's nostrils weren't wrecked enough from constant smoke inhalation since he turned eight. He didn't appreciate the thought of getting citrus bodywash when soap in general feels like he's stewing in a cauldron of hydrogen peroxide, but he still found it pretty damn funny that Toga gifted Shigaraki 'Head and Shoulders' shampoo since it "reminded her of him."
Meanwhile, this place doesn't even have bodywash. Or more than two different brands of conditioner. Losers.
There are only three bottles here: a really fancy lookin' green tea shampoo and conditioner set that has to be Fuyumi's, and one shampoo that's in an all black container with gold lettering. The third one must be Endeavor's, because he's the type of person who wouldn't use conditioner because real Todoroki men don't need salves or aids for their iron skin and scalp, instead, they would generate E for Everyone lubricant over their entire body because they don't need outside help.
And he just knows from personal experience that Enji is a eugenics advocate.
He squirts a large dollop of the fancy-ass shampoo in his palm, ignoring the way it seeps between the staples and fucking disinfects his entire palmline like a motherfucker, and lathers it into his crusty hair, his staplers acting like a comb's teeth that yanks through the tangles.
"Which shampoo are you using?" He hears Shouto ask from the other side of the shower curtain, probably hearing the loud sputter of Fuyumi's almost empty container.
"The good one."
"That was my sister's."
"Stop whining. Earlier you were bitchin' about me dirtying your bedsheets-"
"Because you were."
"Yeah, now I'm getting clean. Pick a problem, you're making a mess by choosing both," Dabi suggests dully, leaving the shampoo in his hair as he begins to grab the malformed bar of soap after scraping off the stray strands of hair stuck in it. He begins to carefully clean his healthy patches of skin.
"It's a mess as long as you're part of it." Shouto grumbles from the side.
"Mm. You know what else is a mess? Yeah. Your shower after this." Oh fuck. Maybe using bar soap wasn't a good idea.
"...should I be concerned? I don't wanna look, but I'm concerned-"
"No, like. I'm pretty sure I just clogged your drain with pieces of my flesh."
A pause.
"See, this is why I said as long as you're a part of it, it'll become a mess. Literally." And Shouto sounds vaguely disgusted as well as mostly concerned, and honestly, Dabi has no idea if his tone of worry applies to the fact that Dabi's making an absolute bloodbath (ha, bloodbath) out of his bathroom, or that he's leaving chunks of flesh on the floor like this is an underfunded city subway. "Don't collapse in my shower."
"If I do, it'll be fine. The door's locked." He reassures, lathering more soap to sting the ravines between his staples.
When a lapse of silence replies to his consolation, Dabi assumes the conversation's over.
It's only when he hears a strained: "oh my god. It's hitting me that I could have a dead body in my bathtub any moment now," does he realise no, Shouto didn't decide to just accept things as it is, and instead, is being an absolute primadonna.
"...my guy. You have a mass murderer in your bathroom. And he's taking a shower here, while your whole family with a hero as a head ia R home, with the majority of them unaware that their house was even trespassed." Dabi summarizes slowly like a 144p YouTube educational video trying to explain to a middle schooler why Shakespeare most definitely unironically took cocaine while writing Titus Andronicus (oh god, and he can't believe Enji made fourteen-year-old Touya read Shakespeare, when most native English speakers can't even understand people from the vast and terrifyingly rural midwest, much less a funny little European man from 1550s). "You're already off the deep-end."
"You can't use the 'I'm a killer' argument to invalidate me at any moment, because earlier you wouldn't let me use it-"
"Absolute drama queen, why are you still so caught up on that-"
"Firstly, I can't even be worried about half of thethings you've said because there's no point to it. And I don't want to hear you judging my priorities after you glossed over the fact that you straight up met god-"
He squints at that. "That was a conversation from last night. Hours ago. Why are you bringing up now?"
"You met god. Why can I not bring this up again?" Shouto hisses, and for a moment, Dabi's terrified that Shouto is going to stick his head through the shower curtain out of impulsive frustration while Dabi's hairless-cat of a body is trying to be moderately clean of at least five dead diseases that he picked up over his career of living out on the streets.
"I told you, they weren't god. Gods. God. I don't know, they said they weren't god-"
"If a cryptic and deitic being that appears to know the mechanisms of life that mortals will never understand, and knew what you were in the sense that they're capable of invalidating your individual existence in the grand scheme of things laid out by the depths of their knowledge, and they say that they are not god-" Shouto takes a breath like the theater kid that he is, when he doesn't have to breathe- "then that's arguably much worse than just meeting Jesus taking a recess from his tea party with Buddha or whatever." He somehow exhales that all in one-go with appropriate pauses.
Seriously.
Shouto's been watching too many of his dumb thriller dramas with horrible and awful casting for any playable villain (really, the build-up was perfect for the cousin to be the killer-).
"You dying feels way too close for comfort, especially after you met an entity that has to outright claim they are not god despite having qualifications to be one, at least, in terms of ignorant mortal standards." Shouto finishes, and wow, this must've been eating him up all night if he said all that with so much confidence like he's rehearsed all of his points as to why Dabi's newest divine dude (godly gal, magical mate, satanic sister) was god.
"Stop speaking like that before I actually decide to lynch myself with a loofah because you're trying to be all technical when I just want to smell like a twelve-year-old girl's hand sanitizer." Dabi, a simple man who likes to have a simple mind, warns him.
Shouto, being an asshole, in fact does not stop speaking like that.
"Dabi! We are anomalies in the mortal world-"
"Just stop saying 'mortal'. This is not a supernatural fantasy manga."
"And you just surpassed the boundaries to the extent of talking with Adam and Eve's morphed version of some evil Holy Bible fanfic!"
"What the hell." Dabi limply drops the bar of soap, angrily watching it basically dent itself against the curve of the bottom of the bathtub. "You're really ruining my vibes."
"You met god!"
"And you are ruining my vibes!" Dabi echoes, matching his hysterical timbre. "I certainly did not meet god, so stop insisting I had." He has a sudden and startlingly flashback of where he once was (and Shouto doesn't get it. It wasn't the voices, the speaker, the Creator that had ruined him. It was the ominpotency of It, the omniscience the creature had, how Its networked body encompassed the emptiness Dabi sat in, a source of something in the middleness of nothing that quenched the hollow and gut-scraping fear of loneliness and mortifying ordeal of being nonexistent without something to perceive him. That had scared Dabi with a fear that even Endeavor couldn't wish to inflict).
Dabi doesn't think of it.
No, he does.
He thinks about how Shouto is being a real Negative Nancy, a real Party Pooper, a real Multi-Barrelled Rocket Launcher.
"I don't. I don't care if they were god or not, I care that you met them." Shouto exclaims.
"UGH." Dabi hates this (the tremors in his brainwaves, the dryness evaporating off the surface of his eyeballs as he's afraid to blink and everything will be black and nothing more, no god, no saviour, no salvation-), and he doesn't want to think about it (doesn't want to think about the starless galaxy he stood in, like an ever-expanding cave trying to mimic the intricacies of space, the abyssal bottoms of inhabitual oceans), "you are killing my mood."
And he was so happy.
He had a shower.
He had possibly new clothes that he wouldn't have to care about switching out of, because they were already worn. And Natsuo, a stupid kid, wouldn't take the clothes back and would instead give them away.
He had new clothes. He had a shower.
And Shouto, is seriously banging down on his ambitious rare burst of energy and hedonistic want for something terribly and achingly nice, by reminding him that he basically just clipped through the damn mortal map and ended up in the√-1 dimension. "Can you stop reminding me of my existential crisis? Like I've had one before uhhhhhhh I don't know, having the most non-religious manifestation of a divine entity possible that might as well be considered blasphemous enough to be tried and burnt to a crisp as a witch back during the trials, but I really don't need this particular one screwing up the first hot shower with nice water pressure I've had in like half a year?"
"...I don't know if I envy or fear your adaptability."
"I'm telling your brother you straight up told a villain you envy and fear something about them if you continue being a bitchin' bastard."
A pause.
"You know what. Just die in my shower. I don't even care anymore."
"Damn. And people say I'm the villain."
"Your death would be more beneficial than you living, after all."
"My old man used to say that."
"...it's not ethical of me to say I agree."
"Just say you agree."
"I'm not as disrespectful as you."
"Nah. You're just a coward."
"Yeah your old man was right." And he didn't even hesitate.
Dabi cackles, and as his eyes pinch shut, the watery shampoo drizzles off his bangs and into his eyes.
"Character development," he finally croaks.
"You can touch your phone?"
Shouto glances up from where he's grabbing his phone, which to Dabi's astonishment, is also halo'd with an outline of supernatural film within his hands. "Oh. Wait. I grabbed my phone once," he mistily realizes, having forgotten that. He carefully dabs the diluted blood seeping from his skin with his towel, before harshly drying his hair with it.
"Yeah. Was your phone on you when you transformed?" Shouto asks, gesturing to the loose pockets of his pajamas that he's still wearing. His ugly Doraemon pajamas.
Dabi absently nods as he wipes his wet feet on the bathtub rug.
"Doesn't that make you wonder? How this all works?" Nope. The moment Dabi realizes something is out of his comprehension capabilities, he immediately gives up. Why waste all that effort? "Because if you think about it, it makes sense that we keep stuff on us, since both of us remain dressed when we turn into ghosts even though our clothes aren't a part of our bodies."
"If our stuff didn't stay on us, all my staples wouldn't remain on me- my flesh would unzip like a bodybag," he wheezes, and Shouto looks genuinely disgusted by that, which only furthers his amusement.
"...I was trying to create a theory on how we can somehow logically hold items, and you're here saying crap like this." He scowls. Dabi shrugs. Okay. So he's a mood murderer. Shouto did it first with his existential crisis while he was trying to have a hot shower. "Anyways. So basically. We can hold things, especially subconsciously, since it's not like either of us mentally prepared ourselves to turn into ghosts in the first place, yet neither of us ghostiified into a naked form of ourselves as we've kept our clothes transformed on us." A pause. Shouto's eyes dart over to him, before laxing as he realizes he's wrapped in a towel. "And your staples," he adds.
"Yeah, but going off of your logic, that would mean you could grab something by thinking really hard, which doesn't work." Dabi retorts, figuring Shouto probably already figured this out on his own. Though, he gets Shouto's theory. As a spirit, his clothes stayed on him, meaning whatever's influencing its ghostly form must be subconscious and constant since it's not like anything was actively keeping his clothes in a ghostly form (at least, to his knowledge) for hours.
But Dabi also remembers desperately wanting to touch something to the point of almost emotionally spiraling, and he couldn't grab anything outside of himself.
"Mm." Shouto nods, pointing to a comb on the sink counter. Dabi snags it after lazily tossing the towel onto the floor. "I tried grabbing that," he says as Dabi begins to run the comb through his matted hair. "Didn't work," he says with a tone of disappointment.
When Dabi firmly tucks the towel around his waist and gathers his clothes into an unmade pile into his arms, he goes: "I'm covered. Let's go." Shouto turns around from where he was facing the door, only to freeze, eyes darting across Dabi's bare upper body. "Hey. No thirsting," he snaps, knowing full-well that Shouto's staring because of the expansive scarring instead of anything else.
It's hard not to stare.
Shouto sticks out his tongue, clearly trying to play off his sudden reaction. "I didn't know it was that bad. It's a lot." He observes aloud like he said something profound, eyes shamelessly scurrying over Dabi's shoulders and neck. "How do you breathe?"
And he forgot; Shouto is tactless. Then again, Dabi finds himself unbothered by his obtuse insensitivity- he's not that much different, after all. He's more shot in the face by the fact that he doesn't know what to do with the lack of malicious intent in Shouto's questions. "Can't gasp too hard, skin is like a noose since it's inflexible and doesn't grow 'cuz it's dead," Dabi croaks. And he's never felt self-conscious before. Probably. He knows people stares, and it's infuriatingly itchy when they do, but he can always deepfry those fuckers' fingers like cucumbers pickled in a bird-shat park lake. Besides. The people he usually interacts with are those associated with the League, and none of them care enough to judge, especially since that scaly bastard is their boss.
He's never had a chance to experience and appropriate his conduct to match Shouto's earnest curiosity, past that creep of a doctor who keeps begging Boss to let him get his nasty hands on him to see how he functions.
"The scarring is deep," Shouto observes the obvious, eyes flitting across his frame, before something dark shadows his expression. "I guess it'd be less common to find users whose bodies are immune to high-heat quirks, huh?"
"Why? Your brother was the same?" He pushes, but Shouto doesn't respond with an expected biting remark or recoiled demeanor.
Instead, he just shrugs. "Coincidences exist." Then, with refreshing flippancy, "besides. Touya's dead." He didn't expect this type of nonchalance from Shouto out of everyone. Dabi's kind of impressed.
Shouto continues to rotate to Dabi's back. "How did you get them?"
And he doesn't really care about the questions, he guesses, as hearing that doesn't do anything for him. Rather, he's more or less unsettled by Shouto's scientific fascination, but then again, that's certainly not the worst response Dabi's faced before. He can't pin his sudden crawl of uncomfortableness on indignation, because he knows that if Shouto's asking without any undertone of mockery, than he's not; Shouto's pretty straightforward with his disdain.
But that makes things worse, because then Dabi can't dissect why this conversation is so disconcerting like the world is crumpling in on him, with a creaky and flickering spotlight focused on his existence,
"Does it hurt?"
"Of course not, Shouto," he purposefully whips out the first name, figuring it'll deter him. He doesn't like this conversation. He doesn't know why. "All these staples are actually clip-ons." He snarks.
Shouto doesn't retract from his proximity, nor does he seem particularly offended by his snappish sarcasm. "C'mon. Check. Are there people outside?" Dabi orders, unable to bite back the pensiveness in his tone. He doesn't like the air he's breathing in this damn studio right now: ugly atmosphere and uncomfortable stares.
"Oh. They're all in the kitchen. I heard Natsuo telling the others I was picking up food, and he didn't mention anything about you to my sister," Shouto replies.
"Good. Then my guest appearance will be a surprise."
"Haha. Do that to my family and I actually will hire an exorcist." Shouto says, working out an ache near his jaw.
Dabi rolls his eyes at Shouto's theatrics, while boldly stepping out of the bathroom, trusting Shouto to not lie to him about the rest of the Todorokis' locations, probably because he's realized that having a replica of a dead sibling encounter one of his family members is like asking the uncles from his mother side, to meet the uncle from his father's side. It's really a hit-or-miss, but on a homicidal scale.
"Hurry, run!" Shouto hisses from behind him, worriedly glancing down the hallway as Dabi leisurely heads into Shouto's bedroom.
"I don't run." Dabi says. Forming muscles with half of his skin being a literal jerkied-up skin suit is just a bitch, and any harsh movement feels like his skin is ripping like wax paper.
"Lock the door behind you!"
Dabi scoffs, but does do that anyways. Actually, he's majorly surprised that Shouto had a door up until now- Enji seems like the type to unscrew the hinges of his child's bedroom door if they raise his voice against him.
Then again, he supposes punching really is a lot easier than pulling a Bob the Builder.
He finds clothes laid out at the edge of Shouto's bed, and on his boringly empty desk, a plate of dumplings. There's even a pair of mismatched chopsticks stabbed through one of them.
"He spread it out for you," Shouto says with a tone of fondness, investigating the clothes, probably to check to make sure Natsuo didn't give him good brands.
He rounds to him, disgusted. "As if we both don't know he probably did that because he doesn't know how to fold clothes."
Shouto averts his eyes, and doesn't refute that.
Dabi rolls his eyes so far, that he nearly physically tears a blood vessel. He tugs on the white shirt, his hair wetting the rim of the collar, and frowns as he slips his arms in. The material is thicker, sturdier than the ones he has, which kind of fucks with his seamed skin that's already rubbed rawer than it already is after the shower.
Good enough.
"Think he wore this?" Dabi holds up a pair of briefs.
"Even if he did, it's probably washed unlike yours."
"Hey." He does try and single-use his underwear. It's...difficult, though. Underwear and socks are the few garments he has that can be easily washed with dish gloves and a bar of soap in the sink, but some days he just.
He just.
Look. Dabi's a raging open wound and he's usually five seconds from losing it, not just physically, but mentally.
Changing clothes he had worn for four to seven consecutive days in a row is honestly not something that crosses his mind as a real problem after years of living like this.
"That's gross." Shouto comments, probably because Dabi's silence says everything.
"I am literally homeless." When he does end up at the base of the rest of the League, though, he does exploit their running water and washing machine as much as possible.
Shouto, to his credit, retaliates without a moment of ashamed or self-reflective hesitation: "I said what I said," though, he uses a less judgmental and more factual tone this time.
"You're an ass." Dabi snorts indifferently, tugging on the pair of athletic shorts, flimsy and polyester. He doesn't know if he likes them. Their looseness is comfortable since they don't create friction against his fucked up legs, but their material is definitely the type to easily catch onto his staples and the dry ridges of his flesh.
Whatever. They're clean.
Shouto shrugs, not denying it. "You should head to U.A. in around half an hour. That's when Aizawa will be there, and we can try and fix this quicker."
"What if I just don't go?" He asks more to provoke him than out of any real curiosity.
"...are you seriously willing to sacrifice your mental health by having the two of us waste our time by walking in different directions when both of us are in corporal form? Like two children fighting to use the remote and switching to their preferred channel when mom says it's their turn to control the TV?"
"Duh."
Shouto scowls.
"I'm not walking back into that hellhole." Dabi states.
"You definitely haven't been to school before-"
"Wow. Assume much?"
"Have you?"
"No."
Shouto looks ready to fill Dabi's sinuses with his kidney fluid.
"Anyways. You don't get to call it a 'hellhole' until you've experienced it first, which is something you can do if you get moving now."
Dabi shrugs. "I don't have to attend school to just know it's a hellhole. I can tell it's one since you're a product of that environment." He retorts, ignoring the way that Shouto looks like he wants to take off his head with a brick but is physically unable to.
Ignoring the Shouto Stare™, he instead relishes in the way the new socks against his feet feel thick and padded rather than moist and ratty.
He hesitates when he fans out his own duster. He sniffs his coat, and even with his awful senses, the tangy sourness of dried soot and old smoke that had embedded itself into the fabric of his jacket stings his nose. He glances at the new and scentless shirt that's airy around his scrawny limbs.
A bit mournfully, he carelessly balls his duster with the rest of his dirty clothes, and grabs a plastic bag from the corner of the room that's already holding a pair of fuzzy slippers with dirty twists of yarn that individually the girth of his fingers, looking like a strange mop. He dumps those slippers out, ignoring Shouto's loud protests, and uses it to stash his lump of laundry. He tightly knots the handles of the bag into bunny ears, and heads to the desk to begin eating the left out meal.
Slumping into the desk chair that's way too close to the floor, he snags up the pair of chopsticks balanced on the plate, and picks up one of the sticky shrimp dumplings. "Can you see the inside of my stomach?" Dabi asks curiously as Shouto dunks his head through his lower belly, half of his body phasing through Dabi's bones, encasing them in a chill. He nearly swallows one of the dumplings whole upon the odd sensation of someone going through him.
"Yeah. Can see your bacteria culture. It's nasty." Shouto replies sarcastically.
"Makes sense. It's probably the cigarettes I ate."
"What."
"Yeah. Fibrous, you know. Good to stave off cravings."
"You're like a personification of what a STD is," Shouto says, disgusted. "I- that's." He exhales, groaning into his palms. "Yeah. Okay. Fine." He bites out, clearly realizing that he probably can't berate Dabi for doing things off of survival.
Well, to be fair, he also ate them because he was curious like an unsupervised toddler with colourful crayons (he was also drunk that night for the first time in his life and was absolutely outta his goddamn mind. He doesn't remember much of that time past Shigaraki's shouting, him hating himself, and him vomiting into a toilet while having a miraculous moment of sobriety where he conclusively decided that "yeah, we're never doing this again").
"Anyways. Eat quickly. We have to head out soon, since you told Sensei you'd be ready in what? Two hours?" Shouto impatiently gestures, hands flapping straight through Dabi. Dabi tunes him out, clumsily stuffing another dumpling into his mouth. "Eat faster! Aizawa-sensei will be actually annoyed if you show up late after asking him to pick up."
"Hey. You were the one who suggested me to call him, and even gave me his number," which by the way, he still thinks is really weird that the students have their teacher's personal number.
Then again, said students are kids like Shouto, Bakugou, and Hawks one weird crow child who speaks like an edgy middle-schooler who kins Shadow the Hedgehog.
At that thorough description, he then silently supposes that maybe these students do need extra parental supervision than typical for a normal class. Perhaps it's not that weird that Aizawa is basically their emergency contact.
"What's that old man gonna do?" He bashes, knowing full well that Eraserhead doesn't deserve his shit, especially since Dabi just knows he receives long blocks of texts conveying a whole-ass nervous breakdowns from his students at three in the morning. This man does not need Dabi tossing him underneath the bus, but Dabi wants to do it, so he will. "He literally looks like he's on death's door and is more or less annoyed that the grim reaper hasn't made up their mind as to whether or not they're going to take Eraserhead to hell, or bring hell to him, since he's currently stuck in a limbo of both." He speaks through a full mouth. "I could fold him with a single forehead flick."
"You're right in the sense that Aizawa-sensei would rather just not deal with us in general-"
"Yeah. Great lifeline."
"But that's why if he loses all patience with us, he would just call Endeavor and tell him that you're in his very house right now."
"I hope he does." He immediately replies without missing a beat. "Imagine Endeavor finding out I've just been here the whole time, even using the showers in his house. What a powerplay on my part." He genuinely praises himself, while trying to poorly calculate how long it'll take him to finish his damn dumplings. He should eat them. He wants to.
He can't.
His line irons out into a wobbly grimace, exhaustion and something akin to sickness swirling in his throat. And it's not like he was conditioned into finishing his plate as a child after Endeavor realized Touya's quirk was extremely high-metabolic; rather, it was after years of living on the streets that taught Dabi that wasting food is a long-term regret.
He tiredly takes another bite of his dumpling.
Shouto, to his credit, doesn't look majorly undeterred by Dabi's statement of power-moving his father, and is instead dazedly watching him eat, clearly anxious by his slow munching. Which is wholly unintentional. But to be fair to Shouto, if he could eat faster without minding his stapled jaw or his cramping stomach, he wouldn't, since ticking Shouto off is more or less Dabi's newest daily reward for logging into life for the past couple of days.
"Eat faster."
"I am." He snaps, chopsticks clacking against his plate with aggravation, annoyed at being told what to do, especially since he-
He can't.
"Why do you eat like that sloth from Zootopia? Hurry up."
"Don't rush me. I'm savouring my plate." Dabi lazily waves away his hand, shuffling the chopsticks in his left hand. He was raised to use his right-hand, but after leaving the household, he would often revert back to his left-hand for its stronger grip, in spite of his right-hand's learnt precision and muscle memory.
Shouto stays quiet for like. The next 0.4 seconds before clawing through the desk. "You're so slow."
"And you're slow-witted. We balance each other out."
"I don't want to hear that, even as a joke."
"See. This is why you're slow. Because that wasn't a joke."
"...when I turn corporal, I'm confining myself in a room with just Bakugou, so you'll have to waste away your hours of existence when you end up switching back."
"What makes you think I won't be the one torturing him?"
Shouto looks at him weirdly. "You're telling me you're fine with being in an enclosed and inescapable room where your only source of company and validation for your existence as a person on the verge of solitary confinement is a self-absorbed fifteen-year-old with the social cooperativeness of a metal-handle tea kettle?"
The hand that Dabi was using to bring the dumpling to his mouth stutters in movement.
And he doesn't say anything in response to that, but if Shouto notices that his bites have more urgency behind them, then he didn't comment on it.
"Yeah so you gotta go through the second floor window."
Dabi squints. "I am not hopping out of the second floor window."
"Coward. This is the only way out." Shouto exclaims. "My window is the only one with a ledge underneath so don't worry: your knees don't fold out of place like an escalator."
Lies. The master bedroom has a ledge, too.
Another lie is that since his knees have the durability of apple sauce he's an absolute goner the moment the landing travels up his legs.
Dabi groans, and grabs his plastic bag of clothes, and even dumps his boots into it as well. He kicks on the oversized mop sandals he earlier shook out of the same bag, instead. He doesn't wanna shove his nice socks into his old shoes.
"I'm not crawling out of your second floor window like an absolute heathen when I have the body padding of a Minecraft skeleton-"
"Don't pussy out-" a pause, "you know Minecraft?"
"You use pussy?" And honestly, Dabi's having more of a whiplash at hearing the word 'pussy' coming out of the usually appropriately filtered Todoroki Shouto's mouth, rather than the fact that he's currently being peer pressured by a damn fifteen-year-old into committing spinal-cord suicide by Geronimo'ing out of his bedroom's second floor window (seriously. Teenagers are actual menaces to society, and he doesn't understand why the government hasn't enforced leashes for them).
"I am NOT getting socially sandbagged into dangling myself out of your bedroom window." He states when the two of them only share a hard and quiet gaze of mutual judgment.
"Why? You commit arson. You kidnap influential children. You broke into influential childrens' houses!" Shouto gesticulates around him, his hands flying through the walls as one spiritually does.
"Yeah, well, the payout for ruining my body is usually worth it. If I actually end up hitting the floor from this height, I'll probably end up stripping every muscle connected to my lower body's joints like banana peels."
"What are you saving your body for?" Shouto groans, frustrated and impatient.
"...what? I- what?" He doesn't even know what Shouto is trying to say right now. "Marriage?" He blurts abruptly, unsure what Shouto's even asking him anymore.
"No, like- your body preservation! It's not like you're going to get taxidermized in the future!"
"Well, of course I won't." He thinks about the mad doc' that Shigaraki talks to like an underground plastic surgeon. "Not voluntarily-"
"Yeah of cour-" a pause, "what?"
"But I don't get why I can't try and keep myself from dying right now?" Dabi continues with an frustrated tone after snatching a bathrobe out of Shouto's closet.
Shouto looks at him like he's dumb. "No offense, but you're what? Trying to save your body for like, another year tops? Your body is already half-dead. Don't tell me you're worrying about your bodily functions now."
"Dude." He can't believe he just dude'd a child. God he feels so old. "You're right, but I am NOT throwing myself out of your window-"
"Don't gotta throw, just crawl. I'm not asking you to snap all your bones like a stale glowstick, just crawl because I don't want my other family members to see you-"
"Yeah, well, you don't want them to see a dead body in their backyard right underneath your open window, huh?" Dabi lours.
"Listen." He considers charring Shouto's bed for trying to use the 'white Nickelodian dad who's not mad, just disappointed at their teenage child threw a coked up party while they were away' voice. "You don't understand. Not to get political, but my dad is kind of an incorrigible bitch." Shouto exhales shakily, pinching the bridge of his nose, and Dabi's beginning to realise that maybe Shouto's uncharacteristic panic might have deeper-rooted reasons than he initially thought. Right. If Endeavor finds out, there's no way shit won't hit the fan for both of them, especially given that their odd circumstances that compromises Shouto's safety, with no sure guarantee that Dabi can be controlled by anyone but himself.
"...I don't want to crawl out through your window." He bites stonily, though, his previous mocking timbre tampers down slightly.
Shouto looks at him with his stupidly earnest eyes, vulnerable from desperation of not getting both of their organs shredded by legalities as a form of literal corporal punishment for their corporal asses.
"I really don't want to crawl through your window."
Shouto only clasps his hands together. And Shouto does not beg, but he certainly does guilt-trip, this bastard.
"Son of a whore," he exhales under his breath. "...I am not crawling through your wi-"
Natsuo chokes on his congee as he sees a dark figure fly past the window.
"What's wrong?"
He glances up to see Fuyumi glancing at him worriedly, as well as Enji giving a disapproving glare towards the spittle of rice porridge peppering the previously glossy dinner table.
"...nothing?" A really large, really suspiciously humanoid figure just fell past the window like a homeless Chuck E. Cheese mascot, but right now, that window reveals nothing but sunshine and branches of the pretentious cherry blossom trees that his father ordered for their backyard.
Noticing the direction of his gaze, Fuyumi twists in her seat to see, as Natsuo knows, nothing right outside of the window.
Fuyumi looks back at him with a blank gaze. His mom looks up from where she's stirring more fermented tofu into Fuyumi's congee, curious about all the commotion.
Natsuo awkwardly spoons another mouthful of bland congee into his mouth.
He then rather unexpectedly sees a wirey figure jackknife up from where he was folded beneath the dining room window, swaying on the spot.
He loses his grip on his handle, and nearly deep-throats an entire spoon.
"Natsuo!" His mom shouts, while his father sighs as more congee goes splattering out his mouth and all over the table as he watches Shouto's weird friend with a branch in his hair stagger on the spot, grab onto his spine like a blotchy old grandpa whose scoliosis is acting up again- and is that a bathrobe?
Then, said weird friend who looks like a muppet stitched out of foreskin, swivels over, and pauses as he notices Natsuo who's asphyxiating to death.
In the middle of Fuyumi scrabbling to find water for him while Enji looks ready to pound his back so hard that he inverts his entire skeletal frame, the weirdo, upon making eye contact with Natsuo's who's about to see god via spoon, simply makes a rockstar gesture with a single hand, before limping away.
"-tsuo, Natsuo!"
"Ablslkfdjf."
"Spit, spit!" His mom's urging is very unhelpful, since the watery rice is already gurgling in the bottom of his windpipe like its exit is an organic trash disposal.
"Can you not cause a ruckus so early in the morning? He already spat all over the table," Enji says with a foul expression. "Natsuo, focus while eating."
Pretty hard to focus, when Natsuo's pretty sure that he just saw a guy fall off of their second floor roof, and get up with nothing more than backpain.
He unlodges the spoon out of his throat gut.
"Are you okay?" Fuyumi gasps, flustered as he finally stops nearly dying all over their dining table.
Distantly, he feels his mom's cold hand pat his back.
He noisily clears his throat, and shakily accepts her offered glass of water. "Yeah." He rumbles. "Just peachy."
Oh god.
He just got "rock on'd" by Shouto's questionably aged friend who has a murderous friendship tag between him and his pro-hero of a father.
He coughs on the water, and hears in the distant background, Enji mutter "Jesus Christ."
"You're going to walk?"
Dabi glances to the side, distraught that someone who's supposed to share similar genes with him, can say something so stupid.
"No. I'm going to fly, Shouto."
"Don't call me that-"
"Then don't say stupid things, and I won't, either." Dabi retorts dryly, tightening the scarf around his neck and bottom half of his face, ignoring how the material snags onto the staples clamping his blasphemous mouth together.
"First off, that was really clever, so fuck you, my name is perfect."
"Did you always swear this much?" Dabi mutters, nearly eating the scarf.
"Only after having you as my sole source of outside, social-world interaction for half of every day that I've had," Shouto admits unabashedly. "Anyways. Dabi. It's going to take an hour and a half if you try and walk to school." He warns, heeling next to Dabi, walking like he's a person with a tangible body, trotting like he's real, despite this illusion being constantly bombarded and glitched by pedestrians and babystrollers distressing his translucent figure. "Just wait for Aizawa-sensei-"
"He's not coming for another half hour," and he doesn't want to wait. He feels itchy, disgusting, and so distinctly out of place out in this shopping square. He's never been out here, Touya hasn't either, so he wasn't aware there'd be so many pedestrians out this early in the morning. He knots the bathrobe tighter around his waist, the sleeves obscuring his absolutely scuffed as hell elbows.
As if sensing he's going to be unreasonably and whiningly stubborn about this, Shouto sighs, and suggests: "get on the metro as I had-"
"I don't have a pass or any money at all," he scoffs. And he should've raided through Endeavor's bedroom; Rei had very few valuables, but he's sure he can pawn whatever jewelry she had left for stuff. He could probably sell Endeavor's underwear and toothbrush on Craigslist after taking a picture of it and its location to prove its validity. There are some crazy ass people out there (there are people who'd buy gamergirl bathwater, so why not prohero used toothbrush?), and he might as well make them his targeted consumers. At the very least, he should've burrowed through the drawers to find loose change.
Instead, he's trotting along the sidewalk with a plastic bag of tattered clothes, customized like a randomly generated GoGirlsGame avatar due to his heavy disguise and light outfit. He's tossed a bathrobe he snatched out of Shouto's closet to hide the expansive scarring of his arms and legs, though, he's sure that if anyone takes a second glance at him due to his odd attire, they might see the glinting of the staples clipped above his socked ankles, or the withered earlobes holding up the pair of shades he snagged from Natsuo's room.
Honestly, he looks like a Disney original villain, which is like, just an alternate reality of who he truly is, so good enough for him. He takes another step with the clonky and awkwardly sized bath shoes (and holy shit, doesn't Shouto have smaller feet than him? Why does he have oversized shoes then-), each step slapping against the concrete like flippers.
"Okay." Shouto clears his throat, reminding Dabi that he's still trying to tell Dabi what to do.
He bites back a snarl.
"But don't walk."
"Bet."
"No. I-" he makes a noise of irritation. And he's pretty sure just like. Two. Three? Two days ago, Shouto has never emitted random sparking noises of frustration out of his unhinged jaw like a flame left unattended. Just in the past ten minutes, Shouto has generated enough noise to power a plastic Barbie SUV. Finally, he advises, "you literally look like you'd die if you had to walk that far."
"I will." He promises, ignoring the way a kid tugs on the end of his bathrobe, clearly taking second glances at his Walmart stacked Eraserhead cosplay.
"...you know what, you kidnap kids and cultivate mold culture in your boxers. I'm just going to suggest you to hijack someone's bike, you're already too late for salvation." Shouto sighs. "...yeah. There's no way you met god out of all people at that time. You probably saw Satan."
Dabi, unfortunately, has to stifle a shredded noise of amusement at Shouto's resignation to Dabi's criminal character.
"You think I can bike with these legs?"
"You're already bleeding all over the place."
"Yeah. Because I leapt out a window," he strains.
A couple who was walking near him slowly slows down.
Shouto, who notes this, looks at him smugly. "Wow. An underdressed homeless sewer rat dragging around a foul smelling plastic bag is talking to himself about jumping out of a window. Maybe the police will pick you up even without knowing who you really are."
Dabi rolls his eyes, only to realize there's no way Shouto can see the well-deserved gesture due to his shades, and instead, flips him off.
A citizen walking around him does a doubletake upon seeing Dabi gesturing in his direction, and Dabi, feeling like it's only fair to respond to him and it'd be rude not to, this time directly sticks his middle finger up for him.
"It'll be half an hour. Just wait it out."
"I'm not gonna wait without doing anything." Dabi gripes. "Here. I'll just drive instead."
"You can drive?"
"Duh. I'm an adult."
"You literally can't ride a bike."
"So?" Dabi shrugs, glancing around the sidewalk of the bustling streets of the city, hoping to spy a random car that's circumstantial for easy hijacking.
"By this point, you might as well just ride public transport and force your way off to avoid paying." Shouto deadpans, seeing him glancing around suspiciously. "Stop doing that. You're creeping everyone around you out.
"I'm talking to myself right now, holding a one-sided conversation with air while dressed like a Sesame Street character," Dabi scoffs. "I'm already freaking everyone out," he leans against a parking meter. "Shit. Driving myself there would be so much easier than just fucking walking." The sun is turning his entire bathrobed body into a greenhouse, and since his burned skin can't sweat, he's just overheating to the point of soft boiled eyeballs and an uncomfortable patchy itch stitching underneath all of his damaged flesh.
Shit.
He should've just gotten on a public bus, but he doesn't know where the nearest station is. It's not like Touya ever really explored the public or city even right outside his own neighbourhood; not when Endeavor insisted on using personal transport, and insisted on keeping Touya at home.
"Fuck. I wanna drive." And he can't even be bothered to care how goddamn miserable he must sound.
The yarn of the mop slippers are catching onto the texture of the sidewalk, the lack of sole support and fabric covering feeling like he's walking around in falling-apart socks, and it's so stupid, but-
This is going to be his reason for losing it.
He hates everything.
"Can you really drive?" Shouto asks, more curious than mocking.
"I wouldn't say it if I couldn't." He reasons.
"Not legally, though." Shouto clarifies, once again, sounding more factual than accusatory (and god Dabi hates that. The earnestness and lack of judgment in Shouto's tone during discussions that always directly involve Dabi as a person, that juxtapose the constant disgust in all his other remarks. It's weird, unfathomable, and creepy).
"Yeah, but was that your question?"
"You're a menace."
"I kill people, Shouto."
"You can't use that argument if I can't, we went over this-" a pause, "you can't use my name, either- get away from that car!" And Dabi doesn't know how to feel about his ex-baby brother in an incorporeal spiritual form trying to smack Dabi away from a parked car like a particularly anxious dog owner trying to prevent their pet from eating plastic. Then again, Dabi has had an impromptu rendez vous with god like a frat boy who's stirred a little too much oregano into the brownie batter, and he's essentially part cryptid by this point, and he broke into number one pro hero Endeavor's house and allied with his two remaining sons to hide his existence. So is Shouto acting like his unappreciated babysitter really the moment that Dabi's going to let get to him?
The answer is yes, because being disrespected by a teenager is the absolute last straw out of everything.
"Just wait for Aizawa-sensei, we told him we'd be around the market street."
"Or, I can drive. I'm bored." Unnerved. He's going to lose it, blow both of their covers, have a goddamn meltdown underneath the purple Floridian heat with dumpling vomit dribbling down the sewer systems underneath tens, hundreds, thousands of pedestrians that are just right next to him- god why is he so itchy- "I've been only around you this whole time. At least let me stop by a CVS. I'll raid it for those fancy-ass granola bars that are way too overpriced for a being a stick of peanutbutter." He suggests, mouth tacky and words fished out of his melted, gluey, white matter.
He inwradly laughs.
I could find the exact same protein bars in Petsmart, for sure.
"Yeah, let's not do that." Shouto advises. Then, his eyes widen slightly as he looks at Dabi (and Dabi hates how he looks back. He only has the confidence because of the glasses covering his emotions, hiding away the weird sense of comfort from focusing on one source of stimuli rather than the thousands around him [the mortifying ordeal of being known], that has him surrendering his undivided attention to the brat). "You had a license before...you changed career paths?"
"Nope," he pops his syllables. He never had a chance to learn how to drive, and Touya definitely didn't either. However, living on the streets for the first couple years as a teenager, barely hitting the age of a young adult, he picked up a few tricks
One of them being how to pick out the perfect victim to hijack the car. However, "driving," he thinks out loud, "...now that's all handwaved." That shit he barely bothered to learn, and he doesn't know most of the basic rules of the road.
"What. Did you just say your driving was handwaved."
"Don't worry. I don't speed," motion sickness is a bitch. He glances up as he senses movement, and sees a young lady warily eyeball him.
He steps aside from the car he was subconsciously trotting to.
They stare at each other.
He walks away wtihout a second glance.
Shouto, witnessing all of this, glances at him pityingly. "the secondhand embarrassment you're giving me right now...."
"You talk like my old man." And because he's mean: "you talk like your old man."
Shouto looks at him, stricken with minor disgust, but, he doesn't appear offended. Just stares at Dabi like he's sick.
Dabi sighs. "It's a lot funnier if you knew what I was saying."
"Trust me, I know what you're saying."
"Noooo," Dabi begins, exasperated because Shouto's wrong and Dabi, who's always misunderstood (well, no, he did kill those recruits because they pissed him off, so him being a shit person probably isn't that much of a misunderstanding-) is finding himself unexpectedly suffering the consequences of it, "ugh, I have so many wicked lines, and you can't even get them-"
"But I do?" Shouto replies defensively. "It's not like your jokes are profound? I don't get it."
And before he knows it, their entire conversation is dissolving into a murky puddle of shit, but Dabi is willing to wade through that swamp because his mind is amazing and Shouto's missing out on it.
"That's what I'm saying. That you can't get it and it's so infuriating-" Irony is such a karmic bitch and he's wholly upset that Shouto can't get it when Dabi is honestly, the funniest person that he knows.
"Are you high?"
"Why do you always think I'm high?"
"You look like it."
"I smoke one joint and trust me, my entire soul is gone." He doesn't know why he's telling Shouto this, when Dabi never likes talking more than necessary (too much effort to painfully creak open his jaw, too much effort to care-), "you know what's good though? Sakuma's Drops."
"...those are nasty." Shouto's staring at him oddly, his strange expression unsynced with the impassiveness of his voice.
And holy shit. Dabi glowers at Shouto, ignoring the way that a teenager right behind of the ghost trips over their glittery sandals. "What?"
"Those are gross. Especially the chocolate ones."
"Distasteful. You take that back."
"I absolutely will not."
"Take that back."
"The people hated Jesus because he told the truth."
"I said, take that back-"
Aizawa doesn't know why he's currently Ubering over a student and said student's villainous companion, but he finds himself veering his motorcycle around the lane to park near the curb of this large shopping square. He's sure that Todoroki said they would drop by here.
Sighing, he yanks off his helmet, ignoring the way his hair plasters against his cheek. He limply hangs the helmet on a handle, and kicks down the brake of his vehicle.
Done, he takes a step back and a moment to absorb his surroundings. Lots of people. As expected. It is a Sunday. He's in a place that's full of store brands even he recognizes. No wonder there are so many families and students still wearing uniforms running around.
He frowns, and reaches for his phone in the pockets of his duster. As he leans against his cycle, he finally gets a full view of a gathered crowd on the sidewalk.
He blinks, his eyes darting back up from his screen.
He nearly crushes his phone. Please.
He barely trusts Todoroki to mimic a barline functional member of modern society, and knowing that it's Dabi who's the physical host at the moment of this emotionally volitaile and literally interdimensional relationship that has the balance of a plastic 4-6yo seesaw, he trusts him (them, really) even less. Running in the direction of the crowd, he prepares himself to find Dabi and probably some poor citizen harassed half to death (physically or verbally because judging from Todoroki's reports, Dabi has the infuriating personality of a dustpan), only to freeze as he looks up from where he nearly punted aside a runt clinging to his father's kneecaps.
A lanky figure dressed in a bathrobe matted at the hems, with an expensive pair of sunglasses slipping down their nose, is shouting to the air beside them, words barely coherent through the illegally long scarf perched and looped all the way from their collarbones to right below their nose like a tie-dyed rattlesnake (listen. Aizawa is a long scarf advocator. But that scarf is evilly piled onto their shoulders like a large dump). It's like a white wine aunt found god and the atomic make-up of beer through an ectsasy-induced religious epiphany, and is therefore now part of a hippie cult where everyones' haircut looks like Jesus on the run.
And maybe invisible Shouto noticed him, or Dabi did himself, because a second after staring, the man who has the fashion of the criminally insane, whips around and faces Aizawa with too much confidence for his liking. "Oh. 'Raserhead." The absolute wackjob gives a flippant wave, and his hands are literally scarred and stapled. His disguise is more eye-catching than a disguise with a goal has the right to be.
He's the type of man who wears a paper bag over his head in hopes of hiding his identity.
Aizawa eyeballs him, and for a moment, decides that honestly, the purpose of his fit does work. His outfit is so horrendously trashbagged, that to be able to see past its first layer of degeneracy is unlikely for normal citizens, which is effective since his second layer is literally just 'serial killer cosplay'.
"Yeah...." Aizawa glances up. "No....you got the wrong person."
"No. You're definitely Eraserhead."
"No. I'm not. You got the wrong person-"
"You promised me a ride-" Aizawa takes a step back.
"Wrong person."
"You fuc- stop running-"
"...yeahhhhh." Hero Commissioner Yoshiki slowly lowers his stack of papers. His eyes dart over to A-rank villain Dabi, who's currently dressed like a grandpa who went on tour to Hawaii without knowing the effects of tourisms on the natives. As if challenging his gaze, Dabi takes a long and hard sip of the strawberry banana smoothie that Aizawa reluctantly bought for him at the small cafe they're seated at.
Aizawa continues staring straight-ahead, numbed to Dabi's presence by this point. To be fair, Dabi's not very talkative in general, past occasionally snapping at the air beside him.
"I tried going through all the files, can't find shit," Yoshiki shrugs apologetically, flicking his ugly fedora. "There's no reported quirk, even within the classified files, that could do something like..." He gesticulates desperately at Dabi, "this."
"You sure he's reliable?" Dabi accusingly points, clearly still not over his suspicions with the Commission, even though Aizawa knows that Yoshiki is dependable because despite his high-rank in the offices of the Commission, his loyalty lies with Aizawa's saving account.
Yoshiki glances at Dabi, looking more or less offended. "Hey. My information is always correct-"
"I have pretty high standards when it comes to info brokers," Dabi dismisses with his typically patronizing tone.
"I don't want to hear about your petty marijuana dealer and their block gossip-"
"As if. Smoking is bad for you," Dabi, who literally is a gas giant in his own right, says with confidence he should not have. "It's you who looks like he thinks cases and information are sold in briefcases, Bungou-No-Stray-Dogs-looking-ass-"
Aizawa sighs, exasperated that he got caught up in an impromptu dick-measuring contest with a deepfried, morally corrupt bastard with the fashion sense of a Disney World tourist, and Dabi.
"Okay." Aizawa intervenes. "Yoshiki, was there anything you could possibly find that could explain...this, even on the most miniscule scale?" And Aizawa doesn't plead, because that's only blood for moneyhounds like Yoshiki, because not to get political, but he's pretty desperate since he really doesn't want to be on childcare duty over a twenty-something-year-old murderer, with his assistant nanny being a sixteen-year-old who's codependent on his coping mechanisms developed since childhood.
"Your customer is a bitch." Yoshiki gripes, clearly edging along the bias that he wants to pettily hold back simply due to his newfound dislike for Dabi. Which is childish, because everyone hates Dabi, it's not like he's special.
"For your sake and everybody elses', you should play hero and just suck it up and help us," Aizawa insinuates with a sharp tone that's definitely more 'demanding' than 'suggesting'. It's the tone he uses every time Bakugou tries to assert dominance by sacrificing one of his classmates in Aizawa's homeroom again, and Aizawa has to kindly advise him to not interpret the 'm' in 'Midoriya' as 'murder'.
"Why?" Yoshiki glances at Dabi slyly, as if there's something more to the illegally dressed serial killer who's gnawing his plastic straw like a mutt. "He's special?"
And Yoshiki doesn't know that it's Todoroki Shouto who's currently standing around as a third party of the small breakfast diner that they've gathered within, but he knows that there is currently some offbrand spirit walking around ther booth at the moment. Yoshiki also doesn't know that it's Dabi who's sitting across from them, and honestly, Aizawa didn't want to bring Dabi along, until Dabi insisted on tagging along, claiming that it was Todoroki who was screaming in his ear to convey his one-sentence message.
Somehow, he had visualized Todoroki staring at him with extreme judgment the moment he returns in a physical form, and that's when Aizawa decided that he's not dealing with the tantrum of an edgy teenager for the rest of the week, and brought Dabi along with him.
"Sure. I'm just saying, you'll regret not helping him out," Aizawa answers vaguely.
At this, Yoshiki shrugs, leaning forwrad. "Lemillon's quirk is the obvious answer to your earlier question. The quirk properties are very similar in terms of appearance, but the technicalities are way too different to really use him as a proper comparison." Aizawa nods in agreement.
"...so like. Phenotype, the quirks are the same, but the genotype is different, right?" Dabi slowly inputs from the side.
Both of them look at him.
"What?" Yoshiki deadpans.
However, Aizawa stares at him with mild astonishment. "You took biology?"
"No." Dabi takes a loud slurp of his smoothie.
Aizawa maintains eye contact with his bejeweled Burlington sunglasses.
"Oh." Is all he can say.
He turns to Yoshiki who's still watching Dabi with an odd expression. To be fair, how else could you look at him? "Anything else?" He prompts, and Yoshiki blinks, rounding back to him.
"I mean. There are a ton of unregistered quirk users," Yoshiki professionally rattles off, even though his gaze seems not all there after getting corrupted by the concept of the uncanny valley effect applied to an actually real person, which is Dabi himself. "So there really could be quirks that cause something like this, and we'd just never know. A quirk like this would guarantee that the user would be under government watch for the rest of their life." They both ignore Dabi who's currently rudely flipping off the space at the end of their table. "Most people who realise this would just avoid reporting their quirk just for the sake of privacy." He takes a sip of Aizawa's coffee that's still warm from the bar. Aizawa glares at him. "Not that I blame them."
"You think this quirk is permanent?" Dabi inquires without warning, no doubt including himself into the conversation because Todoroki probably harassed him into doing so. It's terrifying, the guts that the kid has. Then again, he sees Todoroki verbally whiplash Bakugou on a daily basis with zero regards for his mental wellbeing, so maybe he's always known that Todoroki was fundamentally sociopathic to a certain degree (or, more likely, just the bottom barrel species of mother nature's natural selection's byproducts). "...Based on your expertise," Dabi adds with a sigh after glowering at the space above of Yoshiki's head.
"We don't know for sure. But something I had noticed was the more...reality altering the quirk tends to be, the more temporary it becomes. It's like the universe understands that some quirks have the power to influence the system or universal laws, and limits them so shit doesn't get outta hand, ya know." Yoshiki explains, as he tears open a sugar packet and dumps that shit into Aizawa's mug.
Aizawa gives a thin sigh at that pathetic sight.
"Universe isn't sentient," Dabi snorts, but a second later, his head whips to the space beside him. "I think the universe isn't sentient," he rephrases nastily, pompously shoving his RayBans farther up his nose.
"The pattern exists. And how do you know for sure that they aren't-" Yoshiki says defensively, coffee dribbling out of his mouth, and Aizawa groans, sensing another petty argument.
"Great. This is great. We're moving on," Aizawa loudly interrupts, tired that it's nine in the morning and he's being forced to play teacher with a bunch of children on a Sunday. A Sunday.
He doesn't even get his coffee, and ended up paying for these broke bastards.
"I mean. Great. Moving onto what? More conspiracies?" Dabi shrugs, flapping the folds of his robe over his front before crossing his arms over them like a disgruntled 1990s housewife. "No, conspiracy theories aren't found on solid logic," he responds with brutal conviction to nobody but probably Todoroki in particular, "they're not even close to hypotheses, they're just guesses pulled out of nothing remotely concrete-"
"You have a better idea?" Yoshiki scoffs. "If there's nothing solid, we have to stir the pot of ideas until something comes up."
"I'd rather let a mad scientist dissect my body to figure out what atomically changed in my structural state of being, or let him mess with my brainwaves and have it connect to another wireless body so I can bluetooth it in ghost form like it's a Roomba-"
Yoshiki turns to Aizawa with an empty gaze.
Aizawa, being the void that stares back, maintains it without blinking.
"...this conversation is over." Yoshiki finally voices the unspoken.
Aizawa absently nods, turning to Dabi who's rambling to himself. "Yeah. Well. Not theirs." He sighs.
"...that guy is a weirdo." Yoshiki comments, shuffling another cigarette out of its crumpled packaging.
Aizawa grunts, staring at Dabi who's now knotting the fluttering ends of his bathrobe around his cinched waist, clearly learning his lesson after the first time he got on Aizawa's motorcycle and nearly got dragged underneath the wheels when the material flew too close to the ground.
"No shit." Aizawa replies.
Yoshiki harshly flicks open a scratched up lighter, letting his cigarette catch fire. "He's just as weird as Giran called him." He mutters, bringing the light up to his mouth.
Aizawa frowns, looking over. "Giran?" Giran's an infamous underworld name. He's not that surprised that someone like Yoshiki, who shuffles information to him and other heroes outside of the Commission's radar, to mention him. It also makes sense that someone as efficient and unreadable as Yoshiki has connections with someone like Giran.
"You know who he is?" Aizawa hesitantly points at Dabi who's currently throwing his hands up, being pestered by the relentless and unrested soul of a fifteen-year-old child. Teenagers are honestly the worst breed.
"I mean. Now that I can see his legs, yeah." Yoshiki shrugs.
Aizawa glances at Dabi's bared legs, scrawny and burnt to the point where the ridges look like literal chicken feet.
"That. And also Dabi's disappearance has been getting around the Underworld." Aizawa looks up in surprise at that. "Apparently, the League can't get in contact with Dabi at all. It's kind of a rumour, and the League denies it, but word gets around. 'Pparently their youngest, the girl, Toga, was crying about it in an alleyway that Dabi hasn't kept in touch or somethin'."
"...is Dabi a reliable responder?" Aizawa says, somewhat taken back by the idea that people actually talk to Dabi, and expect someone like him to dependably reciprocate any social interaction.
"From what I heard, nah. He only cooperates if he wants to, but at least he tells you beforehand if he's gonna jump in or not. He's definitely a last-minute flaker, but at least he'll let you know that he's one." He looks at him. "You want more, pay up."
"You drank my coffee." And coffees from cafes are mad overpriced.
"So?"
Aizawa stares him dead in the eyes. "You try and scam me, and I'll tell that cute waitress you gave your number to that you rely on others to pay for all your meals."
They maintain eye contact for a solid second.
"Annnnyways, so this bit of information leaked through another scuffle between the League and the remaining Shie Hassaikai. Apparently, one of the League members was complaining that if only Dabi was with them, the floor would've been wiped quicker than ever. I've heard that for an antisocial fellow, Dabi's never dropped off the face of the earth the way he has until now." He looks at Aizawa, eyes glinting. "So. How come you have him? Little people must know if even the Commission has no idea of any of this going around."
Aizawa inwardly curses.
He trusts Yoshiki's credibility, trusts his goldpinching character. The latter is double-edged, and right now, it's biting him in the ass.
"Keep quiet on this. On Dabi's whereabouts and his condition." He inwardly curses. "I'll pay."
"You can't possibly pay more than illegal operations, or, the Commission." Yoshiki sings gleefully.
"You tell the Commission, and you know they'll pull every unethical move to get Dabi on their plate."
"Yeah. I feel bad for the guy who's connected to Dabi's soul right now." Yoshiki gives a scrappy laugh, clearly finding enjoyment in Aizawa's difficult predicament. Sadist.
Aizawa meets his crescent eyes. Asshole. "The guy who's connected to him is someone the Commission can't even easily mess with. Maybe not mess with at all." Yoshiki glances up, surprised, and Aizawa responds with a smug smile. "Then, there's the fact that if you give away Dabi's situation right now, he'll certainly come after you first." It's true. Dabi's not the type to enjoy others getting into his business, and if Yoshiki's actions snowballs into a problem that Dabi has to deal with, either directly or indirectly, Aizawa doesn't doubt that Dabi won't try and settle debts.
Yoshiki does ashen this time. "As if I'm falling for your bluff. I can handle Dabi if I go into hiding. How do I know you're really saying the truth?" He leers, laxening the amateurish tension that pinched his cheeks.
Aizawa just smiles, taking pleasure in the way that Yoshiki's watching him with growing concern. And Aizawa's certainly not going to give up the information that it's the Number One pro-hero's son that's in involuntary kahoots with Dabi, but he knows that if does get out, then Yoshiki is fucked if he handles this wrong. The Commission will definitely be nicer to Shouto, but even then, Endeavor's not the type to let others push him or his name around like a doormat, and by extension, his prized son.
"You can try it if it's a bluff."
"As if I can believe an old fox like you."
"The fox here is you- I never liked underhanded dealings or troublesome things," and another intersection of loyalty they have is simple sentiment: they grew up together. No matter how distant they may be, how their social circles back then and now never overlapped, they both know each other for who they are. Yoshiki knows Aizawa's not lying.
"I'm being nice, by even offering you money in pay for your silence." Aizawa says, knowing that Yoshiki is well aware of this as well, refusing to respond his attempt at feeling out Aizawa's lies and truths.
Finally, the scraggly businessman sighs, knocking up the brim of his fedora. "Fine." He glances over at Dabi who's impatiently staring at Aizawa, hands propped on his hips. "Jesus. How did you get into this giant mess, 'Zawa?" And bold of him to act so familiar with Aizawa.
"I don't know." He replies tiredly. He rethinks that. "No I definitely do know."
Yoshiki looks at him with clear greed, being the expectant information broker that he is.
"It's because I'm the only responsible adult within this whole godforesaken district."
"...you know. I'm going to be real here. Holding a civil conversation with a hero in the middle of an angsty highschool hero school while having my technical and unfortunate soulmate being a hero, is something I really don't think I could've foreseen."
Aizawa's eyes pinches in judgment. The amount of times he's used the term 'hero' in one sentence would have points docked off of his credibility, Aizawa's positive emotions for him, and his faith in his grammatical skills, if not for the fact that all three of them are already face-down in the dirt. "Get your feet off the table." Is all he says, eyeballing the mop slippers currently sweeping retained dust all over the teacher lounge's table like dandruff.
Dabi in fact, does not get his feet off the table.
"So Boss," Dabi cracks with a zipper-like smile. Aizawa does not share his grin. "You got plans with me?"
Aizawa glances around Dabi, subconsciously looking for Todoroki, when Dabi whistles: "whoa. Rude. If you wanna talk to your kid so bad, you gotta at least not ignore me."
"Okay. Well. This is going to be a problem, because there's no way Todoroki can attend classes if your switches are uncontrollable. Honestly, there's no way you should be allowed on school grounds due to this," Aizawa exhales.
"Okay. Then why am I?" Dabi immediately challenges him like a prepubescent teenager who thinks they're hot shit.
"Because I've considered legally reporting this, and elected to instead ignore this." Aizawa answers shortly.
Dabi, to his credit, does not either tell Aizawa off for being an awful hero like most Villains With A Cause™ would jump on (though, their argument would be valid because Aizawa is technically endangering a whole school of students who are the prime target for villains like Dabi), nor does he attempt to curry some sort of vigilante emotions within Aizawa's heart into going against the status quo since he's already doing it now, when Aizawa full well can shit on the government without doing something as dangerously stupid as this.
Instead, Dabi says: "You're kinda weird, you know that, right?"
"Yeah. Well. I don't want to hear that you."
Dabi hums in acknowledgment, before staggering upright. Aizawa stiffens, alarmed, and carefully observes him as Dabi heads over to their cabinets.
He then watches as Dabi, with the delicacy of an NYC urban sewer raccoon, digs through their cabinets, leaving all their doors open, before retrieving one box of bag of stale bagels that Aizawa didn't even know they had.
"Don't eat that." He warns, immediately standing up.
Startled, Dabi clutches the bag close to his chest.
"That has to be expired," Aizawa snaps, reaching over, figuring his logic would explain everything.
However, he has severely underestimated Dabi's inner visceral rat instincts, because he finds his outstretched hands being viciously batted away by Dabi. "Hey. Hands off." He snarls. His head then whips to the side, expression contorting enough for the puncture wounds of his staples to warp.
"...What did Todoroki say?" Aizawa asks, realizing that Dabi's listening to someone.
"Nah. He was talking about how when we first met, I was also eating shit food."
"...do you like." Aizawa squints at this, realizing he's opened his mouth before properly processing Dabi's implications that Dabi and Todoroki apparently randomly and almost companionably talk about their little moments together like best friends. After another second to straighten his thoughts, he continues: "you know while you are here and your life is currently codependent with Todoroki's, I can feed you unexpired food, right?"
"Did I ask?" Dabi retorts flatly.
They look at each other.
Aizawa lunges forward.
Yamada stretches, joints creaking as he finally trudges down the hall. And it's a weekend, but he needs to now prepare for class, especially since he procrastinated on it for the past two days.
He heads towards the hallway to the lounge, knowing that he probably stashed his files on all of his classes somewhere in there.
"Fuck off these are min-"
"I can buy you new bagels." Aizawa grits. "I can literall-" his vision fixates on inky characters printed directly on the bagel's packaging. "This says these were expired fourteen years ago-"
"They look FINE."
"So does half of my students, but that doesn't mean they're not rotten inside." Aizawa flinches as a bony knee jams into his stomach, and he hisses, scarf knotting the man's legs together and hands grasping Dabi's shoulders like a claw machine, the staples burrowing into the callouses of his palm as he brute-forces Dabi against the playmat that Yamada bought with all the fabric roads and little soapbox cars like they're five and at Ikea- "you're bleeding all over my carpet, oh my god-" he mutters, eyes shuttering wide as a staple tears out of Dabi's forearm, catching onto the ratty rug that's worn from Eri's pretend-play carcrashes (yeah, maybe he should stop letting her near Bakugou).
"I've watched Food Network before. I've seen how Guy Fieri fixes a bagel, don't worry. Slather on some cream cheese and Bacon Bits and it'll be chill-" Dabi's voice cracks out of his bony ribcage like a stuffy wheeze as he somehow still remains clutching the bag of bagels and honestly-
If Dabi is willing to fight to the point of bleeding all of the car-pet for the bagels-
He should just let him.
He seriously feels like he's bullying a stickfigure at the moment.
And he sits upright, glancing at the bag of bagels that appear terrifyingly fresh (and since they've been dead for fourteen years, they're either radioactive by this point or pumped full of chemicals like edible botox. These bagels are the exact representation of what vegan white moms think preservatives in vegetables would do to allegedly biodegradable matter).
Oh god.
This isn't worth his effort.
Just let Dabi get sick like the scrawny cat that he is and start throwing up all over his carpet.
And before he can consider surrendering the Botox bagels to Dabi-
The door slams open.
Dabi on the floor cranes his head with scarf shackles pretzeling his ankles, and Aizawa casually turns his head from where he's towering over him like a particularly unmotivated executor.
Yamada stares at them.
"...what the shit."
"Oh. This might be a problem." Aizawa deadpans, realizing that now with a third-party invader, especially one that actually has vaguely respectful societally acceptable morals, it's going to be more difficult to just sweep this underneath the rug.
Goddammit.
"Oh my god???" Yamada echoes, eyes fixated on Dabi.
Aizawa envisions the paperwork. Especially since Todoroki is involved.
Goddammit.
And before Aizawa can. Well. Confess to his own negligence and to whatever the hell he can even grasp about Dabi's condition, right before his eyes, Dabi vanishes.
Yamada begins screaming.
A rather accurately human and overall appropriate response to these current sequence of events, but Aizawa still stares at him out of annoyance as if he's being utterly unreasonable as usual.
A familiar gangly teenager crumples onto the carpet right in front of him, at a spot couple steps away from where Dabi was just moments ago.
"What the shit???"
"Shut up, Yamada," Aizawa snaps without even glancing over, eyes darting over to a vaguely ruffled and breathless Todoroki. He stares at the spot where Dabi was supposed to be.
He frowns.
Todoroki shakily gets onto his legs.
Something's wrong.
"...where did the bag of bagels go?"
“So you’re telling me that Todoroki was hit by an unknown quirk, which turned him into a ghost, but then he ran into Dabi, who could somehow see him?”
Aizawa stares back, indifferent to Yamada's obvious judgement.
“And somehow, they can switch between being in a ghostly state?” Yamada continues, slowly sliding his gaze from Aizawa and to Todoroki, who’s currently mumbling to himself. He watches as the boy tosses his hands up in exasperation.
“Seems so. Actually, I don't even know if they really become ghosts. If anything, Dabi's right now essentially a Walmart Bargain Bin version of Lemillion."
“But Dabi is right here, right now, in UA, in this room?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why Todoroki is currently holding a sustainable, apparently not-one-sided argument about Guy Fieri right now?”
Aizawa pauses at that, his inability to give a shit finally faltering. “That, I actually don't know, because that could arguably be Todoroki just being himself."
Dabi tightens his grasp on his bag, vaguely stunned, and slightly delirious from the high of a victory.
"Guy Fieri would not approve-" Stupid Shouto continues desperately, still believing that he can convince Dabi to release his grasp on his bagels.
He looks at the translucent bag of bagels sitting in his arms. "I've noticed," he intervenes, actively ignoring Shouto's background ramblings. "That I don't feel real pain while in a ghostly state." Processing his words as something remotely important, Shouto shuts up, staring at him with a screwed gaze of confusion.
"...okay...and?"
"It hurts to make expressions in real life. But. While as a ghost, I can make all the expressions I want and all it causes is a dull ache," he slowly elaborates. Shouto's now wearing an unreadable expression, one that he can't be bothered to dissect. "But when I return to a physical state, it seems like the damage remains, but a lot of the pain has passed, probably due to time passing while I was still a ghost."
Shouto's expression suddenly twists into one of alarm. "You're not thinkin-"
"Meaning if I eat the bagels now, and if they have any side effects, as long as they happen while I'm in a spiritual condition, I won't experience them in full throttle."
"Food poisoning is not something that's just going to go away without potentially longterm effec-put it down-"
Dabi splinters his molars against the absolutely solid breading of the vaguely translucent bagel that looks absolutely divinely angelic due to the ghostly aura surrounding it.
"Shit."
Shouto looks at him, eyes bewildered and mouth bolted into a grimace.
Dabi groans. "It's like biting into a rock."
"Honestly, the fact that that is the only issue you're facing right now from trying to eat it, is probably god protecting you."
Dabi thinks about the creature he met and their apathetic demeanor and dull statement of how Dabi shouldn't exist. "God wouldn't protect me." If Touya wasn't proof enough of that, Dabi's existence is more than enough to fill the roles of Exhibit B, C, and D.
"You don't deserve it, for sure." Todoroki scowls.
Dabi shrugs. "Probably." He says blandly, staring through the hole of his bagel as if it'd give him the answers to life, universe, and the antichrist he's ran onto like every other Sunday afternoon.
"You're taking this pretty well." Aizawa truly thought that Yamada would, as a morally and emotionally appropriate response, 'lose his shit,' as kids these days say.
"Oh no, I am absolutely not," Yamada brightly reassures, taking another sip of his criminally thick mango slushie. "I've just came to the conclusion that getting mad at you is like trying to fatally stab a cotton doll."
Todoroki looks over at what Aizawa supposes should be a particularly alarming statement, but Aizawa also thinks that the fact that Yamada has not once throughout their unfortunate years of friendship, has really tried to stab him in his sleep, says a lot about his character. Or terrifying amount of tolerance that feels strange for a person who's peeled straight out of Curious George's character sheet with the ambitious crossover of any of the Spongebob cast's personality. "And I've came to the conclusion that it's also morally apprehensive to fight children." He gives a consoling nod of acknowledgment to Todoroki, who if anything, lowers his drink of water, eyes never leaving his teacher, as if he's seeing him for the first time.
Personally, Aizawa thinks by this point, speculation that nobody who voluntarily works around children shouldn't be considered all there in the brainpan is nothing short of common sense, but he cuts Todoroki some slack since what does an inexperienced little child know about the horrors of being the legal guardian over a breed of humans that could spawn Bakugou Katsuki?
"So you'd take a jab at Dabi the moment he returns?" Todoroki asks curiously.
"Well. I should." Yamada says with the tiredness of a retail worker being asked to work overtime.
Todoroki waits for him to finish with a glance of expectation.
Yamada, in fact, does not bother to meet those expectations.
"Well." Aizawa slaps his palms against the surface of the table as he hoists himself onto his feet. He looks at Todoroki who nearly chokes, water sputtering over his lip. Aizawa watches in alarm. Either Dabi is strangling him, or Todoroki's just being Todoroki again. It's really hard to gauge whether each inexplicably unsettling action of Todoroki is done out of free-will, or because he's really just weird kid. "What?" He asks with a low tone of alarmness.
"...nothing."
Aizawa narrows his eyes.
"Todoroki, if this is something serious-"
"Yeah so Dabi said that Mina has made a DIY tattoo pen using a sharpened paperclip, a toy circuit board pieces, and Kaminari's piss."
Aizawa falls quiet.
All three (four?) of them don't say anything for an unsettling moment.
Then: "I mean water is a good conductor," Todoroki says thoughtfully, as if he's agreeing to someone.
"Can I even be legally mad about this?" Aizawa finally asks to no one in particular.
"Well. No. But you can most certainly be morally upset about if you'd like," Yamada offers.
And since Aizawa doesn't do morals, not on weekends, he decides that if he doesn't hear Dabi, then his words don't exist in the first place. After all, he doesn't do object permanence during his off-times either (not like he doesn't already know this, given how many times he's blatantly ignored Bakugou's existence while passing by his spontaneous road rage in the hallways against Monoma).
"So you're going to report this, right?" Yamada gestures towards Todoroki.
Aizawa picks up his cup of stale coffee and takes a prolonged sip, eyes never leaving Yamada's face while at it.
"You are going to report this, right?"
Aizawa lowers his mug.
"Aizawa Shouta, you can NOT be serious right now-"
"You know. I didn't envision their dynamic to be this way," Shouto watches the two adults begin to have an entire high school history class debate in the middle of a teacher's lounge, one of them playing devil's advocate and the other one fighting for common sense.
Todoroki isn't entirely sure which person is which.
"Hm. Yeah." Dabi mumbles absent-mindedly, clearly bored out of his mind. "Anyways if you needed to know, your zippy friend-"
"Kaminari."
"Is getting a pair of hairy testicles tattooed onto the sole of his foot."
"Nice."
They watch a bit longer as Yamada immediately crouches into a defensive stance as Aizawa abruptly stands up from behind his desk, hands slamming against the surface area.
He sighs. He knows how fights go. He's had so many since childhood, and now, he's had so many against Bakugou as an impromptu recreational activity that spontaneously happens whenever they bump into each other in any vaguely large space of area.
Meaning, he knows that this fight is going to be long, boring, and ultimately have zero conclusion of bloodshed before some teacher steps in (he wonders if this pattern changes given that it's usually Aizawa who steps in betwen him in Bakugou, and now, it's Aizawa who needs to be restrained), and then they'll start arguing it out in group therapy (as he and Bakugou unfortunately attend).
So nothing is going to get done.
He inwardly sighs, eyes rolling up to the ceiling.
And as he begins to doze off on two swaying feet, he wonders if he should just lie down. He's dreary, bored, and honestly, there's a blanket of lethargy that pads his joints and blur his thoughts, extinctive exhaustion settling into his bones; it's been a long day. Maybe he should just.
Sleep.
"What the fuck."
Shouto's head heavily bobs up, but his weighted eyelids immediately sticks into their creases as he stares at what Dabi's facing.
His mouth unhinges, the weary sleepiness clouding his vision immediately exorcised out of his goddamn soul by the large, all-encompassing black hole beginning to eat through the floor.
"What." He blurts loudly, unaware of the way two scrabbling figures halt, unaware of the way that the world remains still as the setting eats away, folding into itself, the cannibalization of the arcane.
"Todoroki? Todoroki-" his eyes dart over to Yamada and Aizawa who are now watching him with crinkled expressions, and oh.
This must be a ghostly-bonding whatever this thing is, whatever this- just yeah, but-
Todoroki's jaw bolts shut, something akin to a pitched exhale of fear whistling out of his gated teeth as his pupils dilate and eat through his irises the same way the blackhole begins to Pac-Man the floors and Todoroki's existence.
"Todorok- Todoroki-" and oh that's sensei but Todoroki can't reply, can't breathe, can't see them except for the darkness and-
"Dabi!" He hoarsely shouts, mind frazzled with incomplete thoughts that bifurcate farther into nonsensical syllables, leaving nothing comprehensible past primal and innate emotions that stem from fear. "Dabi!"
Dabi's phantom figure, a nightlight in the dark, is eaten by the splotches of black.
And it's so childishly hilarious, egocentric even, that the only weird empty realization that encroaches the underwater fireworks shaking the structure of his brain, is that if Dabi's existence is gone, then he's going to be alone in a way that will be hardwired into his own being.
Notes:
also uh i love you guys. like literally so much uwu.
DID YOU KNOW: this was not supposed to happen. like what the FUCK is going on.
i literally was going to have this happen the moment dabi and shouto got back to UA:
"...what's this about?""My mental instability."
Bakugou gives him a look. "Even if I could help you with that, I refuse to."
Todoroki, knowing full well that Bakugou meant every word, but also knowing that Bakugou knows he's telling someone who does not care nor respect his boundaries, continues to elaborate on his newfound trauma of his unwilling ghostly companion potentially going into the light: "yeah, so Dabi met god the other day."
"I did not ask."
AND THEN I DIDN'T I JUST DECIDED??? LOL APOCALYPSE TIME? like what the FUCK am i doing right now HELP
oh yeah btw.
i deleted like. 3k words bc i decided to move that into the next chapter since i realized it'd be REALLY stupid of me to write more and try and shove it into one unbearable chapter, but i'm also so sad bc i'm REALLY excited to reveal the concept i was heading for. like the plot point.
but it's like. hhhhh i can't show you that amount, or else it'd look weird/incomplete, but i can't add more or it'd just feel too cluttered.LIKE IM SO EXCITED BUT IT'S LIKE I KNOW FOR A FUCKING FACT THAT IF I PUT ITI N THE NEXT CHAPTER, THAT AIN'T GETTING PUBLISHED IN LIKE MONTHS BC I'M A PROCRASTINATOR
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