It's not a surprise to see Shouto in the mountains. It's not even a surprise to see him crying into the burnt grass. What is a surprise, what makes Dabi hesitate from striding out from the scorched trees, is the white object in his little brother's hands. Apprehension and excitement mix in his gut like a witches brew. The rare feeling of unease pushes Dabi further into the sparse remaining underbrush.
He sits, and he waits, like a tiger hunting prey. Dabi is coiled tight, a predator in human form. Shouto is there, just feet away, and Dabi needs him. He wants to hold his slender frame, caress the two-tone hair, kiss those pretty lips. He wants and he needs and he feels the absolute possessive urge in his body, everything pulling him to the boy in the empty field. The feeling makes him both happy and disgusted.
Dabi picks at the ragged skin of his knuckles, fidgets with the staples along his cheeks, pulls at his burnt, battered, bruised, ruined , skin. He watches his brother, the teen who 'daddy' loved most, his perfect skin, perfect body, perfect quirk, perfect everything. He's jealous, not an unfamiliar feeling, and he hates the rush of heat that grows along his spine.
"Touya." The murmur of his name, no, not his name, the name of the boy he used to be, on Shouto's lips. Dabi is intrigued. He creeps close, watches the teens face, makes sure he isn't seeing him. Getting close, oh so close, Dabi realizes he needn't worry, his brother is asleep, crying until unconscious. The cremation villain can't help but touch, feel the silky hair between fingers, the smooth skin under battered fingertips, plush lips against a knuckle. Shouto is perfect, everything about him is absolutely, deliciously, perfect.
It is then, finally, Dabi gets a look at the white object clutched between small hands. Carefully, oh so carefully, Dabi extricates the thing from the two different temperature hands. Its bone, a jawbone , clean and white and well taken care of. Surprise coats the back of his throat and settles in the hollow where his heart should be. A scarred hand comes up and clutches at more scarred skin, at metal underneath, clutching at a facsimile of a real jaw.
Touya Todoroki surfaces for a moment, for such a small amount of time to be described as a blip, and he kisses the forehead of his sleeping baby brother, of the teen that owns his nonexistent heart, that dominates every obsessive thought in the villain's mind, the child who falls asleep crying on a mountain where his oldest brother had 'died', holding Touya's jawbone, and speaking Touya's name in his sleep.
When Shouto's eyes finally open, the black haired villain is long gone, jawbone placed back into the safety of the teen's arms.