Watching Sayuri with her pets, he could easily picture her as a kindergarten teacher. Dabi remained where he was lounging on the couch, intently observing her. She opened the cage and gently held out a hand for one of the rats to climb on. The pale little creature was settled on the top of the cage and she smiled down at them, carefully running a fingertip over their snowy fur.
He still thought that rats were a weird choice of pet. She seemed more like the kind of girl that would have a basket of kittens or something along those lines. Rats were usually seen as pretty dirty. Vermin. Sayuri was perfectly comfortable with petting them and handfeeding them some pellets though.
"What're their names anyway?"
She glanced over and appeared sheepish. Like she had forgotten he was there. "Shirayuki and Kamishiro. Want to hold one of them?"
Dabi stared down at the one she was now offering him. He reached out, but the rat seemed apprehensive. Its nose got close to his skin as it sniffed and then it sneezed. It recoiled from his outstretched hand. His eyes narrowed and he frowned. "Whatever."
"You washed your hands, didn't you?" Sayuri gave him a curious look as she tried to comfort the rat.
"You're still going on about that? What's it gonna take to make you stop saying that? I don't smell like death." He had been in a decent mood after eating, but now he was starting to get just a little annoyed. Dabi was never self-conscious, but she was making him slightly concerned that she might not want to get close to him if she really thought he smelled strange.
Not that it could really be helped. With what he did, carrying the smell of ashes and burning flesh was unavoidable. It was as he thought this that he felt his lips curl into a smirk. She was so innocent and sweet. He had to wonder what she would think if she knew what he did.
A serial arsonist and a kindergartner teacher. What a match. He leaned forward on the couch cushion, his elbows resting on his knees as he watched Sayuri put her pets away. "You're done playing?"
She flushed a light pink and looked away. "Well…I have some stuff to take care of," she explained.
Dabi snickered to himself and shook his head. When he saw her get so flustered, it made him want to do certain things. He wanted to see how red he could make her face turn. How flustered she could really get. He wanted to taint her and see how innocent she would be when he was done.
While Sayuri was in the bathroom, washing her hands, he imagined all of the things he could do to try to make her blush. All of the things he could say to get a reaction from her. The possibilities were exciting and he felt his motivation increasing.
She went to the kitchen without a word to him and that was when he finally got up from his comfortable seat. Dabi leaned against the counter beside the sink as she washed their dishes, his eyes roaming along the length of her forearms. The wounds she had taken from him had healed and now she was left with a few scars. Little reminders on her skin to make her think of him.
He let his gaze lift upwards, roaming over her form until he came to the neckline of her t-shirt. It dipped just low enough to display the scar on her collarbone from that night. A scar identical to the one he had on his own collarbone. Like morbid matching markings.
Shift P.O.V
Sayuri's heart felt like it was doing flips. She kept her head down a little, trying her best to hide how flustered she was. I barely know him, she tried to reason with herself. So why do I feel fluttery around him? Just him looking at me like this…feels like he's touching me.
A finger hooked into the neckline of her shirt and tugged down a little, exposing more of her collarbone. "That looks deep."
"Yeah, you would probably know, huh?" Sayuri lifted a wet, slightly trembling, hand to push a lock of pale hair behind her ear. She could feel heat in her ears from blushing and it only got worse when he leaned over and brought his lips close to her left ear.
"It wasn't too deep for you, was it?" There was a teasing quality to his tone as he asked this.
"Don't worry. It doesn't hurt anymore. I'm tougher than I look." The girl shivered as she felt the scrape of his staples over her cheek and then the side of her neck. "Dabi-"
"Finish this. I'll be waiting."
She tensed when he pulled away and caught the faint smirk that lingered on his face. Sayuri bit her lower lip and frowned. She felt self-conscious before, but when she realized that he was looking her over, she found it hard to focus. Her eyes went to the scars on her arms and she released a quiet sigh.
He had been cut deeply on Christmas night and when she took his injuries, she inflicted those same wounds on herself while simultaneously healing him. She knew the pain he had felt and now that she was alone, she wondered what had happened to him that day.
The horrible wounds. The smell of burned flesh and hair that clung to him. Thinking about it brought on a sinking feeling in her stomach. She knew the most obvious answer, but she did not want to believe it. When she asked about his quirk before, he said he made flames that could "burn a lot of stuff to ashes really fast". Sayuri had an awful feeling in her gut that he was burning living things, but that was just too terrible to consider.
Looking over at the couch, she saw that he had made himself comfortable once again. Though he had discarded his coat and boots now. Sayuri had only seen killers on television or in the newspaper. She had never met one. She tried to steer clear of that sort of thing anyway; it was too horrible to think about tragedies in the real world.
He isn't a killer. He can't be. He was just in a bad accident. That has to be it. Setting aside the clean dishes in the drying rack, she tried to reassure herself. There's no way. It's just not possible. I can't have a murderer in my apartment. I'm overthinking things.
As she went to the television, she could feel his eyes on her. Sayuri settled on the floor near a stack of books and movies. She selected a horror movie to watch. While she could not stand gore and death in real life, she could handle horror movies because she knew it was all fake. Especially monster movies.
He's not a killer, she told herself again. That weird burning smell. He has a fire quirk so what if that's why he smells that way? I shouldn't jump to conclusions and assume that he killed someone. This sounded like a decent explanation. Sayuri knew that people's quirks sometimes affected them in weird ways so this sort of made sense.
Dabi gave her a smug half-grin when she turned toward the couch. He beckoned for her to join him, but made no move to sit up so she could sit next to him. "Come on. What do you look so nervous about? You think I'm gonna bite?"
"You think I'm nervous?" She smiled and stood, but still hesitated to get too close to him. "I bet I bite harder than you do anyway."
"You wanna test that?" He waited for her to finally approach him before grabbing her wrist and pulling her down on top of him. His hands gripped her hips and he smirked as her pale hair fell around his face, brushing over his right cheek.
Sayuri's hands braced against the cushion behind him, her pale purple eyes widening with surprise. "You were planning to come back, right?" She tried to hide her unease, but her tone was one of worry despite her best efforts.
He flipped them abruptly so she was under him, one hand lifting and threading into her hair. His left knee slipped between her legs, bringing them closer. "Seriously? You think I was kidding?" Bright turquoise stared down into soft lilac as his face drew within inches of hers. "I said I was gonna keep you, didn't I?"
"I don't know what that's supposed to mean," she muttered, looking away.
"It means I'm not gonna let you go." Dabi saw her cheeks turning pink, a vibrant contrast against her pale hair, and it seemed to fuel his amusement. His fingers trailed through her hair and then slowly began moving down along her side. She shivered, her hands lifting and tangling in his dark hair. Dabi leaned down to the girl's ear, his warm breath sending a pleasant jolt through her. "You don't want me to let you go, do you? I bet you were lonely without me."
She wanted to give him a snappy comeback, but she was distracted. His left hand was sliding beneath the hem of her shirt and Sayuri could feel it being slipped up little by little. She lightly dug her nails into his scalp, making him inhale sharply. Was that bad? Did I mess up-?
"Harder," he growled beside her ear.
"You…you like that?" She got her answer in the form of him moving down from her ear and along her neck. Sayuri's back arched a little and she closed her eyes, her pulse hammering in her chest. The girl's nails sank in a bit deeper, testing him. The fingers of his right hand slipped into the waist of her jeans and tugged.
"Hang on. What're you doing?" Her tone made her sound like she was panicking and she knew her face was turning red.
"Relax. I want to see your scars." Dabi seemed to realize that she was silently questioning him and his eyes darted back to hers. "I've got a scar right here," he said, tapping a fingertip against a spot low on her hip. "I'm just gonna look."
Sayuri tried to calm herself and felt cold air hit her skin when he tugged the denim down to expose her pale flesh. She already knew what he would find. A jagged, pinkish scar that he undoubtedly had on his hip as well. Her eyes closed, teeth lightly sinking into her lower lip as she felt him trace the scar with a fingertip.
"You seriously took all of my injuries. That's crazy."
She could feel warmth against her skin when he drew closer and a weird, jittery sort of feeling took form in the pit of her stomach. Turning her head to the side, she tried to hide how flustered she was felt. Nervous, excitable.
"If you have this one, you probably have that one." Dabi seemed to be turning his attention elsewhere now. His left hand slipped her shirt up more, stopping just short of her bra. A finger tapped at her chest, just beneath the bottom of where her shirt was now.
The girl knew what he was touching. Her deepest scar, acquired the night they met. The scar from a wound that could have ended Dabi's life that night. The wound had been deep and she had lost a lot of blood. It was still tender and made her tense when he touched it. "C-careful."
"What? It's sensitive?" Warmth drew close to her skin and when his lips pressed against her scar, he smirked.
Sayuri's back arched more and her eyes snapped open. Her fingers ran through his hair, sinking in deeply and latching her nails gently into his scalp. A groan was muffled against her ribs and she had to bite back a whimper. It felt strange to have the scar touched this way, but it was not unpleasant.
The staples in his skin lightly scraped over her sensitive flesh as he moved along the length of her scar, pressing his lips where he pleased. At the same time, his right hand began to trail along her outer thigh. He soon moved his hands to hips, gripping a bit roughly, and he finally drew his face away from her ribs.
He saw that her head was turned and he released a frustrated sort of growl. "Look at me." Dabi saw her eyes shift, but her head was still turned to the side. His lips twitched into a smirk and he lifted a hand to grip her right wrist. He leaned back and moved her hand down from his hair, tracing along the side of his neck.
She finally turned her face toward him as her hand was pressed against his ribs, where his identical scar was located. "How did you get hurt?"
Whatever he had expected her to say, it was not that. "What?" Dabi tilted his head, staring down at her in confusion.
"What happened to you? I know I joked about you getting carved up, but…what actually happened to you?"
"You shouldn't ask stuff like that." Dabi was clearly annoyed by the question, but not about to back away.
"You could've died!"
"You really care that much? You barely knew me when you took my injuries. Why does it matter now? I got hurt because some idiots thought they could jump me. Not that it matters." He saw her frowning and knew the mood was ruined. "What? You think they're gonna come after me again?"
After hearing a confirmation that he had been attacked by someone, she found that this was exactly her worry. If someone went after him before, they could do it again. He might not be lucky enough for a healer to stumble across him a second time. Sayuri wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him close against her again. "Shut up. You think it's funny? What if I can't find you again?"
Dabi snickered and enjoyed the warmth of her embrace. "What? Are you my personal little healer now? Cute."
