an: I cannot remember what I said on Ao3 and it's down right now, noooo. So, just gonna say: lots of exposition in this chapter and setting up for stuff that will happen later. I was initially planning on something VERY SERIOUS happening this chapter, buuuut it will happen next chapter/the chapter after it. I'm so sorry for this slow burn, but I think it's really important to watch Dabi and Suzu's relationship grow... especially with what comes later!


003: a gift for your favor.

Late January; 17 years.

It is exactly 5:37 in the early evening when Touya wakes up in his internet cafe capsule room, more than a little disoriented.

Of course it takes him a moment to actually find the time; the hazy blue-white glare of the PC's monitor is particularly hard to look at, and it takes him a few moments of rubbing lingering sleep from his eyes before he manages – with a particularly agitated squint – to read the numbers in the bottom corner of the display.

It's the only light in the tiny, coffin-like room. Touya had made a point to kill the overhead light as soon as he'd arrived close to seven hours ago, and he doesn't bother to turn it on now. He dresses instead in the cold artificial glow of the PC, settling on a threadbare white long-sleeved shirt and a pair of dark trousers. Freshly laundered in one of the rental machines earlier, they smell of cheap detergent and feel scratchy against his raw, freshly blistered skin.

(He'd gone a little hard on the flames the night before.)

At least they're clean, he thinks, ignoring the pain the pull and tug of the fabric causes as he rakes a hand through his hair. That's newly washed, too, and softer than his clothes thanks to a tiny bottle of travel conditioner he'd stolen from a pharmacy earlier in the week.

Showers though, like laundry, are not small, easy things one can pickpocket, and at the internet and manga cafes he stays at regularly, they are always an extra charge. He aims for a shower every two days, and tries hard to keep his meager wardrobe mostly clean, but sometimes luck and funds necessitate unfortunate conservation.

Luck has been kind to Touya this week, though. After walking off with a worn leather shoulder bag he'd lifted from a sleeping businessman on the last train of the night a few days prior, Touya had found himself with a laptop worth fencing and a wallet filled with a generous assortment of 5,000 and 10,000 yen notes. Considering the sloppy state of the man – near comatose and reeking with the smell of piss and alcohol – it had been an especially surprising discovery. The man had not even stirred when Touya boldly tugged the strap free of the drunkard's limp arm, and Touya suspected the amount of liquor the man had needed to sedate himself into such a stupor must have cost a fortune.

It was a wonder that there had been any money left in the wallet at all.

Touya hadn't questioned it too much then, though, and he doesn't question it now. He had learned early on in his transience that there were many benefits to taking the last train of the night, and aimless, vacant men in suits who worked aimless, vacant jobs had fast become his top picks as far as benefits went. Plied stupid with alcohol, he'd found they often made easy marks in the empty cars they foolishly seemed to prefer.

Their loss, Touya thinks, and counts out what's left of his money, spread across the small monitor shelf at the foot of his makeshift pallet bed.

(His gain is ultimately the only thing that matters, after all.)

Without an ounce of guilt, Touya revels in the small nest egg he's stolen for himself. With the added funds from the laptop he'd sold the previous day, it's more than enough to assure a comfortable couple of weeks in the internet cafe's private capsule accommodations if he wants to indulge – and even more than that if he slums it cheaper in their more public cubicles.

Hardly the height of comfort, Touya has nevertheless found internet cafes offering overnight and hours-long lodgings as something that has made his homelessness significantly more bearable than what he'd imagined he'd be facing when he'd first struck out alone from the hospital. The public cubicles – little more than bathroom stalls, really, outfitted with a PC and a usually plush chair – provide a consistent roof over his head, unfettered internet access, and a place to sleep somewhere climate controlled.

For more money, of course, the personal capsule rooms are a significant upgrade. Roomier and with near-total soundproofing, Touya both relishes and craves the privacy they promise, even if he can't often justify the expense. It's nice to be able to lay down, too; the provided sleeping mats, he thinks, are ultimately an upgrade over the cubicle chairs. When he closes his eyes, it's easy to pretend it's a real bed.

While Touya usually settles for the cubicles out of frugal necessity, his stay in the capsule is a treat to himself – and the porn still up on his PC's screen is a testament to that. It's not that he won't risk it when he stays in the cubicles, but it's always a hassle, worrying so much about double checking the facility-provided headphones or needing to be mindful about staying stealthy and quiet.

By contrast, the relatively decent sound-proofing of the capsule room is an extravagance Touya doesn't allow himself often. He'd been able to finish himself off, careless and extravagant, spilled messy into a handful of tissues he'd brought back from the toilets.

(The deep, dreamless sleep that had taken him moments after had been glorious.)

As he puts his money back in the wallet and tucks it into the shoulder bag – a nice one, he thinks, and one he's decided to keep – Touya suspects he just might treat himself to a few more easy, hedonistic stays.

And though he's tactful enough to clear the used tissues from the room as he leaves, Touya elects to leave the video he'd finished himself off to up for whoever comes to clean his room.

Villain on hero porn – and particularly brutal, at that.

(His favorite.)


It takes Touya close to thirty agonizing minutes to get to Suzume's neighborhood in Musutafu by train. Pressed uncomfortably between the bodies of strangers packed thick and squirming inside the rocking car, Dabi's only refuge is in the comfort of the face mask he'd discovered in his new bag right as he was boarding.

It isn't that he wants to hide the scars on his face. Something twisted in him kind of likes the way people side eye him and look away, anxiety, or pity, or concern, or even fear flickering across their features. Something twisted in him delights in how eager society seems to want to validate his pessimism.

Sometimes, sometimes, he's just so hungry for the justification to burn it all down –

But sometimes – most times, even – being around so many people just feels so fucking suffocating. A mask, he thinks, is a wall he can build around himself, however meager. Something small to put between himself and the masses.

And he's thankful for that, at least.

Thankfully, the already dwindling crowd thins considerably as he makes his way out into the dark street, hands pushed into his pockets, bag hooked snug across his chest. It's winter still, and night has settled in already, the warm yellow glow of the street lamps fighting a losing battle against the thickening gloom.

Briefly, Touya wonders if it might snow. A thick blanket of clouds swallows the sky, hanging low and heavy over the city.

That, too, would be a mercy.

(He's always so damnably hot.)

The trip to the park is a ten minute walk that Touya takes at a leisurely pace, thick plumes of his breath escaping out from the edges of his mask. As a child, he'd always been so pleased with how heavy and white his breath became when it was cold. It was something he had in common with his father, something his mother and Fuyumi – who did not run as hot as either Touya or the Todoroki's patriarch – couldn't match.

Once, when Touya had been six, Fuyumi told him that he reminded her of a dragon full of smoke and fire, and he'd chased her around the yard in response, pinning her down in a pile of wet leaves to huff hot, billowing air across her giggling face.

(He'd pretended to be angry, but really, he'd taken her off-handed remark as a point of pride.)

The memory touches him differently now, though, and his steaming breath feels a little bitter behind his teeth. He feels sometimes as if the boy he remembers being is someone else entirely, that these memories are not his own. Maybe he has dreamed them. Maybe they are just some passing story he's heard exchanged between a pair of siblings on the train –

Not the heavy mantle of a long-dead boy's ghost.

Feeling his mood slipping a little, Touya reaches into his pocket to fetch the small prepaid phone and check the time. The digital display tells him that it's only 6:50 – too early yet for Suzume to have been cut loose by whatever surrogate mother has her for the night – and that he has some time to kill.

Another mercy, he thinks, because he suddenly realizes he is particularly hungry.

So, thinking about his wallet full of bills instead, Touya makes his way into a nearby convenience store.

The clerk, a young woman who looks as if she might be two or three years older than him, greets him enthusiastically as he enters, a wide, easy smile framing her face. He's surprised both by her obvious good cheer and by the otherwise empty store; a quick glance around reveals they're the only two inside.

Even though he doesn't want to, Touya makes himself offer some approximation of a curt half-nod in response before stalking off down one of the isles with purpose, shoving his mask back into his bag.

First stop: sweet bread. Touya has never really had a taste for sugary things in any real capacity – not even as a child – but Suzume seems wild for anything sweet, and he's heard her complain her mother isn't often keen on indulging her sweet tooth. He picks two at random, and one with purpose – mousse, whipped cream, and custard-filled – and tucks their crinkling packages into the corner of his arm.

Coffee comes next. He chooses a dark roast, freshly brewed, and fills the largest cup he can dangerously close to the brim. Hot as he knows it is, Touya barely registers the heat when some spills across the back of his hand accidentally while he fixes the lid. Hardly one to worry about propriety, Touya simply licks his hand clean, sucking coffee off the back of his sharp knuckles. For cheap coffee, Touya thinks, it tastes surprisingly good – deliciously bitter in all the right ways.

(Almost comforting, he thinks. He's no stranger to bitter, after all.)

The last things he needs to purchase are at the register, so he takes his coffee and Suzume's trio of breads to the front where the girl waits for him, eyeing him in a way he finds strangely expectant.

"Find everything okay?" She all but chirps the question while he sets his things down on the counter. He doesn't bother looking at her, his attention drifting to the hot oden display. Soup hadn't even been on his radar when he'd entered, but he has to admit: it sounds damn good right now.

"Mmm. Can you get me three sticks of yakitori?" And then, before she can ask, he clarifies the specifics: "Large."

"Want those hot?" She's so cheery and strangely casual as she gathers the sticks up into a colorful winter-themed wrapper, and he finds he hates it.

He wants to say something cruel, but instead he settles on another half-nod. While she goes to heat up his yakitori, she falls blessedly silent, leaving Touya to fix a bowl of oden for himself in relative peace.

(An unfortunately short lived one.)

When she meets him back at the register with his newly-heated yakitori and takes stock of his purchases, it all begins again.

"You always take your coffee black," she says as she begins to scan his sweet buns. "I'm surprised to see you with cream bread!"

For a moment, Touya can only stare at her, narrowed eyes burning into hers. Outside of his dalliances with Suzume, Touya has tried very hard to be invisible. This girl speaks as if she knows him, and something hateful licks up the insides of his ribs. Under the weight of his icy gaze, her smile falters – but surprisingly doesn't fall away completely.

When Touya doesn't say anything in response though, she tries again, scanning the second bread. "Are they for your girlfriend?" Her tone is delicate, as if she finds the words themselves barbed in her own mouth.

Oh, Touya thinks; is that what this is? "Do I know you?" Touya can't help the sneer that crawls lazily across his face – not that he would if he could. "Why do you know or care how I take my coffee?"

The girl looks a little bewildered by his bluntness, hands stilling before she finishes scanning the third. "Well, I've… you know, I've seen you around a bit lately. I guess I just noticed you always take your coffee black and it feels like you come in on my shift a lot and – "

"That's a coincidence," Touya interjects, neat and cold. "Definitely not doing it on purpose."

And then, because he loves twisting the knife: "But hey, I saw a sign outside that said you guys had hot chocolate made with soft serve? Get me one of those – y'know, for my girlfriend."

And finally, her smile falls away. With a look of a chastised child, withdrawn and sullen, she goes to fix his drink, and that look haunts her even when she returns to finish up with him at the register.

Her voice when she reads him his total is soft, lost of its earlier good humor, and Touya relishes that loss much as he did the taste of the coffee earlier:

Bitter in all the right ways.


Suzume is perched atop a wide slide when Touya arrives at the park a little bit later, her mittened hands caught tight around the overhead rail, head tilted up towards the sky.

The low hanging clouds reflect the light of the city back upon itself, casting the dark park – and everything in it – in a surreal kind of glow. It halos in her summery peach-gold hair, gleaming silver-bright along the edges of the buttons of her coat. Her cheeks are awash with it, bleached a luminous and almost ethereal white.

It lends her the appearance of something barely-there, indistinct and effervescent. He feels that if he blinks she might not be there when he opens his eyes.

(It's a feeling he finds he doesn't care for.)

"Hey," he calls up to her from the end of the slide, and even though he is quiet, his voice sounds too-loud in the empty park. Slowly, she draws her attention away from the clouds, and when she turns to look at him, he can tell – even from meters away, even in the dark – that she's been crying.

"Hi." Her voice quavers on that single word, and she rubs the back of her wrist across her nose, snuffling.

(Little girl histrionics, he thinks, and almost smiles.)

Instead, Touya responds by holding up the bag from the convenience store. "Wanna have dinner with me?"

Something almost imperceptible shifts in her expression, but only for a moment. She's stubborn; pouty. She doesn't want to be cheered up so quickly.

(He'll see about that.)

"But I already had dinner."

"Didn't have it with me, so it didn't count," he informs her very matter-of-factly, and sweeps up on his tiptoes to hold out the drink carrier to her. She hesitates for a moment before reaching out to take it, the soft fabric of her mittens brushing his fingers in the exchange.

She looks surprised. "Are you – are you coming up?"

"Yeah, so move over."

Suzume scrambles to do as she's told, swinging her legs off the slide so she can settle herself anew, back against the left guard rail, drink carrier balanced carefully on her lap. She alternates between watching him climb the ladder and gazing down at the drink carrier in her lap. "What's this?"

"A surprise, so quit trying' to ruin it," he says as his head crests the platform. He sets the bag down beside her and hoists himself the rest of the way up using the overhead bar. She tries to be stealthy in the way she watches him, but he doesn't miss the way admiration creeps into her features as she does.

(She's always so easy to impress.)

It's a tight fit for the two of them even as he tucks himself back against the right guard rail of the slide, and when he sits cross-legged facing her, his knees brush hers.

And he notices, suddenly, that she's wearing a skirt.

"What the hell are you doing wearing that in this weather?"

Suzume tilts her head and pats at her eyes this time, snuffling some more. Briefly, she looks a little disappointed. "But – but it's cute – and I'm wearing winter leggings under it, anyway, so it's fine."

He reaches out and pinches the thin, snowflake patterned fabric that stretches over her left calf and frowns. "Winter leggings? Like shit. This fabric is so damn thin –"

"But I'm not cold," she cuts him off, a whiney lilt pitching her voice higher. Still, when he raises his eyes to her face, the vague chatter of her teeth more than gives her away.

"You're cold and you're a bad fucking liar," he scolds her, rolling his eyes before he reaches into his bag to rifle around his meager assortment of clothes. "I oughta kick your ass."

"They have snowflakes on them so they're definitely meant for winter – "

"Inside, maybe – not outside. Don't be dumb." Touya finds what he's looking for and pulls out a lightweight zip up hoodie. "Pick up the drinks, careful-like."

For all her grumbling baby-teeth backtalk, Suzume does as she's told again, obediently taking the carrier in both hands and lifting it up over her head. He tosses the hoodie over her lap as a sort of makeshift blanket, then nods up at the drink carrier. "You're good, now – but bring it down real slow again so you don't make a mess and burn yourself."

Suzume mumbles something to herself that sounds like begrudging assent, but Touya can't help but notice the warm pink suffusing her cheeks.

"What's got you so suddenly flustered?" He asks, mindful enough of his next move to take the drink carrier from her and set it beside the bag.

She puffs out her cheeks and crinkles her nose at him. "M'not flustered."

"Lies, lies, lies. I can't believe you're such a liar, Suzu." Touya shakes his head, pinning her with a pitying look. "Can't believe you'd be dumb enough to lie to your big brother." His hand snakes out and pinches one of her cheeks, eliciting a sharp, surprised squeal from her. "Your cheeks are all pink – "

She's adorably indignant, mittened-hand clasped to the affronted cheek. "That's 'cause you just pinched me – "

"Only got one, and they were both pink before."

"It's 'cause I was cold!"

"I thought your leggings were enough because, and I quote: 'they have snowflakes on them'?"

Suzume flops forward into her own lap dramatically, her body heaving with a half-sigh, half-groan. Her hair is a spill of red gold across his legs now, and he fights the urge to touch it – to wrap it up in his fingers – and to pull.

"Don't do this, Nii-chan," she wails, muffled, into his hoodie.

Touya grins, eyes half-lidded as he watches her bury her own hands in the waves of her hair. "Do what, huh? Be right? Can't help it when you make it so easy."

When she raises her head to fix him with a very exaggerated glare, he's quick to pinch her other cheek. The way she jerks away from him in a flurry of flapping hands has him laughing easy into the cold night air, his breath billowing out of him in thick, smoking clouds.

"Don't do that either!"

"So demanding, aren't you?" He takes her cup – hot chocolate made with an indulgent base of soft-serve chocolate ice cream – and pushes it into her hands. "You get what you deserve – 'specially so when I went to all this trouble to get you something nice."

Suzume regards him with narrowed eyes for a beat before her try-hard icy expression seems to melt all at once under the heat of the cup in her hands. Suddenly, she looks as if she might cry again. "M'sorry," she only just barely manages to warble, pushing the heel of her free hand into one of her eyes. "I'm not trying to be – to be demanding."

And were this anyone else, Touya thinks – anyone else but Suzume – he'd suspect she was trying to manipulate him in the floundering, unsophisticated way of children, playing up the water works to guilt him, to get him to leave her alone. But Suzume is guileless, and too soft. As an only child, he imagines his behavior must be completely alien to her.

Even so, she seems to both delight in and crumble under the weight of his hazing in equal measure.

"Hey, now – don't go getting all weepy on me again." He takes hold of her free hand and pulls it away from her face before saying, without a shred of cruelty: "You're such a baby, Suzu."

She pouts at him, brows knit, big eyes glistening. "Only 'cause you're so mean to me."

"C'mon, you know you like that." Another half-lidded smile. "Besides, I'll make it up to you. Take a sip of your drink and see what else I got you."

Suzume does as she's told – because for all her bluster, she's a good girl, Touya thinks, fondly – and her eyes gleam bright and eager as the first taste of rich decadence hits her tongue. "Oh," she says, admiringly. "Hot chocolate!"

And then Touya shows her his other gifts, producing her trio of buns from the bag one at a time with an exaggerated flourish of his hands. She sets her drink down and takes each successive offering from him – first with surprise, and then with excitement, and by the time he gives her the third – custard-filled, which he knows is her favorite – her smile is as dazzling as the sun.

With the other two in her lap, she holds the custard-cream filled bun gingerly, the package crinkling in her cupped hands. "This one's the best," she whispers, her voice alight with a reverence that touches in him something he's tried so hard to kill.

(Something he's held on to these last few months just for her.)

"Your favorite," he acknowledges, affecting a casual tone as he fishes out the first of the yakitori skewers from the bag.

"You remembered!" In his periphery, he can see the way she holds it under her chin as if it is the best gift anyone has ever given her – as if it wasn't something that cost a hundred and seven yen, bought easy in a convenience store a street over from the park.

"I remembered."

Straightening up, he lifts his yakitori up to her in a faux-toast, and she laughs, tears forgotten again, lifting her small, packaged bun to mimic the gesture. "It's not really dinner food, though…"

Through a mouthful of yakitori, he fixes her with a sly look. "Like your leggings aren't really winter leggings?"

"Okay, okay – " She scrunches her face up at him, but her lips curl up and sweet in a way that betrays her. "I guess it can be dinner."

Touya wants to tease her – it's an almost irrepressible need – but instead he watches her open the package with all the careful veneration of someone handling something beloved. Even under the curtain of her hair spilling across her face as she leans over it, he can still make out her easy smile, summer-warm despite the winter evening.

And it makes something in him ache.

(Best to distract himself, then.)

"So," he says, swallowing a bite of chicken before helping himself to another, his first skewer already half-devoured by the time she's managed to pull off a mitten and wrestle a piece of her bun free from the plastic. "What got you so worked up earlier?"

She looks up from her first uneaten bite and frowns a bit – and Touya is relieved to see his gift proves a good enough inoculation against her earlier tears that she doesn't immediately devolve into fresh ones at the question. "Got into a fight."

"Oh yeah?" He chews a bit through her contemplative silence, and then prods some more. "With who?"

He remembers Suzume's sour-puss face from the night they first met when it puckers up much the same way now. "Katsuki-kun."

Suzume has mentioned this boy before, though only very briefly, and usually only in disdainful passing. As Touya recalls, he's the son of one of the women who watches her sometimes after school. In the months that he's known Suzume, he's noticed her tolerance for the boy has dropped considerably. Any stories involving him are always brief, touch-and-go in a way that tells him she very much does not want to think about him, let alone talk about him.

So Touya plays polite and lets her plop the bite of bun into her mouth, lets her chew and swallow – before needling her again.

"And? No details on the courtly drama, princess?"

Suzume sighs with the air of someone long-suffering and three times her age, so deep and heavy for so small a girl.

(And Touya only just barely manages to suppress his laughter with another bite of yakitori.)

"He's just really mean and really stupid and – and his dumb face makes me mad when I see him. I had to go stay at his place today 'cause Izuku had to go to a doctor's appointment 'cause he's got a bad cold or something – I've been avoiding going to his house for weeks and I never wanted to go again, but well – we got into a fight, and I just don't…" Suzume trails off, picking noncommittally at her bun.

"You don't?" Touya prompts.

"I just don't like him at all anymore! He thinks he's so cool because his quirk is so strong and he pushes me and everyone else around and tells me I gotta listen to him 'cause he's stronger, says I'm weak 'cause he thinks I don't have a quirk, and he's always yelling, and he gives me a headache, and – " Suzume sucks in a sharp breath of air to recover from her tirade before letting it out in one, long groan.

Touya regards her for a moment, thoughtfully chewing the last bit of his first skewer. "I'm mean to you, too. You say so all the time."

The look she fixes him with is one of such incredulity he can't help but chuckle. "That's different," she exclaims, as if he's just said the stupidest thing she's ever heard in her life. "You're different!"

"Yeah?" It's cheap, he knows, to fish like this. He can't help it. Doesn't want to. "How so?"

"Because – because you saved me! And – and because you help me with hard things in video games… and you hang out with me, and because you remember my favorite foods, and because you're nice, too, sometimes!" Her flush is back, and he smiles as he watches her paw at her cheek with her one still-mittened hand.

"Besides…" She looks at him seriously then, and he finds himself struck by the sudden vulnerability that softens her features. "Isn't it – isn't it normal for older brothers to be mean, sometimes?"

"Oh, yeah," he agrees, starting in on his second skewer, feeling lighter than he has in a long time. "Absolutely required-by-law older brother behavior."

"Yeah, so." Her relief at his reassurance seems immeasurable. "So – see! It's different!"

"I concede your point," he says, very formally. Suzume looks very pleased with that – as if he's just awarded her with some high and impressive honor – and finally takes a second bite of her bun. "But I stand by what I said the first night we met – because it's the same kid, right? This the kid who chased you up the tree?"

She nods, darkly.

"Yeah," Touya says, matter-of-fact, gesturing towards her with his skewer. "He likes you."

"That. Is. Gross." Suzume spits each out each word in pronounced distaste and mimics his earlier eye-roll to further illustrate her disgust. "And anyway, I don't believe it! He's too mean for that, and he's not even an older brother!"

"But older brothers are mean for the same reasons he's mean to you, kid."

She's incredulous. "What?"

"It's true." Touya shrugs. "Sometimes, you just think somethin's so cute you gotta bully it."

Suzume manages to hold Touya's unwavering gaze with her own bashful little glower through the entirety of her third bite of food, and he can't help but be impressed. She's usually so quick to wither under the directness of his stare. "That's dumb," she says finally, first to flounder uncomfortably in the silence.

Touya grins at her. "Sure, but it's like I told you before – those're the rules."

"I'm not mean to you or to people I like – "

"You try, sometimes. You're just bad at it." He pats her cheek, pleased with himself over how much the pink hue lingers even still. "You're too soft, Suzu."

"Am not – "

"You are, but it's a good thing. It's a good little-sister kinda quality to have."

For one brief second, he thinks she looks a little sad. It's a flicker of something, there and then gone, and then she is all faux-fierceness again.

"Well – that's okay for you," she allows, graciously, "Or – well, it's okay for you to be that way with me. Because – because you're my big brother, and I like you, and if that's how it is, then… But, I don't want Katsuki-kun to do that – to be that way with me. I don't like him. I want him to stop and leave me alone!"

Touya tsks his tongue against his teeth in contemplation as he appraises her before asking, "You want my advice?"

Suzume's hands curl into tiny, adorable fists and she all but cries out, "I want you to beat him up!"

That has Touya laughing again even as he shakes his head at her in genuine surprise. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah!"

And Suzume looks up at him with such wide, hopeful eyes that he almost cannot bear even the thought of turning her down. And Touya knows that in another time, in another life – in any other circumstance but the one he's in now – he would have gleefully fulfilled her wish without question, or regret, or doubt.

(That he would very eagerly visit his genuine wrath upon this snot-nosed shit-heeled brat eight years his junior for the cardinal sin of making his cute little sister cry.)

But Touya, unfortunately, has to keep a low profile, so he does the next best thing.

"Mmm – I think that would be very satisfying for both of us," he admits, pulling the lid off his oden. Still warm, it steams hot between them, and briefly it draws her attention from his face. "But I think there's a better route you can go."

She's looking back up at him immediately, though, already pouting. "But – "

He holds up a hand for her silence, and that has her attention immediately. He can almost feel the way her eyes are drawn as if by a magnet to the skin there, split red and angry by fresh burns.

It's a calculated if cheap distraction – Suzume struggles to do much else when she thinks Touya needs help. She's already reaching for him with her mittenless hand, whispering "Oh, let me – "

But he interrupts her. "Don't worry about this," he says, waving his hand dismissively, "And don't worry about me kicking the ass of your aggressive little paramore, 'cause – and just listen to me, okay? 'Cause I could bury that kid, sure – I could fucking humiliate him, but short of actually murdering him, me kicking his ass is just gonna go and get him even more worked up. You can't send some piece of shit like that a messenger to tell them 'no', you understand me? It's just gonna feed into his bullshit delusion, make him want what he wants even more. He'll think, oh, I have to fight harder for this. Think he's gotta scramble harder for his prize – which, in this case, is you. It's your attention."

Touya pulls the pair of chopsticks he has stowed away in the bag and snaps them in half before using them to stir his oden bowl. "And this kid doesn't sound like someone who's gonna be cowed by fear for long the way you talk about him, yeah? He's just gonna go back to hounding you in a month – a few weeks, tops. He'll be worse for it, too. Worse to you, worse on you. Worse all around."

Suzume looks more than a little dismayed at this sage counsel, watching Touya through the hazy steam of his bowl of oden. "Maybe…" She trails off for a moment, lost in thought as she watches him fish out some konjac noodles. "Maybe we should kill him?"

Touya gives her a grin that's all teeth, one that has her looking away from him almost immediately, clearly overwhelmed. "Somehow, Suzu," he says, something hot slinking its way through his tone, "I don't think you're quite cut out for that."

"Maybe not," she concedes, quietly, picking anxiously at her bun.

"Definitely not," Touya says with emphasis, and slurps a few noodles loudly. "But don't worry; you're not out of options even if you're not ready to go the full fire and brimstone route."

When she looks up at him expectantly, he continues again: "I imagine you've told him to cut out his shit before this?"

"Oh, lots of times." Suzume nods solemnly. "All the time. Every day! I've tried asking nicely, and I've tried being angry, and I've tried yelling, and I've tried crying. It doesn't change anything."

"Call him stupid?" Touya tries a bit of a chicken meatball. It's good – incredible and juicy, made more so by the broth of the soup it's been soaking in. "Tell him he's dumb?"

"More times than I can count!"

"You told him you hated him, yet?"

Suzume opens her mouth and then closes it again as she processes this question. "Well, no," she admits, finally. "I don't – I don't know if I actually really hate him. He just really makes me mad, and I don't – I don't like him."

"So, what you're gonna need to do is you're gonna have to lie." Touya pauses for dramatic effect and eats another meatball. "You're gonna have to tell him you hate him, and you're gonna need to sound mean about it."

The look of sheer confusion on Suzume's face is so naive and so precious he wishes he could fold it up nice and neat for another day. "But – why would he care? He tells me and Izuku-kun he hates us all the time. He also calls us dumb, and stupid – but he doesn't care ever when I tell him he's dumb or stupid, so why would he – "

"Because it's reasonable you'd be angry at him for picking on you, Suzu. Because that's somethin' he understands, somethin' he expects, because he's angry and he's full of himself and he's a little shit. But you're not really like him in the ways that actually matter to him — you're nicer than him, sweeter. You're soft. You don't have any real bite to the shit you say when you're mad, and it's just – it's not threatening, kid. It's just cute. It makes him wanna push your buttons harder. It makes him wanna keep picking at you, so you'll keep getting that sour little face you get when you're annoyed – so you'll keep doing cute, dumb things."

Suzume looks so offended, and Touya knows exactly why Katsuki does the things he does.

(It's because Touya wants to do them, too.)

(Because he wants very badly to do them right now.)

Instead, he elaborates on his recommendations like the good older brother he so rarely is. "You gotta tell him you hate him, Suzu. You gotta say it quiet, and you gotta say it cold. Don't yell, don't cry, don't stomp your feet – you gotta say it like being around him is just a chore you can't be assed to deal with anymore, like he's the worst, most disappointing kind of scum and you can't imagine why you'd ever wasted your time on him in the first place."

"That sounds – " Suzume is frowning again. "It sounds really mean. And I still don't get why it would work…"

"'Cause right now, you're just letting him be a piece of shit to you, and he likes to see you get all riled up.'Cause you're good, and sweet, and kind – and he really likes that about you, both 'cause it appeals to him, but also 'cause he can haze you for months and you still get dragged down in all this bullshit guilt at just the hypothetical concept of putting him in his place.

"But the thing is, you being nice means that when you tell him you hate him – god, Suzu, it's gonna hit him so much fucking harder than it would if you were a jackass like he is. And you know, it's 'cause it's not in your nature to be that way – 'cause if you feel that way about him, it's gonna show him just how badly he's fucked up with his little 'I-wanna-make-Suzu-cry' game. He's gonna know he took it too far, that he gambled on getting a little too much of what he liked when he got too damn greedy – and that he lost everything for it."

Suzume's eyes have a glazed, almost glassy look to them as she tilts her head back, looking up at the sky again. There's a little crease between her furrowed brows, and Touya wants to take her face in both his hands and smooth it away with his thumb. He wants to take her face in his hands and blow in her ear until she's shrieking and slapping at him, wants to bury clawed hands in her sides to tickle her until she's laughing and bright again.

He doesn't think this 'Katsuki-kun' deserves any of her anguished feelings.

And he wonders if he shouldn't kill the kid, after all.

After a long silence, Suzume returns her attention to him for a moment, and then to his bowl of oden. "Hey." Her voice is a ghost of itself, eyes widening just slightly. "Are those fishcakes?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you hated fish?"

"I do." Touya shrugs. "I got some to share with you – 'cause you said you liked them a while back."

And Suzume's expression is at once equal parts anguished and adoring – as if she is so overwhelmed by her love that it hurts. "Oh," is all she manages. He can barely hear her.

Touya is greedy in the way he drinks deep of her expression, delighting in the way she folds in on herself, overtaken by her own feelings. Suzume's anguish and adoration – in this moment, they're both his.

Just his.

Gathering up a napkin in his free hand, Touya picks out a fish cake with his chopsticks. Careful to hold the napkin under the outstretched morsel, he offers the fishcake up to her. "Want some?"

Her hands in her lap – one mittened and one not – tangle uselessly in the fabric of his hoodie, the loose garment bunching between her small fingers. Her eyes dart between the fishcake and his face, timid with a sudden and irrepressible shyness.

"I've never – " She's stumbling, clumsy, over her words. "At least, not like this – "

"First time for everything, isn't there?"

She's slow in the way she leans forward, careful in the way she parts her lips and lets him gently feed her the fishcake from his chopsticks. It's as if she's afraid to be graceless.

(He thinks she manages quite well, all things considered.)

"See?" He says, and claims another bite for himself – another bit of meatball. "Easy."

She watches him chew as if it's the most fascinating thing in the world, and he notices her cheeks aren't pink anymore.

They're a hot, bright red.

Touya grins at her, knowingly, and her gaze drops to her lap again, her hands restlessly flattening his hoodie over her legs. "Do you – do you really think it will work?"

Touya thinks Katsuki sounds a lot like himself, just young, and inexperienced. Not near as manipulative.

There's a balance to everything, and Katsuki hasn't found it, yet.

(His loss, Touya thinks, grin widening.)

"Oh, absolutely," he assures her. "In fact, I'm so confident that it will work that I wanna make a new bet with you."

"Mmm." Suzume sets her half eaten bun down beside her on the slide's platform and pulls her legs up, resting her chin on both her knees and his hoodie, her arms caught up greedy in the fabric. "Same one as before?"

"Yeah."

Suzume rubs her cheek on his hoodie as she thinks about this, and Touya can't help but feel a bit smug about it. "You're not gonna cheat again – right?"

"How would I even begin to cheat in this context?"

"I don't know." She sounds clearly unsure, herself.. "You could… threaten him?"

"Tempting," he says, "Very tempting – but I wouldn't be doing that to win a bet, and I doubt I'd be able to stop at threatening."

Suzume is curious. "Then why?"

Touya shrugs again, and is completely honest when he answers her. "For my own fucked-up sense of satisfaction."

Burying her face in his hoodie, Suzume threads her hands through her hair until her fingers lace together along the back of her head. Touya is reminded of a cat, overwhelmed and overstimulated by too much affection.

And it really is a battle this time to not try and push her further – a struggle he finds himself becoming ever more familiar with.

"Okay," she says finally, voice muffled into her knees, into his hoodie. "I'll take the bet. But – but you really gotta answer my question if it doesn't work."

"Deal." He's magnanimous and confident when he agrees, reaching out to gently pat her bent head, his hands just shy of her own, his fingers lingering in the softness of her hair.

And then he immediately loses that battle with himself. "So," he says, "Want another fishcake?"