AN: Posted this on Ao3 last week and forgot, whoops.


020: a fraying nerve.

December; 19 years.

In early December, just on the cusp of winter proper, Suzume comes to Dabi with a favor.

Without preamble, somber as a prayer, she declares: "I wanna visit Mama."

He looks up at her from his phone with raised eyebrows. Drowning in one of his shirts, she stands confidently before him, the waves of her hair very visibly damp. As pink as a goddamn flower, her skin is nearly raw from the blunted-needle assault of the shower. The thing has absolutely no business having the kind of water pressure it does out here in the sticks; even Dabi's childhood home back in Musutafu hadn't had that kind of force, and his father was never the sort to do anything by halves. If she spends any amount of time in it, she's guaranteed to come out looking as if she's been slapped all over.

(It's not a bad look.)

For a long and silent moment, they only stare at each other, Suzume with a sort of controlled anticipation, and Dabi with practiced disinterest. Really, he thinks; not even a please? When it becomes evident that she doesn't intend to amend the pronouncement with any sort of groveling, he rewards her nerve with what it's worth by grunting in disdainful acknowledgement.

"Well, that's unfortunate," he says, coolly, "considering that, last I checked, she's real fucking dead."

It's surprising, Dabi finds, that when Suzume speaks again it isn't in a voice quaking with fast-forming tears. Brows furrowing considerably, her response is more prickly than deflated. (Surprising, and disappointing.) "God – you're so mean. I meant I wanna visit her grave, you butthead."

He opts not to dignify that pitiful attempt at outrage with any kind of real response. "Quit the drowned cat act and go dry your hair before you catch pneumonia or tuberculosis or lung cancer or some other dumbshit thing."

"That – that's not even how that works," she interjects, but Dabi is already waving her off, having anticipated this know-it-all sisterly whining long before she'd even opened her mouth. He knows how it works. He just likes annoying her. Somehow, like clockwork, she falls for this sort of shit every time.

"Come the hell on, Suzu. The cold wrecks you. It's negative one out there, you know that, right? It's so cold you're gonna end up with super cancer. Your ass is gonna freeze and straight up fall off. And as much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, it's not like you got a lot to spare. Hustle it up, buttercup." And then he looks back at his phone. He doesn't really see it, though. Not really. As much as he'd like it not to be sometimes, his attention is focused wholly on her.

When is it not, these days?

There's the rustle of fabric and the floor creaking under her shifting weight. Without looking at her, he knows she's pinned her fists to her hips and lifted that delicate chin, little nose scrunched, pouty lips pursed. Like always, she's predictable. Cute, too – even when he's not looking at her. Inwardly, Dabi curses his own fondness. Outwardly, his face betrays nothing.

She suspects nothing.

(He has years of practice, after all.)

"There's no such thing as super cancer. My butt is fine," she says in a strong, defiant voice that still wavers delectably with self-doubt around the edges. "And if you don't take me, I'll go by myself." A dramatic pause. "Or – or I'll find someone else to go with."

Well, maybe she could stand to suspect something, actually, Dabi thinks darkly – like how much he absolutely does not fucking like that. Later, he'll teach her why she needs to watch that wagging tongue of hers.

Now, though, he refuses to look up at her, both because he knows it's exactly what she wants and because even without looking at her, he can feel his resolve slipping. Whether in reality or only in his mind's eye, she's just too cute. He doesn't especially like that feeling, either; sentimentality is, almost always, a fucking mistake.

"Uh-huh. Someone else. Got it," Dabi says, pointedly unruffled because he knows that's something Suzume is trying to do, too – that she's trying to rile him up. For all the ways his face doesn't betray it, though, he is riled.

Just a little.

(Maybe a little more than a little.)

But it's late, and he's comfortable, sedate and languorous, and it's easier than it might normally be to push it down. Sprawled out across the entirety of the futon like the selfish bastard he is, Dabi continues to scroll through his phone, acting the part of the good-natured older brother he occasionally pretends to be. She's so fucking lucky. If she'd caught him even an hour earlier and tried running her mouth about finding a replacement for him, he'd have buried her beneath him faster than she could scream and thrashed her until she was sobbing.

"I mean it," comes her voice again, more stubborn this time.

She doesn't mean it, but whatever. She also doesn't realize how grateful she should be that he knows she doesn't, and really – isn't that the biggest fucking shame of playing nice? If Suzume doesn't know, she can't appreciate it the way she should. Dabi will have to educate her, later.

Later, later, later.

(So many fun things for later.)

"Sure you do," he says, continuing to be rational in lieu of kicking her ass like she obviously deserves – and, with the way she's acting, might actually want. Want it or not, though, Dabi knows she isn't prepared to handle it. Not now. Not yet. Really, he's so benevolent, sometimes. He deserves a goddamn medal. "So, the cemetery where the kids like to hang out these days? Shit's sure changed since I was your age." He keeps his voice and expression deadpan, eyes boring into hers from over his phone. "You and all your dozens of no-fucking-friends gonna make a right time of it, sounds like. A real killer party."

"I have… I have friends," she says, defensively.

"Oh, of course. Loads."

Now she's deflating fast. Finally. "Well… maybe just one."

"Yeah? 'Maybe,' is it?"

Obviously deciding this bit of back and forth is not going to end in her favor, Suzume exhales long and deep, a weary-in-her-bones sigh that has her shoulders sagging so much it's visible even in his periphery. It's her fault for being optimistic, Dabi thinks, suppressing a grin. When does it ever?

Typical of her, disappointment doesn't have her down for long. Pivoting in her attempt, Suzume leans into a different strategy, something much more tried-and-true.

"Nii-chan." Pitching her voice high on the first syllable, she draws out the childishly affectionate honorific long and sweet, making it needy, just how he likes it. With a practiced artfulness that betrays how often she has to fight him for space in her own bed, she collapses next to Dabi on the futon in one of the tiny slivers of bedding left.

"Get outta here with that wet head," he says, fully abandoning his phone in favor of tangling his hand into her wet hair. The desire to take a fistful of it and pull her closer is there, but he doesn't. As much as it's what he wants most, it's something he's sure she wants, too, and that just won't do right now. The desire to haul her little ass up and drag her back to the bathroom to forcibly dry her hair is also there, but he doesn't do that, either. It's another thing she'd probably enjoy too much.

No, he's more than fine denying himself to spite her. With his hand pressed flat to the side of her head, Dabi pushes her away from himself and lets his face twist in overblown disgust, as if being as close to her as he is is the worst kind of torture.

It's not. Far from it. Really, there's nothing Dabi loves more than Suzume's desperate-driven nearness… except maybe the huffy, wounded expression that overtakes her when denied, which is exactly what she gives him now. Stubbornly, she wriggles out of his half-assed grip and snuggles up against him, making a pleased noise of contentment when he deigns to allow it this time.

He's been mellow lately, so most of her fear of him is muted, eagerly put away for darker climes. Now, blossoming in the good fortune of his better humor, Suzume is open, and touchy, and bold. Pressing her face into the side of Dabi's neck, she sneaks an arm around his shoulders and hooks a slim leg across his waist.

Dabi loves her fearful reverence, but he has to admit, even if only to himself: he loves this particular flavor, too.

"Please." This word she draws out too, two syllables rather than one, more puh-lease than please. It's much softer out of respect for her proximity to his ear – or, more likely, because being this close to her big brother always flusters her, even when she chooses to do it to herself.

Which is, as always, adorable.

He knows the outcome of this little exchange already, but as with everything between them, he likes making her work for it. "Please what?"

Just as soft, she says, "Nii-chan, c'mon – please? Take me – I wanna go with you, and not anyone else. I only said – I only said the other thing to make you…" Obviously feeling guilty, her voice trails off.

Without turning his head to look at her, Dabi clicks his tongue against his teeth: tsk, tsk, tsk. "To make me what?"

"To make you mad," she confesses in a very low voice, even more guiltily. "You were being mean, and it got me all… I don't know, just worked up. I know it's – I know it's dumb. I was being dumb. I didn't mean it."

He's unfair, and he doesn't care. "That so?"

It's another thing she falls for, every time. "I'm – I'm really sorry," she whispers, perfectly miserable.

Dabi knows that – knew that long before her hushed confession. He can read her like a book. Whatever monstrous thing their relationship is becoming, there is always this undercurrent: the hungry teeth he presses to her throat in a blasphemy of intimacy, and the nippy, toothless way she tries to come after him in reprisal. She's just so fucking terrible at it – too soft-hearted, too penitent, too moral. Dabi almost feels bad. Hopeless though she might be, he thinks he ought to pinch her for the sin of trying. He ought to work his fingers into the plush meat of her cheeks, or into her hips, or even her thighs. But he doesn't.

Sometimes, Dabi is a little soft-hearted himself.

(Or, more likely, hungry for something else entirely.)

"Mm. What a little masochist. You're so bad, aren't you, asking me for favors and being such a brat about it." Clicking his tongue again, he shakes his head in faux-wonder. "The balls on you, I swear." With both hands, Dabi mimes cupping something with considerable heft. "Huge."

"Eww." It's less a coherent word than a groan, and she lifts her arm from around his neck to slap ineffectually at his hands. "Gross – I don't – don't do – bleh, don't say stuff like that – "

He allows himself the small satisfaction of tugging her ear to hear her squeak with surprise. It's not enough to hurt, but he can't possibly help himself; she's always so reactive, even to the smallest things. Letting his breath out in a sigh, Dabi affects the air of someone long suffering being asked to do something that will undoubtedly cause them considerably more suffering. "You're lucky I'm in a good mood. Might be good enough I could be convinced to consider your favor, even – assuming you quit trying to play your cards more aggressively than you can handle. I swear, you must fucking love losing."

Another groan. Suzume refuses to take the bait, latching onto what matters most to her. "'Might be?'"

"Oh, sure." He lets his fingers crawl like a spider through her damp hair. It smells sweet, like her shampoo – like she always does. "I can play nice."

When she exhales sharply in disbelief, Dabi returns with a scoff of his own at her apparent lack of faith. "What, you think I can't be generous?" Before she can interrupt again, he lifts his other hand and settles it over the leg she has draped across his stomach, working his thumb in slow circles against her smooth, bare skin. Rather than disagree like he knows she would otherwise, he feels her body tense, no doubt expecting a pinch that doesn't come. It isn't that he doesn't want to. The need for it burns in his fingers, unanswered – another thing for later.

For now, at least, he is playing nice.

"The deciding factor is you, though, not me. So go on, Suzu. Help yourself out a little, here. Make it worth my while."

He hears her take in a slow breath through her nose, but then: nothing. It doesn't come out. Suddenly, her face is in his periphery, bright eyes half-lidded, cheeks still pink. When she presses her closed mouth to the hot flesh of his mangled jaw, the touch is feather-light, lips pursed in a kiss, supple and licked-wet.

It makes his pulse quicken.

"Please," she says, again, a little unsure this time. Her breath comes out then, puffed against his cheek, warmed in a way that cannot compare with Dabi's own body heat. Still, he thinks; it feels good.

Really good.

All of it does.

Against his naked shoulder, her hand smooths clumsily across the livid skin there, fingers first and then with the flat of her palm. Once settled, her thumb mirrors the way his own works into her thigh, moving over him in tiny, soothing circles. "Please, Nii-chan… I wanna go with you," she whispers.

This, he knows, she means. Even a deaf man could hear the emphasis and adoration in that you.

It's not a lot. Not really. Not in the grand scheme of things.

But to Dabi, it's everything.

"Well," he says, finally turning his head to press his own mouth to her forehead through the spill of her bangs, "I guess it's a start."

Accepting his kiss with half-lidded eyes and glowing cheeks, Suzume noses her way under his chin when he's done, fingers still working at his shoulder. "Nii-chan?"

"Mm?"

Tucked against his neck again, she sounds muffled, and very small. "Is, um… is my butt really that bad?"

Glad she can't see the grin abruptly tugging at his staples, Dabi answers her very gravely. "Straight heinous, I'm afraid. Most tragic ass I've ever seen."

"Oh," she says, and she sounds so completely crushed that Dabi wants, very suddenly, to tug her head back by her hair and –

The hand he's working through her hair goes completely still at the realization that he's just imagined kissing her. Really kissing her. Mouth crushed to mouth, his fingers dug into her jaw to force hers open. A shudder works its way through him at the vividness of it – at the way he pictures her eyes blown out wide under the flutter of her thick eyelashes, shock vying with fear, fear vying with hesitant desire. What kind of noises would she make, then? If he let her jaw go, would she keep her mouth open of her own accord? Would she let him dip his tongue past her lips, let him fill her mouth with it?

Would she kiss him back? Would she keep kissing him back even if his hands moved from her jaw down to her throat?

"Are you cold?" It's a dumb question, but Suzume asks it so earnestly, managing an impressive level of concern despite the drowsiness that's quickly taking hold of her. "I can go dry my hair if it's making you cold."

"Nah," Dabi says, deciding to be honest, himself. "Don't want you to go anywhere without me."

With how tightly her face is pressed against his throat, he thinks he can feel her smile. "You could… go with me?"

Slowly, his fingers begin to drift through her hair again. He knows he should play the adult and make her do exactly that; Suzume is prone to colds. It's just so hard, he tells himself. It's so hard to not be selfish. So he closes his eyes, tongue moving along the inside of his teeth, and dips back into that fantasy again.

"Maybe in a bit. Just lay with me here awhile, yeah?"

And the kiss she presses against his throat in response only makes that fantasy all the sweeter.


The trip to Saitama – where Suzume's mother's ashes are entombed in a family plot – is not a long one. At only a little over an hour and a half by train, it's nothing to Dabi. He's used to the five hour round trip between Chichibu and Yokohama, where he occasionally does business with Giran. A three hour round trip is kid shit.

Suzume, though, is a bundle of nerves. Having traveled only rarely when she'd lived in Musutafu, and not at all once moving to Chichibu, she only fractionally avoids bursting into tears when Dabi insists they need to meet at the station separately. He's impressed with her resolve not to – impressed enough, anyway, to resist the urge to menace her the rest of the way. It's a familiar and particularly potent temptation. She really should know better than to threaten her ruthless big brother with a good time, even if only incidentally.

God, he thinks, with a touch of bitterness; he has the restraint of a saint.

"It won't make sense, me coming with you." In a move further unlike himself, he is patient and reasonable, if not exactly comforting; Suzume can't escape at least one pinched cheek. There's no bite behind it though, and when – instead of wincing or whining or crying – she only nestles her face into his offending hand, Dabi can't resist the urge to plant a kiss on her other cheek.

(It's just too much when she's so openly pathetic.)

"You're supposed to live alone," he continues, mouth moving against her flushed skin. "Or with a mostly-dead grandma, anyway. You gotta act like it. We can't have anyone you know see you cavorting around town with a sketchy fuck like me, can we?"

At that, she's fussy in a flustered, hand-wringing kind of way, worrying her winter-chapped lips with her teeth and mumbling her complaints just under her breath. "You're not sketchy," she argues, whining now. It's a cute lie, one she sounds like she believes. But for all her bluster, Suzume listens. Rare as it is, she's usually inclined to listen to him when he's being patient and reasonable.

So, as planned, the two of them arrive at the station at different times, Dabi some ten minutes after her. Standing apart from the thin crowd and very alone on the platform, Suzume is easy to spot. Bundled up in the same coat that she'd worn when she came out to meet him in the woods the first night they'd reconvened in Chichibu – has she grown at all, he thinks, wonderingly? Maybe a few centimeters, but only barely – and a scarf wrapped tight around the lower half of her face, she looks especially small in the sparsely populated station. The day is gray and threatening rain. It's not cold enough for snow, but definitely cold enough to chase anyone sane away from anything but the most important of weekend plans.

Dabi loves it. With the heat of what often feels like ten thousand dying stars inside of him, the cold is a near unmatched relief. Ever his opposite, Suzume looks absolutely miserable, bleary-eyed and sulky, even from far away. Driven by that misery, she's quick to seek him out when he makes his appearance – frantic, almost, in the way she presses herself against him, heaving an anguished, pensive sigh as she buries her scarf-muffled face into his chest.

"I thought we were going to pretend to be a little less familiar," he says, more with amusement than any real attempt at reproach. Dabi is many awful things, and gluttonous is not the least of them. It's always difficult for him to discourage her clinginess. Most times, as now, he doesn't bother to try.

"I don't know anyone here." Smothered though it is against the light fabric of his hoodie and her scarf, Dabi doesn't miss the petulance seeping into Suzume's voice. "No one's gonna know. The plan's dumb if there's no one I need to hide from, anyway."

"Don't call my plan dumb."

"Dumb, dumb, dumb," he hears her grumble, and he wonders if she's shaking her head or nuzzling her face against him. Considering the desperation with which she tangles her fingers into his hoodie, though, it's an easy enough guess – one that has the effect of robbing her childish argument of any and all venom it could possibly have.

Fortuitous for her, really. But can the same be said for him?

Dabi hasn't gotten where he is in life by being anything other than exceptionally meticulous, and this sure as shit isn't the brand of careful he prefers. Still, of the maybe five people scattered across the platform, no one pays any attention to the way Suzume latches onto him, thin arms an anxious vice around his waist. To any onlooker, they must look like a real pair of siblings – like a timid little sister, far too dependent on her overindulgent big brother.

With his own identity obscured by a black face mask and a pair of shades far too dark for the grim day, Dabi allows himself the luxury of running his hands through the wind-swept waves of her hair. Chilled by the winter air, it's cold to the touch, like a spill of long, untouched silk. Caught between his hot fingers, it feels phenomenal. Being able to touch her openly and in public like this is a strange thing, so surreal that it feels almost dream-like.

It's strange being out with her in public at all.

(Dabi finds he likes it more than he thinks he ought to.)

The train arrives on time without fanfare, and the trip itself is nothing out of the ordinary. The car Dabi chooses for them is about as crowded as the platform – which is to say, hardly at all. There is plenty of room to sit, so they do, his arm thrown over the back of the orange-upholstered bench. Nesting beneath the comfort of that arm, Suzume tucks herself against his body and grips his pant leg with one white-knuckled fist, watching the countryside fly by out the opposite window. They don't talk much at all, which is very unlike her; she seems too preoccupied with her thoughts. For once, Dabi allows her to be.

Concessions, concessions. So many concessions lately. Empathy is another one of those feelings he's certain he doesn't like, but sometimes, despite his best efforts, it comes creeping in, even if only for her. As much as he doesn't like to admit it – and as much as he doesn't like sharing her attention with anything, ever – Dabi is intimately familiar with the concept of mourning the loss of family. His own might not be dead yet, sure – unfortunate a truth as that is, and one he plans to rectify – but that certainly hadn't stopped him from mourning them all the same.

Truthfully, he feels a little sorry for her. Hate, he's come to learn, is so much easier than grief, mercifully less vulnerable, and definitely less ugly. It's just not a lesson he thinks Suzume will ever be capable of learning. Her anger never lasts; she's too tender-hearted.

And really, when he really thinks about it, it's not one he ever wants her to learn – not when it plays out so often in his favor.

Close to their destination, Dabi lets his arm slip down from the back of the seat to settle around her shoulders, twining a strand of her hair around his fingers. Less cold than it was out on the platform, it still feels incredible.

"So. Why now?" It's a question that's been nagging him since she'd begged the favor of him a few days ago. He's not sure why he hasn't asked. Respect? Concern? Laughable. Whatever it is, no respect or concern softens his clarification. "Your mom – she died in the spring. Kinda early for a visit, isn't it?"

Suzume doesn't answer immediately. Briefly, Dabi thinks she's fallen asleep, but when he looks down at her, he can see her violet eyes moving minutely in her small, elfin face, still fixed on the window. Eventually, they slide up to meet his gaze. They look wet.

"It's her birthday today," she says, simply.

A birthday visit rather than a death day one, then. How very like his little sister.

"Oh, Suzu," he says. Her cheeks look a little wet now, too, and it makes his teeth ache with some terrible, awful need he almost feels bad for feeling. "You're so soft, aren't you."

Outside, pattering against the foggy glass of the train car, it begins to rain.


Dabi buys a single umbrella at a convenience store near the station and the pair of them buy two small bouquets of flowers from a small shop close to the graveyard. The first purchase is an exercise in frugality; there's no need for two. Letting her up on his back, he lets her hold the umbrella over the both of them while she manages his phone in her free hand, acting the part of their subdued but surprisingly competent navigator.

Not that frugality is the only driving factor. Suzume seems as if breaking bodily contact with him is something she absolutely cannot bear, and Dabi, ever selfish, appreciates both the closeness and her need for it immensely.

The flowers are significantly less frugal. In a bizarre moment of tenderness, he offers to buy the bouquet she wants for her, but Suzume insists on using her own pocket money. "I want it to come from me," she says emphatically, voice quivering with emotion. So Dabi lets her buy the biggest, fanciest bouquet she can afford, and while she's tucked off in the corner juggling her change and the fuckoff huge armful of flowers, he buys his own small offering. When he goes to meet her, Suzume stares at the flowers in his hands with thinned lips and raised eyebrows. The neutrality of her expression makes him feel almost proud. No doubt it's something she's picked up from him.

Her tone, though, betrays that neatly constructed impassivity. It's a little too guarded to be properly nonchalant. "What're those for?"

Shrugging, Dabi hits her with a withering look, as if this is the stupidest question in the world anyone could conceivably ask. "Your mom." The duh is implied. He's sure she gets it, even if she doesn't fully react to the jab. The flustered little eye roll she gives him all but confirms that.

Outside in the rain again, he sinks down to the balls of the feet to let Suzume back up on his back. She takes her time looking at him, rain in her hair and freckled across her cheeks, shining like gems even in the low light. With her arms full of flowers now, it occurs to Dabi with no small amount of regret that a piggyback ride is no longer feasible.

Before he can stand back up, though, Suzume steps closer, reaching out with a hesitant hand to relegate his shades to the top of his head and tug his mask down under his chin. Her own scarf has come down to hang haphazardly around her throat, and her breath steams hot in the blistering, cold air. When she leans in quick to steal a kiss very near the corner of his mouth, her lips are whisper soft and wet with rain.

Still as death, Dabi lets her – and the toothy grin he favors her with when she pulls away has her face burning just as hot as her mouth is cold.


At the cemetery, Suzume insists on borrowing a ladle and pail to clean her mother's grave despite the way the steely, sodden sky seems intent on washing everything away with indiscriminate abandon.

"Should just let the rain do it," Dabi tells her, making no move to stop her from adding the wooden tools to her already full arms. Between the flowers, the incense she'd purchased from the graveyard shrine, and now this, it's evident she's struggling. It's cute though, watching her struggle, so he doesn't offer her any assistance besides standing close enough with the umbrella to shield most of her from the rain. "Bet it'd be way more efficient than you, even."

"The rain's not traditional," she huffs, shuffling from foot to foot as if that might help her better balance her collection of grave-visiting paraphernalia. "I want it to be special. I've already missed a couple of years."

"Pretty sure your mom understands." Dabi sucks his teeth a moment, gazing down at her pointedly. "You know, considering the circumstances. You've kinda been indisposed, what with the whole getting kidnapped by your dad thing – nevermind your asshole of an older brother."

Suzume groans, shoulders sagging beneath the weight of her feelings and the absurd amount of things she's trying – and nearly failing – to handle. "That just – but that just makes me feel bad."

"Wasn't my intention, that time." When she fixes him with a suspicious look, Dabi shrugs. "Surprising, I know."

Letting her head fall back, Suzume's face scrunches up in distress and obvious guilt. "But that makes me feel even worse, somehow! It feels like – it feels like it'd be less bad if you were trying to make me feel bad."

"Guilt sure does seem like it sucks ass for you." Tucking his flowers into the crook of his arm, Dabi cups her cheek fondly with his now free hand and tugs her close to plant a long kiss against the crown of her head. "You should try the whole guilt-free psychopath thing like your big brother sometime," he says, quietly, into her hair. "Way less stressful. Loads more fun."

Suzume is grumbly, and sweet as ever, defensive of her big brother even as she wriggles out of his grasp to peer up at him critically. "Don't say that. You're not a – not a psychopath." She repeats the word with a shiver and a twisted lemon-puckered face, as if it tastes awful in her mouth.

"Oh, you think?"

That gets him another eye roll, restrained in its drama. When he grins down at her, wide and uncanny, she breaks his gaze, cheeks puffed out with exasperation as she turns to sulk off into the cemetery alone. He thinks he hears something about butthead and the worst, but the rigid line of her shoulders reveals the unease behind her agitation.

Before he catches up with her, Dabi lets Suzume get a few paces ahead of him – enough time for her to get a thorough soaking in the cold rain. For once, it's not out of any desire to teach her a lesson.

Chilled as he knows she'll be for it, she'll be extra clingy on the ride home.

Aside from another duo of visitors, the graveyard itself is completely empty. The rain drones on, pattering against the cheap material of the umbrella in a drowsy, heedless rhythm as Dabi and Suzume shuffle down neat rows of tidy, stone-hewn grave markers. On one row, they cross the other pair – a couple, it seems, maybe a few years older than Dabi. Arm in arm, they share a much more expensive looking yellow umbrella and a quiet conversation. The woman offers a warm smile to Dabi and Suzume both as they pass, the gesture reflected in her crinkled eyes. If she bears any judgment for Dabi's twisted visage, it does not register on her face; her good humor seems insuppressible. The boyfriend – husband, maybe? – is much too preoccupied with his partner to pay anything or anyone else any mind.

"So, what'd you talk to them about?" The man's question is playful in tone – indulgent, even, in its earnestness.

Moving beyond Dabi and Suzume now, the woman's laughter is bright and tinkling in response. "About you, you dork," she says, and her voice is warmed through with all her obvious fondness. "Had to check with grandma that I was making the right choice, accepting your proposal!"

From much farther down the row, their journey carrying them out and away, Dabi thinks he hears the man ask, laughter in his own voice, now: "Well, what'd she say?"

But they're too far gone for him to hear the answer.

Beside Dabi, Suzume has gone very still. When he looks down at her, she's staring back over her shoulder at the pair, watching silently as they descend the long set of stairs back down to the street.

"Suzu," he says, and he nudges her a little. Looking back up at him, her eyes are lavender moons in her face, wide and bright. Her countenance is an otherwise expressionless mask. Dabi knows better.

Her eyes look wet again.

Slow and gentle, he takes the flowers and the incense from her. The incense he puts in his pocket and the flowers he joins with his, managing both bouquets and the umbrella easily with a single hand. In his free one, Dabi gathers her much smaller hand in his own. Her fingers are so cold, fine and fragile as glass. They tighten around his reflexively, and she steps forward and presses her face against his arm.

"C'mon," he says, in a passable imitation of encouragement. "We're almost there."

At the end of another very long row, in an old family plot, they finally arrive at Kozue Meihane's grave. There are no flowers and no offerings of any kind to be seen, something Suzume is quick to begin rectifying after she splashes water from the borrowed pail over the already water-drenched grave marker. In an act of mercy, Dabi keeps his snide comments to himself, handing over the bouquets one at a time. Mindful of the presentation, Suzume takes her time fiddling with the arrangement while he stands behind her in dutiful silence, holding the umbrella more over her than himself.

Then she reaches and pulls the incense from his pocket of her own accord. Opening the box, she holds a stick up to him.

Dabi expects… he doesn't know what he expects. Sass, maybe. Knit eyebrows. Her mouth, twisting, before it pulls back from a row of neat, blunted teeth. A sigh. A demand, delivered raw.

Instead, he gets her voice, a little ragged, a little hoarse. Her eyes are the eyes of a wounded animal, all the fight gone out of her. "Please?"

It's enough like begging that he doesn't hassle her like he normally might. Instead, silently, he reaches out with his hand and lights the proffered stick in a flash of radiant blue heat that reflects very brightly in her watery eyes. She mouths the word thanks; for all the way the world is soaked through, her voice seems to have dried up completely. Quick to turn away, she uses the stick to light the others before joining them to the grave's modest arrangement.

Still playing at being dutiful, Dabi holds out the umbrella to shield both Suzume and the incense from the rain with the tiny umbrella. For the sacrifice, the rain spatters across the back of his neck, running cold, wet rivulets down under the neckline of his hoodie.

Aside from the white-noise static of the rain and the occasional, distant sound of a faraway car, the temple grounds are perfectly silent. It's strange being here, Dabi thinks, watching the girl who is for all intents and purposes his only worthy family as she sinks down, pressing her palms together in prayer for a woman he has never met and will never meet. It's strange especially because he had, at one time, flirted rather heavily with the idea of murdering that same woman.

(Dabi had never handled jealousy well. He still doesn't.)

Even now, he feels it. Anything that challenges him for Suzume's attention sets it alight, and it flares to life in his heart, a candle's flame in a very, very dark room. It's not the conflagration he knows it could be, but it's there: a flicker, a kindling, the stubborn cherry at the end of a cigarette, hidden from the wind behind cupped hands. Dabi is unabashedly thankful her mother is dead. Besides contributing one half of his genetics to his daughter, murdering his wife is the only other decent thing Akihiko Meihane had ever done. Still, it feels a little morbid to thank him for that here – even by Dabi's own twisted standards.

So, he bows his head and closes his eyes, choosing instead to thank Kozue Meihane for her part in giving him his little sister. It's a short prayer. Suzume's own silent exchange seems to be taking much longer, and in the silence that stretches on between them, Dabi lets his mind start to wander.

It's hard, he finds, not to think of things in a graveyard. It feels like the sort of thing he's meant to do, like something primeval in the place urges him to sit and reflect on the things he's done and the things he'll do. Life, and death. Family. Relationships. The way things begin, and the way things end.

The way things change.

Opening his eyes, Dabi gazes down at the back of his little sister's head. Shielded from the rain by the umbrella, the smoke from the incense drifts lazily past her, gathering about her hair like a veil, wispy as delicate lace. Like the man with his fiancée, Dabi can't help but wonder what Suzume is talking to her mother about – about what sorts of things she finds herself reflecting on here in this quiet, dead place.

Does she ask her for guidance? Does she beg her to weigh in on her new older brother, her replacement family – her only real family, now? Does she comfort her mother with the telling that her new brother has murdered her father? Does she confess that her brother covers her in kisses and bruises, both in equal measure?

Does she admit – like the woman only minutes before – that this same brother is the man she wants to marry?

Years ago, when Dabi was very young and someone else entirely, Fuyumi had expressed the same wish. He'd done something nice for her – a rarity for him, the details of which he cannot even begin to remember – and Fuyumi had done the thing she'd always done and blown it right out of fucking proportion. Rather than simply say thank you like any normal person might have, she'd declared, rather dramatically, that she was going to marry him when she got older.

"Gross." His voice had been thick with vehemence, lips curled back from his teeth in obvious disdain. In the moment, he'd been unable to imagine a worse scenario, thoroughly regretting his insane lapse into kindly older-brotherhood. "That's nasty."

That, too, had called for more of her drama. From beaming to incensed, she had immediately switched gears, attempting to argue her position as if she could bicker her way into an engagement with her significantly cooler and thoroughly disgusted older brother. As small as he had been back then, though, Dabi had been tenacious, and he'd verbally brow-beaten her into taking it back. Except she hadn't just taken it back. In true Fuyumi fashion, she'd amended her declaration:

She would marry Natsuo, instead.

Like always, and with everything, Dabi had been jealous. It was an obvious trap, and one that worked better than it should have. He hadn't remotely wanted to marry Fuyumi. Death had, to his pre-teen self, honestly seemed preferable. It was certainly less disgusting, anyway. But any loss of attention – especially after Shouto's birth – had fucking stung.

That was the way of siblings, though, wasn't it? Always going for the lowest blow.

Wrestling her beneath him, he'd twisted her arm painfully behind her back until her face was a mess of tears. "Natsuo's just a dumb baby," Dabi had hissed in scathing tones. It had been the truth, too; Natsuo was. There was no way he could have been older than five at the time, and compared to Dabi, the eldest and the wisest and the most deserving, well – the rest of them were absolutely stupid.

"Maybe now." Despite the snot running down her nose, Fuyumi had managed an air of sage certainty that had only made Dabi more angry. "But he won't be a baby forever – he's gonna grow up, one day."

"So you admit he's dumb then, huh?" He'd grappled her other arm, then, to twist it, too, grip bruising and mean. "Hope you have fun with your dumb husband."

Fuyumi, only willing to sacrifice one arm for argument's sake, had promptly lost her cool, shrieking until their mother arrived to pry them apart – and that had been that.

At the time, what she'd said had meant nothing to Dabi. Where did she get off acting like aging was any kind of a clever observation worth pronouncing aloud? Of course Natsuo would fucking grow up. Of course he'd get bigger. They would all get bigger. There was nothing else to do but grow up, awful as the entire experience was.

With a sudden sense of vertigo, Dabi thinks about that now as he stares down at Suzume and her bent head, the palms of her tiny hands pressed tightly together. Standing behind her, he holds the umbrella in a hand that feels, for the first time that he can really remember, clammy and cold. It isn't that he's never considered her growing up before. He has. How could he not? But he realizes now it's always been in a nebulous sort of way, almost like the way a child might perceive notions of the future: more malformed half-thoughts and heady aspiration than anything close to reality.

His relationship with Suzume is – what is it, really? She is his younger sister, and he, her older brother. That, in his mind, is an absolute truth, and one of several: he has taken her in hand; he has raised her; he will continue to raise her. Not out of a sense of obligation, or responsibility, no, but because he wants to.

But he knows it's more than that. It's something so much more than that. The edges that defined their relationship had been blurred at the outset. It was more than that years ago, and it's certainly more than that, now.

It isn't something he thinks about often. It's something he feels, rather; something he knows, inarticulate but implicit all the same. There aren't words to describe what Suzume is to him. There is no one else in his life but her – not anyone he doesn't want dead, anyway – and Dabi doesn't suspect there ever will be, again. She is his sister, yes, but in the rusty trap of his lock-jaw mind, and in the rotten, decaying remnants of his heart, he knows she is his in the most fundamental understanding of the sentiment. She will always be. It's something he wants. It's something he needs. And that, he thinks, is love. His love. He loves her. A twisted love, maybe; a cruel love. A love grounded in possession, in starvation, in consumption. Love made feral and hungry. But love, still, all the same.

But what is that love really like in practice, he thinks? He knows what it's like now: an intense, sentimental fondness that endures stubbornly even in the wake of all the hate that has left him emotionally barren. A desire to be near her, and to touch her. A drive to be the sole focus of her attention.

When she'd told him she'd wanted to marry him, Dabi had laughed it off. In part that had been because he'd never seen himself as the marrying type, even when he was young and significantly less bitter. It was something he'd been leery of long before Fuyumi had made the concept seem more real, though she'd certainly further poisoned it in the process.

More than that, though, Dabi had found Suzume's desire a little insulting at the time. As if something as banal and pedestrian as marriage could even begin to touch on the ways she belonged to him. Didn't she know that?

Ultimately, he'd forgiven her misunderstanding. He could never really stay mad at her – not really. Besides, Suzume was still a child, and she hadn't known any better. The sentiment behind her desire was flattering in its honesty, and she'd been so goddamn cute, flustered as she was with the confession. He's thought of that day often, remembering the flush on her face and the way her voice had trembled. Considering that, it had been all too easy to forgive her.

It had also been a real learning experience. In that moment, Dabi had come to truly realize something that – up until that moment – he felt he'd known only subconsciously. Marriage was worthless on so many levels, but marriage with Suzume was especially so. It was fucking redundant. Regardless of whether she believed it or not, she would be with him when she got older.

What was the alternative?

That she'd grow up and one day leave the foul, sordid nest he'd built with the bones of her parents and the eventual corpses of his own?

That she'd find someone else?

That she'd get together with someone else?

The thought then had made him sick with a roiling and barely controlled fury. The thought now makes him want to laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

Oh, it was just like he'd said then: like hell she would.

The knowledge had definitely been worth the brief bit of rage. After that, a lot of his interest in her, especially his subdued but still notably sexual curiosity, had made significantly more sense. Born out of a feeling of possession, it was suddenly easy for Dabi to justify his occasional fascination.

If she belonged to him – if he would, eventually, have her in every way that mattered – why shouldn't he let his mind wander now? It was a lot like sneaking a small taste of desert a few years before he was meant to have dinner, he'd reasoned at the time. That desert was his.

Suzume was his.

It was – she was – absolutely his right.

He could afford to be a little greedy, he'd reasoned. He can afford to be greedy now.

Now, though, always implies a later. It's later now than it had been when Dabi had first come to terms with those realizations, and it will be later than even this, eventually. A day, a week, a month… a year, and then some more. For all the ways things stay the same – for all the ways that they seem unmoving and endlessly familiar, day in, and day out, so many single grains of sand slipping slow through a thin-mouthed hourglass – well, Dabi knows that everything is always in flux.

Will they keep changing?

Will she keep changing?

More than a little unsettled, Dabi knows at least part of the answer. Looking down at his little sister, praying before the grave of her years-dead mother, he knows it with a sudden, shocking clarity:

Suzume won't always be a baby forever.


March; 20 years.

The change starts as all things worth anything of substance do: very, very slowly. It creeps in, micrometer by micrometer, a glacial kind of slowness. The minute crawl of it is so small and insignificant that he doesn't notice it at first.

It's Dabi's fucking mistake, really. One very long and drawn out mistake.

That mistake begins a few weeks out from the end of the school year, just before Suzume leaves her elementary years behind forever. Together, the pair of them gather in the common room as they often do. Despite that life event looming just on the horizon, today is only a day, like any other day – just another day in a sea of days, all of them like the ones preceding. Bent over the short table, her legs folded beneath it, Suzume works at her homework with a steady focus Dabi had never had for his own studies. Sitting just a bit to her side, he sprawls out across the tatami, the bottoms of his feet pressed to one of her bare thighs. It's more for her comfort than his, he'd told her – she gets so cold. She always craves his heat, doesn't she?

It's a believable lie, and one she'd swallowed well enough and without much fuss. The best lies are always built on a kernel of truth, and there is a part of him that does, very much against his will, fret over her.

At the heart of it, though, he really just likes touching her. And cold as the day is, she'd been the one to come home and peel off the thermal leggings she'd worn under her school skirt. Who was he to deny her? It was clear to Dabi that she wanted him to touch her, too, skin to skin.

(Micrometer by micrometer.)

Phone in hand, he debates finally returning a text from Giran he's been dodging for the last four days. Work, work, and more goddamn work. It's almost funny, really, the notion that villainy could be like any other job. Giran tries to keep Dabi's nose pressed to the metaphorical grindstone, grinding up people for a living… just maybe a little less metaphorically. It's not like he needs to work. He sure as shit doesn't want to. Still, it's hard to deny the drive to stay sharp – and that's something he needs to do, doesn't he? ("Idle hands and all that shit about devils, yeah? It'd be a right fucking waste to let your tools get rusty," Giran had told him once, with an exaggerated and irreverent wink.)

That bit of wisdom hadn't been without merit. Besides that, being useful is something Dabi knows will pay off in the long run. It pays to know someone like Giran. It pays even more to be someone a broker of Giran's caliber can count on.

(Nevermind how often murder-for-hire turns out to be a unique but effective form of stress relief.)

The sensation of Suzume's cool-palmed hand settling over the back of one of his feet draws his attention from his phone up to her, but her focus is still captivated by her homework. It's an unconscious gesture; much like the way she raises her pencil's eraser to her mouth to roll it across her lower lip, she's not even aware she's doing it. Frowning down at her composition book, she squeezes his foot absently, once, twice, and then a third time more – as if she might somehow pump the answer from his toes.

Cute.

More than cute, Dabi finds it unbearably endearing. It's something he considers teasing her for – something he wants desperately to, even – but he doesn't. Oh, it'd be fun, he knows. He can imagine it perfectly:

Aww. Can't get enough of my feet, can you? He'd leer and loom over her, catch her shoulder with his foot and push her down, pinning her to the tatami. He'd dig his heel into the soft flesh of her cheek. He'd laugh. Helpless, she'd writhe beneath him, and that would be good. She'd probably squeal a lot, too, or start whining about him getting his gross toes out of her hair. If he was lucky, maybe she'd even beg. Not that it would matter if she did; he'd only do it more, do it worse, do it mean. That would be on her – she should know him better by now, know how much it goads him. Inevitably, she'd start crying, and that would be, in every respect, fucking great.

But it's not worth it. This subconscious need to touch him, this innate expression of her innocent affection – it's too precious, and not worth the risk of training it out of her.

Across the table, a tiny space heater belches summer-level heat into the still, warm room. The soft ticking of her grandmother's clock is the only other noise besides the faint scratch of Suzume's pencil against her paper as she returns to her work with renewed zealotry, tucking an errant strand of her hair from her face behind one ear. She's unaware of the danger, diminutive hand still settled across his foot, her thumb brushing gently over one of his staples. It's a sweet, domestic scene, one challenged only by the fact that Giran's text, when Dabi returns his attention to it, is a vaguely-worded request to, "Take care of some shit and make it un-shit in that neat way you do, Horrorshow. Just make it more shit first, please."

That's neither sweet or domestic, of course. It's Giran's way of saying he needs someone murked with no evidence, preceded with a gratuitous appetizer of torture. For information or fun? Who knows. But Suzume doesn't know that. She doesn't know the kinds of shit her big brother gets up to on his phone while she sits there trying to milk the answers to her math problems out of his foot. Gnawing at her lower lip and making an occasional noise of dismay as she erases a whole swath of failure from her notebook, she's otherwise oblivious. And that's fine. It's cozy like this. Nice. Drowsy. Dabi turns off his phone and places it face down on the floor beside him, fighting a losing battle against a yawn. What's one more day, unanswered? Giran will wait for quality. He always does.

Rolling his head back and forth across the tatami in an attempt to get more comfortable, Dabi spies Suzume's bookbag a little to his left. Struck by the sudden and no doubt regrettable inspiration to use it as a pillow – it looks only marginally more comfortable than the floor – he snags it by its strap and drags it towards himself. A few of her books spill out on the short trip –

As does what looks to be a simple, white envelope.

For one long moment, he only stares at it, his attention transfixed by that glaringly pale rectangle. It's an alien brightness against the faded tatami, neat and crisp with its four sharp corners, and wholly out of place. Immediately, and more than a little bizarrely, Dabi finds he absolutely doesn't like it. It isn't quite dread – not really – but it's something close enough to it that he finds his breath catches all the same.

What the fuck.

Unaware of the quiet drama unfolding beside her, Suzume's focus remains preoccupied by her homework. Despite the noise and the fresh mess of books scattered across the floor, she doesn't even offer her brother – or the way he sits up to begin ransacking her things – a curious glance. She's long since grown accustomed to his spontaneous intrusions into her spaces. Conditioning that in her had been one of his top priorities when he'd moved himself in, and one that has continued to reward him in spades.

The books Dabi doesn't give a shit about. Those are normal. They belong. The envelope, foreign and strange, does not. He takes hold of it and flips it over, revealing a name: Meihane-san. Suzume's last name.

His eyes narrow.

It's written rough and scratchy, the kanji ill-formed. Childish, really, despite the formality. The handwriting is most certainly not neat enough to be Suzume's, nor is it remotely feminine.

Pinched like something foul between his fingers, Dabi holds the envelope out. "What the hell's this?"

Suzume makes a soft sigh of a sound as she uncurls herself from her hunched position over the table, lifting the hand that holds her pencil high into the air. Rolling her shoulders after it, her back arches into a long, indulgent stretch before she finally fixes him with her attention, her fingers drumming softly across his foot. "What's what?" Her eyes light first on his his before flickering to the envelope, and in the couple of seconds she regards it, not even a hint of recognition registers in her face.

"Um." A look of deliberation crosses her features very briefly, brows knit, one cheek sucked in so she can fuss at it with her teeth. Then, as if she's won some internal debate with herself, Suzume appraises him with lofted eyebrows, suddenly too smarmy for her own goddamn good. "An… envelope?"

The duh, he can tell, is very much implied. She's learning too much from him.

"Don't you go getting cute with me." Oh, she's lucky he's distracted. For all the ways she's disinterested in it, Dabi finds the envelope very distracting. "You wanna get cute with me, I'll ream your little ass."

Distracted as he is, the threat doesn't quite hit home. With a faint smile and a roll of bright, lavender eyes, Suzume turns her focus back to her homework. "You're the one who tells me not to ask dumb questions," she says, very quietly.

Very smart-assedly.

That's so close to being enough, isn't it? So very, very close. He can feel the urge to pounce building up in him, a hungry, savage need simmering just under his skin. A little sister shouldn't mouth off to her big brother like that – not if she knows what's good for her. Evidently, he's been too lax lately; been just a touch too soft. That's his mistake, and his responsibility to rectify. Not that there's any reason it shouldn't also be his reward.

(Wouldn't it be fun to re-educate her?)

Oh, but she has gotten lucky, though. Suzume really is so very fucking lucky today. In his long, sister-tormenting fingers, the still-sealed envelope feels like it weighs a million goddamn pounds, and her name on the front – the name he'd been careful not to show her – is like a black brand burned into all that perfect whiteness. It's an anomaly. Whatever it is, this shit does not belong, and he doesn't like that, not one bit. He runs his ship too tight for anomalies.

Working a nail underneath the flap, the sound of tearing paper is loud in the quiet room. A quick glance at Suzume reveals her continued disinterest in Dabi's discovery, lending an honesty to it he knows she couldn't hope to imitate. Her poker face is terrible. It always has been. If there was some deception on her part, it would have crumbled away minutes ago in a very probable storm of tears.

Turning his attention back to the envelope, he pulls out a bit of paper folded artlessly over itself a few times to fit. Dabi takes his time unfolding it, stealing peeks at Suzume as he does so. Engrossed in her work, she continues to ignore his existence save for the way her fingers worry at the staple she'd been stroking earlier.

Cute, he thinks. Fucking cute.

Fully unfolded, it becomes apparent that the paper was torn out of a composition notebook. The edge of it is ragged, and a large tear very nearly splits the page in half. Mismatched with the plain solemnity of the envelope, it's as if the envelope itself was a half-hearted attempt to dress up what was otherwise an unmitigated disaster. The effect is almost comedic.

Almost.

Covered in a cramped, chicken scratch kind of scrawl that's somehow even worse than the mess that had adorned the front, Dabi has to lift the paper closer to his face and squint to read it. After only a few seconds, it becomes immediately apparent why the handwriting is so fucking messy:

Anxiety. The handwriting is messy because its author was anxious – terrified, even. Suddenly, Dabi's eyes narrow for very different reasons.

The letter is a fucking love confession.

It begins with a very polite Meihane-san to match the address on the front, and Dabi finds himself relieved that whatever little prick saw fit to think himself worthy of writing the letter didn't similarly see himself worthy of using Suzume's given-fucking-name. But that's the first and only reprieve. What follows it only serves to set Dabi's blood on fire.

When you first changed schools and joined our class, I told myself that I wanted to be your friend. You looked really shy. I know because I've always been shy, too. It's hard for me to make friends, and it seems like it is for you, too. When I would see you sitting alone at the beginning of class, or looking out the window during lunch, I would imagine what it might be like to sit and talk to you. I would imagine asking you about the stickers on your notebook, or the books you'd read. I'd think about it being cool if I could make you laugh. I think we like the same things.

But I was always so scared. I never thought you'd be mean to me. I don't know why I was scared, or why I am still scared. When you do talk, you're always very nice to everyone, even maybe to people who don't deserve it. I like that about you. But I could never make myself say anything, even though I would think about it every day at school. Even when I got home. I hope that's not weird. I like you a lot, so I think about you a lot. I think you're very cute and nice.

Soon, we're gonna go off to middle school. If we go to different middle schools, you'll be gone and I'll miss my chance to be friends with you, or

The words maybe more have been poorly crossed out, readable with only a bit of effort. It's a graceless attempt at cunning, a childish play at manipulation. With his lips pulled back from his teeth, Dabi's breathing becomes very shallow as he continues to read.

I wish I could just say who I am. Write my name down. My phone number. I wish I wasn't a coward. I don't want to be. I'm trying not to.

There's a big oak tree in the park a block over from the school. I go there sometimes after school because my parents work late and I don't like going home when the house is empty. It's big and shady and there are better parks so it's quiet and people don't bother me much there. I'll be there every day this week after school lets out, waiting underneath the tree. Maybe you could come see me and we could hang out. Even if we don't go to the same middle school, we could probably be friends, right?

Please consider my feelings sincerely, Meihane-san. It would mean a lot to me even if we don't end up becoming friends.

There is no signature. There's only a date – Monday, the day prior. Somehow, by the grace of something divine, Suzume must not have noticed it either yesterday or today. Dabi suspects the fucking worm must have snuck it into her bag at some point during school, just a tad too carefully. The image of some punk rifling through his little sister's shit with the intention of initiating this pathetic charade has his teeth set against each other hard, jaw throbbing with a dull but furious ache.

The temptation to grill Suzume on who she thinks the author might be flares to life in him immediately, but it's a desire he's quick to smother. Knowing her bleeding heart, it's something that would end up eating her alive. Plagued by some absurd sense of obligation or a guilty conscience or both, he knows she'd immediately fall to pieces, acting like it was her moral goddamn responsibility to meet with the scum in some attempt to spare him his crushed feelings –

As if crushed feelings and worse aren't exactly what this mysterious snot-nosed bastard deserves for trying to weasel his grubby, greedy little fingers into places they absolutely shouldn't be –

Into things that are absolutely not his to fuck with.

Dabi does not bother to refold the letter. Rather, he crumples it in one tight-gripped fist and sets the whole goddamn thing alight. Like the letter itself, it's childish; dramatic.

He cannot bring himself to care.

The electric blue incandescence and the sudden puff of smoke finally distracts Suzume from her homework. Staring up with wide eyes, alarm written in all of her features, she watches the still lit paper drift towards the floor. "What – what are you doing?"

From across the short space that stands between them, Dabi looks at her through the curtain of fresh, bitter smoke. Suzume's face is an intimacy that is burned into his very soul, as familiar to him as his own in the mirror – if not more so. And yet, looking at her now, limned as she is in the late afternoon sun slanting gold through the window, she is somehow completely new to him, too.

As a child, when they'd first met, he remembers her with plump, flushed cheeks, padded with baby fat. Months later, her father's house had seen them starved to a frightening thinness; she'd been little more than a ghost in that awful, contemporary house, gaunt-faced and anaemic. Later still and living together, her face had filled out again, soft and round and tempting to pinch –

But it seems that somehow, without him noticing, it's changed again. Not quite so round, anymore. Not quite so plump. Rather, her face has slimmed down, the curve of her jaw a gentle, feminine slope taking shape from beneath the childish roundness he remembers – childish roundness that has, it seems, begun to melt away. Now her cheekbones are high and delicate, much more pronounced than they used to be, and certainly not from starvation.

Cute, the letter had said. Cute wasn't wrong. Cute was her nose in Dabi's memory, tip-tilted and small, button-like in her sweet face despite all the ways she'd crinkle it at him in dismay. It's still small, now; it's still tip-tilted, even. But set now in this more slender and almost unfamiliar face, it's less cute than it is pretty. Doll-like, even, as if it had been sculpted lovingly by some masterful hand to suit an overall artistic vision, matched in a very pleasing manner with her heart shaped lips and her wide, bright eyes.

Suzume has always been cute, both in spirit and in countenance. She's cute now, too. But it's more than that; it's so much more than that. Looking at her now, it's obviously evident that she is very much the product of her parents:

Both very attractive people.

Cute. It's there in the letter. The whole letter is goddamn infantile, fumbling in the worst, most inarticulate way. Cute. And very much against his will, Dabi can imagine it: some snot-nosed, mouth-breathing shit in her class, making eyes at her as she stares out the window. That same little shit, watching her, day in and day out, noticing things that Dabi himself has somehow missed. Cute, he'd said. Of course the little cunt would say cute. The kid wouldn't have the game or the balls to say what he actually thinks, what Dabi is sure the boy thinks every night, night after night, working his miniscule prick in his scumfuck, sticky fingers. And really – how dare he? How fucking dare he? How dare that rotten little bastard think about what absolutely isn't his to think about?

God, Dabi thinks, the rush of his pulse a roar in his ears. Fuck. Suzume isn't just fucking cute anymore.

It's a realization that hits him like a swift right-hook to the jaw, and for several long moments he finds he can only stare at his little sister – at this girl he has known for four fucking years, this girl with her familiar-but-unfamiliar face, haunting and terrible in all the ways she's pretty, now –

Lovely, now.

It's not that he's never thought of her like that. Pretty. Lovely. He's even used those words. Pretty when she cries. Lovely when she shies away from him, embarrassment blooming like fire-flower fireworks in her cheeks. But it was different before, somehow. The words had been the same, but the meanings had been different – it'd been so fucking different –

"Nii-chan?" Suzume's voice cuts through the room with the precision of a surgical blade, edged sharp by her fast-growing concern. Dabi stares at her. Her eyes are so round, and in the sunlight, her thick eyelashes gleam as if lit aflame.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Are you okay?" Her hand slides up from his foot to take hold of his ankle, shaking it gently. He lets his gaze fall away from the too-perfect lineaments of her face down to her hand. It's so small. Each and every one of her fingers is slender and flawless. Dabi sets his teeth against something awful building up behind them. He wants to get up. He wants to leave and go and burn down her whole fucking school. The room seems as if it has tilted, gone off-kilter. Impossibly, the world rotates on, spinning, and he spins with it, dizzy and undone and full of wrath.

"Nii-chan," she says, softer now, but no less frightened. Her voice is the sweetest thing he has ever heard. Hasn't it always been?

Hasn't it?

Fuck. God – fuck!

In his palm and on the floor, the letter smolders. She moves in his periphery like the still, staccato shots from a slideshow, lifting a book from the table to swat at the burning ash so that the lingering flame doesn't spread to the tatami. The scent of more smoke is thick in the air, and he's glad – he's fucking glad –

He's not sure he can handle smelling her right now.

"Nii-chan!" There's panic in her voice now, and god, at that the ache behind his teeth is in his throat, now – in his lungs, in his blood, twisting sick in his guts.

With both hands, Dabi smothers the last of the live ashes between mashed palms. "Fuck," he hisses aloud, despite himself. Then, in a voice like the hot ash in his hands, he breathes: "I'm fine."

It's a lie. It's a bad one, too. He's not. He can't look at her, can't talk to her, because he isn't fine and looking at her and hearing her will only make it fucking worse. He's so – so what? Bewildered? Angry? When had this happened? When did this start? How had he missed it? How had someone else noticed first?

"You're not fine!"

Dabi doesn't look at her. Instead he looks at the clock on the mantle. 4:45 PM. School had let out a little over an hour ago.

The thoughts come to him in short, snapping bursts, the rapid firing of fuse-like synapses set deep in his voracious predator's brain. School. Park. Tree. Waiting.

Ironic, isn't it? A fucking park.

Oh, that the little rat thinks he can take Dabi's fucking place.

"Suzu." He says her name slowly. In his mouth, it feels different, tastes different. Everything feels different. The room tilts again by another degree or twelve, and he closes his eyes, nauseous, hateful. "I need to go do something."

"Nii-chan – please." She touches at his pant leg, down by his ankle again. "Please, you're really scaring me – please don't go, please tell me what's wrong – "

Shaking off her hand, he rises to his feet, still refusing to look at her. There is ash in his hands and in his throat. His heart has never beat so fast. "It's just for a bit. I'll be back soon."

When he moves to the kitchen to exit by the back door as he always does, he hears her get up – can feel the way she comes stumbling after him through the way the floor creaks between them.

"No," he snarls, before she can reach him – before she can touch him. The vibration on the floor stills, her intent cut short by the vicious threat in his voice. Behind him, her breathing is ragged with panic.

"Nii-chan – " Pleading, now. The threat of tears is imminent. That, at least, is something that hasn't changed.

But that's dangerous in its own way, in its own right. Oh, not her tears – not now. Not like this. He needs air – he needs space. He needs something much worse than both of those things.

"Don't follow me." He grinds out the words, biting them off one by one, short and cold as he haphazardly tugs on his boots. "I'll be back. Nothing's wrong. Chill out. Wait here."

And then before she can call him back – before her voice breaks in a way he knows he won't be able to resist – Dabi leaves his changeling of a little sister alone in the house, heading for the park.