AN: I forgot to come back and publish this here; it's been on Ao3 for a couple of weeks now. I forgot to post here, whoops! Chapter 30 is on Ao3 already too, but I'll try and come and add it here tomorrow if I can remember. My brain is very scattershot these days.

029: desperate times and degenerate measures.

Late November; 17 years.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, Dabi is alone in the bathroom, listening to the hissing water as it pours from the shower head. Condensation beads along the walls, and along his skin, too. Or maybe it's sweat. It's hard to tell in here, in all the humidity. He doesn't sweat much these days; not anymore. Not since he'd woken up in that hospital all those years ago, stitched back together into some horrific amalgamation of himself and an unknowable number of dead strangers.

(Or at least it had been horrifying to consider back then. Dabi finds he doesn't care at all, anymore.)

With his shirt balled up in his hands, he keeps his bare feet on the floor. He hasn't gotten in yet. Isn't sure he wants to. Hasn't even gotten fully undressed. The water, cranked up to the hottest temperature this old apartment can manage, is scalding, hot enough to fill the bathroom with thick, choking steam. Even then, it doesn't matter. The stray water spatter feels at best lukewarm. Almost cool. Maybe even cold.

(Like always.)

God, he thinks, swallowing thickly. He's so fucking hot right now everything feels cold. Lifting his shirt in vaguely shaking hands, he buries his face in the fabric and wonders that it doesn't burst into flames on the exhale, his breath ragged and heaving, smoke seeping out from the edges of his lips. He'd grabbed it off the line in the living room, initially intending to use it to put some space between him and Suzume. Unsurprisingly, the thin fabric hadn't been enough for that.

No, that had required that Dabi actively remove himself from the situation. The bewildered note of hurt in her voice as she'd called after him had challenged his resolve as he'd shut and locked the door between them, but it had been for her benefit, not his. Thankfully, whether out of fear or obedience, she hadn't questioned him long. All of her protests had lapsed into silence a while ago. Now it's been – what? Fifteen minutes, maybe? Thirty at the most? Not that he actually knows; he hasn't been paying attention. Time feels as slick and wet as the walls, those unknowable minutes slipping away towards the drain, down, and then gone. His phone sits on the counter face-down, its low-end electronic components no doubt struggling in the humidity, but he hasn't been able to make himself get up, to check the time – to do anything at all. Dabi's sure that if he does stand up, he won't stop at his phone. He knows himself. He'll walk right past it, and open the door, and find Suzume out in the living room, and –

Another shuddering exhalation of breath, smoke mixing with steam, the room hazy with that white-grey shroud. In his hands, his shirt smells like the floral-scented detergent Suzume likes, like the fancy soap she's bought him, more smoke, ash, too –

And, if Dabi tries hard enough to catch it, there's the scent of her there, tucked away like a sweet, sweet secret.

She wears off on him, he thinks. When she brushes against him in the kitchen. When she leans against him on the couch. When she sleeps next to him at night, tangled up in his arms. When he pushes up against her while she brushes her teeth, when he bullies her into a corner to wheedle some confession out of her, when he slips his hand under her shirt to feel the curve of her fragile ribs, fingers climbing them like a ladder. One rung, two, god, maybe even three, if he dares. And he does. He does dare, so often willing to test her nerves and, even worse, his own long-flagging self-control –

Luckily for him, Suzume always gives first in this perverse game of chicken. Three is the max before she's shaking him off, cross and blustery, her arms thrown over her chest in a burst of panicky, high-pitched not-quite-laughter.

"Stop," she always says, stumbling over that simple word. And then, "please."

And he does, and not because she asks. Not even because she says please, though he really likes that.

(It's because he knows if he goes any further he won't be able to stop himself.)

But Suzume wears off on him even then, and he can smell her now, in his clothes, when he tries to find it. And Dabi does. He tries to find it. He shouldn't be, but he does, he does, huffing into his own shirt like a starved animal pawing through garbage for an especially promising morsel.

Like a fucking drug addict, wide-eyed and feral, willing to do anything for another hit.

Dabi's mouth is open, and his teeth sink into the fabric. He imagines it's her shoulder. Her lovely, slender throat. The beaded water meanders its way down his back in those almost-cold rivulets, and he finds himself imagining its her fingers instead, so small and so soft, scrabbling in clumsy motions across his stitched-up skin. And in this fantasy, does she try to fight him off, or does she accept him? Ohhhh, he thinks, closing his eyes. Maybe both, the former leading naturally into the latter. She loves him, doesn't she? She'd forgive him, wouldn't she?

The shiver is in more than just his hands now. It works its way up from the base of his spine, electricity and fire together, skipping from nerve to nerve. It's in his blood, too, that feeling, all that lust-charged heat. That devastating galvanic fire hollows him out. It invades him, pouring through his veins, inflating his lungs, poison that replaces the marrow deep down in his bones. It's overtaking anything and everything he's ever been and could ever hope to be.

But he's always been this fire, hasn't he? Always this heat, always this hungry, voracious inferno. And it's only getting worse. Every day, every night, it gets worse, and worse, and worse. He's not really surprised. It's been in him since the day he was born, this flint and tinder soul.

When Dabi had been a child, it had been his father laying down the kindling for his son's nascent flame. His father with his own flint and tinder soul, and his cupped hands meant to nurture Dabi's flames, and his own hot breath feeding that fire. But somewhere between Dabi's birth and when he'd died, that tiny flame inside of him had become something no one could have hoped to control. Not Dabi. Certainly not his father.

But more than anyone or anything, it's Suzume feeding it now, he thinks. Now that fire inside of him wants her the most, eager to glut itself on his sweet little sister, and her kerosene tears, and her tender, tinder-body.

Because somehow Suzume has become the ideal accelerant. It's like she was made for it, crafted by some scientist in a lab with Dabi's particular brand of hellfire havoc in mind. Perpetual energy. Endless. Infinite.

And maybe that's why he thinks of his father and his family less often than he used to. They aren't gone completely, of course. He's sure they won't ever really be truly gone. Like ghosts they haunt the gutted crater of cold-ink shadows in the center of his chest, just –

Not every day, like before. Before her.

Because it's as if his sister has wormed her way inside him and built up and over that vast and gaping nothing, board by board, brick by brick, constructing for herself the theater that she and Dabi both play out their sick game of house in. He finds he's taken to his performance with much more interest than he ever could have imagined. He, as her big brother – and one day, he thinks, one day very soon, both that and more. So much more.

Something he very much wants already.

As for Suzume, she plays the part of his little sister with eager zealotry. It doesn't even matter how much he unsettles her when he's at his worst; nothing really seems to dissuade her. Whether satisfied or terrified, it's abundantly clear she yearns for the second act of their deviant play regardless; the fact that she's already practicing the role of his doting wife is proof enough of that.

And Dabi likes that. He likes it a lot. And so, selfishly, he lets her build up that place inside of him, where her affection becomes the beautifully ornate walls, her adoration the rich and heavy curtains. There, in that dark place, her optimism hangs stars for theater lights, and her hopes for their shared future polish the well-worn stage to a mirror-shine gleam. Day by day, piece by piece, she's building it up, up and over that cold, black pit with warm colors and warmer intentions.

He's sure she's aware of what she builds over even if she doesn't fully understand it. He's sure she knows all about the things lurking in the basement of her radiant theater, the awful things that wait with their worse intentions, peering up at her with their sharp eyes and sharper teeth from between the thin spaces in the floorboards. And Dabi knows that one day, something will shift. Something tectonic, some catastrophic disaster – and then that hole will open wide and swallow her and everything she's worked so hard to build right up.

He wonders if she worries about that, too.

He thinks she does. She should. He's sure he sees it in her face sometimes, most often when she's not even looking at him. It surfaces there, in tiny, fractionary moments, even when she's at her happiest; a sudden pinched look about her brows, her lips gone pursed and tight, her gaze faraway and fixed to some troubling point in her thoughts that Dabi isn't privy to. Is it him? Is it what lurks inside of him? And who else could it really be? What else? He's purposefully kept her world as small as possible for his own ends. He's let her build that theater in his chest where his heart used to be, right behind the locked-tight cage of his ribs because he isn't willing to share her with anything or anyone else. She doesn't know shit about the world beyond what she knew before him, and those experiences, they're long over, long buried. He's made sure of it. He'd been carrying the shovel.

So what else could it be, if not him?

It's selfish, he knows. To damn her this way. To keep her trapped here, with him, forever. But he doesn't care. He doesn't care about the inevitability of a collapse, or what will happen when – when, and not if – it does. Dabi wants what he has now, wants more, even, and he's going to keep it, the future and any longing she has for the larger world be damned.

He will be the only thing she loves, no matter what happens.

He'll make damn sure of it. No friends. No future. Nothing.

And god. Fuck. It's perfect. That thought is perfect, but he can't let himself think about that right now. He can't. He's almost moaning into his shirt, the noise held back by the snarled grip of his teeth, by his own roiling disgust with himself. He's so fucking hard, so hard it actually hurts. Dabi's almost nauseous with it. It's made even worse by the fact that he'd neglected to take off his pants when he'd half-stumbled into the bathroom to turn on the shower, desperate for relief he knew the shower wouldn't be able to give him. There's not enough water in the world to put out his fire.

Not the fire she feeds.

He should get in, he tells himself. He should try, anyway. Stand under the shower head like he does so often, grimacing as the water soaks into his unruly hair and drips down his gnarled cheeks. He should turn the faucet until the water's cold, frigid, freezing, and jerk off for the second time today – or is it the third? – imagining her like he always does these days. Her thin wrists, brittle and helpless in his hands. The arc of her back. The delicate and too-pretty contours of her face, and –

Another sound scrabbles its way up his throat, up from some place in his gut, this one half a moan, half a hiss. His tongue pushes it against his grit teeth like he wants to push her head into a pillow. It leaks out even through the seal of his lips where he smothers it until it's dead in the fabric of his shirt. He's never been one to make noise when he jerks off, and certainly not when he's just fucking sitting here, doing nothing, not even touching himself, only thinking, thinking, thinking –

About his perfect and perfectly unaware little sister.

And god, he hates that. Dabi hates what he is now, what he's become, what Suzume has turned him into. And he wants to hate her for that, too. Hate her for what she's done to him. Hate how she's come into his life and somehow unraveled him, figurative stitch by stitch, metaphorical staple by staple, crawling up and under his patchwork skin to nest there, to roost, to grow, thrive, and flourish. She's there in his thoughts when he wakes up in the morning. There, too, when he goes to lay down, when he tries and fails to sleep.

And when he does succeed? More often than not, she's there in his dreams.

Of course he can't really hate her, even if he wants to. But the desire is there sometimes, and especially now, hot and smoldering, hot like everything about him is hot, hot like she makes him feel, and somehow, some-fucking-how, that only adds to his delirious need for her. There's just something so intoxicating about that particular combination. Him, feeling so sweet on her, and hating himself for feeling that way. It's a fuel that could feed a fire for several eternities, he thinks. A fuel that could take ships across endless galaxies, all perpetual spark, all forever combustion, and –

Fuck. Fuck!

No, no, no, he thinks furiously, grinding his teeth in frustration. His knuckles have gone white from the violence of his grip on his shirt. No, he won't jerk off. He doesn't even want to. What's the goddamn point, anyway? All it is is some temporary reprieve, and barely even that anymore. What relief he gets, it's only physical. It does nothing for the way he feels, nothing to stop his racing thoughts, how hollow he is on the inside. The void howls for more, more, and more, for anything

more real than his fist wrapped around his desperate, throbbing cock.

It has to be her.

And that voice in his head, it's getting so much harder to resist these days. Why can't it be her hand? Her mouth? Her –

Dabi lets the shirt slip from his fingers. The floor, like the rest of the bathroom, is wet, and he stares down at it bunched up at his feet. Growing heavy and saturated with water, the edges of the fabric are fast going dark, the white made grey like angry storm clouds.

His stomach churns, looking at it. He feels a little sick.

He turns off the shower.

Heavy with that always-hollow feeling in his gut, Dabi stands. He's not really thinking anymore. When he opens the door out into the hallway, steam billows out and around him only to dissipate rapidly in the much cooler air.

"Suzu."

He thinks he means it like a question. Suzu? That kind of name-question combo that means where are you? or maybe what are you doing? But it doesn't come out that way. It comes out like a statement. Like a demand.

Come here.

Come see me.

Right now.

Now. Now. Now.

The apartment is small, almost cramped, and the living room is only two steps down the hallway to the right. She should be able to hear him from here. Dabi's had numerous conversations with her that prove that, him in the bathroom, her as far as the kitchen and sometimes even with the door shut between them. It's never been a problem before.

But this time, she doesn't answer.

Standing in that doorway, condensation still working in slow, lazy rills down the backs of his arms, the back of his neck, Dabi waits. Listens.

Tries so hard to dial himself back.

"Suzu," he says again, this time in a whisper.

Still, nothing.

As he makes his way into the living room, his footsteps are as automatic as they are silent. Everything is as he left it. The lights are low, and the room is quiet, and Suzume – from what he can gather by the lump beneath the blanket, anyway – is still on the couch.

"Hey."

Silence.

But as he stands there, still, unmoving, holding his breath on the very real chance that even that might set him off, he begins to pick up on the slow and even cadence of her own breathing. He thinks he does, anyway. Maybe he's only imagining it, filling in sound where he can visibly see the subtle rise and fall of the blanket.

Regardless, she's clearly asleep. Unguarded. Vulnerable.

And an awful, awful thought occurs to him:

Suzume can't be afraid if she isn't awake. Can't really be unready.

Dabi can't accidentally break her if she can't remember it.

Touching his palms to his cheeks, he presses his fingers into his squeezed-shut eyes and finally lets himself take in a single breath through his mouth. It's not as steadying as he wants it to be.

It's not steadying at all.

Maybe he should have jacked off, he thinks. Being in this room with her, even when he can't even see her, it's almost – no, it's beyond too much. There's no way he can hear her breathe, and that's something he realizes with a chilling sort of clarity. Not from beneath the blanket. Not from across the room. But he imagines he does. And even imagined, it sounds so fucking real. Dabi knows what it sounds like when she does, and his brain can replicate it perfectly from memory… just like he can replicate anything and everything about her from memory.

The shape her smile takes, when he closes his eyes. The cadence of her voice, in normal conversation, or when he's got her flustered, or when she reads to him from one of her books, lifting and lowering her tone to match her interpretation of whatever character might be speaking.

He always makes fun of her for that. "Such a tryhard," he'll say with a laugh, like he thinks she's being ridiculous, too over-the-top. And there she is in perfect memory, her cheeks puffing out in annoyance, her all-too-familiar hot-cheeked embarrassment.

(Not that it ever stops her – and Dabi is glad it doesn't. He likes when she does it. Much like any and everything about her, he thinks it's fucking cute.)

No. Stop.

He shakes his head. Takes another breath, this time through his nose – and, fuck, that's a mistake, because there, there, there's the scent of her again. And is that real, or another construction of his own fast unspooling mind trying to sate him –

Or push him past the breaking point?

God, he thinks, failing to suppress a shudder. She's in him so fucking deep.

Still reeling – because he's been reeling this whole time – Dabi takes off back down the hallway. In lieu of the bathroom, though, he finds himself boiling into the bedroom, feeling – what? He's shaking his head again, frantic, all claws and teeth, scratching and gnashing at the prison walls of his own head. Maybe he should put on a shirt, go outside, go for a walk. Maybe the air outside will help sober him up. Maybe, maybe, maybe –

Because it's not good to be here, either. More than any other place in the house, the bedroom really is Suzume incarnate. Gauzy pink curtains drift across the windows like friendly rose-colored spectres, and any and all flat surfaces are adorned with cutesy knick knacks and plush creatures of every variety. There are animals, imaginary and fantastical creatures, and even some inanimate objects. Sitting askew atop a jewelry box, an overstuffed and inexplicably fuzzy marshmallow regards him with sad black marble eyes. Its mouth is only a simple bit of thread, lending it a perpetually gloomy expression.

Suzume had brought it home a few weeks ago, Dabi remembers, admitting to him that she'd, "Had to buy her," ostensibly because, "she looked so lonely on the shelf all by herself."

"That's just her face," he'd told her, inwardly annoyed that he'd found himself adopting the pronouns she'd chosen for the fucking marshmallow toy without realizing. Not that his face or voice had betrayed even a trace of that annoyance. "They made its face that way with exactly that intention. Way to get played by capitalism, Suzu."

"You just don't have any… any whimsy," she'd declared after a thoughtful pause, heaving an over-exaggerated sigh. Her pout had mimicked the marshmallow's – at least until she'd abandoned the act in lieu of nuzzling the soft toy against his face, all smiles again. "It's okay, though. She likes you anyway."

Dabi had snorted, angling his head away. "Yeah? It looks pretty miserable about the whole situation to me."

"You mean she," she'd corrected cheerily, chasing after him with the toy to continue the nuzzling. The little smirk on her face had been annoyingly adorable. "And I thought you said it was just her face?" Meeting and holding his gaze in an obvious dare, her smile had only grown. "Now who's getting played by capitalism?"

"Y'know, pretending to be clever doesn't work out all that hot when you openly recycle my shit – poorly, I might add – a half-second later."

Drawing the toy back, she'd turned it to face herself instead, hands hooked under its dangling, noodle-like appendages as if she were holding up a malformed toddler. "Y'know, I don't think her face is sad by design. I think she really was sad at the store – and now she's super sad. And I can't say I blame her! You're a rotten roommate."

"Yeah? 'Roommate,' is it?"

Suzume had tried so hard to look serious when peeking at him from over the top of her ridiculously fat marshmallow. But even without seeing her mouth, Dabi had known she was still smiling. The slight crinkle of her eyes had given it away. "Roommate is what gets you?" She'd asked, tone airy with mimed innocence. "Not rotten?"

He'd also been very aware that she was trying, very much on purpose, to push his buttons.

So he'd given her what she wanted. Languishing back into the couch, he'd stared pointedly up at her, a sly grin of his own crawling across his face. "Rotten I'll cop to," he'd said, "but I don't think 'roommate' is a very respectful way to refer to your older brother. Your much cooler and significantly bigger-than-you older brother. Do you?"

Even with his eyes fixed on her face, he'd seen her body weight shift, the heel of one slippered foot sliding backwards along the floor, one centimeter, then two. "I think," she'd said, schooling her expression into something considerably more impassive as she'd cradled her plush toy against her chest, "that you're being too much of a butthead to get any big brother respect for the day. Or the week. And the month, like, the whole rest of the month. Maybe we can meet up about it next month to review?"

For all the effort she was putting into her face, the smile had started leaking into her voice by that point, curling at the edges of her words. Despite that, he remembers thinking that she'd been getting considerably better about keeping a halfway decent poker face. It might've even fooled someone else.

It just didn't fool him.

"Oh, so that's how you think it is." He'd nodded, sucking his teeth in mock-consideration. "You think it's something I gotta earn. I play nice, I get your respect. That right?"

To her credit, her expression hadn't wavered. But there was no missing the way her breathing was obviously picking up, or the way her heel slid back another almost centimeter.

And of course the fact that she'd only nodded rather than voice some secondary smart-assed comment was certainly another tell. She had wanted to push her luck, but only so much.

Just enough to get him riled up.

(Not enough to actually get mad.)

Dabi had cracked his knuckles, then. That, he'd noticed, with his own growing sense of satisfaction, had finally fractured the mostly-stoic veneer of her expression. Flickering through the cracks, her smile had begun to show, nervous and expectant.

Eager, even.

Oh, he'd thought then, with fondness, with that now familiar stab of lust lancing through his gut. Oh, his sweet little sister – his decidedly masochistic little sister – clutching her stupid toy. He'd wondered how hard her heart hammered behind it. He'd wanted to hold his hand there, wanted to feel it, even if it set his jaw to aching and his own pulse on fire. "You're such an optimist, Suzu. But you should be more realistic. I think society, when it's trying to be nice, calls a lot of really dumb people optimists. I guess that's what they mean when they say ignorance is bliss, yeah?" Laying his phone down on the couch, he'd swept up to his full height, closing his eyes and rolling his head back in an easy, apathetic stretch.

She hadn't responded to that either. When he'd finally opened his eyes again, he'd found she'd skittered halfway across the room, her round-eyed gaze fixed on him. Tension had had every single muscle in all of her limbs wound as tight as springs. A breath, he had known, would set her off.

"Let's have that meeting now, actually. My schedule's free, and yours is about to be." He'd shown her his teeth, then. "And Suzu? Keep the screaming to a minimum when I catch you, yeah? This is an apartment."

She hadn't minded the warning. After a very short chase, he'd caught her here, in their bedroom, where he'd pinned her against the bed, one hot palm pressed over her shrieking, laughing mouth.

And at the time it hadn't seemed like she was actually afraid. Her body language hadn't been frantic even as she'd pantomimed her way through the act of fighting him off – or, more accurately, failing to fight him off. She'd taken it as a joke, a bit of jocular play between a domineering but loving older brother and his line-toeing little sister. Typical. Harmless.

But of course for him it hadn't been a joke. Not that he'd wanted to hurt her, or even really frighten her. Not really.

(Not that much, anyway.)

But he had wanted to hold her down. He had wanted her to struggle. He had wanted to hear the noises she'd made, her giggles hiccuped and whimpery as she'd writhed beneath him, weakly protesting the way he'd pinned her wrists above her head in one hand and held her hips still with his knees.

On the floor, her marshmallow friend had stared sadly up at them from where she'd dropped it in her feigned attempt at escape. He remembers seeing it there, a half-second after he'd first caught her in his long arms – and he remembers hating the way it had looked at him as he'd wrestled her forward towards the bed, her body a spill of playfully thrashing limbs all across the duvet.

In that moment, it had felt as if that stupid fucking toy could see him for what he was, what he was really doing. Sure, Suzume goaded him on, and often on purpose. And sure, she even hated the retaliation sometimes. But more often than not Dabi knew it thrilled her, much like it clearly had in that moment. It got her excited, all pink-sweet in the face, laughing even as she cried for him to stop – to stop holding her down, and tickling her, and pinching her. To stop nipping along her jaw with teeth that only just barely held his starving tongue at bay.

But in that quick exchange of glances – between what? Himself and a stupid plush toy? He'd read judgment there in those dark, glassy eyes. It was as if it was saying, "I know what you really want. I know what you're doing."

And then, of course, he'd gotten distracted. It was hard not to. It had taken some effort to hold her down, even when she wasn't really trying to fight him off, and he'd become far too taken with the way her small body had felt thrashing against his to spare any more thoughts for absurdities like self-aware toys from the fucking one hundred yen store.

So what if he'd proved the idiot thing right? So what if he was every bit the horror it clearly took him for?

At some point between then and now, she must have rescued the marshmallow from its sad exile on the floor. At some point earlier in the day, she must have decided to leave it on open display. Now, arranged atop her jewelry box on her bedside table, it looks at him in much the same way as it had then, mouth a simple, sour frown, eyes made sullen and judgmental by a bit of white fluff spilling over them. In an act of childish fancy, Suzume had loosely tied its string limbs over its round, fat body in some imitation of crossed-armed frustration.

It's just been a few weeks. Just a few weeks, since then.

"Just a few weeks, and you're even worse now," he swears he hears it say.

"Fuck you." It's crazy, he thinks, that he's standing here, talking to this dumbass stuffed trinket like he actually hears it, like it's actually talking. He knows it's not. Still, he wants to pick it up and burn it to cinders and ash in his hands.

But she'd notice. For all the dozens of plush toys she collects, it's like Suzume has an encyclopedic knowledge of all of them, so much so that he's certain a, "Whoops, Suzu. Accident," won't possibly placate her when she finds the thing missing. And he can't do that to her. Not now – not today, anyway. Even if he hadn't frightened her as much as he had earlier, she's still been so sick, so down-in-the-dumps mopey. He hasn't seen her like that since he'd been skipping out on time with her in favor of long days doing work for Giran. Despite knowing the cause isn't anything as dramatic, Dabi certainly hasn't missed this behavior.

Not that it worries him.

(Not that much, anyway.)

Still, he tells himself, almost shaking his head. He can't destroy it.

So he tears his gaze away from the thing and fixes it on the bed instead.

It's October now, and getting colder. Even though she has him, and even though she often complains about his suffocating heat, she always brings out the heavy bedding early. The strawberry-patterned duvet cocoons a comforter as thick and plush as spring clouds. Dabi imagines it as Suzume trying to hoard the cheerier weather from bygone March or April for herself, stitched-up safe in colorful cotton thread. As if to sell the effect, the sheets hidden beneath match the duvet: more strawberries, two seasons too late.

The bed is made. Everything is tucked away neatly, just like she always keeps it. Even sick, she'll drag herself out of bed to make it, though this morning he'd bullied her out of the impulse and taken care of it himself while she'd gone off to sulk with her stomach ache on the couch. Now he finds himself peeling back those layers of false spring as much to have something to do with his hands as anything.

No, he realizes, trying to reframe his thoughts into something positive. That isn't it. He's turning down the bed for her. She can't sleep on the couch. It isn't as comfortable –

(And, most importantly, there's not enough room for him to sleep there with her.)

But with the bedding all turned back, Dabi finds himself standing there, staring down at the white, white sheets and their pattern of cartoonishly round strawberries, now red, now pink.

It just smells so much like her, he thinks. And he's not imagining it this time, not recreating it from memory. It smells like her. Her soap, her shampoo, her detergent, and more than that, it's her. The smell of her skin, her hair, even and especially the sweet scent of her sweat when she gets too hot, smothered beneath all those blankets and her furnace of an older brother –

Dabi tries to tell himself his hands are moving on their own when they take hold of his belt, undoing the buckle with fingers that are notably less dexterous than they normally are. But even before he's unzipped his dark trousers, and certainly long before he's stepping out of both them and his trunks, he knows exactly what he's doing – and especially so as he slides into their shared bed.

Set in the corner of the room, the bed is only easily accessible from one side. Since moving in, Dabi had claimed the outer edge of the bed for himself, leaving Suzume only one option: sleep sandwiched between him and the wall.

"But I'll have to climb over you when I use the bathroom," she'd protested that first night when they'd been semi-squabbling over spots. Her grandmother's house had never raised such a quandary. The futon they'd shared had always been set up in the middle of the room, meaning that both sides were essentially equal in both desirability and accessibility.

The same had not been the case with this new bed.

"So? You want me crawling all over you when I gotta piss?"

"Well, no, but – "

"'Sides, it ain't like I sleep much. Not like you'll be waking me up from anything."

" – but shouldn't that mean you get the spot where it happens less – "

"'Sides, don't you want me watching the door? Imagine what could be on the other side of it."

She'd given up after that. Whether Suzume had actually surrendered because of the potential threat of maybe-monsters and would-be-criminals lurking in the hallway, because she didn't actually mind – or, and most likely, because he'd strong-armed her, like always – Dabi wasn't really sure. He hadn't cared either way.

All he'd actually cared about was boxing her in. She couldn't easily wiggle away from him if she had nowhere to wiggle away to – even if she did get too hot.

But it isn't his own spot he's interested in now. Now, as he climbs into bed completely naked, he moves past his own hard-won reward and slides through those cool, neat sheets and into hers.

It's stupid, he knows. Fucking stupid. And even knowing that, here he is still, trying to tell himself he doesn't know what he's doing. Maybe if he could pretend this is all on instinct – convince himself that it's only his id driving him forward and past the line he'd tried drawing for himself months ago – he could escape even some of the blame.

The blame that Dabi has the clarity of mind to know, even as he lies, is all his own to bear.

But that doesn't stop him from trying. He tries to pretend that he doesn't know why he's burying his face in her pillow like he had with his shirt only minutes earlier. Before, there'd only been traces of her there, buried beneath the heaviness of his own scent and a mask of detergent. Here, though, there's just so much more of her. Here her scent is so rich, so deliciously unadulterated. After only two slow, deep breaths, his chest is heaving for more, erratic and almost stuttering.

"Fuck." The word is barely audible as he breathes it out, choked off at the end by another sharp intake of air.

He can't remember ever being so worked up in his entire awful life.

It's funny, he thinks. He's never felt particularly bad about what he does in the shower. Hidden away inside that white, glossy-walled room, fucking his hand hasn't ever felt like anything more than a thought crime confessed to some nebulously Western notion of a god he doesn't even believe in. It's not like god, whoever he is, can judge him – and even if he could, why should Dabi care? Why should anyone care?

(Would he even be capable of caring, anymore?)

No matter how twisted, how dark or vile, those private horrors in his mind hurt no one. If he were meant to be judged for anything, surely the veritable laundry list of crimes – theft, torture, murder, and especially that bit of attempted fratricide Dabi still plans to make good on one day – would come long before the things he puts Suzume through in the sordid secrecy of his own thoughts.

And so he has always felt unburdened there, free to imagine his beloved little sister in whatever vile ways he pleases. The guilt he feels, if any, is ephemeral. The water gathers it up and washes it away as neatly as his cum when he spills it, part and parcel together, and all of it filth swept off into some similarly filthy sewer.

Which must be an improvement. As rancid as the sewer is, Dabi imagines it must be prime real estate compared to what goes on in his mind.

But this is different. Here, in bed, the way he is now – this is his fantasy seeping into reality. Dabi has imagined himself doing exactly this more than a few times: laying in bed, his face buried in her pillow, his hips a slow, agonizing grind against the bed. And he's doing that now, isn't he? Now, half-buried beneath the heavy winter bedding – the bedding he can easily imagine her pondering over in some banal store, debating feel, warmth, and cuteness as if how adorable it is is as valid a metric as the first two – there's no stopping the roll of his hips or the way he works his cock against the mattress. Suzume had made a good choice, he thinks, swallowing back the desire to moan. Caught as his cock is, throbbing between his thigh and those silk-smooth sheets, the sensation has the room spinning when he spares a moment to open his eyes and look up.

And it isn't because the bed feels good. Not that it doesn't feel good, because fuck. It does. Every nerve in his body feels like a fresh-struck match, and for once not in a way that's terrible or painful even if it is every bit out of his control. But he could do a better job with his hand, he thinks. Dabi knows himself well. Knows it would be better, physically, than this clumsy, unfocused attention. He's certain of that.

And yet it feels better than anything he's ever had. Better than any living, breathing girl that isn't his sister. Better than any time spent with his hand before, than the hours spent lurking in the sweltering bathroom, alone with the shame he's never let himself feel and the pitiful seconds of relief he's become addicted to as of late.

It feels better than all of that because he's here.

In her spot.

Because this is her side of the bed, and her pillow held between his teeth as he takes her scent into his nose, his mouth, his lungs. He could breathe it in forever, and it would still be here, sugar-bright on the air and hanging all around him like a perfume he wishes he could bottle, soft like a veil he wishes he could smother himself in. And god, every greedy breath in has his cock twitching, desperate and aching to spill all over these too-sweet pink and white strawberry sheets.

But Dabi is such a glutton. Even this isn't enough. He wants more, more, always more. He's always playing this game with himself, this stupid fucking game where he thinks: just a taste. Just a little bit. Think about her while in the shower, and all the false and stolen moments he orchestrates between them that mean so much more than she knows, than she could even hope to understand. Holding her down beneath him. Pushing his fingers into her mouth. Kissing her, on her cheeks, the corners of her mouth, the hollow of her throat. Think about that, those pretty bruises, half-choking his dick in his hand while he does.

And every time he'll tell himself: just a little bit more. Just a tiny bit. A millimeter now. A centimeter the next. God, just a little bit extra, just this once. This taste will be enough, the last, and then it'll be fine. Then he'll be good. Then he'll be done.

But every time, like clockwork, it escalates. What worked before doesn't work again, and he finds himself needing even more: another couple of seconds, another couple of centimeters, more kisses, more bruises, more tears, more shame.

It's the same now. Even here, laying in her spot, in her bed, desecrating it, violating it, his need creeps out like a spider along the web he's spent years building, this web of more and more that just keeps spreading like a plague. His thoughts wander with it, long-legged and predatory.

Dabi imagines her here, with him. Not even now, but after. Just a taste, right? No, after, only after, after he's had his fun, indulged the sick perversions he's not even all that good at hiding anymore and profaned this sacred, holy space. And god, really, how easy would it be? Suzume is so goddamn naive. So unaware. She's not even fucking awake. How easy to step into the role of the concerned older brother, the noble prince, hell, even both characters at once, and him carrying her, cradled like the unspeakably precious thing she is, held so carefully in his arms – his sister, his lovely, sleep-drunk princess – only to come and lay her down in the filth he's left in her bed.

The filth and sin he spills for her. For her.

It's so wrong. It's so fucking wrong, and he knows it, and there's a feeling Dabi hasn't felt in ages gone as heavy and toxic as melted lead in his stomach. It's a wonder he doesn't poison himself when he breathes out, that he doesn't poison anything and everything around him. Dabi feels like a biological weapon, all that miasma boiling up inside of him and threatening to suffuse the room, emptying it out of all that sweetness that is hers and hers alone.

God knows he has never been sweet a day in his life.

But that's how it is, isn't it? Who he is. Someone who breathes in something pure, something bright, something so delectably sweet, taking it in in great greedy gulps as if he could have it all for himself. And he knows he has to. He must have it all for himself. He fucking has to.

And of course, when he breathes it out –

What else could it be but ruined? Sweetness curdled to noxious smoke and fetid gas.

It's sick, Dabi realizes. That feeling in his gut. He feels sick. He is sick. He's been sick for a long time, maybe since he was a kid. Maybe since he was born.

It's his father's fault. His father's fault, or most of it, he's sure of it. Dabi has too much of his father in him, too much of his inhuman drive and his desire to overcome, to conquer and claim what's rightfully his. His siblings hadn't come out that way. They'd had more of his mother in them, much more passive, almost timid. His father had never seen them as strong enough to do anything. To be worth anything – at least until Shouto.

And even then, Dabi thought, even if he'd never gotten to know his youngest brother very well – and even if his father hadn't been able to see it himself, far too blinded by precious potential – there had been far too much of his mother in Shouto, too.

His mother had surely seen it, though. He's sure his mother would have described all his siblings as kind. Sweet. Soft. Words that, in her own flawed mind, were good things to be.

Things his father had clearly disagreed on.

And because Dabi had wanted so badly to be what his father had wanted, he'd made sure he was never any of those things.

So is he really surprised? Is he? Does realizing he feels sick about what he's doing stop him? No. If anything, his hips have picked up speed, and not because of instinct. No, he's not trying to lie to himself anymore. He's doing this because he wants to. This is a choice, one he has thought about before, over and over, one he's been wanting to make. Now, afforded the opportunity, he's making that choice. Taking it. So what if it makes him feel sick? Feeling sick doesn't make him not want it.

(It only makes him want it more.)

By now he can feel that his shaft and the sheets beneath him have both grown damp and slick with precum. That's no surprise, either. He's been wanting this so much, and for so long. It's been a long time coming – and god, god, he wants to cum so fucking badly.

For her. Because of her. It's her fault. It is. God, so much, so fucking much, all of it her damn fucking fault. And how dare she. How dare she! That she should stumble into his life, and make him actually fucking like her, want to be around her, to need her, miss her, and after only hours apart –

But god, fuck, even worse than all of that, to love her in whatever way his graveyard of a heart is capable of loving –

(Voracious, uncompromising, and destructive – )

And fuck, Dabi just needs her, so fucking badly.

But not so fast. Not so fast…

Because why should it be over this quickly if she's sound asleep in the living room? Why the need to rush?

Unlike before, the way he throws his arm across the bed to tug open the side table drawer is actual instinct. Not a lie this time. His hand rattles blindly through the contents, feeling for the things he wants by touch alone –

Because really, he can't possibly hope to separate himself from the pillow just yet.

He finds the surgical staple remover quickly. It's one of two he keeps, both of them well past their intended one-time sterile use. This one is always used for full-body staple changes. The event is always something of a ritual, Dabi sitting on a towel spread over the floor with Suzume fretting over him, asking him every time if he's okay, if it hurts, if he wants anything. She always wants to help. He makes a big deal out of acting like he doesn't want or need anything from her, but internally he loves that she's like that. God knows she loves doing anything and everything for her big brother. It's a strange and unique kind of intimacy, feeling her hair dust his arms as she bends over him, plucking out the staples along his back where he can't easily reach. The first few times she'd been squeamish about it, and especially so about placing the new ones. Now, even if she still fusses, she handles it like a champ, every bit the seasoned little nurse, her hands firm and gentle and without even a touch of hesitation.

The other stapler he keeps in the bathroom. That one is a much more private affair – like this one is about to be.

With that in hand, it's all he really needs. Still, Dabi's fingers probe deeper into the drawer, a touch more purposeful as his muddied thoughts start to sharpen and clear with a newly surfaced – and especially reprehensible – desire.

This new thing – or rather, this old and forgotten thing – takes a little longer to find. It would be faster if he got up to look, he knows this, but Dabi doesn't want to, too distracted with keeping up that awful movement of his hips, with humping the sheets. Thankfully, after passing over enough pens and pencils and misplaced charging cables, he discovers what he wants: a cheap pair of earbuds he'd gotten back in Chichibu and had brought along for the move only on a whim. They'd seen heavy use in that old house – at least in the beginning. Back then, porn had still had its appeal, proving an occasional diversion from the boredom of waiting for Suzume to come home from school.

He hasn't used them in ages though.

(Another thing Suzume has inadvertently ruined for him.)

And yet even with these prizes in hand and all their promises of greater debaucheries, it still almost takes an act of god to get Dabi to wrench his face from her pillow in some twisting attempt to find a position where he can actually put them to use. Eventually he settles down with his back against the bed, his cock sorely missing the steady but clumsy stimulation of being humped into the mattress.

That makes him feel sick, too. The need in him is so intense he feels worse now, painful desire layered over a gut-souring sense of shame. That, at least – the shame – seems to be getting quieter and quieter as the minutes tick by. It's easier to accept it, he knows. Easier to revel in it.

So he does.

Letting the ear buds rest momentarily on his chest, Dabi uses the staple remover to pull out those few unfortunately placed staples from his right palm. It bleeds, as expected, but only a little. Beading up from the holes of his healthier skin, it makes him think of tiny flowers, bright and red and as sick as he is. Red like strawberries, set against white, clean sheets. Suzume would fuss if she were here. She'd touch him with her slender fingers, her golden-glow palms, stopping the bleeding in an instant. After years and years of putting him back together, such minor injuries are nothing for her. He can't imagine she'd even flinch, anymore.

Dabi can barely spare a moment to swipe it clean with a sweep of his tongue.

With that taste of iron and salt in his mouth and his staples dumped carelessly into the still open drawer of the side table, Dabi returns his attention to his earbuds. These he handles like he imagines a heroin addict might handle their needles: with hands nearly shaking in anticipation and a twisted sort of reverence.

It's the devil's own luck that they still have a charge. Luckier still that they connect without any fuss to his phone. He's so hard still, so unsatisfied, fiending for relief, and every extra second of trying to achieve that is the worst torture he could ever imagine.

He's done, he finds himself thinking, laying there rock-fucking-hard as he fits the earbuds into his ears. He's really done lying to himself about what he wants and how he feels this time. And what's the point anyway, this feigned innocence, the attempts to blame on his id what is absolutely the fault of each and every part of him, conscious and subconscious both? It's like he's always telling Suzume: sometimes things that make you feel bad make you feel really good, too. Sometimes it's just best to give in.

And god, he wants to give in.

And how could he lie, anyway? With his palm bare, and his earbuds in his ears, and his phone in his hand – they may as well be intent, the weapon, and the murder scene – and him, here, with all of it, guilty as charged. An open and shut case, really, as neat and tidy as Suzume likes to keep her life.

Or her bed.

(The bed he's about to ruin.)

It takes less time for him to sift through his phone than it did with the drawer. It not being any one specific thing helps, and being that he never lets anyone but Suzume use his phone – and even that only under strict supervision – it's nothing he's ever bothered to hide. A sweep of a finger, a press, and another, and there it is.

Audio files. Dozens of them. So fucking many of them, each and every one of them like clear little windows into days and memories from weeks ago. Months ago. He's captured so many of them over the last year, not really caring what he records, only knowing that he wants to, that he has to.

And until now, he's never really been sure of why he does it. There's never been any real rhyme or reason to it. Half an hour here, an hour there – only 47 seconds on this one – and all of it together some unknowable and expansive amount of time –

All stolen and hoarded minutes of Suzume's voice.

It's anything. It's everything. Her reading to him, the recording crackling to life in the middle of a sentence, a quarter of a way through a chapter. Her telling him the plot to some movie she's interested in seeing, or at least what she's interpreted the plot to be from a movie poster she happened by on her way home from school. Her recalling something her mother had done when she was younger, stumbling over the words as if tripped up by long-buried emotions and a hazy memory. In this one, she's snappish, chiding him for annoying her. And here, she's blubbering over the climax of some flick he can't hope to remember, asking him in a watery voice to pass her the tissues, snuffling stubbornly at him when he makes fun of her for it.

Cooking plans. Cleaning tips. Something she needs help getting down off a high-up shelf. Trying to convince him to play some co-op game with her.

"Don't you wanna help me with my farm?" Comes her voice in his earbuds. He can hear the smile in it as clearly as the implied please.

And he can see her as if through polished glass in this moment – remembers her standing on her tiptoes, her hands on his forearm. Her face, tilted up towards his, had been as bright as a sunflower.

"Hardly," he hears himself say with a laugh. "Sounds boring as shit."

He remembers he'd relented, anyway.

(Remembers he'd really meant yes.)

On their own and outside the vast quantity of them, they're entirely innocuous. Nothing anyone could read as vulgar. He's never managed to have the foresight to get his phone going when he's pulling one of his sneakier, nastier tricks. There's nothing from when he's wrestled her beneath him. No clips of her begging him to let her alone, or crying out, no whimpering as she tries to wriggle out of his iron-wrought fingers.

Just her talking. Sometimes laughing. Sometimes getting a touch weepy over something benign – something that isn't him, anyway.

And that's it.

And somehow, he thinks, it's worse that way. Somehow more disgusting that he should be here, laying in his little sister's spot, his right hand creeping down towards his insistent cock as it twitches and throbs – all while her voice fills his ears, laughing about some dumb joke he's already told before or babbling on about an even dumber thing that happened at school.

In his ears and in his memory both, he hears himself tell her just how stupid both those things are.

And there in his ears and in his memory, he hears her sigh, a petulant, put-on kind of noise, dialing up the drama. Then she's laughing again, unable to keep up the bit. She so rarely can.

"Nii-chan," she says, in faux-admonishment.

Nii-chan.

He can feel that in his gut. More than that, as he wraps his fingers around it in a loose grip, he can feel it in his cock too. He'd made a mess of the sheets earlier, and his cock is every bit a mess still, drooling, demanding attention, starved for relief, the head and even much of the length sticky with pre. That mess is quick to spread; even a single squeeze has it clinging to his fingers, coating his palm.

More chatter in his ears. He isn't even hearing most of the words anymore. Not really. It's enough to hear her voice, just her voice –

At least until she says it again.

"Nii-chan – "

It doesn't matter what comes before or after. He wants to hear her call him that, and his cock wants it too, and fuck, it's so much better here than in the shower. He barely has to touch himself – hardly allows himself, even, working his curled hand in a gentle grip, slack-fingered and slow in the hopes of drawing this out, of basking in it. The bed is just so soft. It cradles him like her scent does, like his own hand around his dick, twitching with a rotten and treacherous hunger every time her sweet voice calls him by that childish appellation.

She'd called him 'onii-san' at first, and only very briefly – a day or two at most. They'd been strangers then. She had been a polite child, and had only ever used onii-san as a show of respect for an older boy she didn't know. It hadn't meant that she saw him as her brother. Not at first, anyway.

But it hadn't been very long at all before she was calling him 'onii-chan' instead. Unlike his actual siblings, Suzume didn't have a name to fall back on. The intimacy inherent in Touya-nii hadn't been available to her, and she'd been left to operate in the dark. Not that she hadn't wanted to know his name, hadn't begged for it. It had always made him laugh – and flattered him, besides – to see her pout and grumble every time he denied her.

'Onii-chan' had lost the honorary prefix sometime after the third or fourth time he'd refused to give her a name, and thereafter he'd become exclusively 'Nii-chan.' Had Suzume been any other little girl, he might have thought she'd made the change to spite him, that she was pulling some childish fit at once more being denied the intimacy of his name.

Another no-respect-for-you-Nii-chan sort of moment.

But that hadn't been it at all. Suzume just hadn't been that kind of kid. She'd been polite, and more than that, she had been affectionate, effusive, desperate for any kind of closeness with her cool older brother. Nii-chan had been a rebellion of sorts, but not in the cruel way he would have meant it.

No. It was a stolen bit of familiarity. Even if he wouldn't give her his name, she had been determined to lay some fond claim to him regardless. The lack of that deferential prefix hadn't been meant as a power play or an insult. It had only been meant to say: Please let me be close enough to you to call you this.

And he could have refused her that, too. At first, he'd even kind of wanted to. Looking back, he doesn't think he would have ever allowed any of his blood-related siblings the use of that particular nickname past the age of five. That Suzume has held onto it all these years later is surely a testament of what he means to her – and, maybe even more tellingly, what she's come to mean to him that he still lets her. It had been childish when she was eight. It's even more childish now that she's older.

But he can't imagine telling her to stop. Can't bear even entertaining the thought of that loss. They were close. They are close. He had been, and very much still is, her beloved big brother. Nii-chan. It's as much his identity as long-dead Touya used to be. As much an identity as Dabi is now.

She'd never once tried to use the name he'd given her.

No, no. He isn't Dabi to her. He isn't Touya, either – was never Touya, to her. He's her big brother, strictly her big brother, the big brother she's nursed a crush on for years and years. The big brother she's undeniably in love with now – because of that, or in spite of that, he doesn't know.

Probably both.

(It's both for him, too.)

Her big brother, he thinks, drawing in a shaky breath that still smells like her. Her big brother, sprawled out across her side of the bed. Her big brother, his dick in his hand, getting off to the sound of her voice saying, whispering, laughing, calling:

Nii-chan. Nii-chan!

God. Fuck. All those words, and then Nii-chan. All that lull, his hand gliding up and down, slow, slow, and then – electricity and heat, surging through him. Precum bubbling up at the tip of his cock, precum hot and slippery under his finger as he smears it along the swollen head, as he imagines smearing it across her pretty mouth like some obscene lipgloss. But it's not so bad, he tells himself. Right? Not so bad. She's getting older. In years, in how she looks. And today, tonight, oh, she's bleeding. Her fucking period, out of the blue. He's surprised he hasn't put the signs together until now. What's that shit people say? Girls on the cusp of womanhood, blossoming into adults? He's not sure. Some saccharine sort of garbage, some kind of mawkish poetry, he isn't really sure, and he doesn't especially care. He'd call it bullshit if he wasn't excited by it. And fuck, he's excited by it.

Because at the very least it means her body is ready. And isn't ready at least a little better than simply capable?

Which gets him thinking about what he's been trying so hard to avoid thinking about this whole evening. The thing he wants to think about, more than anything, the reason he's here, in their bed, in her spot, trying to curb an orgasm that he's been on the edge of this whole fucking time –

Dabi has always had a fascination with Suzume's mouth. Not that that's ever come as any real kind of surprise. When he'd first waded into the world of pornography, it hadn't taken him very long to pick out favorites from the plethora of disgusting things that had piqued his interest.

Blowjobs had been chief among them. Real messy shit, and most often with the girl on her knees – something he'd found he especially liked. Sometimes the girls struggled to take it. Sometimes they tried to pull back, their cheeks blown up like ridiculous pufferfish, eyes wild with animal terror as they tried to take in air around the cock violating their throat. Sometimes they seemed bewilderingly excited to do it, batting their cum-and-spit matted lashes even as their eyes watered. Sometimes they'd even manage a wobbly smile after gagging, moaning wantonly around it and between those wet glucking sounds they made if they took it wrong or too deep.

He'd liked the noises. Liked the tears. Liked when it was a struggle Liked the contrast, too, when a girl struggled, but seemed to want to do it anyway. Liked it even – and often especially – when it was all a struggle, the whole way through.

(When the girl fought the whole time.)

Like everything, it had always depended on his mood. Sour and bitter? He wanted it mean. Feeling lighter? Seeing some girl happily debase herself, well, that had worked too.

As Suzume had gotten older, his curiosity had naturally turned to her and what she might be for him in their coming future. He'd never really had friends. Never any crushes. The women he'd decide to fuck, when he met them in bars, they weren't even really people to him as much as they were means to a very selfish and specific end. It was, at least for awhile, more fun to cum with someone, on someone, in them, than it was alone.

Another thing Suzume had ruined...

(Or, as he thinks now, made better.)

But so much of the fantasies he'd started to have about his little sister involved her mouth. With her, though, it has always been more than just the thought of her being on her knees for him. More than the thought of his cock smearing pre across her soft lips while he coaxes her to kiss it in his fantasies. More than the thought of her struggling to take him, in her mouth, down her throat.

It's because he loves the look of her so much. It's her face, the way her hair spills into it, the endearingly over-expressive nature of her bright, clear eyes. She's just so pretty; so fucking lovely. And to combine those together, her face, her mouth, her tears, and his cock –

Dabi stifles a groan, fully spreading out his fingers, not even touching himself, no palm, nothing. His cock twitches indignantly, once, twice, and he swallowing back the impulse to finish himself off then and there when Suzume's voice pipes up in his ears, mumbling, "Nii-chan, please," as she glumly begs him to stop making fun of her for messing up in a video game.

Because no. Not this. Not right now. This isn't what he wants to think about. He's always thinking about her mouth. Always, all the time, and now this is different, and tonight is special, and he wants something more, something else –

And he hasn't really thought about this before. Hasn't exactly let himself, on account of that sick feeling, and her not being old enough, not ready, too afraid. And maybe she's still too afraid, and maybe she isn't actually even ready. Not emotionally, anyway.

But her body is.

And god, his is, too.

So that's where his mind goes. Up along that web again, out into the darker, terrible edges of it, searching for morsels he hasn't allowed himself to consider.

She's old enough, now. Body ripened. He's seen it: that hot, red potential against all the white of her panties.

Strawberries on white sheets.

Oh, god. He touches himself with tentative fingers again, teeth grinding against each other. The touch is light, but his cock is throbbing, almost pulsing against his fingertips as his thoughts stretch out for more.

There's even more precum now. His hand is somehow more wet than before, his knuckles glazed with it, and his fingers work over that wet slick with a languid sense of almost-grief. It shouldn't be on his hands. It should be in her. All of it, every single degenerate drop.

Because now he could get her pregnant. He could. He could breed his little sister, if he wanted to.

And he does. He wants to.

And that – oh, that thought. Just that thought.

Nostrils flaring, he takes in a breath, slow, on purpose. Right now his natural inclination is to breathe quickly, frantically, sucking in air like a man drowning as he feels his head get lighter and lighter. Gingerly he touches his fingers to his cock again, more a brush of skin on skin than anything real, and fuck, he's imagining pushing Suzume down in this exact spot, here, in her bed. What sort of face would she make when he grips her by her slender, trembling hips and lines the head of his drooling cock up with her little cunt, that tender little cunt, made just for him, just for him, like everything else about her is made just for him?

Behind his closed eyes, he imagines it. Imagines her. Her shaking her head. Her biting her lip. Her with tears in her eyes, with tears matting her lashes like he imagines his cum will too, one day. Please, he can hear her saying. Please, I'm not ready.

But she is ready. Her body is. And what does it matter if the rest of her isn't? He knows he could coax her into it. Bully her into it. Get her to grin and bear it, if he asks, if he tells her it's what he needs. That's what little sisters are meant to do, right? To do what their big brothers need? And he does need it. Fuck, he needs it so bad. She'd understand. She would. She'd be willing to take him, even if she was scared, even if it hurt, even if –

"Nii-chan." Again, in his head. His little sister. His favorite. The only thing he can get off to anymore. The only thing left in the smoldering ruins of his heart.

Even barely touching himself like he is, Dabi isn't going to last much longer. His eyes have been closed for most of this, but now he opens them, opens them wide even as his hand wraps firm and tight around his shaft just beneath the swollen red head of his weeping cock.

And he sees –

The bedding, kicked back. More of that red on white, promsing everything he knows he shouldn't want: fertility a dirty promise in his little sister, her womb primed and ready to take his cum. And how his cum could change her, now – change her, take her, claim her –

And then his eyes sweep away from that. They land first on the empty door he hadn't even bothered to shut and then the emptier, darker hallway down which his sister sleeps, oblivious and peaceful even after everything he's put her through tonight and everything he's doing now –

And then, beside him.

Her toy. It sits atop her jewelry box, watching him, as sad and disappointed as ever.

(He thinks he can see himself reflected in its shining marble gaze.)

It isn't instinct that has Dabi stretching his free hand out towards that stupid thing. No, no. No more lies. It's time for him to own his decisions, his appetites. It's easier, he's sure, in the long run. Less guilt. Less doubt. Less sick, at least in his gut.

Because in every other way he knows it's more sick.

The doll's roughly crossed arms come undone as he tugs it over, its limbs dangling down along its sides as if it has completely given up, choosing surrender over a fight. Now when it stares up at him, Dabi can't find any disappointment or judgement in its black eyes. He sees, as he draws it closer, only a mournful but understanding acceptance.

There's no stopping this, he knows. Not now, not in the future, not anymore.

The toy seems to know this. Seems to resign itself to its fate – and to his sister's eventual fate, too – with that placid, almost heart-breaking melancholy.

It makes it worse. It makes it better. Makes it feel better. God, he's so fucking close, so fucking close.

(What is wrong with him?)

Positioning the toy with his left hand, Dabi spits into the still faintly bleeding palm of his other and takes hold of his cock in earnest. No more gentle touches. No more trying to milk this. How long has it been? That he's been listening? That he's been wanting this?

He doesn't know. He doesn't care. This whole time, and so much time before it too, it feels as if his mind, his faltering sense of control, all of it's been a mess and a melt, falling apart, falling to pieces, ash and ash and so much dust he can't hope to hold together. Every day, there's more and more of it gone, out from between fingers that don't really even try to hold on anymore.

And that original sick feeling in his stomach is gone. Something to let go of, just more ash. There is only that second flavor of sick left, that heat, the unfulfilled and slavering need. His hand moves quickly now, up and down, up and down, his grip tightening, slick with spit and pre, driven on by the sense that if he doesn't cum here, now, right-fucking-now, he's going to get up and stumble into the living room and take what he really wants there whether Suzume is ready or not.

"Nii-chan." Like bells, he thinks. Her voice. Chimes on the wind, high and sweet, only in his ears now, held there forever by cheap, plastic earbuds.

He shudders.

"Again," he says, aloud, into the air. It's a demand his little memory-sister can't hope to obey. And she's talking, and talking, laughing, the audio bleeding together, one file faltering before ending bluntly, then abruptly leading into another, none of it with any editing or rhyme or reason. He'd never named the files. He's not even sure they're in order chronologically.

He holds off by holding his breath, hand still pumping. Holds off, waiting, there on the edge, that razor-wire edge. Everything in him howls like a beast for relief. But it has to be perfect. It has to be just right. It has to be –

And there it is. Finally. Fucking finally. Suzume's voice in his ear. Coming home from school, he thinks. Home from somewhere.

"I'm home," she says, and she sounds tired. Even so, there's a lightness to her voice, bubbling up like carbonated soda water. She's happy to see him. There's some muffled noise, and he thinks he remembers this. Thinks he remembers slipping his phone into the jacket of his pocket where she couldn't see or know what he was doing –

That he'd been recording her.

"Hey," he hears himself greet her, perfectly nonchalant, nothing-bad-here. How she ever believes him is beyond him. The bad is clearly there, waiting for her like it always is. Like he always is. But she does believe him. She almost always does. "Welcome home."

More distorted noise. Footsteps. Fabric moving. He remembers this, too: her shedding her bag, her shoes. Her coming and collapsing against him, crawling into his lap, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

And then, against his ear then, and inside it, now: "I missed you, Nii-chan."

Nii-chan. Oh, oh, oh – his sweet, perfect little sister.

He cums on the downswing, his fingers sliding towards the base of his cock. Midway, right as his climax really hits him, he switches direction, working upward instead in short, jerky motions to milk himself, spilling hot cum all across the stitched-sad mouth of the plush toy. And Dabi watches it happen. Makes himself. The acrylic fur doesn't really absorb any of it, and fuck, there's just so much of it this time, so fucking much of it, so much more than normal as he works it out, and out, and out as if by doing so he might finally buy himself some time away from this terrible fucking hunger. He knows it will come back. It will. But maybe, at least for awhile –

Some of his cum covers the black thread mouth. Some of it covers the black glass eyes. Most of it mats in the white fur, chunks of previously wispy strands clinging wetly together. And as he empties himself out, hand a furious blur, blood and spit and cum, all of it – he realizes that it's not enough. It can't be enough. He knows that already, even as the most intense orgasm he's ever had rips itself through him and leaves him hollow, just as before. No, he thinks. More hollow, somehow. This isn't enough, and it won't ever be enough. It's not what he wants. Not what he needs. It isn't her, it isn't fucking her, she isn't here, and it's not enough, won't ever be enough, not without her. Dabi grits his teeth and lets his whole body shudder with the last of his release, his face a twisted, almost agonized grimace, his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth as he swallows back the disappointment and the delirium both.

And in his ear, there's Suzume still, her voice fluttery like an excitable bird, going on as if nothing is wrong. Something about cooking now, it seems. She's telling him about a recipe.

Cream cake, he hears her say. Italian, but not really. Italian in name only, but actually American. Now she's laughing about some snide remark from, now answering his questions. Coconuts. Pecans. Yes, no, yes. Heard about it online.

"I wanna make it tonight," she's saying. "I hope you like it, Nii-chan."

And Dabi, laying naked as the day he was born in their bed, in her spot, his cum all over his hands, all over her stupid fucking toy, answers that question much differently than he does on the recording.

Now, he can only laugh, and laugh, and laugh, all of it bitter like the salty taste of blood still lingering in his mouth. He throws his arm over his eyes, panting into the air. He feels… manic. Exhausted, too. Beside him the toy lays in the mess of blankets, sticky and wet, this pathetic fragment of childhood now made as vile and disgusting as he is. His other hand continues to languidly pump his cock. Like him, it's stubborn, half-hard even now. Wholly undeterred by notions of refractory periods, it continues to twitch at the sound of her voice.

Oh, he thinks. He'll like it. He knows he'll like it. He already likes it so much he's sure he'll never be able to really get enough.