AN: Only took me two weeks to get this out instead of like, a month and a half. Woooo 😭 ️

019: give and take, and take, and take.

Summer; 11 years.

"It's really not hard," Hawks tells her confidently as he lights down in a barren and providentially level farmer's field. Long ago abandoned, it's snarled with sparse, dry weeds and little else. Suzume hardly notices. Behind the pair of them, Hawks' great crimson wings still to a whisper, and held as she is in his arms, it's all she can really bring herself to look at. Much more so than either their first or second time together, every neat and perfect feather holds her in rapt attention.

"Seriously, I promise," he continues, only marginally distracting her from her fascination. "You'll be a natural at it."

In their quick, flighted search for what he'd informally referred to as 'some place even-grounded enough for take-off practice, I dunno, it doesn't really matter that much,' Hawks had a lot to say. Suzume had only heard at most a quarter of it; the other three had been swallowed up by the wind, by her hair whipping about her ears, and by the great, gusting whoosh of his wings.

What she had managed to hear, though, had all sounded very optimistic. That was very much like Hawks, of course. His confidence during their brief trip was much the same as it ever was. It's much the same now, too, warmed through with a beaming smile as he settles her down gently on her feet. Finally managing to tear her focus away from his wings, Suzume meets his gaze and finds him regarding her with such an intense sense of pride, it's as if she'd flown the both of them here herself.

Suffused with more nausea, Suzume can't help but fret that all that conviction might be very misplaced.

"I haven't even done anything yet." Wringing her slight hands, her protest is muted but anguished. While she manages not to withdraw entirely into herself and away from all his glowing, preemptive, and arguably ill-judged praise, there's no helping her frown – something she only just manages to aim at their feet. (He is being very charitable, after all; she doesn't want to seem ungrateful.) "What if I'm real bad at it? Like, the worst? What if I can't get even a meter off the ground? Or even a few centimeters?" Her voice pitches higher with a dull, growing panic. "What if I can jump higher than I can fly? I can't even jump very high – "

Hawks' laughter is soft and kind to match the soft kindness of his sun-kissed face. "Chickadee, you're overthinking it mega-hard, here. It's like learning how to… god, I dunno, grab something with your hands, or learning how to breathe. The knowing is just in you already. It's instinctual. No one had to teach you how to pick something up, did they? Your mom didn't have to teach you how not to suffocate, I'm betting."

"I guess," she murmurs, worrying the hem of her sweater with both hands, now. Her mother might not have, but her brother certainly had. The memory of him holding her cheeks and making her breathe with him is a vivid one, and one she recalls often… even if remembering the feeling of his marred, hot palms cupping her face makes it harder to breathe rather than easier, these days. Just the thought has a heat tingling in her ears. "But also – I guess I don't know." Floundering, she shrugs. "It's not like I was old enough to remember it if she did."

"I can promise you no one taught you anything like that. You were natural born, gripping and grabbing, huffing and puffing, the tippity top percentile of all babies, and all the nurses proclaimed: this one passes muster! What a professional, talented baby! Boy, she sure can work those lungs and hands!" Hawks does not touch her often, but he grasps her shoulder firmly now, giving it a little shake. "Flying's gonna be the exact same. Really, you don't even need me."

"Then why'd you come?" Peering up at him, her eyes narrow in moderate, doubtful suspicion. "You sure you didn't come along just – just to make sure I don't fall and – and go splat and… and die somewhere?"

Even more fervent this time, his rich laughter blooms in him again. "I think the splat makes the die part a teensy bit of an oversell, chickadee, though I definitely appreciate your flair for the dramatic. But no, no – I didn't tag along for that. Not like I don't care, mind you, 'cause I sure as hell don't fancy you falling prey to either the metaphorical splat or the hypothetical die. That'd blow a whole hell of a lot; I'd definitely miss you. But, really: I came for totally selfish reasons."

"Selfish?" Incredulity steals into her voice. It's difficult to imagine Hawks as anything close to selfish. Suzume isn't sure he understands the word – isn't sure he's ever really met someone truly selfish in his entire, bombastic life.

Not like she has. Briefly – irrationally – she wonders if she might not feel more at ease around Hawks if he was selfish.

Hawks regards her with a smile so easy and honest that she feels even more caught off-guard. She thinks it should feel pleasant, maybe, to be the recipient of such a smile. (Somehow, though: it isn't.)

"It's… well, learning to fly for me was – hmm. No joke, I struggle to put it into words that'll do it any kind of justice. Never really been that kinda guy, right? Y'know… poetic, I guess? I mean, I can run my mouth, sure, but not about anything of substance. Bit of a curse, really. Lack of poetic touch aside, I'll try to do it justice, anyway: flying is sick. Flying for the first time? It was fucking aces, if you'll pardon my language. Needed that f-bomb for emphasis, you understand." Conspiratorially, he winks at her, placing a tanned finger briefly over his lips. "But where I get to fly every day, I only ever got to fly for the first time that one time, you feel me? And I thought, well, that was it! Never again! Thanks for the memories, Past Me; I'll cherish the hell out of 'em."

Letting his hand fall away from her shoulder, Hawks gives her a casual half-shrug of his own that very much belies the candor of his confession. "But now – hey! Here you are. And I get to see you do it for your first time, and, hell… you know, I figure it's as close as I'll ever get to experiencing it for the first time again. You get what I mean?" He's expectant when he looks at her, lively and bright. "You got anything like that?"

Struck into a numb sort of silence, Suzume gnaws at the inside of her cheek, mulling it over. It makes sense, she supposes, though she can't really think of anything in her life as being so phenomenal that she'd like to experience again –

At least, nothing that she can share. Sometimes, she desperately wishes she could be eight again, waiting for her brother on the swings in the park, still so young and new and blissfully unaware of what awful eventualities the future held.

Unable and unwilling to confess to that, though, Suzume shakes her head. "Yeah, I… I don't know if I have anything like that," she says, quietly. It's a small lie, she reasons. She hopes it'll be fine. "But I think I understand."

Very much undaunted, Hawks' gold and gleaming eyes shine with bald-faced excitement. "I'd like to say: damn, that's too bad, and: you're really missing out, but hey – don't worry. We're totally about to give you that exact experience, and you'll get what I mean."

It's as if he cannot even conceive of the possibility of failure, and the dread settling like a vacuous pit in her stomach deepens to drowning depths. "You are… you have a lot of confidence," Suzume says, with downcast eyes.

There is the nuzzle of knuckles against her jaw, then, very gentle and only a little warm. It doesn't scald, and it doesn't hurt. It's there, and then gone – the briefest bit of toothless affection. His voice is impossibly kind, so kind she almost can't stand it. "I think you could stand to have a bit more, yourself."

Suzume doesn't know what to think about all of that. The world lurches. Between the dryness of her mouth and the way her stomach is knotting, she's not sure she wants to. Luckily, Hawks doesn't seem to notice, and he doesn't give her much time to dwell before he's pushing ahead, eager to start.

"Go on," he says suddenly, brazen and a little breathless already. "I wanna see 'em. Let's bring them out and see what they can do!"

So, she stands together with him in the dead farmer's field and, a little reluctantly, draws out her wings. Unfurled long and fluttering behind her like a great gossamer veil, all four of them are lambent and bright even in the late afternoon sun. Suzume can tell immediately that he's fascinated with them; he reaches out, as if to touch one, his face slack, his eyes wide. But Hawks is as astute as he is confident; he can tell by the way her wings pull back and go statue-still that she doesn't want to be touched.

With a sheepish kind of smile, he pulls his hand back. The restrained, half-melancholic edge to it is like a lance gone through her heart that she tries very hard to expel. She manages, but there's no helping the sting.

"Sorry," he says, and means it. (That isn't helping, either.) "I got a little ahead of myself, there."

Then, in lieu of touching them: he has Suzume move them. Standing still with her feet flat to the ground, she listens intently as Hawks instructs her to will movement through them, up and back and down, up and back and down, using his own wings as an example. Mimicking his movements, Suzume watches as his feet leave the ground – and begins to feel hers lift, too.

The sensation is startling. She's been so focused on the physicality of the movements that she hasn't let her mind keep pace. As her thoughts flood in, though – wonder, joy, and no small amount of horror, all at the same time – her wings immediately still, promptly costing her the meager centimeters of lift she'd gained. Clumsily, Suzume's feet find the ground again in a bit of a stumble that mercifully doesn't punctuate into a fall.

Laughing, Hawks settles very close beside her, his wings fanning out and around her in an almost-embrace. Suzume feels them brush her own, and the foreign sensation of being touched that way plucks a shiver out of her that Hawks' has the decency to not acknowledge. "Don't get too up in your head. The goal's to get up in the sky, right?" He sounds very wise and clever as he says it, as if he knows well enough about her feelings overwhelming her. "If you can make it a few centimeters off the ground, you can manage a few meters, and then even more. Sky's the limit, chickadee. You're already almost there."

The supposed simplicity of it all seems quite insane to her, but he'd been right; it hadn't taken much to get her off the ground. So when he asks her to try again – asks her, rather than tells her, and that is its own wonder – she does.

Hawks, it turns out, is a lot like her brother in that he's right about a lot of things. She lacks for his grace, of course; her movements are jerky and awkward compared to the bold way his wings scythe through the hot, summer air, but even so, Suzume begins to rise up all the same.

"You feel it, don't you?" Soon, they're much higher, and Hawks calls out to her, his wings moving him closer to her, just close enough for her to hear but not get caught up in the graceful red whorl of them. "It's instinctual, yeah? Faster for more lift, slower to drift down – spread 'em out nice and wide so you can coast when the wind gets you! Think of any bird you've ever seen, keep that in your thoughts, imitate it, and there – there!" Delighted, he shouts with boyishly unrestrained passion. "You've got it – hey, you've got it!"

He's right about all that, too. Lifting and drifting, she can spread her wings and let the wind catch her, feel the force of it against their sweeping expanse like the tender press of dozens of helpful hands. It's a dizzying experience. In and out, in and out, she draws the artful curve of her radiant wings, and in turn they carry her and raise her. The years-dead field falls further and further away.

Suzume wasn't sure what she imagined when she'd asked Hawks to teach her how to fly. The necessity of his hands on her, perhaps, hooked firm and tight under her arms, dragging her dead-weight along – or maybe him scolding her for poor form and gawky movements. But Hawks doesn't touch her; he doesn't need to, now. Rather, he darts around her in exultant joy, streaking here and there in neat slashes of brown and bronze and gold. Across his eyes, his hair is a flaxen spill, touched and tousled by the wind, and she sees him glide below her, his head thrown back now, his laughter boisterous and wild and filling up all the sun-baked emptiness between them.

"Look at you," he calls up to her across the wind, and his voice is buoyed high, fiery with glee. "Look at you, chickadee – you got wings – you got wings – you can fly."

She does. And she can. And the higher she gets, and the farther away the earth falls, well: everything is so different. Everything changes. The wind in her face and in her mouth and in her hair – it's colder, more feral, ice-tipped fingers startling as they slide across the skin of her cheeks even as the sun reaches out to stroke them, too. Twirling and rising and falling, there is so much color, and all of it a blur: the green of the trees, verdant, like spilled emeralds, the gray-brown of the mountains a dull series of smudges – and of course the sun-glazed blue of the afternoon sky bleeding through all of it. Tumbling here, and sailing there, Suzume lets the wind catch her, and take her, and cradle her. It is an intimacy the likes of which she has never known.

Hawks watches her, and laughs, and soon she's laughing, too. It's a feverish, undone kind of laugh. It's like some terrible occlusion has been pierced through, as if some long-held weight pours out of her with each frantic pump of her wings. Suzume soars up and up, leaving more and more of it behind until she is empty of anything and everything but the vast and beautiful sky.

"So, chickadee," Hawks says, suddenly. Vibrant as always, his voice blooms easy in the steady silence.

They are in a small clearing at the foothills of the mountains, surrounded on all sides by dense, interlocking trees. Sprawled out on her back, Suzume pants into the warm air, trying in vain to catch both her breath and her thoughts. It doesn't matter that he's sitting right next to her when he says it; she can hardly process that the noises he's making are language. With all that sky above her – and with the sun setting deep and raw and red-gold off to the west in that wide and endless expanse – well, she can hardly process anything. She still feels a bit like she's flying. Hawks sounds so very far away.

So, Suzume turns her head to look at him, as if to bring him back to herself from that distant place. Gilded by the setting sun, he is painted in those same shades of blinding golds and fire-hot reds. Like summer made into a person, his smile envelopes her, just as warm as sunshine. Hawks is no closer than he was to her a moment ago, but looking at him now, he feels like he should be.

"What was it that finally pushed you to wanna learn to fly?" She can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks again just as well as she can see it; it's as if it has reached across the space between them to touch her cheek.

Fighting back an instinctive flinch as if her life depended on it, Suzume is immensely relieved when she succeeds.

Hawks, thankfully, seems not to notice. "I imagine you've known you had wings for a hot minute, now."

This time, he's speaking a language she understands. Hawks is here, and for now, the sky is put away. And Hawks is right; she has known about her wings for a very long time. She has known since she was four, since she'd felt that strange, pinch-like ache in her shoulders and lower still down her spine. Well-acquainted with how her father's wings worked, she'd experimented with that feeling alone in the dark bathroom, back in the big house. Sure enough, her wings had come out, filling up the tiny room with a soft, incandescent light. She had even seen them in the mirror, violet like her eyes – like her father's eyes – luminous in the shut-door pitch, an anxious, flittering curtain behind her. Suzume had promptly thrown up into the sink. The wings had gone away, then, and she'd spent the better part of her life trying to convince herself that the yearning ache she felt in her back was just some causeless, phantom pain –

That the only thing her father had forced on her was the color of her eyes.

Hawks isn't asking her how though. He isn't even asking her when. Not really. He is only implying it. His real question is simple, with a simple answer, and when even the simple answers burn in her mouth like a scalded tongue choking back hot coals of self-loathing, Suzume isn't willing to admit to more than she has to.

She looks away from him again, because he is, in this moment, even brighter than the sun. Still suspended in the sky, the real sun sulks slowly towards the darkening horizon, trees and mountains waiting like brandished teeth to swallow it whole. It must go willingly, and out of jealousy, Suzume thinks. She cannot imagine it likes being so spectacularly out-shone by a single teenage boy. Even in the encroaching dark, Hawks' light is not threatened by anything so mundane as a day-night cycle. Irrationally, Suzume thinks he is less an imitation of the sun than the sun is an imitation of him –

And a pale one, at that.

No, it is too difficult to look at him. His heat is unfamiliar to her; his warmth is nothing at all like her brother's. The gentle nature of it settles over her like continuous waves, working steadily at all the cold, anxious parts of her that ache for tenderness. Where the rocks of her walls crack beneath that patient encroachment, though, she knows no relief. Cold and oily, it's shame and guilt that seeps into her, instead.

It's not what she wants, she thinks, wildly. It's not. Hawks is not her brother. Hawks is like her brother in none of the ways that matter, and unlike him in all of the ways that do.

So, Suzume turns her attention back to the sky, and thinks of something else. Blush pink threads seamlessly into lavender, and the smooth gradient is broken up only by gauzy, impressionist brush strokes of clouds. Looking up at it, her head spins, and the world goes with it. Only minutes ago, she had pushed her wings hard, soaring up and up and up, leaving any notion or sense of direction behind her. Up had been down, left had been right, and she had felt as if she was falling impossibly higher. It had been exactly as Hawks had told her it would be: freedom in its most distilled, natural form. It was the ability to go anywhere, and do anything. For a few brief minutes, she had been completely unburdened and unchained from everything.

Now, though, on the ground, she finds she's left with the heady sensation of waking from a lovely but cruel-in-its-impossibility dream. Blinking and blinking, the surreality of it clings to her like sleep, making a mockery of her own memories and twisting it until everything feels like a hazy unreality.

And through all of that awful haze, she can feel Hawks looking at her, expectant but endlessly patient.

"Well," she says, her voice splintering on the word and on all the emotions behind it that she can't possibly begin to put names to, "Someone told me that not using our quirks – that not using them would make us… I guess really sick. Since they're… well, an extension of ourselves. And that to deny such a big part of ourselves is… not good."

Tightening her hands around fistfuls of her sweater, Suzume swallows. "I don't wanna be sick." She doesn't. And that's part of it. That's part of it. But…

"That's, uh. Well, that's a little dramatic!" Hawks laughs, like it's a joke. It's not mean-spirited the way it might be in her brother's mouth. It's warm and effervescent, like the rest of him, like he always is, filling the small clearing like morning light – but Suzume feels somehow chastised all the same.

She closes her eyes. "Yeah, it's probably pretty stupid," she says, quietly, feeling her throat pull tight and raw. It is, she thinks – it is. This whole thing is stupid. She'd just wanted a secret from her brother, like all the secrets he'd kept from her – she'd wanted to feel big, adult-like. Cool. And, somehow, hearing something her brother has said questioned so openly –

Hawks is quick to interrupt her scattering thoughts. "Hey, hey – c'mon, hey, I'm sorry! Really, I am – I didn't mean it like that. I guess I was just expecting something with… I dunno, less depth? You know, just, you'd expect a kid to say something like, 'Who doesn't want to fly?' or, "Wings are sick, and it's my time to shine!'"

"I… I don't think anyone would say that second one, actually," Suzume says quietly, opening her eyes to cast a doubtful glance in his direction.

"Yeah?" Hawks meets her gaze with lifted hands, playfully defensive. "That's 'cause you're not a shonen protagonist or an inspirational poster. And really, thank god for that."

That squeezes a smile out of her at least, and before she looks away from him again, Suzume sees the line of Hawks' shoulders soften beneath his worn leather jacket. It's strange, she thinks, talking to someone who seems so anxious in the wake of her potentially hurt feelings. It's strange being apologized to. She doesn't know how to process it. She's not even sure she likes it.

She's certain it makes her feel a little bad.

Thankfully, whether he realizes what he's doing or not, Hawks is quick to help her off that strenuous mental subject. It's something she notices he's very good at. "I think I remember hearing that, anyway, now that you mention it. It gets talked a lot alongside discussions of what some people call quirk-relevant psychology and… well, what other people politely call pseudoscience."

Suzume's eyes linger on a particularly thin cloud drifting across her field of vision. Without looking at him, she asks, "What's pseudoscience?"

"Uh, like – fake science, I guess you'd say. Pretend science. Some people take it real serious-like, hence the psychology-bit, and some people – the people saying it's pseudosciencey garbage, anyway – they look at it with all the seriousness that most people do, say, blood-type based personalities, or… you know astrology? Like how the west treats astrology. Which is to say they think it's shit, but sometimes like, fun-shit."

"Oh." Suzume frowns. The cloud in the sky reminds her of pulled cotton, stretched and pulled until there are only threads of it left. She doesn't like looking at it, but it's easier than looking at Hawks. "So, not serious at all."

"That's not to say it's not serious, though, right?" Hawks' tone is airy, and she sees him wave a hand in her periphery. "All science is fake science until it's proven otherwise by people much smarter than us, y'know. Those nerds with their billion years of school, right? They keep coming up. But even then, well – there's always gonna be some piss-for-brains who disagrees. God knows anything that deals with emotions and feelings and complex brain meats always slows everyone up, too. Just, no one ever wants to agree. I know they're still looking into it – and by they, I mean like, the brain meat doctors."

Weaving her fingers together and settling her hands across her stomach, Suzume finally turns her head towards him again. "So, what do you think?"

In the low light, his eyes looking back at her remind her of two gleaming, golden coins. "Well, we've mentioned a lot of things – which of 'em do you wanna pick my brain over, specifically?"

"Your brain meats, you mean?"

At that, Hawks cracks a wide grin at her. His teeth behind his lips are white, and, to Suzume's immense surprise, wholly unthreatening. "Aww. Stealing things straight outta my dumbass-lexicon. I'm flattered."

It occurs to her immediately that Hawks isn't being remotely sarcastic. More than a little flustered by his sincerity, Suzume sucks her cheeks in between her own teeth and chews through the sudden flare of anxiety.

As if to spare her, Hawks is the one who turns his head away this time. Leaning back, he settles himself on his forearms, letting his gaze raise up towards the sky. The smile lingers, though, closed-lipped and fond and limned bright in the dying sunlight.

It takes Suzume a moment to compose herself. "I – well, so – okay." Deep breath, she thinks, very ill-composed. "The person who told me about… how not using our quirks might make us – unwell? He also said something about how our quirks influence our personality, too. And I think – I think that's what you meant by the whole bit about quirk-psychology, maybe?"

Hawks nods, sunlight dappling his face as it filters through the trees. It has the effect of setting his blonde eyelashes and fierce, fluffy eyebrows visually ablaze. "Sure is."

Buoyed up a bit by the relief she feels at not having to over-explain anything, Suzume pushes forward. "That, then – that's what I want your opinion on. Do you think – do you think there's any truth to it? That our quirks influence us, and what we want – how we feel? That if not using them, we'll make ourselves sick?"

Hawks takes in a breath, long and slow through his nose. It comes out of him as a doubly long sigh, and his eyes search the horizon as if he might find answers there. "Gotta be level with you, chickadee; I can't say I've ever thought one way or another about it, so I'm kinda working it through my brain for the first time, here. Not that I think it's a bad set of questions or anything, really – but also, confession: I'm kinda rusty on anyone asking my opinion on anything."

"They ask you things all the time in interviews, though," Suzume points out in mild surprise.

When his eyes slide back to hers, his eyebrows are angled soft and his mouth pulled tight like a bowstring. His smile seems a little strained, now. "Yeah – hah, about that. I guess it's more that I mean… I'm not used to giving my honest opinion. A lotta what everyone says and does when the cameras are rolling is, uh, kinda staged. Reporters pull from a pretty predictable pool of questions, and most everyone who spends time in front of 'em says what… well, let's say they say what needs to be said. What people wanna hear. It's easy enough to craft a narrative, or plan what you want people to think you think. I'm sure you understand."

Suzume stares at him. She does understand, of course. This is something she has understood for a very long time. Her father had been a master at that. It's surreal, though, to have someone admit it in so many words – that it's a thing that it sounds like everyone does.

That it's something Hawks all but admits to doing.

"But, hey," he says, and his voice seems to fray at the edges. "I'd like to… take my time with it. And with you. You know, really think about it, what you ask me. I wanna be honest with you."

Suzume wants to ask, "But is that enough?" A year and a half ago, in the hospital, she knows she would have. Snapping and furious, she would have spit the question at him, demanded it of him. How dare he. How dare he! Cloaked in lies to whisper truths only where no one else could hear them – but what good was the truth if only between the two of them? What good was it if he believed her about her mother if he wouldn't tell anyone else ?

The girl in the hospital bed would have been so angry, so very hateful. Secrets, secrets, so many stupid secrets. Everyone and their secrets. Secrets she knew, and secrets she didn't. Secrets about her father, and secrets about her mother. Her brother's secrets.

But Suzume knows a little more about secrets, now, and now Hawks sits beside her, and his shoulders sag, and his head dips, and his smile is decidedly bittersweet. Her eyes drift from his face to take stock of his wings, at the rigid way they stiffen behind him, barely moved by the breeze. Pure, distilled freedom, he'd told her, laughing. He isn't laughing now. Suzume wonders how free he really is – just like she wonders how free she'll ever really be, herself.

"It's okay," she says, instead, voice soft as a whisper. Her palms are clammy, her mouth dry as bones bleached in a desert. "I get it."

"Well, you shouldn't have to," he says, and his laughter is back, but there's none of that good humor to it anymore. If anything, it's edged in a bitterness that makes her heart ache.

At the tail end of being a teenager, Hawks is less a boy than he is a man, but even so, sitting beside her now, he looks somehow small, somehow lost. It's there in his face, a flicker of faltering vulnerability, a faraway sadness about his eyes even as he forces a smile and mimes a laugh.

It hurts her to look at him. It makes her throat ache in much the same way her heart does.

Hawks has spared her so much today, and secrets are too heavy for anyone. So, Suzume does for him what he's been doing for her and gently changes the subject. "How would you feel if you couldn't fly anymore?"

When his amber eyes slide from the sky back to her, she is reminded less of the sun than she is of a single streetlamp come on in a very empty, lonely street. "You tell me, chickadee," he says, quietly. "Can you imagine giving it up, now that you've had it?"

Rather than answer him, Suzume closes her eyes. She can still feel it, if she thinks about it: the vertigo, the fall, the lift, the wind in her hair and in her wings. The howling of it, in her ears, like some primal ecstatic song. Even now, with just the memory, her heart beats so fast, the pounding tempo of a melody that has been in her since birth – one that she had tried so hard to deafen herself to.

"I think it'd make me sick," she says, eventually. "I think not being yourself would make anyone sick."

"Well," Hawks says, and his voice is very quiet, "Pseudoscience or not – I'm no brain meat doctor, but I'd venture at least that that much is true."

The sun is gone by the time she makes her way back home. Clouds have come out, and there are no stars and no more color to the sky. Even the cicadas have gone mostly quiet. Too lonely for sleep, only a stubborn few remain, calling shrilly into the still, breezeless night. Suzume understands that feeling well. Standing in the road and staring at the black shape of her grandmother's lightless house, she feels a little like crying into the night herself – as if by doing so, she could bring her brother back to her.

Because just like he'd said, he's gone, too, still.

If he was home, no doubt he'd leave a few lights on. At the very least, the back porch light would be burning, and he'd be there, waiting. But Suzume can tell from way out on the gravel road that there are none. He's not there. Whether to welcome her home or pass a cruel, bruising judgment on her for her absence, her brother is missing, lost to his mysterious tasks he obstinately refuses to elaborate on. The back porch is empty and dark.

(And her heart feels empty and dark for it.)

In this moment, without either her brother or Hawks, Suzume is struck with everything she's done, and nausea suffuses her like a slick, hot fog. Sweat beads on her brow, and her tongue feels thick in her sticky mouth. She'd wanted so much for some small semblance of control, for some secret independent of her brother, but now she can't help but see that as some childish folly he would be right to mock her for. What control even is there in these little acts of rebellion? What does she gain from it? Those stolen moments of joy with someone who is not her brother – every traitorous smile and every recreant laugh wrung out of her like dirty water from a soiled rag – they claw at her gut now, carrion animals working their way through an overripe corpse. She has gorged herself on something terrible, and now her guilt feasts, growing monstrous by the moment. Alone in the street, wishing desperately for the brother she feels she's wronged with her ill-gotten happiness, Suzume realizes how very little control she actually has.

Is it even really a secret she'd wanted, one kept from him, like she tells herself? Was it really the fear that not flying would break her somehow, make her sick, rot her from the inside out like she'd told Hawks?

Or had it been the awful, dreadful fear of being alone when she was meant to be with her brother?

Is she really so lost without him that even a few hours apart from him are enough to drive her to this?

The shape of her grandmother's house – no, her brother's house blurs wetly with the burning sting of sudden tears. No doubt the inside is just as dark as it is outside – blacker, even, the shadows deeper and more cold, and empty of what she wants and needs most:

Her brother.

Because really, is it even home without him? Will the angles and corners meet the way she remembers them, the way they're supposed to, if he isn't there to be the law that holds them together?

No, she thinks, trembling and alone, staring at the house. No, it won't. The house waits to be filled again. It waits to feel blood again. It waits for a heartbeat, for the tread of heavy, haunting footsteps, for lights to come on in all of those dark spaces and darker corners. But Suzume is too small. She's too insignificant to light it herself, not in any way that matters. Her pulse isn't strong enough to pump life back into the hallway-veins of the house and into the cold, organ-rooms. How can she do it without her brother? She can't. The house is dead without him.

(And the house is a lot like her heart, in that way.)

So, instead of going home, Suzume turns and retreats into the woods. It's darker in the forest than their home is, but at the very least: it's supposed to be. Their home is not meant to be so dark; her heart is not meant to be so dark. Without her brother's heat and his piercing, bright eyes, those places are made as impenetrable shadows to her, the familiar turned foreign and grossly frightening for their sudden, awful emptiness. At least the forest is always a stranger. Its darkness, while frightening, is not made from the horror of what it's lacking. It welcomes her into its Stygian gloom, and she finds herself treading paths made routine to her from a year and a half before.

Suzume thinks she shouldn't be able to find her way in all that darkness, but she does, somehow. It's a memory reawakened, run along a well-worn nerve. The sensation of the ground beneath her feet and the feeling of a particular tree against her palm is an old intimacy that comes back to her quickly. Left here, and right there, and there, and there. The path is visible if she squints, and with every step, the memory of taking these turns and steps and stumbles with her brother draws closer and closer to her heart, blooming anew in all that fresh blood and sentiment.

And then: here she is, at the shrine. It's been a long time since she's been here, and there are leaves everywhere, old and dead, rotting in the corners. Once, she'd come here every day with her brother, this makeshift replacement for a park, this tiny, haunted place that Suzume and her brother had filled with ghosts of their own making. She remembers weeping for her mother in this lost place. She remembers her brother holding her, wiping her tears with a tenderness that did not quite match the strange, knife-sharp gleam of his eyes.

Even this, even now – this place is as much her brother's as the house is. But it's not so new, not so fresh. It doesn't ache quite so much. Making her way up those decrepit, whining stairs, Suzume moves into the spider-webbed blackness, brushing cobwebs from her hair before she sinks to her knees amid the nostalgic, poignant smell of wet decay.

She's just so tired, suddenly. All the rare, good moments of the past day feel a million years behind her. Somehow, they feel like the memories of another little girl – maybe the same one who had once had a mother to come home to, who had once been friends with Katsuki and Izuku.

Someone else entirely.

Certainly not the girl she is now.

She's just so sad. She feels sick with guilt, and so desperately lonely. Hawks' warm summer smiles cannot find her here, and she thinks she's glad for that. She doesn't deserve them. She isn't meant for them. She can't be.

No, she thinks, fast succumbing to a deep-in-the-soul fatigue; she's meant wholly and completely for someone else entirely.

Summer; 19 years.

The house is lightless.

He knows long before he enters it that she isn't home. There's no way she would be. Eleven years old already, and Suzume is still terrified of the fucking dark. As soon as the sun starts to set, she's always up on her little feet, darting from room to room, hitting every switch with a restrained kind of panic she thinks Dabi doesn't notice. It's a childish prayer against the coming night; she thinks she's so good at hiding it.

(Like a lot of things she tries to do on her own, though, she's absolutely god-fucking-awful at it. Where would she be without him?)

Sometimes, Dabi lets her. Sometimes, he reclines in the living room and listens to the patter of her light feet carry her throughout the house, watching light bloom again and again behind his closed eyelids, grinning to himself. Most of the time, though, he'll let her finish her run before rising from his place on the floor to slink after her, killing each ritual-prayer light until he finds her trembling with agitation in their bedroom. With her hands on her hips and an incensed frown darkening her lovely features, Suzume is always a sight to behold.

Usually, all he gets is a huff. She might ask him why. ("You wanna burn through your grandma's electricity real bad, huh," is usually enough for that one.) She might even grind her heels into the floor, bottom lip out and quivering and too-fucking-cute. She never tells him not to, though, because to do so would reveal what she somehow still thinks he doesn't know:

That Suzume is afraid of the dark.

(That seeing her brother come swimming out of the inky shadows of a hallway with his too-bright eyes and even brighter grin makes her little heart hammer so hard in her chest that he can feel it when he sweeps her up into his arms and holds her tightly against himself.)

So, at 11:11 PM when Dabi comes home and finds the house dark, well, he knows she's not there. She can barely handle it when he startles her by coming out of a room she knew he was already in; there's no way she'd let him sneak up on her from outside where things are really scary. No doubt she'd have every light on. Instead, the inevitably empty house sits at the bottom of the hill like a black, ponderous corpse gone still in an even blacker night. If he didn't know it was there, Dabi would definitely miss it.

The anger comes to him quickly. He stalks into the house and takes the path he knows she'd take if she was running ahead of him to turn on the lights. Living room to kitchen, kitchen to hall – throw wide the door to the attic to hit the switch at the foot of the stairs with a hand he knows shakes from the fear of that place before she shuts it again. Does she think of him locking her in there when she does, every time? He certainly does.

Bathroom, then, and then her grandmother's long untouched room – and then, the bedroom he shares with her. In each room Dabi enters, a new spark catches fire in him, burning brighter, smoldering hotter, incensed and furious. The lights are off in every goddamn room. Suzume is in none of them. The futon the two of them share is still made as he knows she'd made it that morning, just like she does every morning. The linens are neatly tucked, the lines of it clean and smooth and perfect, not a wrinkle out of place. There never is. Suzume takes her job as a dutiful little sister-wife very seriously, doesn't she?

Except if she did, he thinks, lips pulling back from his teeth, she'd fucking be here. And she's not. It doesn't even look like she's been home since school.

(That absolutely won't fucking do.)

Dabi has even come home early for her, tonight – at least, that's what he'd intended on telling her. For her, for his cute little sister, since she'd been so sad – and really, who else would it be for? Certainly not for himself. Certainly not because the tight-bodied distraction he'd lined up for himself a few days prior had proven to be far more of a fucking disappointment than the relief he'd really needed her to be tonight.

Really, Dabi thinks; he should've known better. People have always bored him. Conversation is a fucking chore on the best of days, and outright torture for the rest of them. But when he'd stumbled into that much-too-young-for-her-job waitress at one of Giran's favorite haunts and she'd seemed openly fascinated with him, well – who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth – or, more likely, a free whore in the cunt?

Unfortunately, Dabi had been quick to learn that even if he wasn't paying for her services with actual money, he was still made to pay in other ways. He was expected to talk. More than that, and much worse even, he was expected to listen.

So, tonight he'd tried listening – listening, at least, in that not-listening kind of way, trying to focus instead on what should have been good: the feeling of a choice looking body beneath his hands, of all those soft, ripe curves and the pliable give of them – of the way her skin had looked when he'd cracked his palm across it, hard. Blooming red and hot, the girl had started squealing immediately. That at least had interrupted the way she'd been inanely running her mouth about how hot he supposedly was, but even that had been a disappointment. He'd expected the sounds she'd make to do something. He'd expected the tears when one of his staples had caught the curve of her ass and left a jagged, angry gash across all that plush, jiggling flesh to…

Well, to do anything for him at all, really.

It hadn't, though. It didn't matter how much her obscene body had caught his attention at the bar; she ruined it every time she opened her mouth, which was way-too-goddamn-often. Eventually, he'd had the presence of mind to gag her, but the coy, greedy look she'd fixed him with as he'd pushed her panties past her teeth was very nearly just as bad as whatever garbage she'd been spewing moments prior. Dabi didn't want her sloppy, empty compliments. He didn't want to look into her blown-out eyes and her lust-drunk face. When he'd put his hands around her throat to see if he might be able to choke back some of those insipid, mewly sounds she kept making, the way her eyes had rolled back in her head in delirious anticipation had only fucking infuriated him.

Still, he'd kept going. Dabi had put in so much effort already, listened to so much mindless, giggly drivel up until that point that the thought of giving up with nothing to show for it was at least still debatably worse. He'd still wanted to cum. Needed it, even – and needed it bad. And fucking a body was still an upgrade over his hand, wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

So, nice as her tits had been, he'd hauled her around and pushed her to her knees so he could take her from behind. That had been moderately better. It was worth it not to see her face at all. He'd been able to close his eyes and lose himself to the sensation of it, to the feeling of a slender hip crushed beneath the bruising grip of his hand, and of a hot, wet cunt milking his cock with an eagerness that should have excited him, but didn't. He could imagine it was something else –

Someone else –

At least until she'd managed to dislodge the admittedly makeshift gag enough to moan, brokenly, about how much she loved the look of his scarred hand and black-painted nails digging into her shoulder.

That was one of several problems with love hotels. So many of the rooms had mirrors fucking everywhere. He'd opened his eyes to find hers fixed on the silver glass – and, via reflection, him. Her smeared, full mouth hung open as she panted her admiration into the air, cooing and slurring, mascara running black tracks down her cheeks.

And, just as she'd said, there was his hand. Clawed over her shoulder, the black polish at the end of his fingers gleamed in the low, atmospheric red light of the cheap room. Dabi had stared at it, and then back at his choice of partner for the night. Meeting his gaze in the mirror, she'd given him a delirious smile and raised a hand as if to touch his at her shoulder.

Well, that had absolutely, catastrophically ruined fucking everything. He'd pushed her off the length of his hard, still aching cock, spitting his undisguised disgust. The sour loathing roiling in his stomach had been so potent than even the idea of a good hate-fuck with her filled him with a decidedly unarousing sort of revulsion.

After all that, Dabi hadn't finished. Didn't even fucking want to – not anymore.

Standing here in the empty house feels a lot like that all over again. There's no pay-off. No relief. Suzume doesn't come bolting out of the futon with tears in her eyes, hungry for his touch, desperate to throw her skinny little arms around his waist and bury her face in his ribs. There's no wailing about how awful and bad and scary everything was without him. She doesn't take his hand and tug her back into bed with her where Dabi knows she'd nestle against him, putting aside her wounded pride and her unease to seek the warmth of his body, all of her own needy accord.

No. The house is dark, and empty, and it feels like that inside of him too, now.

"I guess I'll be around," she'd said. And to think he thought she was a bad liar.

Dabi goes into the living room to – to do what? Wait? He scoffs at the fucking notion of it; this reversal certainly isn't what he was expecting. Feeling like a vacant, fire blackened hearth gone hate-cold, he lurks in the dark, turning on the TV, muting the sound. With the remote, he flips through the minimal channels with a mindless, seething sense of betrayal, sucking his teeth and flexing his other hand into a repeated, tight fist. Suzume's grandmother's clock ticks away on the wall, seconds into minutes, minutes into thirty, and then fourty, and then goddamn fifty.

Suddenly, agonizingly, it's midnight. Dabi knows Suzume much too well. He's kept her up much later than this, but she's always dead on her feet by now, rubber-limbed and sweetly passive with exhaustion. Eleven was late for a spiteful temper tantrum, but still wholly plausible. Midnight is –

Turning off the TV, Dabi falls back on the floor with the remote on his chest and stares up at the ceiling, very quiet in the thick dark of the room. The clock ticks, and ticks, and there is no other sound either within the house or without. Where is she? How dare she? Is she all right?

How dare she?

And then, very abruptly and all at once, it occurs to Dabi where Suzume might be.

He isn't sure why he lets her sleep. If she'd been anywhere else, well, maybe it'd be different. He'd be mean about it. Cruel about it. He'd push her, shake her, his fingers gripping her arm until it left the bruises he liked the look of so much, set down deep in her skin where they were meant to be. Dabi could look at them, then, whenever he liked. More than that, he could know she'd feel them any time anything touched them – which he'd do often, of course, because he'd want her to feel it. He'd want her to hurt. He'd want her to remember.

(It's an old, possessive comfort. He does that kinda shit all the time.)

But, he doesn't now. Now, sat against the wall nearest his little sister, he watches her from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, working his teeth around the end of his blue-tipped cigarette. It smolders, smoking in all the humid, rank air, and so does he – but maybe not for the same reasons as before.

The rotting shrine is small. It's been a long time since either of them have been here, and it's smaller than he remembers it being. But small and cramped as it is, Suzume looks smaller in it, somehow. On her side and curled in on herself, her hair is a spill of too much color in the desaturated abyss of the filthy space. There are leaves there, too, brown and spoiling, caught up in her wild locks. A smudge of dirt mars the delicate loveliness of an otherwise soft, pristine cheek, and god –

It's like she'd laid herself down on the floor and just given up, completely uncaring, letting herself succumb to exhaustion and what Dabi suspects – with no small amount of savage, gloating triumph – is most probably grief.

Blowing smoke up towards the sagging ceiling, Dabi thinks that must be it – that must be why he lets her sleep. She's so pitiful like this already. So hopeless. So… pathetic. Swallowed up in her big sweater, her pale tights mucked up with the grime of all the decay around her, it's easy to imagine Suzume here hours before, a mess of tears and snot, her hair clinging to her damp, precious face.

Good, he thinks indulgently, taking a long, deep drag of his cigarette. The tip of it flares vividly in the fetid room, casting everything in an eerie, haunting shade of blue. Fucking good.

Whether because of the light or because of the smell of smoke, Suzume starts to stir. She always comes awake so slowly, and this time is no exception. Dabi watches the hand near her chin unfurl from a loose fist, flattening against the ground, her fingers sliding, as if unfeeling, between a mess of soggy, crumbling leaves. Through parted lips, her tongue moves awkwardly between her teeth, unsticking itself from the roof of her mouth. The even, sleepy rhythm of her breath stutters as consciousness finds her before it falters into a spluttering cough, her untried lungs struggling with the acrid smoke in the confined space.

And then, her eyes are open.

They're big in her face, framed with thick, red-gold lashes that catch the dim light in a way that snares Dabi's attention. Blinking up at him as if trying to make sense of what she's seeing, as if her eyelids are too heavy to hold open, she closes her mouth and tries to swallow back what he guesses is the feeling of dehydration from crying too much.

"Well, look at that," he says, and leers at her with full teeth from behind his cigarette. "My little sleeping beauty's finally awake."

"Nii-chan." It's a disoriented whisper. Her lips and mouth sound tacky and uncertain around his name, and she tries to swallow again. "Nii-chan – where – "

Too wasted on sleep to fully process what's going on, she shakes her head back and forth, oblivious to the way it tangles more leaves in her hair. Her eyes move sluggishly between the ceiling and his face, taking in the dilapidated walls and the thick forest just beyond them.

"You tell me, Suzu." Something about her when she's still so overwhelmed with fatigue always gets into him. She's so wretched, and it's terribly cute. It makes him ache to be awful to her, and because he's still a little annoyed with her, Dabi justifies it as more than fair when he blows smoke down into her sweet, upturned face. It's impossible not to relish the way she chokes again; that's decidedly adorable, too. "I'm the one who had to find you out here in the ass-end of nowhere."

Waving a clumsy hand in front of her face in some shit-attempt to help the smoke dissipate, Suzume turns her attention back to him, fully, where it belongs. "Since when d'you – when do you smoke?" There's a little bit of a whine creeping into her voice, now. It makes something hot and feral in his blood sing, electric in his teeth.

"Since forever," he says, extending his hand to tap the ash of his cigarette into the leaves beside him. The thought to ash it over her is there, but he's not feeling that mean. Not right now. Not anymore. "I just do it socially."

The bewilderment that overtakes her face is something he suspects is less from lingering drowsiness than it is the real, honest to god thing. "You're… social?"

It's something Dabi thinks he'd take as an insult from anyone else. From Suzume, though, there's such a startled, innocent surprise to it – nevermind the clear note of raw jealousy in her incredulous question, resonating sweet as a bell.

"Occasionally." He doesn't say unfortunately, his mind wandering to the absolute fucking let-down from earlier. Instead, he takes another drag, blowing more smoke at her. It's just too much, watching her eyes tear up as her tiny body heaves with another coughing fit. Nice and distracting, just the way he likes her. Dabi can't help himself. He doesn't even want to. "And hey, here we are, being social now. Nice place to lure me out for a date. Feeling nostalgic, were you?"

Suzume makes a soft noise that sounds suspiciously like ugh and pulls her collar up and over her nose and mouth, gagging through her distaste. Even in the garbage lighting, he doesn't miss the way her cheeks color at the mere mention of the word date before they're hidden beneath the fabric of her sweater. She hides too much behind all her oversized, drapey clothes. It's really a fucking shame.

"Cut it out," she grumbles, snuffling. "It smells so gross, and it – it hurts in my chest."

"Oh, does it?" Staring down at her steadily, Dabi is no longer smiling, his expression and voice dripping with mock-pity. "Poor Suzu. Too bad you deserve it."

When he doesn't punctuate the statement by blowing more smoke in her face – though he certainly thinks about that, too – Suzume sits up, her sweater sliding down just under her nose. She's such a disaster. Even without her mouth, though, he can judge her expression by her eyes:

Anxious. Timid. A tiny bit indignant. "I deserve it?"

(Maybe more than a tiny bit.)

Snorting, Dabi mashes his cigarette into an especially wet leaf. The tip of it sizzles and hisses, and then goes out. "You're the one who came out here to throw a petulant baby bitch-fit – "

"That's not true – " Climbing shakily to her feet, she takes a fistful of her sweater and tugs it down until the collar settles back around her shoulders. In the brief dip of the neckline, Dabi catches sight of her collarbone, pronounced and fragile beneath her fair, translucent skin. He has to force himself to look up at her face. That's really no better; her hair behind her is wild. It has the effect of making her look like she'd just been pinned down and freshly fucked.

(God, he thinks blackly, his teeth grinding together; why'd the bitch from earlier have to go and mention his fucking nails?)

It's only because of years of practice that he manages to keep his tone cool and unaffected, perfectly detached in the way that he knows gets right under her skin. "Dragging me up here looking for you in the middle of the goddamn night like an unbelievable fucking brat, goading me all 'cause you wanna get back at me – "

It's working, because of course it does. The sleeves of Suzume's sweater mostly cover her hands, but he can see the way her tiny fingers ball into dainty fists, her voice warbling when she cries out, "That's not – that's not true or fair!"

"Oh yeah?" Without the light from his cigarette, the visibility in the shrine is terrible, but Dabi swears her eyes have gone glossy in the dark. Like an addict, he stares into them expectantly, nostrils flaring as if he might scent the threat of salt –

Of hot, rueful tears.

When she doesn't answer – when she only stands before him, little fists bared, body trembling as if she were cold – Dabi can't help himself. There's been no relief tonight, like he'd intended. Fucking none. He should have at least this. He deserves this much.

She owes him this.

"Aww, what is it, then?" The contemptuous, ruthless urgency of it makes it sound more like a demand than the dispassionate question he'd intended it to be, but he doesn't care. Not now. "What's your supposed truth, Suzu?"

Her mouth opens, and she sucks in a breath, and then another, chest hitching sharply with each haggard intake. Then, much as he was expecting, and wanting, and needing: Suzume bursts into tears.

It's instant hysteria. She takes the three steps between them on such unsteady feet that it's a wonder she doesn't fall before she spills into his open and hungry arms. As soon as he has his hands around her waist, it's as if all of her limbs have been cut at every joint. She goes limp as she collapses against him, body rocking with the force of her sobs.

He hasn't seen her cry like this in a long, long time. It's an ugly, brutal kind of crying. Bubbling up out of her in gasping waves, it has her head rolling back against his hand when he pulls her into the curve of his throat by the back of her neck. Insensible in her distress, Suzume lets him arrange her like a doll, chest to his own, her legs pulled round his waist. There is almost no space between them. She slumps into him, burying her broken, gasping wails into the crook where his shoulder meets his neck, drool and tears soaking the fabric of his thin shirt. Eventually, her slack hands drift blindly up and over his chest, fingers snagging into the fabric stretched over it with such an intensity it's as if she's afraid she'll be torn away from him at any moment.

And this, Dabi thinks, his own breathing growing increasingly more shallow – this is fucking something. Even with the rotting leaves caught up in her hair, god – he tucks his head against the side of hers, nose pressed hungrily against her, and she just smells so good, so achingly, awfully familiar. His fingers sift feverishly through the heavy spill of her summer-peach hair, plucking leaves free and burning them impulsively to ash in blue, phosphorescent bursts.

"Suzu," he whispers her name into her hair, saccharine and sticky, his free arm wrapped so completely around her waist that he's all but crushing her against him. Ash tumbles down his bare, scarred arm, a shimmer of azure sparks gone gray before they reach the floor. "Shh. Go on, c'mon, oh, you can tell me – you can tell me. Tell me what's wrong."

Impossibly, her grip on his shirt tightens. She can barely speak; her words are garbled, strung loosely together by hiccuping sobs. "The house – the house is – the house is dead without you – "

Oh, yes. This is something, so much confessed in one half-incoherent exclamation. Dabi sinks his hand into her hair again to wrap his fingers around the back of her head, pulling her face up closer to his ear. Gluttonous, he wants these precious confessions all for himself. "Tell me," he insists, voice pulled low and tight and almost-wild. "Tell me."

It comes out of her in pretty, strangled gasps. "The house – the house is dead – and me, too, me too – inside, it feels too much – just, inside – it feels so awful, it – it isn't fair – "

"Oh, Suzu," Dabi says in a hushed exhalation, drawn out good and long, her name a whisper of flame in his mouth. His wide grin stretches painfully at his staples. He is awful; heisn't fair. He wants, and he needs, and he takes. God, how he fucking takes. "Didn't you say you wanted the house to yourself? Didn't you say it'd be cool? Didn't you?" Gripping the back of her head by a fistful of her hair, he forcibly shakes it, a frantic, jerky motion that she only barely acknowledges with a watery, stuttering whimper. "Didn't you?"

"I – I – " There's no more defense to her when she's like this. There's none of the faux-bravado from last night, no more poorly-constructed emotional walls erected out of some pitiful, laughable attempt at self-respect. "I lied – Nii-chan, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I lied – it was the worst – it's the – Nii-chan, it's the worst, please, I'm – sorry, I'm so – sorry, I'm sorry…"

"Mmm. Good girl." It comes out of him as a breath, so hot, fire all up the length of his throat. It burns behind his barred and eager teeth: a searing, oil-slick purr with all the intimacy of a knife slipped lovingly between her ribs. "There, see, oh there's the good, sweet, honest little sister I love so much. But god, Suzu – why? Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you wanna lie to me? Why try so hard to pretend? Acting so fucking tough last night, and for what?"

At that, Suzume cries harder. Dabi's neck and shoulder are both soaked with tears, the fabric of his shirt clinging wetly to his skin. As she blubbers on, he can feel her mouth moving against him, more whimpered apologies and indistinct agreement while she works her head up and down in a bobble-headed nod.

"Aww." Dabi strokes her hair, tucking damp strands of it behind her ear. "C'mon, Suzu, look: isn't this easier? Doesn't this feel better? This feels good, right? Don't you like this so much more? You don't have to be strong. You don't need to be independent. Just keep it up; let it all out. You can do it, I know you can."

Gathering another fistful of her hair, he wrestles her pliable body even closer to his own. His voice is quieter than a whisper when he says, "Do it for me."

Those walls from the night before are ash like the leaves he's pulled from her hair. Now, she debases herself for him willingly. It all comes out of her in a rush, in a flurry, voice pitched high with the hysterical, inarticulate realization of it. "It feels like being – I'd rather be – I'd rather be dead without you!"

And suddenly, it's all too much for her again. She's back to keening against him, little animal noises strangled as she presses her face into him, as if even a hair's breadth of space between the two of them is inconceivable, unacceptable. There's a tension in her legs now, even, haloed as they are around his waist, tighter than before. She's so fucking small, he thinks, delirious in his wanton delight; her legs don't reach well at all.

It's just – fuck, and he's reeling with it. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Suzume's broken-hearted desperation over something so arguably insignificant is the most intoxicating thing Dabi has ever known. Of course he'd known she'd miss him; he'd seen the way her face had fallen the night before, when he'd told her he'd be out. He'd seen the brief flash of indignant anger in her eyes too, when he'd refused to address her very reasonable question of why he had to go with the answer even he could admit she deserved.

He could have given it to her. There's a lot he could and should give to her, even. Suzume deserves something more, deserves something better for keeping her faith through all her sorrow and her fear, through the ways he pushes her, and torments her, and makes her cry. She is, in every possible way, the perfect little sister – so precious and too overwhelmed with her adoration for her monster of a big brother for her own goddamn good.

But god, he thinks – god. That makes it so much more perfect. If he was good, and if he was kind, and if he was reasonable… if he really fucking tried, well – would it mean as much? Would the proof of her love and devotion be worth anywhere near what it means now?

No, he thinks, cradling her against himself, reveling in his own unspeakable selfishness. She's so close now he can feel her heart against him again, a frantic, wild thrum so near his own. It's no surprise that his beats nearly as fast as hers.

No, no, no. He is the hell through which she must prove herself, again and again and again. He is a fucking crucible, an impossible trial, the cruelest of forges through which everything that he wants and needs so fiercely can be unmade –

And remade exactly as he sees fit.

This, Dabi is sure, is honest-to-god love. This is something he has understood ever since he was a child. This has always been love, true love, undeniable and savage in the gritty, feral reality of it. None of that give and take bullshit propagated by optimistic, naive jackasses who don't know any better. None of that mutual-fucking-respect that people talk about as if it were even a goddamn possibility. This is how it's meant to be: one half yearning to give, and one half hungry to take, and take, and take.

Tangling his hand in her hair, he jerks her head back roughly again. His mouth finds her ear, then the feminine line of her jaw, then her filth-smeared cheek. The dirt means nothing to him. The kisses he leaves there, and there, and there – they're all hot, and wet, the threat of teeth behind each of them as he savors the taste of salt on his tongue. He wants to bite. He wants to hear her scream. He wants, in that moment, to make her bleed. Wants her to love him through it, like he knows she will, because she's meant to – because she's meant for it, and meant for him.

It takes everything in him not to.

(Not yet. Not yet.)

"Suzu, Suzu, you're so fucking good," he hisses, lips moving over her tear-slicked and salty skin. His hand leaves her hair to seize her jaw, pushing her back just enough until he can get a full look at her face. Her eyes are closed; beneath the tight, biting grip of his fingers, her skin is glistening, as red from crying as if she'd been slapped. Some of the dirt comes off on his fingers, and he can't stop himself from grinding it into her lovely skin.

She's just so small. So fragile. She is the prettiest thing he has ever fucking seen.

"Look at me." It comes out a snarl, and he shudders with the effort of saying it.

Obediently, she does. Suzume is close enough now that Dabi can see the color of her eyes in the dark, violet and glittering through the glassy veil of tears that just won't stop. He loves it when she cries. He loves it so much. He wishes she'd cry for him, forever.

"You know I see you, don't you?"

Muffled against his palm, she only just manages a sobby, unsure little, "Uh-huh."

"You know I'll always see you. Always look at you. Always. You know that, right?"

Her eyebrows furrow in tremulous disconcertion, and Dabi thinks it's okay that she doesn't understand. It is. It's okay. He'll never give her a reason to understand exactly what he means, and it's enough, he thinks. That's enough. In the wake of all the cruelty he knows she will suffer under his hands, it's the kindest thing he'll ever be able to give her.

When he brushes a thumb beneath one of her eyes, it's her turn to shiver. While her sobs still ripple through her, they're quieter now, the time between each heady little gasp lengthening. She holds his gaze from under heavy, swollen lids – and then her eyes flicker down.

"Nii-chan," she whispers. The sensation of her sweet, wet mouth moving against his hand feels better than he thinks it ought to, but he'd learned that well before now, hadn't he?

"What is it?"

"I like – " Suzume swallows as her eyes drift back up to his, fat tears slipping down her hot cheeks. It's a wonder she has anything at all left in her to cry. Her voice is raw, fraying at the edges when she says, "I like the way your hands look – so much."

"Yeah?" There's no revulsion in him at this whispered confession when it comes from his favorite little sister. There is only the want for more – that need to take even more, always. "That right?"

Dabi lets his grip on her jaw relax enough for her to bob her head in a graceless nod. Then he lets go of it entirely, pressing his fingers to her mouth instead.

"Show me." It's nothing short of a command, imperiously delivered with a knife-sharp grin."Go on; prove it to me."

And with a soft, breathless reverence, Suzume tearfully kisses each and every one of his black-tipped fingers.