Work Text:
Cold. I’m cold.
Shouto floated towards consciousness, wading through some indistinct dream. His limbs felt heavy as they had for the last few days, but now they felt like rocks, and moving even his fingers produced an achey sensation. Further movement tests resulted in a full-body shudder that he wasn’t able to repress, and his eyes fluttered open.
Squinting against the meager light spearing through the drawn curtains, he looked around and instantly shot upright despite his body’s protests. A sharp pain lanced through his stomach, and he suddenly recalled getting pierced through the torso.
Where am I? How long have I been out?
Battle training and instinct thrummed through him, looking around the room he was in. The torso part of his hero costume’s jumpsuit had been turned down to expose his abdomen, which was covered thickly in gauzy bandages.
There was a scorpion villain and I got stabbed.
The bed he laid on was heaped with the warmest blankets he’d ever felt, their fluffiness gliding against his skin as he slowly sat up. The rest of the room was rather unremarkable, a bedside table and a lamp, bookshelf with a fake plant on top.
I need to get out of here.
Shouto pulled his costume on fully, ignoring the watery feeling in his stomach and the pounding in his head as he zipped it up to the collar. His boots thankfully rested at the foot of the bed, and he pulled them on before he reached for the doorknob.
The doorknob which suddenly turned before he could even touch it, causing Shouto to reflexively jolt backwards, reaching for his quirk. A wave of nausea washed over him as he tried to pull on his power, sending him crashing to the floor.
“Wh--hey, you little shit, why are you out of bed?” A raspy voice reprimanded, and footsteps began approaching his prone form.
Shouto scrambled to get his feet under him, to look his company in the eye and demand to know where he was and what was going on, but the fiery burning of his wound overtook him. The best he could manage was to pant shallowly on his hands and knees, staring at the floor as his vision swam a bit. He’d probably reopened his wound.
Hands grabbed under his shoulders, pulling him up like a disobedient cat and dragging him back over to the bed, where he was unceremoniously dumped. Something rough on the palms scratched at his sensitive skin. Blearily blinking, Shouto tried to focus on the figure who was currently scrutinizing him.
“If you’ve got enough energy to try to escape, you’ve got enough energy to eat food. Eat this, and don’t complain about the mackerel.”
In the dim light of the room, a bowl of steaming something was placed on the bedside table.
“Where am I? Why am I here?” Shouto managed to get out. His throat felt rubbed raw, cold air searing as he inhaled.
“You’re somewhere safe. Some fucker got the drop on you.” The voice paused. “And you almost died. But congrats, you survived.”
If that wasn’t vague as all hell.
“Why?”
“Because your shitty dad let you out on patrol even when you were sicker than a dog.”
That’s not quite what I meant.
Right, he’d been feeling a bit under the weather for the last few days. With his quirk being what it was, being sick meant alternating wildly between being too hot and too cold, with little to no quirk manifestation possible. He’d still gone out on patrol though; a small fever was no reason to shirk his responsibilities or training.
“I can hear you thinking, quit it. You’re sick, and you should have been on bedrest. You woke up three times in the last twelve hours to puke, so don’t give me some shit about a ‘minor fever’ or whatever.”
He felt his boots being yanked off again, and the blankets being rearranged around him. The haze in his mind refused to lift, and he hated how vulnerable he felt, instincts dulled and subdued by whatever strain of the flu was going around UA.
“I. I need to go.”
“Go where?” The voice snorted. “If you can’t even walk without falling over, you’re a sitting duck for any other poor excuse for a villain who has a grudge against Endeavor.”
Something tickled in the back of Shouto’s mind. Danger, maybe.
“Do you have a grudge against Endeavor?”
“Waste of oxygen.”
Well….that wasn’t promising.
“Who are you?”
“Your elder. You’ve been stupidly cold for the last six hours, so stay under the covers.” The blankets were pulled up around his chin again, and he could barely resist the urge to rub his face in them and drift back off.
I’m vulnerable.
The thought was enough to make him push himself up again, stuffing down the pain with practiced ease. Now wasn’t a time to be weak, he had to get out of here. He didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t know who his helper was, or if they were even a helper. For all he knew, they could be a captor. He couldn’t be vulnerable, that was how heroes got killed.
“What did I say, dumbass?” The hand grabbed his shoulder and firmly shoved him back onto the bed. Shouto’s own hand darted out and grabbed the stranger before they could pull back, a weak flare of fire sparking at his fingertips and crawling up his arm. Far from the warning rush of flame he wanted.
“Oi, stop that. You’re just going to hurt yourself.” Another hand reached out and easily smothered the orange flame on his hand. There wasn’t a smell of burning flesh, so the stranger was at least somewhat fire resistant. The burning cold of their hands suggested a temperature related quirk.
Shouto gritted his teeth and bit out a sharp “Let go.”
“Are you gonna try to light me on fire again, little firebug?” The voice asked wryly, hand swiping up his forearm and extinguishing the last of his flames. “Cause it won’t work. I promise you’re in good hands. I don’t have any motive to hurt you right now, so calm down and go back to sleep. You can try to fight me again when you’re feeling better.”
The soupy feeling in Shouto’s brain whispered that surrendering to sleep sounded like a good idea, and he was finding it harder and harder to resist. A bone-deep shudder ran through him, reminding him of his chilled body.
“Cold.” A murmur he barely recognized as his left his lips.
“Only you would get cold instead of a fever.” The sighing grumble sounded resigned somehow, Shouto’s mind supplied. The hands retreated, breaking his hold on them, carefully tucking his arm back under the blanket. One returned to his forehead, the cold allayed by the hand suddenly warming up.
Weakened alarm klaxons sounded in Shouto’s hazy brain, warning him of danger he wasn’t so sure of anymore. This stranger seemed to want him to get better, even if their motivations were unknown.
I’m vulnerable.
The thought contained the kind of ingrained terror that demanded he rectify the problem immediately. The kind of terror that was taught through fiery fists and puking onto the floor when he wasn’t fast enough to dodge.
But the room was so warm, so different from the searing pain of the past. A gentle heat that demanded nothing of him but to be well. It was nice. Kind. Maybe he could just relax and sleep….
The warmth of the hand was accompanied by a sudden rise in the temperature of the room, heat soaking into his skin. As the temperature soared into what probably would be extremely uncomfortable if he wasn’t so freezing cold, he allowed himself to sink into the bed. His heavy eyes looked to the shadowy figure who was trying to warm him back up, parsing for details he could use to piece together a profile.
Blue. Green? No, turquoise. Like mine.
“Go to sleep. If you’re so worried, I’ll stay here with you. You’re safe.”
The last sensation he felt before he slipped under was the stranger brushing back his bangs, the warmth they radiated somehow familiar.
In his nightmares, there was fire. Bright orange and gold that surrounded him and lashed out in tongues, trying to sear his flesh from his bones. It melted through his skin, fleshy drops landing on the floor in sickening splats. He barely felt the pain, reaching out with disintegrating hands to try to find a way out of the hellscape. Neither half of his quirk was anywhere to be found, and he felt completely and utterly weak. Vulnerable.
No matter where he turned, he couldn’t find an end to the flames, even when he ran forward on skeletal legs devoid of muscle. The panic that pumped fear and adrenaline into his blood mounted, and he tripped over his own feet and crashed into the ground. As the flames roared, jeering, above him, he stared up at the indistinct sky above. There were no stars to be found, no moon to pull the tide to wash away the flames.
He burned in those nightmares, and he just closed his eyes and let it happen.
“--tou! Shouto!” The raised voice startled Shouto out of his dreams.
His eyes flung open, and his hand snapped out into the darkness to grab an arm, flash-freezing it with his quirk. The temperature of the entire room plummeted as his quirk spread from the stranger to the rest of the room, frosting over the window and crusting the bedframe.
“That won’t work.” The voice drawled, and Shouto heard rather than saw his ice sublimating into hissing steam. “You were thrashing a lot. Nightmare or something?”
“.....yeah.” Though he was relieved that his impulsive quirk usage hadn’t hurt anyone, Shouto was still wary of this stranger, who was apparently immune to both halves of his quirk. The blankets were either hanging half off of the bed or wrapped around his legs.
His body was still wound tight as a spring, energy pumping through his veins. It wasn’t an uncommon nightmare, burning to death. When he was young, that was one of his strongest fears, along with the fear that his mother had left because he had done something wrong to make her not love him.
He’d had to work hard to undo the learned helplessness, but the nightmare always threw him back to the days when he could do nothing but run and hide.
A full-body shudder wracked his body, causing him to cringe into himself. He couldn’t curl up like he wanted to, not with the stranger so near, and not with his wound already smarting sharply with his sudden movement. He settled for clenching his chattering teeth shut and attempting to draw his blankets back up around himself without moving his torso. A rare case of goosebumps covered his entire body, his body chilled deeply beyond what he was comfortable with, devoid of his quirk as he was. Even after he’d gotten himself settled back in, his shudders were so profound that he could hear the sheets rustling.
He searched and searched within for the fire half of his quirk, but it was still dampened and useless. The drowsiness from his illness had receded somewhat, but he felt naked without his quirk.
A snort sounded from a few feet away, making Shouto jump. He’d forgotten the stranger was even in the room.
“I can hear your teeth chattering from over here. Your quirk still hasn’t come back, has it?”
Shouto refused to answer that. Quirklessness meant uselessness, and weakness if this stranger decided to attack. Better to leave them wondering.
“I bet your joints are all stiff and shit. Cold doesn’t help open wounds, either.” The stranger ventured.
“What do you want?”
“To help.” The shrug was audible in the stranger’s voice. “Call it altruism, or whatever.”
“I’ll be fine, thanks.” Shouto cursed how his voice shook as his shivers rattled through him.
“Don’t be a brat.” The bed suddenly dipped, and a weirdly cold body sat itself next to Shouto on the bed.
Shouto tensed, preparing to defend himself, pulse skyrocketing when he once again felt a hand on his forehead. But just as before, heat began radiating from the palm, sinking into his skin and soothing the headache he didn’t realize he’s been nursing.
“I know something about being cold when you get sick.” The voice took on a tone of nostalgia, though there was some bitterness there.
Shouto had to know. “Do you have a fire quirk too?”
There was a pregnant pause, during which another hand landed on his shoulder and also began heating up.
When the voice spoke again, it was full of a jumble of emotions, ranging from sadness to disgust. “Yeah.”
“I wondered….when you were able to smother my flames.”
A hoarse chuckle. “You’re not my first experience with sick brats.”
Another wave of warmth flooded the room, melting the remainder of Shouto’s ice and blanketing him in a cocoon of comfort. Still so familiar somehow, like some soft memory calling from the haze of pain that had comprised his childhood.
He felt his body slowly lower itself back into a sleepy state, lulled by the warmth that the stranger was filling the room with.
“Better?”
“Yeah.” He mumbled, succumbing to the allure of a sleepless slumber.
The next time Shouto awoke, it was twilight.
I’ve been here another day. And still no answers.
The low evening light shone in through the curtains, everything cast in shadow just as it had been the day before. It was less grating on his eyes, thankfully.
As he did his checks, he noted that the soreness in his joints was down from their horrible stiffness of the prior day, and his temperature had normalized slightly in his two halves. A quick search revealed that his quirk had grown from a spark to a small flame, an ice crystal to a small flurry. Passable.
Slowly sitting up, he looked down to find his jumpsuit pulled down again, and fresh dressings on his wound. It still hurt, but not unmanageably. There was a glass of water and an over-the-counter painkiller sitting on the bedside table, which he skipped over. He still didn’t know where he was, and he wasn’t in the habit of drugging himself with pills from strangers.
“You know, if I wanted to kill you, I would have done it while you were asleep. Less screaming that way.”
Shouto jumped, not having sensed anyone else in the room with him. It was the same voice, and the same glowing turquoise eyes staring at him from the dark corner of the room. A tall figure unfolded themselves from what must have been a chair, and strode over to the bed.
Alarms, now at full volume, screamed in Shouto’s mind, potent adrenaline feeding into his fight or flight instinct.
“You. You’re Dabi.” He cursed his voice for warbling in the middle.
“Yes I am. Nice of you to have noticed.” Dabi drawled, a dry smirk curling what passed as the edges of his mouth. Before Shouto could react, he had leaned forward, looming over the young hero, and placed his hand on his forehead.
A combination of horror and anger swept through Shouto. This was who had been taking care of him? The flame villain with a rapidly climbing body count who had so happily snatched Bakugou out of his reach at the training camp? Who had tucked him into bed and warmed the room and soothed his chills? None of it added up.
Something was bothering him though.
“Mackerel.”
“Huh?” Dabi’s face went blank, sloughing off any emotion as he withdrew his hand and stood back up.
“I hate mackerel.”
“It’s gross, yeah.”
Shouto swallowed around a lump in his throat.
“How do you know that?”
The tension in the room suddenly thickened beyond the oppressive heat that Dabi’s quirk provided. Shit. He’d let a known murderer named Cremation warm him up.
“It’s not a hard guess. Mackerel’s stringy and gross.”
“That’s an opinion, not a fact. You also mentioned that only I would get chills instead of a fever. You know me.” Shouto gave Dabi a quick once-over, looking for anything familiar that might call out to him. The scars, the staples, the long, lanky limbs, face shape, eyes. His eyes. That glowing turquoise that he knew matched his own. He was suddenly struck with a thought. Call it curiosity. “Come here.”
Dabi raised his eyebrows, and shoved his hands in his pants pockets. Without his signature jacket on, he looked oddly small. Thinner, and somehow shorter. It belied the fire Shouto knew was crackling below his skin. There was something in the older man’s eyes that Shouto couldn’t identify, but he stepped forward nonetheless, his feet making no sound on the carpet.
Like a ghost.
Shouto dug his gaze into Dabi from where he sat on the bed, searching. This man, standing practically scrunched in on himself, was deeply familiar in some unidentifiable way. His horrible posture shrunk what Shouto realized was a shorter frame than he thought originally; Dabi was probably around Shouto’s own height, not the towering giant he seemed when he had his hand around Bakugou’s neck. Scars wrapped around his arms and neck like bandages, and Shouto wondered how Dabi was able to even breathe. Gray and turquoise slid up to Dabi’s own eyes. His eyes .
Like mine.
“What? I got something on my face?” Dabi huffed, refusing to look away. But it felt less like a show of aggression, more of a return of interest.
Shouto refused to answer that, raking his gaze over Dabi’s cheekbones and jawline, the feeling of familiarity now clawing at his insides, shrieking recognition but refusing to name it.
There was nothing familiar in the metal in his ears or nose, nor in the scarring under his eyes. But….there.
“Red.”
Dabi recoiled almost violently, stepping backwards quickly. A scowl appeared on his face as tension flooded his body language. Like a cornered animal.
“You dye your hair?”
Looking like he was about ready to snap, Dabi’s jaw clenched.
“Didn’t suit me.”
What did Aizawa-sensei call it? Like pulling teeth.
Shouto began to raise his hand towards Dabi, but thought better of it and put it back down. When he opened his mouth, his voice came out smaller than he expected.
“Please come back?”
Surprise flickered in Dabi’s expression, but he shuffled back over, now unwilling or unable to meet Shouto’s stare. He was a step away from the bed, and his head shot up when Shouto moved closer to the edge to get a better look.
Who are you?
Shouto slowly reached out again. Dabi eyed his hand with suspicion, but allowed it to land in his hair. It felt oddly stiff and somewhat brittle, springing back up into its characteristic wild spikes when Shouto ran his fingers through it. And there it was, at the very roots. A vibrant, spiderlily red.
Like mine.
His hand slowly drifted downwards, tracing the mask of pale skin between the scarred patches, examining. The red hair. The eyes and facial features that struck recognition in him because he shared them.
There was something impossibly soft in the way Dabi glared at him as he let him poke and prod. Soft, and melancholy.
Recognition flashed across his vision suddenly, painting black hair red and replacing scars and staples with white bandages. Only the luminous glow of his eyes remained the same, sorrowful and haunted, though they were filled with more bitter rage than he remembered.
“Touya.”
The single word breathed into the room released something in Dabi, and he exhaled, eyes finally sliding closed.
“Can’t say no to you, can I, hatchling?"
Shouto spread his fingers, bringing his other hand up to cup his face. The scar tissue was stiff under his touch, waxy and dead compared to his healthy skin. He wanted to match up the villain in front of him to the older brother he remembered by his tenderness, the one who called him hatchling and held him when he hurt.
“Never could, Touya-nii.”
“I go by Dabi now, you know.” Dabi opened his eyes. He didn’t move from Shouto’s grasp.
Something swelled in Shouto’s chest. Whatever happened to Touya was terrible enough to give rise to the charred man in front of him, and he wanted to destroy it. Rectify it. Whatever, wherever it was. “Dabi. I remember you.”
“And I remember you.” Dabi murmured. “I look away for one second, and you’re on TV destroying an arena.”
“It was necessary.” Shouto leaned back, pulling his hands away from Dabi’s face.
Dabi let him go, though he stood stock still, seemingly not sure what to say.
“The whole city is looking for you.” He blurted. “You’ve officially been missing for over half a week. The old bastard is going mad trying to find you. Doesn’t look good if his son goes missing without a trace.”
"I think he'll survive. I'm in good hands, anyways." Shouto shivered and pulled his blanket around his shoulders, fully uncaring of how messy his hair most certainly was. If it was Dabi, showing weakness wouldn't be the worst thing. After all, the man had seen him burnt up so many times before, and had picked up his broken pieces when everyone else had turned a blind eye.
Dabi snickered fondly.
"As soon as bird brain gets back with your medication you're gonna take another nap."
Shouto tilted his head at his brother, trying to parse his brain for anyone that could be described as "bird brain". Bakugou came to mind, but that couldn't be right.
Dabi raised an eyebrow at him. "What, you think a wanted villain can afford a place like this? I've got a benefactor."
"'Benefactor'? That's cold, Dabi." A teasing voice filtered in from the hallway. "I thought I meant more than that."
"Not if you forgot Shouto's medicine." Dabi walked out, though his voice carried back to the room. "I didn't hear the door. You came into through the window again, didn't you, birdie?"
Taking the opportunity to wrap more blankets around himself, Shouto turned his attention inward again, searching for his quirk. He was still cold, but his inner fire had replenished substantially since his last nap. When he tried to focus heat into his left side, his lungs decided to give out and he devolved into a coughing fit.
When he opened his eyes again, his brother stood in front of him, proffering a glass of steaming water and what was presumably an anti-inflammatory drug. He took it this time, throwing the pill back and relishing the warmth that nested in his stomach from the water.
There was something calculating in the way Dabi was staring at him, something conflicted. He raised a hand, then faltered as his he reached across the distance to Shouto. His aloof exterior cracked, just enough for Shouto to see that he was afraid. Afraid Shouto would reject him, just as their mother had. For being a monster. For being the villain in their family’s story.
He also saw the moment Dabi clamped down on his fears and reached the rest of the way to the back of Shouto’s head. Dabi leaned in, pressing their foreheads together, and Shouto could feel the furrow in his brow through the tangle of their fringes, though some of the tension left the line of his shoulders.
It was far too gentle of a motion for a villain to make, but Shouto had also been relearning softness. He understood the stiff, abortive motions and recognized them in his older brother for what they were. This was the kind of physicality that they were denied and made to fear, that they wanted to reclaim.
He allowed the barest of smiles, bringing his own hand up to the back of Dabi’s head in reciprocation, staring directly into his eyes.
I see you.
Dabi seemed to falter at the silent declaration, but his expression shuttered before he could give anything away. Shouto realized the moment was over, and began withdrawing himself from his brother’s space, his own emotions feeling a bit raw.
Something suddenly itched in his throat, near his nose. Rearing back, he sneezed directly in Dabi’s face. A cloud of smoke wafted out of the left corner of his mouth, floating towards the ceiling as Dabi stared on in disgusted shock.
He jerked back, grimacing. “Fucking sick brats at that school full of germs.” His eyes drifted upward, though, and took on a satisfied glimmer. “Though I guess they don’t have anything on dragons.”
Shouto stared blankly, confused, until Dabi extended a hand and smushed it into his hair. There might have been some gratuitous hair mussing, though Shouto tolerated it because of his brother's sharp smile. He heard a faint sizzling, and realized that his shoulder and hair were alight with bright orange flames. Small, but they had finally returned.
Leaning his head away from his brother’s teasing, he coughed once more into his fist.
“I’m still not feeling completely well. It wouldn’t be appropriate to go back now and get my classmates sick.”
The look Dabi levelled at him said he didn’t believe him at all. And yet….
“Yeah, that’d be rude as hell. Go back to sleep. I’m going to make you more soup, and this time you’re going to eat it.” Finally withdrawing, he walked over to the door.
“Or what, you’ll set me on fire?” Shouto surprised himself when he retorted so childishly.
“ Cremation. ” Dabi waved his arm dismissively, a wisp of blue flame flicking off his fingertips.
Shouto wiggled down in the blankets, pointedly ignoring the ribbing, and closed his eyes again.
Dad can stand to wait another day. I'm warm.