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“Get those fingers out of my face if you want to keep them,” Dabi says, sounding almost bored as he taps away at his phone.
Needless to say, you don’t pay him any mind. Your fingertips continue to wander, taking a particular interest in his nose—the slope of it, the way it trails downward then quickly curves up. It reminds you of the ones in the pictures on those old coins, the old royalty.
“You’ve got a really regal profile, you know.” You turn over onto your side, trying to get a closer look. The bed creaks beneath your sudden shift in weight. “You could model if this whole villain thing doesn’t work out for you.”
Dabi looks away from his screen for long enough to shoot you a dangerous look. His eyes seem to pulse in the dark, reflecting back the hazy glow from his phone tenfold. They’re icy blue and more alive tonight than they’ve seemed all week, clinging to something you know he’ll never speak into existence. Something that’s still malicious—still Dabi—but also harboring a hint of mischief.
In one swift movement, he catches you by the wrist. He twists it, examining every angle as you curse the harsh press of his nails into your skin.
“I warned ya’,” is all he says as he drags your hand to his mouth, grinning wickedly. Then he clamps his teeth down on your index finger. Hard.
You yelp, swiping at his cheek with your other hand. You’re ashamed to admit that you aren’t the least bit surprised when he pushes past your flailing limbs and plants a palm into your gut. In a fuzzy moment of disorientation, your breath leaves you and you’re shoved onto your back. The bed groans angrily beneath your weight, especially now that you’ve got Dabi laying an elbow across your neck, keeping you down. Trapping you.
“That was a real stupid thing to do.”
The heat radiating off his skin is unmistakable. So him, and completely at odds with the chill that creeps up your spine at just the sound of his voice.
“Guess I’m just a glutton for punishment.” You gasp when a hand slides up your stomach, palm burning against old scars. Scars he’d put there.
Dabi leans over you, a shadow in the blackness of the room. A beam of light from a streetlamp or a passing car or something shines in for a fraction of a second. And you see it, even though you know he doesn’t mean for you to. The look. The half-lidded eyes that seem fixated on your determined expression. The pursed lips that seem amused at your impudence.
Something you’re not supposed to acknowledge.
It burns away as quickly as it comes, as always. And once it’s gone, it’s gone. His eyebrows furrow and his mouth pulls back in a tight line and he forces the expression—the feeling—back to wherever it is he stores all the other things he doesn’t have the patience for. There’s no plume of smoke, no embers left where a trace of affection might have emerged. The light from outside fades and what’s left in the aftermath is Dabi. Cold, despite the heat in his fingers. Distant, despite the close proximity. This man is callous and apathetic and cruel, and you know that there’s no changing that fact, no matter how many times the facade cracks and lets a hint of something else shine through.
A low sort of sound crawls out from the depths of Dabi’s throat. Only when his fingers dig into the spaces between your ribs—when your hissing intermingles with the crackling of his fingertips along your skin—do you realize that he’s chuckling.
You see Dabi for what he is: evil. Regardless of the reason, that was simply the truth of things now. You don’t delude yourself, don’t convince yourself of the good in him, buried deep, deep, deep beneath the staples and singed skin. It was his choice to do the things he did—past, present, and future be damned.
And you were the sorry fool that had the misfortune of wanting him just the way he was.