Archive of Our Own

This is how Dabi comes to own a warehouse:

He knows a guy, who knows another guy, who has a brother that needs some cash and happens to be in possession of an old warehouse on the bay. The brother wants six hundred thousand yen, so Dabi scrapes together half of that and burns the guy’s eyebrows off in lieu of giving him the other half. 

Shigaraki calls him an idiot and refuses the spare key Dabi tries to give him, because he’s still a bastard even though he’s ‘finding himself’ or ‘being reformed’ or ‘learning about vigilantism,’ or whatever. The war is eight months past but change comes slowly to them, to his stupid little family that he still can’t shake off. 

Anyway.

The warehouse is kind of awful, reeks of mildew and stale bread. There’s no equipment left inside, but Dabi likes to imagine that maybe it used to be teeming with fresh shokupan being packaged, warm and fragrant, the kind Twice used to buy from the konbini on their old corner. There’s a rickety iron catwalk stretching over the main floor, the slats wide enough that he can dangle his legs through them and look down at all the nothingness. He opens the sliding metal door of the delivery ramp when the weather is good, lets the salty bay breeze blow away the years and years of dust.

He doesn’t need a warehouse, not in these days of a new (new) life. But it’s his anyway, and he likes it.

In the office, buried under stacks of water-logged invoices and bleeding pens, there is a piano.

The piano has a special place in the lore Dabi’s weaved in his mind for the warehouse. The owner who wiled away long hours in his musty office, who dreamed of sea songs and grand stages and careful melodies. Dabi used to play the piano, too, in another life. Not very well, he never did much of anything well in that other life. But maybe he can be better in this one.

(He doesn’t get much better. But he tries.)

He likes to think that when he left his other life behind, he never looked back. That he dyed his hair and changed his name and let his heart turn to scar tissue along with the rest of him. 

But that’s not really true. 

Fuyumi had been the easiest to find. Her name was public, easily searchable, her gentle, calm face smiling at him from an elementary school’s website. Of course she’d be a teacher, he thinks. When they were little kids, just the two of them in a big, empty house, she’d sit with him at the table with her picture books and pretend to help him with his homework. The scribbles she’d make in the margins of his notebook probably made just as much sense as his actual answers. 

He goes to her school, just once. Just to confirm with his own eyes that she’s still there, still real. He sits on a low wall across the street from where the kids are on recess, chasing each other across the concrete. One falls and skins his knee and suddenly she’s there, long blue skirt swishing around her ankles as she bends down to comfort him. 

She looks beautiful. There’s color on her cheeks from running after her students, and she keeps having to nudge her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. Dabi desperately wants to know what her voice sounds like, if it’s the same soothing alto as it is in his memory, but he’s too far away to hear what she says to the skinned-knee brat as she helps him up. 

It’s fine. His memories will keep.

He searches for Natsuo next. Dabi finds his social media pages easily enough but they’re sparsely used, all the relevant information private. There’s a couple photos, though, wild white hair not so different from what Dabi colors over once a month. In one, Natsu’s squished between two women, their arms thrown around him, all of them wearing matching white coats. A ceremony of some kind, a celebration. He’s wearing a collared shirt and tie underneath the coat but his posture is relaxed, casual. He looks happy, Dabi thinks, in a reserved sort of way. 

Dabi hopes he’s happy. 

His mother is impossible to track down.

Entire years slip by him with nothing to show for it, not a trace of her name or likeness anywhere online. Dabi dreams that she’s dead, that he killed her, her long, white hair lit up in neon blue. He wakes up gasping night after night, a scream stuck in his throat. Ever his fellow insomniac, Shigaraki sits on the edge of his mattress and touches four fingers to his chest until he can remember how to breathe again. 

He never asks Dabi about the things that haunt him. Ghosts follow him too, Dabi knows.

Then, there is Shouto.

The training camp incident really is the first time Dabi sees him in person, even though Endeavor’s golden boy has been on and off his radar for years now. Poor little Todoroki Shouto, he says, watches those bizarre eyes flash with something before he hides it away. Dabi plays back the video of his first Sports Festival over and over and over when he can’t sleep at night, thinks about the crazed glint in Shouto’s eyes while he burns and wonders if the two of them aren’t so different after all. 

It’s not hard to get his number. The blond asshole they take from the training camp has his phone on him, which Dabi promptly hands over to Compress for unlocking. He takes it to the back room while Shigaraki is dealing with the kid and scrolls through the contacts, searching for Shouto’s name. There’s nothing, though, or at least that’s how it appears at first - every listing is a weird, crude moniker of some kind instead of actual names. Dabi reaches the end, then starts scrolling backwards and reading each entry more closely. Tape-Face, Shitty Hair, Old Hag, then finally…

‘Icyhot Bastard.’ Dabi actually laughs out loud at that - yeah, that’s Shouto alright. 

He copies down the number before meandering back out front and stuffing the phone back into the kid’s pocket. Things kind of go downhill from there, but at least he got one good thing out of the whole ordeal. 

He doesn’t do anything with the number for a long, long time. What would he even say? What does he want to say? What would Shouto be most likely to listen to without hanging up? Dabi doesn’t know, it strikes him over and over again as the months pass, how he doesn’t know anything about Shouto. Fuck, he was just a little kid when Dabi left. They never even got the chance to know each other. 

It’s not fair. 

Dabi sees him in person one more time, only a few days before everything goes to shit. 

It’s totally by chance. He’s lingering in the shadows of a dingy alleyway, his usual spot along Hawks’ Saturday patrol route. Waiting on the last dose of intel, grasping at straws. Everything’s coming to a head, but they’re ready. He’s ready.

Like something out of his dreams, Shouto walks right by the alley, his hair unmissable in the bright noon sunshine. The blond asshole is slouching at his side. 

Dabi takes a minute to restart his heart from the shock, then slinks out of the alley and follows them.

He keeps his distance, a lot of distance, because they may only be sixteen but their stupid elite school is still training them day in and day out to be soldiers. He follows them all the way out of the district until they turn up the road that leads back to UA, at which point Dabi deems it too risky to keep going. 

He can’t really hear what they’re talking about, their voices lost to the wind. Shouto says something or other and it makes Blondie laugh, loud and abrasive. He shoves at Shouto’s shoulder but it’s playful, teasing, and Dabi thinks, oh. 

There’s a missed text from Hawks asking Dabi why he wasn’t at the rendezvous point. He doesn’t answer.

Three days later, they all go to war.

There’s so much dust. Fuck, Shigaraki turned so much to dust.

Dabi had asked him once if it was dust or ashes or something else. They’d been laying on Dabi’s mattress together, bodies curled perfectly parallel to each other but not touching. Shigaraki always hated being touched from behind but didn’t like to face him either. 

Call it what you want, he’d said. It’s still death.

So Dabi calls it dust. Ashes come from burning. 

(He would know.)

There’s dust, dust, mountains of it where there used to be a hospital, a city. It hangs thick in the air, not yet settled. Dabi knows how to breathe through lungfuls of ash but this is different, bigger. Did they win? What counts as winning in a wasteland?

He’ll think about it later. Right now, Shouto’s hair has gone grey with the dust as he stands atop it, even the red half now matches the dullness of his good eye. But the blue one is electric still, wide and piercing and the same color as Dabi’s own and he wonders how long Shouto’s known, if he’d heard poor little Todoroki Shouto all those months ago and started putting the pieces together.

It’d be impossible for him not to know, now.

“Touya?”

Shouto chokes on the name, his old name, his lost name. No one’s called him that in a decade, and it makes Dabi choke too. This isn’t right. This wasn’t how he wanted it to go.

Someone calls for Shouto over the piles of dust-or-maybe-ashes. Shouto doesn’t look away from him, doesn’t even blink. Dabi feels like someone’s poured wet concrete into his shoes.

“I have to go,” he says anyway, because he really fucking has to go. Shigaraki is- somewhere, in the dust, half-dead, or dead-dead, or something, so Dabi really has to go. “I’ll text you.”

Shouto blinks. “What? Text me? What- you don’t, you- ”

“I do. I’ll do it this time. I promise.”

The person yells Shouto’s name again, sounding more urgent this time. He still doesn’t move.

“See you later, little brother.”

Dabi: hey
Dabi: this is
Dabi: me
Dabi: touya
Dabi: fuck, don’t call me that
Dabi: or do, it’s fine
Dabi: maybe i’ll get used to it

Shouto: how did you get this number

Dabi: don’t worry about it
Dabi: you won’t like the answer

Shouto: well that’s reassuring

Shouto: i was starting to think you wouldn’t keep your promise
Shouto: is there somewhere we can meet?

Dabi: i have a warehouse
Dabi: but you have to come alone

Shouto: you too

Dabi: okay

Shouto: okay

They agree on a day and time, late in the evening on a weeknight. Dabi wonders how difficult it is for Shouto to get off campus these days. What he’s risking to come out here. Dabi gets to the warehouse a full forty minutes early, alone as promised. It occurs to him that this could be a setup, that he could be walking into a trap. 

It doesn’t feel like a trap. He hopes it’s not a trap. 

He goes into the office and wheels the piano out to the main floor, just for something to do with his hands. The sound echoes weirdly in the open space when he presses a few keys experimentally. He opens the delivery door and plays a half-remembered melody to the frozen sea while he waits. Something soothing, non-threatening. He’s not a threat, not to Shouto, not anymore. This isn’t a trap. 

His scar tissue aches a bit as he stretches his hands wide for the octaves, pulling at the places where the stitches meet his real skin. The melody becomes more improvised the longer he plays, his memory of the actual notes fading into just what sounds right to his ears. The piano is out of tune, anyway. 

A shadow catches his eye from the open doorway, and he glances up.

His first thought about Shouto is of how young he still looks. Dressed in jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt, hood pulled up to hide his hair, he looks so much like the teenager he still is. The hoodie is too big on him, making him seem much smaller and less muscled than Dabi knows he is. His left hand is tucked into the pocket, right one held out low and cautious in front of him, palm facing down.

Ready to fight. Ready to ice over the entire warehouse if he has to.

For a moment, they simply look at each other, yellow light spilling in from the docks. When Dabi makes no move to do something like attack him, Shouto retracts his hand. 

“Hey,” Dabi starts, for lack of anything better. 

Shouto takes a careful step into the warehouse, keeping his back flush to the wall. His eyes dart to the corners of the building, the shadows, the catwalk above, before landing on Dabi once again. 

“Hello.”

“Relax. This isn’t an ambush.”

“Sounds like what someone planning an ambush might say.”

Dabi scoffs. “Oh, so he knows how to make jokes, does he?”

“Not very well, I’m told. Forgive me for not taking you at your word.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. Shouto’s not the one who needs to ask for forgiveness here.

Another step. Dabi was less nervous with the entire world crumbling around him than he is right now. 

“It’s,” Shouto starts, stops again. Maybe he’s nervous, too. “It’s really you?”

Say my name, Dabi thinks, wants it with a desperate kind of recklessness. But Shouto doesn’t, just takes another step forward and curls his long fingers over the lid of the piano. 

Dabi nods. “Yeah. It’s me.”

He reads the hero news sometimes, looking for the things people say about Shouto. On the edge of seventeen but the whole country knows his face, knows how strong he is, how much promise he has. Knows he’s Endeavor’s son, for better or worse. The tabloids call him cold, impassive - emotionless is perhaps their favorite buzzword to use.

But Dabi watches a dozen conflicting emotions flit across Shouto’s face in that moment and thinks that they’re so, so wrong. 

“I looked for you,” Shouto says, “after...” He lifts one hand from the piano and makes a small gesture that probably encompasses something like after the war, after the dust settled, after everything. “It’s been months, there was nothing…”

“I like being hard to find.”

Shouto nods, looks away. All the things Dabi wants to ask him are lodged in his throat, overlapping and tangling with each other so that he can’t get even a single one out. 

Shouto drums his fingers restlessly on the old wood, pushes his hood back with his other hand and combs his bangs out of his eyes. 

“You had my phone number. How long?”

“Awhile,” Dabi says, because a year makes him sound too much like the coward he is. 

Shouto exhales something that might be a laugh, or a scoff. “Kamino,” he says, a statement instead of a question. “You took it from Bakugou’s phone. Right?” 

“Can’t get anything past you, huh? You know he has you listed as ‘Icyhot Bastard?’ Nice guy, that one.”

“Coming from him, that’s pretty mild.”

“He must like you, then.”

Shouto’s face does something complicated at the implication of that, and he looks away again. 

“Is he your boyfriend?”

Dabi doesn’t know why he presses - he’s interested in the answer, sure, but it’s hardly at the top of the list of things they need to talk about. 

There’ll be time. He hopes there’ll be time.

“I didn’t come here to discuss my questionable taste in men.”

“Sure, sure.” Dabi waves a hand in dismissal. “Tell me then - why did you come?”

It’s a loaded question, probably, with a hundred different answers. A siren wails in the distance, the waves slap against the wood of the dock. Dabi’s heart is beating in his ears. 

“I don’t know,” Shouto says quietly, after a long pause. “I guess I just...wanted to know for sure. That I hadn’t just built something up in my imagination. That it was really you. Are you- ” He cuts himself off again, like a question he’s not sure he’s allowed to ask. “Are you okay? Are you - safe? Somewhere?”

Something cracks open in Dabi’s chest, an old wound that refuses to heal right. 

“Yeah,” Dabi manages. “I have a- a somewhere. Don’t worry.”

Shouto scoffs, shoves his hands back in his pockets. “‘Don’t worry,’” he mocks. “You’re- that’s kind of ridiculous, you get that, right? All this time, I thought you were- ” There’s a pinch of something in his expression, in the knit of his brow or the crumpled edge of his scar, something like...anger? “I thought you were dead, Touya.”

Fuck, hearing that name really does make his ears ring. He averts his eyes and presses down lightly on one of the piano keys over and over, low F# slowly bringing his thoughts back into focus.

“Well. I’m not,” he gets out eventually, doesn’t know what else to qualify it with. The story is long, untold and messy and closely guarded and so, so long. 

He senses more than sees Shouto shifting his weight restlessly, still standing at the edge of the piano. Dabi has the strange urge to reach out and touch him, his arm or his shoulder or maybe ruffle his hair. There’s a memory like that somewhere, tucked away where he can’t tarnish it. 

“Yeah,” Shouto says eventually, and Dabi has the distinct sense that he’s fucked up but has no idea how. “Sorry. I can’t- I can’t actually stay long tonight, anyway. I sort of - didn’t do the best job sneaking out, I think. I’ll do it better next time.”

“Next time?”

Shouto’s eyes widen just a fraction. “Or- I mean. Yeah. If you want. And if not, then that’s- ”

“No. I mean- yes. Next time. There can be a next time.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

There might be a hint of a smile on Shouto’s face. It’s hard to tell in the darkness. 

“Okay. I have to go, then. See you, Touya.”

He slips out of the warehouse the same way he came, disappearing around the corner. Dabi strains his ears and listens to his quiet footsteps fading into the night, whispers see you into the space he’d vacated and tries very hard not to feel anything at all. 

Home has been an abstract concept for a long time now.

The grass under a footbridge, an alleyway sheltered from the rain, a mattress in the back room of an old bar. Places to sleep but not to stay, don’t put down roots, don’t get attached. Guard your fragile baby bird heart and stay alive, don’t give them anything to use against you.

That’s all well and good. But some plans are better off being revised.

Shigaraki is asleep when he unlocks the door to their little studio, doesn’t even stir as Dabi latches the bolt behind himself and kicks off his boots in the entry. They hardly have much by way of furnishings, but Compress had bought them a lamp from, like, an actual lamp store, and Toga breaks in every few days to water the houseplant she’d left on the windowsill. 

It’s more than he’s ever had. It’s more than he deserves.

He tiptoes over to where Shigaraki is curled up facing the wall, socked feet skimming over scratched hardwood. The mattress dips with his weight but Shigaraki still doesn’t wake - surprising, since he’s a feather-light sleeper even on his best days. Maybe he finally broke down and took one of the herbal sleep aids Spinner keeps bringing him. 

Dabi sheds his jeans and the rest of his outerwear and lies down next to him, scooting close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off his back. He reaches out and draws a finger over the bumps of his spine, the scars that have healed pink and jagged over his winter paleness. 

“I saw my baby brother today,” Dabi whispers into the darkness. Shigaraki inhales deep and slow like the hushed noise might’ve finally woken him, stretching out a bit and poking his bare toes into Dabi’s shins. He flings an arm backwards in blind search, and Dabi obligingly offers his own arm for him to koala onto. 

He doesn’t even flinch when all five of Shigaraki’s fingers slot between his. Maybe it says something about his fucked-up sense of trust, or maybe it’s just called being in love. 

Shigaraki mumbles something unintelligible and promptly falls asleep again, relaxing back against Dabi’s chest. Dabi closes his eyes and makes a mental note to text Spinner tomorrow and ask what dose of melatonin he gave him.

“You have a piano,” Shouto says by way of greeting the next time they meet, just two weeks after the first. Dabi startles and bangs his knee on the underside of said piano, looking up to see a Shouto-shaped shadow looming in the open doorway.

“Fuck’s sake, Shouto, make a little noise next time.”

Shouto shrugs, steps fully inside. “Sorry,” he says, somehow managing to not sound sorry at all. “Force of habit. Do you still play?”

Dabi’s brain gets stuck on the word still, because it means that Shouto remembers he used to play at all. He looks down at the keys and traces an old melody with two fingers, a half-forgotten nursery rhyme. “Not really,” he says. “I thought I might remember more than I do.”

“Where’d you even get it?”

“It was here. In the warehouse.”

“Where’d you even get a warehouse?”

Dabi laughs and plunks out the next phrase of the rhyme, sounding it out by ear. “You ask too many questions.”

“Don’t you have things you want to ask?” 

Dabi looks up at him then, finds him standing in the same spot he was last time with his hands folded primly on the piano lid. He’d practiced a hundred different versions of this conversation but none of them make their way to his tongue now when he needs them. Why is this so hard?

“Yeah. I do, I just. I don’t know where to start, I guess.”

Shouto seems to consider him for a moment, the corners of his mouth tugged down in a barely-there frown. He blows out a breath and sheds his jacket, draping it over the lid.

“Move over,” he says, and Dabi tenses before realizing what’s happening. He scoots over on the bench to make room for Shouto to sit down next to him at the higher end of the piano, watching as he places his hands over the keys.

“Shit, I’m about to really get shown up, huh?”

Shouto cracks a smile and starts playing with an effortlessness that comes only from lifelong practice. His hands are delicate and unscarred, and there’s no marks visible on his arms, either. Dabi catches sight of just one scar in the dim light, a thin, pale line visible where the red half of his hair is tucked behind his ear. He wonders how Shouto got it, who gave it to him. If it was from the war, or a training exercise at school, or a training exercise at home. 

That last thought makes him dig his nails into his own palms.

Shouto plays easily, reaching across Dabi a bit to strike a few low notes. His expression is neutral but not empty, careful but not closed off. 

“This is what you were playing, right? The other week, when I came in.”

Dabi nods. It’s kind of incredible that Shouto picked that out from his haphazard playing. 

“I haven’t practiced this one in awhile. Think I’ve forgotten most of it.”

“Shut up, you’re like, actually good.”

“I’m alright.” Shouto shrugs, lets the melody trail off. “I play for Mom sometimes.”

Dabi kind of feels like Shouto just punched him in the chest with a grand total of five words and his too-soft voice. A greatest hits-style montage of all his nightmares flits across his mind, a slideshow of white hair and neon blue backed by a soundtrack of her screaming. Or maybe he’s the one screaming. 

“She- ” Dabi starts, can’t get the rest out. His tongue feels like sandpaper. Shouto turns to look at him, and it makes Dabi feel a bit dizzy. “Where is she?”

Shouto’s eyes widen just a fraction, like he’s just now realizing that maybe he should’ve led this conversation with something else. “I can’t tell you that,” he says slowly, each word carefully chosen. 

“I couldn’t find her.” The words start tumbling out of him without his consent, he’s tripping over himself in his rush to say it all. “There was nothing anywhere, I scoured the whole damn city for a fucking crumb of information and there was nothing, not like the rest of you, and- ”   

“You were looking for us?”

Dabi shuts up and fixes his gaze down on his hands, his scars pulled taut from being curled into fists. He focuses on the ache of it and tries to pull himself back together, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe-

Shouto’s hand appears in his periphery, hovering for a second before settling lightly over the worn leather of his jacket sleeve.

“She’s fine,” he says quietly. “She’s safe. I’ll make sure of it, as long as I live. Natsu and Fuyumi, too.”

What about me, Dabi thinks, then tries desperately to lock that thought away where it can’t kill him. He simply nods in response instead, takes a few more deep breaths. Shouto retracts his hand. 

“Play me something else,” Dabi says when he trusts himself to speak again. “Something she likes to hear.”

Winter turns to spring, slowly but surely. 

They settle into a Monday night routine, because Tuesdays are Shouto’s day off from early morning training and it still feels safer to meet late at night. Dabi buys gummy candies from the konbini on his way to the docks, the kind coated in sour sugar that makes his tongue feel like it’s been struck by lightning but somehow they’re still his favorite. Shouto picks all the green ones out of the bag and they sit at the piano together, trading songs and stories and memories. 

Shouto is strange company in a lot of ways. Quiet but with a fierce determination embedded in his core. Opinionated where it counts, but the bluntness is softened by his placid nature. He can play Bach and Debussy and the Super Mario theme song but stumbles over anything that’s been on the radio in the last decade. Blondie is absolutely his boyfriend even if Shouto never says it in so many words - Dabi’s not stupid. He wonders how much Endeavor would loathe the knowledge that two of his sons turned out queer as hell. 

There’s lots of things they don’t talk about. The war, the fallout, villainhood. Regrets and mistakes, things they can’t take back, both of them with burdens of different sizes and shapes. In time, maybe. He always hopes there’ll be time. He’ll come back to this stupid warehouse every Monday for the rest of his life if that’s how Shouto agrees to see him.

There’ll be time.

“Give this to your boyfriend.”

Dabi slides the envelope across the piano lid, Shouto sauntering over from the door lazy and slow. Summer heat has come early this year, lingering into the evenings. Shouto’s grown his hair out a bit and has it tied up messy at the crown of his head, red and white wisps escaping the bun to stick to his skin instead. 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Shouto says, but picks up the envelope anyway.

“Denial’s an ugly look on you, kid.”

Shouto arranges his face into something approximating a pout, and it makes Dabi laugh out loud. 

“What is it? A letter?”

“None of your goddamn business,” Dabi says with absolutely no heat behind it. “Just give it to him and maybe like, grow a spine and kiss him while you’re at it.” 

Dabi feels positively gleeful at the shade of red Shouto turns at that.

Dear Blondie,
Blondie,
Bakugou,

I hope Shouto’s told you that he’s been meeting me, or else this’ll sound pretty weird. It’ll probably sound really weird anyway but I don’t care there’s nothing I can do about that. He talks about you like you’re really important to him and so I don’t want you to hate me for there to be bad blood between us, because I’m trying to stick around this time. 

I’m sorry for kidnapping you. I’ve done a lot of things I regret and that’s one of them. I’m not so foolish to think that I deserve your forgiveness, or anyone’s for that matter. But I think hope it matters that I apologized at all, and that I mean it. And I hope that if we ever meet in person again, you’ll give me the chance to do it properly. 

Shouto really likes you. Thanks for taking care of him. Please let him call you his boyfriend because it’s really insufferable for me to listen to him deny it every week. 

Thanks.

Dabi
Todoroki Touya

Emo Asshole,
Dabi,
Touya, 

You’re pretty shit at writing apology letters. I’m not a very forgiving guy and I’ll be honest with you, Kamino fucked me up in a lot of ways.

I’ll think about what you said. But don’t believe for a second that I’m doing it for you.

I don’t know what to make of you. Shouto doesn’t tell me much but he seems happy when he comes back from seeing you. 

If you disappear on him again, I’ll find you. And I think I’ll forget to be nice.

Bakugou Katsuki

“What did you say to him? He wouldn’t let me read it.”

Dabi folds the note into his pocket and looks up at Shouto, who’d launched himself up to the catwalk on a platform of ice in an effort to snoop over his shoulder. He’s sitting there with one leg dangling through the slats, the other tucked up underneath him.  

“I think he threatened to murder me. Is it weird that it kind of makes me like him?”

“Yes.”

Dabi shrugs. He’s never claimed to have good taste in people. 

“Well I’m not letting you read it either. Get down here.”

“You come up here.”

“God, you’re such a brat sometimes.”

Shouto blinks down at him, completely placid. “I’m the youngest, I’m allowed.”

Dabi chucks a gummy at him before getting up to go for the ladder. It smacks into the bottom of Shouto’s shoe before dropping back to the warehouse floor.

“That better not have been a green one.”

“And what are you gonna do if it was, huh?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“You should really let your boyfriend teach you how to threaten people properly.”

“Don’t encourage him.”

Dabi grins, sits down on the catwalk next to Shouto and dangles both his legs over the edge. “What, no denial?” 

Silence. Dabi’s a fucking genius.

“I’m a fucking genius, holy shit. Screw villainhood, this is my new career - idiot matchmaking.”

“Tell me what you said to him, Touya, I’m serious!”

Dabi mimes zipping his mouth shut, trying to stifle his laughter. Shouto kicks him none too gently in the ankle. 

“I actually hate you. See if I deliver any more of your stupid letters.” 

“Sure, sure. Who else do you wanna date? I’ll send it by post this time.” 

Shouto shoves him in the shoulder and Dabi shoves him right back, and then they’re having a stupid play fight on a metal walkway suspended a dozen meters in the air.

Halfway through a sloppy dodge of a frost-covered hand, Dabi thinks: this is my brother.

Spring turns to summer, slowly but surely. 

They forgo sour gummies and switch to frozen ice pops, Shouto keeping them cold in his right pocket until he gets to the warehouse. He brings old beginner’s piano books and teaches Dabi how to read sheet music again, all the things he used to know clouded over with age and lack of practice. But it comes back to him in bits and pieces, his hands still remember even if his brain doesn’t.

Sometimes Shouto just plays instead, Chopin or Mendelssohn or more fucking Debussy while Dabi lays on the cruddy warehouse floor under the piano and feels each chord rattling his bones. Listening to it like this brings back so many memories for some reason, things he’d thought he’d forgotten or hid away in his mind without even realizing it. It gets easier to ask questions, he prods Shouto for more stories about Natsuo and Fuyumi and their mother and all the years he’d missed. 

One night, as June threatens to slip into July, he sits in the office after Shouto has gone home and practices an old habit, a child’s hobby. Stacks of old invoices get folded and refolded and then crumpled up and tossed into the corner.

The next morning, he goes out and buys a pack of sun-yellow kami paper.

Dabi: can you come to the warehouse tonight? i have to give you something.

Shouto: uh
Shouto: i don’t think so. there’s a dorm thing i can’t really get out of. 

Dabi: can i come to you then? it’ll just take a few minutes.

Dabi waits in the shadows at the bottom of the road that leads up to U.A., a weird sense of déjà vu lingering over him. When he sees Shouto walking down the hill, he has to force himself to stay put until he gets closer. The folded paper feels like it’s burning a hole in his pocket. 

Shouto spots him even before he gets to the bottom of the road, observant as ever. Dabi steps out into the light of the streetlamp. 

“Hey,” Shouto greets him. “What’s going on?”

“Tomorrow’s Natsu’s birthday,” Dabi says without preamble, because if he hedges around it at all, he’ll probably chicken out. He pulls the gift carefully from his pocket and holds it out. “Will you give him this?”

Shouto stares down at the offering, clearly not understanding. “A paper crane?”

Dabi nods, silently pleading with Shouto to just take it before his hand can start noticeably shaking from his nerves. “Yeah. It’s- it’s from- it’s a thing. From when we were kids. It’s- he’ll remember. I think. I think he’ll remember.”

Shouto considers him, plucking the crane delicately from his palm. He’s had a growth spurt recently, towering more than a few centimeters over Dabi now when only a few months ago they were eye-to-eye. He says nothing, though, and Dabi feels stupidly compelled to fill the silence with more words.

“I mean, you- you told them, right? That I’m- here, or whatever. Alive. Trying to do- this, whatever we’ve been doing. And he’ll remember. Natsu will remember, when he sees it. I know he will. I’m trying to- ”

“I’ll give it to him.”

Dabi’s breath hitches. Fuck, all of this is still so hard. 

“I’ll give it to him,” Shouto says again, softer even in his too-soft voice. 

“Okay. Thanks.”

Shouto nods, closes his palm gently around the crane. “I have to go back. See you next week?”

“Yeah. See you.”

Dabi slinks back into the shadows and watches him go, wondering how badly he just fucked everything up.

Summer is long and humid that year, the days passing honey-thick and slow. Shigaraki stops cutting his hair and so Dabi spends most evenings learning how to braid it back out of his eyes for him, over-under, over-under. Toga always mocks his handiwork when she sees it, but Dabi thinks it looks pretty nice.

“Do you think he’d hate me?” Shigaraki asks him one night, sitting on the floor of their studio with his head tipped back onto Dabi’s knees. His hair is still damp from the shower but Dabi likes the way it’ll look extra wavy tomorrow when he takes the braids out. Over-under, over under. 

It’s raining, the summer heat storm cacophonous against the windows. Dabi’s fingers lose their rhythm and he huffs in frustration, undoing the braid all the way and starting over. He’s never been good at fixing his mistakes from the middle.

“I think he doesn’t even know you,” he replies, two minutes too late. “He only knows who you used to be.” Shigaraki sighs and closes his eyes. 

“I’m the same.”

“No, you’re not. God, don’t start with the melodrama.”

“Melodrama?” Shigaraki reaches back and pushes Dabi’s hand out of his hair, turning to face him. “I’m not the one trying to live a life that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Dabi blinks down at him. “Holy shit, what the hell is your problem?”

Shigaraki just shakes his head, getting to his feet and striding over to where their shoes are sitting side-by-side near the door. “Nothing. Nothing. He’s your family, after all.”

Dabi goes after him, catching him by the wrist. “You’re my family,” he says, with no idea whether or not it’s the sentiment Shigaraki wants to hear right now. It’s true, anyway. 

“Right.”

“Hey.” Dabi manhandles him into facing him - Shigaraki’s stronger than he is but doesn’t put up a fight. “It’s not like it’s one or the other. It’s not a choice.”

The rain is almost deafening. Thunder rumbles so close overhead that the glass of the windows rattles in the old frames. 

Shigaraki wrenches his wrist out of Dabi’s grasp and plucks his keys off the nail in the wall, refusing eye contact. He reaches up with one hand and untangles the half-braid, blue-white strands falling back into his face. “Of course it’s a choice,” he says quietly, definitively. “I’ve got stuff to take care of. See you later, Touya.”

Dabi lets him go, because Shigaraki is a force of nature in his own right and he’s learned the hard way that it’s impossible to hold him down. But how many times does he have to prove his fucking loyalty? 

Hours after the storm has passed, Shigaraki comes back. Dabi pretends to be asleep.

Dabi: hey
Dabi: i can’t make it this week. something came up.
Dabi: sorry

Shouto: oh
Shouto: okay
Shouto: is everything alright? 

Dabi: yeah. don’t worry. 

Shouto: okay

-

Shouto: [image attached]
Shouto: bakugou said this cat looks like a ‘gremlin with its ears on backwards’
Shouto: i think it kind of looks like you

-

Shouto: where are you? i waited at the dock for an hour. you didn’t say otherwise so i thought we could still meet this week.
Shouto: i have to go back now but. let me know that you’re okay.

-

Shouto: i went and saw mom today. i played that new piece i was working on and i think she really liked it. thanks for helping me work out the ending.
Shouto: can we meet this week? your piano is kind of terrible but i’m starting to like it more than the one at home.

-

Shouto: touya?
Shouto: if i did something wrong then i’m sorry
Shouto: i don’t understand why you’re ignoring me. i went to the warehouse again tonight but you weren’t there.
Shouto: i hope you’re okay
Shouto: if you need help with something you can ask me
Shouto: i’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want but
Shouto: just tell me if you’re okay

-

Shouto: i left something at the warehouse for you, i just slipped it under the door.
Shouto: i hope it gets to you.

Touya-nii,

Holy shit, how do I even start this? I know Shouto’s been meeting you for months now but even as I write this I kinda still think he’s lying. He’s not a liar, but. I don’t know.

No one else would know about the paper cranes, though. So it has to really be you. Thanks, by the way. Shouto said that you thought I might not remember. But I do. I still have the others. 

I don’t know how to ask this so I’ll just be blunt - can we see you sometime? Me and Fuyumi, I mean. We both want to. You can say no, but. If you’re worried that we’re angry or something then don’t be. We just want to see you again.

Natsuo

p.s. I liked the color of the crane.

“What the fuck are we doing here.”

Dabi rolls his eyes and herds Shigaraki through the warehouse door. The sun is sinking over the horizon of the buildings, casting everything in weird red-orange shadows.

“Can you relax and just trust me for like, thirty seconds?”

“Literally when have you ever seen me relaxed.”

Dabi raises a brow at him. “I can think of a few times.”

“Fuck off.”

The bay breeze is strong tonight, cutting through the last of summer’s humidity. Everything smells of salt and sun and heat, the season waning. Preparing for another change.

The piano is still occupying its usual spot in the center of the main floor. Dabi always thinks about how all the different weather must be bad for it, but it never seems to sound any worse than normal. He makes a show of sweeping away some dust before laying down underneath it, gesturing for Shigaraki to do the same.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Dabi lolls his head to the side to look up at him. “Because I’m asking you to?”

Shigaraki sighs but gives in, just as Dabi knew he would. He lies down next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and folds his hands across his stomach.

“Now what?”

“Close your eyes.”

“Is this your secret plan to finally murder me? I’ll fucking disintegrate your precious piano if you try.”

“I won’t murder you, I promise. Eyes closed.”

Shigaraki grumbles but does as he’s asked, and Dabi turns for a moment to look at his profile. Lithe and strong, pale sky hair tied up in a messy bun, so much younger than he looks and so, so many scars. Dabi followed him to war and he’d do it again if Shigaraki asked him to, wouldn’t take back any of the mistakes that led him into that old bar all those years ago. Does it make him a bad person, that he would choose to make those mistakes again, horrible and bloody as they were? He doesn’t believe in fate, he could’ve just as easily walked away when Shigaraki offered him a bed and a purpose. But he didn’t. That matters.

He thinks that’s what matters.

“When I ran away,” he starts, choosing his words carefully, “I thought I wasn’t leaving anything behind. I was scared and hurting and so fucking angry that I couldn’t see any other path forward. I was just a kid, trying to protect myself. All I knew how to do for a long time was protect myself.” 

“I know you think that- that I regret what I did. What we did. And in some ways, I guess I do. I wouldn’t be trying to make amends with them if I didn’t have regrets. But I’m not trying to go back to some old life, you know? All of this old life, new life, new-new life stuff, I don’t want to separate everything out like that.”

“You were right, what you said - they’re my family, and that matters. But…” Shigaraki doesn’t flinch when Dabi reaches out to touch him, the scratched-up skin of his wrist, old scars healed over and over again. “This matters too. I don’t regret the person I became. I don’t regret the people we’re becoming. I don’t think we have to leave everything behind in order to become something good.”

A pause. Shigaraki cracks one eye open to look at him. “Are you done?”

Dabi nods. He’s still holding on to Shigaraki’s wrist, a lifeline, his pulse racing under Dabi’s thumb.

Shigaraki looks back up at old wood above them. “Play me something on your stupid piano,” he says. “I’ve never gotten to hear you.”

It’s code for give me a minute to think, Dabi knows, so he nods again crawls out from under the piano. Shigaraki stays where he is, crosses his legs at the ankles. Dabi sits down at the bench and pauses for a moment with his hands over the keys, contemplating what to play. 

Shouto’s go-to is fucking Debussy, for some god-awful reason. But Dabi’s not Shouto, and today he’s playing for an audience. 

He plunks out the first line, note by note, slow and deliberate with just his right hand. It startles a laugh out of Shigaraki from below him, just the way he hoped it would, and so he continues on with the rest of the song, adding in the bass and bringing it up to tempo.

It’s messy as it always is when he plays, the memory of Shouto teaching him the stupid Super Mario theme song coming in and out of focus in his mind. But he remembers most of it, and Shigaraki curls a hand around his ankle and laughs again and Dabi knows they’ll be okay. 

They’ll be okay.

Dabi: hey shouto
Dabi: sorry for all the missed messages
Dabi: i’m okay. just had to take care of some stuff.
Dabi: can we meet this week? i have a lot of things i want to talk to you about.

-

Dabi: okay i get it, you’re ignoring me. payback for the last couple weeks.
Dabi: no that’s stupid, it’s not payback if i fucking deserve it
Dabi: which i do
Dabi: i know i messed up, okay? i’m sorry.

-

Dabi: i read natsu’s letter
Dabi: did he tell you what it said?
Dabi: i want to say yes but i’m fucking terrified, is that what you wanna hear? that i know i won’t ever deserve forgiveness from any of you but i’m asking anyway?

-

Dabi: shou
Dabi: please
Dabi: fuck i’m so fucking sorry
Dabi: i’m sorry
Dabi: i’ll stop bothering you

Summer turns to fall, slowly but surely, and Dabi spends his Monday nights alone. 

Natsu,

Sorry for taking awhile to reply to your letter. I don’t know when or even if this’ll get to you. I’m leaving it for Shouto at our meeting spot but I don’t know how often he goes back there anymore. I thought about leaving it at the house for you but I was afraid of the wrong person finding it. 

If you read this, please tell him that I’m sorry. I already told him, but. Please tell him again for me. 

It’s raining today, thunder and lighting and all that shit. Do you remember how Fuyumi used to hide in our room when it rained like this? I always think about that when there’s a storm. I’m the one who’s a little scaredy-cat now.

I’m afraid that if we meet in person, you won’t like what you see. I’m afraid that you’ll be afraid of me. And I haven’t done enough good things in my life to be allowed a third chance at this.

But, I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t waste my second chance either, even if it’s fucking terrifying.

So. Shouto knows where to find me. You can show him this and let him know that it’s okay to tell you the location. I’m here on Monday nights, every week. You can tell him that, too. 

I’m glad you liked the color of the crane. That makes me a little less afraid.

Touya

Dabi tapes the letter to the warehouse door, folded carefully into a little plastic bag to protect it from the rain. It’s the first thing he checks, night after night when he arrives at the docks.

Weeks go by, and Dabi reinforces the tape. 

He goes there more and more often as the weather turns cooler, the constant breeze off the bay a balm on his too-warm skin. He digs through the storage closets and finds a broom and a mop, sweeps all the dust out onto the docks and scrubs the floors clean with buckets of seawater. He scrapes together some extra cash and gets the electricity turned on. Compress buys him another stupid lamp and he sets it atop the piano, multiple extension cords connecting it to the socket on the wall.  

He works through the piano books Shouto had left him, the teach-it-yourself kind with paragraphs on correct fingerings and music theory lessons in between the songs. He notates the margins in blue ink, all the places he’s prone to messing up or getting ahead of himself.

Shigaraki comes with him sometimes, sits out on the dock with a book or naps under the piano with his hand wrapped around Dabi’s ankle. 

In mid-October, the letter disappears.

Winter comes early that year, the first snowflakes melting before they can even touch the ground. Shigaraki complains constantly of the cold so Dabi buys him a thick, woolen scarf and has to tackle him to their bed in order to wind it around his neck. 

He finishes the last of the piano books and doesn’t really know what to do next, so he just plays the final piece over and over and over until it’s stuck in his memory for good. It’s freezing in the unheated warehouse but on Mondays he leaves the door open anyway, waiting. He’s never minded the cold much.

Today is Monday. He closes the book and closes his eyes and plays the piece from memory for the thousandth time, listening past the notes to hear the waves lapping at the docks.

And then, footsteps.

“Is it this one?”

“The door’s open, is he here- ”

“Shouto, did you text him? You really should’ve texted him first, it’s rude to just- ”

“It’s fine- ”

“It’s fine, Yumi, right Shouto? He’s- ”

Dabi opens his eyes just in time for Shouto to come into view around the corner, silent as ever as he slips into the doorway. He holds up a hand to stop whoever’s walking behind him. Dabi’s heart is trying to vault itself out of his chest. 

“Hey,” Shouto starts, cautious. Dabi’s reminded suddenly of the very first time they met here, Shouto tensed and ready for a fight and still so young. He opens his mouth to respond but no sound comes out.

Fuyumi appears behind Shouto, standing on her tiptoes to look over his shoulder. “Oh,” she says quietly, a hand coming up to cover her mouth. Dabi stands from the piano bench on shaky legs. 

He blinks and she’s ducked past Shouto to get to him, the heels of her shoes clicking on the concrete until she’s standing right in front of him. 

Another voice filters in past the cotton in his ears, deeper and smoother than he remembers it. “Holy shit, Shouto, you weren’t lying.”

“Why would I have lied? I wouldn’t- ” 

Their argument is eclipsed by the way Fuyumi is looking up at him, hand poised halfway in the air like she can’t decide whether or not she’s allowed to touch him. “Your hair…” she says softly, a tear slipping down her cheek. She’s smiling, though. “It looks good.” 

It startles a laugh out of him, because his hair of all things is what she noticed first. He reaches for her hand, giving her ample time to pull it away before he folds it into his own. “You look lovely,” he manages, because she does, her hair loose and longer than when he’d seen her at the school that one time. It hits him all at once how much they’ve grown up, how he lost the years where they stopped being kids and started being themselves. 

“I gotta be honest, you look like shit, man.” 

“Natsuo, don’t be so rude!” 

“It’s okay,” Dabi says, “Natsu just knows we have the same face.”

“Hey!”

Shouto snorts into the collar of his shirt, still leaning against the doorframe and trying to hide his smile. 

“All of you are horrible,” Fuyumi declares, but folds Dabi into a hug anyway. Natsuo bounds over to clap him on the shoulder and ruffle his hair and Dabi feels like his heart is going to burst. He glances over at Shouto, never one to dole out affection so readily in all the months Dabi had gotten to know him. 

“Hey. We okay?”

Shouto nods and looks around, the electricity, the clean floors, the piano books with Dabi’s chicken scratch handwriting. The four of them in the same room, a second chance.

“Yeah.” The corner of his mouth ticks up in a barely-there smile. “We’re good.”

Okaasan, 

I’m not really sure how to start. I know you might not read this for a while still. Shouto said that he would save these letters and give them to you when you’re ready. I hope it’s sooner rather than later. I’m selfish like that.

It’s February right now. I turned twenty-nine a few weeks ago but I feel so much older . I was thinking about that one year where there was a huge snowstorm on my birthday, do you remember? We woke up early and built a snowman in the front yard and you let me eat a slice of strawberry cake before he woke up for breakfast. Do you still like winter the most? Me too.

I miss your cooking, I hope that’s not weird for me to say. I hope none of this is weird for me to say but it probably is. Shouto says that Fuyumi cooks a lot of your old recipes. He brought me some of her dango last week and it was as good as I remember yours being. Whenever you’re reading this, will you write back and send me a recipe? I own a stove now and my boyfriend can’t cook for shit I kind of need a new hobby. 

I don’t really know what kinds of things I should tell you about myself. I feel like I have a lot of things I want to say but it’s hard to say them. Or even write them down. When I first started talking to Shouto it was hard like this too, so maybe it’ll get easier.

I miss you. I’m trying to be better. 

Shouto told me he plays the piano for you sometimes. I’m not very good anymore but maybe one day I can try to play something for you, too. What would you like to hear? I’ll practice as much as I can. 

Thanks for reading,
Love,
Write back soon,

Love,
Touya