Chapter Text
The smell of cigarettes overpowered the faint fresh scent that lingered on the air once the rain had stopped. It was like a staining fog that drenched his clothes with an acrid smell and made him cringe in disgust once it reached his nostrils. It was unavoidable and poisoned whatever crossed its path. It was the smell of home and night work.
There wasn’t much to see or do in a slow night like this one. He could wander around the desolated streets or wait under a light pole for someone to grab his arm and pull him away from the cold night, away from the dark streets, away from the intoxicating smoke. Anyone would be fine but, like many past nights, no one came. No one ever came.
The dark silhouette of two persons, so close to each other that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other started, got closer to where he was standing. Some weeks ago, the sight of a couple walking to the hidden motels was the most common thing to see there. Now, with the recent murders, the number of them had dropped significantly, to the point where Dabi found himself following them with his half-lidded eyes.
He got curious. The girl, oddly cheerful and wandering around a place she didn’t belong to, had been the one that caught his attention. She had a loud voice and loud thoughts about Stain, the hero killer. Even though a considerable amount of people had taken a liking to Stain and his inspiring work, himself included, it was rare to find someone talking so openly about him. That was strange, she was strange. There was something off-putting in the way she laughed and leaned on a man that looked more like a prey than a lover.
Just… what is she doing here, of all places?
Curiosity is natural to the soul of man or so someone said. That could explain why his subconscious pushed him to follow the couple or why his heart started to beat so fast, realization hitting him like a bucket of ice cold water, when the girl pulled her victim between abandoned buildings that lead to a dead and mortal end. Before he could turn in her direction, a soft and prolonged laughter invaded his freezing ears.
The blood in movies is always too watery and undeniably red, so different from the picture before his eyes. The body lying on the floor hadn’t turned white nor told a story of an atrocious homicide. The dead man looked so tranquil that anyone could think he was sleeping, if they overlooked the blood gushing out from his open wounds. She wasn’t covered in the blood of her victim, only her clothes had been stained with a darker and sticky color and her skin stood out with the little drops that had splashed on her. She was smiling and had a lovesick look stuck on her face. To say that she looked pretty felt like an insult to her beauty.
Dabi realized at that moment that he probably was the biggest idiot in the planet.
He had a strong hold on her wrist and his heart was beating hard enough to jump off his chest at any moment now while they ran away from the murder scene. He didn’t even bother to turn to look at her, ask her name or wonder why she let him yank her arm. Dabi took out his phone and dialed the first name that he remembered that owned him a favor.
At least, tonight wasn’t boring anymore.
Dabi stared at the bloody body lying on the floor with a pensive look. He closed his eyes and hoped that the dead body would be gone once he opened them again. That didn’t happen. Instead, Himiko, her, was sitting on the armchair of an old couch as if she hadn´t killed someone a couple of minutes ago. Not knowing what else to say in such situation, he only managed to state the obvious. “You killed him.”
He hadn’t been particularly fond of the man that now bled on the floor or of the things he would have to do to keep said man quiet. After all, giving your house to hide a murderer isn’t something that many would do for free. But that was fine. They would leave this hellhole as soon as he found a better place to escape to, even though he still doesn’t understand why he had to pick her up or why she now felt like his responsibility. Or, at least, that had been the original plan. Goddammit, he had only left the house for some minutes and now he comes back to a horror movie scene.
She really is something else.
Himiko simply shrugged and looked to the opposite direction as if it wasn’t her problem. “He got too close.”
Dabi figured as much, yet it annoyed him that now he had another problem to deal with right now. He deserved a break. “And you had to kill him?”
For a moment, Himiko wore a pensive look on her face but, instead of answering, she evaded his question with another one. “Are you mad?” He had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes because yes, he was kind of mad. And Himiko either didn´t get the message or simply was that nosy, but she kept asking too much questions. “Was he your friend?”
Dabi paused, lips tightening into a straight line. He didn’t want to tell her the nature of his relationship with the now cold body. It felt… wrong. How funny. She was the murderer with questionable principles, yet the one feeling ashamed and guilty was him. “Not really but…” Dabi sat on his heels and scratched the back of his head. “This is such a mess.” He clicked his tongue annoyance. “Now what?”
Himiko stared at him with the smile that seemed to be stuck on her face while she swung her legs in an almost childish manner. “I don’t know…”
“What?” What?
She looked at the ceiling as if the words she was looking for were written in the dirty roof, ignoring the glares of her new companion. “I am not exactly familiar with the whole ´getting rid of the body´ thing, to be honest.” She lowered her gaze to him again for a second before her eyes focused on her polished nails. ”I just leave after they die.”
Dabi blinked a couple of times before he remembered how his voice worked. “Seriously?” Goddammit He groaned loudly and stood up. They had so much work to do. “Close everything and help me take him to the bath.”
“Ok~”
It had been almost a year since he last helped in doing something like this but, luckily, he still remembered everything with great detail. After they dropped the body in the bathtub, Dabi began to shave off all of the hair of the dead man so that it wouldn’t stink so badly when he burned the body while Himiko drained it of fluids. She was good with knifes and knew where to cut and push to drain the body more easily. After more gutting, breaking joints to separate the body in several parts and mingling gallons of bleach to control the nauseating stench, Dabi unplugged the drain until the tub was empty. He ended up burning the chunks of meat and bone until the skin fried and shrunk like a burning tree branch or, at least, until they became unidentifiable.
Meanwhile, Himiko was standing on the farthest side of the bathroom with her hands covering her nose and mouth. “Stinks” Dabi would have snickered at her discomfort but he was sure that he would throw up if he breathed more of the sickening smoke than his lungs needed. And, in all honesty, he really didn’t want to make the scene more disgusting than it already was.
Once his stomach had calmed down, Dabi took advantage of Himiko´s distress to put a stop to her unnecessary killing spree. “If you don´t want to bear that smell anymore then don´t kill anyone else here.”
“Ok, ok, I get it.” Himiko gagged and pressed her hands tighter against her face in an attempt to block the horrendous smell. “Can I leave now?”
Dabi raised an eyebrow at her comment. “No way, this is your fault.” He paused for a moment to cough due to the amount of concentrated black smoke. “You are staying till the end.”
“Ugghh” He found rather fascinating and disconcerting her childishness in contrast to her murderous intentions. She was a murderer, twisted in her own sociopathic way, but she only was just a brat in the end. “Just, please, stop the smell.”
They spent the rest of the day cleaning and erasing the existence of a man that was no good, but the strong smell of burnt meat and bleach lasted for 3 days.
“Now what?” Himiko looked bored and tired, mostly bored. They were sitting on the floor, with their backs pressed to the wooden door that lead to the bathroom that still reeked of death. Neither of them said it out loud but they knew that the stench would never truly disappear. It would be a little reminder, a house secret.
But that didn’t truly matter. Things went back to normal disturbingly fast after the got rid of the body. Dabi pressed the back of his head against the wooden door, closed his eyes and took a deep and unsatisfactory breath that tasted like smoke. He was too tired to care about the smell of burnt meat or the ache of his muscles. After thinking of the past few days, he opened an eye to look at his bored companion. “You also admire Stain, right?”
As if the mention of that name had lightened the fire in her once tired soul, Himiko turned around excitedly. Her eyes gleamed with enthusiasm and she wore that lovesick expression that he now knew was too dangerous to trust. She said “I love Stain!”