Work Text:
i wish you could know me
and i wish i could know you much more sometimes…
i.
Shouto watches from the doorway as Touya and Natsuo elbow each other, video game controllers in hand. They’re bickering about cheating and which of them is really better at the game, and their voices are rough but they both wear wide smiles. Natsuo tackles Touya, and he goes down laughing.
A heavy hand comes to rest on Shouto’s shoulder, steering him away.
“Pay them no mind,” his father instructs. “You have no time for fooling around.”
ii.
Touya is hovering over Fuyumi’s shoulder while she cooks, valiantly ignoring her attempts to swat him away.
“I wanna taste!” he whines.
“It’s hot,” Fuyumi argues. “Sit down; it’ll be done soon.”
“I can handle a little heat.” Touya manages to swipe the spoon from her grasp. He holds it high above his head so Fuyumi can’t get it back. “I’m only gonna take a small bite, I promise.”
Fuyumi jumps up, hanging onto his arm but remaining unsuccessful in lowering the spoon to a point where she can reach it. “No you won’t! You always eat enough that you ruin your dinner.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yeah-huh!”
The door slides open, and their arguing stops in the wake of their father’s entrance. But he pays them no mind, gaze falling onto Shouto alone.
“Come with me,” he says. And Shouto knows better than to argue, so he clambers to his feet and follows his father from the kitchen. They leave Fuyumi and Touya behind in a strange silence.
(By the time Shouto returns, his dinner has long-since grown cold.)
iii.
Touya, Fuyumi, and Natsuo have their homework spread out over the table, all bent over textbooks and lined paper, pencils in hand and varying degrees of frustration evident in their expressions. Shouto walks right past, with his father’s hand on his back, guiding him away from the normalcy his siblings all get to experience. He slows, gazing longingly for a moment, before his father pushes him onward.
iv.
When Shouto is five years old, his eldest brother dies by his own flames. Fuyumi and Natsuo and his parents cry for the loss, but Shouto can only stare blankly at Touya’s picture. They’re brothers by blood, raised by the same hands, and yet—
Shouto never really knew him at all.
v.
Dabi reveals the truth to the world, burning like a dying star, and Shouto can only dive headfirst, blindly, into the flames. His father sees a dead son reborn on the battlefield, but all Shouto sees is a legend he only half-believed in. The brother who exists in his faintest memories looks nothing like the villain across from him—the only familiarity is in his snow-white hair and the soft blue eyes turned dark with a rage Shouto used to see in his own reflection.
Endeavor sees family, but Shouto is facing someone he never got a chance to truly know.
He supposes it’s a different type of ache. He cannot mourn anything lost, because there was nothing for him to lose when Touya died. He can only mourn the things that never had the chance to be—the life neither of them got the chance to live.
In the aftermath, something hollow forms in his chest. Or, perhaps, some hole that has always existed in his heart reveals itself to him—the place where Touya should have resided. He did not know how empty he was until he was forced to confront the person he lost.
Still, it feels wrong to grieve someone he never knew. His other siblings and his parents have far more right to mourn than Shouto does. Fuyumi’s red eyes and his father’s sleepless nights are understandable. Natsuo’s anger and their mother’s fragile silence are only what’s to be expected from them. Shouto—
Shouto can only ache with longing for a brother he did not have. He can only wish he knew Touya before he became Dabi, though it likely wouldn’t have made any difference in the end.
+ i.
Shouto visits Touya as often as he can.
As the world is rebuilt around them, Shouto tries to build something of his own with a brother he has only just been given an opportunity to talk to. Even if his death is inevitable, even if he will wither away locked up and on life support he curses with what little breath he can spare, Shouto will not throw away his chance to get to know Touya.
They are bound by blood and fire and rage, but they are also linked by softer things. A blue iris, a love for soba, a face shaped like their mother’s. Shouto wants to know what other similarities exist between them—and all the ways they differ, too.
So he visits Touya, and he talks to him even when he refuses to respond. Or he sits in the room in silence, watching Touya as Touya watches him. It doesn’t matter much to Shouta what they do, as long as he can know what it is like to have Touya as a brother.
“Why are you always here?” he grumbles one day, voice rough and breathless. There is still anger in his eyes, but today, there is curiosity, too.
“I want to know you,” Shouto answers simply. There is nothing more or less he desires from Touya. He won’t waste his time begging for an apology or shouting at him for how unfair it was that he left. None of that matters now. “And I want you to know me, too.”
Touya just stares at him. He does not respond for a very, very, long time. But Shouto does not mind waiting.
Finally, Touya asks, “Why?”
Shouto blinks. Was that not obvious?
“You’re my brother,” he responds. “We never had the chance to know each other before, and…I don’t like that. I want to make up for it now, while I can. I want to know you like the others do, and I want you to have a chance to know me. Like we should have when we were kids. But I don’t want to push you to the point of hurting yourself either, so I can be patient.”
Touya’s lips twist up into a smirk. He huffs out something that might be a laugh.
“If you’re willing to listen,” he says, “then I’m able to speak.”
So Touya talks, and Shouto listens, and in the still isolation of Touya’s room, they are finally able to know one another.
…wish i could do nothing with you
sit in the yard while the day dies
willing and able, noah kahan