Curate, connect, and discover
I was gonna put this on ao3 but I decided you all can have it instead.
Dabi tries to break up with you.
Loving someone like him wasn’t easy, he was a man of contradictions. He could be cagey and distant one day, clingy and obsessive another. There were days he’d say barely two words to you, and days he’d talk until his throat couldn’t take any more. But there was at least one thing that he was consistent on:
Dabi didn’t lie.
If you asked him something he couldn’t-or just didn’t want-to answer, he’d either stay silent, or tell you that it wasn’t your business. Things like that included his work with the League, and his identity or past. Even if you pushed him on it, he’d clamp his jaw shut and turn away from you. You’d asked him once, why he didn’t just tell you something, even if it wasn’t true. You’d reminded him that it wasn’t like you’d know if he was lying, so what was the harm?
“I don’t like liars,” Is all he’d said, and you’d had no choice but to accept it. You appreciated his truthfulness, knowing well just how easy it was for a man to lie to you just to keep in your good graces. Dabi was not afraid of telling you the truth, even if it hurt or made you angry.
And that’s what makes tonight so strange.
There was something in the way he stood, stiff yet overly relaxed, that clued you into something not being quite right. Then he refused to look you in the eye, which was definitely strange for him. He may not always look at you directly while speaking, but he was never the type to go to any great length to avoid your gaze. And tonight, his eyes were everywhere but on you, no matter how hard you tried to meet them. And on top of all that, nothing he was saying even made sense to you.
He’d lived in your home, eaten your food, given you any and everything he could, told you over and over again for the last year that he loved you. And now he was breaking up with you?
No, something was wrong here. Very, very wrong.
“Dabi,” You say his name slowly, carefully. “Can you just…tell me what’s going on?”
“I am telling you,” He says, tone far too strained to be natural.
“Not…not really.”
“It’s just not working.”
“What isn’t working?”
“Us.”
“What about us?”
He lets out a hard sigh, your name mumbled from his lips. His eyes flit to yours for the barest second before they find the far wall again.
“We don’t fit,” He says, and for the first time in this entire conversation, he sounds honest.
“Says who?” You ask with a careful step forward. You reach out to touch him, hands gently grazing the front of his shirt before resting on his chest, soaking in his warmth through your fingertips. He doesn’t flinch at your touch, doesn’t lean away. If anything, he presses himself closer, his body much more truthful than his words.
“Says everyone.”
You frown, pushing yourself closer by just another step. Your hands slide up his chest to caress his face, forcing him with gentle hands to look at you. He looks like he’s in pain.
“Dabi,” You say his name again, catching how he subtly flinches at the sound of it. “My love-”
He rips away from you, shoving you hard backwards in the process. It’s such a sudden action that you’re unable to catch yourself before tumbling to the ground, hissing in pain when your ankle twists the wrong way. Traitorous tears fill your eyes and threaten to fall from your lashes as you look up at him from your new spot on the ground. The way he looks back at you can only be described as abject horror.
“No-fuck-I-” He vacillates between reaching for you and backing further away, unsure of what to do with himself now. “Shit.”
His breathing is coming hard, eyes blown wide. One hand digs into his hair, pulling at his scalp, the other scratching at the staples in his face, almost like he was trying to tear them out. Your breath catches in your throat when you realize that he’s having a panic attack.
You say his name, but he doesn’t hear you. His eyes are unfocused, his chest heaving. He manages to stumble back one more step before hitting the far wall and going still. You take that as your chance to move, scrambling up and limping over to him slowly, hands outstretched to take hold of him as soon as he’s within distance. When the first drops of blood hit your floor, you move faster, launching yourself forward heedless of how badly your ankle hurts.
“Hey, hey,” You keep your voice low, grabbing at his wrists and trying to pull them away from his hair and face. He’s shaking, even harder than the days when he stumbles home overheated and overtired. He’s looking at you, but you aren’t sure he’s really seeing you.
You coax him into sitting on the floor with you, letting him stay with his back pressed into the wall while you knelt in front of him. You’ve managed to pry his hands away from their self-destructive task and now hold them close, pressing them gently against your own chest so that he can feel your heartbeat and steadier breathing.
“I’m okay,” You murmur softly, trying to keep your face neutral at the sight of his bloodied face. He’d managed to get a few staples out, causing new wounds in the process. “It’s going to be okay.”
You wrack your brain for what to do now. There was no promise that this pause in self harm wouldn’t start back up at the wrong word or movement. Dabi was stronger than you, if he wanted to pull away from you and dig his fingers into his skin until he bled all over, he very well could, and though you’d resist, he’d definitely win that fight. There had to be something you could do, something that would shake him out of his fog just enough for you to bring him back to reality, without making it worse than it already was.
“Do you think All Might would win in a fight against a mantis shrimp?” You blurt, surprising you both. Dabi looks at you, blinking slowly.
“I mean,” You continue. “Mantis shrimps can punch super hard, right? Like they can really fuck someone up despite being so little. But since All Might is also, like, the strongest in the world, would that make it a fair fight?”
The corner of his lips turns upwards, light slowly returning to his eyes, and you just keep going.
“They have to be in special cases when in captivity, cause otherwise they’ll break out. Did you know that they can punch so fast that they boil the water around them? And they do this totally naturally. They evolved to be able to do that. What kind of predators do these things have?”
“All Might…” His voice is hoarse. “Apparently.”
You grin at him, snickering a little. He lets out a huff of air, something similar to a laugh but not quite.
“The shrimp would win,” He says.
“Oh, one hundred percent.” Now you’re both laughing, really, properly laughing. His shoulders hunch, head dropped down, but his torso shakes with his amusement nonetheless.
You take a breath, calming yourself a bit and observing your partner. His breathing was still a bit labored, and his eyes still had a faraway look to them, but he seemed to be back in the here and now, at least for the moment. Whatever had triggered his episode, whether it had been the argument, him pushing you over, or both, seems to have floated from his mind momentarily. You had no doubt you’d need to be prepared to talk him through it all once he was back to being fully himself.
For a moment, you think you see who he could have been, if whatever had happened to him hadn’t happened. You could imagine him with brighter eyes, a bigger grin not suppressed by scars and staples. He was already perfect to you, but your heart ached for him. For the him that was lost to his past.
“I love you,” You say.
He looks at you for a long moment, his laughter dead in his chest. He pulls one hand away from your chest, and lifts it to caress your face. His thumb runs a soothing line along your cheekbone, twitching a bit when he spots the drying blood he’s accidentally rubbing into your skin.
“I know,” He mumbles.
You want to crack a joke at him, but it doesn’t come out. Instead, the tears return, this time spilling over your lashes and soaking your face. There was such a finality in his tone, one that made you think that maybe this was all real, that he wasn’t lying, and he really was going to leave and never come back. You can feel your heart shattering with every second he doesn’t say anything else, with every second he just holds you in his hand and watches you cry.
He couldn’t do this to you, not after all the endless nights and early mornings. Not after all the hours spent with his body connected to yours, branding you from the inside as his. He couldn’t just break you after he’d finally put you back together.
You push his hand away and wipe at your eyes, trying your hardest to control your breathing and calm down. You had to finish this conversation calmly, you had to make sure he was okay. It felt horribly selfish to sob like this after he’d just been the one in a full blown panic attack. You needed to stop, to stifle your emotions until he left so that his last memory of you wasn’t this.
“Are you…are you okay, now?” You ask with a shaky voice. This was probably the calmest you were going to be at the moment.
“Yeah, baby, I’m good,” He says.
The world feels like it’s tilted sideways, nothing going the way you wanted it to. You were supposed to be having dinner, curled on your couch next to the man you adored more than you ever thought you could. He’s supposed to have an arm draped around you, not quite holding you but still keeping you close to him. There is supposed to be a shitty movie playing on the TV that the two of you make fun of together between idle kisses and steamy touches. It wasn’t fair.
“I love you,” You can’t stop yourself. “So much.” .
“I know, baby,” He repeats his own words, reaching to brush hair from your tear-soaked face. He looks like he wants to say something else, but his jaw clenches, silencing himself before he lets whatever it is spill from his lips.
So the two of you sit on the floor of your apartment in heavy silence.
Your ankle throbs under you, reminding you of the tumble you’d taken just a moment ago. That seemed to be what had set him off, the more you think about it. He’d been calm when informing you that he was leaving you, and even when you argued with him about it. But it had been when he pushed you, and you got hurt, that he’d crumpled.
“I’m sorry for upsetting you,” You manage to mumble.
“You didn’t,” He says just as softly, and you know from the look on his face that he’s not talking about his panic attack. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Can you just make something up?” You know you sound pathetic, pleading with him like this, but you can’t help it. “Please, I don’t care if it’s something stupid. I just…I need to know that you have a reason for leaving. Something I can be mad about so this doesn’t hurt so much!”
He sighs your name with a shake of his head.
“I can’t.”
“Hah…” You shift and stand, trying not to put too much weight on your injured foot. “What was it you were saying to me earlier? That we don’t fit? Is that really what you want to stick with? What you want me to remember?”
“What do you want me to say?” He asks, standing now as well.
“Anything!” You yell, throwing your hands in the air.
“Like what?!” He yells back, taking a step towards you, invading your space.
“Tell me that I’m annoying! Tell me that I talk too much, or that I’m messy, or stupid! Lie to me! Or be honest and tell me that you don’t love me!”
You think he’s stopped breathing, you’ve never seen him so still. It feels like standing in a silent forest, horrible and unnatural and frightening.
“Is that…what you think?” His voice is low, almost deadly. “You seriously think. That I’m doing this because I don’t love you?”
“Unless you tell me otherwise, then-”
“Are you stupid?”
The sudden, vicious anger in his words startles you, all words dying on your tongue as you just stare at him in surprise, your own frustration burning through your body. What gave him the right to sound like that when he was the one who started all this?
You start to say his name, but one of his hands flies up to cover your mouth, just like he’d done when you’d babbled at him on the first night you met.
“I’m doing this because I love you. Because being with me is dangerous for you, and I can’t fucking sleep at night anymore thinking about what could happen if someone finds out about you. It’s bad enough that heroes have been sniffing around this neighborhood recently, but if another villain gets their hands on you? Because of me?”
With his hand over your mouth, you can’t say anything. Though, even if you were free to, you’re not sure how you’d even respond to him at all.
“You make me want to give up on everything. And I swear, if you asked, I’d do it. I’d give up on the revenge that I rightfully fucking deserve just to make you happy, because I can’t stand the idea that what I do could make you miserable.”
His breathing is hard and angry, eyes wide and wild, and yet not for a single moment do you worry that he could hurt you. He’d scared you for a moment, sure, but now that you were really processing his words, you realize you had no reason to feel that way. He wasn’t angry with you. He hasn’t been this whole time.
You lift your hands to gently take hold of his wrist, tugging on him to signal that you wanted to speak. His eyes narrow at you, but he allows his palm to be pried from your mouth, and moved to press into your cheek. You make him stand like that for a long time, letting yourself just digest everything he’s said.
There were a hundred and one things you could say in response to him, but none of them really felt right. Telling him you loved him wouldn’t do much, telling him you understood would be a lie. Allowing him to leave was a big no-go, but brushing this all under the rug felt even worse. When you finally settle on what to say, you’re careful to do it slowly.
“You know…I don’t know that much about you,” You say. “I don’t know why your revenge is so important, I don’t know what kind of people you deal with or have made angry that might try to hurt me. And I don’t know why you pushing me over sent you so over the edge.”
You look up at him, letting go of his wrist in favor of reaching for his face, to caress it the way he stayed caressing yours.
“But, I still want you here. I want to love and be loved by you, regardless of if it means that I have to be a little extra vigilant. I don’t care if I have to practice what to say if a hero comes to the door, I don’t care if I have to be ready to jump out the window with you because you need to run and you don’t want to leave me behind. You being a villain, and having enemies, all that doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that you come home at night, that you remember things about me when I tell them to you, even in passing, and that you’re alive. You don’t even have to be safe, if you can’t promise that. Just come home with enough pieces that I can put you back together.”
He huffs, pulling away but not too far, and covers his face. His shoulders shake and it takes you a moment to realize he’s laughing at you. Your face flushes, a touch of embarrassment making you anxious and antsy.
Then, he mumbles something.
“Wh-what?” You ask.
“I can’t cry,” His voice is soft, muffled by his hands but now just loud enough to hear.
“Huh…?”
“My face is too fucked up.”
“Your face isn’t…it’s not-”
“Baby,” He drops his hands, looking at you with tired eyes and a lopsided grin. “I know what I look like.”
You let his self deprecating comment slide, just this once.
“Do you want to cry?” You ask, instead.
“Right now? A little bit.”
You pull him impossibly close, one arm around his neck, hand petting the back of his head, the other up under his arm to grip his shoulder from behind. He buries his face into your neck, arms wrapping around you as tightly as he could without hurting you, and the two of you just stand like that for a while.
You hiss involuntarily when he leans on you a little too hard, your ankle protesting the extra weight. The sound has him jerking away, eyes wide and full of worry. His expression was so foreign to you it was almost laughable. But it was honest, that much you knew.
“I’m okay,” You say. “I think I rolled my ankle when I fell-”
“Fuck, baby, I-” He cuts himself off, taking a breath before continuing. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know,” You say.
“Let me look at it.”
You let him lead you to the couch and sit you down, kneeling at your feet so that he can take the injured one into his hands. He bends and twists it slowly, gauging your reactions, muttering soft apologies every time you wince or let out a pained noise.
“Should ice it,” He says. “Prop it up, don’t use it for a couple days.”
“Yes sir,” You can’t stop yourself from teasing him a bit, grinning ear to ear when he levels you with a dangerous look.
“Watch it, baby. I just narrowly avoided losing you. I’m wound up enough.”
“Oh?” You lean forward a bit. “I think we’re both a little wound up.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm.”
“Good.”
He gathers you in his arms and throws you over his shoulder, carrying you squealing and laughing into the bedroom, where he dumps you on the mattress and follows quickly after. He spends the rest of the night kissing you all over, hands refamiliarizing themselves with your body. His teeth leave marks along your shoulder and chest, and the wall ends up with a burn mark from him getting a little too excited.
This was how things should be.
-
He’s always awake before you, but this was the first time he really laid here like this, looking at you. He watched as the first rays of sunlight stream through the tiny gap in the curtains, illuminating your face in a way he’s sure he’s never seen before. He traces a finger along your features, smiling a bit to himself when your eyebrows furrow, but you don’t wake.
He, admittedly, feels bad for taking you to bed and being so rough when you were already hurt. He also never explained to you why him hurting you affected him so. To be fair, he hadn’t realized that something like that could bother him. Not after all the people he’d hurt and killed over the past several years.
But seeing you on the floor, because of him? Hurt by his hands? It had made him feel disgusting, like a monster. It was that moment that he realized that he really was as bad as he’d told himself he was. That everyone told him he was. Everyone but you, that is.
It cemented in him that his revenge couldn’t be put on hold, because if anyone took you away, it would be his father.
“You have no idea,” He whispers to your sleeping form. “What I’d do for you.”
You let out a soft, sleepy hum. His first sign that you were really starting to wake up.
“Do you even realize what I would do to this fucking country if I lost you?” He keeps his voice low. “There wouldn’t be anything left. I’d burn it. Do you understand? I’d burn the whole fucking world to ashes, and no one would be able to stop me.”
“Promise?” One eye cracks open, and he’s honestly not sure you actually heart the whole of what he’s said, nor does he think you understood in your mostly-asleep state.
“Cross my heart, baby.”
You sigh, giving him another happy, sleepy little hum, and snuggle closer to him.
“I love you,” He murmurs, kissing the top of your head.
“Mm…I know.”