Chapter Text
Destroy, the voice whispers.
The club lights are dim and colorful. They hide the way his eyes burn, always just a little too bright, hot as blue can be. As he steps inside, the smell of tobacco, booze and heavy incense envelops him. The one they’re burning is always eucalyptus.
He’s not here every night, but he might as well be, with the way the bouncer has begun to recognize him, with the way the bartender knows his order of smoky whiskey sour without need for words. Tonight, he asks for something even stronger. It, too, burns going down. He dibs his fingers on the ashes on the burner plate, where the incense stick is still smoking. He draws a line over his wrist, rubs it in, orders a second drink.
He finds Spinner at a table next to the dance floor, him and Magne both. She’s put in effort today, he can tell, and it goes wasted hiding in a booth like this. He sheds his leather jacket and joins them.
“Dabi!” She greets him and has to half-shout over the music.
“Didn’t think you’d show up before Toga,” Spinner comments. He’s got a beer, and by the looks of things, it’s not his first.
“Toga shouldn’t fucking be coming here.” Dabi drinks and lets the liquid sit on his tongue. Its bitter taste is lost under how strong it is.
“We’ll look after her,” Magne promises. “She won’t have nothin’.”
“Like you looked after her last time?” Dabi glares at them. Last time Toga had ended up puking her guts out in the back alley, crying and laughing and stumbling like a shot deer. The memory stings.
“Give her a break, man,” Spinner sighs, finishing his beer and staring at the empty glass. “This shit ain’t easy on her either. Fuck. This glass is filthy.”
Spinner’s got a point. Toga is seventeen – the youngest of them all, and it’s not like Dabi wasn’t handling this just as badly when he’d been her age. In fact, he’d been worse off.
Time passes. Dabi’s not sure how long it’s been. In the beginning, it always crawls. He’s bored. The dancers don’t interest him. He won’t meet their eyes or return their smiles. Then the alcohol begins to work at the senses and hours bleed into one another. Toga never shows up. He doesn’t know if he should be worried or not. It happens so often now that he’s becoming numb to that too. Magne is different. She stands up and leaves the club to find her. Dabi doesn’t think she’ll succeed. Toga could be anywhere, and it’s not like she always wants to be found.
Destroy, it whispers again. His head hurts, and he rubs his temples with his fingers. The ash on his skin has ceased to soothe it, then.
“Fuck,” he hisses, and Spinner gives him an understanding look. “Give me a minute.”
Dabi stands up and stalks to the bathroom. He hates touching anything there, knowing damn well that they don’t clean anything here properly, but he needs to collect himself. The light in the toilet is deep blue to discourage using anything stronger, but even in this light, he can see his eyes burn a brighter blue. He grits his teeth. He can feel how the fire inside tears at his already scarred skin, begging for him to let it out.
He stares at the scarring on his arm darkly. It climbs past his wrist, ruins his palm, the back of his hand. It’s all his fucking fault. I’ll kill him for this.
Kill, the voice agrees. It just doesn’t care about whom.
The burn that alcohol brings stopped soothing it when Dabi was nineteen. No matter how much more he drank, it wouldn’t fool it anymore. Now booze only soothes him with its familiarity. Sometimes he flicks matches, watches them light up and flip in the air and go out on the ground. Sometimes he takes out a lighter and burns himself. Ash helps too, but only for a while.
Cigarettes still work, even though he’s smoked for as long as he’s drunk. Maybe it’s because there’s real fire and smoke. And Dabi does not want to set the club ablaze, no matter how grimy it is.
So he steps out the back door into the rainy, cold November. Whatever snow had been there yesterday has melted into a dirty slosh that slips in through the worn heel of his left shoe and wets his sock. Dabi leans against the brick wall of the building next to them and lights a cigarette, drawing in the smoke, letting it sit in his lungs. Usually that calms the thing inside him, if just enough to put the inevitable off for another night. Right now, though, for some reason, it’s not really doing it. Maybe he just needs to smoke another after this one. Dabi exhales. Wisps of smoke curl in the air.
He stares at one of the dumpsters and remembers Toga slumping down against it, her knees bloody from hitting the asphalt one too many times. He finds himself praying that Magne will find her and that she has enough sense to take her home.
It’s still not calming it down. If anything, he’s starting to feel it shift under his skin. There’s a flicker of a flame licking his finger, and he forces it to go out with a groan.
“Stop,” he hisses out loud. “We’re fine. We’re fucking fine. Stop freaking.” He takes another long drag, trying to drown out the growing need to incinerate with a flimsy Lucky Strike.
Something wet drips down the wall and onto his shoulder. Something warm.
Dabi brings his hand to the stain, and when he pulls it back, his fingers are soaked red. The thing inside him roars, and the cigarette in his hand goes up in blue flames that erupt from his palms.
He jerks away from the wall and whirls around, looking up just in time to meet a pair of glowing yellow eyes up...
Holy shit, it’s against the wall.
He can’t see its face, save for the eyes, but it’s a man or something pretending to be one. Sharp claws stick out of its fingers and feet, letting it cling into the brick, dark wings flaring out as soon Dabi chokes on the smoke still spilling from his lips. The wall is glistening, wet with what he now knows is blood. He hears a wet crunch and a chew. It’s eating something.
How did I not fucking see that?!
The bird man detaches itself from the wall with a horrid scraping noise. Pieces of brick fall down onto the street, and then, after them, something big that splatters more blood all over. The bird man hovers up in the air, shoulders hunched, claws curling. Dabi throws his hands up, fire roaring and forming a wall between them, free at last. The figure screeches, the sound of it horrifying and inhuman. Before he can see any more of it, it disappears into the night.
Dabi whirls around, fire licking the sleeves of his hoodie until they sizzle and burn, until his skin starts to char with the fabric, but the bird man is gone. As soon as he’s certain it won’t swoop down and tear him to pieces, he falls down to his knees, cursing and shaking his hands, trying to put the fire out. He slams his palms into the muddy slosh until it all sizzles out. His eyes are burning too, he knows, he needs water to wash his face before he blinds himself for days again.
He’s still looking around, expecting to see the creature flying towards him any moment now. Instead, his eyes land on whatever it was the bird man dropped. He stares at it, slowly making out an arm and two legs, the ripped apart torso, the neck that's clearly been eaten from. It’s missing a head.
He needs to get the fuck out of here and run.
Inside him, the voice delights, begs to be let out again. Destroy.