The apartment smells like them—cigarette smoke and clean cotton, leather and peppermint. Shoto closes the door and leans against it. The ring on his finger catches the afternoon light from the window, a cold, beautiful weight. His gaze goes straight to the closet. To the shelf. To the lockbox.
It’s a small, gunmetal-gray safe, impersonal and sturdy. He carries it to the bed, the metal cold against his ink-stained fingers. His heart is a slow, heavy drum in his chest. This is a violation. He knows it. He also knows he’s been starving for the truth for two years.
He sits on the edge of the mattress, the safe in his lap. A four-digit code. He tries the obvious ones first, his movements mechanical. 1-1-1-1. A soft, negative click. 1-2-3-4. Nothing. 4-3-2-1. The silence from the mechanism feels like a judgment.
“Okay,” he whispers to the empty room. “Think.” Dabi’s birthday. He inputs the month and day. The lock doesn’t budge. Dabi’s birth year. Another failure. He sits back, a hollow laugh escaping him. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. Nothing with Dabi ever is.
He stares at the numbers. For shit and giggles, he thinks, a bitter twist in his gut. A final, futile gesture before he admits defeat. His own birthday. He punches in the four digits—the month, the day.
The lock clicks open.
The sound is obscenely loud in the quiet room. Shoto’s breath stops. His fingers freeze on the lid. That’s not a coincidence. That can’t be a coincidence. A cold, sick understanding begins to pool in his stomach, slow and thick as oil. He lifts the lid.
Inside, there’s a single, worn manila envelope. No other clutter. No keepsakes. Just this. He pulls it out, his hands steady now in a way that feels alien. The envelope is unsealed. He upends it onto the comforter.
The contents slide onto the comforter. A faded color photograph, the edges slightly curled. And a single, folded piece of paper. Shoto’s heart is still that heavy drum, but his mind is a white, buzzing static. He picks up the photo first.
It’s his family. The one above the fireplace in his parents’ home. His mother, young and smiling softly, holding a baby wrapped in a blue blanket—him. His father, stern-faced but present. Fuyumi, Natsuo, both looking at the camera with childhood grins. And a boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, with shock-white hair and bright blue eyes, standing rigidly beside their father. Toya. His stomach bottoms out. Why does Dabi have this? His family said Toya died. They never talked about him. The grief was too thick, too painful. A sacred silence.
His hands are shaking now. A fine, uncontrollable tremor. He sets the photo down carefully, as if it’s made of glass. The folded paper. It’s heavier stock, official. He unfolds it. The words are a blur at first, then they snap into vicious, bureaucratic clarity.
**CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH.**
**NAME: TODOROKI, TOYA.**
The name hangs in the air, printed in stark, bureaucratic type. Todoroki, Toya. Shoto’s fingers feel numb where they grip the paper. His mind, usually so quick to assemble logic, to compartmentalize, is a scattering of broken pieces. The photo. The certificate. The lockbox that opened to his birthday. They form a shape. A shape he refuses to see.
He folds the certificate. The crease is sharp, precise. He slides it back into the envelope, then the photo. His movements are methodical, robotic. He places the envelope into the lockbox, closes the lid, hears the lock engage with a final, soft click. He stands, carries the box back to the closet shelf, positions it exactly as it was. A perfect restoration. If he puts it all away, it can be unreal. A mistake. A coincidence. A sick joke from the universe.
His own birthday. The thought is a cold spike driven up through his sternum. He walks to the bathroom, splashes water on his face. The man in the mirror looks pale, his heterochromatic eyes too wide. His brother Toya died. He remembers the funeral, the stifling black clothes, his mother’s silent, shattered weeping. He was ten. They said it was an accident. They never spoke of him again. A sacred, buried grief. This isn’t possible. Dabi is… Dabi. Scars and ink and raspy laughter and the way he says ‘baby’ like it’s a secret. Not a ghost. Not a lie.
The front door opens. Shoto’s entire body goes rigid. He hears the familiar shuffle of boots, the jingle of keys tossed onto the side table. “Shoto? You ready?” Dabi’s voice, that low drawl, rolls down the hallway.
Shoto breathes in. Out. He schools his features into something neutral, something tired. He walks out of the bathroom. Dabi is by the door, duffel bag at his feet, shrugging off his leather jacket. His blue eyes find Shoto immediately, scanning him. “You look like shit. Nervous about the trip?”
“Just tired,” Shoto says, and his voice sounds almost normal. Almost. “Just packed.”
Dabi steps closer, his scent of smoke and embers wrapping around Shoto. A calloused thumb brushes under Shoto’s turquoise eye. “You sure? Your brain’s going a mile a minute. I can hear the gears.”
“It’s nothing.” Shoto forces himself to meet that gaze. The blue is so familiar. It has always been familiar. He’d thought it was just a color. Now it feels like an accusation. “Just… thinking about work. Let’s go.”
A flicker of something—concern, suspicion—passes over Dabi’s scarred face. But he nods, steps back. “Alright. Car’s downstairs. Got the cabin for three days. No other people. Just us.” He says it like a vow, a wall against the world. He picks up his bag, then Shoto’s. “You got your ring?”
Shoto looks down at his hand. The orange sapphire and blue diamond catch the light. A beautiful cage. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I’ve got it.”
He follows Dabi out of the apartment, locking the door behind them. The click of the deadbolt is another final sound. As they descend the stairs, Shoto’s mind splits cleanly in two. One part is here, watching the back of Dabi’s black hair, the confident set of his shoulders, the man he loves, the man he’s going to marry. The other part is still in that room, staring at a folded piece of paper, screaming a single, silent word: *Brother*.
He gets into the passenger seat. Dabi starts the engine, and the city begins to blur past the window. Shoto presses his forehead to the cool glass. There has to be another explanation. A stolen identity. A cruel collection of mementos from a tragic story. Anything. Anything but the truth that is settling into his bones, cold and heavy and undeniable, as Dabi’s hand reaches across the console to squeeze his thigh, possessive and warm.
Dabi’s hand is warm and heavy on his thigh, a brand through the denim. Shoto closes his eyes. The warmth is an anchor, a comfort so profound it feels like a betrayal of his own screaming mind. He leans into the touch, just slightly. Just enough to feel the solid reality of the man beside him, and not the ghost in the lockbox.
“You’re quiet,” Dabi says, his thumb rubbing a slow circle. The highway hums beneath them.
“Just… decompressing,” Shoto murmurs, the lie smooth and automatic now. He turns his head, resting his cheek against the cool window instead of his forehead, watching Dabi’s scarred profile in the fading light. This is his fiancé. The man who pierced him, tattooed him, proposed to him. Not a dead brother. Not a secret.
The cabin is a dark silhouette against a pine-studded mountainside, isolated and perfect. Dabi unlocks it, ushers Shoto inside with a hand on the small of his back—right over the fresh tattoo. The touch makes Shoto flinch, a full-body jolt he disguises as a shiver. “Cold,” he whispers.
Dabi just hums, already moving to start a fire in the stone fireplace. He moves with a familiar, efficient grace. Shoto stands in the middle of the room, hugging himself, watching. He pushes the thoughts down. He shoves them into a box, locks it, and throws away the key. For now. For this trip.
“Sit,” Dabi says, nodding to the worn couch. “I’m making dinner.”
Shoto sits. He watches the flames catch and dance. He listens to the familiar sounds of Dabi in a kitchen—the click of the stove, the running water, the chop of a knife. The smell of cold soba noodles, his favorite, begins to fill the space. It’s a deliberate peace offering, a domestic ritual. It makes Shoto’s chest ache.
They eat at the small wooden table, knees touching underneath. The noodles are perfect. The silence is thick, but not hostile. Dabi watches him, his blue eyes reflecting the firelight. “Better?” he asks, his voice low.
Shoto nods, slurping a noodle. “Yeah. Thanks. This… helps.”
After, they wash the dishes side by side, a routine from their own apartment. Dabi’s hip bumps his. A simple touch. Brother, Shoto’s brain supplies, unbidden. He focuses on the soap suds. He pushes it down.
They end up on the couch under a thick blanket, a movie playing on the laptop—some action flick Dabi picked, the explosions a distant rumble. Dabi pulls Shoto against his chest, arms wrapped tight around him. Shoto lets himself be held. He focuses on the steady heartbeat against his back, the rise and fall of Dabi’s chest. The warmth. The safety. This is real. This has to be real.
His mind is a battlefield, but his body, traitorously, melts into the familiar embrace. He drifts, not sleeping, in a numb haze where the only truths are the arm around his waist and the scent of smoke in the fabric of Dabi’s shirt.
Later, in the dark of the bedroom, Dabi’s hands find him. They always do. It’s a nightly worship. Fingers trace the lines of his hips, the dip of his waist, the sensitive skin of his inner thighs. Shoto lies still, his eyes wide open in the darkness, staring at the ceiling beams. The touch is heaven. It is hell.
“So perfect,” Dabi murmurs into the nape of his neck, his voice sleep-rough and reverent. His hand slides up Shoto’s stomach, under the thin cotton of his shirt, to cup one of his small, soft tits. His thumb brushes a stiff nipple. Shoto shudders. Desire, deep and animalistic, coils hot in his gut, momentarily vaporizing the ice in his veins.
Dabi shifts, his body a warm line against Shoto’s back. He kisses his shoulder, then the scar by his eye. “Gonna taste you,” he whispers, a promise that usually makes Shoto arch and plead. “Love the way you drip for me.”
He starts to shift down the bed, his hands guiding Shoto onto his back. The blanket is pulled away. The cool air hits Shoto’s skin. He sees the dark shape of Dabi moving between his legs, a familiar silhouette of hunger and devotion.
This is the moment. The touch. The intimacy. The mouth that knows every inch of him. The mouth that belongs to…
A sound tears out of Shoto’s throat—a raw, broken gasp that isn’t pleasure. It’s the sound of a dam breaking. Then a sob, wrenched from somewhere deeper than his lungs. It’s followed by another, and another, great heaving waves that shake his entire frame. He curls in on himself, hands flying to his face, hot tears streaming through his fingers. He can’t stop. He can’t breathe.
The bed dips violently. “Shoto? Fuck—Shoto, what’s wrong?” Dabi’s voice is sharp, panicked. Hands grab his wrists, pulling them away from his face. In the faint moonlight, Dabi’s expression is sheer, unadulterated terror. “Did I hurt you? Did I touch something—the piercing, did I—”
Shoto just shakes his head, sobbing too hard to speak. He’s never cried like this—not in front of Dabi, not ever. It’s ugly, snotty, world-ending. He sees the ring on his finger, a blur of blue and orange through the tears. The evidence of their life together. The evidence of the lie.
“Talk to me, baby, please, you’re scaring me,” Dabi pleads, his own voice cracking. He gathers Shoto against him, holding him tight, rocking them both. “What is it? Tell me. I’ll fix it. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it.”
But Shoto can only cry, his body wracked with the force of it, all his calm, all his intelligence, all his control utterly shattered against the warm, terrified chest of the man he can no longer name.
The words come out between sobs, choked and broken, but clear. "Why did you lie to me, Toya?" Shoto’s voice is a raw, shredded thing. He doesn’t open his eyes, his face pressed into the scarred skin of Dabi’s chest. "Why did everyone lie to me?"
The name hangs in the dark room like a guillotine blade. The body beneath him goes utterly, deathly still. The hand that had been stroking his back freezes. The only sound is Shoto’s hitching breath and the frantic, hammering heartbeat under his ear—Dabi’s heart, Toya’s heart.
"What did you call me?" Dabi’s voice is barely a whisper, stripped of all its rasp, all its control. It’s just hollow. Terrified.
Shoto forces himself to pull back, to look up. His vision is blurred with tears, but he sees the utter devastation on Dabi’s face—the wide, shocked blue eyes, the parted lips, the color draining from what’s left of his unscarred skin. "I found it," Shoto whispers. "The lockbox. My birthday. The photo. The birth certificate." He swallows a sob, his throat burning. "You’re my brother. My dead brother. And you… you fucked me. You proposed to me."
Dabi flinches as if struck. His hands, which had been holding Shoto, slowly fall away. He stares, his expression crumbling from shock into a dawning, horrified comprehension. "You went through my things," he says, but there’s no anger in it. It’s a flat, dead statement of fact. A door slamming shut inside him.
"You gave me no choice!" The words tear out of Shoto, a sudden, desperate fury cutting through the grief. "For two years! You wouldn’t tell me a single thing! I’m supposed to marry you! I asked you to meet my mother and you looked at me like I’d pulled a knife on you!" He’s shaking again, his fists clenched in the sheets. "I had to know who I was giving my life to. And it’s you. It’s always been you. Toya."
Dabi looks away, his jaw working. In the moonlight, a single, treacherous tear carves a path through the scar tissue on his cheek. He doesn’t wipe it away. "You weren’t supposed to find out," he says, his voice a rough scrape. "It was… preserved. It was safe."
"Safe?" A hysterical, broken laugh escapes Shoto. "What part of this is safe? What part of any of this is safe, Toya? We’re brothers. We’ve been… we’ve been everything to each other. Everything." The images flood him—Dabi’s mouth on him, Dabi’s cock inside him, the tattoo, the piercing, the ring on his finger. A wave of nausea, hot and acidic, rises in his throat. He gags, covering his mouth.
Dabi’s eyes snap back to him, a wild, pained intensity burning in the blue. "Don’t," he commands, but it sounds like a plea. "Don’t do that. Don’t make it ugly. What we have… it’s the only real thing I’ve ever had. The only thing that’s ever been mine." He reaches out, his trembling fingers hovering near Shoto’s face but not touching. "You feel it. You know it’s real. The name doesn’t change what’s between us."
"It changes everything!" Shoto cries, recoiling from the almost-touch. "It makes it wrong. It makes it sick. My own brother…" He can’t finish. He wraps his arms around himself, feeling violently, profoundly alone in bed.
Dabi watches him curl in on himself, and something in his own posture breaks. The defensive wall shatters, leaving only raw, bleeding truth. "I know," he whispers, the confession dragged from the deepest, darkest part of him. "I know it’s wrong. I’ve always known. From the first Grindr message. From the first time I saw your picture and knew it was you, all grown up… I knew." He runs a shaking hand through his black hair. "And I did it anyway. Because I wanted you. I’ve always wanted you. Even when we were kids, before the fire, before… everything. It was always you, Shoto."
Shoto stares at him, his sobs quieting to choked breaths. The words hang in the air—I've always wanted you—but they don't land yet. They're too big. There's a before. "What do you mean?" His voice is scraped raw. "Why does everyone say you're dead, Toya? What happened?"
Dabi—Toya—lets out a shuddering breath. He looks at the ceiling, his blue eyes glassy. "Cause they all want me dead," he says, the rasp back in his voice, thick with old poison. "From the moment you were born, I… I loved you. More than any normal brother should. It wasn't right. I knew it wasn't right even then. I’d follow you everywhere. I’d get angry if Mom held you instead of me."
He turns his head, his gaze fixing on Shoto’s scar in the dark. "As we got older, it got… worse. More inappropriate. I’d watch you. I’d make excuses to touch you. Our parents saw it. They tried to keep us apart. Separate rooms, different schedules. It just made me want you more."
"I was sixteen," he continues, the words coming faster now, a confession spilling from a wound that never closed. "You were ten. You trusted me. You followed me everywhere." A muscle ticks in his jaw. "I did something unforgivable. I was a teenager, and I wanted… I wanted the person I loved. Sexually.”
Dabi’s voice cracks, a fracture in the night. “You were ten. You’d follow me anywhere. I… I told you it was a game. A secret game just for us. I kissed you. Not like a brother. I touched you.” He swallows, the sound thick. “You were confused, but you… you said you wanted me to. You said you loved me. You trusted me.”
Shoto’s stomach turns to ice. A fragmented, hazy memory surfaces—a dark closet, the smell of old coats, a nervous, thrilling secret. A kiss that felt too long. A hand, too big, on his small thigh. He’d buried it for a decade. “I was a child,” he whispers.
“I know!” Toya’s shout is sudden, ripped with agony. He scrubs a hand over his scarred face. “I was a fucked-up kid who loved his baby brother in a fucked-up way. And they caught us. Mom walked in. She screamed. She screamed like she was the one on fire.”
His blue eyes are wild, locked on Shoto’s. “Dad came running. He saw. He saw everything. He dragged me out by my hair. He called me a monster. A deviant. He said I’d corrupted his perfect heir.” The words spill out, poisonous and fast. “He had a branding iron. For the fucking horses. He said he’d burn the sickness out of me.”
Shoto’s hand flies to the scar over his own eye. A dull, phantom heat blooms there. “My scar…”
“You tried to stop him,” Toya says, his voice dropping to a shattered hush. “You were crying, screaming for him to stop. You ran at him. You grabbed his arm. The iron… it swung. It caught you. Just a graze, but it was enough. You fell. There was blood. My blood was already on the floor, and then yours was too.”
The memory crystallizes, sharp and brutal: the searing pain, the smell of burnt flesh and hair, his father’s enraged roar, Toya’s guttural screams. The world narrows to the sight of Toya’s wide, terrified eyes meeting his across the stable floor.
“It made him worse,” Toya corrects, a bitter, broken laugh escaping him. “He lost his mind. Said I’d made you complicit. That you were tainted because of me. He went back to work. He held me down. He burned me until I stopped screaming. Until he thought I was dead.” A tear tracks freely through the scar tissue. “They dumped me at a hospital hours away. Told them I was a runaway. A John Doe. They told you I died in an accident. They made me dead to save their reputation. To save you from me.”
Shoto can’t breathe. The cabin walls feel like they’re pressing in. The man in front of him—his lover, his fiancé—is a mosaic of pain inflicted by their own father. To punish a desire that never died. A desire that found him again, tens years later, in a Grindr message. “All this time,” Shoto chokes out. “You let me believe you were dead. You hunted me down. You built a life on a grave.”
“I wasn’t hunting!” Toya insists, desperation clawing at his words. “I saw your profile by chance. I just… I had to see you. I had to know you. One time. That’s all I wanted. But then you were there, in that hotel room, and you were everything. You are everything. The sickness was never in my skin, Shoto. It’s in my bones. It’s in every beat of my heart. It’s you.”
He reaches out, his trembling, scarred fingers finally bridging the gap to brush Shoto’s cheek. The touch is searing. “You feel it too. You’ve always felt it. That pull. That’s why you said yes. That’s why you wear my ring. The name is a detail. The truth is right here.” His thumb strokes the line of Shoto’s jaw, a gesture of unbearable familiarity. “We’re not brothers in that house. We’re survivors. We’re each other’s. We always have been.”
Shoto wants to vomit. He wants to scream. He wants to lean into that touch and never let go. His body is a traitor, humming at the contact, even as his mind screams the word over and over: brother, brother, brother. The two truths wage war inside him: the beautiful, consuming love he’s built for two years, and the rotten, hidden root it grew from. He looks at Toya’s desperate, scarred face, at the love and the ruin in his eyes, and he doesn’t know which one is real anymore.
Shoto pushes himself up, the sheets clinging to his damp skin. He doesn’t look at Toya. He can’t. He grabs the pillow from under his head and yanks the top blanket free, wrapping it around his shoulders like a shield. His body moves on autopilot, his mind a white-noise scream of brother, brother, brother.
“Where are you going?” Toya’s voice is wrecked, small.
“I need space,” Shoto says, the words toneless. He stands, his legs shaky. The wood floor is cold under his feet. “I’m sleeping in the living room.”
“Shoto, please. Don’t—”
“Don’t what?” Shoto interrupts, still not turning. His knuckles are white where they clutch the blanket. “Don’t leave the room? Don’t breathe? You just told me our father tried to burn you to death for touching me. You told me you started this when I was ten. What am I supposed to do with that, Toya? Lie here and pretend I don’t want to peel my own skin off?”
He walks out. The bedroom door doesn’t close behind him. The main room of the cabin is dark, lit only by the dying embers in the stone fireplace. It smells of pine and dust. He drops the pillow onto the scratchy wool couch and collapses onto it, pulling the blanket over his head. The fabric smells like them—like sex and sweat and Dabi’s cigarettes. He gags, shoving it away, and curls into a ball on the cushions, shaking.
He hears the soft pad of bare feet. Toya stands in the doorway, a silhouette backlit by the moonlight from the bedroom. He doesn’t come closer. “I know I don’t have the right to ask for anything,” he says, his rasp barely audible. “But don’t shut me out. Not completely. I can’t… I can’t lose you twice.”
Shoto squeezes his eyes shut. The ring on his finger feels like a brand. “You never had me the first time,” he whispers into the cushion. “You had a lie.”
“It wasn’t a lie.” The pain in Toya’s voice is physical, a wound in the dark. “The name was a lie. The history was a lie. What I feel for you is the only true thing I’ve ever known. You felt it, too. You know you did.”
“I felt it for Dabi,” Shoto says, his own voice breaking. “My mysterious boyfriend. My fiancé. Not for my dead brother. You took my choice away. You built a life on a foundation of secrets and then proposed to me on top of it.” He finally turns his head, looking at the shadow in the doorway. “Did you think I’d never find out? Or did you just not care?”
Toya is silent for a long moment. When he speaks, it’s raw. “I thought if you ever found out… you’d hate me. And you’d be right to. But I’d rather have you hate me knowing the truth than love a ghost. I was… I was saving it. The truth. For when I thought you could survive it.” A bitter, hollow laugh. “Turns out I can’t survive you knowing.”
Shoto turns his face back into the pillow. The sobbing is gone, replaced by a hollow, aching numbness. “Go back to bed, Toya.”
He hears a sharp, indrawn breath. Then, silence. The silhouette doesn’t move for a full minute. Finally, the footsteps retreat. The bedroom door clicks shut, not quite latching.
Alone, Shoto stares at the orange glow of the embers. His mind races, trying to reconcile the two men: Dabi, who loved him with a possessive, reverent fire, and Toya, the scarred boy from a burned-out memory who loved him in a way that broke the world. He brings his left hand to his face, staring at the ring. The blue diamond and orange sapphire glint in the low light. A beautiful cage. A promise built on a grave. He doesn’t take it off. He’s not sure he physically can.