#vic.thirsts

When he finally decides to open the door, he does so with a slam. It would’ve made you jump if you hadn’t been so focused on the skyline. Tracing the buildings, looking for stars you know you won’t be able to see. They get swallowed up, this deep in the city. Drowned out by light. 

(When you were a child, you didn’t quite understand how stars could vanish in the night. Weren’t they the brightest things in the universe? Burning and brilliant, even light years away? 

You understand it better now. How mankind has this nasty habit of ruining, of polluting, of blotting out things of wonder and then desperately trying to remake it in our own image.

It’s never as beautiful as what was, but it’s far too late for us to admit defeat now.)

He’s mad, burning up with fury. You can feel the heat of it, cutting straight through the heavy chill of the night air. It’s stifling, your balcony so small that he’s practically breathing down your neck with how close he is. Accompanying his presence, always, is the faint smell of burnt flesh he can never quite mask, no matter the amount of cheap aftershave he tries to drown himself in. 

He’d texted you, and you’d ignored him. For a week, you’ve ignored him and if there’s one thing Dabi hates, it’s when he gets ignored. 

He’s the one that ignores you, it should never be the other way around. 

You know that, of course. You know all his little unwritten rules. 

(Don’t ignore him is at the top of the list. Except, of course, during those nights when he thinks you’re asleep and he clings to you like a child, his tears burning where they touch your skin. Even his grief, you can’t help but think, is scorching.

On those nights, you’ve found it’s best to stay quiet. He wields his grief like rage and you’d rather not be caught in the crossfire.)

He’s waiting for you to talk, to stumble over your words, make some sort of vague attempt at an apology. It’s what you would usually do after you’ve broken one of his rules. 

But you say nothing, content to sit in the too-heavy silence. You’re tired. Of him. Of whatever it is you two have been doing. It’s the same stupid story, the same vicious cycle. A snake cursed to eat its own tail. 

He’s using you. He has been for a long while now. If you’re being perfectly honest with yourself, he most likely has been since the beginning. And God, it’s exhausting work, being used. 

Although, really, you’re not all that much better than he is. In the beginning, you were with him purely because he fascinated you. All his grief laid bare, and so vulnerable. So obvious and painful. Undeniable in its brutality. 

(Rage, he’d say, it’s righteous rage, not grief.

But what is rage, you’d ask him, if not one of the many faces of grief?) 

It didn’t take long for you to realize he’s chasing something. And it took you even less time to realize that whatever he’s after, is probably going to kill him one day. 

(You wonder if he knows he’s chasing his own death. You wonder if he’d care at all. 

He reminds you of Eve, eating the forbidden fruit. You think she’d take a bite of the apple, again and again and again if ever given the choice, even knowing the consequences. Even with intimate knowledge of the suffering to come. How could she not? How could any of us hold our fate in the palm of our hands and choose not to sink our teeth into it?)

He’s growing impatient beside you, burning up with it. If he touched you, you’re sure he’d melt your flesh straight to the hollow bone. 

But you don’t break. Just once, you want him to fall apart first. Just once, you want him desperate. 

(He’s always been so good at making you desperate, with a hand around your neck, just tight enough to leave you gasping for air, your back to his chest and his staples drawing blood, as he pounds into you so hard all you could do is dig your nails into his arm. 

His lips are right by your ear, you’re mine, he says. You’re mine. You’re mine. You’re mine. 

And God, with his cock hitting all the right spots in your cunt you’d believe it. You’d believe anything he’d said to you as long he just kept going. 

Say it, he hisses, say you’re mine. 

You don’t answer him right away, mostly because you can’t, not with the way he’s fucking you. You can’t catch your breath enough to form a sound, you can’t get your bearings enough to collect a single thought that isn’t Dabi Dabi Dabi. 

Annoyed at your lack of answer, he brings a searing thumb down to your overstimulated clit. You keen, arching, desperately trying to get away from the sensation that at this point is more pain than pleasure. 

Say it, he says again, there’s a strange sort of edge to it. Looking back you think it might’ve been desperation. Say it. 

When he presses down just a little harder, you finally crack. 

Yours, you gasp. I’m yours. Yours. Yours. Yours. 

He laughs, so deep in his chest that you feel it in your own. 

It echoes in your head for weeks afterward.)

“What,” he grounds out, low and furious, “the fuck.” 

It’s not a question. 

You turn towards him, at last. Though you can hardly see him, surrounded by shadows. There are glints of his piercings in the polluted light, a gleaming flash as he runs his tongue along with his teeth. But it’s his eyes that you lock on. Bright and a brilliant blue. Glowing and monstrous in the dark. 

(You’re reminded, once again, of the stars. Burning and burning and burning.)

With no preamble, you say, “I think I love you.” 

The air around you quiets. Like the city itself is holding it’s breath. 

It’s not a sweet confession under the moonlight. In the week since you came to the realization, it’s already started to fester, to rot straight through your bones. 

It’s a curse more than anything. You love a man whose chasing his own death. You love a ghost. Or, you suppose, a ghost in the making. 

Before you can say anything else (though really, what else is there to say) he cuts in sharply, meanly, “No, you don’t.” 

You can’t help but tilt your head at that. You don’t really know what to say. You don’t know if you’re supposed to say anything. His lips are pulled back, teeth bared, he’s gleaming and sharp, pulled so taught with tension you wonder how he’s even breathing. He reminds you, vividly, of a cornered animal. A scared one. Though he’s trying to mask it with annoyance, with a type of anger that toes the line of fury. 

He’s always doing that. Masking his fear with rage. Masking his grief with rage. Hiding any part of himself that might be perceived as weak, as soft, as vulnerable, under the guise of rage. 

You can’t imagine that it’s anything less than exhausting. 

Though you have to admit, you didn’t expect this response. You didn’t expect fear. You thought he’d be unbearably smug about it. Proud of himself for finally sinking his teeth into your heart. Ready to chew you up and spit you back out. You were ready for him to move on. 

You didn’t expect him to deny it. 

(He could be right, though you doubt he is.

You wonder what it means to love, you wonder how you’re supposed to love. You wonder if you can only love someone if you’ve seen the cruelest parts of them first. 

You suppose if that’s the case, then he might be right. 

You’ve never actually been able to force yourself to look up what exactly he’s wanted for. What exactly it is he’s done. 

Mostly because you’re afraid that even if you knew every last gory detail, it wouldn’t be enough to make you walk away. And how would you be able to look at yourself in the mirror, after that? Knowing exactly who you let share your bed? who cried scorching hot tears into your shoulder? 

Ignorance is bliss, they say. In your case, it could very well be your only hope for salvation.

But, you don’t really think there’s a set way a person is supposed to love. It’s what makes it so terrifying. It’s an unknown. And it’s so hard to not fear the unknown.)

“Dabi-” you start. 

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he spits out. Eyes flashing, his hands stuffed in his pockets. 

You want to laugh at the absurdity of it all, of him trying to tell you what you do and do not feel, but you think he’d turn you to ashes for the slight. His pride has always been so easily shaken.  

“Dabi-” you try again. 

But he’s two steps ahead of you. He always is. 

He’s already turned around, hiding his face from view, opening the door. And you don’t stop him. You don’t see why you should. 

You can’t shake him from the path he’s on. You don’t think anyone can, really. 

Grief is all he has, it’s all he’s let himself have. It’s fundamental to him now. It’s all he is. And you’re sure he believes whatever he’s chasing is going to fill the hollow void it’s made of him. 

It won’t. You’re sure of that, at least, because even if he does succeed, what will he be left with then? 

You don’t say any of that to him, because you’re not his fucking therapist. And because you’re not so sure he wouldn’t kill you for it. 

It’s anticlimactic, watching him disappear into your darkened apartment. 

But all you can think about when you hear the click of the front door closing behind him is how honest his fear was, almost childlike. Remnants of a poor, grief-stricken boy. 

What a monster it’s made of him. 

a/n part two:

thinking about adrianne kalfopoulou’s ‘grief will keep you reaching back / for what is not there.’