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plush-rabbit · 2 years

Text

Rot

Request: happy birthday!!! I know its weird but as a bday request I would love to have you write the most self indulgent fic for yourself if you feel like it because your fics are always a gift for us and since I cant because I cant write for shit maybe you should write something for yourself? idk its an idea more than a request tbh, but happy bday anyway!!

Word Count: 3.7K

A/N: it was my birthday and this took a while to pump out but here it is!! my thing!! because if i cant enjoy my cake, i’ll write about something!! -

He stares into your eyes, his eyes finally adjusting to the dimness of your room. The fan spins above creating a chill wind that has you clutching the blanket in your fists. His body is splayed beside you, arms and legs tense, and eyes focused on the ceiling where the paint has begun to chip. His head turns towards you before his eyes do, and you give him an odd look- expectant and eager. There’s a flex in your jaw, and he hears the little click that it makes. The question hangs in the air.

Your eyes are wide, almost unblinking and owl-like as you try to search his own face for any expressions. The tip of your tongue peeks out, wetting your upper lip and it returns back, hidden inside of your mouth, laying after your teeth. You swallow, and a lump shifts in your throat. You want an answer. Would you be able to tell if he’s lying? Would you even care? Would it just be another thing that you would take- that you would accept because it was just easier that way; because if you questioned it, pried too deep, you might end up hating him. He’s sure he could lie to you and you wouldn’t think twice about it. There’d be a spark in your eyes- content for getting something out of him and a smile would stretch your lips. You’d nod and kiss the corner of his lips, and it'd be your way of saying thank you to him. You’d thank him for being honest and he wouldn’t feel guilty about lying to you and stealing that little bit of trust that you gave to him for no particular reason.

There’s a siren outside, and it’s you who becomes stiff, whose eyes dart to the window. There’s no real reason why you'd be scared of law enforcement- you haven’t done anything to warrant such fear. The only crime you ever committed was when you accidently hit the corner bumper of a car with your own. It’s like you’re still waiting for the police to come and arrest you, as if you don’t have a murder in your bed who just moments ago had you under him.

You really are odd.

It’s not as if you don’t know him. Maybe those first few dates where he showed up to your place with nothing more than the coat on his back. His skin would smell of baby wipes and cologne that you confessed had made your throat burn. Even so, he’s made no attempt to hide who he is. Up until just a few months ago, his crimes weren’t something that the public talked about. Sure, there were deaths that were made public, innocent people who smiled at the camera and had a sort of respectable look towards them, but then there were others who went unnoticed. Scoundrels who had a nasty sneer, who didn’t hesitate to say such cruel words, and who had bloody knuckles. People who didn’t get an obituary and were instead, just labeled as missing because it was easier to say that- to look for them and just reason that they ran off.

But you hadn’t seemed to care. You brought him like a stray cat- let the smell of the cologne that burned your throat and made your eyes water linger in your bedsheets and hands that were never quite soft touch at every intimate part of you- the nape of your neck, the pittering of your heart just above your left breast, the swell of your tummy that was full of food.

Something warm touches just above where his purpled scars begin to creep upwards- right at the middle of the skin that still belongs to someone who has long been forgotten. He gives a start and his eyes finally focus where yours are crinkled with worry. “Dabi? You still with me?” You ask in a small voice, cooing to him like an injured animal. You’re still using his name even if you believe that it isn’t his. In the corner of his eye, he sees your hand lift slowly, and it falls between his chest and yours.

You’re still waiting for an answer. “What’s the sudden interest?”

You blink once. Twice. And once more, and your eyes casted downwards. The sheet rolls off your body as you turn to lay on your back. His throat is dry. He’s made you upset. You won’t tell him, but you’re an open book no matter how mysterious you want to appear. It just isn’t in your nature to hide your feelings.

“I just thought it would be nice to know something more about you.” Your tone is wistful, and your eyes are sad. He wishes he knew what you were thinking. Even if he can read every emotion, he could never read your mind. He can never know if you keep him around because you pity him, or if there’s actually something there, something so perverse and rotten, that it’ll disgust him if he ever knew the truth. “It’s okay.” It isn’t- you're still not facing him. “Names are sacred and whatever.” You’re trying so hard to sound poetic and nonchalant that it’s making acid burn the inner soft part of his throat. Your hand scratches at the side of your temple and you don’t look at him.

All you did was ask if his name is Dabi. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less. It’s just a simple yes or no answer, and while he knows that you would have wanted to hear him talk more, you would have accepted any of his answers no matter how simple.

You don’t care for any of who he was or who he will be.

“Does it matter if I have any name? I call myself Dabi. Isn’t that enough for you?” It comes out rougher than it should be and his molars grind into each other.

It’s getting harder and harder to look at you, to ignore that pitiful, melancholic look that you give him, the one where he can’t escape his reflection. “I guess so,” you answer, turning your back towards him. Your left arm curls under your head, acting as a cushion despite the pillows being just a few inches away from the top of your head. Your right arm extends outwards, hand limp and fingers reaching down for the ground.

No. No. No, no.

You’re not supposed to look away from him. You’re supposed to be looking up at him- focused and smiling, holding his hand until you fall asleep and you eventually cling to him during the night. There’s always something there, irradiant and gleaming like a pearl that’s been covered in grime and muck. You’re supposed to look at him when you fall asleep, pity replaced with something that he’ll never have or be able to mimic.

Look at him. Look at him. Look at him.

What do you want from him? His name doesn’t matter. Not in the way that you think it does.

The fan spins on and the light creates soft shadows. You must be eager to avoid him if you don’t want to waste another second awake. His tongue wets his chapped lips, the taste of copper faint. “Should I leave?” He croaks out in shame.

You twist in the bed- your legs still facing the wall, your torso twisted, and head turned to him. “What?”

He scratches the thin bed sheet with his nails. “Do you want me to leave?”

You untwist yourself, lifting yourself until you’re looking down at him, and under your gaze, he feels like he’s being pulled apart, as if you’re seeing something that even he can’t. Your head is cocked to one side, and like before, your eyes are wide, staring down at him, trying to look- to see him. He wonders if he’s as emotionless as he makes himself out to be. Your lips purse together. He isn’t like others- he can’t just ask for affection, can’t even put it into words. Neither can you, but at least you try to do something other than sexual, at least you kiss him before anything else. You feed him and hold his hand and all he can do is wrinkle your shirt and sully your body with the dirt under his nails.

“Of course not,” you say quickly, horrified that he would even suggest something like that. “It’s cold out. I’m not letting you go out in the cold.”

His gaze focuses elsewhere; like a child that’s been caught doing something naughty and can’t handle the shame and embarrassment. “I can bum somewhere for the night.” The words taste bitter on his tongue and shame burns in his face and simmers in the tips of his ears.

“Dabi?” His name has never sounded so sweet.

The blanket has fallen from your chest and lays crumpled on your lap. He is still covered, the shirt that you have bought for him loose on his body, and the rest of his patched skin hidden under the covers. He doesn’t answer you, doesn’t give you a look and a part of him hopes that you’ll tell him to leave and a deeper, starved and child-like part of him wants you to hold him and kiss the top of his head. Under the covers, his nails press into the heel of his hand. The sharp pain is enough to make his head stop spinning.

There’s a shuffle beside him, the bed giving off a low creak as you rest once more, this time turning your attention toward him. In his peripheral vision, he can see your hand lift and reach out slowly, and his jaw tightens, but you don’t seem to notice.

Instead, you rest your hand soft on the side of his face. The pads of your fingertips rest just below the half-moons under his eyes, and your palm is nothing more than a phantom that makes his skin prick. You don’t have to give him a gentle nudge to have him face you, he does it all on his own. Eyes half-lidded, wanting to close, to not have to look at you, to not have to see you and see his own reflection, but you call his name in that soft tone, and he stays looking at you despite how much that lingering sense of emptiness is starting to grow and consume him, to stain his being with grime and muck.

“Do you want to leave?” A part of him will always wish that he had never met you- that you got to live your life with someone that wasn’t so rotten and cruel. He’s many things- and soft will never be one of them, he could never be enough for you and even as he lies in your bed, cradling your hand with his, and shaking his head, he feels ugly at having kissed you. You smile, and your body digs deeper into the bed, the blanket covering just below your chest. “Then you’ll stay here, and in the morning I’ll make some breakfast for us.”

He doesn’t want to leave. Not when it’s cold outside. Not when you’re beside him, keeping his old shirts cleaned because you want to. Because you want him to have something nice.

Outside, he can hear a car’s tires squeal and the sound makes your mouth pull into a thin line. It’s better if you don’t see him. Not now. Not when he hasn’t even said ‘thank you’ for letting him stay the night. He reaches over you, your hand falls to your chest and your touch is burned into him. The light is snuffed out, with beads of amber peeking from between the blinds.

The covers and the mattress don’t feel right under him. The fabric is crumpled, wrinkled and overlapping, the stitched lines of the diamonds are coming undone, tickling him and making his skin feel as if ants are walking on him. In the dark, your figure becomes a dark mass to his eyes, and in turn, he must look like that towards you. He doesn't want to be perceived by you at the moment. Even so, it doesn’t take long for his eyes to begin to adjust. His body betrays him, using whatever little light that peeks through the blinds to make out your shape. He can start to see you, little bits that start to piece together- the bridge of your nose, the way your eyes are still open, and the way the blanket shifts as you do, starting to move closer to him.

Sleeping almost feels wrong. The world has beat on him, torn him apart and left him with a never fading scar, and the act of sleeping has been tarnished. He’s been denied so much of his life- had years stolen from him and now he pays the price for it. He’s unable to properly show and control his emotions, often feeling like they're bigger than him- feeling as if they’d burst out of him, swelling him up like a balloon until he’s being torn at the seams of his skin. Holding your hands under the covers feels like it’s too much- like he’s violating something of yours despite already having done so much more with you. This simple act of him reaching forward makes his stomach twist until he feels as if he’s going to vomit and look ugly.

His hands must feel like sandpaper against yours.

Yet, you still hold his hand, squeezing it back and inching closer to him. You still touch him; you still allow him to touch you. You know what’s done. You know who he is. What do you gain from him? Even if he had wanted to make this work, he couldn’t. He has blood on his hands that will never become clean. He has blood that seeps out of him like poison, and he’s going to live with it- and he won’t regret it. He won’t cry and wish to be forgiven, because it can never be forgiven. His actions can never be washed away no matter how many times you wash his back and kiss his crown. You slept with him, not expecting that he would stay the night, not expecting that he would come back like a stray that’s been starved and fed once.

Even tonight, you kissed him and called him pretty knowing that there was a monster feasting on your skin and blood. But even you have blood on your hands. You bite into him to muffle your moans, to keep your whimpers and sounds for him, canines into the soft spot between his neck and shoulder, his pulse quickening as you made such perverse sounds for him. You cling so tightly to him- dug your nails into the scars on his back, not caring for a moment if you were hurting him, forgetting that he was stapled together just above you. And he kissed you- sloppy and teeth bumping into each other to let you know that he was fine, because as much as it stung- as painful as it was, it felt so good to know that you didn’t want to let go of him.

He felt every part of you. Touched and memorized the grooves of your skin, every freckle, ever thin, paled scar, every bit of you that giggled when he let his finger ghost over your sides. Your skin has been nipped at with his teeth- sharp enough for you to whine and curse, to hold the swelling wound. He touches and feels you with such a primal need to mark you, to let his canines drag against the soft squish of your skin.

“What are you thinking about?” You ask, bringing his hand up to examine it under the darkness.

“Breakfast,” he lies.

“What are you in the mood for?”

Your fingertip traces over the rising scar, and he tries to ignore the way that it makes him feel, but even so, he intakes a sharp breath of air. His jaw closes, molars pit against each other in order to keep anything else in. You don’t stop your tracing.

“Whatever you have. I’m not picky.” You’ve started to trace over the lines in his palm and his fingers rise and fall.

“Are you going to stay for the day?” You’re too enamored with his hand to focus on looking at him.

“Yes.” He says too quickly for his liking. “Is that okay?” That question comes out sounding far too wretched for his liking.

“Yeah.” Your thumb runs down his. “There’s this movie I want to see. I think it’ll be fun to watch it with you.” He hums. “It’s about cannibals.” He breathes a short laugh. “It’s like a romantic comedy if that helps.”

“It really doesn’t, but I’ll watch it.”

He’d subject himself to whatever it is that you wanted. You wouldn’t have to pry his eyes open or force him; he’d do it all willingly if it meant that you’d sit beside him. He’d go through a hundred terrible movies- he stops himself. He’s been starting to grin- he doesn’t even know when that had started. He’d torture himself through movies and for what? He’s gone through far worse; the act of thinking that movies were some form of torture is repulsive.

“Your team won’t miss you?”

“Nah. I'm doing a bit of my own thing for a bit.”

He wonders if you would miss him if he never came back. You shouldn’t, but he hopes that you will. He hopes that it would be ugly- that you’d sob and have your heartbroken over him. That’s his only wish for all of this- that you’d miss Dabi enough to wretch and become a mess and a shadow of yourself.

“You’re gonna be okay?” The way you ask that question makes his stomach twist and shame burn the back of his neck.

“Always am,” he says without skipping a beat.

Silence befalls the both of you. You move closer to him, still holding his hand in yours. No other word is uttered, nothing breaks the silence except for the electrical humming in your home. That’s the end of the conversation and he accepts it the way that you accept that he won’t ever do more than stay for a day or two.

Is it cruel of him to want you to miss him? It has to be. There’s some twistedness inside of him, one that he was born with, and grew with and he let the rot fester in him. He’ll never be a saint, he’ll never be a holy, and neither will you- you’ll be sullied by him and even if he knows that you deserve more than what he could give to you, he’s still going to latch on like a parasite, clinging to you for life. Of course, you’d never see him that way. He doesn't know why. In the back of his mind, he’s sure he’s some kind of project for you- something that you can fix and smile when you’re on deathbed.

Your name is whispered, and it feels so foreign on his tongue, heavy and sugar coated that it makes his bones ache. There’s no answer.

It’s presumptuous of him to think that. You don’t try to fix him. The most that you do is wash his back and buy him new clothes that he would never wear outside of your home. There’s a familiar ache in the middle of his throat- swelling and constricting his air. His eyes burn and he’s worried that he’s going to ruin your pillow cases. You’ve let him use your soft towels, he can’t dirty something else for yours with his blood.

You've given him new clothes. Cleaned his old ones, but no matter how hard you tried the dirt and blood of it would never disappear. The blood will always stay there- a soft pink patch that would only get redder by the day. The dirt spreading, darker and thicker with every day. He never used the new ones outside of your home. Never dared to dirty them. Not something of yours- because no matter what, no matter how often you tried to give them to him, they were still yours. Something that you had risked to share with him.

He's bled a few times in your home. Stained your sheets and the first time you looked inconvenienced, a bit disgusted that someone was just bleeding on your items but then he made a pained, pitiful sound, a forced one, anything to get you to look at him with something other than disgust. He wanted you to look at him the way you would look at any other. And it worked, because you held him and bandaged his wounds, held his hands and touched the calloused tips of his fingers.

Should he kiss you goodnight? Does it matter? You’re asleep, you wouldn’t even know if he’s kissed you or not. Kissing isn’t something that’s taboo for either of you, but doing it now- when whatever talk you just had is still lingerie in the air? Is that right for him to do? He wants to kiss you, there’s no doubt about it. Dabi has long grown attached to you and ‘attached’ is the wrong word, it’s something needier, something possessive.

No matter the answer, you’re asleep and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because he’s going to leave and he won’t return and he hopes that you’ll cry.

The pink of his tongue swipes to wet his lips, and he takes in a chill breath of air that breathes out warmly. With a trembling motion, he leans to peck the corner of your mouth. With no one to witness him, he lets himself linger, letting his hands entangle themselves in your hair, and legs interlacing with yours. He pulls away, only to let his chin rest on the top of your head. Your weight is on his hand, and he closes his eyes.

In the morning, he’ll wake up with you in the kitchen. It’ll be a moment where he forgets just where he is, where his mind hasn’t caught up to him, where he’s caught in a fog and he’ll think that this is his norm- that he’s deserving of having homemade breakfast after all that he is. And while he’s eating and drinking coffee, he’ll wish that you had let him rot on the street.

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