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uglypastels · 1 year ago

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the Special | Sanji x reader

a/n - my first One Piece fic. absolutely terrifying but definitely a needed change of scenario to get out of my writing block. please be kind; I'm taking all my inspo from the live-action as that is what I am currently the most familiar with. but, well, we just have to see how it goes. bon appetite

Shoutout to my dear @mydearzero for encouraging my newfound obsession with this show and this character, as well as generally encouraging me to write. this is all your fault. And to everyone else who had been expecting me to finally post one of the other million fics I had promised... I'm sorry

And kind reminder that reblogs is what makes tumblr work. Please, if you enjoyed the story, reblog

word count: 9.9k

warning: 18+ only. MDNI. smut. piv sex. oral sex (f!receiving). unprotected sex [wrap up your eggplants yall]. semi-public sex. several FDA regulation code breaks, probably. afab reader. swearing. little bit of angst. shitty and fat-shaming [oc!]boyfriend/date. fist fight. alcohol consumption.

“Look at your waiter's face. He knows. It's another reason to be polite to your waiter; he could save your life with a raised eyebrow or a sigh.”

― Anthony Bourdain,

The first thing you saw was the red, bright sign spelling out the restaurant's name.

Baratie. You had no clue what it meant but could only hope that “the best restaurant in the East Blue” was somewhere down the list of its definitions, especially after the months that they had kept you on the waiting list and the tumultuous trip that it took to sail there. Next, as your ship approached, you saw the… fish head. The sight of the sculpture at the front of the ship structure buried some worry in the pit of your stomach, but surely, if so many people had given it such fond reviews, the exterior was not to speak for what awaited you inside.

‘Believe me, baby, you’ll love it here.’

‘I really hope so,’ you smiled as you got off your boat. Your legs shook at the knee as you stepped onto the sturdy dock planks. Days at sea, which had never been your friend, had clearly done more damage than you expected. You would have been on the floor if it wasn’t for the pair of arms holding on to you.

‘Thanks, Chosi,’ you said towards your boyfriend as he helped you steadily get back onto your feet.

‘Can’t have you faceplant the second we get here,’ he brushed some invisible dust off your shoulder, and with his arm entwined with yours, he led you to the entrance of the establishment. You grabbed at the skirt of your dress to keep it down as the wind blew by.

As you walked, you looked at all the other ships harboured on the… was this an island? Was the entirety just one large ship? Was it anchored to something then, or was it drifting around the seas constantly? You couldn’t quite comprehend the logistics of it all. But you could tell that humans and other creatures of all walks of life–royalty, commoners, marines, pirates—were unbothered by each other's presence and enjoying the outing. Once inside, the shushed sound of the waves was exchanged for a whisper of swing music, as well as the chatter of the restaurant’s patrons and the clinking of their cutlery on plates. The walls were lined in crimson wallpaper as well as painted depictions of sea battles, accented in gold and bronze details matching the furniture placed spaciously around the room and the two stories above it that lead the eye to a beautiful aquamarine ceiling that gave the illusion as if one was looking up at the bright sky from underwater.

The maitre’d, a Fishman, stood to attention at your entrance.

‘Good afternoon, how may I help you?’ he asked kindly.

‘We have a reservation. Name is Chosi,’ Chosi stated with his head held high. Despite you doubting that anyone knew his name in these parts of the world, he never ceased to pronounce it with a level of expectation to it. It was commendable, as well as disappointing, when nothing happened afterwards. The maitre’d simply nodded and glanced down at his long list of names, searching for the one he had just heard, ready to cross it off.

‘Ah, yes, right here. Please, do follow me to your table.’ And so, you did just that, walking down the grand staircase onto the restaurant's main floor, where you seated at one of the smaller tables, perfect for a romantic dinner for two. ‘Your waiter will be right with you.’ The Fishman bid you farewell just like that and returned to his position at the door.

‘So?’ Chosi looked at you with a raised brow as you looked around.

‘It is quite stunning.’ You must admit that you did not expect this kind of splendour when looking at the carved fish that gaped at you outside. Something about that just did not exude the same essence as the timeless and classy beauty of the interior. You barely even felt the shake of the waves beneath you.

Maybe your response wasn’t sufficient, for Chosi had opened his mouth to respond, something in the angles of his face announcing displeasure, but he was interrupted by a new presence at your table. You looked up at the tall figure towering over you.

‘Welcome,’ the man spoke, his accent clearly indicating his origin if only you had been aware of where that was. Simultaneously, he put down a plate of bread rolls, perfectly and meticulously positioned atop it. ‘...to Baratie. My name is Sanji; I will be your waiter this afternoon.’

‘Took you long enough.’ Chosi mumbled under his breath, giving you an immense urge to kick him underneath the table, but you knew better than to do that, especially when he did not seem to be ready to stop any time soon. ‘Trying to convince my girl this place is worth visiting, heh.’ You could feel your cheeks burning up in embarrassment. Nevertheless, the waiter—Sanji, he said was his name—did not seem to give the comment much thought as he looked down at you with a curve to his thin-lined lips.

‘My apologies, madame; I hope my service will not give you the false impression of this establishment being worth any of your precious time.’ The smoothness of his voice almost concealed the true meaning behind his speech, leaving you, as well as your date, speechless. However, you felt your speaking ability to be taken away by more than just his words as you spared a second to take your waiter in properly. You just could not help but notice how his suit wrapped around his arms, and although one was covered by his blonde hair, his eyes had a glint of something that excited you despite not even knowing the root of that excitement.

Like nothing had happened, Sanji continued, ‘Would you care to see the menu? Hear the specials?’ That is when you noticed the menu cards he was holding in his hand. And he must have been ready to list the special items, but Chosi was a step ahead.

‘Actually, I think we are ready to order.’ That was the first you had heard of it, but you stayed put as he continued. After all, Chosi had eaten here before. He knew what was good, and you could trust his judgement.

‘Prime rib, medium rare,’ as your boyfriend spoke, you kept your eye on the waiter, noticing the appearance of the smallest of flinches in his face at the sound of the dish, but never faltering his picture-perfect appearance, ‘and my lady will have the salad.’

Another twitch, right below his visible eyes, followed, but Sanji’s professional facade stayed on as he inquired: ‘We offer quite a variety of salads; which would madame prefer?’ And with that, he turned to you, that smile plastered on like a sticker, but he had trouble keeping it on as the answer to his question did not come from your mouth.

‘Whichever is the best, of course.’ Chosi rolled his eyes, and you wished you could do so as well. The waiter glanced between you and him, turning back to you momentarily. Long enough for you to give him a reassuring smile. It would be in everyone’s best interest if he just moved on from the matter.

‘Drinks, then,’ Sanji again spoke with an unphased essence about him, as if nothing from the past few minutes had ever occurred, or at least tried to emulate this. ‘Madam, anything I can get you?’ The way he emphasised that word didn’t require any pointed glares.

‘Uhm,’ you hesitated as he kept his full attention on you, completely ignoring the man sitting opposite you at the table, making Chosi stare at you just as, if not more, intensely, for all the opposite reasons. Out of panic, you just blurted out the most straightforward order. ‘Just water, thank you.’ It being the first words you said in the waiter's presence, they came out soft. Nothing like your regular voice, which startled you slightly.

‘Still, sparkling or mineral?’ Sanji pursued.

‘Still please,’ you smiled shyly, unsure where that actual shyness derived from.

‘Ice? Cubed or crushed?’ He fired the questions at a rapid pace.

‘A bit of ice is fine. Thank you,’ you repeated yourself, looking down at the table and letting the waiter move on to the rest of the order. He didn’t say anything else but looked at Chosi with anticipation.

‘I’ll have your finest brew.’

‘Coming up,’ his voice had a sudden coldness to it as he walked away, back to the kitchen, leaving the table to a thick silence.

‘I could have ordered for myself, you know,’ you said, with that same soft tone you had spoken with earlier, although this felt much more familiar seeing who you talked to.

‘And have you stuff yourself with some useless carbs? C’mon, you know I’m just looking out for you, here.’

‘I know.’ You straightened out a fork in front of you, suddenly feeling uneasy at how far away from the plate it was positioned compared to the knife on the opposite side. You were straightening out a crease in the tablecloth when Sanji returned with a silver tray in one hand. He placed the pint glass full of golden brew in front of Chosi before turning your way and setting a glass beside your plate. With a pair of tongs, one by one, he let ice cubes fall to the bottom of it, the clinking against the glass almost deafening. Then, he followed up with another pair of tongs and reached for a little tray but stopped himself to ask you: ‘Care for a slice of lemon, madame?’

‘Oh, uhm, sure,’ you shrugged, unable to look away. This process of pouring a glass of water felt rather extensive, but you could not deny the fact you were enjoying it all. As he grabbed the large pitcher to pour the water, you were unsure how he had carried all of these items with one hand and did so seemingly effortlessly.

‘There we go,’ he smiled, ‘your food will be with you shortly, but do let me know if you require anything else.’ And just like that, he was gone again, but not without leaving you feeling that he had meant his parting words especially for you and that that sentiment had undoubtedly not escaped your date.

‘I don’t like the look of that guy.’ Chosi glared at you as he took a sip from his pint, slurping up the top layer of foam with it.

‘I think he’s quite sweet.’ You straightened out the fork again and reached for a bread roll to tear it apart piece by piece.

‘Of course you would,’ he rolled his eyes, which made you look up from your little snack.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ You put the bread roll down as the pit in your stomach hollowed out your appetite. Right, making space for that damn salad.

‘Nothing.’ Chosi shrugged, ‘Just that it's typical that somehow I’m the only one to notice when some guy is trying to cop a feel.’

‘He was doing no such thing.’ You had to bite your tongue not to raise your voice as his insinuation, despite being on the waiter's actions, seemed to be brutally judging yourself. ‘The poor guy is just doing his job. I’m not bothered by it, and neither should you be.’ Usually, you would attach some sweet nickname at the end of that sentence, but this was one too many times you had said a variant of the confirmation, and you were growing tired of just the thought of it.

Somewhere in the distance, a table erupted into a shouting match that had to be broken up by a handful of waiters. While usually, you turned away from such brutalities, never having been fond of violence and not particularly having a necessity in seeing people getting their teeth punched out minutes before eating a meal, this time you stretched your neck out to glance across the room, secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of the white-blonde hair among the rousing heads. Someone had pulled a pistol, but the weapon was kicked out of the man's grip before they could shoot or even alarm people enough to hide beneath their tables. Just like that, the restaurant resumed its normal state of pleasantries, and you got back to your abysmal date and hoped it was still worth saving… or that saving was still even an option to begin with.

‘From what you had told me about the place, Chi, it is much grander than I had expected.’ You smiled, and he nodded to your affirmations.

‘Well, I didn’t want to raise the expectations too high, but you know I don’t do anything but the best for you, sweet cheeks.’

‘Of course—’ you were interrupted by the footsteps nearing your table, and the weight nearly lifted off your shoulders at the sight of Sanji carrying too large plates.

‘Hello there,’ he grinned slyly, ‘hope I don’t interrupt anythin’.’

‘Not at all,’ You moved your glass aside to make space for your dish, but Sanji put Chosi’s plate down first, announcing the food.

‘Prime rib, medium rare, for the gentleman.’ Like everything else, he precisely placed it so the gold details on the plate faced the diner exactly right. The roast glistened in the restaurant's dim light, and the smell hit you right at the nerves that reminded you of your hunger. But that was for the gentleman, and the gentleman had ordered for you the—

‘And for the madame,’ Sanji put a plate in front of you, ‘what I like to call the Sanji Special.’

You looked down at your plate of food with a stunned expression and then looked back up. Just in time, you caught the slight wink that your waiter had sent you before stepping back to then, with a nod, say, ‘Bon appetite.’

He got to take about three steps and had just turned his back towards your table when Chosi called out to him, clearing his throat. ‘Ehem, excuse me, Sonny.’

‘Is there a problem?’ Sanji returned with his hands behind his back, but you didn’t need to see his fists to know he was clenching them. It was all visible in the strain of his upper arms and jaw as he restrained himself to keep up a polite smile.

‘I am pretty sure we had ordered a salad?’ Chosi tried to play it off with a casual laugh, but it turned out to be anything but. Sanji leaned forward to grab the plate, but then your boyfriend exclaimed, ‘No, not for me; for her.’ before the waiter got his hand on his prime rib.

With a satisfied smile, Sanji glanced at your plate and stated: ‘That is a salad.’

Not that you did not appreciate what was in front of you, but if it was a salad, it was the loosest interpretation of the definition possible. You had to keep your laugh in as he explained that the dish was a “twist on kensui salad with steamed components, egg, and pork” or, in your simpler terms… the most delicious-looking pot of ramen you had ever encountered in your life, but no, definitely not a salad in the traditional sense. You smiled at the food, not daring to look up at Sanji while your boyfriend’s head seemed to be boiling alive, but the waiter was a step ahead of you.

‘Ah, almost forgot, for the lady,’ almost out of nowhere, he made a pair of chopsticks appear for you.

‘She will not be eating that,’ Chosi grunted.

‘I think that is for her to decide,’ Sanji didn’t even bother to look at him, keeping his sweet smile on you, which, in turn, rushed a hot flush over your cheeks.

‘Chosi, don’t be like that; this looks delicious.’ You spoke, hoping he would calm down and let you finally sink your teeth into this gorgeous meal. After a tense second, Chosi finally huffed out and sank back down in his chair, making you realise he had been on the verge of getting up for whatever reason. Either way, his intentions could not have been good. In the meantime, Sanji excused himself once more to finally leave you to eat.

You had perhaps taken half a bite when Chosi, his food untouched, spoke up again. ‘Why do you always do this?’

‘Do what?’ your throat tightened around the pork you had just swallowed.

‘Embarrass me like that?’ He sighed, a vein in his forehead looking more prominent than ever.

‘I didn’t—’

‘Cut the shit, you know what you’re doing.’ Chosi slammed his fist on the table, startling you and the few people sitting at the nearest tables to you.

‘Please, can we not do this now,’ you kept your head down, ignoring all the pairs of eyes that must have started catching on to what was happening. Chosi had turned red from anger by that point.

‘What, am I being too much for you? Imagine what it’s like going out with a slut—’

‘Chosi!’ you snapped, immediately covering your face with your hand as if you had not meant to shout and grab the attention of even more people.

Deep breath in.

Out.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ You hissed at the man across the table from you.

‘With me? You’re the one that has been eyefucking the waiter this whole time, and now you disrespected me like that in front of him? Do I mean so little to you?’

‘I did no such thing.’ You rolled your eyes, catching glimpses of the room you were in. The people that sat around, the employees. Of course, Sanji stood only a few tables away, taking an order. Could he hear what was happening? Most likely, the idea of that burned you in a new, much more unpleasant manner. Chosi must have said something, but you had been too occupied by your surroundings and too tired to even listen to what other vile things he had to tell you. The only thing that kept you at that table was the food, but no matter how good, it wasn’t worth enduring him. ‘You know what,’ you grabbed your napkin and slapped it onto the table, ‘I can’t do this right now. I’ll see you on the boat.’ The chair shrieked as you shoved it back.

‘Where the hell do you think you’re going,’ Chosi growled practically, and despite you having already turned your back to him, you heard his own chair scrape the deck floor. You had your eyes squeezed shut as you got ready for what was coming. He reached out, but nothing happened.

You looked over your shoulder to see Sanji pulling Chosi in by the sleeve.

‘Believe me, we don’t wanna do that, mate.’ Sanji said, his eyes filled with a new rage that made you take a step back.

‘Let go of me, you sleaze.’ Chosi suddenly reminded you of a feral kitten, how he tried to wriggle himself out of the waiter’s grip. ‘I’ll make you regret ever touching me. Do you know who I am?’

‘Do I look like I give a shit?’ he let go with a laugh, almost pushing Chosi to the ground. As your date dusted off his sleeves, Sanji took a step forward, pressing himself against him. Now that both men were standing face to face, did you only realise how much taller Sanji was than your boyfriend. How much bigger and, most likely, how much stronger. With a hushed and reserved tone yet somehow full of intimidation, the waiter said, ‘Don’t you ever try to touch or speak to a woman like that again, you hear me? Or I’ll make you regret you were ever born.’

Chosi could only nod with his eyes blown wide open. The restaurant was dead quiet, unable to pull their eyes away from the scene unfolding before them. No one said anything or moved, and yet, somewhere, a stack of plates fell. The crash of porcelain echoed through the space, and Sanji turned his attention toward the kitchen’s double doors for a second. That quick moment was enough for Chosi to find his moment and attack.

Or at least make an attempt at it.

Sanji was still looking toward the kitchen, and Chosi’s fist was in mid-air, but the waiter flawlessly manoeuvred around it, swinging himself back and letting Chosi fall forward. To make matters worse, Sanji supplemented the fall by kicking him over. If it wasn’t for the fact that your boyfriend’s chin had smacked against the table, you would have missed the entire thing, as Sanji’s movements were so elegant that it seemed as if he had not moved at all. He might as well have been refilling your water, ignorant of the groaning mess of a man he had kicked down to the ground with such ease.

Chosi got up shakily. A nasty cut was already dripping blood from the underside of his face, but the redness didn’t compare to the rage on his face. He looked around until his eyes caught yours. ‘What, you’re just gonna stand there like some dumb–’

‘What did I just say?’ Sanji said, this time much louder, not trying to hide the row from the rest of the diners. But before he could make another move, Chosi reached for the nearest thing he could reach, which in his case was your dish of ramen, and threw a fistful of noodles Sanji’s way, hitting him square in the chest.

Silence.

He must have been too stunned at the audacious strike to move out of the way for it. Everyone must have been watching the noodles unstick from his navy jacket and slowly fall to the ground, then watched as Sanji raised his head back up, his expression unamused and cold, but his eyes filled with a passionate and furious fire. One that was enough to live up to the promise he had made the man you had come to the restaurant with. And so, just like that, without another word needing to be said by anyone, you watched Chosi back away—one, two, three steps, whimpering and mumbling some comments that could almost make up an apology, before he sprinted up the stairs to the exit.

‘Ridiculous,’ you heard Sanji mutter under his breath. ‘Fucking waste of food.’

Before you could think any better about it, you walked up and knelt down, as he did, to reach for the spilt noodles. ‘I am so sorry,’ you started apologising. ‘I swear normally he–’

‘Is exactly like that,’ Sanji chuckled with a rasp. You looked up at him, a bit dumbfounded. He had managed to scoop most of the food before you had and was already getting up. ‘You have nothing to apologise for.’ One of his colleagues had been quick with bringing over cleaning supplies. ‘If anything, I should be the one saying sorry. Let me make it up to you—a drink in the bar, on the house.’

‘No, that is really not necessary.’ You couldn’t accept anything for free after your boyfriend pulled off such a scene and… had run off without paying. The realisation hit you like a brick on the head as you cursed under your breath with a strong sense of panic, which Sanji caught on to immediately.

‘Please,’ He reached gently for your arm. ‘I insist.’

You stuttered for a moment before actually answering in defeated agreement. With a satisfied smile, Sanji led you to another exit, leading to the bar deck. ‘Right this way, madame.’

The bar deck, located in the mouth of that giant fish head, was moderately empty. Except for you and the appointed barman behind the counter, only a handful of others were sprinkled across the couches and futons. You chose a seat overlooking the sea and the setting sun that coloured the sky and waters an array of warm colours.

You understood that you had to go up to the bar to order, but you felt no particular need for it, just enjoying the breeze that brought over the calm sea air towards you.

It was unclear how much time you spent sitting out there, looking at the waves splashing by and the clouds above you and the people around you. Only once the sun had set entirely, darkening the sky completely, and most people had left the area, you decide to finally walk up to the bartender and place an order. The man nodded and proceeded to make your drink with only a few attached flourishes to the craft, but the result was charming and tasted delicious.

‘I hope I had made it clear that that was one drink on the house,’ you heard from behind you.

‘Don’t worry, this is my first.’ You said, turning around to see Sanji standing behind you.

‘You might just be the slowest drinker I have ever met,’ he said as he took the spot by your side.

‘Jeez, do your manners flush away the second you’re off the clock?’ You smiled, taking a sip of your drink, most likely also proving Sanji his point as the sip you took was particularly small.

‘For what it’s worth, madame, I was about to tell you that your bill has been taken care of.’ He leaned against the bar countertop with his forearms. ‘But I will make myself scarce now.’

‘No, wait,’ you stopped him before he could push himself back. ‘What do you mean it was– I would have happily paid. At least let me leave a tip.’ You were ready to pull out your purse when he took his turn to halt your movements.

‘I will not be accepting any tips for my service today. And honestly, you barely had a meal to eat, let alone to pay for. It is all taken care of. I promise.’

You looked up at him apprehensively, but something about his–not necessarily laidback–but how he was so comfortable with the situation put you at ease, too. But something was gnawing at your conscience.

‘Alright then, but I disagree with the review of your service. You most certainly need something for it in return.’ How could you repay the man who had just gotten you out of your horrific relationship? You doubted anything in the world could match your actual gratefulness. Although, maybe the smile that pulled at Sanji’s lips said something different.

‘Let me cook for you.’

‘What?’ You blinked slowly, making him smile even wider.

‘You haven’t eaten anything proper in hours. Let me make you something in the kitchen–an exclusive guest experience.’

‘That doesn’t sound much like a gratuity for you.’ You pointed out, but he did not seem to mind.

‘Indulge me,’ was all he responded with. Feeling giddy at the prospect, you glanced over at the bartender, who was definitely listening in on the conversation. Understanding what you meant with your look, he simply shrugged while wiping the glasses.

‘Ok then.’ This entire thing felt utterly ridiculous, and you didn’t hide the amusement you felt from it as Sanji opened the door to the kitchen for you. That is when your smile lightly faltered, only to be replaced with a fallen jaw as you looked around in amazement. Like the dining area, this room had a high ceiling but wasn’t decorated as much as simply visually enhanced by all the bronze pots and pans hanging around, and the pipes leading from the ovens and stoves up to the chimneys. There were long lines of prep stations, behind which one Sanji comfortably made himself at home as he immediately got started on something.

The first few minutes, after you watched him exchange his suit jacket for a white chef’s uniform, you were occupied with the kitchen itself, but once you had gotten used to the environment, you wondered where you could make yourself equally comfortable as not a nuisance to him as he cooked.

‘Make yourself at home, sweetheart,’ he said while chopping some ingredients at a speed that made your heart skip a beat in fear. Or did that come from the new nickname that caught you by surprise?

‘What happened to “madame”?’ you walked closer to his station. Sanji just looked up briefly, eye covered by his hair but his smile evermore present. Your smile lasted longer as you forgot you had meant to look at what he was doing, not to stare at him. Noticing he was not planning on answering your question, you asked another. ‘So, what exactly are you making?’

‘Since I’m sure dinner did not turn out entirely as you had planned, I thought maybe dessert would be a good pick-me-up. Rose and chocolate meringue tartes, how does that sound?’

‘Makes me wonder what I did to deserve it,’ you laugh it off while speaking the question that had been on your mind this whole time.

‘I like to show a lady how she’s meant to be treated,’ he said as he poured several ingredients into a glass bowl and began wicking at a pace that should have stopped him from looking so effortless long ago. ‘It’s all part of the special package deal.’

‘Right, the Sanji Special, was it?’ You looked around at the countertop next to him, which seemed free from ingredients and anything you could set on fire. You glanced his way, and he swiftly nodded your way. With that permission in mind, you pushed yourself up on the counter, swinging your legs lightly back and forth. ‘So what exactly does this special indicate?’

‘A nice meal, a little surprise, a few kind words, nothing too crazy. I would like to think that, with it, I have perfected the recipe on how to eliminate shitbag boyfriends like that prince charming you came here with.’

‘My knight in shining armour.’ You rolled your eyes, hiding how much you appreciated all his actions from that day. ‘Must have worked on quite a few girls then?’

‘Can’t say it has,’ he said as he pushed the oven open to prebake a few tartelette frames. The speed at which he worked truly was otherworldly.

‘Can’t because of a bad success rate or because you hadn’t actually tried it before?’

He appeared next to you from beside the oven; tiny droplets of sweat were forming at his temple, but his energy was still burning like the fire under the pot where he was melting the chocolate. ‘Let's say the latter. For both our dignity’s sake.’ It did not come as a surprise to you that he was a flirt and most likely tried these tricks out on the entirety of the female clientele, and yet, for reasons unknown, you did not mind one bit, and it still did not seize to make the smallest of his advances work on you with tremendous effect.

‘Don’t think I have much more of that left after everything that happened out there.’ You cringed at the memory of the shouting, the mess, and just how many people had been sitting there watching you.

‘There’s been much worse out there, believe me.’ Sanji lowered the fire under the pan lightly.

‘I hardly believe that. He threw noodles at you. That is absolutely revolting behaviour.’ And somehow, you managed not to get kicked out of the restaurant along with Chosi but even got to hang out in the kitchen after hours as a special dessert was being prepared for you… by the waiter that your boyfriend had tried to assault— no, that your ex-boyfriend tried to assault. That felt much better, but still didn’t let the whole situation make any more sense.

‘And that wouldn’t even make the top ten of shit that’s happened around this place.’

‘I… am not sure wether to be relieved or disappointed.’ For an inexplicable reason, you thought you would be more memorable to him. However, would you have wanted that, seeing the actual circumstances under which that would be? Ugh.

As if he could read your mind, Sanji added in. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not planning on forgetting you anytime soon.’

‘I bet you say that to everyone.’ You rolled your eyes, to which he just smiled. ‘But really, I am sorry for what happened—especially to your suit.’

‘I care more about the noodles, honestly, don’t like seeing food go to waste—’ he drifted off with his thoughts before coming back up to the surface with another question, ‘speaking of noodles, where’d you meet this guy anyway?’

‘It’s complicated,’ you sighed, not wanting to burden him with your story, but from the eager attitude he was conveying as he managed his ingredients, he did not hold the same sentiment over it. ‘We had been friends for ages—out dads worked together—and it seemed, to everyone, apparently, like the natural progression of events that we would end up together.’

‘Everyone… except for you?’ he assumed, looking up at you from the counter space.

‘No, I mean, at first I thought so too, but over time… well, you saw it yourself. But by the time I had realised what a mess I had gotten myself into, it felt like I was already too late.’

‘How so?’ You heard the gentleness in his question like he was treading the topic lightly, not wanting to put any pressure on it or on you to answer.

‘Heard people talking he had been planning to propose.’ You shrugged it off. ‘But I doubt that will be happening anymore.’

‘What are you going to do now?’ The question came with that same carefulness but perhaps a bit more intrigue. You simply shrugged again.

‘Will probably have to find another ship to get back home on, as I can’t imagine he would want me on board with him.’ It was crazy you had not bothered to check but assumed that he had already taken off hours ago, leaving you behind to fend for yourself. ‘And then, if I see him again… well, not much else I can do but officially dump his ass.’

‘So I shouldn’t feel bad for what I did?’ He stopped what he was doing as he waited for an answer.

‘Absolutely not. I can’t thank you enough for doing that.’

The both of you shared sheepish smiles before you watched him work silently for a few more minutes. The tarte frames came out of the oven in a beautifully crisp golden tone, and he mixed the chocolate into a thick mousse while the rosy syrup lay back to cool off. While the two of you remained quiet, the kitchen was anything but that as his utensils clinked around the pans. You thought back to a few hours ago and how the silence at your table had been anything but this. You had sat in a cold dread, waiting for something to snap until it inevitably did. However, you sat back comfortably here, happily watching as Sanji focused on his work.

It really was his element. While you thought the man had been exemplary at waiting tables, it was nothing compared to the ease at which he performed here. Each move he made seemed like second nature to him.

‘Do all the waiters here know how to cook like this?’ you inquired, leaning in to see how he filled the pastries up, hands in a tight grip on the piping bag.

‘The ones that are cooks do,’ he chuckled.

‘You’re a cook?’ you blinked, ‘then what were you doing out there earlier?’

‘Ah, the old shitbag that runs this place likes to torture me and send me off to do the waitin’.’ He readjusted his hold on the piping bag, briefly stopping to wipe his hand on the towel tucked between his belt.

‘Doesn’t that bother you? I’m sure you’d much rather work here.’ You certainly would. Some people could be real assholes to serve… your former date being a prime example. But Sanji simply laughed it off.

‘Nah, not when beautiful women are out there waiting to be served.’ He stopped to look up at you with a shit-eating grin, and the unseriousness dripping off of it made you blush, smile along with him and push him back by his shoulder before you would do something else much more irrational. Perhaps a bit too hard, as he lost his balance, only finding it on the counter, exactly where the piping bag had been left behind. His palm fell right over the ending, bursting out the mousse in an unfortunate mess, spilling all over him and the counter.

‘Oh no,’ you said, covering your mouth but not the giggles from it, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘You think it’s funny, don’t you?’ He couldn’t keep his smile, but you shook your head harshly. ‘You’ll pay for this,’ he pointed his hand, covered in chocolate, at you. Several thoughts ran through your mind initially, but you managed to suppress most of them, opting for simply running your finger over the back of his hand where most of the mousse had spilt and giving it a taste.

‘That is really good.’ you hummed at the sweetness. Sanji stood back, somewhat frozen at what you had done, but quickly thawed out with a few blinks.

‘Well, what else did you expect?’ He wiped the rest of his hand on the towel at his side, ‘and I’ll have you know it’s rude to eat the food before it’s done. Takes away from the experience.’

‘I’m sorry,’ you pouted, ‘but I promise you I am still very much enjoying this whole experience.’

‘You better.’ Sanji said, taking the baking tray and putting it back in the oven for the last few minutes. With the oven door shut, he sighed and leaned against the counter opposite you. ‘Now we wait.’

‘How long exactly?’

‘In a rush, are we?’ He glanced at you from behind his hair, and the question made you heat up in the face. Because how could you explain to this practical stranger that you were feeling the opposite of what he insinuated. That you did not want this night to end at all. That being here with him, even if you were just waiting for a damn tart to bake, you were having more fun than you had had in weeks, if not longer. So, all you did was simply shake your head again.

‘It will be just a few minutes, and then gotta let it cool for a bit.’ He reassured you. That is when you noticed the bowl he had mixed the mousse in, mostly scraped clean while filling up the piping bag, but even the best chef can’t always scrape every last ounce out. Now, you might not have had any particular urge to leave any time soon, but you certainly were hungry, and having tasted just how delicious Sanji’s food was, you couldn’t help but lean in to get another little taste.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He said, bemused, reaching to stop you from taking another swipe of mousse onto your finger. His hand gently grabbed your wrist, but he had been too late. When he caught you, you had your hand directly over your lips, looking up at him. He glared down at you in a daring manner.

You licked the chocolate off yourself as innocently as possible without bursting into laughter.

‘I can’t believe you’d do that.’ He took a step forward, nearly closing the gap between you. The presence of his body, so close to yours, almost touching, reverberated off of you with warmth, and suddenly, you felt the breath you had taken to be stuck in the back of your throat. ‘Did you not listen to anything I just said?’ His breath was hot against your skin, and if you didn’t know any better, you would have thought it was a direct source of the skip in your heart.

‘Of course I did.’ You ignored the fast beating of your heart and the feeling like it might just burst out of your chest as you took him by the arm to give you some space and let you slide down the counter back onto your feet. ‘Something about experience and…’ you slid out from between him and the counter, and as you did so, swooped by the bowl of mousse with your finger one last time. ‘I forgot what else.’

‘You are unbelievable,’ Sanji reached for your hand, but you were quicker and manoeuvred around him and from his arm’s reach. Taunting him with the mousse, you walked around the work counters, and he, happily playing along, followed suit.

Like children, you ran around the kitchen, with him not far behind you, trying to catch you until he finally did, picking you up by the waist. Unintentionally, a squeak of a shriek came out of you, followed by both your laughs. You kept on laughing until you heard something outside the door. Heavy footsteps, freezing you both in your place until they moved on by. That is when you noted the time. Hours past midnight.

‘Are we even allowed to be in here at this time?’ You whispered as if the person who had walked by would suddenly be able to hear you.

‘Of course,’ Sanji said with confidence, but his expression juxtaposed this with signs that you could only read as “absolutely fucking not.” chances were that if you were caught in the kitchen at this time of night, you would be shot on the spot by, what did Sanji call him, the old shitbag.

But before you could run away in fear of getting caught, it was Sanji’s turn to take you by surprise. As you stood in his arms, he leaned in and wrapped his mouth around your finger, sucking all the chocolate right off. You could feel his tongue move down your knuckles and back up until he released it, leaving you stunned and wide-eyed.

‘I thought it’s rude to eat a dish before it’s done,’ you managed to sputter out.

‘So you did listen,’ he smiled, ‘but you might want to know that a good cook always tastes their dishes in the process, and that… was delicious.’

‘Are you always this humble about your cooking?’ Your heart was basically in your throat at this moment.

‘Wasn’t talking about the food,’ his tone was deep, sultry, as he leaned closer. ‘But care to give me another taste?’

Your breath was officially hitched in your throat, unable to breathe properly, as you stared at him, body flooding with heat and need for him. As words escaped you, you nodded lightly and leaned in as he did the same, meeting your lips in the middle with a kiss.

As soon as it happened, his arms found their spot on your side as you fastened yourself on his shoulders. It was nothing like you expected it to be. For a man spending his entire nights and days in the kitchen, he felt nothing like it. You could smell the cologne, taste the cigarettes and the fresh mint he used to conceal the former. His tender but firm touch held you in your place as he pressed closer.

There was a force to it, but nothing that you didn’t feel in yourself to copy as the need for him boiled deep inside you.

Your hand moved slowly up to his cheek, over to his hair at the nape of his neck.

One of his hands, in the meantime, had found your thigh, pulling it up over his leg as he squeezed your soft flesh, but before giving you a chance to even react to this new position and all its implications, Sanji moved.

Pulling apart, leaving your lips to be the last piece he detached from as he kept your bottom lip between his teeth lightly, he apologised, ‘Excuse me for a moment.’ because while you might have forgotten all about the world around you, he had still been keeping track of the tartelettes that were baking down in the oven.

He pulled the tray of pastries out with a white tea towel, practically throwing it down on the counter, discarding it with a metal clang.

‘Now we wait for them to cool,’ he explained as he got back to you.

‘And what were you planning on doing in the meantime,’ you pulled him back in by the blue ascot tie.

With his lips ghosting over yours, he half-whispered, ‘I might have a few things in mind,’ and with it, kissed you again. While the kiss itself was not much different, with that same intensity and passion running through both of you as before, now you were very much aware of what was to follow. If it wasn’t your need that spurred you on, then it was Sanji and his eagerness. Despite his chef’s uniform and the navy apron, you could feel him grow harder against you as the kiss continued. A moan escaped you as his lips travelled down to your neck, leaving sloppy kisses one by one until he reached a spot that was more sensitive than others. The simple touch sparked a fuse inside you.

As he continued playing with your sensitive skin, he led both your bodies to one of the empty tables at the side of the room, pressing you right against the edge and locking you in between it and him.

Without needing him to say a word, you understood exactly what you needed to do and climbed on top of the table, spreading your legs to make space for him right in the middle.

Your dress might have hiked up slightly over your thighs, but it wasn’t enough for Sanji, who took it upon himself to pull it up.

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying’,’ he smiled as he kissed the corner of your mouth and as his hand reached the top of your leg, ‘but I had been thinkin' about this ever since I saw you.’

‘Me too,’ you exhaled deeply, letting the confession sink in. Maybe Chosi was right after all. Now, with him out of the picture, you could admit that something had been there from the start, from the moment you caught a glimpse of the waiter cook. And if it wasn’t for all the shit that occurred that day, maybe you would have felt a twinge of guilt as you guided Sanji’s hand between your legs. If you had not shut that chapter behind you, perhaps you would have felt bad, but any insecurities of that disappeared as Sanji began to toy with your core. His slender fingers grazed slowly over your slit, putting enough pressure on it to make you arch your back in need of more.

‘Already so needy,’ he smirked. ‘And I barely touched you.’

‘Touch me then,’ you said with gritted teeth.

‘Don’t need to tell me twice.’ His fingers moved up in pace and barely went any deeper, keeping you on the edge of satisfaction. ‘And what would madame like me to do?’ He threaded his movements, and you were growing impatient with the teasing.

‘Fuck me,’ ready to hear his next question, you added, ‘I don’t care how.’

His grin only grew wider at your words. Much to your dislike, he pulled his hand away to place both at your thighs, pressing his fingers into your skin and using that as leverage to make more space for himself in between.

‘As madame wishes.’ He spoke softly right below your ear as he descended onto his knees.

The kiss he left over your panties already invoked a tremble through your entire body, and it only got worse from there, in the best sense. He pushed your underwear aside and took his time giving you all his attention and care. Kissing your core deeply until his nose pressed up against you. His tongue licked up your juices like a starving man until your eyes rolled back, and you felt weak.

The table you were perched on was empty, so you only had Sanji to hold on to. At first, you reached for his shoulder, but it was just not high enough for you to find support. As you tried to look for it, Sanji reached for your hand and brought it up to the side of his head for you to tangle your fingers in his light locks. Before you even managed to grab onto them, simply letting your nails trace over his hair, you felt the vibrations of his moans strike you. Another deep blow to your senses pulled you further down to the edge. Closer and closer until you couldn’t take it anymore. Your grip on his hair tightened as your breath grew sporadic.

‘Fuck, fuck,’ you moaned, voice filled with desperation for a release, and one that Sanji would be more than pleased to give you… just not quite yet. As he pulled away from you, you deflated with the feeling of a ruined climax and the urge to pull him back to finish what he had started, but all you could do was whimper in protest.

‘Don’t worry,’ he kissed your knee softly, ‘all in good time. I promise to take good care of you,’ and with that, he rose back up to his feet, untying his apron.

‘That was good,’ your chest still moving up and down heavily as you caught your breath. ‘Really good.’

‘It pleases me to hear that,’ he said as he threw the apron aside onto the ground. ‘And believe me, I would love to go back for seconds—’

‘Does all your pillow talk stem from restaurant jargon?’ you interrupted jokingly.

‘You laugh, and yet you’re the one begging me to fuck you.’ God, he was so cocky, with the way he stood there in front of you, his head tilted sideways, and his lip turned up in a grin that told you he knew he was right. ‘So, please, let me.’ His hand was already on his belt buckle.

There was no time or need for either of you to undress. With your dress hiked up to your hips, he already had easy enough access, and once his belt was loose, it only took a few sharp pulls for you to release him from the material restraints.

‘You ready?’ he asked.

‘For the love of god,’ grabbing him by the arm, you pulled him in, ‘stop talking and just take me.’ You knew he was about to respond, but before he got the chance to make another absurdly silly but nonetheless flirtatious comment, you shit him up with a kiss. Just like that, the two of you melted into one another. Sanji made himself comfortable between you and let his lips wander down to your neck again, to that one spot he found that drove you crazy.

He kept kissing your neck as he finally slid into you. The two feelings made your body go weak, melting you into a puddle of burning nerves as he spread your walls and filled you up perfectly.

First, he moved slowly, but with each thrust, he sped up more and more, putting more force into it until you were both shaking with ferocity, and the table underneath you scratched over the planks it stood upon. The sound of the tortured floor was the only thing covering up both your moans and that of the messy skin-to-skin contact.

While he practically pounded into you, you reached for his hair again. There was just something about it: how messy you managed to make it with a few tugs and brushstrokes. All of it, how he acted and reacted, it was all in response to you. Just how he made you see stars with each move he made.

‘Feels so good, fuck,’ he groaned over your shoulder as you grabbed for his, pulling him closer if possible. He had your legs pressed against his sides. He shook his head quickly, letting the hair flick out of his sight, but the attempt was poor as the lock quickly fell back over his eye despite his efforts.

‘San–’ you moaned, ‘Sanji–’

‘That’s right,’ he might as well have been kissing you, so close were his lips to you, but instead, the only thing you truly felt was his hot breath on your skin as he kept going deeper and harder. ‘Gonna come for me? His voice got even deeper the longer he kept going. At the sound of it, your nails dug into his back, his striped shirt being the only thing saving him from possibly some nasty scratches, but it seemed to only spur him on more. ‘I–’ you gasped out as you felt him hit the deepest part of you.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m close, fuck.’ the pit in your stomach tightened, your muscles strained as you tried to hold on to that feeling of pleasure he brought over you. The tension built up like a band being pulled tighter and tighter, ready to snap at any moment; he had you in his grip, waiting to let go of you at the exact right time. All you needed was that touch, just the right one in the right spot.

You could feel it all. Could feel just how close he was himself as his thrusts got sloppier, and his breathing grew heavier and rougher between his words. ‘Yeah, c’mon. I know you can do it. Come all over my cock. ‘’s gonna feel so good, I promise you.’

The encouragement might not have been necessarily what did it. It was more like a concoction of things that all led to this precise moment when ecstasy overtook your body and washed over you like a hot flash. Sanji was not far behind you, riding his high as he ensured you got to yours. His movements slowed down as you felt the cum slick down your thighs. While you both caught your breath, it became quiet once more.

It took you a bit longer to catch up on air in your lungs, and so while you closed your eyes and focused on your breathing, you heard Sanji zip his trousers back up and lightly walk across the aisle between the workstations. When you opened your eyes again, he was making his way back to you already, a handful of paper towels in his hand.

Despite the burn you already felt in your sore muscles, you spread your legs one last time to give him access to clean you up. His soft touches to your sensitive core now were in stark contrast to what he had been doing to you moments ago, but the cold of the damp towel brought a nice sense of comfort.

‘You think you can stand up for me?’ he asked gently, and the little words in that tone were enough to make your heart flutter.

‘Yeah, I think so.’ You said, but that was quickly proven wrong when your knees buckled almost immediately when your feet touched the ground. It was only because of the way that Sanji held your arm that you had not completely toppled over.

‘Woah, alright.’ He smiled, never letting go of you, ‘How about we just sit for now.’ Slowly, he guided you to sit on the ground, back against a cabinet. ‘Water?’

You nodded in agreement. The question had made you realise just how parched you were.

‘Still, sparkling, mineral?’

‘Surprise me.’ You said through a tired smile at the reference to how he waited on you earlier, but moments later, you reminded yourself of your preference, ‘just not sparkling! It just tastes foul.’

‘Anything but sparkling water, coming right up.’ He moved around the room to pour you some surprise water, and while he did so, you pressed your face into your hands, laughing at the absurdity of it all. Less than 12 hours ago, you had been walking up the deck, arm in arm, with your good-for-nothing boyfriend, soon-to-be fiance. Now you sat on the ground of a restaurant kitchen, with no idea where said–now ex–-boyfriend was in the world, coming down from one of the best orgasms you had ever received… all by the hand of a stranger. A handsome stranger at that. One that you could imagine seeing much more of in the future, but it was all just too silly.

And you were tired. And hungry.

‘Voila,’ Sanji appeared in front of you with impeccable timing, a large ice-cold looking glass in one hand, filled with ice cubes and cucumber, and two plates in the other hand. The rose and chocolate meringue tartes look particularly inviting. ‘Thought you might finally want to try one,’ he said as he handed you a plate and fork.

‘I swear, you’re a godsend.’ No matter in how much need you were of a drink, the sight of the dessert made your mouth water.

‘Ah, just a little something sweet for—’

‘If you’re going to say what I think you’re going to say, I will shove this tarte in your face.’ One could only endure so much of this sappy flirting, even if you found it very endearing. Sanji shut his mouth and sat beside you, poking his fork into his portion.

The two of you ate quickly but still took enough time to appreciate the flavours that oozed out of the pastry and its filling. The moan you made as it all reached your tastebuds might have been more pornographic than any sound you made while he had been deep inside you.

‘Mmm, this is delicious,’ you said through another bite. The praise brought a huge smile to the cook’s lips. ‘Seriously, thank you. For everything.’

‘It’s been my pleasure,’ he spoke in a way that almost made you think he was getting shy on you. That felt unlikely, but you let him process it all for a moment as you kept eating.

Only once you had eaten everything off your plate did you ask your next question of the evening. ‘How did you know I would like this?’

‘It’s a chef’s best trait,’ he pulled the fork out of his mouth with a pop, ‘to be able to read their customers well. To be able to tell what they like or dislike; to know them better than they know themselves.’

‘But how?’ With intrigue, you moved closer to him. He had been leaning against the same cupboard as you, one of his knees raised up and an arm hanging casually over it. His hair was still messy, falling over his eye. ‘How could you tell I would enjoy this specific dish?’

The one unobstructed eye fell over you, looking up and down over your body as his mischievous smile reappeared. ‘It felt fitting.’

‘How so?’ You blinked, confused as to what he meant.

‘Sweet, decadent and hot; what’s there not to like? I mean—’ he leaned in over his arm to kiss you, feather-light. Then, he hummed as he pulled back. ‘It is an absolutely divine combination.’

Your cheeks burned up for what felt like the millionth time that evening, and you could not dare keep looking at him as he stared down at you with that innate hunger. That kind that could only be filled with one thing, and it just so happened to have wholly exhausted you.

‘Is this still all part of that special of yours?’

To this, Sanji shrugged, ‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On how long you want to keep me around.’ He scraped some leftover mousse from his plate, licking it off his fork.

‘I think for a while,’ you admitted. Yeah, you definitely hadn’t had enough of him yet.

‘Well, then there’s so much more I can do for you, madame.’

the end

thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please consider reblogging and commenting-either through the comments, in a reblog or through my inbox <3 to hear your thoughts on my writing means the world to me and really is a huge help in motivation to keep going.

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satancopilotsmytardis · 1 month ago

Text

Reforged

Pairing: Shigadabi

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Commissioned by @moonlightcrazyphoenix (who you should all give a huge thank you to for letting me go wild and absolutely cook with this one). Dabi was the first born prince of his father’s kingdom, and then his magic failed. Now he is nothing but an unwanted specter who haunts the castle halls, with no hope of a future ahead of him, save maybe his youngest brother someday sitting on the throne instead of their father. But when a border skirmish brings refugees into their castle and a new practitioner so powerful he is knighted nearly on the spot into his life, that absence of hope begins to wane.

Contents: Royalty AU, Fantasy AU, minor character death, suicidal thoughts, BDSM, master/slave dynamic, impact play, intercrural sex, cumming untouched, grinding, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, size kink, degradation, humiliation, praise kink, genital piercings, non-human genitalia, double penetration, anal fingering, anal sex, blow jobs, cum swallowing, aftercare.

Word Count: 37,035

The only thing worse than being the former crown prince, is being the former crown prince that has to convince his own fucking guards to let him go to the throne room when he hears that there's been another attack.

"Your father said that you shouldn't concern yourself with matters of state," The harpy man tells him, his wings a red cloak along his back.

His father, the title makes him want to risk sparking up the barest embers of magic in his blood and try to destroy them both, doesn't think he should know about matters of state or any other kind of business in the kingdom because he won't have any part of it. He just wants him to learn how to melt into the background as his siblings are at least able to be used for a purpose. Fuyumi will be married off to some other kingdom to make certain that theirs grows. Natsuo will become the court medic once his schooling is finished, ensuring that there is no one that the royal family has to rely on for their health. And, of course, Shoto will be king some day, his magic outpacing all of theirs by miles. Dabi, now so named because his magic burned out when he was still just a child, is useless. He has no great magic to his name, his body cannot be trained to become a revered warrior, and his burns make him far too ugly for any noble of another kingdom to ever want to take him as a spouse. He has no value, so in his father's eyes, the least that he can do is pretend to not exist at all.

"I am still a member of the royal family and a citizen of this kingdom, Takami." He snarls, pushing past the knight. "If there was another attack, I want to know about it." He hears the shorter man sigh but he doesn't dare try to stop him again as Dabi enters the chamber and moves off to the side of the dais at the front of the room. Only his father, Shoto, and Fuyumi have chairs there, the latter two much smaller and further off to either side of his fathers, but both of them are sitting there. Natsuo is nowhere in sight, but he thinks that he can chalk that up to the fact that some of the villagers who have come to speak are already at least partially bandaged. If they came with more people to make their report and if those members of their traveling party are in worse condition, then his brother will be in his ward making sure that they are receiving care.

A man with wild brown hair is standing at the front of the group. His clothes are rumpled, frayed on the edges, creased, and there are smears of dirt clinging to them, but the cut of the outfit and the material of it tells Dabi that he must have been a merchant with a decent to moderate income. Clearly one who had enough standing in the village to be appointed the speaker for them as he addresses his father.

"--three dragons, one with scales of bronze, one as black as pitch, and one as green as the hills that they decimated. They arrived just as sunrise began, hiding in the long shadows that were cast across the land, and they destroyed every farm, every field. They tore up the roads and ate our livestock."

"Did the creatures speak? Were they sent by their master?"

"I do not know anyone among us who conversed with them."

"Did they retreat of their own accord?" His father presses.

"No, your majesty." He half turns and gestures someone forward. From the crowd comes what looks to be a farmhand with wild white hair that is barely being contained by a tie, broad shoulders, pale skin, ruby red eyes, and scars cut in over his eye and one lip. He is missing three fingers on one hand and has a rope of burn scars going down his other arm that discolor his skin to a deep reddish color unlike the purple hue that Dabi's show. "This young man," and yes, even with dirt on his face, he does look younger than himself. Maybe Natsuo's age if he had to guess, "Tapped into a wealth of magic as they came for his farm. His destructive talent was able to injure the silver dragon and they fled."

That has his father's eyes going sharper, interest piqued. "Where did you learn to hone your talents, boy?"

"I did not." The farmhand's voice is raspy, like he hasn't spoken in several days, but it does not waver and his spine does not bow in the wake of having all of the king's attention on him. "I was cornered and I wanted to protect my land. I would have done it with a pitchfork if necessary, and then I felt it well up inside of me. It withered everything I touched."

His father considers this. "As the damage to your village is being assessed and repaired by our druids, you will remain in an encampment inside of the palace grounds. You, young man, what is your name?"

"Tomura Shigaraki, your majesty."

"No member of my kingdom who can do such damage to a dragon will go unassessed. You will be accompanied by my knights to our scholars. Have you any family?"

"No, your Majesty. I was an orphan from Ylunburg. I turned eighteen last spring and made my way to Ontsall to make a life for myself."

Well, that guy is fucked. Or should be thrilled. Depends on how much he liked being a farmer because he definitely won't be one anymore. If his magic was really that strong, then he'll be part of the guard in a matter of days. If he can prove his magic can stay that strong consistently and it wasn't just it awakening for the first time that drew out such massive power, then he might even end up like Takami and the other guards that his father keeps closest to ensure that they always have their most dangerous resources close by. His father starts giving more orders about where he wants the encampment to be set up, the number of soldiers and druids that he wants taken to Ontsall to see to the rebuilding efforts, and Dabi is bored again. He doesn't have anything to do with this and this simply means that his father will be in a foul mood for the rest of the week and that both of his brothers will be painfully busy until this matter is seen to. Which means that he's better off going to his chambers and occupying his time pretending to be a scholar than it will be spent shadowing them where he might distract them from their duties and bring his father's ire down on himself.

Dabi turns and leaves as orders are still being doled out, and Takami, for all his protests before, doesn't even bother to shadow him. What assassin worth anything would try to kill the discarded prince that the king would pardon them for dispatching when the deed was done?

///

Dabi doesn't pay the refugees much attention for a few days. They are being integrated the best they can be on the castle grounds. Most of them are farmers, and they take wagons out to the nearest neighboring fields to help do the day's work there, before coming back to meals prepared by some of the additional refugees and their own kitchen staff to help ensure they are doing well. Natsuo and other healers make certain that no one is severely hurt, and Dabi is bored. He is almost always bored, but at least he's able to be bored without a shadow for a few days because Takami is apparently off assessing the farmhand. He would rather be bored alone than bored with that fucking bird following him around and talking his ear off. He was an orphan too, and he can't shut up about how happy he was to be taken in by the crown and given purpose. Dabi has set his wings on fire more than once just to shut him the hell up.

But apparently five days of a reprieve was all he was going to be able to get as the harpy barely knocks before entering his chambers. Dabi is just glad he's sitting at his desk reading instead of lounging around in bed so he can at least pretend to be busy with other things. "I will have you thrown in the stocks for two days if you enter my rooms without knocking again, Takami."

"My apologies, your highness." He says without an ounce of sincerity and far too much cheerfulness. "But you won't have to suffer my company much longer."

"Oh? Is my father finally having you tarred to match your garish feathers?"

"No, I'll be going out to help patrol the border after such a brazen attack. I'll be leaving immediately, but I wanted to take a moment to make sure that I introduced you to your new guard." Dabi finally looks up as Takami waves in the other person lingering in the doorway. The farmhand from before must have had more natural ability than Dabi even thought he might because he is cleaned up. His long hair is tied neatly into a pony at the base of his neck, and he is wearing the same gleaming armor as Takami, his spine straight, and his injured hand must have either been healed or new arcane prosthetic fingers must have been added to help his gloves fit correctly on both hands. He definitely looks more handsome like this and certainly looks to be Natuso's age now that he's closer to him. "This is Sir Tomura Shigaraki, the newest knight in your father's court."

Dabi snorts softly, but he's not expecting Shigaraki to address that.

"Is there something amusing about this, your highness?"

He does his best not to bristle. "You've spent at least five minutes with the pigeon. You can't tell me that it's not a joke after that."

"Ignore him," Takami says, turning to the new knight. "He's always saying nearly treasonous things. He's bitter, but his father considers him harmless. You only need to ensure he is either in his rooms or that you're accompanying him when he moves throughout the palace. Otherwise, you're free to go about whatever business you please within the castle walls."

"...I see."

Takami shrugs at the other's tone and then waves at Dabi over his shoulder. "See you around, matchstick!" Before he exits the room. Tomura Shigaraki closes the door behind him and the wards lock into place, sealing them off so that their voices will not carry past the door and so the small gem sat at his throat will glow if anyone tries to enter without his permission. Shigaraki stands with his hands behind his back in front of the door, at his post the way that no other guard has ever bothered to do for him once he woke from his coma. They had all known their lives were of more value than his, and their time could be better spent doing things besides watching after the worthless spare prince. Shigaraki will pick up on that soon enough and leave him alone for hours at a time, only coming in to follow the servants who bring his meals or when Dabi has to signal to him to open the wards that his magic is too weak now to do himself. He is more a prisoner in this castle than a prince. When this knight learns that he is nothing more than his jailor, he will stop being so attentive.

It's quiet for several hours as he goes back to his reading, but when he finishes his book and stands to return it to the shelf, Shigaraki speaks again. "It is a joke."

"Excuse me?" Dabi wasn't expecting him to speak, let alone respond to his barb from earlier.

"This position, your father's guard. It's a joke. He couldn't bring his own magic any higher so he finds those without anyone else and brings them into his circle and elevates their positions. All of his guards are orphans from the war with the Demon King and his dragons. They worship him because he offers them status and a brotherhood while he makes an orphan of his own firstborn son through his neglect. It is a joke, and you should be so lucky to have the last laugh." Red eyes on his, unwaveringly. Dabi may flirt with words that could be construed as treasonous, but no one in this kingdom considers him a threat. Someone powerful enough to be knighted in just five days since his magical abilities awakened would be taken much more seriously than him.

"Do not speak about my father or this kingdom in that way again, or he will have your head."

"But not you?" When Dabi doesn't retort immediately, Shigaraki keeps looking right through him with those too-sharp eyes. "Because your word doesn't mean as much to your father as one he hardly knows would? Because mine comes laden with magic?"

Dabi doesn't deign to reply to him, huffing softly before he turns to his bookshelf again. Why bother telling the man something he already knows to be true?

///

Tomura Shigaraki is infuriating in a way that none of his other guards have been before. For one, he actually comes to his room each morning when Dabi wakes to ensure his meal has been brought in and he's awake at a reasonable time. After two weeks he starts to come and wake Dabi earlier than he used to, well before his breakfast is brought and makes him come outside with him as he trains the forms that the other knights must have taught him.

"Your training is not my problem." Dabi snaps at him. He may not have a real position in the kingdom, but he is a prince. He gets to do what he wants, he doesn't have to follow the whims of his servant.

"You are going to rot away into nothing in that bedroom." Shigaraki tells him. He, Dabi has surmised, hates to wear his armor. It impedes his speed and he doesn't need to be slow when his magic works when he has contact with the thing he is looking to destroy. He has opted only for the uniform tunic and pants, some leather bracers, and a short sword on his hip if he has need of it. He will wear the armor when he is expected to attend court, not that he ever will be while he's assigned to his babysitting, but whatever.

"Then let me rot. At least the bed will be a comfortable tomb."

"You are pathetic."

Dabi's face burns at the man's insult. Everyone in his kingdom thinks that, if they bother to think of him at all, but that doesn't mean that he should be spoken to without even the barest bit of respect. "I am your prince--"

"You have been discarded and seek to make nothing of the station you were left with. You do grow your mind, but to no end. You have all of the wealth and ability to create a new life for yourself within the confines of the enormous shadow your father has left for you, but you do nothing. I will not pretend to guard someone who so blatantly tells the world that they believe their life is as worthless as all of their naysayers do. You will find something worthwhile to occupy your time, or I shall occupy it with my own activities." He continues to move through his forms, and Dabi can see the rippling of his muscles beneath his clothes. He is thin, weak, his training stopped when he was ten years old, and the training he did for himself stopped when he burned as his magic burst bright one final time before turning to only the smallest of embers. "When you were a child, they said that you were the jewel of the kingdom, did they not?"

"That jewel shattered a long time ago." He hisses.

"So?" Shigaraki turns to level him with that look again. The look in his eyes that Dabi doesn't know how he hides from his father. The look that tells him that he blames the crown for the war, for whatever battle took his parents from him, for them not having the people in Ontsall to protect the village that resulted in him being trapped here as a knight instead of carving out a life for himself as a farmer on the land he was so desperate to protect that he awoke magic in himself at nineteen. A look that tells Dabi that he hates him as much as he hates the rest of the royal family even though he is capable of doing nothing-- "Diamond dust can still return people to life."

He turns back to his exercises and those words sit with him for the rest of the long day.

///

Dabi has not had to consider what he would do with his life for a very long time. He thought that he would just be this, a prisoner in his father's castle, trying to make himself small and unnoticed until Shoto was old enough to be crowned. When he takes over, he's already told him that he'll be free to do what he pleases. If he'd like to go on to become a scholar, then he will be able to do so, if he'd rather just move to one of their country estates to live out his life in peace, start a business, master an artistry, marry, whatever he pleases. He's promised similar things to each of them. He doesn't want to use their lives as tools the way their father has. He wants them to be happy. It's to that end, that he has been trying to delay Fuyumi's potential marriage as long as possible. She doesn't want to be sent off to some other kingdom to push out babies like their mother was. She wants to be a scholar far more ardently than Dabi does. She would become a teacher if she were able to. The children of other nobles need to be taught. She could do so without seeming to lower her station. Natsuo does want to be a healer, but he wants to be a field medic. He wants to go out and make sure the soldiers that are actually fighting on their borders as the Demon King continues to try to spread his influence to this half of the continent are taken care of. He doesn't flinch at the potential danger. But Dabi is just... nothing. He isn't anything worthy of attention or consideration. He has no ambitions to pursue when his father no longer controls his life. He just wants to... be allowed to exist. He doesn't want to have the shame of being the broken prince forever hanging around his neck. But those thoughts are something soft and weak that he will not lay bare for anyone else to see lest he end up mocked for them again. So he keeps his mouth shut and goes to visit Fuyumi.

She often ends up locked in her room as well when she's not being paraded around to other visiting royalty and potential suitors. She studies and practices her embroidery. Her magic is the same as their mother's, as Natsuo's, imbued with a near unbreakable preference for ice than any other form. And since she is not to ever be a warrior, she is expected to use her magic as an artform rather than a weapon. She isn't a dressmaker, but she works with them closely as they design her elaborate wardrobe. She helps determine the style and cut of the dresses she will wear because before the bolts of fabric can be cut and stitched into clothing, they are brought to her, and she embellishes them with eternal, unmelting embroidery of frost that glitters like she's woven diamonds into the fabric whenever she moves.

Shigaraki, as he follows him everywhere, follows him to her room and stands at the door as he joins her at a small table. She keeps the fabric in her lap as she works. "What's wrong, Toya?" His siblings are the only ones who call him by that name, and only when they aren't in front of their father. He stopped being worthy of it the moment his magic failed him, according to Enji.

Dabi would prefer to have this conversation in private, and tells Shigaraki, "You're dismissed."

"I am not supposed to let you out of my sight when you are outside of your chambers." The knight says unwaveringly.

"That is the problem."

"He can't be worse than Takami?" It's only half a question.

"Takami worships our father, this one is a hypocrite who has about as much love for him as you or I, but is still following his every order to the letter."

"I am doing my duties."

"And he's always talking back to me!" Dabi snaps, half turning in his chair to glare at the other man.

Fuyumi, the bitch, decides that's at least a little funny as she tries to cover her mouth to pretend she's coughing instead of laughing. "Sir Shigaraki, surely you have started to be taught court etiquette?"

"I have, your highness. However, I was also explicitly told those courtesies are not to extend to your older brother as he is not a member of the court."

Dabi's ears would have been bright red with his humiliation if they weren't so badly burned. "You're a bastard and someday I'm going to see you drawn and quartered!"

"You're a moping sod who isn't worth the breath in his lungs." Shigaraki snaps right back. "Apologies for the outburst, your highness."

Fuyumi's mouth is hanging open. Takami is never professional with either of them but his informality is in a joking and arrogant way.

"You see!?" Dabi stresses. "He's probably going to slit my throat in my sleep!"

"That would be far too much effort for someone like you. I just have to wait for you to burn yourself out again." He hums, "Or hang yourself. I suppose that you couldn't get the job done with fire the first time anyway."

"Sir Shigaraki!" He's glad that Fuyumi is up out of her seat, her face also flushed with her indignance and rage. "Regardless of what instructions my father has given you, you will not ever speak that way to my brother in my presence! For your disrespect you will receive twenty lashes!"

Dabi hasn't ever heard his sister sentence someone to corporal punishment. She and Natsuo normally try to hide their own servants' fuck-ups so that their father doesn't give them those kinds of punishments. But, well, maybe she is more scared of him actually finally going through with the suicide that has been sitting at the edge of his mind for years. Maybe she is scared that their father ordered Shigaraki to demoralize him until he just took himself off the board so Enji wouldn't have to bother to do it himself.

"I'll see that he gets them." Dabi says firmly before she can rescind the order. He had wanted to talk to her more, but this takes precedence.

Fuyumi looks like she's already regretting the words, the color draining away from her face. They all wonder if being raised by a warrior king has permanently tarnished their very souls, but she usually tries to stay above it. Tries to keep herself as pure as snow. But even she can't be perfect all the time.

Shigaraki, for all of his backtalk, doesn't look particularly moved by the declaration, though he supposed if he grew up in one of the workhouses in Ylunburg, he's probably received so many lashes that the sting of them will be familiar. He still opens the door the way he's supposed to and shadows Dabi as he goes down to the dungeons. There are guards on duty, but they aren't holding anyone in the cells for now. He bypasses them and goes over to the instruments that are used on the enemy soldiers that are brought here; he doesn't know the name of all of the instruments that are used and he doesn't want to. Torturer's work is not something that he will let occupy his mind. But he does have the option between a flogger, whip, or switch. He chooses the switch because he knows that someone untrained with the former two is more likely to hurt themself when the leather recoils than they are to actually hurt their target.

Shigaraki looks around the dungeon as he gets the switch and then follows him up to his room silently and Dabi feels his heart starting to race. He's never actually done this before and when they're in the room with the door locked, he suddenly feels incredibly out of his depth when Shigaraki has to be the one who turns to him and catches the gem at his throat to actually seal up the wards around the room. The other man is shorter than him, by a couple of centimeters, but it doesn't feel like that matters at all when he has those red eyes so intense on him.

"Do you even know how to use that thing?" His voice is lower, rougher, and Dabi does his best to keep his spine straight.

"Remove your tunic and get on your knees." His voice isn't nearly as steady as he wants it to be.

Shigaraki lets go of the gem and moves to the center of the room, stripping away his bracers, outer tunic, and the long sleeved shirt he was wearing beneath it, letting Dabi see the layers of muscle he was certain were beneath the cloth, but also far more scars than he thought there would be. He must have been at one of the orphanages that also loaned children out for factory work. That's the only explanation for the scars that continue up his arm and over his shoulder, the gash that is taken on the other side closer to his collarbone, the pockmarks on his skin that must have been from hot rivets being sunk into him. It must have also been where he lost his fingers as well, though he keeps on the glove that holds the prosthetics in place as he bares his torso.

He turns away from Dabi and sinks to his knees, his hands against his thighs once he's swept his long hair off of his back, showing Dabi that he has two massive scars here as well, carved down from the tops of each shoulder blades to the small of his back in jagged, but parallel lines. There is not an inch of this man that has not been touched by some misfortune. Dabi's palms start to sweat as he feels the weight of the switch in his hand. The vindication that he received for finally getting to silence Shigaraki's backtalk is not as strong as his disgust for himself as he wonders what exactly he's trying to do now. His father is cruelty and violence. He and his siblings have tried to distance that from themselves so ardently. Even Shoto, a knight himself, avoids a fight if a conversation can be had instead. He shows mercy instead of cruelty. The world their father has made for them is cruel. So they choose to be kinder. Dabi has never had an ounce of power over anyone else since he was a child. Is this what he's going to do with it now just because he can?

"You are so very weak." Shigaraki says without raising his head.

And that sends him over the edge. He tightens his grip on the switch, stalks forward the few steps he needs to close the distance, and he brings the switch down across the other's back. The loud crack of the leather meeting skin doesn't do anything to make him feel stronger and he throws the instrument to the ground in nearly the same move as he stalks over to his bed. "Yes!" His voice is raw with his fury, with his emotion, and he hates himself for it. He hates the way it tears from his throat and makes his eyes burn even though he can no longer shed tears as freely as he did when he was a child. "I am weak!" He screams, turning to face the knight. "I was strong for so little of my life and told that I wasn't worthy of my breath for the other half! I'm nothing! No one! I will die more unremarkable than you would have if you'd stayed a farmer because at least you would have provided something to the kingdom! My sentence is to make myself smaller and smaller until I'm nothing so that my father can be free of my stain on his legacy!"

Shigaraki stares at him for a long moment and Dabi hates having his eyes on him.

"Get ou--"

"Pick the switch back up." The other's voice is hard and robs Dabi of his anger, his indignance, his sorrow. It hollows him out all over again. When Dabi doesn't move, Shigaraki keeps speaking. "Pick it up. You have nineteen more lashes to deliver. If you can make me bleed, then you will have proven that you have more strength in your body than you or your father believe you do. And if you cannot manage it, I will show you how you can forge it instead. If I am to stay in your company for the duration of my time here, then I will have you less pathetic company than you are right now."

"Y-You don't get to order me around! I'm the prince!" By all the stars in the sky, why is this man, "You are asking to be punished!"

"I am asking you to prove that you are capable of completing a single task that is not reading a book!" Shigaraki snarls back at him. "I am hoping that you have not been so completely and thoroughly broken by your father and your failures that you cannot even imagine a world in which you become something more than those things have made you believe you are. Pick. Up. The. Switch."

Dabi hesitates. For a long moment he wants to tell the other to leave, wants to go back to Fuyumi's room and have her switch guards with him until the end of however long this lasts. He never wants to have to look Shigaraki in the eye again because he knows that if he has to see those red eyes filled with any more disgust then they already are now, he just won't be able to survive it. He used to hate how his father never looked at him after his magic failed him. He used to try anything to get his eyes to turn to him. But the first time they had, two years after he awoke from his coma, there had been nothing in them. No disgust, no anger, no disappointment, he had simply looked through him and moved on. He thought that had killed something deep inside of him, but having Shigaraki looking at him now with so much barely-contained contempt has dragged out his corpse to be burned again. His fingers shake as he reaches back down and picks up the switch.

Shigaraki huffs and lowers his head again, hands fisted against his thighs. "Move it along. I don't have all night."

Dabi doesn't feel any more steady or sure than he did a moment before as he takes his position behind the other man again. He tightens his grip on the switch as he realizes that there's not even a mark from the first hit, and tries again. The impact makes the switch sting the seam running over his palm and once again Shigaraki doesn't flinch.

"You'll have to hit harder than that."

"Shut up!" He snarls and tries again. It shakes up his entire arm as he hits the other man. He doesn't let himself stop, he goes again, and again, and again, his eyes burning with his frustration, his helplessness, his arm getting weaker with every hit. Until Shigaraki is standing up, catching his wrist, and taking the switch from it. There's blood on the ground, but it's not from the knight's back, it's dripping off of Dabi's face as a sob slips from his throat because he really is as pathetic as the guard said.

"That was twenty-seven." Shigaraki says, "and I'm not bleeding."

He tries to pull his wrist from the other's grip, but he's too weak to manage that. "Let go of me." His voice is soft now, he doesn't have any of his anger left inside of him.

"No. You couldn't make me bleed, so now I get to reshape you. That's what you agreed to. Or are you a liar as well as a waste of space?"

Dabi didn't know he could feel worse than he already did, but his gut sours with shame at the idea of not even being able to keep his word. He's not sure that he has anything at all left to him but the voice that so few even fail to acknowledge when he does speak. He grits his teeth. "...'Reshape' me how?"

"You went seven over. Strip your clothes from the waist down."

Dabi pales sharply. "Absolutely not--!"

Shigaraki's other hand catches his chin, those eyes hot and dangerous on him as he forces him to meet his. "Your back is stapled together." He's seen him getting out of bed in the morning with only his undergarments on, there is very little mystery left of his body. "If I give you the hits there, you'll split open. Even if I avoid the seams, you're so thin that taking the hits over the bones will leave you unable to move. Your thighs are the only place with enough muscle and without any burns. I can give you your seven there, or I can give them to you over your back, and when you cannot move, you can explain to anyone who bothers to come check on you what happened."

"You'll--"

"Maybe receive a slap on the wrist if you lie about our wager. But your father will be more keen to believe my side of the story." He takes the switch from Dabi's hand and waits. He could refuse. He hasn't been in pain since he burned. He doesn't hurt. He's a ghost, not even worthy of being noticed by the gods of misfortune who are so keen to throw their blessings to all. He could refuse. Why does he need the respect of this man? How much more could he lose from his father? What does it matter if he lets one of his servants beat him black and blue? He's already a worthless, broken thing. It makes his humiliation burn hotter in his veins than it ever has before when he reaches to start to undo his belt.

Dabi strips his boots, his pants, thinks he might be able to stop at that, but one glance at the hard lines of the other's features tell him that he has to remove his undergarments as well. His own tunic, thankfully, is long enough that if he holds the hem, he can preserve a modicum of his modesty.

"Bend over the edge of your bed." Shigaraki orders him like he hasn't made this situation embarrassing enough. He wants to protest again, but it won't do him any good. He goes over to his bed, takes a breath and bends over. After a moment, he hears Shigaraki's boots against the floor, moving closer until they stop behind him. He will not cry out. He will not scream. It is seven hits. He will be able to take that. It cannot hurt more than the beatings his father gave him throughout his training or his burning. "Hold out for as many as you can. But if you need me to stop, tell me."

Dabi clenches his jaw shut tight and braces himself. He is already displaying so much weakness. He is not about to beg for mercy.

The first hit comes across the back of his thighs and instantaneously becomes a line of white-hot agony across his skin that has fresh, bloody tears trickling down his cheeks.

"One," Shigaraki counts in an even tone while the crack of the switch is still echoing around the room. Dabi barely has the chance to breathe before the second comes down, a little below the first, closer to the staples that curve around the middle of his thighs. This one hurts just as badly as the first, maybe a little worse, but it's hard to tell when the switch coming down against him is such a singular, blinding pain. "Two."

The next one comes down just below the curve of his ass, and so much higher makes his whole body flinch as that hit definitely hurts worse than the first one. "Three." Oh, by the gods, he's hitting him harder each time. Dabi presses his face into the bedding so that it will muffle any sound that might try to slip out of him. When the fourth overlaps the first hit he can't help his toes curling and the way his body squirms involuntarily as the pain radiates out from his skin, stinging at first, but blooming into a deep throb that he knows will put bruises on the pale parts of his flesh as dark as his scars. "Four." It hurts. It hurts so badly that his stomach feels tight and sick. He doesn't think that he's going to be able to last the final three. He thinks that if he does, he'll just fall apart right then.

And then Shigaraki's hand moves to the hem of his shirt. His ass had been at least partially covered by his tunic, but he pushes it up now, his hand cool and his skin rough as he runs it over the curve of him, up to press against his lower back, that touch so sharply different from the painful ones against his thighs that he's left gasping.

"There. You're doing better than I thought you would." The tone in his voice is different than Dabi has ever heard it before. "See? You must have some amount of pride left if you hold your word so sacred." He moves his thumb over the base of his spine and that soft touch, the words mingling with the pain coursing through his skin, puts a hazy confusion in his mind that fogs his focus. "Can you take more, little prince?"

He should back out now. He already is hurting so much. He should tell Shigaraki off for touching him with a hand that isn't trying to inflict violence. But that hand and the words before are like a balm. They insulate him from some of the thrumming agony in his skin and make it easier for him to just manage to nod his head, his hands fisting tightly in the sheets.

"These will be harder." The knight warns as he takes his hand away. Dabi doesn't bite his tongue only because he's scared he might bite it off. The fifth hit is so hard that Dabi swears that he is pushed forward on the bed slightly and he can't help the soft cry that he lets out. "Five, shhh," his voice is still much calmer than it was before. Soothing as his cool hand goes to the back of his thighs again and that feels horrible and wonderful all at the same time as the chill of his skin takes away the blood bright heat that is coming from the welts blooming from his hits. "Only two more. Show me that you have some resolve left in you."

He hates how much easier it is to brace his body for the pain when he knows that he's doing it to earn Shigaraki's approval. It feels different to earn this than it does to have his siblings’ that comes out of obligation and nostalgia. Shigaraki gives him another few seconds to tell him to stop, but when he doesn't speak, his hand draws back again. It takes three agonizing seconds before the switch comes back down against his skin and he howls this time with how hard it hits him.

"Six," but there's such satisfaction in Shigaraki's voice. "Just one more, little prince." He can't even find words to answer him, he only manages a soft whimper that makes him feel so incredibly small and pathetic. He hears the switch whistle through the air a split second before it cracks against his skin again and Dabi can't help the other pained cry that comes out of him. "Seven," the hand goes back to his lower back and Dabi lets out another miserable sob against the sheets. "There, you kept your word." He hears the switch hit the floor and can't help flinching slightly again. "Stay there." Shigaraki instructs like Dabi can move at all.

The other man moves around the room for a moment and Dabi tries to find his voice enough to tell him to go. He doesn't know how he can survive being any more humiliated and pathetic than he feels right now. He doesn't want to have to wait to find out. But before he can find his voice, the other man is back and murmuring.

"This is going to sting a little." He doesn't wait and the next second a cool, wet cloth is being gently pressed to his stinging thighs. He bites his lip hard to keep from squealing, but the pain of having the pressure on his skin is easy to ignore when the coolness of the cloth and the soft little circles that the other man starts to rub against him feel so good. Dabi just thinks that the knight might be cleaning up the blood off of his skin, absolutely certain that his thighs have to be torn to ribbons from how badly they hurt, but he refreshes the coolness of the towel with a spell after a minute or two and he realizes that the man is just trying to soothe the hurts.

That is working a little too well, he realizes vaguely as between the pain, the relief, and his body's exhaustion, there is a new feeling tingling through him.

It's not helped when the knight murmurs, "You did such a good job. I thought a little prince like you wouldn't be able to handle one, but you made it all the way to seven. You should be proud of yourself."

Dabi doesn't think that it's pride that is in him when all of the sensations against his body have his cock twitching against the soft sheets. Mortification goes through him and he doesn't know what to do with himself when that feeling only makes his cock harden faster instead of chasing the ill-gotten arousal away. He hopes that with his body pressed into the bed and his thighs pressed tightly together that the other won't be able to see it and he can find his voice quickly enough that he can get the other man to leave so he doesn't have to show any more weakness.

"Where I'm from, we have a code that we live by. 'Endure what you can, destroy the parts of you that fail, reforge what you need to move forward'." The words are spoken softly. The touches against his skin are soft. "You've endured for years. Now I've broken you. All you need now is to forge yourself into something stronger." Dabi is not expecting just how strong the other man is or how easily he's able to roll him onto his back before he can make him stop. He fumbles to try and hide himself, but it doesn't work, the other's eyes falling to his hard prick before he can tug his shirt down over it. But there's no contempt left in those eyes when they look at him now. Now there's a... heat in them that doesn't help the way his shameful body is feeling so needy. "Or perhaps you need a firm hand to help with that too. Tell me, little prince, has anyone ever touched you like this before?"

No. No one but his kin has ever struck him. No one has ever deigned let their hands linger on his body the way that Shigaraki's are as they run over the uninjured tops of his thighs before they curve back around to touch the welts that have formed on his skin. His fingers press in a little and Dabi makes himself so weak, surely loses the thinnest thread of respect he managed to gain by suffering through each hit, when he lets out a weak moan, the wound caught between agony and bliss as his cock curved up against his stomach from the sensation. He got a few stolen kisses, once. He was seventeen and attending a ball that was supposed to be full of suitors for his sister, but one noble's son had taken an interest in him, he brought him off to the side and had kissed him until Takami had tracked him down. He must have told his father what happened, because the noble's title and lands were stripped, Dabi ended up locked in his chambers for three months being served the same slop and moldy bread as their prisoners, and his room was spelled dark as the dungeons, so that when he was able to leave it, the world outside of his room hurt twice as badly. His father, without saying a word to him, had made it abundantly clear that he was absolutely not allowed to pursue any form of love. That would bring attention to him. He was supposed to disappear.

He manages to shake his head. Shigaraki is one of his father's knights. With his magic, he can get away with things that Dabi will never be able to contemplate.

"Do you want me to keep touching you, little one?" His voice is warm and drips over his skin like honey, even as his fingers press to remind him how much pain he just brought. "I think you've more than earned a reward for being such a good boy taking your first punishment."

He doesn't feel like he's being good, but being called that makes more of that sticky, needy heat, like the sticky blood that he thinks must be going tacky on his thighs, warm his insides further. He wants to be rewarded for everything that he's endured so far. His throat is still too tight to find his voice, but he manages a tiny nod and that has the knight climbing into his bed with him. He murmurs a spell, bringing oil over his fingers, as the other hand pushes his shirt up beneath his arms so his ruined skin and needy cock are on display. Just being looked at with those red eyes at the most intimate part of his body makes him tremble and shiver.

"Impressive someone so weak can also be so cute." Shigaraki murmurs as his wet fingers trail over his cock. Dabi has had his own hand there before, but it's very, very different to feel those sensations of pleasure spilling over his nerves when it's someone else touching him. He bites his lip harder because he's scared that he'll moan too loudly, that someone will somehow hear it past his wards and come in and stop this before he gets the other's hand completely fisted around his body. His hips jump up when the knight runs a single finger along his underside, from root to tip, flicking his head when he reaches it. Beyond humiliation when that has a bead of precum starting to form there. "So sensitive, little one. Not going to be able to last long when I have my hand on you." He hates how quickly and succinctly the other has assessed his need. But his hand doesn't fist around him to let him have that pleasure. Instead his hands go back around his aching thighs and Dabi humiliates himself further when he moans loudly as fingers press firmly into the forming welts and sends pain that goes sour-sweet over his nerves. "Wonderful," and the word sounds like it's been drenched in his sincerity, as he says it. "You're already becoming something new. Maybe you will be worth my time after all." He shifts on the bed, taking his hands away from Dabi's skin, and for one horrible moment, he thinks that the knight might have been playing him. He already got him to allow his body to be so debased, but maybe he wanted the further humiliation of knowing that Dabi was begging for more despite the pain that came before. Maybe he wanted to be able to go tell his father that he ordered him into his bed so that he would end up locked up in the dark again so he could pursue the interests that he would rather instead of having to deal with him all of the time.

But Shigaraki doesn't leave the bed, he just flicks open his belt and opens his trousers. Dabi's mouth goes dry as the other reaches inside and uses his oil-slicked hand to begin pumping his own cock, bringing himself to full hardness and showing Dabi that he is not only weaker than the knight when it comes to their muscles, but that his cock may be the more pathetic side of average or that Shigaraki's is simply far, far bigger than a cock has any right to be. Not only big, but pierced with a ring curving through his head that Dabi cannot imagine the pain that it must have taken to have it put there. He's only ever seen women in court with their ears pierced. He didn't even know that jewelry could be added to that part of the body. Shigaraki gets himself hard, and then his hands shift to Dabi's ankles. His nerves peak as he worries about something so big being forced inside of his body, but the knight doesn't spread him wide or hook his legs over his shoulders. Instead, he brings Dabi's ankles together and makes him bend his knees up towards his chest, forcing the aching skin of his thighs to be stretched as the lower half of his legs are then over-directed so that they are twisted to the side, allowing the other man to see his handiwork.

"There, just like that, little prince. Since you liked the sting of them so much, and since I want you to soak in this revelation, I'm going to bring you your first pleasure right here." Dabi has touched himself before. He knows what the kiss of an orgasm feels like, but he is not about to protest any of that out of fear it might get all of this taken away. He doesn't quite understand what the other man is saying, but he murmurs that word again and fresh oil is spilling down between his thighs, enough of it his skin feels slippery over his injuries and it's dripping over his sensitive balls. Shigaraki holds his legs as he moves forward, kneeling on the bed as he feeds his cock between Dabi's stinging thighs. He lets out a gasp, the movement bringing the pain back to the forefront of his mind, but it is unable to stop him from also whining with the pleasure that goes through him. He didn't know pain and pleasure could mingle like this. Didn't know that he could be so pathetic as to want both and the sweeter words that are coming from the man who inflicted the pain as well. But he doesn't protest at all as the other pushes between his legs and then pulls out nearly all the way before he pushes back in again slowly. The movements don't allow the pain under his skin let up in the slightest, but it doesn't matter. Each sting of pleasure races through him before it reaches his cock and turns to pleasure as it tingles up from his root.

By the second thrust, he's letting out a breathless gasp of arousal as it happens. It's all heightened by the fact that Shigaraki won't stop talking.

"Squeeze your thighs tight, little one. That's it. Let me feel how badly your muscles shake as I fuck you right here. You can cry, baby boy. You can moan and whine. I like those sounds that you're making. I'd ask if that feels good, but you're staining your shirt with how much your cute prick is leaking." He never stops moving as he's speaking, never relents in the pleasure-pain that he's soaking Dabi's whole body in, and he doesn't know if he's going to be able to survive this. He's felt an orgasm come on before, but never without his hand around his cock. He tries to fumble to reach for it. Shigaraki catches his wrist and pins it to the bed, all but growling, "No, little one. You're going to cum just like this. You've already shown me that you can find your resolve, now show me how pretty you are as you break."

Dabi wonders if he should be embarrassed by how immediately that makes his cock twitch and his balls draw tight before his orgasm is rushing through him. He doesn't know if the pleasure has ever burned brighter than it does when he's coming apart as Shigaraki keeps fucking his swollen thighs harder. He moves and moves, every thrust pushing his pleasure higher and higher-- he didn't know that the pleasure of his orgasm could ricochet all through his body again and again even after his balls are empty and his cock can't spill anything else. But he feels so, so good as the ache keeps building between his thighs as it takes so much longer for Shigaraki to get his fill, the tops of his thighs slapping the injured bottoms of his own so hard he nearly squeals again as he fucks into the press of them that he tightens manually by squeezing them together in his rough grip as the head of his cock peaks out from between them, the ring cool against his skin, before his cum is splashing over Dabi's skin.

He's trembling on the bed, still gasping for breath as the other man lowers his legs to the bed again. His fingers go to Dabi's soft cock and he starts to tease and stroke him, making his nerves sting fresh and him choke out a sob as he shakes his head weakly.

Red eyes are so soft on him as he falls apart. "Okay, little one. Let me clean you up." And he does. He brings back the towel and Dabi takes note of the pitcher of water he brought to the nightstand. He uses the cloth to clean the cum from their skin and to make sure that his thighs are a little more soothed. Then he reaches into Dabi's bedside drawer for the medicine Natsuo makes to help keep his seams healthy and unswollen from how the staples can irritate his skin. He takes some of that on his fingers and rubs it into the welts across the backs of his thighs. The medicine soothes some of the ache and Dabi is so confused when, as the pain lessens, he feels like crying even more than he did before.

It takes a few minutes before Shigaraki is done with that and then he's reaching for Dabi's soiled shirt. "Alright, let's get you out of--"

Dabi shakes his head weakly. He just wants Shigaraki to go before he falls apart completely. The knight praised him for finding his resolve before and he wants to hold onto it but the tears feel like they're so big and heavy in his chest. He needs to let them out or he might combust again. He was always a crybaby. His siblings used to make fun of him for that until his life became so terrible that they couldn't deny that he had so much sorrow that it was unfair the gods took away the ability for him to shed it without also shedding blood. "... you can go." His voice is so small and shaky as he tries to make himself sit up. He can't manage though, everything from his waist down feeling like it's being lost in the ache of his thighs.

"No."

"I don't need your pity! I don't need you to baby me! You got what you wanted, you humiliated me! Just leave me alone and go tell my father that you've finally turned the unwanted son into nothing but a--" He can't fight the sob back. 'Whore' had crossed his mind. But the fact he had gone to bed with Shigaraki, that he had enjoyed it, reminds him too sharply of his mother and how their father treated her until her mind shattered apart. Oh gods, is that what is going to happen to him? Will he be sent away somewhere just like she was? He brings a shaky hand to his mouth to try and cover it because he might not be able to fight the sobs that are coming out of him, but he can do his best to muffle them.

He's not expecting for the knight to shush him gently and shift on the bed. He sits with his back against the headboard and pulls Dabi into his lap, hand gentle as he makes Dabi tuck his face into the crook of his neck even though he's smearing blood all over his skin. "Little one, you have never had my pity, only my contempt. You do not even have that now." He presses his face to the top of Dabi's head, and he wonders if he is entirely delusional when he thinks that he feels the other man give him a kiss there. "You have endured half a life of disgrace at the hands of your father and his kingdom. Now I have brought you down to the lowest point you could reach and raised you back up to the brightest pleasure you've ever had, have I not?"

Dabi feels his face heat and he hides it more against the other's skin. He didn't even touch his cock as he fucked his thighs. But it... had felt better than he'd ever managed to make himself feel with his hand tight on his length.

"We can keep finding those highs and lows when we're alone, little prince. But afterwards, I'm going to help you find a way to live in between them without letting you believe the way you are treated outside of these walls has been earned. You may have lost your magic and your standing in your father's court, but you are still alive, princeling. You still have time to become something greater than those things could have ever made you." His hand is gentle as it strokes along his back. "You can cry, sweet one. It's natural to mourn for the ways we've suffered."

Dabi doesn't want to fall apart, but the sobs come anyway, wracking and deep. He sobs and sobs and Shigaraki doesn't mock him. He doesn't leave. He holds him close, kisses his skin, and looks at him like he might be seeing something... precious for the first time when he considers him. Perhaps what's more astounding is that when the seams under his eyes are swollen and the bed is stained with blood, the knight still doesn't leave him. He wipes up his face, spells the bedding clean, and applies medicine to his face as the tub is filled with steaming water. He makes sure that Dabi is clean, that the medicine is applied fresh to his thighs again, and then he strips his own clothes and climbs back into the bed with him. He presses kisses to his face, across his shoulders, and gives him more soft, sweet words before he draws Dabi back into his chest and lets him sink deeply into the most restful sleep that he thinks he's had in over a decade.

///

Things are so very different after that. Shigaraki's contempt for him in their day-to-day conversations is no longer so strong. It only increases when he sees his spine begin to bow under the weight of the disinterest that the rest of the world gives him. When he falters and starts to sag, the knight brings him back to the room. He shuts the wards around them, and he has Dabi strip naked for him. He had protested at first and Shigaraki had simply turned and left the room. He came back the next morning as his duties required, but he had not spoken a kind word to him. Dabi had held out for a day more before he'd been stripped and waiting for the other on the morning of the third day. Shigaraki didn't hit him. He made him kneel on the floor and let the other rest a boot on his back until his knees were aching and all of his limbs were trembling from trying to hold the position for so long. It wasn't until the sun started to wane through the windows that Shigaraki had him look up from the floor and had taken the boot from his back. He had Dabi open his mouth as he undid his pants and took out his cock. He wasn't even hard at the time, but he slipped it inside of his mouth anyway. His knees were still hurting very badly, but he was able to stay like that for a long time until the pain became distant and there was a... foreign pleasure that started to press in along his body. He hadn't ever known that pain could become pleasure so intense, but as he felt his jaw stretch and go numb as spit started to dribble past his lips, his cock had hardened more rapidly than Shigaraki's. The other man had put his boot on his crotch. He hadn't applied any pressure to make it hurt, and after he was leaking against the sole of his shoe, he let him start to hump into the press like he was nothing but a desperate dog that was misbehaving.

Shigaraki assured him afterwards that he wasn't though. He let him cum, had taken himself from Dabi's mouth and had cum across his face, letting him taste someone else's cum for the first time. Dabi had been so embarrassed by the mess he'd made, by how ready he was to debase himself further, but the knight had easily picked him up when his limbs were too weak to carry himself, and had brought him over to the bed. He cleaned him up again and when Dabi had been trembling, terrified that he was going to leave him alone in the shame that was saturating his whole body, he had crawled back into the bed and gathered him close.

"You don't need to be scared, little one." He told him, his breath soft and sweet as he all but sighed the words against his skin. "After all of the more subtle cruelties you face each day, craving these ones, like this? Where you know that you're safe and when you know that you won't be pushed beyond what you can take-- that's alright. You can have this and enjoy it, princeling." His hand cupped his cheek and he made him look up at him, meet those red eyes that had a flicker of something in them that was softer and more... worried than he'd ever seen in the other's expression before. "You are still the prince. One word, and I will stop anything we may be doing. One word and I won't ever touch you again. You know that, don't you?"

He wasn't sure at the time, but he had nodded anyway, unable to trust his voice.

Shigaraki had drawn him tighter to his breast and had kissed the top of his head again. "You can stay like this a while, Dabi." He'd told him. "But not forever. You will have to find a way of existing outside of these moments. I won't be able to find you forever if you turn into a ghost each time my attention is elsewhere."

A ghost. That's what he thought of himself for so long. Ever since he burned. He died with the loss of his magic, he thought. And since then, he has only been a specter haunting the halls of the palace. He wasn't wanted, but no one could figure out how to exorcise him yet.

It took another few days of nothing sexual happening between them before Shigaraki had come and woken him before the crack of dawn. He'd brought him a page's vestments, and had urged him out of bed. He'd half expected the man was going to make him polish his armor before he violated him in the stables or something, but instead he had asked to see what he had learned before his coma. The forms felt horrible. He remembered how his body used to move through them, how he used to be able to train, but he didn't have the same muscles, the same flexibility, the same stamina that he'd needed to do so without embarrassing himself.

But Shigaraki had only nodded to himself and then brought him back up to his room to bathe and prepare himself for the rest of the day before the servants would bring his meal.

Dabi wasn't sure what the other man was planning, but he was already prepared to go back to bed by the time he'd finished his breakfast. For once, the knight did not complain about the laziness of his schedule because he said he wanted to go to the refugee camp that afternoon anyway. He left and Dabi slept.

///

It's a week later that Shigaraki comes into his room before dawn again, and he pulls the sheets tighter over his head, trying to hide in the blankets.

"I am not going back out to embarrass myself again! I'm sleeping!"

"You are not embarrassing yourself by resuming your training, you are embarrassing yourself," Shigaraki is so much stronger than him that he is easily able to rip the blankets from his hands and pull them back to expose his body to the chill of the air. "By allowing yourself to waste away in this room. Your father will not allow you to partake in political meetings, let you pursue a knighthood, or grant you permission to study any school of artistry in any official capacity. But you are the one who has chosen to instead do as he wants and let yourself become nothing but a memory of potential. Just because your magic is gone does not mean that you have no worth. Warriors without magic make a difference on the battlefield everyday. Artists without it are able to create masterpieces that hang in your family's gallery for centuries. And even the common man can bring concerns to the court and make a difference."

"Why do you care so much what I choose to do with my life? You don't even like me unless I'm degrading myself and letting you cum across my skin."

Shigaraki's expression does fill with a lighter contempt than it had when he'd first been assigned to him, but that still makes Dabi feel unbearably small. "I care," he says, "because a member of the royal family should not be squandering the opportunities that he was given by his very birth, even if they are not the ones he was promised then. I certainly enjoy the moments you let yourself submit to me, but even if you hadn't been so worked up after your first punishment, I would still be pursuing this goal. You are pathetic as you are now, but you have the potential to be more. I am not someone who can let such potential go wasted."

Dabi tries to wrap his head around that, annoyed as he can't tell if he's starting to blush because he was just insulted again or if it's because the... reassurance that Shigaraki really does want him in their encounters helps to soothe a deep ache in him that he didn't have a name for. He manages to not embarrass himself by addressing any of that and instead asking, "What goal?"

"The goal of turning a discarded ingot into a sword. Get up, get dressed. You will be decisive and sure by the time I am finished with you."

"And when exactly will that be?"

"If you manage to prove yourself to be worth my efforts? Perhaps never."

Dabi isn't expecting the way that makes warmth take root in his chest, but it does. Takami was his guard because he was a lazy piece of shit that wanted to stay in the castle as much as possible so he could flash his feathers at his father like he was hoping to take a mate. No other guard had ever chosen to stay on as his. Being assigned watching him was considered insulting since he was the thing in this castle that was worth so little it really didn't warrant being protected. They wanted to move onto bigger and better things. But Shigaraki just implied that he would stay. That things could be... Dabi isn't sure if the things that he's doing with the guard can be considered 'good', but they certainly are different, and Dabi... likes that difference. Things could be different like this for a while.

"You're insufferable and I should have you thrown in the stocks." He says as he gets out of bed and takes the page's clothes he's handed again.

"You would miss me if you left me there. Dress."

"Can I at least eat--"

"No. No sense in wasting the food in case you throw up."

"What the fuck am I going to be doing that could make me puke?"

///

Shigaraki didn't deign to answer him and instead brings him down to the training grounds as the sky begins to lighten from pitch to the deepest blue. But Dabi is surprised when they are not alone on the training grounds despite the early hour. A man is standing there. He is blond with a strong build, a livid scar splitting his forehead, and a shock of short blond hair, wearing peasant's clothes. Dabi bristles. No one but the castle staff and their knights should be here so early, and for one sickening moment he wonders if he's about to be killed. But Shigaraki catches his arm when he draws to a stop and pulls him forward.

The blond man hears their footsteps, Dabi's dragging as his panic builds, before he turns and smiles. "Yo, Tomura, what's up?"

"I hope that you didn't have any trouble getting over here?" Shigaraki asks when they are no more than a meter from the stranger. A stranger to him, but clearly someone that Shigaraki invited.

"No problem for me, man." He eyes Dabi. "This the prince?"

"One of them. Dabi, this is my friend, Jin Bubaigawara. Jin, this is your new trainee."

"'Trainee'?" Dabi bristles, turning his attention completely to Shigaraki. "I'm not going to be trained by a--" the word catches on his tongue as he realizes the rudeness of it and is leveled with a dry look from his guard. "Person who does not have formal training himself."

"You're in luck then. Jin does has formal training. He was a soldier since he was your youngest brother's age. His injury has kept him off of the battlefield for a few years, but he's still able to use his unique abilities to help train others."

"Oh," he feels his face flush slightly. "My apologies, thank you for your service, Sir Bubaigawara."

The blond man laughs uproariously and Dabi's embarrassment only grows at his complete rudeness. "'Sir' never had that before. You can just call me 'Jin'."

Shigaraki lets go of Dabi's arm and takes a step back, letting the other man start to speak. He asks Dabi how much training he received as a child, how often he exercises now, what he remembers of his sword forms, and then he nods. He gives Dabi one of the training swords and casts a spell. It's beyond strange when he sees the other man's shadow separate itself from his body and stand across from him, the shape of it morphing from Jin's mirror to one of his own. He hesitates, glancing at Shigaraki, but the knight is just watching with those assessing red eyes.

"Go ahead and run through your practice maneuvers like you would against one of the dummies." Jin instructs him.

Dabi does his best, but he feels slow and uncoordinated as he brings his sword against the body made of darkness that is shaped like him. It feels as solid as his own body each time he strikes it and there is a brewing discomfort in his chest as he lands the weak blows against it. When he finishes the set he takes a step back.

"Good, now, this guy," Jin pats the shade's shoulder, "is going to do that exact same sequence against you and you're going to try to defend. While you do, you'll be able to see exactly how you were moving before. Try to pay attention to that too while you avoid getting your shit kicked in."

Dabi doesn't feel all that confident about that, but he's glad he was at least given a warning before the other spurs the conjuration to life. The first blow he blocks is already testing his strength. His arms are so weak after the first round of his maneuvers that he doesn't think that he'll be able to block the blows throughout the whole set. He's slow, but so is the shade. The power that it strikes him with makes his arms shake, but it doesn't knock the training sword out of his hands the way that his father used to. He knows the moves that are coming, he sees the way that the shadow trembles between moves, how long it takes between each form to move again like it's already exhausted. He sees how he looks to others as he tries so hard to do what they were asking him to, and he doesn't know if he'll manage it. But he gets through the shade's set without letting a single swipe go under his guard.

"Perfect, now we're going to switch again. Look for the weaknesses in your defenses, and see if you can exploit them."

And on this goes. Jin has him try until his arms are so heavy that he can't even lift them and then he spends an additional hour showing him how to improve his footwork so that his attacks aren't so easily and blatantly choreographed. But he gives Shigaraki a thumbs up and the knight looks vaguely pleased himself before he turns to take him off to the castle as the sun rises high overhead. Dabi is exhausted and sweaty as they get back to their room, and Shigaraki rewards him for his hard work by letting him bathe before he feeds him some of the food that his servants bring. When he wants to get back into bed, he allows that too, having him spread his legs so he can move between them and dip his head down to his skin.

Dabi is a whole new kind of humiliated when he kisses his hole well before the knight has ever deigned to put his mouth against his lips, but he can't deny himself the pleasure that goes through him as he licks inside of his aching body.

///

The training sessions with Jin continue, first every other day, but as Dabi starts to actually be able to move after each, they turn to each day. And every day he learns a little more. His muscles get a little stronger, his steps more sure, his speed better. It takes months of training, but he improves. He even gets to the point where Jin or Shigaraki themselves will spar with him. Jin always goes easy on him, always just barely tapping him with the sword when he slips and isn't able to block. Shigaraki always makes sure to strike him just short of breaking skin. But the pain reminds him sharply to do better next time, while the soft touches as Shigaraki rubs the medicine into his skin in the privacy of his chambers remind him that the knight is never doing this for cruelty's sake. He can make this stop at any second with just one word. But he never does. He wants to less and less as he has to order new clothing because his shoulders are widening, has to have larger meals sent to his room because his stomach is no longer concave as he wastes away beneath his scars. He is growing. He is... getting stronger again. It becomes easier for him to hold his spine straighter. He wonders if he should be ashamed that it is also so easy to let himself bend it whenever Shigaraki demands, but the pleasure that comes in the moments he lets the other control him completely banishes that thought from his mind.

///

He didn't mean to go three months without seeing his siblings, but Shoto is extremely busy with matters of the war and court. Natsuo has been constantly making potions and healing any soldiers who are brought to the castle as the skirmish that started in Ontsall continues to rage. Fuyumi is the only one he can see, and that's only because the worsening skirmish had gotten to the point that potential suitors are being brought to her instead of her being sent off to distant kingdoms to court favor. He may not have meant for the last time he saw her to be when she sentenced Shigaraki to twenty lashes and sent everything that has happened between him and his guard into motion, but when he enters her chambers and her cheeks immediately pink when she sees Shigaraki following behind him, he realizes that she must not be over her reaction to his cruel words even if Dabi has had more than enough time to get over them.

"Don't worry about that, Fu," he says as he crosses the room to sit at the table they always sit at when he comes for a visit. "He didn't even feel them. Damn bastard didn't even bruise."

He doesn't think his sister looks all that relieved about that, her eyes moving away from Shigaraki and locking on him, widening with her surprise. "Oh-- Toya, you look... good."

Healthy. Solid. Less like a ghost than he did before. His body may always be disfigured with the evidence of his magic leaving him, but he is not the specter that used to come and haunt her rooms when she was free of her own duties. He looks real again. He feels real again. "I've been entertaining myself since our father has no need of me."

"I'm glad," she sounds it, but her eyes do flick to Shigaraki again and she makes herself straighten her spine. It would be improper for her to apologize for doling out the punishment that she did, but her nature and guilt are making it difficult for her to hold her tongue, clearly.

"Sir Shigaraki," he calls to the guard who is maintaining his post at the door. "I believe you owe my sister an apology. The last time we were here you were extremely disrespectful using that language in front of her."

"Toya, no--!"

"You're right, my prince." Shigaraki's voice is measured, but warmer than it normally is in front of others. Respectful, but so falsely that Dabi is certain that he is going to be punished severely when they find a moment alone again. He bows to his sister, and Dabi is a little jealous that the other man hasn't ever done so for him, before he speaks again. "You have my sincerest apologies, Princess Fuyumi. My behavior the last time we saw each other was unwarranted and extremely disrespectful. If someone had spoken to my sister the way I spoke to your brother, I would have demanded a far worse punishment. Your grace and decorum are truly something to behold and I hope that I may be worthy of what I have been shown of them some day."

Dabi would have immediately bitched at him over the massive amount of horseshit that apology was when he knows that Shigaraki probably would have been more impressed if his sister had given him a worse punishment after his backtalk last time. But instead he is gaping at the other man as his sister raises a hand to try and cover the tiny gasp that comes from her throat.

"Sister? What sister?" Dabi demands, finding his voice first as Shigaraki straightens back up to maintain his position at the door.

"You told the king that you were an orphan. That you had no family." Her voice is more terrified than indignant like his own. "If he discovers you lied to him in front of the entire court--"

"My apologies, I've told neither you nor the king a lie about my family. She is not my sister by blood, which is the only way the laws of this kingdom recognize kin. But we were raised together. I dried her tears, I bandaged her skinned knees, I watched her grow until I was not allowed to be at her side anymore. I got work and tried to protect my farm so that I might be able to bring her back to my side one day." He stops speaking for a moment, his teeth clenching and a muscle twitching in the side of his jaw as he swallows the words that they all know he wants to say, but that he cannot without letting his tongue slip and potentially showing their father the same disrespect he so casually showed Dabi the first time they were all together in this room. Knights in the king's circle are not allowed relationships outside of it unless directly condoned by their father. Those relationships, historically, have only been to sire children along with another of the kingdom's strong magical bloodline. A foster sister that cannot bring the kingdom more power is not someone he will ever be allowed to try to find again. "She is not blood, but she is kin." Is all he says instead.

Three months of letting the man train him, debase him, pamper him, and he still knows nearly nothing about him.

"How old is she?" Fuyumi asks.

"She would be fifteen now. She was always working for one of the textile factories in the city, so even once I had my farm, I wasn't able to purchase her contract to get her away from there."

"Textiles?" Dabi sees the gears turning in his sister's head faster than his own and he hesitates. But yes, that could work. "That's fascinating. You know, Shoto's sixteenth birthday is fast approaching. The ball that will be thrown will be quite a spectacle with people visiting from far and wide. I've been granted permission to gather some extra hands to assist me while I work on crafting my dress. Does your sister have any skill with embroidery?"

Oh they are all going to be in so much trouble if Enji finds out about this and Fuyumi is definitely letting her guilt drive her generosity. But, well, Tomura's eyes are bright and glimmer in a way that makes Dabi's stomach swoop a bit. He can't quite name the look there, but it seems to be a good one, because when they are alone again in his chambers, the punishment he doles out for his insolence in public is very light before he's letting Dabi grind himself into his pillows while the other watches him, actually letting him reach his satisfaction this time as he does.

///

It takes another week, but the day that Shigaraki's foster sister is supposed to arrive, they go down to the gates near the refugee camp. Jin and Atsuhiro, the merchant who spoke for the rest of the village, are also there, waiting. Jin, apparently, met Shigaraki and his sister when he was stationed near their orphanage, and is equally as excited to see the young woman again. And with the castle preparing itself to be stuffed to the brim with the foreign dignitaries and their own servants, Atsuhiro offered to let her stay in the tent that Shigaraki had assigned to him before he ended up in the kingdom's service. Dabi feels strange waiting at the gates for this with Shigaraki and the people he calls friends. He and Jin get along well enough during his training, but he is supposed to be the prince, even disgraced, he shouldn't be down in the refugee camp waiting to see a servant into the palace. He'd even told Shigaraki that he could stay in his room while he reunited with his sister so he could see her without having to worry about shirking his other duties, but the other had promised him five lashes if he wouldn't get dressed and come down with him.

Five lashes are hardly an issue now, more of a tease than anything, but Shigaraki's eyes had gone hot on him when he'd been so defiant about that and he had climbed into his bed with him, his hand reaching down into his sleep clothes to stroke along his thighs, murmuring that if he could take the hits there so easily, that perhaps he would have to put them against something more sensitive. He had fondled him for long enough that Dabi was starting to go breathless and squirm, before delivering a firm tap against his sac that left him gasping in a whole different way. He'd gotten out of bed then, but he had a feeling that was not just an idle threat. He's not sure how much he's going to enjoy that punishment when he eventually earns it, but each punishment comes with a sweeter reward. Hands petting over the hurts, lips kissing his skin until it's humming instead of screaming with his pain, and maybe, someday, Shigaraki will deign him worthy of bedding him properly. He has access to plenty of tomes, he knows how men tend to join themselves when they wish to. He wants to know what it will feel like when Shigaraki finally decides he's worthy of having his massive cock inside of him. It's a thought that has him hard when he's alone in his room at night, desperately trying not to touch himself because he has a feeling that he'll be punished for that if Shigaraki finds out that he's done it.

Shigaraki's posture is already perfect, but he seems to try to straighten more beside him, and that tells Dabi that he is slouching. He used to have good posture, but after nearly a decade of being told to make himself smaller and less regal, his spine began to bow. He is having to learn to hold his head high again. So he straightens and waits. The gates are open today, they open most days, to allow people to come and go, attending to their various businesses around the grounds and in the city beyond. That means it's impossible to tell when the young woman is going to come through, and they end up waiting, the three other men chatting and trying to involve him in their conversation for well over an hour before they hear a loud,

"Shiggy," in a feminine voice ringing out around the grounds.

Dabi has never seen Shigaraki slip in public. Even in their private moments, he is always so in control. But in this one, he sees the emotions flood across the other man's face. He sees the way the smile lights up his eyes first, sees how it splits his features, and he moves. He breaks his post to rush, in step with Jin, over to the young woman who is throwing her hood off of her head. Her hair is a little past her shoulders and yellow as wheat, bright topaz eyes matching with thick, dark lashes framing them, and a smile of her own that is so bright that the sun may be hidden behind the clouds today because it knew its radiance would not be able to eclipse her joy. She all but leaps into Shigaraki's arms and holds onto him so tightly as the knight clings to her as well, lifting her from the ground as he hugs her. They're too far away now for Dabi to hear what they are saying, but as Jin reaches them too, the woman reaches to bring him into the hug as well. There is a sinking in Dabi's gut as he watches this all happen. Joy like this is so rare in his world, in the kingdom. The war has been raging for nearly a century and a half, fought by his father's father before him. So many die or are separated from the people they want to be with in the pursuit of a victory that will help to bring all of this suffering to an end. But there is no end in sight. It was something that he'd had to start thinking about when he was next in line for the throne, but now that responsibility lies with Shoto. He doesn't know how his youngest brother could possibly find a way to bring peace to the kingdom, so he supposes he'll just have to hope that when he becomes king, he can at least bring a bit more of this kind of joy here instead.

The three have to move out from the middle of the road to stop impeding traffic, but that spurs them to move back over to him and the merchant. Shigaraki's eyes are still bright when he approaches him. "Toga, this is Prince Dabi, my charge, and Dabi, this is Himiko Toga, my adoptive sister."

"Hello!" She curtsies to him but pops back up very quickly. "It's nice to meet you!"

"Nice to meet you too, your... brother has been so excited to bring you home."

Toga grins, one of her arms around Shigaraki's waist and her body pressed into his side as her eyes move from him to take in the rest of the palace grounds. "This looks like it will be a great home." She tells Shigaraki.

Shigaraki's eyes are on his when he tells her, "It is certainly better than I first thought it would be."

///

Their days change again now that Toga is in the castle. She often sneaks out of the camp early in the morning and waits with Jin for them at the training grounds, wearing trousers and a tunic, her hair tied up into two uneven buns. She trains with a dagger more than a sword against the shade he conjures for her. Her dress is already scandalous but apparently even the two strange men he's come to know are aware that she would never be able to get away with carrying around a sword. But Dabi can't help his confusion as they pause for a break on the third day after her arrival.

"Why are you learning to fight? Now that you are in my sister's employ, you will have all of the protections of the castle and guards-- as soon as the ball has ended."

Toga gives him a strange look and the expression is at least partially mirrored on the faces of the other two as well. "Everyone should know how to fight." She says.

"No, they shouldn't," Dabi tells her carefully. "That is why my father has such strict laws and recruiting practices for the armies of the kingdom. He may not always do good, but he is always trying to do right by the people of his kingdom. He wants to ensure that the violence of the war does not seep into every aspect of our citizens' lives."

"And what happens if your armies fail?" Shigaraki says his tone harder than it has been in a long time and his eyes flat and cold. "If your guards cannot hold the borders, the way they so often fail to? Then enemy forces will flood those villages. They can pillage, plunder, devour, rape, and inflict other violences and horrors on your citizens that have no way of protecting themselves. When the dragons come to the borders, those people are lucky if they are eaten before the demonic soldiers swell through the streets. They know it too. The amount of times people are found hanging in their own homes because they couldn't bear to endure or fight to live or flee is disgusting." Shigaraki's voice is cold and furious when he speaks and Dabi is left staring at him. "Everyone should know how to defend themselves. A soldier's training should be imparted to everyone alongside their basic education so that even if the crown fails, the people will not be so easily trounced and subjugated by whoever comes to take their place."

Dabi struggles to find words. Shigaraki is always spouting off things that are near treason when they are alone, but this kind of challenge against the crown and the way their military is run is actually treacherous. If anyone heard him speaking like this, he would be lucky if he only had his tongue cut out. It feels unnatural, and the other man doesn't even flinch, but he brings his hand across his face anyway. "Do not ever speak of the crown being overtaken again. Words like that breed misfortune and the darkness in the hearts of our enemies."

There's not even a mark on Shigaraki's cheek, and his eyes are cold when they meet his again. "Yes, your highness."

"If your sister wants to learn to fight, that is her prerogative." She shouldn't be doing it and it could get her ostracized and potentially fired from her position if her unladylike decorum is brought to the attention of anyone else, but it is her choice, so long as she can keep it hidden. "But do not make the mistake of thinking that your knighthood allows you to speak so freely about matters of state."

"Yes, your highness." He turns his attention back to his sister who looks like she'd very much like to gut him with the dagger in her hand for his treatment of her brother. But Shigaraki makes her shift her attention back to her forms and Dabi resumes his own training. His hand feels wrong for the rest of the day, but he had to do it. Has to show Shigaraki that he cannot be so blatant in his disrespect. If he becomes too comfortable making his criticisms with him, then he could say something inappropriate in front of the wrong person, and he wouldn't even have a chance to try to save him, his father's wrath would be so immediate and complete. The thought of the knight being lost to him is something too heavy in his chest for him to endure. So he has to learn. He has to stay safe.

Though the rest of their training is tense, when he returns to his rooms with Shigaraki, the other man doesn't turn the punishment back on him. He just catches his wrist before he lets Dabi go to bathe. He holds him and looks at the palm that came across his cheek and then he brings it to his face again, this time to press a kiss to his skin. But he says nothing and he lets go of him almost immediately after, moving to take up his position at the door again. Dabi hopes that means that he understands why he did it.

But after his bath, he's allowed to eat and study for a while, until Shigaraki urges him to visit his sister so he can see his own again as well. Toga, when she's not practicing with a blade, is working hard. The young woman doesn't have the wealth of magic that Shigaraki has, but she does have her own unique ability. She is able to mimic any spell cast in front of her if she has a drop of the caster's blood. Apparently trying to mimic something beyond her abilities can leave her unconscious for days and may even kill her if the spell manages to work at all, but taking a drop of Fuyumi's blood on her tongue allows her to cut his sister's work in half as she can go bolt by bolt with her over the many layers of fabric her gown all needs embroidered. She is more than happy to prick her finger each day to be able to get her work done more quickly, as it will give her dressmakers breathing room to ensure that the final piece is everything that will be expected of all of them.

And while she and Toga work, the young woman talks and talks. She seems to have so many things to say, so many questions about what it's like to be a princess and prince, what their life in the castle is like when they're not attending court, what their court is like. While Shigaraki seems to have nothing but contempt for the entire world that he has found himself in since his abilities awakened, Toga is all bright curiosity.

"You don't have meals together?" She asks as she sits on the floor with the bolt laid out in front of her. His sister currently only has one worktable in the room, but he believes she's having another made if Toga is going to stick around to continue to help her with her craft. For now, the polished floor is the only other place in this room that is large enough for her to get a meter of the fabric in front of her to create the repeating pattern reliably.

"No. The king takes his meals either alone or occasionally with his advisors. When I am not entertaining, I take my meals in my room, as does Toya."

"We always take all of our meals together." Toga tells them. "In the main hall, everyone gathers to eat and talk. It's almost like a festival every night." Which is higher praise of an orphanage than Dabi had really expected, but he supposes, given her and Shigaraki's close bond, that even if the people running it weren't kind or warm, the children stuck there forged their own bonds. "Since Prince Shoto's birthday is coming up, will that be a big festival?"

"It will be a celebration." Fuyumi says with a tentative smile. "There will be a formal dinner and some dancing and mingling, but it won't be a festival. Our brother is spending most of his time embroiled in his military studies and our father wants to put the border skirmish to an end swiftly. Unless that manages to be settled before Shoto's birthday, he will only allow an evening of revelry before they both resume their work."

"Oh, that's boring. You all barely get to see each other, right? It sucks that you're not going to get to spend more time with your other siblings even on a special occasion."

Fuyumi's smile is a little fractured when she looks at Toga. He doesn't know when the desire to have a family that is whole and healthy crystalized in her, but it is something she longs for, and he can see how much it's weighing on her to not have it now. "The four of us spend time together whenever we can. And Toya still comes to visit me, so what else can I really ask for? We're at war."

"You could ask for better company," Shigaraki says, speaking for the first time in hours. "From what I hear, Prince Shoto has a far fairer temperament than Dabi."

"I am more than fair enough for you, you pompous dragon slayer!" He snaps automatically, but there is further relief in him at just hearing the other's voice again since he reprimanded him this morning.

"I haven't killed any of the dragons I've fought so far." He says pointedly.

"Shoto certainly has a kinder temperament than Toya." Fuyumi, the traitor, agrees. "Do you two have any other... siblings?"

"Oh yeah," Toga tells her happily. "We've got big sis Magne, she's a few years younger than Jin, and Spinner, he's Tomu's age and left a few months after him. He got to stay close by though, so I could still see him when neither of us were working. He promised that he'd come visit soon too." She says, looking back at Shigaraki.

"He should come around for the party. Magne too if she's not too busy with her own responsibilities. The knights are supposed to have time afterward on their own for their hard work. We can spend time together and catch up."

"Okay!" Toga beams at him. "I'll make sure to send them a message."

It's still months off, for his and his brother's birthdays, but if she wants to send mail that far south then it's probably good to send that information out sooner rather than later. Half of the knights on the guard, the older ones who have been here for longer, will be off duty during the festivities, encouraged to try and find suitable potential partners who will be able to bring more magic and status to the kingdom, while the younger ones like Shigaraki should be free of their duties for three days two days after the festivities themselves once the foreign guests have left. If they want to see their other friends from the orphanage, then that's something that Toga has every right to request, even if Shigaraki might get a talking to from his father if he doesn't determine Shigaraki's friends to have any exploitable power.

"Are you liking it here?" He asks Toga. "Your asshole of a brother has been glowering since he arrived."

"Shiggy gets really serious about work." Toga says automatically. "But he's a lot more fun when he's off the clock! He and Spinner love to play games at festivals and bars. He usually puts people off by smiling and laughing too much."

"Am I not allowed to enjoy myself?" Shigaraki sounds a bit amused by her declaration.

Dabi suddenly wonders if he's ever even seen him happy before. He thought that... Shigaraki was enjoying himself when he's made him degrade himself. But maybe the satisfaction he takes from his body isn't real the way that he thought it was. Maybe it was just... nothing. Maybe it was just a way to pass the time and find physical satisfaction that he couldn't get as easily as he could before he was trapped in this castle.

"When you're cackling like a demon? No. It's off-putting." Toga tells him. She is very personable and cheerful, so she keeps the conversation going for as long as Fuyumi can let their visit go on before she has other things to see to for the day.

///

"You're getting good at that," Shigaraki tells him, his hand petting through his hair as Dabi kneels on the stone floor of his bedchambers, the guard's cock sunk as deep into his throat as he can take it. It still makes his eyes burn like they want to prickle with tears on the edges, but the weight of the other in his mouth and the taste of his skin is something that Dabi is scared he's going to start to crave. Oh, if anyone ever found out how much he likes to be on his knees for Shigaraki, he thinks that he might die. Shigaraki calls him a whore sometimes and his skin gets so hot, but if the kingdom knew what he was doing, then even death wouldn't be able to restore his lost honor in their eyes. But he likes having his mouth full, likes how Shigaraki's hand cards through his hair and moves around to cradle the back of his head, not forcing himself any deeper, but just... holding him. Dabi can't help looking up at the other through his lashes, his body and chest so full of warmth as he sucks and swallows around him the way that he was taught. Shigaraki's eyes meet his and he sees... something flicker through them. He doesn't know what it is, but he doesn't want to think about it. Not when he feels so heavy and so very light at the same time. He just wants the evidence of the other's enjoyment coating his throat and tongue. Dabi continues to work his mouth over his length, letting himself sink into the movements more deeply each time, his own arousal the only thing that keeps him from sinking into deep satisfaction as his mouth moves.

Shigaraki spills down his throat, not warning him before he does, just keeping him in place when he's deep inside so that Dabi will swallow away the salty, bitter stream of his cum as it splashes down his throat. It wasn't a flavor he liked at first, but now, he savors it, moving his tongue against his skin for a while longer after he's finished spilling to ensure that he has every drop of the other's release in his mouth. The knight makes him pull off once he's softened again and Dabi whines quietly when he's allowed to rest his cheek against his thigh as his hand continues to pet through his hair. The softness that comes after he's finished being disciplined makes his need so much higher and he doesn't know if he'll be allowed to cum today. He slipped during his training today and pulled some of his staples from his seams. They are bandaged over right now to keep him from bleeding, but new soldiers came in needing treatment. Shigaraki sent word to the healers, but no one has arrived yet, and Dabi would prefer it if they didn't until after they've seen to the wounded. His injury is from his own inability to get his training right, they deserve the attention more than him. He doesn't know if he deserves to feel good either when he wasn't able to perform the way Shigaraki expects him to even though he's getting stronger, and he doesn't dare ask. He still feels good now, even without an orgasm, he doesn't want to risk ruining that by getting more beratement for his uselessness if he begs for more.

Shigaraki keeps stroking his hair as he murmurs, "Such a pretty blush on your cheeks, little prince. Lift your shirt for me."

Dabi bites his lip to keep from whining. He's only wearing his shirt right now and when he's kneeling like this, it's only just long enough to cover himself up. But he reaches for the hem anyway with one hand and pulls it up, fisting the fabric against his stomach as his cock is chilled by the air of the room.

"So cute how hard you get just having your filthy mouth used." His voice is still soft and the hand is gentle, but Dabi turns his face more into his leg so he doesn't have to look up at him and see whatever that flicker was in his eyes again. Maybe he's tired of this game. Maybe the contempt will turn to disinterest, pity, or, worst of all, indifference the way that everyone else's eyes have always turned when they look at him. He doesn't want to invite those looks because he thinks, after having these past few months of Shigaraki looking at him, he will shatter apart completely if it does happen. "Show me how cute your face is when you cum, baby boy."

He wants to immediately put his hand on his cock, but he knows better, "Thank you, sir." He wants it, but he has to prove that he's good. He knows what he's supposed to do, how he's supposed to act when Shigaraki is the only person who has ever deigned to give him this.

"You're being such a good boy today, sweetheart." His hand is so soft in his hair and his voice is so warm. "I think you've earned a reward. Do you want to sit in my lap, precious? Or do you want to stroke yourself?"

That has him peeking up at the other man. His eyes are still bright on him, for now. "...I'm not... in trouble?"

Shigaraki frowns at him, fingers stopping at the nape of his neck. "Why would you be in trouble, beautiful?"

"... We had to stop."

That has his brows furrowing too and then the other hooks a hand under his arm and pulls him up, pulls him into his lap. "Princeling, people get hurt training. I'm sure that you had your fair share of pulled muscles and broken blisters even back when you were little. You're not in trouble." Both of his hands come to cup his cheeks and keep him looking at him. "I always tell you why you're being punished, don't I?"

Dabi manages a small nod.

"You're not being punished, little one." His thumbs are soft when they move over the lines of staples in his cheeks. "I just wanted to enjoy you being so cute."

Dabi feels his face warm, but the words don't fully remove the tightness in his chest. Knights aren't forbidden from finding other company as long as they can do it discreetly, but Shigaraki has been taking his duties so seriously that he's barely ever away from Dabi's side for longer than to rest at night. He could have other partners. Ones who are actually cute instead of ruined the way he is. Ones that he doesn't need to punish at all because they can be good for him all the time. Shigaraki must see the flicker of those thoughts behind his eyes, because his are even softer on him when he carefully moves his hand down to his cock, stroking him so that he stays hard even as the mess in his head makes it difficult for him to focus. He very rarely has Shigaraki's hands on his body like this and the sharper spike of pleasure has him squirming slightly and whimpering.

"You could have anyone." The words are weak and miserable. He could. Like Fuyumi, like Shoto. His magic is so strong, his father will want Shigaraki to have children, lots of them probably. He might even let him have a male lover if he agrees to sire those children with a female one. But he doesn't need to have him. The broken, useless prince who he has to train to be as good for him as he wants him to be. Someone who, if anyone discovered their entanglement, he would be reprimanded and Dabi might... he thinks that his siblings would at least argue for exile rather than execution. His father would never want him distracting one of his knights. They would never see each other again if anyone discovered them, and his... heart breaks at the thought of not having Shigaraki in his life anymore. He's only had Shigaraki for a few months, but if he had to go without him, he doesn't know if he would survive it. He needs the other man. He wants him to be in his life because his life, for the first time in years, feels worth holding onto. Losing that would break him in a way that he couldn't bear to experience.

Shigaraki's other hand moves to catch his chin and make sure that he is looking at him even though he wants nothing more than to close his eyes and close out all that is happening to and around him. He doesn't want to look the other in the eyes and be told that he is only warming his cock until he can get a new assignment. That he exists like this because the other man was simply bored. And then Shigaraki speaks, "I chose you," and makes Dabi's heart swell so full that it takes away all of the echoes of grief that he was trying to claim before they'd even come for him. "You're mine, little prince." Shigaraki's voice is not as steady as it was before, there's a growl to it, a possessiveness that has his grip tightening against his skin and sending sharper pleasure spilling out over Dabi's nerves, the words and touch making him twitch against the knight's palm.

He feels how much Dabi likes those words and the hunger in his expression goes ravenous. He lets go of Dabi's length and moves his hands to his hips, letting him rock forward against his thigh. Shigaraki's thighs are thick and muscled, and the texture of his trousers adds another intoxicating sensation when he's allowed to grind into his lap. Dabi's whole head feels dizzy with heat. This is a reward because Shigaraki knows how much he likes to be allowed to cum, but also how much he likes to be made helpless and small in his lap, so needy for his pleasure that he'd debase himself by humping his leg like a dog.

Shigaraki lets him move, lips ghosting over the smooth skin of his cheek to kiss the blush there before he's murmuring, "That's it, little one. Why would I ever want anyone else? My pretty little princeling who was so lost, but who has shown me every step of the way how badly he wants to be more than what he was forced to be. My sweet boy who always takes his punishments and learns to be better. My darling lo-- my darling," he corrects the word, moving his thigh up against Dabi to distract him from the slip, "who won't ever be the jewel of the kingdom again because I am going to selfishly keep you all to myself. I am going to tear down this world to make a place perfect enough for you to sit, my precious prince. How could you ever doubt how deeply my affection goes, little one?" He asks, face nuzzling into his neck. "Perhaps you do need to be punished. I know that those lovely eyes are sharper than that when they are open and attentive."

"No, no, no," he can't be punished now. Not when the words are putting pleasure under his skin as sharply as the frantic movements of his hips, getting easier with each one because he's starting to leak all over the other's pants with his desperation to cum.

"'No', you don't want to be mine? Or 'no', you're such a desperate little whore that you don't want to stop?"

"Don't stop," he whines, his voice breathless and thin.

Shigaraki presses a kiss to his neck like he isn't disgusted by his scars. "Oh, my precious one, it is a miracle that you were not born a commoner or you would have ended up a harlot. A miracle that you were born a prince and made to wait all of these years so that I could be the first one to get to experience your pleasure. A gift to get to train your needy body to adore my touches instead of letting you be tainted by less worthy hands."

Dabi has wanted a lot of things in his life. He wanted to be a dragon slayer. He wanted to grow his magic beyond his father's expectations. He wanted to recover from his injuries. He wanted to even just be acknowledged by the court afterwards. He has wanted so much and so ardently that Dabi thought that would be all he was for the rest of this life. But none of those aches can compare to how much he wants Shigaraki. His touches, the words, the idea of... of belonging to someone if he can't even belong in his own kingdom. He wants someone as devoted to him as the other man says he will be. He would kneel at his feet and take any punishment that he's earned for the rest of his life if he could have this.

But he's selfish, and he asks for a little more as he tries to turn his face to Shigaraki's, his mouth panting and desperate, and seeking out his skin. He's never been allowed to put his lips on his body save for along his cock. He hasn't been allowed so many things during their entanglements even though he wants them so badly, and when he turns his face to try and get a kiss, he is not given it this time either, putting a stone back in his guts.

When Shigaraki pulls back to look at him though, all of the heat is still there. "Not yet, precious. Not until you've chosen me too."

"I want you." He tells the other, his fingers digging into the muscle of his chest as he tries to cling to him.

"I know, little one. But you can't choose me yet. Not until you know every inch of who I am." He presses a kiss to the edge of his lips and moves his thigh again. "For now, all you have to do is choose to let yourself have your pleasure."

"Please," Let him cum, let him in, he just wants it all. Tomura holds him closer as he dips his head again to his neck, pressing a soft kiss to his throat as his hands move over Dabi's skin. One hand up to his chest, fingers teasing at his nipples, the other helping him keep the rhythm that brings his pleasure higher and higher. When he manages to cum, it's when his body is trembling and tight, his need an ache inside of him as Tomura strokes his skin.

They lay together in his bed and that sends a heavier, sweeter pleasure through his veins as he lets himself cling to the other man, their chests pressed together, his nose against the other's collarbone. Tomura's hands move along his back and his hair, petting him as Dabi's breathing goes steady again.

"...You never talk about yourself. Jin and Toga tell me more about you than you do." His voice is so small as he clings to the other, his fingers touching the deep scars that are carved into Tomura's back that he still doesn't know how they got there.

Tomura's hands tighten on him too. "You will know everything about me when it's time, then you can decide if you want to be with me afterward."

"When?" He doesn't want to keep waiting. The skirmish on the border will end eventually. Takami might take his post back and Dabi won't be able to see Tomura anymore.

Tomura shifts so he can take one of Dabi's hands in his own, fingertips running up his before he threads them together. "When someone new sits on your father's throne. When this kingdom is not rotted from that poisoned root. When you can stand tall and choose who you want to kneel to and what your future will bring."

Dabi holds onto him tighter. "I want a future with you."

"Then we will walk the halls together. Everyone will know that you are mine and that all of my devotion belongs to you. Our future will stretch out into an unending line of possibilities." Red eyes on him, no flicker of hesitation or insincerity in them.

"It's so far away," his throat is tight. Years until Shoto takes the throne, more before his father dies. How can the other be so certain that he will still want him after all of that time? "He could send you away at any moment."

"I would tear down this entire world before I let anyone take me from your side, my prince."

Tomura kisses his knuckles and Dabi believes him, but he's about to beg for a real kiss. One against his lips, but he manages to change the direction his tongue wags. "How did your back get hurt?"

The other man rubs his thumb along his knuckles for a moment, and then he lets out a shaky breath. "It never did. Those aren't scars, precious, they're something I was born with."

They're so deep and the texture of them makes the muscles beneath feel strange under his other hand. "Does it hurt?"

"No, but it could be more comfortable."

Dabi touches the mark and feels a strange shifting beneath his shoulder blade. He's about to ask what he means by that when a sharp knock against his door has both of them tensing on the bed.

"Toya?" Natsuo's voice comes from the other side and Dabi's entire body flushes even as his stomach swoops with his fear. They can't be seen so disheveled together. Shigaraki takes his hand from his own and taps easily into his magic to clean their skin and his pants as they both sit up. They both move swiftly, not daring to pause to exchange any further words. The knight pulls his shirt, tunic, and bracers back on as Dabi pulls on his pants, leaving his bandaged side exposed as if he'd just left the shirt off after being bandaged. Shigaraki looks so put together that Dabi could believe that nothing had been happening between them just a moment before, but he aches with the need for it back. The future they were imagining, the honesty the other man was giving him, it made something inside him ache so keenly that he doesn't know how he could have lived without it before now.

When he's sitting on the bed, not looking like he was just being debauched by his guard, Shigaraki lowers the wards around the room and goes to open the door. It's been at least two months since he's gotten to see Natsuo in anything but passing, and though his brother looks tired already from a long morning with the soldiers, he still has a smile for him as he moves past Shigaraki and greets him.

He only seems to notice that Shigaraki is not Takami, but he doesn't pay the knight any other attention as he helps to close the wound on his side. Dabi is happy to see his brother, but he can't deny that he's mourning the loss of closeness that was between he and Tomura when, by the time Natsuo leaves, it feels like it would be unnatural and jarring to try and find it again. He will get it, get to know every inch of the other man, when Tomura has decided he's earned it. He can work for that and wait patiently when there is nothing he can do to speed it along.

It's only as he's going to sleep that night after Shigaraki has left that Dabi realizes that this is the first time in nearly a decade that he is looking forward to the future.

///

Dabi is not a morning person, but getting up early to train each day has at least become routine enough that he isn't as aggressively unhappy about it. It's better now, anyway, because Tomura will wake him with kisses to his brow and cheeks, affection to get him to start the day in a less cranky manner than before. However, even if he's gotten used to being up early, that does not mean that he is prepared for Toga bounding over to them as soon as they step foot onto the training grounds, beaming and immediately catching Tomura's hands so that she can bounce around as squeal.

"Big sis and Spinner are coming to the party!" Her voice is too loud and joyous for this time of the morning and even his knight seems to think the same as he pulls his hands from hers so that he can level a flick that makes a loud thump against her forehead. "Ow!"

"We already knew they were coming to the party. I wouldn't have had you send the invitation if I didn't expect them to attend." He informs her with a dryness that is usually reserved for when Dabi is having one of his low days and he wants to get him moving again.

"Yeah, but they're already on their way!" Toga tells him, pulling a letter from the pocket of her vest.

That piques Shigaraki's interest more than her outburst did and he takes the letter from her hand so that he can flick it open. His eyes scan the contents quickly, "That is good news. They should be able to get a room at one of the local inns and rest there from their trip. I'll bring you some of my coin tomorrow. I won't be able to greet them until I'm no longer on duty, so when they arrive, make sure that you give them the gold for me."

"Okay!" She's still practically dancing through her forms as they get back to their sparring, but at least she's not talking at a mile a minute while their blades cross.

Jin and Shigaraki step off to the side to talk, watching as they spar. Probably discussing what they'll need to work on next. Dabi isn't about to say that he has anywhere near the knight or former soldier's prowess with a sword, but he is getting better. If someone pulled a sword on him now, he would be able to defend himself now instead of having no recourse but begging for his life. But Shigaraki and Jin stay talking for a while as he and Toga finish their set, both having moved a little further away from them in a clear sign that they don't want to be bothered. When Toga sees that, she pulls him down into the sand pit so they can lay on the soft ground, her finger tracing patterns into the earth. He tries not to shiver. It's getting colder as winter proper sets in. Their kingdom is blessed with more mild ones than those up north, the first of usually barely half a dozen snows often coming around his and Shoto's birthdays, but it is cool enough now that, as the sweat dries on his skin, that he is starting to feel that chill more acutely.

"I can't wait for you to meet them!" She tells him. "Big sis is so cool and strong and Spinner likes to read too when he's not playing cards or dice with Shiggy. They're going to love to meet you!"

"I'm sure that your friends will just be excited to see Shigaraki again. How long has it been for the three of them?"

Toga hums. "They got to see each other in passing a few months ago, but they didn't get to talk. And they're going to want to meet you too! He's been saying forever that he wasn't ever going to get involved with someone until after the war was over, but just a few months with you and he changed his tune." She snickers and Dabi's whole body goes cold from something other than the chill.

The blood drains from his face as he sits up. His stomach swoops. "I don't know what you're talking about," he lies. "Shigaraki is just my guard." That's all the rest of the world can know about him if he doesn't want the other man to be taken away from him. He wouldn't ever be allowed to hold onto him if anyone else knew.

"What? Wait," Toga pushes herself up from the ground as well. "You aren't dating? But he's so in love with you--!" She slaps both hands over her mouth with a distressed squeak as Dabi's head whips around to look at her. The flurry of emotions that go through him feel like they're impossible to distinguish from one another.

But all he manages to croak out is, "What?" In the wake of her declaration.

"Oh no, don't tell him I told you!" She says in a hushed voice, even though it could have been a scream with her desperation in it.

"Did he say that?" Hope is the one that swells big enough in his chest that he's able to name it.

"I'm not supposed to tell you if you don't know."

He thinks that might mean 'yes'. Love? His eyes turn to find Tomura speaking with Jin across the training grounds. His expression is grim and determined, a far cry from the softness that he gets now whenever the other comes into his bed. They still haven't kissed. The other man hasn't ever sunk inside his body. He has never said those words to him. But it warms him to the place where the embers of his magic burned out years ago when he thinks that the other could mean those words. When he can really believe that the future that Tomura pictured with him when they were tangled in his sheets is really, truly, something that he wants to. He never thought that he would be allowed to have love bloom in his chest, not until after his father was dead at the very least, but this is something precious and wonderful that he wants to cradle deep inside, secret it away into a small soft part of his heart so that no other hardship or cruel hand in the world will be able to reach for it and shatter it apart.

He sees Tomura and Jin break off their conversation and come over to the two of them, and Dabi hopes he can keep the aching emotion off of his face as he looks up at the knight.

"Get out of there. If that sand gives you an infection, your brother will have my head." His tone is cool and unimpressed. So easy for him to pretend to still have the contempt, even tempered, that he held for him at the very beginning of their entanglement. A ruse for the rest of the world to keep them far from the truth that he wants to believe is really living in both of their hearts.

"If anyone ever gets to take your head," he says with a haughtiness that doesn't feel nearly as natural as it once might have, "it's going to be me."

Shigaraki's eyes flicker. That shadow and then the big inconceivable emotions that Dabi hopes that he'll someday always be able to name in his lover's eyes. "I'll hold you to that." But then Jin starts talking about the next set of exercises that he wants to teach them and he pushes himself into the training even harder than before. Tomura's love is not based on this. He wanted him to be alive, didn't want him to waste away, readying himself to die at any moment the way that he had been before they'd met. He believes everyone should know how to fight so that the strong enemies that they fight won't be able to hurt them the way that he must have seen so many hurt before. But he thinks that the other man would love him still even if he decided not to continue his training. So long as he dedicated himself to something else. This is as good a thing as any though, as he waits for that wonderful future that they envisioned together to come about.

///

The last three weeks before Shoto's birthday finally actually sees his brother return from his post. He is taller than he was the last Dabi saw him, his height now, which does leave him pouting because that probably means that he's going to grow to Natsuo and their father's height. He doesn't have the responsibilities as the oldest, and now he's going to be the second shortest in their family like he needed another slight against his pride.

"I'm going to cut off your feet." He tells Shoto when his younger brother catches him in the hallway as he's coming back from his training with Shigaraki.

"My bones will keep growing," Shoto replies evenly without a pause. It is improper and his father would certainly have something to say about it, but Shoto doesn't hesitate to move into his space and give him a hug. His magic leaves half of his body unnaturally cold, and the other half sweltering with heat, the sensation so unique and strange that he can never forget it, and that makes his chest ache. It's been four years since he was able to give his brother a hug, but neither of them dare linger long out of fear of one of his father's more loyal knights spotting them. Shoto won't be reprimanded for speaking to him, but Dabi could end up punished again for distracting his attention, no matter how briefly. "What are you wearing, Toya?" He asks as he sees his training clothes. He hasn't dressed like this in front of his brother since he was barely five.

"I've been training again," he stands up straighter as he says it. He might not ever be a warrior like him, but he can be something. He can learn how to stand upright and not embarrass their family name any more than he already has. "How has your training gone? You haven't only been fighting at the border, have you?" He is supposed to be training with the other younger soldiers. He could have been knighted immediately, like Shigaraki had been, but Shoto had insisted on entering the school for this nation's warrior mages and going through all of the years of training from a page onwards. He didn't want to use his family name to advance through the rankings without being able to see what exactly the soldiers he would someday be commanding had to go through as well. It's something that their grandfather had forced Enji to do when he was a boy, so this ended up being something that Shoto had been able to argue for when he turned twelve. He's only two years away from his graduation now, and when he does, he will be able to be crowned if his father chooses to step down then, else, Shoto will be able to command their soldiers himself as he takes up a more prominent position in the war room.

There is a tightness around his brother's eyes when he speaks again. "Not the whole time, no." He doesn't offer him more than that at first, and Dabi worries that he'll get nothing more. That the time away from each other and with Enji dripping poison in his little brother's ears has made him believe that Dabi is not worthy of knowing the truth of what is happening in their kingdom beyond these walls. "We've lost ten miles and the line is still wavering." He says after a moment and sinks Dabi's stomach like lead. "I'll only be here for a day or two after the party. My school is being asked to offer more support to make up for the knights that we lost."

"How many-- Who?" His father's knights number, he thinks, around fifty now. A dozen are always kept close to the capital to ensure that no one ever manages to get close to the castle and do damage when they might be unguarded. The others are scattered across the country using their heightened arcane abilities to support their foot soldiers and keep the tides of battle in their favor.

"Eleven, so far." Shoto tells him, his face pinching further with his unhappiness. "Takami was lost in the last battle."

Dabi stares, convinced for a moment that he's heard his brother wrong. That damned, lazy, irritating bird was the fastest soldier in their army. Nothing in the world has ever been able to touch him. He always used to say that his great speed was to make up for the fact that as soon as he was off duty, he would do nothing else but laze about. He always used to complain that the war needed to end soon so that he could have a long life of doing nothing afterward. Dabi will not pretend that he was fond of the knight and his attitude. How he belittled him with a smile and worshipped the ground that his father walked on, but he won't pretend either, that he didn't in some way think that the harpy would outlive him. That his arrogance and the ability to back it up with the incredible feats of magic he could weave through his feathers wouldn't keep him alive until long after Dabi was finally thrown away when his father figured out a way of doing so.

Shoto seems to know that the news isn't something that he will have an easy time grappling with, and he squeezes his shoulder with his cool palm. "He protected my classmate when he did. Another harpy. He'll carry on the hard work while Keigo gets to rest forever now. I'm sure that he's still having the last laugh now."

Dabi still doesn't know if he believes that, or if he even wants the comfort that Shoto is trying to extend to him. He didn't even like Takami. He hated him more than he even hated Shigaraki at the start of their association. Maybe he doesn't have to like someone to be shaken by their death however. "Maybe. Will you be going back to the fighting when you leave then?"

"Maybe. Right now we're mostly focusing on helping to execute evacuation orders and provide healing where we can." If they are already losing so many knights, the chances of them having to go into the frontlines again, if not the older students who are a bit closer to graduation, isn't out of the question. The war is something that happens far away and that has been going on for so long that Dabi forgets sometimes the brutal, ugly shape of it. He forgets that Shoto might not get to become king if he does not survive what it throws at him and the thought of losing his brother, of losing the chance at the kingdom having a future without his father at the throne, sickens him more than whatever flicker of grief went through him at the loss of the other knights.

He reaches for his brother's shoulder in turn and squeezes too. "Stay alive."

"I'll do what I can." He says just as evenly, mismatched eyes steady on him. They hear other footsteps coming from down the hall and they release each other, Shoto straightening again.

"Happy birthday." It's still a few days off, but he isn't sure he'll even be able to speak to Shoto the day of when his father will surely be hovering over his heir and trying to keep Dabi sinking into the shadows of the party.

"You too." No one remembers his birthday comes so near to Shoto's. No one has celebrated it in years. Dabi is sure that their father deliberately keeps his siblings far away from him on that day so they do not imply that they are happy that he is still seeing the years pass by when he could have stopped embarrassing his father and their kingdom by dying ages ago. His brother breaks away from he and Shigaraki, moving swiftly down the hall so that he has turned the corner before the people approaching can see he was even in the same area as him.

He and Tomura make their way back to his chambers and when the door is shut and sealed with the knight's magic, Dabi simply begins to strip away his clothes so he can clean the sweat and dirt from his body as he does every day after his training. He's not expecting for the silence coming from the other end of the room to be so stark and complete. Usually Tomura talks to him when they get back to his room. He tells him if he did well or if he has any particular area for him to focus on improving. He asks if he wants his meal sent up, or if he is going to study for the day, or he... tells him if he's going to give him a reward or punishment that he might not have been able to have otherwise. But today he's very quiet and Dabi has only stripped his shirt before he's turning to find the other maintaining his post at his door, looking across the room at the large windows. The sky is covered in thick clouds that rolled in a few days ago and have not broken since and they are as deep and inscrutable as the expression on his face.

"Tomura?"

His lover's eyes turn to him, but there is still a pause before he speaks again. "Your kingdom is losing the battle."

"We've lost territory before." They've won it back too. The Demon King's armies are tenacious, but they are not absolute. Decades of this war and they have held the line. The lives lost, the battles fought are something to mourn, of course. He just knows that the thing that is tightening his throat is a different fear. "... Has my father said that he is going to send more knights?" Because if Tomura goes, if he loses him, then Dabi doesn't know if he'll still believe that there's any reason to keep fighting at all.

"... He's mentioned it." He holds Dabi's gaze and then they are so much closer as his feet eat up the stones between them as Dabi rushes into his space, fingers tangling into his shirt and holding onto him tightly. Tomura's hands come up immediately, wrapping around his waist and back, pulling him close and pressing their foreheads together.

"Don't--" He can't tell him that he isn't allowed to leave. He doesn't have that kind of power. His father will move his soldiers as he pleases, and no matter how much Dabi feels he belongs to Tomura, the other man does not belong to him.

Tomura hugs him closer and Dabi clings to him. "You are the only one who will ever be able to make me leave." It's a lie, but it's a kind one, a beautiful one, as they hold each other so tightly that Dabi lets himself believe that nothing will be able to tear them apart.

///

The night of Shoto's party is a bit bigger than he and Fuyumi had originally told Toga and Shigaraki. The formal dinner and mingling in the great hall is what was expected, but there are even more dignitaries present than he thought there would be, though now he understands why. If they are fighting at a loss right now, then it will be all the more important to sure up supply chains and to try and get Fuyumi a beneficial engagement. She looks stunning, of course, the work that she and Toga did on her dress is awe-inspiring. Every movement or flicker of torchlight sends the frost glittering across the layers of the pale grey fabric. Shoto is wearing his ceremonial armor and looking so much more grown up in it, like he's finally used to the weight of it, like he might not notice it as much because he knows how to wear his real armor into battle now. Natsuo is dressed similarly to Dabi, both of them in smart, respectable clothes that suit royalty, but Natsuo wears a broach on his breast of a skeletal hand, the hand and the forearm cast in pewter with the radius mended with a sliver of gold going through the center, the mark of a healer that he shows off well. Dabi has no armor or sigil to show that he has an artform he's studied to mastery, but he does, only for occasions like this, get to wear a simple gold circlet on his head. He's changed out his staples for gold today as well, and Tomura's hands had been so gentle and sweet against his skin as he helped him replace the ones he wears each day with these. He pressed kisses to his seams and cupped his face in his hands and stared at him like he was worried that might be the last moment they would ever spend together. There is a fear settling in his gut that Shigaraki has been ordered to leave with Shoto after the party, but he didn't want to tell him until after they spend time with his friends tomorrow, and that does keep him from really tasting his food at all during dinner. It fills his ears with cotton as people speak and soft music drifts around the room.

Tomura stays by his side. He is his guard after all, even if he's certain, from the number of attractive women who come wearing necklaces with prisms, marking them as skilled practitioners of magic, that his father told him to mingle. If he's planning to send Shigaraki off to die, then he might want him to pick a partner, or a dozen, to try and ensure his strong magical bloodline remains. Shigaraki is polite to the women who approach, but he sends each of them off very easily by saying that he is on duty and unable to entertain. When they ask for when he will be available next, he simply tells them that he is unable to make plans for any time after the party. Easier than saying that he will have time off for the next few days and that he would rather see his friends instead of spending time with any of them.

Dabi is already painfully bored two hours after dinner. He isn't being spoken to, everyone present more than knowing not to associate with the spare prince. There is dancing going on at the center of the room and his chest warms as he sees his brother approach one of his classmates, a blond boy who doesn't seem to have any qualms about baring his teeth in a snarl and snapping at the crown prince when he asks him to dance. Even then, the blond does accept the invitation even if he's still complaining about it as he's taken to the floor. He's certain that his father will have a lecture for Shoto after the fact, but it is his birthday, he should be allowed to do whatever he likes today.

"My prince?" He glances over at Tomura, wondering if someone has finally caught his eye, only to find the guard moving in front of him and offering his hand. Dabi immediately feels heat flood to his face. This is beyond improper. He cannot dance with his knight. He isn't even supposed to dance at all, not when that will draw attention to himself. Tomura's look does not waver as he holds his hand out. "Indulge me."

And when has he ever been able to resist doing whatever his lover has asked of him? That sinking in his gut, the thing that tells him that Tomura is preparing for the worst, makes him even more desperate to hold onto what he can right now. He has been absolutely desperate to soak up as much of his lover's time and attention as he could for months now, and he knows the second he has to go without, none of those memories will ever be able to hold him together. He can't stand to let something like this slip through his fingers. He gives the other his hand and lets him take him to the center of the room as the music changes.

Dabi knows this dance, he knows every dance. He has always enjoyed dancing. He taught Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Shoto, but he hasn't been allowed to do so in public for eight years. This is a very structured one, only allowing partners to touch their fingertips together throughout most of the song, until the end when the leading partner pulls the following partner close and dips them to the floor, their foreheads allowed to touch, a kiss allowed to pass between them if appropriate. It's a dance of restraint and desire, a dance that often is done at the start of a courtship, at weddings, and when one wants to show off their devotion to their partner. Dabi is certain that this song was only set to be played because his father had hoped Fuyumi would select a suitor to dance with tonight. He's certain he did not want his oldest and youngest sons to be standing on the floor with a male partner preparing to show the entire kingdom that their hearts do not beat in the rhythm that he tried to force beneath his boot. He's certain that they will all be punished severely for it, but as his eyes meet Tomura's when their fingers touch, he knows that any punishment he receives will be worth it for the few minutes that they have like this.

The music starts and the room slips to his periphery. Tomura leads. It's beyond impropriety. Even disgraced and discarded, he is a prince. He should never be openly subservient to his knight. He doesn't care. He wants everyone to know how wonderful his lover is at keeping him close, at showing him where to step next, at how to move forward when he spent so very long standing still and letting the world bury him in that spot. Tomura has made him something new, made him a person again instead of a ghost. He made 'Dabi' as real as Toya was. Love, that's what Toga had said. Love. It's living in his chest, aching to escape him, and every movement of their bodies to the song as their eyes stay locked over their joined hands, makes him desperate to let it out. He is in love with Tomura. He hasn't dared to tell him that even after all of these months, but he cannot keep them inside anymore.

When the song comes to an end and Tomura pulls him in close, when gravity shifts as the other's hair falls around them in a curtain that blocks them off from the rest of the world, when their foreheads touch, Dabi breathes, "I love you."

And red eyes go so stricken, haunted, as they gaze into his own. "Dabi--"

The warning bells begin to ring before he can say anything else.

Panic surges through his chest. Those bells are only rung if a dragon has been spotted flying towards their home. The last time they rang was thirty years ago, when his father stood on the highest parapet of the castle and brought out a fire so brilliant and complete that people believed that somehow there was a sun setting in the east and west at the same time as he turned a beast made of flames to ash. People around the hall start to panic, but as he wants to straighten up, Tomura holds him tighter, his other hand going to the floor. Dabi isn't expecting the loud crack that fills the air. The symphony of them as the floor all around them starts to crumble and people begin to scream as they fall into it. Some only lose their footing as they try to flee, others are sunk into the earth and stone to their knees. He shifts, pulling himself from the other's arms so he can see what is happening more clearly, but when Dabi is out of his arms, Tomura puts both hands against the stone floor and that cracking sound comes again. The floor contracts, the people who were trapped inside of it are screaming all the more loudly as bones crunch and blood blooms across suits and dresses.

"Tomura," his name is croaked as he realizes that this is his doing. His magic leaching out to hurt the guests. His magic which has swallowed up Natsuo to his waist, Shoto and his date as well. His head reels to try and find Fuyumi and he does spot her-- with one of Toga's familiar dagger's to her throat as she uses his sister as a shield from his father who is trying to melt the stone he has been trapped in.

"Traitor!" His father snarls through the din of panic all around. Traitor. Dabi's chest feels like it's full of glass shards. Traitor. He always made his hatred of the kingdom so plain, but he-- His eyes burn. How could he have ever been so stupid? The weak, pathetic, discarded prince. He must have been such an easy target. Why kill him when he could use him to bring more insurgents into the castle. Why not just use him for everything that he could? Shigaraki's hands are still on the stone as his eyes turn to look at his father before the stone crunches again. It moves again. This time dragging people to the side of the throne room so that there is an open aisle between the throne and the doors.

"I am not a traitor, Enji Todoroki." No one has addressed his father by name without title in decades, and hearing it almost makes his ears sting like the first time he heard the rough, common language of swears after years of careful tutoring. Shigaraki straightens up and brings a hand to the collar of his breastplate. His magic passes over it, withering the metal to nothing but rust, before he curves his fingers into it and pulls it from his body. It clangs loudly against the floor as the other straps and bits of metal fall as well. Until he is standing wearing entirely unfamiliar clothes. Black leathers in a cut that leaves the entirety of his back exposed, that leave his arms open to the air and without protection, thicker plates of black armor curving over his sternum and along his pecs and over his stomach, wrapped around his thighs and padding his knees. And then his hair begins to grow, lengthening to the middle of his back and being pushed aside as his shoulders roll and the sound of tearing flesh fills the room. Dabi stares at him as deep red scales start to inch across his cheeks and forehead, black horns of bone jutting jaggedly from his head, his pupils growing slitted and large fangs filling his mouth, a tail and wings blooming from his skin, the tail lizard-like and bladed at the end, and the wings massive and the deepest red as they flare out behind him.

A dragon. One powerful enough that his magic could disguise his true nature. There are more screams coming from inside of the room and Dabi's eyes search frantically. Why have none of the soldiers broken free of the shattered floor? Why are the alarms still ringing but nothing is being done? He finds his answer as his eyes catch on familiar black shades that have moved up behind every soldier that is in the hall, blood pouring crimson across their armor as Jin slits their throats as he slips in from the secret entrance behind the throne. The entrance that only the royal family and their knights know about. The only soldiers spared are the young ones– the ones from his brother's school who are being restrained by them.

Shigaraki turns his attention to the king, moving over to him. His father throws out his hands, trying to incinerate him, but the massive wall of flame that Dabi knows will swallow him up as well, is caught against his palm, his own magic bursting over every inch of the flames and extinguishing them into nothing but a cloud of ash that coats the entire room and his skin. Dabi and most of the other people who are trapped in this room are left coughing as it fills their lungs. "I am not part of your kingdom. I told you when you first tried to knight me that I only wanted to return to the border. You bright me into your home. You demanded each inch of my life in service of your kingdom even after I had already done the grace of sparing a village. My father always said you were a mortal so hungry for power that you could not see reason or extend mercy. I came to your court hoping that you would prove me wrong and instead what do I find?" He raises his voice as the warning bells are suddenly and completely silenced.

"A kingdom ruled by a tyrant! A king that forces his subjects to their knees, who searches for the powerful and ensures that they have so little that any scrap that the crown offers them convinces them of the kingdom's benevolence instead of its cruelty! A monster who forces his children to be pawns until he decides that they are not worthy of life! How many times did you offer me your daughter's hand if I used my own to slit your first born son's throat?" Shigaraki snarls, looking so monstrous and inhuman for a moment that Dabi is only staring at him and doesn't hear the words that he's spoken as he wraps that deadly, destructive hand, fingers tipped with long black talons, around his father's face.

"What?" There is a coldness. A numbness inside of him that is spreading throughout his whole body.

Shigaraki's tail flicks, his wings pull in tighter against his back. "Seven. Offered to me each month I stayed in his service. Tonight was the last night the offer would stand. After tonight, he would send me to the frontlines, select your sister's suitor, and reassign a new guard who would not be given the option. I trained you so that no one would be able to slip a dagger between your ribs so easily, little prince."

Dabi wants to say that he's lying. He wants to cry out that he betrayed him, he wants to pick up a sword and try to kill a dragon the way he always thought he was meant to when he was a child. But he is silent. His siblings are silent. The whole room is deafening with it. None of them can argue because that is precisely the kind of thing that his father would do.

The doors to the main hall burst open, sending fresh screams through the room as they do. He gets a glimpse of the hall behind and sees red smeared across the floor, more guards laying limp against the stones as a dragon woman with scales of deepest black across her wings, tail, and in patches across her skin, with vibrantly red hair, a warhammer slung over her shoulder, and with crimson splashed across her skin steps into the room alongside another dragon, his hair lavender and pulled back, scales green and covering all of his exposed body, giving him a far more extreme resemblance to the dragons in their true forms than he's ever seen on humanoid features, carrying a sword that is nearly as wide as he is and just as long. They are barely across the threshold before Toga is squealing,

"Magne! Spinner!" As she breaks away from Fuyumi, leaving his sister unguarded and, seemingly, unharmed. He moves immediately to her, half scared, as he runs past some of Jin's shades and Shigaraki himself, that one of them will stop him. Neither of them doo and he and Fuyumi cling to each other as Toga runs right over to get hugs from both of the dragons who entered the hall.

"Hey, hatchling," Magne says, ruffling her hair as she gets her hug before Toga bounces over to Spinner to give him his hug as well. Fuyumi is shaking in his arms, her breath coming out in bursts of frost. The dragon-woman lets out a low whistle as she pokes at some of the cracked stones as they step deeper into the room. "Geez Shig, you know you've gotta live here after we're done, right?"

"That remains to be seen." Shigaraki tells her, though his voice is a little warmer, his composure more settled than it was a moment ago. "The city?"

"We secured the defenses with Atsuhiro's explosives. He's keeping an eye on the grounds in case anyone decides to try and cause trouble.

"Good. Bring him to the dais."

Magne moves up to his father, taking thick iron cuffs that are etched with runes that Dabi knows will take away his magic. His father tries to move, tries to set a spark, but Shigaraki lets out a burst of his own magic against his skin, creaks opening across his temples and forehead, sending streams of blood slipping over his skin, but not taking his head from his shoulders the way he makes it so clear that he could if he wanted to end this right now. Oh god. They're going to kill him. They're going to take the kingdom. His eyes search frantically for something. The doors are still wide open, but Toga is standing there with Spinner, beaming and talking at a mile a minute, asking him how he is and telling him about her time in the castle. Either of them could tear them to pieces before they could slip out, and the entire room is filled with Jin's shades, all of them taking on his appearance. Two, he said he could make up to two other people at a time. Can all of his shadows make more and more of themselves the same way? Is he the army of demonic soldiers that their warriors have spoken about for so many years? It's a horrifying realization that comes for him as he understands that his father might have forced Shigaraki to stay here, but Dabi brought Toga here. He didn't speak up about Jin. He encouraged the other man to reach out to his friends. He brought about his own kingdom's destruction and he did it between Shigaraki's kind and cruel touches. Did it while he was on his knees for him, the other knowing that this would end with him bending a knee or dead even if he didn't accept his father's invitation to do it himself.

Shigaraki reaches out a hand towards the throne as Magne locks his father's arms in place behind his back. "Iguchi, come help her. Do not grow complacent now."

Spinner breaks off from Toga, the young woman pouting as she's left to push the doors shut behind her. They grab his father and Dabi's stomach sinks as the dragon turns to face him. He tries to push Fuyumi behind him, but she doesn't want to move. Even though she's shaking badly, even though her magic is not nearly as powerful as their father or Shoto's, at least she has magic and clearly she seems to think that means she needs to protect him. Dabi didn't have a sword with his formal attire. He isn't worth having even a ceremonial one in his father's eyes, but there are dead knights scattered across the floor and he all but dives down to get one, moving back up in front of his sister just after she has sent a flurry of icicles at Shigaraki. He doesn't even bother to destroy them like he did their father's flames, just bringing his wings around the front of his body and letting them patter against them, shattering against the scales and leathery membranes harmlessly. But as he pulls them back, Dabi puts the tip of the sword against his chest, to a place where the strange armor he's wearing has a seam he hopes he can sink the blade past. Tomura wraps his hand around the blade, not seeming to care as it cuts into his palm, his strength enough to hold it still no matter how Dabi tries to drive it deep.

"Dabi," He hates the way his eyes burn when the other man says his name, soft and careful the way he does when he's checking to make sure that a punishment hasn't gone too far.

"You used me."

"I did not. Nothing I needed to take your father's kingdom came from you alone. Your father opened the grounds to Atsuhiro. He gave me access to the palace to sneak Jin past the walls. Your sister's guilt and good nature allowed me to bring Toga to work here, and your kingdom's customs around celebrations made it easy for me to bring the rest of my friends here to do our work. I used my connections to you for none of it." His voice is still so gentle. "I know that does not lessen the betrayal of my actions. I am going to give you an opportunity to set this right. Come to the dais. Bring the sword." He lets go of the blade and turns his back on him as he moves towards the other end of the hall.

Dabi looks around the room desperately for a way out of this. For something that he can do that will allow him to get he and his siblings out of this mess unscathed. But all around him he sees his panic echoed in the faces of the other trapped nobles, the bodies of everyone who was meant to protect them scattered across the floor. Toga catches his eye from the door and she beams at him, her teeth a little too big and too sharp, as she waves him forward. He feels as trapped as he would if he were rooted to the shattered floor as he has to step away from Fuyumi's side and move across the ground towards the throne.

Shigaraki moves up the steps, but he doesn't take a seat in his father's chair. He stands in front of it instead and then brings his hand to the floor again. The stones crack and reshape themselves, forming two one foot wide two feet long stone pillars that come up to his waist when he stands between them. He gestures at one of them and Dabi's stomach sinks as his father is brought to it. He sees now that Shigaraki's touch must have destroyed his father's tongue, his lips soaked in blood and deep cracks moving across his lips the way they are his other skin. That is the only reason he has remained so quiet throughout this so far. The two other dragons pull his father forward and make him kneel, forcing his head down against the stone and Magne keeping him there as she weaves a spell that makes his flesh be pulled down until, even with all of his father's physical strength, he cannot move from the floor.

When he is secure, Shigaraki turns to him and his eyes are different. Those slitted pupils, the scales that creep along his cheeks. They are foreign and strange, but the... emotion in them is so achingly familiar that Dabi's entire chest feels like it might collapse in on itself. "I told you that when someone else sat on your father's throne that we could have a future together. I told you that I would give you everything once you knew me, once you could choose me with no secrets laid out between us anymore. I am Tomura Shigaraki, dragon, ward and heir to the Demon King. If I get to choose anything that could come in my future, I would choose to share it with you." He holds his gaze as he speaks. Holds it as he moves to the other pillar he'd made. "But you have to choose me." He kneels down, sweeping his long hair over his shoulder and flattening his wings to the floor so that his neck is exposed as he begins to lower his head to the stone. "You can take that sword and kill me. If you do, my people will retreat, harming no one else as they go."

"What?" Magne's voice is loud and unhappy.

"Uh, Tomura--" Spinner sounds decidedly more wary.

"Are you out of your mind?" Jin snaps in their direction.

It's only Toga who coos, "Oh, that's so romantic!"

Shigaraki ignores all of them, looking up at him from where he is kneeling. "Or you can put an end to your father's tyranny and the war. Let me ascend to the throne and we can have the future together that we both were dreaming of. I will spare your siblings. I have seen their kindness, I know that they will not become him and I would not break your heart by doing them harm." Endure, break, reforge, that’s what he has told him before. Tomura holds Dabi's gaze for another few agonizing seconds and then he sighs softly and lowers his forehead to the stone, his eyes slipping shut. "Choose, little prince."

Dabi is left standing, stock still, between the two pillars. Shigaraki's friends are eyeing him, eyeing their leader, but he sees in their pinched expressions that they didn't know that this was part of their leader's plans. He doesn't know if they'll listen to him if he does bring the sword down across his neck. But when he steps between the pillars and tightens his grip on the sword with both hands to hide how badly he's shaking, none of them actually move to stop him, even if their eyes do flick to their leader fearfully. One swing and he can slay a dragon. He isn't sure that he'll really be a hero to the kingdom, not like this. But his siblings, he looks out across the room and finds that their eyes are on him, their expressions worried, drawn, and fearful as well. But not angry. His sister still immediately tried to help protect him when Shigaraki approached them. They won't turn on him. If his father is kept in those cuffs, if his tongue is gone-- Shoto could take the throne tonight. They could have a coup of their own and make certain that Enji Todoroki could never hurt any of them ever again. They could kill the heir to the demon king's throne. They could--

He is standing beside Shigaraki, his hands shaking around the sword, wondering if all of the training he's done over the past few months is even enough to give him the strength to cut through flesh, when he glances at his father. He has not had that man's eyes on him in nearly five years. Hasn't had to see that bright blue that looks back at him from the mirror set into a face that hates him. that is screaming his loathing even as he is on his knees, bound, bleeding, and powerless and still thinking that Dabi should not be standing here. That if he had killed him himself, strangled him to death in his coma, slipped a dagger into his ribs any night as he slept, poisoned his food and dealt with the investigation Natsuo would have demanded, then he could have avoided this situation. He sees the hatred in his father's eyes that is bred from his belief that someone like him should never have been forced to put his fate in someone like Dabi's hands. He sees the hatred on his face and all of the hurt, the fury, the helplessness that he has been drowning in for so many years swells inside of him again. That used to be so thick that it choked out the air in his lungs and left him drowning for years and years as he waited to just finally die. It was Tomura's eyes looking at him, breaking him down, dragging him out of those dark waters, that forced him to build himself back up.

He tightens his grip on the sword so much that his staples pop free of his seam when he brings it down, the force of it splitting skin and clanging against the stone making his arms shake.

There is a long moment, his heart pounding in his ears as he watches and waits. His father's body goes limp and blood pours over the stone and down the pillar as his head drops to the floor and rolls down to the bottom of the dais. He is staring at his father's corpse, uncertain what he should feel as he looks, until Shigaraki's hand, tipped with sharp claws, but still as gentle on his skin as they are when they run through his hair, catches one of his wrists while the other hand takes the sword carefully from his grip.

"Your fight is over, my love." He says softly. "And you've ended the war. Now you only need to keep moving forward. Do not let him bring you low ever again."

The words don't fully sink in past the haze that is filling his mind, but the kiss that Tomura presses to his forehead he can feel.

///

Despite what Tomura said, Dabi can't manage to do much for... a while after he kills his father. He remembers what happened afterward in fits and starts. He remembers Tomura taking up his position in front of the thone and doling out orders to his people. Many of the nobles who were uninjured were brought back to their rooms to be held until he subdued any rebellions that would surely spark across the country as their people discovered that the castle had been taken and the king killed. His siblings were also brought back to their rooms, save Natsuo who was escorted to help heal the life-threatening injuries of the nobles who had been caught in the collapsing floor. Over the course of the next month, things had been tense and horrible. But by the end of it, the castle hung the flags of the Demon King, of Tomura Shigaraki as he was allowed to ascend to both thrones and unite their empires once he proved to his own father he had successfully taken the kingdom. Dabi's gut had been sour with fear that Shigaraki would have he and his siblings executed after that, the way his ancestors always killed all of the former monarchy's families when their territories had been claimed. But that wasn't what happened. Shoto had been brought into meetings about the matter of the state, his siblings had been allowed to visit him so long as they were escorted by at least one of Shigaraki's soldiers. They didn't blame him. The kingdom as they knew it was lost, none of them were royalty anymore, but they were not being mistreated. He still couldn't bear to look any of them in the eyes when they came to see him though.

Shigaraki sometimes comes and knocks on his door. "Princeling," he still calls him. 'Precious', 'little one', 'my love', he calls to him from the other side of the door, asking if he can come in, if he can see him. Dabi cannot raise the wards on his room to keep him out, but he never enters without permission and when he can't do anything but greet his voice with choked-off, muffled sobs, the new king retreats. He doesn't force him out of his room like he did as his guard, doesn't ask him through the door about the future that he promised him, and Dabi waits for the knocks to stop coming, both eager and dreading the day that might come. The knocks don't stop though. Toga comes to his door too.

"Come ooon," She whines, leaning her bodyweight against the wood. "Even Fuyumi will hang out with me again. Shoto's fun too! We can go train together." But when he won't answer her either, she huffs and leaves the door behind.

It takes him a long time of wallowing, of stress, of his siblings coming and him seeing the changes in them. How his sister stops wearing such elaborate dresses that she has slaved over making and instead starts to wear the more severe, simple cut of a scholar's robes. How Natsuo comes with a backpack and tells him that he is going out to the former frontlines to heal soldiers who are being sent home instead of tending mostly to stuffy noses and rich nobles who are worried about the lines that crease their foreheads. How Shoto tells him, "We're going to be okay," and see in his mis-matched eyes that he believes it as he talks about the different ways that Shigaraki is trying to restructure the kingdom now that they won't be under the constant strain of this centuries-long war. Takes him seeing how the three of them are starting to hold themselves up straighter the way he saw in himself when Shigaraki had been encouraging him to grow for him to understand that he is trying to do the same thing to the kingdom. That he meant it when he said that they could have... unending possibilities stretching out in front of them.

It takes him time before he's ready to dress himself well and to hold his spine straight. For him to go to his door and reach for the handle himself, convinced for a moment that he will find the door locked and will realize that this was all a sick game. But the handle turns and he's able to step out into the hall. Jin is sitting on the floor playing cards with Spinner, but they both stop and look up at him as he steps out of the room.

"Dabi," Jin sounds almost relieved as he pushes himself up from the floor. "What's going on? Is everything okay?"

"Am I... not allowed to leave my room?"

Jin blinks at him. "What, no, of course you can. Uh, you just... haven't in a while. I thought you might need something."

"Can I still go where I want?"

The other man looks more uncomfortable now. "Uh, yeah, man. You can go wherever you want. You're not a prisoner here."

"Okay." He starts to walk down the hall, half expecting the other two to follow him. But he just hears hushed whispers behind him, not any footsteps. He keeps walking. He has a good idea of where he needs to go to find what he wants.

When he pushes open the door of the throne room, he finds that Shoto, Magne, Atsuhiro, and a handful of other dignitaries are present and discussing matters of state. Shigaraki is sitting on his father's throne, wearing his leathers and a new crown, one made in a style that does not seem like it was fashioned the way that his or his siblings' were made, this one weaving around the horns that stick out from his hair that is free and wild around his face and down his back. He only means to slip inside, and at first, only the people closest to the door seem to take notice of him as they glance his way. He can take up a position at the edge of the room and wait until they've finished their conversation before he says anything. But then Shigaraki's eyes find his and Dabi is breathless again. He didn't know that he could starve for a look like that. Didn't know that his heart could break and come back together at the same time.

Shigaraki's wings flare and that stops the person speaking mid-sentence. "Your majesty?"

"Clear the room." Shigaraki's voice is as clear and self-assured as it always has been and before Dabi can even think about it, he's moving. Not to the edge of the room, he's pushing his way past the other people in the hall. The floor has been repaired, there's not a trace of blood anywhere, no smell of that and ash clogging his nose like the last time it did when he was standing in this room.

He passes his brother who catches his arm and that is the only reason he's able to tear his eyes from Shigaraki's face. Shoto searches his face but then lets go of him before he looks back at Shigaraki, giving him a glare that is black with his unspoken threat. The dragon sits unmoved on the throne. Shoto moves with everyone else towards the exit, and by the time the doors are shutting and Shigaraki is waving a hand through the air to seal the room, Dabi is right in front of him and the fog in his mind is so absolute that he can't make sense of anything anymore. All he knows is that desperate, searching look on Tomura's face that he's suddenly certain that he must have seen on his own face a hundred times before.

It's so easy for him to sink to his knees. To kneel in the place where he beheaded his own father so he can look up at the lover he didn't truly know but still found a way to fall for anyway. He lets his head bow, his neck bared the way Shigaraki's had been. The man? Dragon? King? Doesn't say anything for a long moment and Dabi finds his voice shakily instead. "I haven't done anything for months. I haven't trained. I've barely eaten. Some days I don't get out of bed until the day has become night again." His voice is hoarser, croaked out each one the longer that he speaks. "I've let myself be nothing again. I can't be something without you." His eyes burn. "I need you to make me good. I need to be punished--"

"Princeling," Tomura's hands reach for him as he shifts forward on the throne, his hands tipped with sharp, wicked claws and filled with a magic that could shatter him apart in an instant. But his voice is so warm and desperate. "You are not nothing. You have always been something, and I'm so sorry that I ever made you think that you had to be mine to be worthy of existing. You are everything, my love. You are a gem no matter who may behold you or not." He makes him tilt his head up so that he can see him again. "You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed your anger, hatred, all of the emotions that you have felt in this time. I will not punish you for that. Not when I only want to hold you close if that is something I am still allowed?" His thumb strokes over Dabi's cheek and he doesn't know how it's taken him so long to understand that he couldn't possibly want anything else.

When Tomura pulls him up into his lap this time, it's so he can bring their lips together in a kiss and all of the heaviness around Dabi's heart falls away. Tomura helped him heal when he first arrived in the kingdom. Now he's cut out the root of the disease. Now all of their land will heal too. He doesn't have to feel so much pain for being the one who helped to administer that medicine.

Tomura kisses him hard, deep, and doesn't let him go. His mouth is rough against his lips, desperate to taste him, and Dabi is doing his best to follow his lead. He has never been kissed with so much desire before, and certainly never by anyone who has teeth as sharp as Tomura's, but he doesn't care. All that matters to him now is that he is being given the kiss that he wanted so much. It comes to him with the vaguest flicker of recognition that the other man knew the betrayal was coming from the moment they met. From the second he brought their relationship into something more than guard and prince, he knew that Dabi would find out about his betrayal. But he didn't want him to think he'd used their relationship, his love to manipulate him. So he had made him wait. Until he would know that the first kiss they shared would not be tainted by the betrayal. That this could be real and perfect as their mouths move against one another and Tomura's hands pull him so close to his skin as Dabi tries to figure out where he can touch him when his body is so different from what Dabi would have expected.

Tomura's hand moves to the back of his neck, cupping his head in his palm the way he always does, as if no time has passed since the last time they shared his bed. "I love you. My darling, my princeling, my precious sapphire. How I have longed to have you right here on this throne. You were always meant to sit here, my love."

His face heats, the softer words stoking the embers of his desire as well as the meaner ones do when he's being punished. "Can we still... be what we were before?" Not when they were in public. Tomura isn't his servant anymore and he doesn't ever want him to be. But in private. The way they would lay together, the way the other looked at him like he was everything. The love that bloomed out between them like a tangled mass of vines. Could they hold onto that even though Tomura has two entire kingdoms and could have whatever he wants from either?

"Of course we can, precious." He tells him, resting their foreheads together. "I told you, there is not a force in this world that could make me leave your side but you."

And tells him with that sentence he meant every other one he'd spoken before that. Dabi is even more desperate when he tangles his hands in the other's thick, wild hair and pulls him in for another kiss, not caring if he splits his lips on the other's fangs. Tomura doesn't begrudge him his passion. He gives it freely and easily, his hands moving over Dabi's body, finding all of the places that he always has before that he knows bring the heights of Dabi's pleasure even higher.

"Mine," he says, the words almost a plea between their lips. "I chose you?"

"Yes, love." Tomura promises. "Yours. No one will ever take us from each other."

Dabi keens with his need. It's been months. Months of loneliness, of guilt, sorrow, anger, and fear. And in a matter of minutes it all drains away. He is left with nothing in his chest but the love that he has been carrying for the other man for so many months now and the desperation to finally, finally be able to have every inch of the other's love in turn. It's been months, but he still knows how to spread his thighs around Tomura's and let himself rock against them. His body still sends a spark of pleasure through him as he does that has him moaning as his lover, his king, slips his tongue into his mouth. Tomura doesn't reprimand him for being so needy that he would put a harlot to shame, he rocks up into him, letting him feel that he needs him just as much, though there's a flicker of confusion in his mind because his lover feels bigger than he was the last time he had him. Was hiding in his human visage making him smaller? By the gods, will his body even be able to take him if he's any bigger?

He doesn't have a chance to think about that when Tomura's sharp talons move to so deftly and carefully start to unbutton his tunic and Dabi realizes that the other wants to give him the other part of the intimacy that he promised right here. On his father's-- on Tomura's throne. In the throne room. His face burns as he pulls away far enough to speak. "Tomura, here?"

"Where else? Oh, my darling, I am going to have you over every inch of this castle if you'll let me. Until your body is always aching so sweetly for my touch you'll need to be trained again to remember how to be more than my pretty little consort."

The words, the knowledge that the other wants him so much, makes Dabi's entire body hotter and has him biting his lip to hide the whimper that wants to slip out of him. He lets the other undo the buttons on his tunic and slips it from his shoulders, before his hands are reaching for Dabi's shirt. Sharp claws tease against his skin as he brings that fabric up over his head, red eyes taking in every inch of him that is exposed as if he's seeing Dabi's body for the very first time and can't help the hunger that the sight of him is stoking. His hands move over Tomura's chest, over the dark leathers that cling to his body and look so different from the clothes he used to wear before. He's lovely. Has always been lovely, always been so confident and held himself like he could never forget his own importance no matter the position he held. Dabi knows now why that was, but seeing him in his own clothes, self-assured and in the position that he belongs in in a way that Dabi doesn't think he ever could, somehow makes him even more attractive.

As the cool air of the room bites at his naked chest, he can't help rolling his hips again, trying to put more pressure against his cock that is hardening so rapidly, desperate for pleasure after months of nothing but the aching void that swelled through him. Feeling his need aching between his legs already has Tomura huffing with his amusement, his hands going to the edge of Dabi's pants before he courses a bit of his magic through the seams to send the panels of cloth fluttering away from his skin. Even with the doors sealed and the room cleared, Dabi's face burns as he's left completely naked in the throne room.

"Don't be embarrassed, little one," Tomura purrs. "Anyone who sees you would be lucky to do so-- until I pluck their eyes from their skull for daring to take the sight of you for themselves."

"Monster," that's what he was always told about dragons. That they crave violence and destruction down to their very souls, that they and the monsters at their command must be destroyed so that the mortal races could live in peace. But the way that Tomura's claws are prickling his skin, the way he offers up his devotion to him so completely and with such a violence is doing something unholy to his mind. It has him shivering with his want, his cock hard and flushed already, curved up against his stomach and trapped between their bodies. The leather that Tomura is wearing already feels so soft and well-made, but against the over-sensitive head of his prick, it is making him even more desperate as he sees the obscene droplet of pearly white get smeared against it as his hips move to try and get more faster. It's been months and months of wanting. He isn't sure that he can wait any longer without losing his mind.

"For you, my love? The worst of them." He agrees without hesitation, letting Dabi's fingers fumble over his shirt, looking for where it must close, for some way of getting it off when the other man has such massive wings in this form. He doesn't find that place, but the other man only leaves him fumbling for a moment, desire and amusement shining in equal measures in those eyes that he has grown so used to having on him, but are still a little strange an foreign now that his pupils are different. But he reaches back and unclasps the closings around his neck and at his lower back, then letting Dabi's greedy hands take away the leather from over his chest. His body is familiar and foreign too. The thick muscle cut over his chest and stomach, the scars he has grown so familiar with are the same, but there are scales now, crawling over his shoulders and down his back, creeping over his sides and curing along swells of muscle, though his center is left exposed and the same color as his skin has always been before. Dabi's fingers hesitate, but his lover does not rush him as he brings his fingers to the edge of those scales for the first time. They are cool under his touch, cooler than the rest of Tomura's body, and so smooth. He can feel the toughness of them beneath his fingertips, the intricacies between them through the places where they overlap. They glitter in the low light of the room, almost as if lit with a fire from within each.

They're beautiful. Tomura was always so beautiful, but seeing him how he was truly meant to be shows Dabi how little he understood of what could be beautiful before this. Tomura's hands are solid and grounding as they curl around his hips and pull him in closer, rolling his own up to meet his body. "You're so needy, little one. So excited to be rewarded after so long?" A question that doesn't require an answer, but Dabi's whole body aches from how much he missed this kind of play that the other taught him.

"Yes, please," his face burns even hotter. "I want you, your majesty."

He is not expecting the way that the words make Tomura's eyes flash and his wings flare. Not expecting how they have him crashing their mouths back together as his hands move over his skin, one going down to his cock and stroking him once dry before he's murmuring his arcane word between their lips so that the next movement comes slick with oil, letting him squeeze Dabi so roughly his mouth is opening on a loud, wanton moan that gives the dragon more room to press his tongue inside of his mouth and lick out every sound of his arousal that is gasped against his lips.

"Oh, my pretty little whore. Going to have you made my consort officially," he strokes him quickly, roughly, the way that he would when Dabi earned a reward for his good behavior at times when he knew a meal might be coming soon or when he had plans to be elsewhere in the palace and knew that he didn't have time to break Dabi into pieces slowly. "Going to have the entire kingdom know that you are mine and that you will always be at my throne, either right here, spread on top of it with my cocks buried into your tight, desperate body, or with you between my knees, showing everyone how comfortable the former prince is doing nothing but stretching his jaw and swallowing my cum."

The filthy words are bringing his pleasure higher, his body shivering with it as his nipples pebble and his hips move desperately up into his hand again and again. He would never survive the humiliation of that, but Tomura's filthy words always make him so needy. There are gut-punched sounds of his pleasure slipping out from between his lips that are certainly not becoming of former royalty, but he can't quell them as he begs, "Tomura, please, please, please, feels so good, please!" Because he hasn't been given permission to cum yet, but he is beyond desperate for it. He might need it more than his next breath.

"Such a good boy for me. Finally coming to see me, finally letting me touch your pretty skin again. Oh, my darling, I am going to have you right here, so many times that I will have to carry you from this room, so completely disheveled that anyone who passes us in the hall won't even be able to recognize you from the look of bliss that will be carved into your features. You can cum, my love, and you can do so knowing it is the first of many you'll receive at my hands today."

It's the words more than any friction, no matter how wonderful that is too, that makes him go over the edge almost immediately. His balls tighten and all of the stress and pent-up frustration that has been sitting at the edge of his mind is released in a perfect splatter of white that covers their stomachs as stars dance behind his eyes. His moan echoes around the room, chasing away every awful memory that lingers in this place from a lifetime of his suffering. Tomura kisses his slack, panting lips, his cheek, down along his jaw, and over his neck. But his hands don't stop. He said that he wouldn't and Dabi knows how to ask for him to if he really, truly desires that. But he doesn't. Even though his cock is softening now, and the pleasure on the edge of his nerves is starting to sting because his body is being asked to accept more, he doesn't care. He would take every inch of this sweet agony if it means that he can have every inch of Tomura joined with him as well. He's wanted this for so long. He can't bear to stop now and have it slip through his fingers again.

"Beautiful, baby boy. I missed seeing how lovely you are with your face twisted with pleasure. I can't wait to see how your mouth falls open when I'm filling you up." He murmurs the words against his shoulder as his tail, long, lined with spikes along the top of it, wraps itself carefully around one of his thighs. It feels like a serpent, corded with such thick muscle that make it feel so solid in a way that he'd not expected. But he can't protest the sensation when Tomura is careful not to let any of the sharp parts of his skin scrape over Dabi's. He brings his legs wider and coaxes him up in his lap even more so he can kiss his collarbones and the hand that is soaked with his cum and the oil can move further between his legs.

He has had Tomura's fingers in his hole before, his tongue too, but there's a sharp prickle of fear as he remembers that the times before the other man did not have wicked black talons curving from his nail beds. But when his fingers circle his rim, he doesn't feel those against his skin. The pads of his fingers are only rough with the callouses that he is so familiar with. He's moaning again as the other man sinks the first finger in without hesitation. His nails curve into his shoulders as that fresh pleasure sparks his nerves hot and aching and he feels the way the muscles ripple as the dragon's wings flare out again. He tries his best to loosen his grip, scared that he's caused the other some kind of discomfort.

"Here, sapphire." His other hand is still tipped with claws as he wraps his fingers around Dabi's wrist and pulls him until their chests are pressed together and they are sharing every breath, bringing his touch over his shoulders and back along the place where he used to be able to feel the scars-- not scars. The place where his wings emerge from his back. The texture of the scales there is somehow even tougher than it was on his front, but the membrane that stretches to connect those scales to the first joint of his wings is leathery and soft. Tomura shivers again, letting out a low, rumbling purr through the air as he lets him touch a part of his body that feels so delicate, but that he saw could not be damaged so easily. Dabi moves his hands over this place gently, carefully, reverently, amazed that he can have this closeness from a creature that he thought for all of his life only could find pleasure in destroying.

Tomura presses another finger into his body and crooks them. He strokes his walls and makes Dabi rock his hips into the touch, makes him settle into a slower rhythm than before, but still keeps him moving like that as he is so desperate to get more. He makes him want it. Makes him need it even though he's still aching from his first orgasm as his cock starts to fill again. He's biting his lip hard enough he's surprised it hasn't split under the abuse from how roughly his teeth meet it. His whimpers join Tomura's purrs as more kisses are peppered over his skin because he fills him with a third finger, a fourth, and makes sure to spread them wide inside of him. So wide, stretching him more than he ever has been before and murmuring his spell to bring more oil to his skin twice more. Until it's dripping out of him and he can feel it soaking into the other's lap.

"Tomura, please," he whines. He knows the other is larger than his fingers, but this stretch is so obscene and his cock is aching so sharply from how hard he is again. If he isn't given what he's wanted for so many months now, he isn't certain that he'll get it at all before he's as disheveled as his lover has already promised to make him.

"So eager for me, my love?" He teases, his fingers pushing in deep and crooking all of them hard against that special spot inside that the dragon showed him. The spot where, with enough attention, he can make Dabi's orgasm crash through him even if he doesn't ever touch his prick. He rocks against him again, another shattered sound of his pleasure breaking apart in his throat as his eyes burn. Tomura has brought him to tears in bed before. He doesn't know if he should be surprised that when he's preparing to have every inch of him so completely for the first time, that he might do so again. "I should have known you would be. Your cute little hole always was so hungry for more. So desperate to be made full that it never even crossed your mind that a prince might demand to put his cock inside of his servant's body instead." Dabi's face flushes at the suggestion. No, he hadn't ever thought of that. He had been surprised the first time Tomura had deigned to wrap his lips around his cock the way Dabi was always so eager to do for him. It was a different desire, a shame that would hang around his neck if anyone had found out about it then, but he hadn't ever wanted Tomura beneath him like this. Not when it always felt so good to have him touching him in these ways.

"Just want what you give me, your majesty," his voice is so thin when he says it, but he can't find any other words to help express his need. He just needs and knows Tomura has to be the one who decides when he's earned having it.

The words seem to push that over the edge, getting a growl out of the dragon as his fingers push against his prostate again, nearly pushing Dabi over the edge for the second time, only managing to hold off because the fingers are withdrawing just as quickly. Dabi's hands fly down to the other's clasp so that he can open them and free his cock, swollen beneath the leather, in the hopes of having it replace the hollowness left behind by his digits. Tomura lets him open his pants, but he reaches inside. Dabi's breath catches in the back of his throat as he takes himself out.

Like the rest of his body, Tomura is changed in his true form. The thick, long cock that he had grown so familiar with is now two. Two cocks that are so big that his head feels dizzy as he looks at him. The top one has the familiar ring through his head, and the bottom one has a strange ridged texture like snake scales running along the underside of it, both of them emerging from the dragon's pelvis, from an open slit, slick fluid dripping over them from pressing out of his body. Dabi has wanted him so badly, but just seeing him has a fresh whimper slipping out of his throat.

"Shh, little one," Tomura raises a hand to cup his cheek sweetly again, the filthy one instead going to his cocks as he makes a show of stroking them, showing Dabi how he can't close his fingers around both at the same time when they're against his palm, thumb teasing along that strange texture that sits along the underside of the bottom one. "I know that this is a lot, but you can handle one, I know you can. My pretty boy has been begging for it for so long, I know that he has the resolve to take what he's been asking for."

Just one? Dabi swallows down his nerves and manages a small nod. He can try for one. Tomura presses a kiss to his temple before he uses a hand and his tail to get Dabi shifted higher up on his lap, steadying his upper cock so he can lower his body down onto himself. Dabi feels the metal of the ring that has been pierced through his head, warmed from his skin, rubbing around the sensitive rim of his hole. Every nerve ending tingles as he does his best to stay relaxed. He has wanted this for so long. He never thought he would get it like this, the other's anatomy so much stranger than what he's grown accustomed to, or here on the throne, but he will not complain about it if it means that he can finally have all of the creature he has tied his future to.

Tomura's eyes meet his and he rests their foreheads together again, eyes hungry and searching his face for every flicker of emotion that passes it as he sinks Dabi's body down onto his cock. He is so happy that the other took such care in prepping him because Dabi thinks the rigidness of that metal and the thickness of his lover's cock might have torn him apart if he hadn't. He still feels like he might split in two as he's slowly slid further and further along his length until he feels the second one wet and hard, pressing up against him, nestled between his cheeks. Tomura fills him up and then smiles so sweetly at him.

"So perfect for me, darling." He murmurs, his hands rubbing over his skin soothingly. "So tight and warm. Perhaps it was good you gave me time to get this country's affairs in order, because I don't think I'm going to be able to slip from your body for weeks if I can have you so warm and tight like this in my nest." He rocks his hips up, just a bit, into Dabi's but he might as well have sent an earthquake off beneath his skin. The moan that he lets out is so loud that he's certain that the wards won't stop the sound from passing through the stone. His fingers are scrabbling over scales and skin to try and get a tighter hold of the other man as he starts to babble,

"Tomura, ah, ah, Tomura!" Because he asked for it, begged for it, but he couldn't have ever imagined how it would feel with him inside. He sees fresh stars when the other man chuckles softly and brings his hands to his hips. The muscles in his arms tighten as he lifts Dabi up, until only his head is just inside of his hole, the hard metal of his piercing so different and solid in its texture that he doesn't think he'll ever be able to stop noticing it, before he lets the force of gravity and just the slightest coaxing of his muscles, bring Dabi back down onto his length. Dabi would be humiliated that just the first real thrust has him spilling his pleasure between their bodies again, but he can't be bothered to care when his orgasm makes his insides squeeze even more tightly around his length, prolonging that pleasure.

The dragon laughs, but the sound is bright, not mocking. It doesn't sour the ecstasy that is still in his veins as he continues to be moved. "Gorgeous. You're going to scream my name when I fill you with my cum, aren't you, precious? Won't be able to help it. How many times was I so tempted to let the wards drop so that everyone in the entire castle would hear how loudly you moaned whenever I let you taste my cum or when I had my fingers sunk into your tight," he moves him down harder on the word and makes Dabi's toes curl, "eager hole? Too many, sapphire. I would have stayed in your bed until every guard in the castle came to tear me away from you just so I could hear you sing so sweetly for as long as possible."

Dabi didn't think that one could die from pleasure, but his seems unending as his muscles soften again, but are still so sharply oversensitive and aching as they are moved over his lover's cock. He isn't sure that anyone could survive this, dragon or not, but oh, how this would be a wonderful way to go. If Tomura could have killed him like this, then he almost wants to go back in time and reprimand him for not doing so sooner. He can feel the other's talons starting to poke against his skin again, his movements growing faster and more certain as Dabi doesn't protest being bounced in his lap like a toy. Perhaps other royalty demand that of those who serve them, he could never even imagine it when Tomura was his. It probably says something unflattering about him that he is so excited to become that for the other man in turn. He would give up making himself anything else if he could always be the one warming Tomura's bed and being an eager home for his thick, perfect... cocks.

Nerves flutter in his stomach through the breathless haze of pleasure that is living inside of him. But he wants to bring Tomura's as high as his own body is going. Wants to make sure that this is just as good for his lover as it has been for him. If he is going to be the king's consort, then he's going to be the best one that he can be. He's going to have every inch of him the way that he was promised.

"Tomura," The movements slow and his kisses sweeten when he says his name.

"What is it, little one? Too much?"

He manages to shake his head and steady himself against the other's chest as he reaches back to touch the second cock. He is heavy, the same heaviness that he has always been against his palm before, but the scales along his underside are new. They're rigid, but there aren't any sharp gaps between where they meet, the skin as velvet and soft as the rest of his length, though there's a distinct chill to this part of him than the top of his length. "I want all of you, your majesty," he begs, uncertain if his body can even take all of him. He already feels so stretched and so good with one of his lover's cocks inside of him, but he wants to make sure their pleasure is matched, beat for beat. He has already cum twice, he can bring the other off with them inside to bring them to even ground again.

"Are you sure, princeling," he nuzzles against his cheek. "This is your first, is it not?"

His face flushes, but he hasn't ever really hid his inexperience from the other man. "Show me what I have to look forward to getting used to, Tomura."

"You really are perfect for me, precious." The words are cooed as softly as the sweetest 'I love you' as the other shifts his body up again, until only his head is stretching his hole, and then he forces himself to retract his claws again so he can reach down. Dabi lets some of his nerves be washed away as his lover makes more oil slick his skin. He has taken such great care to never hurt him and he doesn't believe that he would give him this now if he thought that he might. Tomura slips two fingers inside alongside his first cock and stretches his rim further, but this isn't too much yet, isn't making him doubt what he wanted so badly before. Tomura's eyes are on his face again, watching him for any flicker of discomfort that might pass his features. He doesn't want to stop, will take anything that he can get, and somehow feels more embarrassed when he leans in and gives the dragon a sweet, closed kiss against his lips as he gently rocks his hips back so he can feel his other cock rub against his skin.

Tomura's eyes are heavy with his own affection as he slips the fingers from Dabi's body and reaches to steady his cocks again. He presses the second head to his hole now and tells him, "Breathe for me, my love," waiting for the stream of his breath to start slipping from his lips before he pushes up. Dabi feels a slight ache at his rim as the blunt head presses against him. For a split second, he doesn't think that the other man is going to fit. That he will have to stop and Dabi will learn that no matter how much his lover has encouraged him and helped him not think of his body as completely useless, that it will fail him here too, always failing him when he wants something so keenly. But then his head pushes inside with a pop and stars explode across his vision.

He had thought he felt full with one of his lover's cocks inside, but as his rim is made to stretch so wide, each ridge of the other's scaled cock creating a unique and stunning pressure as it goes inside of him and can still be felt against his walls there, he loses space inside of him that his lungs used to breathe. When he sinks down, when Tomura pulls him down with his hands and tail, he ends up so deep inside his guts that there isn't room for his lungs to expand anymore. He is drowning, pulled under from how completely the joining of their bodies has allowed Tomura's to possess his own. There is no escaping his fullness. No way that he could ever let himself think past this moment that they are brought together in their entirety, nothing separating them anymore.

Everything. This is everything. He could never ask for more. He won't ever need to. Tomura will give this to him forever. He'll train his body to be good for this, to be his perfect consort, and Dabi will show him his devotion each day. He brought him love, warmth, light into his life no matter their rocky start, no matter that they were not supposed to be this to one another. He will bring that light into the kingdom. He won't ever make Dabi regret choosing him over the life he was born into and that had been filled with so many years of cruelty before him.

"You're so pretty when you fall apart for me, baby boy." Tomura's words are sweet when they brush over his cheek before his tongue is moving across his skin. Catching the blood that is dripping over his cheeks because he is so overwhelmed by the fullness inside and how every inch of him is being given fresh pleasure as he begins to move slowly again. "So brave taking so much your first time. Is it good, sweetheart?"

Dabi can't give him an answer in words, he just chokes out a sob as he feels that ring rubbing against his prostate and making his cock, already so oversensitive from his previous two orgasms, swell to half hardness again.

"You have to answer me, baby, or I'll have to stop."

"Don't stop," he's never heard his voice so weak before, but managing the words at all has the other moving him over his cocks more surely.

"There. That wasn't so hard was it? I know that you're going to remember how to behave so well for me, but if you slip again," they're both breathless with their arousal when Tomura promises against his skin, "I'll have to punish you, little prince."

He'll take any that he gets when he starts to move his hips down in time with the other's thrusts. He's so blindingly full, his body so tight with pleasure that he didn't even know he could experience, that he has to bring his lover to this same place as him. Tomura sees his eagerness and lets out another growl, his wings flaring, his tail tightening around his thigh, as he meets the movements with harder thrusts of his own. Seeing his wings flare like that has Dabi's fingers curving back into the place where they connect to his back and whatever restraint that the dragon was holding onto is gone.

Their movements are frantic, each one never letting Dabi's body completely adjust to the feeling of his cocks sinking deep inside of him. He still feels so small and so tight. He can't get to full hardness, not when his pleasure is so complete and centered inside of his hole as his thighs get slicker with each thrust that sends more oil dripping out and mingling with the slick from Tomura's roots and his precum as it starts to fill him. His throat is raw from the litany of sounds he is letting bounce against the stones, only drowned out when Tomura's lips are on his and his tongue is devouring every inch of his mouth, letting Dabi taste his own blood because the dragon can't seem to help himself and keeps licking it away from his skin.

"My sapphire, my princeling, my consort, mine," he snarls against his lips, the movements growing even rougher. "You are worth more than any treasure that will ever enter my horde. More perfect than any kingdom I will ever rule. Mine, until you banish me from your side."

Dabi clings to him even tighter. "Never." He won't ever give him up, won't ever make him leave. Tomura is his future, the only one that he has ever been able to look at and want so fiercely that Dabi would take up a sword and fight through any army that might ever think to come and take it away. "Mine, forever."

"Forever, love." Tomura agrees.

Neither of them can speak more after that as their movements devolve into something so frantic and needy that Dabi doesn't doubt that he will have bruises on his skin from how hard their hips are meeting and their fingers are clenching onto each other's skin and scales. But it's beyond worth it when Tomura lets out a snarl as he slams Dabi onto his lap and sinks his cocks inside as deeply as possible. He didn't realize that the dragon's release would make him feel even fuller, but he is blinded by the amount of pressure that builds inside of him as he is soaked with his cum, the fluid spilling out of his hole even when he's being plugged by his cocks. Dabi doesn't have any cum of his own left, his cock twitching and stinging with pain as bright as his pleasure as his third orgasm crashes over his nerves and leaves him limp and panting against his lover's chest.

It takes a long time for their breathing to steady and for the dragon's cocks to soften and slip out, his cum spilling from Dabi's body because it can't close up fast enough to even try to keep it inside. Their cum all over the throne, the smell of their sex permeating the air. Scandalous. Blissful. Tomura presses another sweet kiss to his temple and gathers him in his arms, his wings curling around their bodies to block him from sight.

"Come now," he murmurs. "It has been months now that I've longed to have you sleeping soundly in my bed, for you to be the first thing I see when I open my eyes each morning. I will have that now, and when you wake this evening, hungry for more, I will have you again."

Dabi doesn't know if his body will be able to handle having Tomura again, but the other man has always been able to find the right ways to push him, how to make him better. He trusts him to know this too, hiding his head against his collarbone and clinging to him as he's carried to the secret door behind the throne. No one should be in these halls, so no one will be able to stop them from going to Tomura's chambers so his lover can make good on his words the way he always has before.

Thank you so much for reading! If you liked it, consider shooting me an ask or leaving a comment!

#shigadabi #my writing

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