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chaoslibra · 1 month ago

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♪ ༘⋆ ᴅʀᴀᴡɴ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ — t.todoroki smau

viii. drive 𝄞 x. keigo lore drop

♪ ༘⋆ ix. family dinner 𝄞 m.list

cw: long ass written part, shitty parents, mentions of and allusions to domestic violence (nothing too graphic though), alcohol (reader isn't the one drinking), mother is being a dick about reader's major (i love all art major babies ur so cool), pls let me know if i forgot anything

nothing had changed about your home, since you had last been here. it felt like you hadn’t walked along the hallway to the living room in ages, even though it had only been a couple weeks – give or take. after introducing dabi and exchanging a couple of polite-ish pleasantries you two followed your mother to the living room. dabi remained a step or two behind you; his eyes roaming around the place. the house wasn’t all that big and most of the furniture appeared to be mismatched and at the very least a couple of years, if not decades, old. he wasn’t necessarily judging any of it, he just couldn’t shut off the memory of how different it had been back at his parents’ place. enji had always strived for perfection, after all.

you turned back at him; watched him look around. without knowing why, a pit grew in your stomach as if his eyes were judging everything you were surrounded by – and you by extension. he noticed the way you looked at him. there was hesitance in your gaze, but beneath it was a sense of curiosity that you seemed to keep deeply locked away. he offered up the faintest smile, nudging you forward with his arm just slightly, so your mother wouldn’t notice. playful as his action may have been, the depth within his strikingly blue eyes led you to believe that he may have noticed the unease you were feeling. you looked up at him. he would probably never understand the extent of it, but you were glad not to be alone in this house tonight.

“can i get you anything to drink? water? a beer, maybe?” your mother’s gaze not so subtly skipped over you. dabi looked back at her, immediately putting on a polite smile. it was so different from his usually smug expression that it caught you off guard at first. “water’s fine, ma’am.”

“are you sure?” her eyes remained on him. “i have some good whiskey, too, if you’d prefer that.” your mother didn’t see the twitch in your eye, when she offered him the harder liquor. he noticed. “no thank you.” he was polite, but his answer was very obviously finite. “i have to drive back, after all.” he laughed, staring her down with the politest smile you had seen on him.

“of course, how responsible.” not even glancing at you once, your mother nodded. “be right back.” she was about to turn toward the kitchen, when dabi interrupted her. “i’ll get it.” he walked past you, toward where he assumed the kitchen to be.

from the moment his presence left your side, you felt yourself missing the security he gave you – and in the very same breath you hated that you did. it was silly you knew it was but so long as he was there, pettiness was all you had to worry about from your mother.

he came back quickly. by then you had sat down on the old and frayed patchwork couch one of her ex-boyfriends had left here when he’d left her. your mother was sitting in the armchair across from you not uttering a word and barely managing to glance your way. when dabi let himself sink into the empty spot on the couch beside you, you didn’t move at all. he didn’t know why, but you were strangely focused on one spot on the wall right across from you. there was barely anything hanging on the walls – no family pictures, no paintings, nor any other décor really. so, the slightly darker spot in the wall, that you were staring at so intently, was way more noticeable than it probably should be. he was still confused, why it would pull your focus in that much. he nudged your knee with his own to pull you back.

you turned to look at him. he had sat down beside you on the couch. close enough for you to take in the scent of his cologne mixed with the hint of cigarette smoke that was always lingering on him. he had two glasses of water with him. you didn’t take note of it any further, assuming he would just offer it up to your mother. he didn’t. instead, he held it out to you. with a barely audible “thanks” you took the glass from his hands. From the corner of your eye you noticed, for a split second, a strange look in your mother’s eyes, almost as if she were upset about something.

“so, dabi was it? are you still in school?” your mother quickly snapped back to playing the polite hostess. dabi smiled, doing his best to hide the satisfaction he felt from getting a reaction out of the woman in front of him. part of him hoped, that you would notice, if only to calm your nerves. “nope.” she continued asking him about his life, barely acknowledging your existence at all. dabi answered every question politely, but he made it a point not to indulge her in ignoring you. he mentioned your brother and the band, when he was asked what he did for work. in an offhanded comment he even went as far as to say how much he enjoyed seeing you at lov’s most recent show.

your mother was obviously irritated by him. something about his picture-perfect smile and his purposefully deadpan, borderline bored answers ticked her off. you could clearly see it in the way her brows pulled together and how her lips formed a tightly pressed line. if it were you, she probably would have blown up at you within your first three words, but she had to save face in front of company. that was the only saving grace you had right now. but you couldn’t stop yourself from at least enjoying the vein pop on your mother’s forehead whenever dabi smiled just a little too brightly in her direction.

unfortunately, whatever little enjoyment you had pulled from this, was not meant to last. the second the front door fell shut, every single muscle in your body tensed. in the four months kai had been living at your mother’s house, you had come to perfectly memorize the heaviness of his steps and how he would always aggressively throw his keys into the little bowl your mother kept in the entry way. your mother stood up from the armchair right when kai dragged his feet into the living room. with a loud sigh he let himself drop into the armchair. not acknowledging dabi or you, he turned to your mother. “dinner’s not ready, yet?” his tone was cutting, too familiar. and not only to you.

“in a minute”, your mother called out from the kitchen. “why don’t you guys go ahead and sit down, hm?”

from the corner of his eyes dabi could easily see how this guy’s presence had shifted the entire energy of the room for you. your body tensed, when he stood up and made his way to the dining table and your eyes followed his every move. dabi stood up before you did, knocking you out of your thoughts. you jumped from the couch, still hesitant to move toward where kai was. he recognized your behavior far too quickly for his own liking.

keep an eye on her mom’s boyfriend.

tomura’s words rang in his ears. subconsciously he found himself moving to shield your body from his view. it wasn’t like the guy was actively doing anything, but if your reaction to his presence alone was anything to go by, he knew that he had to at least keep his guard up. you had asked him to come with you for a reason and slowly but surely the pieces started falling into place.

“y/n!” her voice startled you. after a good twenty minutes of pretending like you didn’t exist, you hadn’t expected her to address you directly. “at least make yourself somewhat useful and help me in the kitchen. honestly, who raised you?” she huffed a few more times, even as she saw you actively making your way across the living room to help her. dabi debated for a few seconds, if he should come with you, but ultimately decided against it. he figured that it was smarter to figure out what the boyfriend’s deal was. not letting the guy out of his sight once, he sat at the table. the guy didn’t seem interested in finding out who he was in the slightest – or being here at all for that matter.

“you know, you could have offered to help on your own.”

she had been hovering over you from the moment you had entered the kitchen. monitoring your every movement, while you were doing exactly what she was asking of you. you had learned over the years, that keeping your head down was your best bet. she had you set the table and put the takeout she had ordered into dishes, so she could pretend like she’d made it. even though, you were unsure who exactly she felt the need to pretend in front of. her eyes were following your every move, scrutinizing every sleight of hand, like you were disarming bombs and not taking forks out of the top drawer. Surprisingly she let you walk out of the kitchen with the main dish in your hand without making another comment on how you were holding the dish wrong or how you had better not drop it.

and when you finally were in your chair, sitting next to dabi with your mother across from you, you still couldn’t feel any less at ease. for the entire dinner, even though he barely grumbled out a word, you could feel kai glaring at you. other than the obvious uncomfortable tension the dinner went somewhat smoothly. the moment kai got his plate of food, that was the only thing he really focused on. you preferred that over him yelling or chucking glasses at you, so you weren’t about to complain. your mother was a little less obvious about excluding you from the conversation, now. she all but made up for it with her commentary on your life choices.

“so, excuse my bluntness, dabi”, she poured herself another glass of wine. kai had gotten up to get his third beer from the kitchen. “but your band, is that really enough to pay the bills?”

“mom!” your eyes widened. you couldn’t believe that she would just ask that. she looked at you, as if she were completely unaware how her question came off.

dabi smiled at her, still. at this point you were amazed at his ability to keep it up that effortlessly. “it’s alright, princess” he said quietly, though deliberately loud enough, so your mother heard it. in any other situation you would have cussed him out for so casually dropping a nickname like that. he turned back to her. “sure, ‘s not like i’m starving or anything”, he shrugged.

your mother nodded and for a second you thought, that’d be the end of that topic. but alas, when had you ever gotten what you wanted? “that’s good. i mean, it’s not like you waste your entire day scribbling nonsense.” she didn’t need to look at you, for you two know what exactly she meant. and yet, she did. she knew you weren’t going to say anything. especially not with kai on his way back from the kitchen. “guess not, though my sister studied art in school and she’s a really good art teacher now.” your mother didn’t say anything after that.

you were afraid to turn to see if maybe he was looking at you. he wasn’t. he did however nudge you lightly with his knee. you appreciated, that he had gone out of his way to spite her for basically the entire night so far, you just hoped, that it would stay at the somewhat manageable level of tense.

most of the dinner was considerably uneventful. your mother even became less passive aggressive about you, though she still talked over you, whenever you answered a question of hers. kai was quiet except for scoffing at every other sentence of yours. dabi remained as polite as ever, not once letting his tone waver, even though he could feel his annoyance for your mother fester within him. he opted to just talk directly to you, whenever she deliberately walked all over you.

“anyway”, she loudly interrupted, when you talked about your new job at the black wing. “how are you liking the noodles, dabi?” he put his fork down and looked up with the very same sickly sweet smile etched onto his face. “it’s really good, ma’am.” your mother smiled, satisfied with his answer. “pretty sure we have the same chinese joint back home.” the way her smile dropped in that very second could almost have been comical if you didn’t have kai’s glare burning into your side.

“that’s the place with the good spring rolls, that you liked so much. wasn’t it?” he was looking at you now. his smile was so gentle that you almost believed it was genuine. he waited, too. with his stupid soft smile and these eyes you could feel yourself sink into; he fucking waited for you to answer. “oh yeah”, you tried your best to match the ease in dabi’s smile – somewhat successfully anyway. “i love that place.” with a huff your mother decided to drop the conversation. she wasn’t one to admit defeat, but you decided to count that as one of the moments where she had no other choice.

with dabi at your side dinner went by faster, than you thought it would. faster than you believed, you found yourself back in the kitchen helping your mother clean up. she had washed exactly one plate before leaving you in the kitchen alone; her excuse being that she had to find ibuprofen for her headache. dabi hung around in the kitchen, helping you with clean-up, though you’d told him more than a couple times that “it’s fine.” and “i can just do it myself.” he reached over you to stow away the clean glass in the cabinet above your head. “i know you do.” his arm barely brushed your shoulder on its way back down. “doesn’t mean you have to.” you weren’t sure if he was still referring to the dishes.

he leaned against the doorframe with a dramatic sigh. “acting like your mother isn’t a total bitch, is fucking exhausting.” his voice was quiet but loud enough for you to hear. “join me for a smoke, pretty?” you were about to remind him, that he didn’t need to act like this when your mother wasn’t there. then you remembered that, unfortunately, this seemed to be dabi’s default setting.

you would like nothing more than to get out of this stuffy house and breathe air that wasn’t heavy and thick with the tension of your childhood having rotted away within these walls for the past 19 years. but you knew that your mother would most likely flip her shit if she came down and saw you weren’t in the kitchen anymore. not that you were particularly fond of being alone in here, but kai would probably be a while before he would be back from getting more beer from the 7/11 down the street.

“i really don’t want her seeing me smoke.” you forced an apologetic smile. “but you go ahead, you deserved it.” the pit in your stomach grew against your will. you had been thinking it this entire time, but saying these exact words, made you realize how much you were putting dabi through tonight. you’d robbed him of a saturday night, forcing him to witness your family drama, as if he were a guest star on some trashy tv drama.

“you sure?”

“yes.”

dabi hesitated before he left, making sure that both your mother and kai were nowhere near you. he stayed planted right next to the front door and gave himself three minutes to finish his cigarette. and yet a minute and a half in – his cigarette barely burned out by a third – he felt like something was wrong. kai hadn’t crossed his path on his way back home yet, but dabi couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. he carelessly tossed his cigarette in the driveway. in any other place he would have probably bothered to pick it up, but he felt like being a dick to your mother, if he couldn’t be to her face. he opened the front door back up. it slowly fell shut behind him, followed by a sharp thud coming from the kitchen. the sound, all too familiar, made every single hair on the back of his neck stand up.

you were only somewhat aware of your surroundings, when dabi left. you figured nothing was going to happen in the few minutes he took to finish a cigarette. though a part of you regretted not joining him out there. it was quiet for a minute or so. you assumed that your mother had decided to just lay down – some part of you hoped, that she did because dabi had continuously outwitted her tonight. you barely caught yourself snorting out a laugh, thinking back at how much your mother had to force herself not to flip out.

“glad you still have shit to laugh about.”

you didn’t need to turn to the kitchen door to know who that voice belonged to. the sharp and deep tone, rumbled through your bones with the heaviness of an earthquake. his steps were heavy as he closed the distance to you in the blink of an eye. your body turned instinctively searching for a way past him, but before you could make your first step he was already towering in front of you. kai had always been tall and broad but in this moment he felt so much taller; so much broader and you could all but shrink before him.

“look, kai–” “don’t even start with me.”

his arms crossed in front of his chest. his entire body was blocking your way to the kitchen door intentionally caging you between him and the kitchen counter, you were pressing your back into.

“you really think you can just waltz in here without even lookin’ at me?” he almost spat at you. ��still waitin’ on that apology by the way.”

“you know what, you’re so right.” in an unprecedented spur of bravery, you heard yourself scoff at him. “i am so sorry that my shoulder got in the way of the wall and the glass you threw.”

your mouth had said the words before your brain could have told it how shitty that idea was. kai’s eyes narrowed, his teeth clenched. it was more than obvious, that he was seething. he took another step toward you. by now you were sure that you were going to get bruises on your lower back from how deeply the edge of the counter was digging into it.

“i’d be careful if i were you,” his warm, intoxicated breath hitting your face sent cold shivers down your spine. “you do not want to see how this plays out.”

you looked up at him trying your hardest not to make the tremble of your limbs too noticeable. “i don’t know what more you want from me.” as much as you struggled, for now you managed to keep the eye contact up. “i sent mom the money days ago and i’m sorry about us fighting and your glass getting broken, but that wasn’t all on me.”

by now you could practically see the steam coming from his ears and the rage that filled his glare.

“not on you?!” your head flinched away at the bellow of his voice. you weren’t sure if you had imagined it, but you thought to have heard yourself wince, too. “you were being a thoughtless bitch, yet again, and i had to deal with it, yet again, but it’s ‘not on you’?”

all this over yet another stupid argument you’d had with kai, you thought. you really shouldn’t be surprised at his reaction. and the truth was, you weren’t. but that didn’t mean that his barks wouldn’t turn into bites soon. it had happened before.

“but i di–”

your breath hitched hearing the sudden smack against the counter. kai’s hand had crashed down on the marble counter only inches away from your body. you jumped back your weight now almost entirely perched against the cold surface.

dabi had rushed over to the kitchen the very moment he had heard the all too familiar sound. and what he found when he reached its origin, couldn’t have been any more familiar to him. kai had his hand raised in a way he’d seen so many times before. his hand was raised the same way enji had raised his against rei – and shoto, soon enough. he had hit the counter first, but dabi knew better than to wait out the second one. the second hit was seldom as forgiving.

“sorry to interrupt, but i have a bit of a family emergency and we need to leave right away.”

both you and kai turned to dabi the very second, he had spoken. you had been so on edge the entire time that you had no strength left to stop the sigh of relief from leaving your body when you saw him. his lips were pulled into the very same smile he’d worn all night, but it did not reach his eyes. his eyes were ice cold, as if his stare alone had the strength to freeze kai in place. he didn’t take his eyes away from the man once. not even breaking eye-contact when you hushed past kai and to dabi’s side. the moment you stood beside him, his body moved in front of you just slightly. you saw then that even though his body language looked akin to somebody just making casual conversation, every muscle in his body was tense. it made you wonder just how much he had seen.

“i apologize for having to cut the evening short.” dabi’s back was shielding you from seeing kai’s reaction. “please give my best to y/n’s mother.”

dabi didn’t wait for kai to respond. he led you toward the hallway with his hand hovering over your back. as much as his hand was there to guide you out of the house, he never actually let it touch you.

you only let go of the breath you had been holding since your first initial sigh of relief, when you were outside. all the way over to his car, you didn’t allow yourself to look at him. always walking just a half step behind him, as soon as he had dropped his hand from beneath your back. he wasn’t actively looking to make eye contact with you, either. he knew the look on your face, all too well.

without a second thought he opened the door for you. you slipped in, eyes hitting the floor about as quickly as your feet did. and it stayed that way for the entire drive. he glanced at you at every other red light, checking for signs that you wanted to talk about it. he chose to drop it though, when he saw your eyes locked on the skin you were picking at around your nails.

the only time you looked at him was the moment you stepped out of the car parked right in front of your apartment building. and he almost wished that you didn’t.

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