A Little Problem || Dbhks ||

Chapter One

"This is your kid Dabi, and I need you to take her because they're damn well going to kill me, we both know enough villains who were in foster care to know that that's not a good option, she looks like you, and I'd rather not have the death of a baby on my conscience."

Dabi stared at the newborn, probably not even a week old in his old friend's arms. Big blue eyes and tufts of red and white hair confirmed what they were saying. This baby was undeniably a Todoroki.

"What the fuck."

~~

———-

Dabi - or Touya at the time, first met them when he was sixteen. Not quite blissfully unaware of the horrors of the world and most definitely not the picture of innocence either, yet still... youthful and oblivious to just how bad things could be. And if it weren't for him, it probably would've taken him years to figure out that society was beyond fucked up, so Dabi vowed to thank him for the rest of his life.

Their name was Ronin. And when Touya had first laid eyes on them, they had tear stains on their slim face and blood on their ripped, old-looking school uniform. Their shirt, utterly decimated, had not done much to cover the bandages and duct tape he had been wearing underneath it.

And- well, Touya-but-not-quite-Touya, who had not yet become as bitter and cruel as Dabi, who had spent most of his childhood isolated, had eloquently announced his presence with a sputtered, "Uh. Are you injured or some shit? I don't think duct tape is gonna help much."

They had looked up at him with the most baffled expression Touya had ever seen on someone's face in his life. "I'm non-binary, you fucking dolt."

Touya had physically felt his face heat up in embarrassment. " Oh..." and then, "Uh, is the uh- duct tape and shit safe?"

They had rolled their eyes. "I'm here for a good time, not a long time. Wanna help me up though? Name's Ronin."

After pausing for only a second, he had then reached over and grasped their hand in his own. "Tou- Dabi."

And so was the start of a very, very interesting (some would call it toxic - Dabi would be a hypocrite if he did though) and destructive friendship.

———-

One year of the two of them living off the streets and Ronin mentoring Dabi on how to properly survive later, they had grown pretty close. It was hard not to when they were both there for each other's first murders, when they both grew to trust one another enough to share their deepest secrets with each other in the dead of night - when Dabi and Ronin both admitted to wanting to 'kill' who they used to be, when they finally did and were able to talk about the names of the people they once were, when Ronin discovered that their weak water-boiling quirk wasn't weak at all and when Dabi had to start using staples to keep himself from falling apart. They were there for it all.

"I never thought I'd ever be a villain," Dabi had said randomly one day - freshly seventeen, if he remembered right. Ronin had snorted, twirling a cigarette in their fingers.

"Not that the cops or heroes even know who you are, but what kid ever does? You never see that written on those stupid 'what I want to be when I grow up' worksheets. Fuck, I used to think I'd take over my family's restaurant one day. Oi, come over here and light this for me."

Dabi had given them a deadpan stare. "You would think I never told you that my fucking quirk burns me with the amount of times you tell me to use it for your own benefit."

Ronin had shrugged, the jagged scar going down the side of their face stretching as he raised his brow. "Doesn't hurt you anymore, so why not use what you're given? You know damn well what I started doing the moment I found out plasma was made up of water, rich boy."