weary travelers.

HOW NATSUO GOT HIS NICKNAME (ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING)

It starts with a thought.

The newest edition, Natsuo thinks, is an older brother. He knows this, because he himself is an older brother, and now that he can actually spend time with his baby-brother (occasionally), there are all these ticks that come.

One: being overprotective.

Dabi watches over everyone at the bar with sharp eyes―not in the way he first had, with fear, but looking for a fight to break up or something to tease. Natsuo does that with Shouto, sometimes. It's downright hilarious. His brother takes everything serious (that wasn't the funny part, it was actually kinda sad, but Natsuo was going to ignore that), so his initial reaction is to figure out what Natsuo means. Tilting his head so he looks like a cat. It's adorable, frankly (Mom used to do that, he thinks).

It's almost cute―almost homey (almost. Like the way turquoise was almost kind, before it went up in smokes and left a child in the ashes). Natsuo does not let the memories bait him to a fit. He is made of cracks, he splits himself open to canyons and sharpens the rubble and ice, he creates mountains of himself. With white spilling from his mouth he burns and freezes and cries. Because for all he is, he does not have his fathers eyes, nor does he have vermilion red lining his hairline (the bits he'd had―maybe when he was younger―are bleached).

Dabi, though. Dabi has one of those looks, like he's remembering something when he's in middle of braiding Ochako's hair, or when he's straightening Izuku's tie―becuase Izuku for the life of him cannot tie one on his own. Or when Tomura is pouting and grumbles over his cracked gameboy.

Split in affection and his hands wrap around himself―maybe he really should stop projecting his his dead brother to a stranger with said brothers' eyes.

Two: the way he acts.

Ruffles and cocky grins and clenched fists.

He gives Izuku headpats, Tomura too. Sometimes he works up the courage to tousle Natsuo's snow-white hair and he smiles―it pulls along the staples that hold him together. (Dabi does not cry, he said he cried too much once and his tear ducts cauterized themselves, he says he's died hundreds of different ways, says he's lived and survived and he knows the difference between a cage and freedom. Natsuo thinks that if Touya was still alive, he would have liked Dabi.)

Sometimes he messes up Ochako's hair after he braids it for fun, mussing the uneven haircut. His hands are always warm (burning hot, he says that his fire eats him alive, burning to the color of his eyes―Touya's fire burns pale blue, a soft color), Izuku finds it fascinating. Though he hasn't worked up the courage to speak yet. Dabi is intimidating―piercing blue eyes. Azure with rage and passion and kindness in a world far too cruel. He's a patchwork of a human being, more scars than skin, more monster than person, he calls himself a walking corpse. Izuku flinches, pale skin and sunken, shallow eyes (he's a boy that hides his skin until he's more plastic and air, until he's gone. Natsuo has spent his entire life looking for things that aren't there and hiding from monsters down the hall).

The way Dabi smiles is familiar, almost.

A taut string of lip pulling bruised fourth-degree burns back. It's an uneven smile―his scars, upon closer inspection, are lopsided too. Not skin grafts, no. There's a story behind them, a story behind his death and each staple and piercing that punctures his barely remaining flesh. Dabi looks sickly. He says he catches fevers too easily and coughs his lungs out when he breathes, it hurts, he says. I'm dying young, he says. It's a promise, a threat, a hope, maybe.

Natsuo does not pity him; he looks at Dabi and thinks that is who he wants to be.

Not a pitiful monster, but a man that can wear his scars like a second skin. That can protect despite it killing them. Natsuo's quirk is perfectly suited for his body―it's controlled by his emotions, controlled by his anger. (His father's anger burns hot, red and fire and pain. His sisters' anger is sad, swallowed in guilt and fear and sadness; mulches of dulled silver and scabed papercuts. His brothers' anger is blank, shut down and buried under years of fear and hurt―Shouto's anger, if he had to pick, is white hot. Natsuo's anger is cold, frigid; icy blue and molten lead. He does not burn his bridges like his father does―no. Ice creeps up and rots away until it's too cold and he's too distant, until freezerburn slips and everything shatters.)

Dabi's anger, Natsuo thinks, is much like Touya's.

Dabi's anger is quiet and it is a shallow purple. It eats away until his eyes are numb from cold and he is dead. He cuts his lips to a crooked grin that's as feral as it is a warning. It is a sign of a man who has lived too long and seen too much, who has grown up too quickly. (Dabi does not remember much of his childhood, he says) Natsuo thinks that this is how his mother was―cold eyes and clenched fists, holding back until one day she snapped and―the kettle shrieks and Shouto screams―her fears dissipate and all that's left is cold rage.

There is a key difference to them. When mother snapped she went screaming, when Dabi does, he goes deathly silent. (Natsuo thinks he died screaming. Died shrieking under the weight of coal and brimstone and sunk under the pressure of his self-loathing.)

When Dabi snaps he grins. It's scary, it makes him feel like he's on the cusp of his demise, maybe it's because he knows that Dabi will fight until he is charred into nothing but ashes―he was made to burn. Dabi grins with his teeth bared, a warning. Edging to crazed, his eyes swirl with insanity and loneliness. He is a man with nothing to lose, in that very moment he has lost all rationality, he is manic. Psychotic and heinous, he will set himself to burn without thought.

Dabi's anger burns quiet, like a campfire spreading to a forest. Or smoke that curls around your lungs.

Three: what Natsuo has dubbed 'The Bro-sense' as of recently.

He has it himself. A twisting in his gut and a spiral in his head that turns and turns whenever Shouto is training because somehow he knows. It kills him, tearing away at his insides and leaving his mouth with a cloud of icy-fog. Because underneath the hate he dresses himself in like a second skin―his own scarring to bear―Natsuo is terrified. Every waking moment has ants crawling up his spine, he can't hear screaming and he can't tell who it's from. Doesn't know if the culprit is himself or his siblings; alive or dead.

It stings―almost. A twisted mix of anticipation and dread that boils in his gut. He closes his eyes. These are the days he spends in the bar, the days when he can hear his entire family crying and his father―Endeavor―the monster, yelling over them.

He grits his teeth and spits out red. Takes in something far too sweet or bitter to curb the thoughts. Dabi is there sometimes, too. In the wee hours of morning, when he cracks open a textbook to study Pre-med because it's the only thing that keeps his mind off of the fact Shouto could be hurt, freezing himself or burning alive. Natsuo does not like these nights, even if they're the reason he's got such good grades.

"Hey, how goes it?" Says Dabi, appearing from thin air.

Natsuo replies without thinking―

"Wouldn't you like to know, weather boy."

And Dabi, being the asshole older brother that he is sure to be, calls Natsuo weather boy until the day he dies, or so he swears to.

(Touya snorts, showing him an age old video called a vine about a decade earlier.)