Chapter Text
The first time you meet Dabi is after a shift from hell. Mondays were always bad, as if people waited for the weekend to be over before taking their ailments to be treated, but today had been especially shitty. You were on your third pair of scrubs after getting the other two covered in an unpleasant cocktail of bodily fluids, and it seemed as though every single patient had been determined to make your day as miserable as possible. The walk home from the subway station wasn’t too long, but the exhaustion clinging to your body made the short distance feel impossible. The only thoughts on your mind as you walked were of a hot shower and collapsing into bed. Your bad luck, though, decided that you hadn’t had enough.
Before your brain could even process what was happening, a firm hand grabbed your arm and dragged you into a shadowy alley, shoving you roughly into the wall of the adjacent building. Despite the dark, you could see the tell-tale glint of a knife in the stranger’s other hand, now pointed at you. The stranger’s other hand was on your shoulder, pressing you further into the brick, the jagged edges of the wall digging uncomfortably into your back. You couldn’t see his face, but his body loomed over yours, his shoulders raised in an attempt to make himself as large and intimidating as possible. His hand shook in front of your face, his knuckles white from his grip on the knife, breathing shallow and hurried. Huh. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as you thought.
“Hand over your purse and I won’t hurt you,” he hissed at you, bits of spittle flying out of his mouth. You scrunched up your face in distaste at having even more bodily fluids pointed your way. His grip on your shoulder loosened slightly upon your lack of reaction. “Did you hear me, bitch? I said give me your—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence before your knee flew up into his groin, sending him reeling backwards with his back hunched over, hands instinctively moving to grab himself. The knife dropped from his hand, and you swiftly bent to pick it up, pointing it back at him. “What was that about not hurting me?” You said, the irritation you’d been pushing down all day bubbling up, spewing out of you and onto this idiot who’d tried to mug you. “I have had,” You inhaled slowly, attempting to calm yourself before continuing, “one hell of a day, so you either get your ass away from me or I’m sending you to the ER.”
Just as the last word leaves your mouth, a door opens to your right. You groan internally as you see the figure who steps out; just when you thought your day couldn’t get any worse, the universe decides to throw a goddamn villain at you, as if a petty mugger wasn’t enough. He blinks in surprise at the sight of you, pointing a knife at the hunched over man, but the expression quickly dissolves into a knowing grin and he closes the door he walked through, walking the few steps it takes to get to you.
As he gets closer to the mouth of the alley, the streetlights bring his face into focus, and you can clearly see the ripples of burned flesh stretching across his face and arms. The smile on his face sends chills down your spine, and you do your best to seem unfazed, despite the very real fear making your heart hammer in your chest. An inexperienced mugger is one thing, but a villain is much more than you can take on.
“Well, this is a fun change of pace,” He says, and the man you’d incapacitated looked up, terror clear in his eyes. He scrambled upright and ran out of the alley, leaving you—alone—with Dabi. He glances down at your hand, still held out with the knife in it, now pointed at him. The villain laughs and raises an eyebrow mockingly. “What exactly are you planning to do with that?”
You weighed your options as his gaze settled on you. One, you could keep the knife up and attempt to somehow fight back, and most likely get killed in the process. Two, you could put your hand down and… What, talk?
You exhale shallowly, lowering your stiff arm. After clearing your throat, you look up at him and say, “Sorry for the disturbance.” His brows rose nearly imperceptibly in surprise at your calmness. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go home now.” Without waiting for a response, you turned away from him and began to walk out of the alley, each step further away from him slightly faster than the last. You prayed to any higher power that would listen for him not to follow you, and somehow, it worked. You heard a light chuckle as you emerged back onto the street, and the sound of it replayed in your head all the way back home.
~
The second time you meet him gives you a sense of déjà vu as you’re once again pulled into an alleyway. It’s broad daylight this time, but you were shaken enough by the villain attack nearby to lose the usual awareness of your surroundings. When you look up at the perpetrator this time, you’re shocked to come face to face with Dabi himself. He looks… Well, he looks like shit. He’s covered in ash and dust, and his face is bloodied with little scratches. It’s enough to make you temporarily forget that you’re currently at the mercy of a villain. He’s a little out of breath, and the hand he isn’t using to grip you is clutching his own ribs.
“I’m gonna keep it short, doll. I know you’re some kind of nurse or doctor. Now, either you fix me up and stay quiet about it, or you don’t make it home. What’s it gonna be?” His hand on your arm was heating up a little, just toeing the line of being painful.
That was certainly not what you were anticipating.
There really wasn’t much of a choice, was there? Either you do what he asks, or he chars you. Lovely.
“I can’t do much here; I don’t have anything with me to help you.” A gamble. You weren’t lying, but you weren’t sure how he’d react to the answer. Surprisingly, he didn’t immediately burn you to a crisp.
“I’m not going to a hospital.” His jaw clenched in thought for a moment, then he said, “Where do you live?”
“No,” You blurted out before your brain caught up with you. “Absolutely not. I am not bringing a villain to my apartment.”
“If I wanted to hurt you, don’t you think I would have done it by now?” You had to nod. “Perfect. Now, you’re gonna walk home, doll, and I’ll follow you. You’re a dangerous one, but you wouldn’t try to throw me off your trail, would you? I don’t think that would end very well for you.”
That was the last thing he said before letting go of your arm and shoving you out of the narrow alley you’d been in.
You began to walk back home, plans of meeting up with a friend completely forgotten. Despite not being able to see Dabi the whole time, you felt the uncanny feeling of being watched, a pair of eyes never leaving you. Was this your reality now? Oh god, what if other villains started showing up to your apartment, demanding you treat their wounds? You had no choice but to go along with it.
By the time you’ve reached your home and are opening the door, you haven’t seen Dabi once since he let you go. As you close the door, though, it stops just short of latching closed, and it opens up again to reveal Dabi, just as dirty and disheveled as before. You reluctantly let him in, and he makes a beeline for the couch, collapsing heavily onto it. You die a little on the inside at the thought of the filth that is now surely covering your couch, but decide not to say anything, opting not to put your life on the line. His eyes are shut, an arm wrapped around his stomach and the other one hanging off the couch.
One eye opens to survey you, still standing at the door, keys in hand. “You gonna stand there all day, doll?”
You bristle at the name, but finally leave the relative safety of the doorway. “I’m going to get you some painkillers and water.” You pause before continuing, “The bathroom is that way. Clean yourself up. No point in cleaning up any wounds if they’re just going to get infected again.” He looks mildly surprised at your boldness, as if no one in his life had ever told him to take a shower or something. Nevertheless, he gets up with a groan and follows your instructions. The couch, to your dismay, is indeed covered in ash where he sat, and if you look hard enough, you can say faint traces of his shoes across the carpet from the couch and into the hallway. You sigh and set your things down on a counter, getting ready to clean up the villain’s mess.
~
By the time Dabi’s cleaned up—well, as clean as he could be, what with having to wear the same filthy clothes—you’ve more or less gotten rid of the soot trail he’d left in his wake. He emerges from the bathroom looking shockingly less grimy. When was the last time he’d taken a shower? More importantly, you could smell the familiar scent of your expensive shampoo wafting out alongside him, and you couldn’t help but feel a little upset about him using it, despite the fact that there were definitely more pressing issues to be upset about at the moment. The small table in your living room was covered in various supplies you’d retrieved while he was in the bathroom, anything you thought you might need.
“I can give you a mild painkiller for now, then I have to check if you’ve got any serious damage,” you said as you tossed him the rattling bottle of medicine. “Just take two of those for now. I can see you’ve got some bruises and cuts, but the biggest concern is whether you’ve broken a rib or something.”
“Oh, yeah? How do you figure that?” He drawled, but there was a hint of actual curiosity somewhere under the bravado.
“I mean, I am a registered nurse. I’ve seen plenty of people come in all beat up. I know a rib injury when I see it.” It was true. The hospital you worked in wasn’t exactly in the best of neighborhoods, just barely on the cusp of a seedier area of the city. It was never your job to question how people got their injuries, just to treat them. After some experience, it had become easy for you to tell when a patient was lying about how they were injured, so you had to adapt and figure out their injuries without relying on their information. “You’ve been hugging the left side of your ribs since you grabbed me. Doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.”
He laughed lightly as he walked closer, a raspy low sound. “Alright, well are you plannin’ on fixing me up or not, doll?”
“Don’t call me that,” you snapped, unable to stop yourself. You turned to the array of supplies on the table to distract yourself from what you’d just said. Maybe now he’d kill you. You could see him out of the corner of your eye walking towards you, soon feeling him looming over you.
“I hate to disappoint, doll, but it’s not like you’ve told me what to call you.” His knees bent and he was suddenly far too close to you. “Gonna give me a name for that pretty face, or what?”
Your skin began to feel hot, too hot, either because you were scared of being charred in your own home or from his overwhelming body heat. It was honestly hard to tell at this point. Regardless, you remained silent, opening up a first aid kit and rummaging through it instead. You cleared your throat and turned to the couch sharply, unfolding from your seat on the floor to perch on the side of the table. “Please sit down,” you hesitated for a barely-there moment before continuing, “and take your shirt off.”
Surprisingly enough, he followed your instructions. He dropped his jacket and shirt unceremoniously to the ground, planting himself on the couch in front of you. Once you actually looked back at him, you were taken aback. Sure, you’d seen the scars on his hands and face, but you didn’t think about whether they would cover other parts of him; mangled skin stretched across the top of his chest and his lower abdomen, flaking and dry. A large bruise bloomed over his left side, and he was littered with other bruises all over.
You began to work in silence, disinfecting the cuts on his face and applying an antibiotic cream on them. His cerulean eyes follow your movements, and if the nerves make you fumble a few times, that’s no one’s business but your own. You finally move down to his ribs, but not before noticing how dry and taut his scarred skin is. That’s gotta be hurting him.
“Do you not use anything for your scars?” You ask, and he gives you a slightly confused look. “Burns like that need maintenance. I’m sure they’re not comfortable like that.”
“They didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual,” he scoffed, as if you were being wildly unreasonable. “No, I don’t do anything to them.”
“Hm. Well, I don’t really have anything beyond a regular household first aid kit, so I can’t give you anything for them, but if they itch or bother you at all, that’s a sign you should probably be moisturizing them since the skin can’t do that naturally anymore. Any unscented moisturizer should do the trick.”
He’s uncharacteristically silent as you move on to inspecting his rib. “I’m gonna have to poke and prod a bit, I just need to try and feel out if any of the bones are broken or fractured.” He gave a curt nod and seemed to tense up. “I’ll do my best, but there’s no way to now for sure without some scans. I know that’s not an option, but I just wanted to let you know. Also, you have to relax. Breathe normally.” He untensed a bit. “I don’t bite.”
“Damn shame,” he huffed through a laugh.
Gently, you began to press your fingers against his side, feeling out for any irregularities. He hissed out a breath when you reached the bruise, but you were able to continue your assessment. You drew your hand away, looking back up at his face. “From what I can tell, your bones are fine, you just have a bruised rib. It’ll hurt for a while and you may have some difficulty breathing, but you should be fine in a few weeks. If it stays swelled up like that, you can just ice it and it should go down.”
He looked at you with an unreadable expression as you got up and started for the kitchen, and he still had that same expression when you came back with a glass of water. He stopped his staring to begin putting his shirt back on, but you blurted out, “Don’t put it back on yet!”
With his shirt halfway on, Dabi looks up at you, and he laughs. “Doll, if you wanted me out of my clothes all you had to do was ask.”
Your cheeks burn in embarrassment before you explain yourself, “I… I have a healing quirk and I was going to heal your rib.” You clear your throat before continuing, a little surer of yourself. “It’s not big or flashy, it’s not even that powerful, but I figured it’s better than nothing.”
“Shoulda said that from the beginning.” He grumbled, nevertheless removing his half-worn shirt. “Have your way with me.”
You approached with the glass of water and sat down on the table. As you stretched your hand out, the water from the glass began to float up in ribbons, wrapping around your hand like bandages. Soon enough, your hand was engulfed in water and you reached out to touch Dabi’s side. The water then spread from your fingers to his bruised skin. It seemed to sparkle a bit, as though rays of sunlight dappled across it, despite you being indoors. His bruise began to fade, but you were forced to stop before it could disappear entirely. The water sluiced back into the glass at your command, and you sat back with a small gasp, your breathing labored. Dabi breathed in with a little more ease, the pain in his side much less intense after your healing.
“Goddamn, why didn’t you just do that in the first place?” He stretched experimentally, testing the pain. He paused when his gaze fell on the glass of water, now more than half empty. “Where did the rest of the water go?”
“Well the water is what’s really doing the healing, I’m just kind of a… catalyst for it. Water has been associated with wellness for centuries, but its effects are usually slow, and my quirk lets me speed that process up. Since the water is what’s healing the injury, it gets expended and absorbed.” You dip a finger into the water, taking with you just a few drops of water. You both watch as a hangnail disappears along with the water, leaving nothing but soft skin. “Only problem is I have to use my own energy to sort of power it. It needs the energy from somewhere, so I act like a battery to power the process and heal. That’s why I can’t use it too much; I need to recharge after every use.”
“I’m gonna be honest, doll,” He says as he gets up, “I don’t really care how it works as long as it does.”
He shrugs his jacket back on and heads to the door. He’s turning the handle when you speak up again. “Is this… Are you going to make me heal you again?”
He laughs as he opens the door, then says, “You’ll just have to wait and see.” And with that, the door closed behind him, leaving you in your living room.
He might as well have said yes with that answer. Your exhaustion hits you at once, and you flop onto the sofa, eventually falling asleep to the smell of ash.