A wet cat.
That’s what you said he looked like. The up-and-coming villain known as Dabi would have burnt you. If he could’ve, of course.
The burnt skin on his wrists had rolled up like sleeves. It detached itself from its fastening staples, revealing flesh. The purple skin on his side had split open. Some sections of tissue were charred black, while others were pink and bloody. Bleeding.
His blood, the only reminder he had that his heart was still beating inside his ribcage. Red as anyone else’s, and still flowing though his limbs.
It was also as red as his father’s hair. As red as his own hair had been.
Seeing the red of his own blood evoked a strange flurry of emotions that he had no desire to detangle. As long as he kept ahold of his rage he could keep going.
Unless he dies of blood loss before he can achieve his goal, of course.
Which is why, when you walk up calling him a wet cat and offer your hand, he accepts it.
Your apartment isn’t far, but with Dabi’s injuries it takes four times as long as it should have. Blood droplets litter the ground, pooled in the spots his gate paused.
You sit him down on the closed toilet lid, bandaging his arms and torso with practiced ease. You’re not acting how he expected. Dabi is used to people being afraid of him. He knows that the grotesqueness of his stolen skin is the first thing people notice about him. He knows that people don’t want to be around him. Even the other small-time villains he runs into recoil when they get close. Dabi, after one-too-many encounters marred by his skin, stopped letting anyone get close to him.
He hadn’t been emotionally close to another since he was a child, but now he avoided physical proximity too. He had been lonely since he died, the emptiness only getting worse as he got older.
Which is why when you touched him with your gentle, healing hands, he would have cried had his tear ducts not been fused shut by his own flames.
He takes a moment to slow his racing heart before asking you the question that had been bubbling in his head since you first spoke to him.
“Couldn’t you compare me to anything else?”
At his question, you pause before looking him dead in the eyes for the first time since you extended your hand to the stranger.
“Nope!” you sang, before closing the medicine cabinet and walking through the bathroom doorway, leaving the mildly offended villain staring at your back.
Written by @/CaptainsBaby on Tumblr in 2024 <3
I do not consent to my writing being republished in any way without my express written permission.