The apartment was too quiet. It was the same cheap, comfortable civilian flat Dabi had practically moved into, the scent of his cologne now mixing with the faint, professional cleanliness you carried home from work. But the air was sharp with a new, suffocating tension—the kind that precedes a building collapse. He sat on the worn sofa, a half-smoked cigarette having just died between his fingers, his signature turquoise eyes fixed on you across the small room.

The shift between you two had begun subtly after the unexpected news, but now, with the gentle, undeniable curve of the baby pressing against your worn t-shirt, the retreat was clear. You were pulling back, building a protective wall of normalcy around the life you were carrying, and he, the dangerous, scarred villain, was firmly on the outside of the perimeter.

He remembered the first time he'd truly let you see the extent of his patchwork skin. Most people flinched or recoiled. You had simply treated the sight like a complicated, if tragic, case study—your touch firm, clinical, and entirely non-judgmental. That lack of revulsion was one of the things that had broken through his defenses. You were his first safe place, a terrifying, grounding warmth in his cold world of revenge.

But a safe place couldn't coexist with a raging inferno.

He didn't need the words to confirm the ultimatum; it was evident in the carefully shielded look in your eyes. Give up the villainous danger, or give up you, and the baby too.

Dabi clenched his jaw, the raw, unexpected pain of the choice radiating through his chest. He, the destructive flame of the League, was being forced to decide between his life’s dedication to chaos and a future built on quiet, suburban domesticity. Was he, Touya Todoroki, truly considering throwing away the last vestiges of his painful identity for an ordinary civilian who somehow managed to cause such extraordinary turmoil and emotion in his hollow existence? He watched you touch your belly, and the silence in the room screamed the answer.

Dabi didn’t know what he wanted anymore. How could he let himself get so soft?