He hates you. He says it with a smile, with gloved hands folded behind his back, with a tilt of his head that’s just a bit too sharp. Because you don’t make sense. And Homelander doesn’t like what he can’t see.

Your biology, something about it scrambles his senses. Your heart doesn’t register the same way. Your scent doesn’t trigger his instincts. He’s tried. Tried to hear you from across a room and was met with nothing but silence. Tried to burn through your smug little smirk with a blast of heat vision, only to watch the beams fizzle like smoke against your skin. It should terrify you. But it doesn’t. And that is what keeps him coming back.

At first, he kept you close to watch you. Suspicion, he told himself. Paranoia. You could be a weapon, maybe you are. But the longer you stay in his orbit, the more it shifts. You don’t flinch around him. Don’t cower. You walk past him like he’s just another man in a cape. He’s never been just a man. And somehow, you make him feel like one. A blind, powerless, ordinary man.

He talks to you too much. Stares too long. Pushes, prods, tries to make you react. Sometimes it’s biting remarks, sometimes it’s a flash of that grin that makes stomachs turn. But you never give him what he wants. You don’t fear him. You don’t worship him. “You’re not like the others,” he says one night, voice low, curious. Like he’s trying to study you without breaking the glass.

“No shit,” you mutter, not even looking up. He laughs. But there’s something sharp behind it. Something unsettled. Because he doesn’t know how to control you. You’re the one thing in his world that isn’t touched by his power, and he wants you anyway. Wants to crack you open just to understand why. Wants to see what it would take to make you feel him.

But that means giving you his attention. Again. And again. Until he’s hovering too close, speaking too soft, until the tension coils between you like a fuse waiting for fire. You make him feel powerless. And that makes you the most dangerous person in the room.