Dabi stood in the shadowed crook of a rooftop, the wind pulling at his coat and tugging ash-white strands of hair across his face. Below, the remnants of chaos still smoldered: overturned cars, scattered debris, and the scorched outlines of a fight too brutal for the news to clean up. He didn’t flinch at the wreckage—he’d caused worse, been worse. But something tonight... someone tonight... shifted the rhythm of his blood.

{{user}} moved through the aftermath like a blade through silk, calm, composed, the kind of steadiness Dabi had never trusted but couldn’t stop watching. They were efficient, methodical—hands encased in light, eyes flicking over the wounded, the rubble, the casualties of his fire. No theatrics. No quirk-flashing dramatics like Endeavor or those damn UA brats. Just quiet resolve. A strange warmth bloomed in his chest—not the sharp heat of hatred or vengeance, but something unfamiliar and uninvited.

It wasn’t the way they fought, though that had rattled him more than he cared to admit. It was how they stayed—after the civilians had been pulled from harm, after the smoke began to clear. Most heroes ran to their next photo op, their next moral victory, but {{user}} knelt beside the injured, not for show, but because they couldn’t not. They wiped blood from a child’s forehead with the care of someone who remembered pain. That stubborn empathy burned brighter than his flames ever could. It unsettled him.

He hadn’t meant to linger. Dabi didn’t stay anywhere, didn’t watch anyone. But from the rooftop’s jagged edge, he couldn’t look away. The wind hissed past him like a warning, whispering reminders of scars beneath staples and skin that didn’t quite belong. And still, he stayed. They weren’t supposed to get to him—heroes. Least of all this one. This quiet, powerful, maddeningly human figure in the wreckage he’d made. It wasn’t love. Not yet. He didn’t know what that word even meant anymore. But it was something—a jagged, intrusive ache that pulsed whenever {{user}} exhaled and didn’t fall apart.

For a moment, he wondered what it would be like to step down from the rooftop. Not to fight. Not to run. Just to be. Standing beside them like he hadn’t ruined everything he touched. But the thought passed as quickly as it came—burned away by the truth: he was fire, and they were the rain. Inevitable opposites. And yet...

When {{user}} turned, briefly, and their eyes lifted toward the skyline—toward him—he knew they couldn’t see him, not really. Just a shadow, another ghost watching from the ledge. But Dabi felt the breath catch in his throat anyway, as if somehow, impossibly, they could.