𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 (𝐃𝐚𝐛𝐢 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫)

19

The rest of the weekend passed by at a slow, uneventful pace. With Aya out of town and Hawks busy with hero work, you'd been left alone to face the tedious chores that you'd been putting off for weeks.

The morning after Dabi had left, you'd cleaned your room and completely stripped your bedding, determined to erase his lingering scent. You'd needed to wash your clothes anyway, so it was easy just to take the bedding with you to the laundromat.

Although you were trying not to give Dabi any room in your mind, it was incredibly difficult not to think about him when you could feel the presence of whatever person he'd left behind to watch you while he dealt with whatever villainous business he had going on. The entire walk to your destination you could feel eyes on your back.

It was odd, you would have thought that anyone associated with Dabi would have had to stick to the shadows, but this person walked amongst the crowded sidewalks without causing the slightest commotion. Maybe they weren't a villain? Or they wore some sort of disguise when committing crimes to keep themselves from having to hide out in public.

You could have forced your follower to reveal his identity to you at any point, but it wasn't worth the energy it would take. If the person was close enough to Dabi to willingly do him favors like this, you didn't want to interact with them, even if there was a good chance that they weren't friends and Dabi was just blackmailing them into it.

Thankfully, they remained a good distance from you throughout the day, and when you'd gotten back to your apartment you'd made sure that all of your windows were completely covered and your door was locked. You didn't give a shit if they were supposed to be watching over you, there was no way in hell that you were willingly allowing whoever it was to look into your home for hours at a time.

Your day on Sunday danced the fine line between productive and boring. You cleaned for hours, doing even the most unnecessary things in order to keep your mind off of anything other than the tasks you'd given yourself. You swept, mopped, dusted, wiped, bleached, and scrubbed anything that looked slightly stained. In the end, there was only one room in the apartment that hadn't been subject to a thorough deep clean. You'd even organized your pantry.

But now that you'd done everything you could think of to avoid dealing with your thoughts, you were now stuck in a spotless apartment facing a towering pile of unresolved emotions and jumbles of unanswerable questions.

So, instead of dealing with your situation in a healthy manner, you grabbed an unopened bottle of wine and sat down on the couch, not bothering to get a glass. You pulled out the cork, took a long sip, and sighed. "This fucking sucks." You took another drink and then gave a pointed look to the space on the cushions beside you. "Ami, I can feel your spirit judging me right now. It is probably well-deserved, but I also think that it is well deserved for me to relax a little before I have to go to work and deal with the asshole of a bodyguard that you picked for me tomorrow."

In your head, you imagined what her response would be. She probably would've snagged the bottle from your hand, drank some of it herself, and then said something like: "I didn't have many options. At least I didn't give you an ugly one."

You chuckled at the thought. "I actually think this would be a lot easier if you had chosen an ugly one."

With the little self-control you had, you made yourself put the wine down after your head had gotten the first hints of fogginess that often came as a warning before you started getting seriously drunk. You'd been hungover at work enough times to know that it would not be an enjoyable way to start the week.

The week probably wouldn't have an enjoyable start anyways, though. You'd looked into having the lock to your apartment changed so that Dabi would be unable to get inside, but it was too expensive. You'd just have to find a way to get his copy of the key and get rid of it entirely. Because after the shit he'd pulled on Friday night, there was no way that you were going to be sharing a living space with him anymore. The two of you could make a designated meeting spot to see each other during the week to exchange plans and information.