Touch (Dabi X Reader)

Part 1: The First Meeting

When you first joined the League of Villains, you had to admit... Dabi scared the shit out of you.  It wasn't his scars that covered most of his body or the staples that seemed to hold him together like a ragdoll.  It wasn't his tall, lanky frame that seemed to tower over you when he got close, causing your heart to pound in your chest.  It was his eyes.  There was something in those sharp blues that made you want to hide into yourself and disappear each time they fell on you.  They always stared at you, framed in a seemingly bored expression with his head tilted at a lazy angle as he'd watch you through dark bangs.  Yet despite the disinterest written in the curve of his mouth, his eyes always seemed to hint at a different story, a story written in a language you couldn't read.  Talking with him was no better. He was either broodingly silent, his words brief and dismissive, or he was flirtatiously snarky.  He was a complete enigma to you.  You knew that was by design; he had built up a wall around himself that you didn't dare try to climb.  You were too scared of what you'd find on the other side.  So, you accepted this as the state of things... a blind spot in the League of Villains.

So, nothing surprised you more when he finally called on you to use your quirk for him.

It was a healing quirk.  Well, not quite.  It was helpful for healing, surely, but the quirk itself didn't heal any more than an ice pack would, or blissfully numbing drugs.  Your touch had the ability to reduce pain, a useful tool for a group of ragtag villains, pariahs of society living on the fringe.  Hospitals were never an option for these people.  Sure, there were others in the villain network that they could go to if the needed, but they tended to require either large amounts of money or even larger favors.  You were a reliable, in-house alternative.  Their own personal "damage control."

When you had first joined Shigaraki's group, you had taken one look at Dabi and had assumed he would have called on you much sooner.  You could only imagine the amount of pain he was constantly in.  Much of his scarred tissue was long-since healed over, dark ridges of skin roiling across his muscles like black, hardened lava.  You knew enough of third degree burns to know that the scars and resulting nerve damage resulted in one of two options: numbness or excruciating pain.  Add the repeated use of his destructive quirk, and... well, here you were.  Looks like he needed your help after all.

You stood outside his bedroom door, your pulse pounding in your throat.  A light-headedness began to overtake you, and you realized that you had forgotten to breathe.  You forced a long steady breath in and out of your lungs before finally rapping you knuckles on the wood.

It swung open a moment later and Dabi's tall silhouette framed the doorway as weak orange light from his room trickled past him, illuminating the dark hallway.  He stared at you with an unreadable look which you did your best to meet before he finally stepped aside just enough for you to squeeze past him.  The proximity made the hairs on your arms and neck stand on end as your nose caught his scent – some sort of cologne, most likely to cover any possible odors of infection he might have from his quirk abuse, and a smokiness like a bonfire.

The room was unsurprisingly bare, with nothing but a simple bed, nightstand, and a desk with a metal chair.  Plain black sheets covered the mattress and a lamp with a broken shade was the sole source of light in the room as it strained to erase the shadows in the corners.  On the desk, your eyes caught sight of a wide array of bandaging materials.  Rolls of gauze, patches, ointments.  On the nightstand sat empty prescription pill bottles; you didn't have to read them to know that the name on them weren't his.  The room had a chill to it, and you realized that the window was open, letting in the cold night air.

He watched you with a sly grin before you realized how obviously you were scrutinizing everything.  "Like what you see?" He asked, his voice a low rumble.