"I don't own a single gun
But if I did you'd be the one
To hold it, aim it, make all of the bad men run"
There was music emanating throughout Maeve's apartment, as if from speakers. Dabi sat up on the couch to investigate and spied the master of the house herself hunched over a desk in her office. She was examining a pair of expensive-looking headphones with unusually jerky movements and was wearing her famous bodysuit, so Dabi gathered she'd fallen asleep over work. Given the villain hadn't seen her in several days, he couldn't help but feel amused exasperation. Maeve had been fully serious when she proclaimed her solution of stopping sleeping entirely.
"But I don't own a single gun"
She glanced up and their equally bloodshot, exhausted eyes met.
"It's two in the afternoon, fuck's sake," Maeve snapped over strumming guitar. Instead of his usual sarcastic reply about hypocrisy, Dabi just raised his hands in surrender and avoided eye contact. His head was spinning so much from shock after the dream he could barely think straight. The villain just couldn't overlay the nightmare consciousness he'd just experienced with the usual cheeky girl sitting in front of him. He'd never seen her in a bodysuit and lab coat in person before. It gave her an edge of authority that was a far cry from the bloodied shirt of their first encounter.
Maeve gathered up the sea of documents on her desktop into a manila folder and closed it into a waiting filing cabinet, which clanged so loudly it worsened his growing headache. She then locked it and put the key around a chain on her neck. The show of defiance was amusing, even in his current state. Maeve had already worked out he was too lazy to confront her, especially physically, even if official information was on the line. He imagined her father wasn't quite as confident.
"I don't have a sweetheart yet
But if I did I'd break my neck"
"Where's the music coming from?" Dabi asked, needing to raise his voice slightly to be heard. Maeve hesitated fractionally, clearly torn about whether to even talk to him, then tapped her headphones.
"They're still playing and my mind's amplifying it in here. I'm not sure I can turn it off."
From her tone of voice and expression, it seemed like that was rather unfortunate on her part. Dabi found the music a bit grating but not awful, so just shrugged and got up to make himself coffee. He was stopped in his tracks when he glanced out the floor to ceiling windows.
They were floating hundreds of metres above the canopies he'd spied in his dreams.
"To please her, want to make her want stay
In my arms she'd rest
But I don't have a sweetheart yet"
The forest was so enormous he couldn't spy its edges. Dabi understood why: it exactly mirrored the vast sprawl of Maeve's subconscious. That didn't make the expanse any less staggering.
"Why are we above-" he asked, turning back to the desk where Maeve had been sitting, to catch a glimpse of her white coattails disappearing around the corner of her room.
Dabi chose to leave her alone and waded through already accumulated mess to the kitchen. He hit a jackpot of newly stocked food in the pantry and fridge so the burn victim helped himself. Not eating properly in days left him wolfing down leftover noodles with the same desperation as members of the homeless community he'd exiled from under bridges.
"I can't believe what I found in daddy's
Sock drawer, sock drawer today"
Bizarre lyrics made Dabi wonder how things had gone between Maeve and Eraserhead. From the state of the apartment and her dishevelled appearance, however, he guessed not well. For the life of him, the villain didn't understand how she wasn't in the midst of a complete mental breakdown. Maeve clearly relied on work as a distraction from her trauma. Dabi could relate to that.
"It was a pistol, a Smith & Wesson
Holy, holy shit"
He wondered if he'd be able to spot Flea below if he squinted hard enough. Every twig and root in the organism was a nightmare waiting to detonate. Dabi imagined she wouldn't last long, yet really couldn't bring himself to care.
There was a rhythmic thumping coming from Maeve's room. Honest to god it sounded like she was having sex in there, which he gathered was about as likely as her joining an Amish community unironically. Dabi gathered up the components of a grilled cheese sandwich with a sigh. Better check she wasn't beating in her skull with a medical textbook.
"Things I knew when I was young
Some were true and some were wrong"
Maeve had hung a punching bag in her bedroom and was either engaged in some kind of bizarre seizure or a clumsy attempt at training. Said bag had all of her portraits of the league of villains apparently glued to it so she could choose different ones to beat the shit out of depending on the angle. Well, that was the intention. From the girl's current condition, she'd be lucky to beat the shit out of a starving gerbil.
Dirty laundry and loose pill sleeves explored the bed, dresser and floor. Clearly, Maeve hadn't tidied since she arrived at the apartment. There were more pills than clothing. Many, many pills.
"If you have one of those, you should get someone to show you how to actually punch," Dabi snorted, leaning against the doorless frame and pressing two sizzling halves of his sandwich between heated palms.
"I did," Maeve snarled, foggy blue eyes fixed on the coloured pencil Shigaraki she was weakly pummeling. The girl jumped back and forth like she was doing a spasmodic interpretive dance. She'd removed her lab coat and the chain around her neck pranced a polka over her bodysuit. Dabi briefly considered snatching at it. Maeve was so disorientated from fatigue it was like she was drunk. Really drunk, even worse than the girls who sometimes made the mistake of hitting on him in clubs.
"And one day, I pray, I'll be more than my father's son
But I don't own a single gun"
Dabi was distracted by those lyrics long enough that she could tuck the chain down her bodysuit. Decision made for him. The fact that the key was now pressed against her bare skin and the suit was tight enough that he could make out its outline wafted across his consciousness before being shoved into a mental paper shredder. Why did Dabi ever mentally complain that she only ever wore baggy men's clothing? He instead chose to focus on the velcro attachments that hid vials to collect her vomit at work. That she thought that was normal.
"You need a solid base, or the flashiest technique in the world doesn't mean shit. Legs wider apart, elbows in. I thought Eraserhead would've explained all that, he's not... Terrible as a brawler," he grunted around mouthfuls of cheese and carbs. That was enough for Maeve to stop and turn towards him, and from her scandalised expression, in her opinion, he should've stapled his lips all the way shut.
"My God, you're seriously critiquing my self-defence technique? That's fucked on so many levels it almost comes full circle."
"Your hero license exam's in less than two days," the villain commented wryly, wiping greasy hands on already ruined pants.
"Oh shit, really? I forgot," she replied with such force of sarcasm he felt almost impressed.
"I'm busy until four tonight and tomorrow night. Means early mornings for you, but I'm not going entirely nocturnal even if you have tests. Hating each other is going to be a lot easier if we communicate and ideally compromise. Sound fair?"
Dabi forced his voice to stay steady and cold, instead of exasperated. Maeve moved to push back her hair, before remembering it was braided. Her muscle memory overrode her quirk. Interesting.
"I was doing fine-"
"If you hate my twisted villainous guts, why are you doing me a favour by never sleeping? This way we're equally sleep-deprived and irascible," he reasoned. It took a vast swath of willpower to hold in a bark of laughter at her 'fineness.' From what he'd gathered from Maeve's memories the concept of fine was as alien to her as self-pity. The surgeon blinked at him, and it took him a moment to realise 'irascible' probably didn't feature in the vocabularies of most street thugs. Fucking sue him.
"Fine," she huffed, before flashing side-eye. "What are you busy with?"
"What?" Dabi asked, genuinely baffled.
"Until four in the morning. Must be something pressing," Maeve asked, an amused arch to her tone he couldn't believe he'd missed.
"Yeah, I'm fully booked. Shigaraki has me flat out killing kittens until midnight then onto orphans."
"Orphans."
"With cancer."
"Uh-huh," Maeve replied, adjusting worn gloves and fishing her stained periodic table hoodie from a fabric tower beside the bed. She swept past Dabi back to her office with a clear intention to avoid him. He really couldn't blame her but wasn't quite done.
"There a reason why Eraser isn't in charge of your training?"
Maeve froze. They'd almost made it. No mention of their previous disaster in a temporary ceasefire.
"I don't think that's any of your god damn business," she replied icily, shrugging into her hoodie. Dabi shrugged and made to leave, but he'd opened that can of worms, so he couldn't blame her for pouncing.
"If you ever threaten my friends or colleagues again, I'll make your life in here unbearable," she warned, and her eyes were nearly unrecognisable.
"Understood?" Maeve hissed, and Dabi forced down the urge to cross his arms over his chest.
"I understand you're not in a position to barter. What did you expect, bringing him in with you? Trying to lock me up like a zoo animal to be dissected? Treat me like a beast and that's what you'll fucking get."
"I'm treating you like a beast? Is that so?" Maeve replied, voice trembling with suppressed rage.
"Alright," she continued, abruptly turning on her heels and stalking to her bookshelves. The girl picked a volume without even needing to glance at its spine.
"You think I'm treating you like a beast. Ha! Homework." She shoved it into his chest and sat down at her desk. When he stood dumbly, staring at the title, she waved her hand in a gesture eerily similar to his school principle's when they'd lost their patience.
"You're fucking dismissed."
Dabi retreated to the sitting area with the book hanging limply at his side. He couldn't tell her he'd already read it, and that just seeing the cover made his throat close over. The only unfamiliar part was a forward from the quirk era linking The Handmaid's Tale to quirk marriages.
They spent the rest of the afternoon in silence, listening to a playlist of songs that grew increasingly dark. Meanwhile, Maeve's shoulders grew increasingly hunched.
***
She didn't avoid him at four am the next day. Instead, Maeve installed a curtain to her bedroom as a barrier. The girl didn't emerge while she blasted music from the speakers at a volume that made his eardrums want to both explode and implode at the same time. Even worse than that was the subject matter. Maeve hadn't exaggerated when she said she'd make his time in the dream portal unbearable; how the girl managed to fall asleep with that racket was beyond him.
Fucking ABBA. If he had to listen to 'Does your mother know' one more time he swore to God he'd find a way to break the unbreakable glass and fling himself into space.
However, the greatest shock was having Maeve duck out briefly to grab a coffee. She was... Dancing. Ironically, subtly, clearly to mock him. Surely she'd timed it for the water to start boiling just for 'Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight.' Fake swoons and everything, with added pulling of middle fingers he didn't think were in the original music video. It was like he was dreaming, which, in a way Dabi was.
As soon as she disappeared back behind the curtain, Dabi rushed to the boxes containing her old dance certificates. Every single one. Every one. How the fuck did she come last without fail?