𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 (𝐃𝐚𝐛𝐢 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫)

21

"Are you ready for tomorrow night?" Aya asked through the phone.

She sounded nervous, and the question seemed to be more for her reassurance than yours. She'd called you every night since you'd sent over the plan for tomorrow night's event. "I've gone over everything dozens of times. It'll all be fine."

"You're right," she said, still not sounding completely confident. "Is Hawks still on board with everything?"

"Well, he doesn't know that I'm using this party to get access to the files, we didn't tell him that. But you don't need to worry about him making anything difficult. He hasn't said anything so far, I doubt he'd do it at such an important event." The hero seemed genuine in his promise to keep your relationship with Dabi a secret, but you still hadn't wanted to divulge all of the details of your plan to him.

"Right," Aya's voice took on a disdainful tone. "And your villain friend is ready too?"

"He and I have gone over everything too. He's got his side of things covered." The days that followed after you'd let Dabi back into the apartment had been tense, but the two of you had been able to push past your resentment to sit down and make sure that everything was in line for what you needed to accomplish.

That was about the only times you'd spoken to each other, which was clearly what he wanted. But it had been difficult not to go to him the day when you'd seen the news report speaking about what had happened between him and the heroes at the beginning of the week. The deaths caused by Endeavor's blast were being blamed on Dabi, and you knew how much it was probably affecting him. You'd forced yourself to stay away, though, knowing that your attempt to talk to him would only be met with cold words and leave you to stew in your anger once more.

"Good, well, he'd better pull through." Aya took a long breath and then groaned. "The President's calling me. Probably to remind me that I have to be at the office by the asscrack of dawn tomorrow to start setting up."

You winced, "that sucks."

"She's paying me overtime this time, though. I made sure to talk to her after the last time she tried to force a bunch of cleaning on me."

"Good because that was bullshit." The President had a bad habit of treating her interns less than fairly, you'd seen it numerous times. At least Aya was standing up for herself.

"Yup, alright. I'll see you tomorrow night then."

"Good luck," you said. She ended the call and you stared at the screen for a few moments. You were confident in your plan, but you couldn't help the nerves that had started to creep their way through your body the closer you got to it. Sure, you'd done plenty of high-risk things before, but stealing classified information from the Commission, the company that had jurisdiction over most of the country and the company that you worked for, there was a lot more pressure not to fail.

Your phone lit up as a text from Hawks came through, asking if it was still good for him to pick you up at eight tomorrow. You responded with your confirmation and placed the device facedown on your nightstand. It was nearly midnight now, far past the time that you should have gone to sleep.

At least you didn't have to work tomorrow. They'd given most of the employees the day off to make sure all of the preparations were in order. Since the party was being thrown in honor of the Higher-ups, everything needed to be pristine.

That was one thing that you were looking forward to about tomorrow night. The party signaled the end of the Higher-up's visit. Their two weeks had passed, you'd survived with only one off-putting encounter with Zankoku. That in itself was something worth celebrating.

You shut off your lights, determined to rest before tomorrow's events. You'd need to be completely focused and on task.

But expectedly, the universe had other plans.