AN: Hi everybody! Should I be jumping into new fandoms and starting new fics when literally none of the ones I have are finished? Probably not. But here I am, so please enjoy!

Shinra isn't shy.

Anybody who knows him will agree without even thinking about it. He never hesitates to say what's on his mind, and shamelessly declares himself the hero of seemingly every single person he comes across.

Still, there are some things he keeps to himself. Small things, mostly; observations he's made about his classmates, little details he's picked up and subconsciously stored in the back of his mind. Because he likes to look at people. He always has; humans are amazing! The human body is such a cool thing, even without the fact that some of them develop magical fire powers.

And it's not like it's a secret or anything. Shinra just doesn't see the point in voicing his opinions out loud. He used to, back when he was a kid. It never failed to bring a smile to his mother's face when he shared his thoughts with her. An enormous smile full of so much love that it makes Shinra's chest ache just to remember it.

After the fire, Shinra hadn't felt comfortable sharing his little observations with people. Most of them thought he had started the fire anyway; being called a demon and a devil all the time hadn't really encouraged him to make small talk, let alone tell people what he thought of their physical appearance.

"Mou," Maki-san sighs. She's leaning so far over the edge of the parapet that Shinra's already half braced to catch her if she falls. "I wish my body looked like that."

Keeping one eye trained on her, Shinra peers over as well. Down in the street is a group of girls around Maki-san's age, huddled with their heads together and giggling. They're just normal college girls, as far as Shinra can tell; slender and soft and carefree.

"Looked like what?" He asks, squinting harder. Maybe Maki-san can see something he can't?

"Like that!" Maki-san wails, waving a hand at the girls down below. "Nice! Attractive! Feminine!"

She's attracting attention from the rest of their teammates; Shinra can feel all of their curious gazes on his back. They're all on the roof for once, even Viktor and Vulcan. The engineer had some new gadgets for Ōbi-daitaichō to try out, so everybody had trooped upstairs to spar with him (under Hinawa-chūtaichō's careful supervision, of course). Viktor... well, Shinra doesn't actually know why Viktor's up here with them, but he'd seemed to be having a good time observing anyway.

After they'd each had a couple of turns fighting against Ōbi-daitaichō, and Vulcan was satisfied with his results, everybody had ended up staying, content to relax in each others' presence (except for the idiot Knight, who continued to challenge Hinawa-chūtaichō despite the beating he'd already received from their Daitaichō).

And now Maki-san is leaning over the edge of the roof, saying weird things and looking like she's about to cry.

Shinra is very confused.

"Maki-san," he starts, tugging on her shirt so she'll look at him. "Maki-san, you say that like you don't already have a nice body?"

There is a very sudden hush behind them. Even Arthur's stupid monologue has cut off.

Maki-san's staring at him with very wide eyes. "Huh?"

Is-

Does Maki-san think she's ugly or something?

Shinra knows she doesn't like being called manly or whatever - the beatdown that follows 'Who are you calling a gorilla cyclops?!' is always a harsh one. But he hadn't thought she disliked her own musculature that much.

He frowns, looking straight into her eyes. "Maki-san, your body is perfect the way it is."

The rate at which her face floods with red is kinda alarming.

"Woah," he hears Vulcan mutter in the background. "I didn't think Shinra was that bold."

Tamaki is spluttering, and Iris is making strange squeaking sounds, but Shinra can't make out any words. It's not important anyway; Maki-san still hasn't said anything, and Shinra's starting to worry that he's said something wrong.

Or that she's somehow passed out with her eyes open - she's completely frozen in place.

"Um, Maki-san? Hello? Are you okay?" Shinra waves his hand in front of her - still beet red - face.

She blinks, once, twice. Impossibly, her eyes widen even further, and she stumbles back a step.

It's instinct for Shinra to reach out and grab hold of her wrist; he'd still been braced to catch her from earlier. She probably wouldn't have gone over the edge, being a highly capable Fire Soldier and all, but still. Instinct.

"U-uh, ummmm..." Maki-san can't seem to look him in the eye.

Without his permission (as usual), Shinra's mouth curves up in a teeth-baring grin. "Maki-san, I'm sorry if I upset you-"

"No!" She whips her head up, reversing their hands so that she's gripping his wrist instead. "No, Shinra, I'm not upset. You just surprised me is all."

"Oh. Good." He vaguely considers not continuing, but- it's important. "Because I was serious. You're beautiful, Maki-san."

Okay, so maybe he should have left the last part off; his poor senpai doesn't look like she's breathing. A tad desperately, Shinra looks back at the rest of his squad mates. What for, he's not quite sure: reassurance? Agreement? Help?

The last one is probably what his face is communicating - Shinra can feel the way his smile is stretching his cheeks.

Ōbi-daitaichō laughs. "Get in a little over your head there, Shinra?"

"Stupid demon," Arthur scoffs. "Think before you start flirting."

The annoyance is so much that Shinra's finally able to drop the stressed smile in favour of a scowl. "One, you have zero right to be calling anybody stupid. Literally zero. And two - who the fuck is flirting?!"

There's a moment of absolute silence.

"Um, Shinra?"

Maki-san is the one to break it. It's a relief; Shinra had wanted to make her feel better, not break her fucking brain. Kaa-san never used to react like this.

He meets her gaze, uncomfortably aware that his scowl is edging closer to a confused pout. It's not his fault! Shinra has no idea why everybody's being so weird about this. Unless...

Is it out of character? Is it really that strange for him to say something nice about his squad mate? That's a little concerning; surely they all know how much Shinra cares about them? After everything they've been through together, they must.

"Shinra!"

He blinks.

Maki-san has stooped down to look him directly in the face; her wide violet eyes take up half his vision. Honestly, and they wonder why he called her beautiful?

He blinks again, and this time he manages to take in the rest of her face. She's still blushing, but it's softened a lot. She actually looks pretty pleased, in a shy kind of way.

"Thank you, Shinra." Maki-san says. "That was really nice of you to say."

The way she's smiling at him... if saying what he thinks can make his friends look like that, Shinra will have to start doing it more often.

(There's soft laughter echoing in his ears.

It sounds a little like Kaa-san.)

AN: There we go~ This is just a cute, fun little slice of life thing that popped into my head immediately after I finished the series. Summary says 'safe for anime onlys' bc I am, in fact, an anime-only :LLL. For now! I'm reading the manga, but from the beginning, so I won't get to any new content for a while. Hope y'all liked it, drop a review if you did!

- Kelly