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It’s eleven o'clock on a Thursday, a night terribly mundane and boring, and Hawks is trying to make stir fry without his wok because he shattered it two weeks ago and hasn’t bothered to order a new one yet. Dabi is sprawled over the couch like he’s never used one before, knee hooked lazily over the back, coat thrown over the coffee table. All Hawks can see from the split between the island countertop and the upper cabinets is his bare foot and long, long leg, scarred a jagged purple and stapled midway up his thigh, ankle rolling and brittle toe bones pop-popping, swaying with a rhythmic motion Dabi probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing, so used to bouncing and tapping that the movement is second nature.
It’s quiet, save for the sizzle of cheap beef in the skillet and the hum of the rice cooker, kitchen clock tick tick ticking away the stolen seconds beneath the buzzing of too-bright fluorescents he keeps forgetting to replace with something softer, something kinder.
“Hey,” Dabi says, low and croaky in the broken silence, the first thing he’s said in the twenty minutes since Hawks started dinner and he threw himself onto sagging cushions with little care for his own body. His breath leaves him in a heavy whoosh, and Hawks’ feathers puff and ruffle.
A thick, white-gray plume of smoke billows towards the ceiling.
“Hm?” Hawks hums, just loud enough that he knows he’ll be heard over the squealing of the peppers that he’s definitely over cooking, wings drawing up tight on his back in concentration. He flips the haphazard pieces with his chopsticks, nudges them into the mess of oil and fat that’s started to pool under the meat at one end of the pan.
The sauce starts to bubble, so he scoops some into his dish to sip at, running his tongue over his teeth afterward. He pinches more salt between his thumb and forefinger, lets it spill from his hold like snow over the pot, stirs the viscous liquid once, twice, three times, and turns the heat down to a simmer.
“Which of your parents hated you the most?”
“What the fuck?” Hawks says, whipping around so fast his neck cracks and his wing hits the fridge. He rises up on his toes and folds himself over the island to try and see over the low back of the couch where Dabi’s foot is still swinging, up on his tiptoes like the extra inch will make a difference.
He’s ready to yell, ready to be angry, panic coiled into a tight little ball in the center of his chest, but Dabi isn’t even looking at him, head tilted just so to watch the stars pass slowly over the arc of the earth through the windows like he has all the time in the world, higher than a kite and more breathless than a long-dead infant.
Hawks swallows, mouth dry, feathers tingling where they shuffle and curl behind him, sparse enough that the longest barely brush the countertop. He flicks the stove off, wipes his hands hurriedly over a dish towel he’s not sure he’s ever washed, let alone used, and steps around the wall of the island to join Dabi in the sunken living room.
“What kind of- why would you ask me that?” he rasps, bewildered and more than a little miffed.
“Just wonderin’,” Dabi says, pupils blown wide and eyes glowing in the darkness, taking another hit off his joint like this isn’t the third one he’s smoked since he got here an hour ago.
“Fuck’s sake,” Hawks says, snatching the joint to take a much-needed drag for himself, inhaling so deep it burns in the very fiber of his lungs. He holds the smoke until his eyes water, and slips the blunt back into Dabi’s trembling fingers when he finally exhales.
“I think m’dad hated me most,” Dabi offers, still staring blankly ahead, lids drooping low and lashes fluttering over his cheekbones.
(Deep inside, instinct says the same, desperately whispers father father father, like the repetition will make it more real, more solid, more right. Like maybe if he says it loud enough, hears it echo enough times in the empty block of his own head, he’ll forget that his answer could be anything else.
He knows, though, somewhere in the tangled mess of his gut, that father isn’t true. Not for him, standing with his toes curled into the carpet like he hasn’t since he was little, stomach pressing against the base of his esophagus.
His father couldn’t hate him the most if he tried.)
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Dabi,” he says, huffing air through his nose and trying to pretend like his throat isn’t threatening to close around the weight of his own words, like his hands aren’t shaking where he’s got them clenched too-tight around one another, talons sharp against the tender skin of his palms.
(How is hate defined?
What’s the meaning of it, laid bare like this?
This, here; is this hate, what I feel when I’m with you?)
Dabi shrugs, flat on his back, and finally drags his sleepy gaze away from the opposite wall, eyes rolling slowly in his head like it’s taking every effort just to move them, hardly awake and far too aware despite it. “The truth, I guess. Dunno.”
(Mother.
Mother.
Mother.)
Dabi offers him the joint, and when the glow passes over his nose the blood beading beneath his seams gleams something other than red, something almost-orange, all rusty and brown. Hawks takes three deep drags before he hands him back the smoldering roach.
“You on anythin’ else right now?” he murmurs, exhaling from the side of his mouth.
“Nah,” Dabi says. He flicks ash over his stomach, singed tee rucked over his belly button, and stubs the bud out on his own belt. He’s quick to pull another joint from his pocket and light it up with the palm of his hand, pink and steaming. He pats it out against his thigh without care. “Your daddy ever watch you set yourself on fire?”
Hawks inhales the smoke Dabi blows at him, deep enough that it makes him dizzy. He drops onto the arm of the couch, tucking his leg up under his hip for balance. Dabi blinks up at him tiredly, and Hawks shifts to card his shaky fingers through his hair just to have something to do with his hands. “No,” he says, voice cracking even though all he said was one stupid word, one measly little syllable that means fuck-all in the grand scheme of things.
Dabi’s hair is soft where it rubs between his crooked dual knuckles, silky smooth from using the last of his shampoo. He tries to focus on the feeling.
“Did yours?”
“Something like that,” Dabi hums, all-knowing eyes slipping shut. Hawks’ hiccups an ugly little sound.
“Oh,” he says, because there isn’t anything else to say. He licks his bottom lip anxiously. “But,” he starts, and Dabi’s bright burning eyes crack open to look right through him some more. “But,” he continues, swallowing past the lump in his throat that’s trying to block whatever’s coming out of him, his own body frantic in its desire to keep him quiet. “My mom tried to drown me, when I was born.”
Dabi grunts, tilting his chin back down to his chest to watch the stars again. Hawks is grateful for it; he doesn’t know if he could handle the attention. He sends feathers to turn the rice cooker off, ignoring the heat swelling rapidly behind his eyes.
Do you love me, Hawks wonders, sudden and broken, high-pitched like a child where it rattles around in his skull. It’s a question asked just as much to Dabi as it is to anyone else. He glares at the triple constellation piercing in Dabi’s nose as his vision blurs. Could you learn to, if I was good enough?
“I kept crying,” he whispers, like he’s certain any louder will break him. He teases a lock of hair between the pads of his fingers. “I just kept crying.” He swallows thickly, little wings giving an aborted flap before curling around his shoulders. Dabi pointedly doesn’t look at him, but a muscle in his jaw ticks, and Hawks hears his molars grind together. “She said no matter what she did, she couldn’t manage to get my whole body under the water.”
He laughs, wet and agonizing, like any of this is something to laugh about.
“Mine did too,” Dabi finally says, croaky like he’s trying to offer him something secret, trying to absolve him of sins he’s not responsible for, because I’m sorry isn’t something that can fix either of them anymore, if it ever was at all, no matter how much they may mean it. “Wasn’t a baby, though.”
His expression pinches, teeth bared to sneer at nothing. Blood leaks between the gaps of his canines, and Hawks aches to dive forward to lick it up despite himself. He doesn’t, because it might kill him if he did.
“I think my daddy used to love me, at some point. Probably.”
“Yeah?” Hawks sniffs, giving him a soft, sweet smile, tight-lipped and small because it isn’t appropriate, isn’t enough, but it’s all he really has left. “That’s good.”
He takes the blunt from Dabi’s hands, sits quiet with him while he puffs it until the feelings in his chest recede back behind his rib cage where he tends to hide them.
I wish she’d succeeded, sometimes, he thinks between drags. Do you wish, sometimes, that your daddy’d ended it all before he’d ever started, just to save yourself the trouble? Do you ever wish your mama’d been strong enough to keep you under?
He doesn’t say it, he can’t, he won’t, so he hopes he can get the idea across with the crease of his brow, the curl of his lips, the tears drip drip dripping from his scrunched-up eyes instead.
Dabi seems to understand, because his features twist and then soften, something horribly sad and terribly recognizable in the way he looks up at him through his lashes like he understands, like he gets it, blood smeared tacky across his cheeks.
It feels too much like staring in a mirror, and he hates it as much as he loves it, being known like this; he doesn’t look away, even though he wants to.
Instead he leans over to kiss him upside down like a coward, uses his tongue to shove the high into someone else’s mouth because he’s too afraid to deal with it by himself any longer. Dabi kisses him back, just as open-mouthed and just as angry, like he’s whispering I’m glad they didn’t in stubborn retaliation of the thoughts that burden him.
I’m glad you’re here, he thinks, delirious, as tears spill over his waterline, big and constant and splattering onto Dabi’s bloody chin. He pulls back enough to suck more smoke into his mouth, and when they meet again Dabi licks over the back of his teeth and swallows what he gives him, what he keeps giving him, takes it all without complaint, too-hot palms cupped around his cheeks and fingertips curled behind his ears.
Hawks sobs.
I’m glad you’re here, he thinks again, to no one but himself. I’m glad it’s you, here with me, and nobody else. I’m glad.