Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hawks knew he would be out of a job once he lost Fierce Wings. It was a given. He was only ever useful when he had his quirk in the first place. Even with his parents, he was a nuisance because of them. Without Fierce Wings, he didn’t exist. He wasn’t supposed to.

He doesn’t really mourn the loss of his wings. The end goal was always peace and taking out All For One. He was going to fade into obscurity once again, until the commission found use for him.

Which…just so happened to be president of the HPSC.

Hawks went into the office one day, ready to hand in his hero license and badge and make a joke about how many shows he had to catch up on now that he had free time.

(There were no shows. Hawks was restless and couldn’t sleep. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep, since…well, he just hasn’t.)

Instead, acting President Mera looked at him from across a desk stacked with mountains of paperwork, even more haggard than usual. He stared at Hawks like rising from the dead and leered at Hawks with all this jealousy over free time where Hawks was bored out of his mind.

“Wow,” Hawks said. “I’m glad I don’t have your job.”

Mera looked at him with this sort of disdain—which Hawks isn’t a stranger to. “You so sure about that?”

Which is where Hawks laughed. Then he realized Mera wasn’t laughing with him.

The last fifteen-or-so years flashed through Hawks’s mind—all of the training, all of the long nights of enduring every possible scenario and curbing every weakness that could ever threaten his success—all of the things that Madam President oversaw in order to chisel Hawks like a marble statue down to the veins of his feathers—and he felt it like a chasm in his chest.

The President was in charge of the recruitment program for agents like Hawks. Hawks hated it so much that he vowed for a world where heroes could relax, so no one would ever naively get pulled into the program ever again. There were a lot of things the president controlled.

So much so that Mera looked like he was going to keel over at any second.

Enough that Hawks vowed in times of frustration that he’d never do himself if he were president.

And he was bored. Miserable, because he wasn’t useful. This could be useful.

“Why not?” Hawks asked.

*

Hawks is busy. He likes staying busy. If he’s invested in paperwork, then his mind can’t catch up with him. He doesn’t have time to glare at the wall and get angry at himself for not being able to fall asleep. He doesn’t have to remind himself he doesn’t need to flop on his stomach to accommodate for his wings, or that he can just…rest. He can’t berate himself for being so bad at it.

He makes progress. They get a headcount of all the participants in the Paranormal Liberation Front, and he gets to sit in on meetings to discuss reasonable punishments. Not everyone was bad. In fact, many were swayed out of fear. Hawks knows what fear can turn someone into. How much it can unravel them.

Tsutsumi-kun insists she’s better off in jail. She wants to serve her time, even though Hawks insists he had her pardoned, since he has the power and all. Still—she’s indifferent.

Hawks has the power. He can do whatever he wants and make sure the world is better off for it. He’s useful and can help change so many lives, with or without Fierce Wings.

He’s desperate to help out as best he can—including with the Todoroki Family. The family that literally went through hell and back.

Endeavor is retiring his mantle. Shouto is going back to school. Rei, Fuyumi, and Natsuo—they’re shaken. Rattled in a way that Hawks can only wonder—but he knows what it’s like to struggle coming up from air after getting burned. His wings still ache, even if they’re no longer there.

He reminds the family that if there’s anything he can do to help that he will.

Anything.

*

Endea—Todoroki Enji and Rei look at him in shock when he says the words aloud. He makes a show of it. Hawks has to; anything else might actually unnerve Enji and Rei more.

He has his feet kicked over the desk, reclined as far as his office chair will allow him while rattling off about all the nice functions it provides. Seatwarmer, massager, leg desk, sword holder (Hawks got that one specially commissioned.) As he rambles and Rei and Enji just smile and nod, looking proud for some reason, Hawks goes in for the kill.

“Anyway,” he says, “Nagant wouldn’t take the pardon so I have a spare get-out-of-jail free card. You guys interested?”

Their reaction is priceless.

He pauses there. Too much jargon and Enji will habitually tune him out.

Then, Rei claps hands over her mouth, eyebrows furrowed together. She looks ready to cry.

“Hawks,” Enji says. Breathes. “Are you—?”

“Yes,” Hawks says—and he can’t go longer without an earnest smile. “I’m serious. Pardoned of all crimes. He surrendered of his own free will. It counts for something.”

Enji’s eyebrows knit together. He looked lifeless before—crushed and hardened in his wheelchair. But this particular piece of news almost looks like it could change his course with death.

“The commission won’t be happy,” Enji mutters.

“Then they shouldn’t have made me president,” Hawks remarks.

It’s cheeky enough that Enji offers a tired smile. But it fades almost just as quickly.

“My time with him,” Enji murmurs. “I…think he’s had enough of me today. I’m…it’s better that news comes from someone else. For the sake of his heart.”

“His heart?”

“Yes,” Rei says solemnly. “The doctor doesn’t anticipate he has much time left. But I don’t like this. If his final days are in that holding cell, I—”

Her voice catches in her throat.

“They don’t have to be.” Hawks smiles gently. “The Todoroki Family can have a normal few months together. However long that might be.”

“He won’t want to be in a room with me,” Endeavor says. He clears his throat. “I—“

Enji seems to struggle with his next few words, which are knotted in shame.

“I’m okay with that. I—his happiness.” Enji leans forward, evidently trying to take himself out of the situation. “That’s what’s important. That’s all that matters.”

It would be easy for Enji to punctuate that with me, but that’s the catch. He’s trying to keep himself out of the equation after years of striving for Number 1.

“I’ll make living arrangements,” Hawks says. “We can take this one day at a time.”

“Living arrangements?” Rei asks, confused.

“I’ll come up with something.” Hawks has no idea what he plans on coming up with.

“Hawks-kun…” She bows her head, moved. “Truly, we can’t thank you enough. You’re a blessing to this family.”

“Shucks,” Hawks says, “you’re gonna make me blush, Rei-san.”

Only time will tell if Dabi feels the same way. Not that he ever did.

*

“What gave me away?”

“Gave you away? Nothing. I never believed anything from the start.”

*

If Hawks could guess, he’s the last person that Todoroki Touya ever expected to see again. He would know, because if the situation was reversed, he’d never want to see Dabi’s face ever again, either.

There are some stipulations, of course. Hawks is stupid, but he isn’t stupid. A pacemaker is surgically implanted in Dabi. The same bioengineering that went into Bakugou Katsuki’s pacemaker.

For a kid with a bright future ahead of him? There was no question. An S-Rank War Criminal? Not even Endeavor’s nepotism could get him that far.

Fortunately, Hawks is the president, and he ranks above Endeavor now, so getting the same cutting edge technology for Dabi’s sake is just one chicken scratched Hawks signature away.

(And if anyone protests, Hawks can throw them in jail as his presidential right. After all, the commission is nothing without its penchant for abuse of power. He can throw his protesters protesting his punishment of the aforementioned protesters in jail, too.)

Hawks is faced with a difficult decision. He doesn’t want to lead Dabi astray—like a lab rat. No, they’ve had painful conversations about that. But he doesn’t know how Dabi is going to react to him, either. Hell—Hawks hasn’t known how Dabi would react in a long, long time. So building a facade on how to act is…

Unpredictable.

And difficult to gauge, if Hawks is just going to fall back into old habits. But, if he’s been taught anything, he isn’t supposed to make the same mistake twice.

Fuck the commission, Dabi used to tell him. The words were so foreign that it took a while for Hawks to get used to saying it, too.

They allow Hawks in the high security hospital room, where Dabi is getting discharged after a wellness check. There were skin grafts to salvage damaged skin. The intensity of Dabi’s blue eyes, though—is irreplaceable in every sense of the word.

“Don’t you look well?” Hawks hears himself say. It’s unplanned. Dabi always had a way of making him toss his script.

Dabi looks at him, looking so…simple in a plain t-shirt and sweats. His hair is a snowy white, favoring his mother in every sense of the word. The sternness is his father, one-hundred percent.

The attending doctor hands Hawks the clipboard full of discharge forms.

“Psych evaluations once a week, subject to change. Absolutely no use of your quirk. You’re to be under supervision at all times. Which will be pretty easy, since you’re not allowed to leave my side,” Hawks says. “Any questions?”

He realizes he’s talking to the clipboard rather than Dabi. So, Hawks looks up to see those eyes.

Dabi’s lips may not be stitched together, but they remain pressed in an unreadable line, regardless.

There’s just one simple question on his tongue. “Why?”

“Why not?” Hawks asks.

He doesn’t think he could answer the question either way. He doesn’t think Dabi wants to hear him, nor does he want to know if Dabi wants to hear him.

“C’mon, Touya-kun,” Hawks says in the cheeky manner saves for all of the Todoroki Family. “Live a little. Cash in that favor that Jin-kun was so eager to throw away. You burned my back. Only makes sense for me to scratch yours, too, right?”

The attending doctor clears her throat after an immeasurable amount of awkward silence.

“Careful about the strain you put on your heart,” she warns. Hawks has to give her props for how steady she sounds. Anyone else might shit themselves. “Nothing too strenuous.”

Strenuous. Anything strenuous is definitely off the table. The way Dabi glances over almost makes Hawks wonder if Dabi is thinking the same thing.

If so, he doesn’t voice it. They’re pretty good at not talking to each other.

“Congratulations,” she says without even an ounce of Japan’s disdain, “you’re free to go.”

“Sort of,” Hawks corrects. “Free-ish for sure.”

*

They don’t talk on the car ride home. Or the walk into the apartment lobby. Not a word until they’re past the apartment door, and Hawks slides the spare key across the kitchen island.

“Couple of ground rules, new roomie: don’t touch my chicken nuggets in the freezer. The entire bottom shelf is yours. Let me know ahead of time if you’re wanting to bring guests over so I can put pants on.” Hawks fishes out an onigiri from 7-Eleven and artistically plops it on a plate. “I’m an early riser. I have TV rights on Tuesdays to catch up on my shows. Sound good?”

Dabi waits until he finishes talking. There’s no witty banter or a leer. Hawks might as well have gotten a new roommate off of Craigslist. Someone brand new who doesn’t know him.

Which makes sense. Hawks didn’t know Dabi was Todoroki Touya. Dabi knew who Hawks was—who Hawks used to be, for an immeasurable amount of time.

“Touya-kun—?”

“What’s your game?” Dabi rouses finally for the first time. He stares at Hawks like a dragon on guard—protective of its hoard. Only—there isn’t one. The League of Villains is gone. The PLF—gone. A better comparison might be a feral cat in the alleyway—but that’s just it. Dabi is calm. Dabi isn’t feral. Dabi has been studying him since they left the hospital because Dabi is always studying him.

“I’m hurt,” Hawks says mockingly, “that—“

“Everything is always a game with you—”

“—I think you mean us, Dabi.” The sentence flies out of Hawks’s mouth before he can help himself. He holds back a curse because he can handle that much restraint, at least.

Whatever fervor Dabi was leading with suddenly halts like a rush of water to a dam. He stares at Hawks with a demeanor Hawks isn’t a stranger to, while Hawks recomposes himself.

“Your family and I are in agreement: we don’t want to see you rotting away the rest of your life in some mechanical tube,” Hawks says finally. “And I gotta flex my power as president somehow. Will that answer suffice?”

Again, Dabi waits for Hawks to finish. A game of chess means addressing strategies from all angles.

He does what Hawks doesn’t expect. Hawks’s mistake was thinking he could predict anything Dabi did.

No—his mistake was no longer looking back.

Dabi frowns.

“President,” he murmurs quietly, “huh?”

“Like you didn’t know.”

“I did. Just didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to do it.”

Hawks’s jaw tightens. “What—“

“You bend over to get that position, too, birdie?” Dabi asks. “Fucked your way to the top?”

Hawks should be prepared with a remark of his own. He usually is. But Dabi’s driving a knife into a wound with only the thinnest musing of scabbing over. One sneeze could make it bleed. Hawks had months of second and third degree burns at his shoulder blades that threatened to crumble with the wrong movement.

But Dabi is doing it on purpose. Dabi is staring at him, egging him on, on purpose. He wants Hawks to react because they both know how fucking weird this situation is.

“Lights out at ten,” Hawks says instead. “Your room is set up. Your siblings brought some of your belongings. I’m working from home tomorrow so you can get acclimated.”

“That can’t seriously be your plan—“

“I’ve been accused one too many times of not being able to go off script,” Hawks interjects. He smiles pleasantly. “So let’s just call this a trial period.”

*

“You’re standing over there yammering like you’re going off a script, birdie. Pathetic.”

“I’ll have you know—“

“Good. Get more upset. Maybe you’ll finally do something believable.”

*

It takes a week for Touya to get acclimated. Which—given Hawks is going by the skin of his teeth, maybe he should count himself lucky. There could’ve been a more formal process for liberating Todoroki Touya, ex-war criminal, from jail. Hawks just didn’t follow protocol.

(No need to follow protocol if he’s the one directing protocol, right?)

They don’t have a routine set up. No stipulations, really. Rei and the rest of the family have asked when they could see Touya. Hawks vaguely reassured soon—because they don’t have a cemented schedule. He wasn’t kidding when he said they were playing off the cuff.

Also—Hawks is just busy, day in and day out. He had a special thirty minutes blocked off on his calendar titled, Break News to Todoroki Family and Brag About Chair. The execution of that conversation was timed to the very last second.

Hawks’s routine as President comes first. Whatever he manages to scrape together when he’s done with his tasks will be salvaged for rest. There’s too much reconstruction to consider, and Hawks can sleep when he’s dead. He's lived that mantra for twenty years now.

So of course the person who can disrupt this flow suddenly picks up his protein shake and slams it back on his home office table. Twice. Then a third time.

Hawks glances up from his laptop screen beneath his blue light glasses. For some reason, Dabi looks pissy.

“What?” Hawks asks.

“Drink your shake,” Dabi says. “It’s been sitting there all day.”

“All day?” Hawks parrots. “It’s only—“

He stares at the clock.

“16:02. Oh.”

Dabi taps the protein shake against Hawks’s desk rhythmically now, slamming it down with each enunciated syllable. “Drink. Your. Goddamn. Shake.”

“What are you, my wife?” Hawks pulls his glasses off his face, one eyebrow arched in the air.

He’s not sure where their point of contention occurred, but Dabi’s clearly already lost it. The vein popping at his neck could build its own crop circles and declare itself a sovereign nation.

“For six days,” Dabi laments with disgust, “I’ve watched you make this protein shake with your loud ass fucking blender, only for you to sit here behind a goddamn screen, trying to take a sip between call after call, and shove it back in the fridge at the end of the day because you forgot to drink it. So chug it right now before I shove it down your throat. Got it?”

Hawks stares at Dabi. Who stares back at him. A second later, Dabi growls and yanks the cap off the protein shake before he lunges—

“Okay! Okay!” Hawks pulls the shake out of Dabi’s grip and practically unhinges his jaw to down the drink. Dabi has the audacity to hover until the contents are gone.

Huh.

Just like that, Hawks’s fatigue is cured.

“Oh,” Hawks says. “Didn’t even realize I was tired.”

Dabi still looks like he wants to strangle Hawks—but it’s at least a familiar rapport rather than estranged cohabitants. Then, with a sneer, Dabi yanks the cup out of Hawks’s hand and marches back to whatever hide-y hole he’s made for himself out in the hallway.

Then he pops his head back in. “Don’t think I won’t check to make sure you’ve taken a shit!”

“Hard to shit when I haven’t had anything to eat!” Hawks calls back.

While Hawks isn’t sure how one shit and one protein shake would form some kind of truce between them, he doesn’t question it. Hawks realizes the sun has set when there’s a sizzle sound coming from down the hall.

“Oi,” he shouts, “are you burning my apartment down?”

There’s no answer, but no sign of arson, either, so Hawks flips through the next ten pages of the latest modest proposal that landed on his desk before he announced his intent to work from home for the week.

The sizzling stops when food is ready. Hawks eats when he’s kicked out of his office in the following grandiose steps:

What has to be at least thirty minutes after Hawks’s question, while Hawks’s stomach is singing an angelic choir and moaning in agony as the scent of stirfry permeates through the house,

His door getting kicked open with far more vibrato than necessary (to the point that the door bounces off the stopper and nearly slams closed again in Dabi’s face), and,

Dabi raises his voice with a crackling even more loud than the wok: “Dinner’s getting cold. If you don’t haul your ass out here right now—”

Hawks stares at the plate in Dabi’s hand which holds a mountain of what looks to be yakisoba. The last half hour has been spent reading three letters of the same paragraph over and over, with a desperate negotiation between what’s left of his brain and his vengeful stomach.

He’d open his mouth, but Hawks is almost certain his salivating would be obvious.

“You have food,” he says faintly.

Dabi has the nerve to scowl at him, like Hawks is the criminal who is rudely waving a steaming hot plate of homemade yakisoba, even though all Hawks has to his name is a meager crumb.

“Yes, birdie,” Dabi says in what has to be the most patronizing tone possible, “I have food. Birdie want food?”

Hawks stares. His stomach growls with the fervor of a thousand baby chicks, left unattended by their mother hen. He reaches out, but Dabi (and more importantly, the plate of food) retracts.

“Five minutes,” Hawks bargains. “And I’ll be done. You can even just leave the food there.”

“No,” Dabi snaps. “I know you won’t eat it.”

“I will—”

Dabi gestures to the array of unopened bags of candy, snacks, and small bites to eat left on the left side of Hawks’s L-shaped desk.

“Work won’t die if you leave it unattended for fifteen fucking minutes.” Dabi taps his foot impatiently. “Just because you set a fucking plate of food down doesn’t mean you’re actually going to eat it.”

“It gets cold.”

“Then go to the goddamn microwave!”

“No,” Hawks says petulantly—and he thinks Dabi might actually murder him. “That’s three minutes that could be spent getting through reports.”

“Do you even hear yourself?”

If Hawks is being honest, Dabi’s obnoxious interrogation is lost with the growling of his own stomach. He considers what he’s eaten today.

Which isn’t a lot. Maybe he’ll luck out and get rejuvenated with energy again.

So, Hawks shuts his computer off. The blood rushes back to his legs as his feet flatten against the ground, and he waltzes to his kitchen, where Dabi has cleared off a portion of the island and taken paperwork off the stools for sitting.

The fatigue settles in when Hawks plants himself in a different chair. A glass of water awaits him, while Dabi all but places a pair of chopsticks in his hands.

“Oh, god,” Hawks mumbles, “this smells amazing. You cooked?”

“I cooked.”

Which counts as the longest conversation they’ve had since Dabi came to live with Hawks. It’s not…intentional, honestly. But Hawks wouldn’t be truthful if he didn’t say he was relieved that work has kept him so busy.

Maybe they’ve adapted better than Hawks expected. Better than Hawks could’ve ever anticipated. While Hawks has been sequestered away in his home office trying to get work done, Dabi has been studying him. Dabi has picked up on his habits in these last six days, or whatever.

He hasn’t tried to escape. Hawks hasn’t woken up with a knife to his throat or hands wrapped around his neck. Maybe Dabi snuffed out Hawks’s truth: he has no idea what he’s doing.

Hawks never knows what he’s doing when he’s around Dabi. The commission managed to train him in every possible facet except for this one. Dabi turned his brain to goo, and they never addressed the…awkward things that happened after…them. After the us that played games, like Hawks corrected Dabi.

So they’re walking on eggshells around each other. Hawks doesn’t expect Dabi to treat him like a goddamn saint or anything like that. He’s done bad things, too. Things that hurt.

Which is why Hawks can’t figure out what to call this, either—like this is his chance to atone for sins against Dabi, the way Endeavor feels compelled, or whatever.

He hates that nagging feeling in his chest—one that didn’t quite burn away with Fierce Wings when Dabi toppled him the first time.

The need to apologize.

“Take more than two bites,” Dabi chides quietly. “I know you haven’t eaten all day.”

Because—Hawks thinks that in the dialogue left unsaid, there might be an apology waiting for him, too.

“Keeping logs of my logs now?” Hawks mutters under his breath.

He’s tired. Like, really tired. Not even eating is really reenergizing him.

“Being president is hard work,” Hawks admits. “No wonder Mera was senile.”

Dabi snorts. This banter is nearly ritualistic.

So, Hawks tries something. “You wouldn’t believe all the ways the commission has me bending over backwards trying to get all of this shit done.”

He waits for Dabi to carry on the joke. To laugh. Dabi glances at Hawks, but he catches Hawks glancing back. There’s a weight here. Their game.

For some reason, Dabi submits. Instead, he takes another bite of his soba.

“Your hair ain’t all white yet,” Dabi grumbles. “There’s hope.”

Hope. Maybe there’s hope.

“Could be a bird’s nest,” Hawks jests lightly.

“You would have a bird’s nest for a brain with no one home.”

“Ha. Still better than yours.” Hawks plants his palms together around the chopsticks with a light bow. “‘Don’t Dead. Open inside.”

Dabi actually snorts again—and it does feel like their normal rapport. This tiny twig of an olive branch extended across a pair of wooden chopsticks and some kickass yakisoba.

And it’s quiet again. There’s this unnerving anxiety that bubbles at the back of Hawks’s throat. It’s unwelcomed, but unavoidable.

“It’s good,” Hawks says finally. Because if Dabi can make him food, then Hawks can make small talk. Try, at least. “You leave the house for this stuff?”

“No. You had most of it in your fridge.”

“I did?”

Dabi looks genuinely disgusted by Hawks’s astonishment. “How’ve you managed to survive this long without dying from starvation or your own demise is beyond me.”

“Practice,” Hawks replies just as cheekily—and the rhythm is the same. It’s there, like unpausing a song for the first time in a decade—having loaded without anyone to block it but the two people listening.

Dabi stares at him, having Hawks’s full attention for the first time in a long time. Hawks stares back—because while chicken may be his favorite entrée, it’s not how he likes to live his life.

“Does this need a game plan?” Hawks asks halfheartedly. Finally. “Because I’m under the impression you’re going to contradict whatever I want you to do, anyway.”

“Don’t make it so easy for me to,” Dabi says—and it’s a cadence that he matches, unguided by any outside orchestra conductor. No one could ever navigate or steer them—not even each other. It was a strange phenomenon that Hawks could never quite label.

There’s no intent to kill laced in those words. Hawks has spent plenty of time mulling over every piece of rare dialogue exchanged between them since Dabi’s release—because he can’t help himself to try and find a preventative measure. But Dabi can’t burn him alive and Hawks doesn’t have a feather he can just pluck from his back. He’s quirkless. And even more apparent—they’re alone. Just the two of them.

“We’re in a new chapter of history, Touya-kun,” Hawks says. “For once—we don’t have to be fighting about anything. You could’ve killed me by now if you really wanted to. Or—you could be stewing and I’m eight years too early for this trick. I know your M.O. Either way—if you really wanted to break out of my apartment, you would’ve done it by now.”

“Like I’d be stupid enough to think you don’t have the two kilometer radius bugged to send my sorry ass to jail.”

“Well my informants have told me that you haven’t even tried to escape,” Hawks reassures.

Dabi snorts.

Because that’s the bluff. That Dabi hasn’t tried to escape and Hawks has informants surrounding the building.

“Genuinely—this is a new chance at life for you. You get to hit unpause on Todoroki Touya-kun, while I—”

“Shake hands and kiss babies as President Takami Keigo—?”

“I don’t use that name.”

“I thought the president didn’t have to take orders from anyone,” Dabi retorts. “So who’s making you forget it, prez?”

Hawks’s jaw tightens. Because this, too, is familiar.

“Don’t call me Keigo,” he says simply.

“Then don’t call me Touya,” Dabi says. There’s venom to his bite. A threat, charged in his eyes. He’s made Hawks’s stomach swoon with some enchanted noodles, but there’s a different anger there.

“Fine,” Hawks says. He spits on his hand and extends it. “Just Dabi and Hawks, then.”

Just, because there never should’ve been more. They need to keep this at the starting line this time.

If Dabi’s disgusted, he doesn’t show it this time. Instead, he returns the gesture.

One hawk tuah later and hopefully they’ve finally landed in a truce.

*

At some point, Hawks has to return to the office now that Dabi and he have arrived at a truce. Which still looks more like platonic roommates than anything. Hawks doesn’t have to lay down any ground rules, because—Dabi shows no desire to leave.

In fact, he barely budges. Hawks had no idea his kitchen was well stocked with food. Days as an active agent had him constantly out of his apartment on several reconnaissance missions, errands, or his double agent days where he served the League to serve the Commission.

In a way, Hawks was nothing more than another pantry item added to the living quarters in order to fill a space with a body.

(He made a joke once that the commission found him in the poultry aisle of the local grocery store. Mera didn’t find it funny. Once upon a time, Dabi howled with laughter.)

Maybe, eventually, the healthy thing to do would be to sit down and talk about the circumstances in great detail with Dabi. Stipulations. Rules. Ground rules. Bed rules (maybe they don’t need them—but clear expectations now will reduce the inevitable damage control and repercussions in the future. Hindsight’s a bitch and twenty-twenty—and all that.)

Usually, Hawks feeds himself while he’s out and about, between missions and in quiet pockets of reprieve. Even on his commute home he can simply walk by the local 7Eleven to grab an onigiri or whatever else may keep his stomach gremlin at bay.

So his pantry is as big of a mystery haul to himself as it is to Dabi, and it isn’t until the eighth day of questionable freedom that Dabi addresses their current predicament.

“You’re out of chicken,” he says finally, after manhandling Hawks for the third time today. This time, for dinner.

“Impossible,” Hawks reasons. “My freezer is—”

“Completely out,” Dabi informs. “We ate it all.”

Hawks stares at his roommate. Then he waltzes over to his freezer—where, sure enough, for the first time since he moved in, he can see the back of it. “You cooked all of that?”

“One of us had to,” Dabi calls.

“Okay,” Hawks says. He pulls out his phone. “Guess I’ll go grocery shopping tomorrow—”

“Like hell you will. You won’t remember.”

Hawks rolls his eyes. “What do you take me for?”

“Someone I watched pass the bathroom four times in the last ten minutes forgetting he needed to take a leak.”

“Do you have nothing better to do than memorize my bathroom schedule?”

“A schedule might actually help you remember to take a shit.” Dabi dredges a slice of his chicken katsu in sauce. “And no. I don’t have anything better to do. Watching you juggle all those fucking thoughts in your head is even louder than the TV.”

“I have a lot on my mind.” Hawks is busy.

“Yeah,” Dabi agrees. “Which is why I know you’re not going to remember.”

“I’ll just grab some food on the way home like always, then.”

“Great,” Dabi says. “Can’t wait to see what bird seeds you remember to bring home.”

Ah, right. There are two mouths to feed in this apartment now. “So what—you telling me you wanna go grocery shopping while I’m at work tomorrow?”

“What are the stipulations of my parole?”

Hawks mentally flips through filing cabinets in his head. Dabi never made an indication of wanting to leave—but weirdly, the idea Dabi hasn’t left so he doesn’t accidentally fall out of line, opens up a whole new realm of considerations.

There isn’t a leer or scowl hidden in that gaze. The question is fair. Other than signing some paperwork releasing Dabi from the hospital and from imprisonment, Hawks hadn’t explained much.

He’s usually great at exercising forethought. But, he used to be great and precise about a lot of things before he met Dabi.

“Well,” Hawks says with gusto as he returns to his plate of dinner. “Preferably, you aren’t allowed out in public without some form of supervision. I’d say prohero—but I’d prefer not to have someone else hovering 24/7 over my private dwelling.”

Dabi stares at him without any indication of dissatisfaction. Just all zombie-like, as usual. “You intend to be my keeper?”

“Until death do us part,” Hawks promises. “Unless you’d rather be at your father’s—”

“No.”

“—glad to know I’m the lesser of two evils. Still.” A ghost of a smile rocks across Hawks’s face.

Dabi seems unfazed by that comment, too.

“Guess I could always leave my credit card with you.”

“I need to get out of this apartment,” Dabi rouses. “And I’d sooner get arrested for credit card theft than actually make it to bagging groceries.”

“Want a job?” Hawks asks. He strokes his chin and inspects Dabi. “What are you equipped to do, that doesn’t require arson or larceny?”

Dabi snorts. “What job will take me with a criminal record?”

“Plenty,” Hawks reassures. “But what job can handle you is a whole other story.”

He’s surprisingly at the receiving end of a withering glare. It’s a nerve he doesn’t intend to hit—but also a note Hawks takes for future use.

“I mean your grumpy ass,” Hawks reassures. “You can be mean.”

“Then people just shouldn’t be so fucking stupid,” Dabi grumbles almost immediately—and while Hawks shouldn’t laugh, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t.

“Well,” Hawks says candidly, “come to work with me tomorrow, I guess.”

This time, Dabi does arch an eyebrow.

“Calling a commission agent a dumbass is far different than calling a civilian one,” Hawks reasons. “I won’t feel bad for that one. Most of the time, they are being dumbasses.”

Dabi snorts.

“Yes,” Hawks says when Dabi doesn’t, “I’m a prime example. Spot on.”

He’s greeted with Dabi’s satisfied smirk, which is…actually kind of nice to see.

“What,” Dabi laments, “you want me to yell at you to take a shit and eat at work, too?”

There’s a good rhythm to this conversation, so Hawks actually doesn’t want to deter it. That’s really his mistake.

“Might as well pay you for being my babysitter,” Hawks says. “Why not?”

*

Hawks is late to get into the office in the morning. Why? Because his newly hired babysitter made him take a shower and eat breakfast.

Worse—Dabi made him finish his plate of food after an accusatory statement that Hawks would just leave his plate there for hours on end.

He shows up to his first meeting of the morning, well-dressed, bathed, and dismayed. Dabi made him swear he’d eat all of the takoyaki he picked up from a street vendor today before he allowed Hawks to impulsively buy some. The upsetting part was he was so full from his mandated breakfast that he could only eat one.

Dabi looks way too smug behind him as Hawks goes into the meeting.

“You made me late,” Hawks hisses only moments before.

“You made yourself late by arguing with me in the first place,” Dabi retorts.

Hawks halts at the door, where he can see most of his staff leaning at the edge of their seat, relieved to see the president fashionably late.

“I don’t argue,” Hawks argues. “That would imply I’m actually wrong about something.”

He strolls into the meeting room, where a flock of interns, staff, and Mera stare at him.

“Ah,” Hawks says. “This is Dabi. Dabi, this is the Commission.”

His audience of peers give him the same baffled look that the security guards gave him. Wide-eyed, slack-jawed, and one eyebrow high in the air, questioning Hawks’s sanity.

Hawks sits down. Mera immediately clears his throat and gives Hawks the evil eye. It fails in comparison to the one Dabi gave him this morning when Hawks dared to waltz out of the apartment with only a bag of sunflower seeds.

Mera clears his throat again.

“Is there something you’d like to address with the President, Mera?” Hawks muses. “I believe we teach our agents to choose in the moment if directness or coyness is the best way to engage.”

Mera looks ready to strangle him.

Thankfully, an intern willingly becomes a sacrificial lamb and raises their hand.

“Yes?” Hawks asks.

They squeak and clear their throat. “Wh…why is S-Rank Villain D-Dabi…u-um—“

“Outside of his burrito of a holding cell?” Hawks finished for them. “Because I said so.”

They all stare at him. Even Dabi doesn’t look convinced by his reasoning.

So, Hawks peels back the cover of his binder to his first manilla folder.

“Todoroki Touya-kun is a victim of a system that benefits from exploiting the vulnerable. He was forced into a position where his resources were stripped away from him. Keeping him in jail does nothing but press a pause button on a systemic issue that would later be fodder for the next All For One, if history were to repeat itself,” he says. “Under my reign, we won’t focus on punishment. We focus on rehabilitation and reintegration into society and provide him with the resources needed to succeed. Iguchi Shuichi is already making progress after talking to Deku-kun. Dabi is my pick.”

The room is so quiet that a pin drop would be a firework. Hawks can practically feel Dabi staring at him with more bafflement than before.

“I spent a week at home,” Hawks says, “to assess the situation, and pros and cons of this decision. So far things are going well. My notes are in here. I’ll make sure a memo is distributed that outlines current plans. Uravity—that second year from UA—has already collaborated with teachers and other heroes to work on a quirk therapy program to help provide resources to schools that can’t afford them. That is aimed to be a preventative approach. This one is a corrective approach.”

The looks of fear turn into looks of fascination. Mera’s leer only worsens, as normal.

“I didn’t agree to this,” Mera says.

“Good thing I only need the president’s approval then,” Hawks chirps. “Right?”

There’s a guffaw behind him. Hawks suddenly never wanted Fierce Wings more to see the stupid look on Dabi’s face.

“Obviously reintegrating Touya-kun into society—“

“Dabi,” says the voice behind him. It’s stern, annoyed, and barely hides the same ire from the other day.

“Obviously Dabi will need to be reintegrated into society,” Hawks says. “Get a job. His own room and board. Granting the use of his quirk is a conversation in the far, far future—“

“You want to have him work a civilian job?” Mera asks, aghast. “You want us to do that?”

Hawks smiles gleefully. “He already has one. He’s my bodyguard.”

Who else is going to protect him from Mera strangling him?

Hawks doesn’t know who looks more shocked. The ex-president, or the ex-villain.

“Now,” Hawks says, “without further ado, how about we go on with the meeting?”

*

A morning of back-to-back meetings saves Hawks from Mera’s wrath. Hawks weaves through subordinates who try to request follow-up meetings for their own agendas.

He has meetings with executives. Meetings with restoration groups. Meetings with—Dark Shadow and Tokoyami-kun, daily, separately, to make sure his favorite intern is still doing well. Hawks would stop time for that kid, if he could.

Toward noon, Hawks almost runs out of luck. Almost. He makes it to his office door, which has the newly minted President Hawks painted across the glass. Mera appears at the other end of the hall with the motivation of a heat-seeking missile.

Thankfully, Dabi has a new title to exercise and specializes in pissing people off. He sidesteps Hawks and looms over former president Mera.

Mera’s gaze narrows.

“He’s busy,” Dabi says.

“I don’t recall seeing a conflict on his calendar,” Mera says.

“Sorry,” Hawks sings petulantly. “My bodyguard is doing his job. As a reforming citizen, I have to encourage this behavior. Surely you understand?”

“He hasn’t taken a leak all day,” Dabi announces.

Hawks’s smile drops. Some poor worker nearby spits out their coffee.

Mera arches an eyebrow, looking even less amused.

“Fiduciary responsibility,” Hawks says, “and all that.”

“All that shit,” Dabi grumbles. “Don’t even get me started.”

“Bye~!” Hawks yanks them both into his office. He shuts the door behind them, then expels a long sigh. He stretches his arms. “What a morning so far.”

He waltzes towards his desk. Dabi remains in front of his door, where only tufts of Mera’s hair can barely be seen over the curve of Dabi’s shoulder.

Dabi stares at him, square-jawed and unamused. It’s not uncommon for Dabi since his release—but this is different. Nothing like bickering over Hawks’s eating or hygiene habits. They’ve tiptoed. The manilla folder Hawks threw on the table was on par with Godzilla wrecking buildings.

(Figuratively for Hawks. The jury is still out on his fellow commission employees.)

“What the fuck?” Dabi asks finally.

“I take it you want to discuss pay?” Hawks reaches into his huge binder, where the official job offer sits. “I won’t treat you differently from any of my other employees, Dabi. Your pay is comparable to the rest of the security. Good benefits. Time off—obviously, that’s going to get pro-rated based on when you started during the year.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You weren’t listening during the meeting?”

“What bullshit was that?” There’s a tone to Dabi’s voice. It’s grounded in trepidation and wariness. Suspicion. That sounds familiar to their usual banter, too. Nothing like the mundane arguemnts Dabi and he had on the way to work.

“You asked for the stipulations of your parole. I just delivered them.” Hawks extends the contract between them.

Dabi snatches it right away. He skims through each line, twice. Hawks knows how smart this asshole is. Dabi doesn’t need to.

“You gave me a job,” Dabi mutters in disbelief.

“You need to get on your feet somehow,” Hawks reasons. “Mera’s right—it’s the most reasonable option. The Commission can’t just let you loose on the city with your reputation. Even if we managed to get through that barrier of entry, there’s no guarantee people would hire you. You don’t get hired, you can’t afford the resources you need to make an honest living for yourself. You can’t afford it, you get into crime and it escalates. You land your ass back in jail.”

Dabi’s demeanor doesn’t change. “And I’m what—your guinea pig so you can hire a shit ton of criminals as your security guards?”

“Who else better to protect my life than a villain who knows how people would try to assassinate me?”

Dabi’s still, like a statue—frozen in place as he scans every line presented in front of him. His shoulders descend. On any other day with any other person, Hawks could mistake him for one of the other workers he hired with the Commission’s reformation. Dabi is nothing less than ordinary in an unpatterned long sleeve shirt in long pants. He’s practically no more than a uni student fresh out of college, trying to plant his feet on the ground.

And maybe in another world, they both would be.

Eventually, Dabi’s hand descends to his side. He turns his head, hand tight around the contract.

“Why?” he asks quietly.

“Because I felt like it.”

“Hawks. Why?” The tone of his voice is tight. Hawks’s own throat constricts, almost innate in reaction. Dabi is so close that Hawks can practically see every vein and stark outline of tension that sculpts Dabi’s face.

Hawks isn’t sure when his eyes fall to Dabi—but they do. Dabi’s eyes greet him on the other side of a bridge, absent of any smirk or sadistic grin. His voice is heavy without its usual condescending mischief. He’s different.

Hawks doesn’t know if he’s different now, too.

“Take it,” Hawks says. “Don’t make a big deal about it, roomie.”

“Why?”

“Why does it have to be anything?” Hawks combats finally. There’s a flare of a fight there. Hawks’s pulse quickens beneath his skin, since the conversation has finally strayed away from bathroom schedules and grocery shopping.

This part is familiar. Staring each other down.

It's hard to say who moved first.

Suddenly they're kissing, and debating who gets them there is a waste of a breath better applied elsewhere, as Hawks suddenly tastes nothing else but the man in front of him.

There's the brooding impenetrable wall, where Hawks convinces himself that it’s obviously Dabi. Hawks pretends it’s Dabi because he doesn’t want to know otherwise. Taking the gesture as anything more than face value isn’t something he wants to do right now.

It has to be Dabi because Hawks knows better. He’s spent months rebuilding himself to never fall for something like this again. Dabi, though—this is his normal M.O—fucking with Hawks in every way because there isn’t a code of conduct as a villain. If anything, any code burned to ashes the same day Todoroki Touya did—which is another subsection in Hawks’s reformation project—the one he scrambled all week to legitimize with the appropriate legal jargon and verbiage.

After all—if the president is going to flex their power, then they need to substantiate their reasoning, too. Something that Lady Nagant criticized of the Commission in her era as top agent, and the bitter weight that festered in Hawks every day since leaving Takami Keigo in the little shack in Fukuoka.

Conversations with Dabi are dances. The Commission tolerates Hawks’s haplessness and lackadaisical attitude but they’d never make it to the ballroom if they ever had to go toe-to-toe with Dabi. Honestly, it’s fucking hilarious that society thinks they could ever stand against Dabi. Hawks has taken enough bullet wounds, stabbings, and actual flames to know most agents in this building would fold in a heartbeat.

Maybe it’s a stupid ego-stroke. Dabi inhales him as they kiss, between opened mouths and nostrils. The gesture lifts Hawks to the tips of his toes—a lifeless marionette at the hand of a puppeteer. Hawks has had months of going through the motions of acting President of the Commission, but his hands suddenly fly around Dabi’s shoulders like a chokehold, and he gulps Dabi’s taste down his throat, rather than smooth, elegant sips.

He pulls back for air for only a fragment of a second, bowing his head back, while Dabi just pours his weight over, looming in a different way than in the hallway. Dabi’s hands cup Hawks’s ass, and the cadence is so natural that Hawks is rolling to the tips of his toes so he can get lifted into the air.

His moan bleeds into a whimper at an embarrassingly quick rate, but the moment Dabi’s palms just squeeze him, Hawks’s body and thighs lock onto Dabi’s hips and pull his new hire closer. Hawks arches his back in desperate code to guide them onto his fully-loaded desk, and Dabi thankfully steers them there.

“Holy shit,” Dabi mutters, “You’re so—”

“Belt,” Hawks gasps, because he doesn’t care what smartass comment Dabi has loaded. A familiar heat permeates through him, and god, that’s just more important. Hawks kicks his shoes off for emphasis about how much he doesn’t care.

Dabi yanks Hawks’s belt with a clean swipe. The gesture is so efficient and elegant that not even most experienced agents could master that grace. Hawks’s body reacts wordlessly to each of Dabi’s gestures. Dabi’s mouth roams his neck—so obviously Hawks bends his neck, so Dabi has more surface area to work with. Dabi’s hands scale up Hawks’s hips, so obviously Hawks needs to rip off his suit jacket.

“Ah…” Hawks’s gasp is a stutter. It’s been so long since Dabi’s teeth have grazed his collarbone.

Dabi wants to bite him, so obviously Hawks needs to jettison his dress shirt into space.

“Fuck,” Dabi mutters—and Hawks only knows, because he feels the word at his chest, at his bicep, like dozens of times before. It fits so perfectly beside Hawks’s ribcage, tingling with every enunciation.

He missed this. He missed this so much, but—

“Birdie—”

“Stop talking,” Hawks breathes. Demands. Hawks wants to be ruined, but he doesn’t want talking to ruin this.

He rolls onto his stomach, ass up, and it’s not any different from late-night rooftop rendezvous. They’ve skipped the banter altogether, which is completely fine. Instead, Hawks is shucking his pants off and propping his feet against the front wall of his desk.

There might be a hitch, but Hawks decides to ignore it. He hasn’t had eyes in the back of his head since All For One, and he sure as hell isn’t curious what’s on Dabi’s face right now.

Hawks takes the hand beside him instead and engulfs two of Dabi’s fingers in what has to be radical, clear purpose and intent. He glances over his shoulder to Dabi’s eyes, which suddenly widen. Hawks makes a gesture with his own eyebrows, which he hopes reads, get the picture?

He bobs, nearly ready for Dabi’s finger nails to scrape the back of his throat, but finally Dabi comes to his senses and reciprocates.

As Dabi pierces him, Hawks’s body folds under muscle memory.

“Fuck,” he moans. Every joint of Dabi’s fingers are suddenly apparent in him. Every familiar texture and callus of Dabi’s fingers rock in him, and Hawks rolls to the tips of his toes to drive them deeper. His dick throbs at the front of his boxers, hardly sheathed beneath a wet puddle crying wistfully for Dabi’s touch. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”

A sob rattles at the back of his throat, even more apparent in his dick as Dabi wraps a free hand around it. Dabi’s hand just glides with an intense squeeze, and the pleasure sings through Hawks’s body.

He rocks forward for Dabi’s hand, and falls backward for Dabi’s fingers.

“Fuck,” Dabi echoes in quiet murmur. He’s so obviously fascinated, and Hawks relishes in it.

“Yes,” Hawks mewls. His entire dictionary of words is reduced to one singular page with fading coherency. Hawks buries his own face into his desk, if only to produce leverage for Dabi’s fingers. He chants, switching between a string of yes and deeper and fuckfuckfuck with fading distinction of his own syllables.

There’s just nothing that compares to Dabi. Dabi’s hand wrapped around his dick, Dabi, three knuckles deep into him. Every crease of Dabi’s palm imprints upon Hawks’s shaft, and Hawks clenches around Dabi’s fingers in desperation, his whole body whining as they dare leave his body for more than a breath.

And he’s smug, because even after all this time, Dabi’s own is erection so clear and yearning, and Hawks is the one to cause it.

“Oh shit,” Hawks mumbles into a memo pad. He arches his back, keening as Dabi tugs him hastily. “Oh, shitshitshitshit—”

Hawks comes, partly spilling in Dabi’s hand, and partly against the desk. His knees buckle with his orgasm, trembling as Dabi thrusts fingers in and out of him with a groan that’s easier felt than heard. Hawks clings to the top of his desk as best he can for leverage, but god, every ounce of stability just oozes out with the rest of him.

Hawks lays in a puddle of his own slobber for a minute while coming down from enlightenment.

Dabi whistles. “Damn.”

There’s some satisfaction in that curse. Hawks purposefully learned how to decipher Dabi-speak.

“Well?” Hawks breathes. He doesn’t get up. Not yet. They both know this dance, and there’s always more to it.

Dabi grins, and it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. “Where’s the lube?”

So Hawks has no idea it’d fade so quickly.

“What lube?” Hawks muses. “You think Mera got any action when he was acting president? Don’t even get me started on Madam President.”

There’s a hand splayed over the center of Hawks’s back where his feathers used to be. Dabi is trying to multitask as he surveys the president’s desk from the other side. A gentle stroke of Dabi’s thumb makes Hawks swallow a squirm. The skin has never quite felt the same after being scorched. Neither are his shoulder blades, where Fierce Wings was once rooted.

Dabi’s snicker floods Hawks with this immeasurable relief. He didn’t realize how much he—they—needed this.

“C’mon,” Dabi teases—teases! “You want to feel good or not?”

“Please,” Hawks recants. He rolls over onto his elbows. “Just use my cum or something.”

There’s this throaty sound that Dabi makes. Hungry. “You can’t be serious.”

Hawks makes a show of it, smearing the cum across the length of his dick as his erection resurfaces.

“Cum, spit, whatever,” he says. “Trust me—it’s not going to be the worst thing I’ve ever had up my ass.”

For some reason, Dabi’s smile drops. He looks strange now.

“What?” Hawks chirps.

It’s a long second, where Dabi doesn’t say something. Long enough that Hawks’s own mood shifts.

“Dabi, what?” Hawks asks again.

“Nothing.” Dabi suddenly puts some distance between them. “You got takoyaki to eat.”

“What?”

“And a one o’clock,” Dabi continues. He picks up Hawks’s pants from the ground and tosses them. “Be sure to get some food in you before you’re a commission slave again.

There’s venom behind those words.

“What the fuck?” Hawks sits upright now, baffled. He trails behind Dabi into his private bathroom, even more confused why Dabi is just cleaning up, like the meeting time has passed.

“I got a grocery list to write,” Dabi says. He plucks the drool-covered memo pad and pen from Hawks’s desk and nests into the office couch, unbothered.

Hawks stands there, speechless. “What are you doing?”

“Being your bodyguard,” Dabi snaps. “Now eat.”

That’s the end of the conversation. Dabi glares at a notepad, while Hawks stands there, bare.

There’s an unspoken string of words that lingers in the air. Dabi is his bodyguard.

Nothing more than that.

*

“I can’t wait to make you sing, like the pretty little songbird that you are.”

…

“What’s wrong? Hey, Hawks—”

“Nothing. Do what you want.”

“What do you want me to call you?”

“That’s not—”

“Birdie.”

Dabi’s tone is drenched in a tone so raw that Hawks doesn’t know what to do with it. He isn’t prepared for this switch. This concern.

But, Dabi won’t budge on this. Hawks has been called worse. Dabi won’t settle for anything less than satisfactory for both of them. Right now, it needs to just be for them.

“That,” Hawks admits finally. “Call me birdie.”

Chapter Text

The phrase, ‘it was bound to happen eventually,’ is so laughable because Hawks has been trained for every scenario imaginable by the Commission. Even this one, on a technicality, with less words.

After all—his mission was infiltration. And, nearly a mantra at this point in Madam President’s voice—anything goes. Hawks has been polished to understand when to initiate directness or coyness in any given situation.

Granted, Dabi has left no room for coyness in any interaction with him. It’s always blunt, clever, and a bit sadistic. Working Dabi means pushing back to some degree.

So—bound to happen? Sex in exchange for some level of trust or pay isn’t something Hawks is above. It’s no different from exchanging a few yen for his favorite chicken karaage at the end of the evening.

And if he tells himself that—that sex is bound to happen because more often than not, it does, then he can mark the other reason the phrase comes to mind with absolute absurdity. Dabi and him. Bound to happen after banter, bad jokes, scowls, and weighted insults.

Hawks chooses to be demure when he steps on Dabi’s toes. He bites because Dabi bites first.

“How about a good fuck?” Hawks asks loudly, in the hideout, leaving no room to be misheard. “Need me to replace that stick up your ass with something else?”

Half the battle is getting to the dance. Every partner needs something different. Some other way to stroke their fucking ego.

Toga Himiko and Spinner stop their conversation. Twice is babbling some nonsense—but there are suddenly three of them who latch onto this conversation. Even Kurogiri rouses from whatever glass he’s wiping.

Dabi’s normal sneer has a blemish to it. It’s definitely not what he expects, and Hawks finds just a touch more glee in rendering him speechless. This whole fucking room, actually.

Then Dabi laughs dismissively. “That how you get your way to Number Two?”

“Wanna find out?” Hawks asks directly.

There’s a staredown between them. Hawks’s less than coy smile, and a flat line across the seams of Dabi’s face, trying to weigh a bluff or suss out a threat.

“Do it,” Toga whispers. “Doooo iiiiit!”

“Shut it,” Dabi snaps irately—with a fragment of something that Hawks latches onto. He’s caught Dabi off guard.

“You said I was a lapdog,” Hawks says innocently. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Need that doubt cleared, Dabi?”

Dabi’s gnarly grin is replaced with a portrait of stoicism. Hawks doesn’t know what nerve he hit under all that charred skin, but he found one. There’s no other direction to go than push forward.

Then his lips stretch into some other creature of a smirk, head tilted with fascination. Hawks would be lying if he didn’t feel some form of relief.

“Yeah,” Dabi says finally. “If you’re that eager to get on your fucking knees, birdie.”

Which is how Hawks finds himself later, mentally preparing himself. There’s no client to charm or assignment to woo—just himself, with a deafened comm.-link. He hangs his jacket on the backdoor and peels off his gloves.

“You run away yet, birdie?” is the call he hears from the other room.

Dabi thinks he’s kidding.

“Why?” Hawks asks. “Need an out?”

He can’t tell if Dabi wants him to be kidding.

There’s a weirdly traditional Japanese aesthetic to Dabi’s room that differentiates it from the rest of the hideout. Trinkets, here and there. A futon just on the floor beside a four-poster bed because even fancy villains could afford more than a paper box cot to sleep on and brag about it.

Dabi lays in his bed, arms propped behind him and shoes still buckled. There’s an edge to his expression as Hawks appears. Still waiting for the punchline.

Hawks splays everything at the foot of the bed like a hand of poker cards. “What do you want? Ribbed? Smooth? Thick? Thin? Actually, this one—”

Hawks points to one packet in particular.

“—is a pretty damn good brand, so long as you’re not allergic to latex. That would suck.” Hawks waves it around between his fingers. “You allergic?”

The barrage of questions suddenly wipes the smile off Dabi’s face. He blinks instead and sits cross-legged.

“How much can you feel down there?” Hawks asks next, his eyes gliding across the mismatched discoloration of Dabi’s skin. “Let’s start here. You wanna top or bottom? ‘Cause depending on what you wanna do, I do have preferences and recommendations.”

He wants to keel over with laughter at how stunned Dabi looks. Eventually, the questions are finally digested.

“What,” Dabi asks, retrieving some form of dignity, “you come here with the sole intent to put your dick up my ass?”

“Would that be so wrong?” Hawks asks gleefully.

Dabi looks even more disarmed, so Hawks can’t hold back his laughter.

“I come prepared,” Hawks says. “Never know when the other person won’t.”

Dabi looks aghast at this new information. They haven’t even gotten to the pile in Hawks’s left hand.

“I’d…prefer not raw,” Hawks admits, “but if you can prove to me a clean bill of health we can talk. Just don’t cum in my wings and we won’t have a problem.”

Evidently it’s a lot to process. Dabi stares at the splayed out instruments like they’re a loaded gun. With any use, Hawks can get away with just embarrassing Dabi for the evening and having his own cackle. No harm, no foul.

“And if I want it raw?” Dabi dares ask, to his chagrin.

“If that’s what you want,” Hawks replies dismissively.

“You treat all your lays like this?”

“If that’s what they want.”

“And if I do cum in your wings?”

“Then I better have a permanent spot in the League of Villains.” Hawks keeps his voice steely. He smiles, of course. Bargaining went better that way.

“Aren’t you just a little slut?”

“And aren’t you just a little horny?” Hawks rebuts. His gesture towards Dabi is intended to be just that. Then he’s suddenly eying the prominent outline between Dabi’s legs. Little might not be the word he was looking for. Hawks isn’t sure how he hasn’t noticed before.

It throws him for a beat, so he has to recalibrate. Once he does, though, he finds that Dabi is still processing his uno card array of condoms.

“Shall I show you the lube?” Hawks asks, putting on his best tour-guide voice.

“How many?” Dabi asks instead.

“You called me a slut, didn’t you?”

Dabi’s eyes snap back to him—which is good because Hawks’s eyes need to snap away from Dabi’s other… assets. Asset. Singular.

“Famous star like you doesn’t have a girlfriend?”

There’s more conversation than making out going on. Hawks climbs onto the bed. The mattress dips at both their weight.

“Nope,” Hawks confirms.

“Bullshit.”

“You ever see me out with anyone?” Hawks reasons.

“Not even a private one?”

“Who has time for a private relationship when all my freetime is spent trying to get in your pants?” Hawks reasons cheekily.

Dabi’s eyebrow twitches. The frown on his face is almost eerie in how foreign it is. Hawks sooner expects a vein in Dabi’s neck.

“You just carry this shit for hookups,” he continues, which is still more talking than Hawks cares for. “Seems more reckless.”

“Hey, I’m all about safety,” Hawks reasons. He tilts his head with a crooked smile. “Never know what you’re gonna get stuck with.”

Dabi is still stewing.

“So?” Hawks continues to press. “Top? Bottom? Or you wanna just pretend we fucked so you can save your street cred, and I can get my spot—”

“Top.”

Of course he’d say that.

“Condom choice?” Hawks asks without missing a beat.

Dabi doesn’t, either. He’s nothing like the proheroes that Hawks tends to stunlock on a regular basis. “You said that was the best, right?”

“Pretty damn good brand.” Hawks gestures to his other collection. “Time to move onto the condiments?”

There’s just an extra moment where Hawks watches Dabi staring at him. It’s a loud reminder, but Hawks might just be pushing his luck after Dabi even agreed to a condom.

“Best I got?” Hawks asks. “Want me to do all the work?”

Dabi grunts. There’s maybe a hint of dismay in his demeanor.

“I’m just giving you options.” Hawks reaches for his phone. “Any musical requests—?”

“Shut up.”

A quiet fuck. Shocking, but noted.

“Shutting up,” Hawks obeys. Before he can help himself, he adds, “but we’re not going to get to the fun part if you don’t give me something to work with.”

They’re at a cusp where Dabi clearly still can’t tell if he’s joking. Hawks could have one foot out the door if he tried, but the more he talks, the more unsettled Dabi looks, and that might just be a little fun for him. Who knows who’s gotten Dabi’s dick—that very prominent, clear-as-day dick—wet in the past, but he’s never had a lay like Hawks. And Hawks has a deafened comm.-link that isn’t going to chastise him for any pretty choice of his own words.

“Well—?”

Dabi yanks him close, so maybe he is just a quiet fuck. A silent motion is better than none at all. Hawks finds himself further in the slope of the mattress, mouth against Dabi’s own. It’s a demanding, arrogant kiss. Not much different from what Hawks had in the past. Those who feign demureness make him do all the talking, so it’s just a switch flip.

Dabi’s mouth is coarse. He smells of torched skin and ash, with a strange, endearing smolder of a campfire. He’s completely taking charge of this kiss, yanking Hawks around on his short goddamn leash (yet another thing he can complain about the commission and his motive to defect, later, after this performance.)

He’s not the worst taste in the world. His grip is tight over Hawks’s forearm, but at worse, he’s resigned to excessive jacket attire for a few days and forewarning the makeup department at the commission. A kiss from Recovery Girl, if it’s too intense. The usual. The other hand is at Hawks’s hip, hooked in the belt loop of his pants. Dabi’s thumb runs across the lycra of his shirt.

Hawks leans closer, his palm at Dabi’s thigh to make it clear all room for bluffing is gone. To his surprise, Dabi pulls his head back.

Maybe even he has his limits.

“C’mon, birdie,” Dabi murmurs. His breath his hot against Hawks’s mouth. “Thought I was promised the best. You’re not giving me much to work with.”

He looks offensively unimpressed. Hawks is offended.

“You told me to shut up,” Hawks points out.

“Since when do you actually listen when I tell you to shut the fuck up?” Dabi rolls his eyes for emphasis.

Hawks is very offended. Without warning he reaches and gives Dabi’s dick a squeeze through his pants.

It’s—holy shit, it’s huge, but even more, Dabi’s moan is like an engine rumbling to life.

“Give me something to not shut the fuck up about then,” Hawks retorts. “Because right now, you are bo~oring—”

Which is where Hawks basically falls into Dabi’s lap. The gesture is so clumsy and unexpected that Fierce Wings flutters to maintain balance. They twitch, and so does the fucking rod suddenly pressed against the inside of Hawks’s thigh.

“That’s more like it,” Dabi mutters. Now he smirks. Now he looks content.

He places a palm at the back of Hawks’s head and drives it down toward him, knocking against a few teeth along the way. The hand on Hawks’s hand suddenly squeezes so hard there’s no question whether it’ll bruise.

Still, Hawks suddenly rocks into the grip.

This is new, is all that comes to mind.

He thumbs through his mental rolodex of past clients and assignments—all the things that they liked, requested, or pushed him into. Quiet. Loud. Shy. Pushy. Annoying. At the end of the day, it’s an exercise of studying other people in order to reach the best possible outcome in his assignment.

The thing is, Dabi isn’t one of those people with a fetish for wings and an appetite for hero worship. Dabi would probably chuck the rolodex of Hawks’s body count out of the window the same way they unintentionally kick all of Hawks’s bottles of lube and condoms to the futon.

There’s vigor in Dabi’s kiss. Hawks never would’ve guessed it, from the lifeless corpse that Dabi likes to mimic. Then Dabi’s lips move, wet with heat against Hawks’s neck. Ebony hair tickles Hawks’s nose, heavy with the scent of charcoal.

“How’re you on biting?” Dabi suddenly murmurs. The question vibrates at the crook of Hawks’s neck, wet against bare skin.

His teeth are already so close, grazing across thin flesh. Hawks feels the shiver all the way to the ends of his wings. Holy shit.

“Do your worst,” Hawks proffers.

There’s another hum, while Dabi’s other hand toys with Hawks’s belt loops. They tug without purpose. So, Hawks purposefully grinds into Dabi.

“I get the best and you want the worst?” Dabi has the audacity to titter in his ear. “What’s the public gonna say?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time my PR team had to cover up some bad marks,” Hawks reassures.

Another intrigued hum. “How many?”

Three, from the last time Hawks did this. Four, from an assignment before. He’s subjected to a physical and health screening after each assignment, followed up with performance reviews on all the ways Hawks can do better next time. “I don’t keep track.”

Dabi laughs under his breath in this tone that Hawks can’t actually decipher. It’s arrogant and annoying, as usual—but it’s also facetious and at Hawks. Not with him.

“Shit, birdie,” Dabi dares to say. “You’ll lay with anything with a pulse, huh?”

“You called me a slut, didn’t you?” It’s too much talking, so Hawks decides it’s Dabi’s turn to shut up. He grinds against Dabi’s lap, shedding himself of his belt as he does so. The corners of his lips shift into an upturn smile, guaranteed to have Dabi’s full attention. “Still waiting for you to make this lapdog bark.”

Dabi snorts, which is closer to their normal rapport instead of all these personal questions about the facets of Hawks’s work life. “Take your pants off.”

It’s the punctuation at the long-awaited confirmation that, no, Hawks has not once bluffed about how this evening could play out. He shakes off his pants, and the way Dabi casts an appreciative glance downward actually makes Hawks smug.

He’s not sure what he expected Dabi to taste like. Honestly—he doesn’t usually give it much thought other than, God, I hope they’re quick, I have other shit to do—but this was presented as a long-term assignment, and while fucking a villain wasn’t a listed objective, Hawks knew better to rule it out (or anything, ever, for that matter.)

So for a moment in his speedy ascent to Number Two Hero in Japan, he can actually take the time to taste Dabi. The inside of Dabi’s mouth isn’t nearly as rough as his appearance would suggest. His tongue has the same personality as the rest of him—pushy and devious, and intentionally dragging itself through the inside of Hawks’s mouth, while his hands drag across skin. Dabi grabs a fistful of lycra—

“Let me do it,” Hawks says, because people usually mess this part up. Lycra has a lot of give in comparison to other fabrics, like regular cotton or Kevlar—but it’s what the Commission decided when it came to his uniform. Hawks was trained to dodge bullets, so the mere observation that his uniform wasn’t bulletproof was more indicative about his confidence in his ability to avoid them than anything else. That was a criticism Hawks didn’t need to hear twice.

With the amount of flexibility that came with this fabric, it’d suggest easy removal of his garments. Every clumsy, over-eager client and/or assignment before still found a way to get his wings caught—and in one case early on, even sprained one of his wings.

He doesn’t expect Dabi to actually observe him thinning out feathers like a blanket across the bed before he pulls it off. It’s that, first, before this glance at the rest of Hawks’s frame.

“Like what you see?” Hawks chirps.

“Making notes for next time.”

Next time. “What makes you think there’ll be a next time?”

Dabi actually laughs at him again. “You really think one meaningless fuck will get you on my good side?”

Long missions. Long assignments. There’s never been a next time, but Hawks knows things shouldn't be ruled out. He’s just not used to not having that safety net at the end of his missions. Of course Dabi is going to fuck with him. Fucking with him by fucking him. Asshole.

“Wings are more pliant than I thought.”

“Oh,” Hawks remarks, “so you’ve thought about me?”

“Thought that’s why you were so eager to spread your legs for me?” Dabi’s gaze gleams deviously. He’s loud that way, with or without words. “Bet you’ve been trying to guess my dick size all night.”

“Bullshit.”

“You want my eight inches, don’t you?”

“What, you gonna fuck me twice?” Abrupt disruption is a normal passenger in their conversations. Sometimes Dabi’s nose twitches, and sometimes Fierce Wings fidget, disarmed. In this case, Dabi actually snorts, so Hawks welcomes the reaction with another kiss. Another jerk.

He’s given Dabi permission to bite—not that he even expected Dabi to ask—and entertained this exhaustive foreplay enough. Dabi finally gets the picture that Hawks is serious, as Hawks steers their kiss. Hawks puts his full body weight into Dabi, perched on Dabi’s clothed erection.

He shivers with his mouth to Dabi’s ear, rehearsed.

“Still waiting,” Hawks murmurs. He soaks in the low croon that tickles his own cheek.

Hawks nearly yelps as Dabi grips a full asscheek over his compression shorts. There might as well be nothing between bare skin and the finger trying to probe his asshole. Fingers. Dabi palms and massages the whole damn thing in languid strokes. Hawks bucks despite himself. An unrehearsed moan spills from his mouth this time. The more he grinds, the more Dabi moans, too. Hawks practically has an imprint of Dabi’s so-called eight-inch Wonder of the World branded into his right asscheek.

“Oh, fuck—”

He doesn’t expect Dabi’s mouth on his nipple. It’s so out of left-field that Hawks nearly topples like a landslide. He has to steady himself with Dabi’s shoulder—and process what just happened.

Dabi arches an eyebrow. He flicks the other one, which makes Hawks hiss.

“Jesus,” Hawks mutters.

“Sensitive?” Dabi fucking eyes him, like discovering a weakness to exploit.

“Not usually a focal point for people,” Hawks reasons. He hates the heat climbing the back of his neck, like he has something to be embarrassed about.

“Too bad,” Dabi says. “They’re cute.”

Red. His neck is red, and so are his ears. He searches for a protest, but suddenly Dabi decides to use his tongue to give Hawks’s nipples the same haughty attention as his mouth earlier.

Dabi seizes a nipple between his front teeth, and Hawks shudders. He clamps down, and Hawks whimpers.

“Oh,” Dabi murmurs, “I like you like this.”

Dabi likes him. About fucking time—

—he would say, but Dabi twists the other one before Hawks can find the coherency to form any words, and it abruptly disrupts him with the same vivacity of a smartass remark, if not more. Dabi’s other hand keeps Hawks’s ass in a tight grip, fingers adamant on keeping him spread apart.

Dabi might be leaving a hickey around Hawks’s nipple, and his makeup team will probably have to work overtime before his next appearance, but there’s—fuck—there’s a request trapped at the bottom of his throat for more.

“Got somethin’ to say, birdie?” Dabi murmurs, with this stupid shit-eating grin.

Fuck this Dabi in particular.

“I’ve got thoughts,” Hawks reassures. His voice is breathier than anticipated, so he clears his throat. He goes as far as leaning back to stroke his chin with a degree of contemplation. “But that’s okay. I promised you my best. Not the other way aro—”

It’s not a very dignifying squeak when Dabi’s hand is just in the front of his shorts, fully wrapped around his dick.

“Mm,” Dabi says. He retracts his hand a moment later and puts a slick thumb in his mouth. “Surprised you don’t taste like chicken.”

That comment is so out of left-field that Hawks can’t find a comeback. He knows Dabi is basking in that fact.

Eventually they make it to the main course. Hawks is completely naked, and Dabi has shed nothing more than his outer shirt. Some people just want to exercise some power-hungry superiority complex and liked to see him laid bare and stripped of everything. Hawks would be under strict orders to fast before those assignments.

Hawks props his arms behind him. Dabi wants a smartass, so Hawks will give him a smartass. So Hawks just watches, offering a cheeky comment here or there—because even in the bedroom, Dabi bites, so Hawks obviously has to bite back.

(Metaphorically speaking, of course. Dabi is biting, and Hawks is fighting back the urge to ask for more.)

Hawks struggles to find a comeback yet again, when he finally lays eyes on Dabi’s stupid dick. It should just be a dick. Sweaty balls and all. He had the thought earlier in the day—in jest, really—that maybe it was all patchwork and staples like the rest of Dabi, but no—it’s fair-skinned like the other soft brushstrokes of Dabi’s healthy skin.

There are piercings. Purposeful, unlike the ones stitched across Dabi’s skin, and they’re fucking stunning.

And yeah, okay, it’s big, but holy shit, Hawks is infuriated how long he stares at it.

“Birdie,” Dabi says smugly, “you’re drooling.”

“Am not,” Hawks protests petulantly—and he can’t deny it. He’s petulant, like a fucking child.

They reach another hitch when Dabi reaches for the assortment of condoms and lube. No smartass remark in sight. Just a fact.

“Condom’s not gonna fit.”

“What? Bullshit.” Hawks props himself back up.

“Hello,” Dabi says. Of course he gestures proudly to that stupid appendage.

Hawks bites back a sigh. He must look bothered, anyway. Cleaning cum out of wings could take a whole night.

“Guess we got no choice.” Dabi tosses him the condom and one of the bottles lube. He lays on his back, head against the pillow and forearms on either side of him.

Hawks blinks. Lube. Condom. Condom too small for Dabi, but perfectly fine for most of the rest of Japan’s population. The rest of Japan doesn’t grate Hawks the way Dabi does, though.

“Well?” Dabi asks. “Am I gonna get the best or not? Don’t tell me you’re a one trick pony.”

“What?” Hawks blurts out, when he realizes he hasn’t just dissociated to all hell.

Dabi’s apparently not one of those pride-toting straight men in denial that Hawks usually associates with unearned arrogance.

(Does that dick constitute earned arrogance? Fuck, it might.)

“Fuck me,” Dabi says, like it’s the simplest phrase in the world. The most obvious thing in the world. “Duh.”

Holy shit. Hawks’s dick catches a second wind.

“Birdie—“

“Coming.”

*

There's not much time to argue after their escapade. Hawks would be embarrassed, but there’s no room to pencil that in between his meetings. He uses the remainder of his lunch break to clean himself up and make himself presentable for the rest of the day. When he exits his private bathroom, his…mess has been scrubbed from the front of his desk. Dabi is feigning sleep on the couch, face buried in a magazine.

The contract is signed. Todoroki Touya is written in neat handwriting. The timing has sitcom written all over it. Hawks tries to open his mouth, and there’s a knock at the door. His one o’clock.

So, it’s the end of the day before they’re able to talk again. Hawks loses track of time after his last meeting of the day. Mera spends a good amount of time yelling at him and emphasizing how bad of an idea having Dabi as a bodyguard is. Hawks has a few proposals to sign off on. And, of course—because he worked from home for a whole week, his office is a revolving door of people who thought necessary to discuss their needs in person.

Hawk doesn’t realize the sun has set until Dabi decides to bat the front of his computer monitor with the list of groceries. It’s a hard, taptaptap, and a careful gaze of cerulean blue eyes. The first in five hours.

Hawks bats the list away. He gets smacked in the face with it instead.

“Can you not?” Hawks asks. “I’m almost—”

“I can’t clock out until you clock out, boss,” Dabi retorts wryly. “And we need groceries.”

It’s a wonder how after a whole afternoon of silence, this is the first thing Dabi says to him. Even worse, he broke the silence before Hawks did. Probably assuming Hawks was more upset than Dabi was. Hawks doesn’t know what stick Dabi has up his ass this time, but he’s not the one who called it quite right in the middle of things.

Hawks starts typing. He gets slapped with the grocery list. “Hey.”

“Gro-cer-ies,” Dabi says, enunciating every syllable.

“What are you, my—“

“Bodyguard and babysitter,” Dabi interjects. He taps the job contract sitting at the edge of the desk. It’s next to the takoyaki Hawks forgot to eat.

Dabi’s glare is so heated that Hawks’s shoulder blades tingle.

“Just doing your job?” Hawks parrots.

“Yeah.”

They stare each other down. And then they leave it at that, as Hawks finally closes his laptop.

Hawks doesn’t even know what’s in this grocery list. He lets Dabi do all the shopping. Dabi in a grocery store is the strangest thing. It’s not Hawks’s favorite place. Enclosed and crowded. He hasn't been able to fly in a long time now—but it makes him restless. Enclosed in the commission is one thing. A crowd of civilians is another.

A group of middle schoolers ask for a picture with him. A wide-eyed mother gets flustered when she recognizes him. Her confused five-year-old looks at the winged hero action figure and Hawks’s face and asks when they can go home to watch cartoons.

Dabi sidesteps a fourth crowd before they approach. Some teenaged girls who have been stalking them from aisle to aisle, taking photos with Hawks in the background. He obstructs their vision.

Hawks’s not-so-subtle peace sign is also obstructed by Dabi’s hard-assery. “What are you—?”

“Scram,” Dabi calls. His arms are crossed over his chest.

The trio of teenage girls squeak and gawk, offended, but Dabi only doubles down. They cower and leave.

“Fucking exhausting,” Dabi grumbles under his breath. He isn’t angry, though. It’s a loose observation on an otherwise tense afternoon.

“Just doing your job?” Hawks parrots once again—but there’s amusement there.

“How the fuck did you shop before?”

“I didn’t.”

“Your fridge was packed.”

“My freezer was packed.”

Dabi looks like there may be another smart remark on his mouth, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he scrunches his nose and bows his head. “Commission-provided. Right.”

A fact probably provided ages ago in meaningless teasing. Probably. They had so many conversations—empty, full, stupid, grave—that Hawks remembers how he felt in the moment. Hawks didn’t always keep a mental log of those conversations. Conversations with Dabi weren’t always for work.

Hawks would hate to admit that he’s the one who led them to the sex aisle. He has a hard time standing still in a crowded place as is. Hawks needs open movement where he can find it.

They both see it. The last fucking bottle of lube. Disney’s Olaf, frolicking across a field of flowers.

Be like Olaf. Be cool in summer.

Hawks stares. He doesn’t want to know if Dabi’s staring.

“See something you need?” Dabi asks eventually.

He does remember their first conversation. Pro Hero Hawks always comes prepared. President Hawks threw all that shit out months ago before the job promotion on a whim.

“Don’t think it’s on the grocery list,” Hawks reassures. “Can’t eat it.”

“Says edible.”

“Dammit.”

Dabi rolls his eyes. He throws the godawful blue bottle into the basket. He grabs condoms, too, without asking (not that Hawks needs them or implied he cared for them earlier in a desperate plea, but…yeah.)

“I didn’t—“

“Great. Then it’ll be there like all the other shit in your kitchen just in case you want it.”

“What are you doing?”

“Being your bodyguard.” Dabi throws a hand in the air. “Duh.”

Hawks blinks.

Bodyguard. Right. Duh.

*

Hawks can’t get Dabi out of his head. Not the usual sneer, scowl, or cackle, but…sounds. Dabi, sprawled across the mattress like an isolated fire. Dabi, with soft skin sewn with coarse scars. He’s something else in the bedroom. Fingering Dabi was fascinating. Dabi’s entire back had arched like a black cat lying beneath the heat of the summer heat. Hawks has training on how to make a person feel good, but watching Dabi preen and moan made him actually appreciate it.

The actual fucking? Hawks, in the moment, forgot he had a motive.

There was no shame there. No fragile masculine pride easily diminished by the idea of getting fucked in the ass by another guy. And if there were that many of the commission’s clients who had problems with it, Hawks wasn’t sure what he was in the eyes of those assignments.

When they finished, Dabi had the same shit-eating grin as when they started.

“What?” Hawks had breathed. He didn’t anticipate trembling from his own orgasm. He tried to be mechanical in cleaning up as he was in sex—but everything about the night just kept surprising him. Dabi kept surprising him.

“Like my ass as much as my dick?”

Most guys are smug about their overexaggerated assets. Those dicks are barely longer than the word overexaggerated, while their actual orgasm either takes less time for Hawks to blink or last longer than he ever cares for.

Hawks, days later, is still trying to figure out what the fuck happened. And why the fuck he can’t get Dabi’s raspy moans out of his ears. He actually zones out in the middle of a debrief at the end of his week. Mera isn’t happy with him.

Mera can still pencil in a lecture. A physical exam doesn’t cross the medical team’s minds since there was no expectation of sex. Not this time.

At the forefront of his mind is his assignment with the League of Villains. After that is a louder, nagging thought about Dabi. At first, it’s the recurring gasps and grunts and croons from fucking Dabi. Then, it’s Hawks’s own voice, going, hey, remember when Dabi did this?

Hawks is normally required to entertain his assignment for a few days at best. The League of Villains was always expected to be long-term. Which meant more entertaining may be required. So, it’s inevitably going to happen again.

They come across each other again eventually. A rooftop rendezvous where Dabi gives him an evening assignment to signify the end of Hawks’s daytime assignment.

“Birdie never sleeps,” Dabi muses in his face.

“You caught me,” Hawks says with fake surprise, “I’m actually a night owl.”

“What—no ‘early bird catches the worm’?”

“Early bird can still be early if he doesn’t go to sleep,” Hawks muses lightly. “I can go all night if I need to. Just give me the good stuff.”

“Noted.”

Hawks doesn’t know if he hears the change in tone right. Maybe he’s just hearing what he wants to hear—but then he’d have to admit that he wants it. He leaves no rock unturned, though, as he glances back at Dabi. He swears that Dabi is checking him out. Which could be a good thing.

“Finally gonna admit you find me useful?” Hawks asks.

“I have notes.”

Hawks’s wings flutter, lifting him a fraction higher than before. “Do tell.”

“Do your job and we’ll talk.”

“How about a kiss for good luck?” The words tumble out of Hawks’s much, unprecedented—and yet somehow, not out of character for this particular ruse.

There are gray specks in Dabi’s eyes. Embers of discoloration in the absence of blue. It’s fitting, Hawks thinks. But that’s the problem—he’s thinking about Dabi’s eyes.

“Maybe a reward if you’re a good lapdog,” Dabi concludes instead. He doesn’t lose his composure. In fact, one good fuck might’ve actually turned him into a bigger asshole.

“Promise?” Hawks asks cheekily.

“Do the job,” Dabi repeats, “and we’ll talk.”

He shoves Hawks, so Hawks goes a step further and falls off the roof.

“Oh no,” Hawks says dramatically. “If only I could fly.”

Dabi rolls his eyes—fed up like he usually is with Hawks’s bullshit. “Go.”

When Hawks leaves, he’s grinning. A real one.

Something’s changed between them since having sex. Maybe it’s the duration of this assignment that’s causing it. Maybe Hawks isn’t used to long-term assignments. Not like this one, with no end date in sight. It ends after Hawks can guarantee the prevention of a war.

Dabi definitely doesn’t just give him a spot in the League of Villains. Hawks still has to work for it and do his reports—but he thinks he notices Dabi’s eyes lingering. The tone of their conversations might be shifting.

It’s this weird game of cat and mouse, where Hawks can’t tell which one he is. Obviously, if Dabi isn’t just going to give him that spot, then Hawks needs to exploit any openings he can find. Dabi’s opening.

It’s unclear who comes to that conclusion faster.

It takes two weeks of double entendres, stare downs, and wondering if Hawks heard correctly, but it comes up again.

“You look displeased, birdie,” Dabi says at the start of one weekend. “I said you’d have to work for it, didn’t I?”

“You gonna let me fuck you again?”

It almost feels rehearsed. Almost. Hawks figured the subject would come up again, but there’s barely a hitch in their exchange of dialogue. Hawks feeds Dabi almost before the thought is finished. Before Dabi punctuates his sentence with pursed lips.

But somehow, Dabi appears to be in the same boat. He looks amused. “Thought my trust was the goal. Not sex.”

“I’m a worldly man,” Hawks reassures. “I can strive for both.”

“You really scraping the bottom of the barrel on a Friday night, huh?”

“All the more evidence of how much you should trust me,” Hawks says. “Whatcha want tonight?”

Dabi arches an eyebrow. For what reason, Hawks doesn’t know—but he keeps that reaction in the back of his mind.

“To be clear,” Hawks says with no hesitation, “I’m bargaining with sex again.”

“You’re fucking nuts, birdie.” Dabi lets loose a chuckle—which sounds more disbelieving than anything. Good. Hawks is most comfortable when he can catch Dabi off guard. “You think getting my dick wet a couple times is gonna get you on my good side?”

“As many times as it’s gonna take.”

Dabi is staring at him again. Uninhibited, unabashed, and most importantly—at Hawks. “Aren’t we desperate?”

Hawks keeps Dabi’s eye. Then he takes a gracious bow, wings and all. “I live to serve the people.”

“Clearly.” Dabi arches another eyebrow. “Anything I want, huh?”

“Need me to jump out of a birthday cake for you?”

“Can’t imagine that’s any easier to clean out of your wings than my cum.”

It’s hard to keep an impassive expression here, even with this performance. Dabi is reeling from Hawks’s reaction—or, lack of one, technically. There’s a smirk there.

That sentence is blatant. No double entendres. A dick being a dick, with sex flung on the table like an underhanded bargain.

Dabi needs little victories to think he has Hawks cornered. It’s all part of the performance. Hawks just wishes it didn’t irk him so much. This request of all things.

“Lemme fuck you this time—“

“You clean—?”

“Yep.”

Dabi opens his mouth to punctuate before Hawks can finish his own thoughts. It seems even more rehearsed, as they stare at each other with baited breath.

“Alright then,” Hawks concedes. Purposefully, of course. He feigns coyness. “Fuck my brains out then. I dare you.”

They aren’t exactly jumping each other’s bones in flings of passion or anything like that.

Hawks has a hop and a skip to his step as they get into the hideout. Eyes hone in on them as they make an obvious beeline to Dabi’s bedroom. Dabi flips them off. Hawks waves.

He’s mentally preparing himself for the evening. Sex, get Dabi off, get in good with the rest of the League. Hawks could dispel some feathers, which would minimize how much gets in his wings—but not being armed during sex just sounds…dangerous. If he played his cards right, he could con Dabi into letting him spend the night for more reconnaissance. If not, Twice might pity him enough to let him stay anyway.

Still—there’s a reason he hates cum in his wings. One, it’s hard to clean. Two, it makes it harder to fly. He’s less of a night owl and more of a sitting duck. But he has training when his wings aren’t available to him.

At the end of the day, it’s just an inconvenience. Hawks knows better than to care about inconveniences. Normally.

But out of nowhere, Dabi plucks a condom out of his nightstand. The XL is clear on the packaging.

“Cold chicken feet?” Dabi muses.

Hawks’s confusion must show on his face. “I thought you wanted to go without a condom.”

“Like I wanna have to fight my junk in the middle of a meeting, dipshit.”

Hawks chortles because he actually doesn’t have a better response. “So, what, you so eager to fuck me that you went out and bought condoms?”

“Nah.”

“Nah?” Hawks echoes—then he understands Dabi’s answer. “You had these the whole time?”

“You didn’t ask.”

Hawks is flabbergasted. His shock lingers a moment too long because Dabi suddenly tosses his head back with a gleeful cackle.

“Fuck—I hoped I’d catch you with a dumb look on your face but I didn’t think it’d be that good.”

“You’re evil.”

“Yeah, dumbass, and fire is hot.” Dabi grins this time, looking sickeningly too smug. “Knew it’d be funny.”

“Fucking hilarious.”

“Mad?” Dabi asks. “Wanna show me how mad you are?”

“Isn’t this where you beg for my forgiveness?”

“I don’t beg. You might.”

Hawks balks at the idea—but that’s just it. The tension in his shoulders seem to dissipate. He laughs at the idea outright—and he’s certain Dabi hangs onto that fact.

“Go on, birdie.” Dabi’s grin only widens. “Show me what you want.”

*

Hawks has a need. Not necessarily a want—but an absolute, impossible need.

“I’m not done with this report yet.”

“Boohoo. Who’s going to yell at you? Yourself?”

“Just for that, maybe I will.” Hawks is pensive. He’s gotten good at compartmentalizing so he can get work done and sass Dabi at the same time.

He needs his patience. His alone time. A month living with Dabi is testing this.

“Ignoring me won’t make me go away,” Dabi disrupts. “It’s past five and you don’t pay me overtime.”

“Fine,” Hawks says with a magical wave of his hand. “You get overtime. Congratulations.”

Tossing money into a blackhole is the commission’s specialty, so Hawks is ready to argue his way out of that one with the board. Most other workers would be satisfied. Dabi doesn’t budge.

Instead, the screen suddenly goes black when Dabi reaches over and yanks out a plug.

“What the fuck?!”

“It’s all on your laptop.” Dabi grabs Hawks’s laptop case to drag Hawks out of the office as he did this morning to drag Hawks out of their apartment. “I want to go home. Let’s go home.”

“What’s your deal? I approved your overtime. You’re getting paid, so I can finish—“

“You’re still working!”

“I’m president!”

“Then make the executive order to go the fuck home!”

“Does not work that way!” Hawks swiftly grabs his laptop and reaches for his case—but Dabi only yanks harder.

“Give me the laptop.” Dabi’s nostrils flare like a bull seeing red.

“I’ll put my laptop away myself!” Hawks yanks back.

“Bullshit you will!” Dabi yanks just as forcefully, causing Hawks to stumble.

His laptop slips out of his hands before he has the chance to recover his balance. It hits the ground with an awful CRASH.

Both Hawks and Dabi watch it descend in slow motion.

And of course, Mera just happens to be around to witness this.

Which is how they end up in front of the director of HR.

Again.

Mera, of course, has spent every waking moment trying to undo what he sees as a bombastic, impulsive, reckless, dangerous decision that Hawks had created a strategic plan, xeroxed, and sent out to the board of directors before Mera actually had the chance to stage an intervention.

The board of directors responded like Hawks expected. Detached from the situation, staring at the stakeholders like pieces on a chessboard to move. Hawks received a few comments of intrigue, but others let his email slip into a list of unread emails because his voice wasn’t important in their eyes.

So—Hawks got a yes on a technicality and Mera thought to invest all that newfound freedom into reminding Hawks that he’s an idiot.

Including attending this HR visit, which has simply become a weekly investment at this point. Hawks considered bribing their Chief of Human Resources so he could get out of it, but was told that that bribery was considered unethical.

So they sit there while Hawks watches someone from IT assesses his computer damage the second time that week. Hawks asks them several times that week for the first ten minutes of this intervention. The head of HR stares at him, nonplussed, while Dabi and Mera seem to be glaring daggers at Hawks for different reasons.

“Hawks—”

“President,” he corrects.

“Ah, yes.” Agent Cricket. Quirk: Creates chirps like a cricket that lulls listeners into a sense of security. “Apologies. Still takes some getting used to.”

“For all of us,” Dabi grumbles.

Hawks can’t fault her for not remembering his title, either. He asked for her name, once, but mostly knows her for the amount of Chappelle Roan played for positive energy in the background and Wizard of Oz memorabilia.

No place like home, Dabi would probably say.

Which is even more annoying, that Dabi is arguing with Hawks in his own head.

“How about we redirect focus to you instead of your work?” Cricket asks. “While we all appreciate how invested you are in your career and the safety of our people—”

”Nothing’s going on with me.” Hawks huffs and crosses his arms.

Cricket’s lips purse together. She stares at him with this displeased leer.

“My bodyguard wanted me to stop working and go home, while I was catching up on projects. We had a conflict of interest, had a fist fight over my computer, and now I have to make sure everything is in one piece.” Hawks shrugs nonchalantly. “The usual.”

Mera bows his head back in regret, like every day since handing the reigns over to President Hawks.

Cricket opens her mouth to speak. But, as usual—”

”It’s five o’clock!” Dabi interjects because he has to be heard now that his stupid hair is white now and he needs the whole world to listen to him. “Why do you need to work right now?!”

“Because it’s important!” Hawks retorts. “Tell him, Mera! This is why you never slept!”

“What happened to a fucking world where heroes could relax?” Dabi snaps.

“Someone’s gotta steer the conversation!”

“Well steer the conversation tomorrow!”

“You see how he talks to me?” Hawks whips his head back to Agent Cricket and Mera, “The lack of respect?”

“They don’t even respect you!” Dabi snaps. The explosion in his voice makes the IT person jump. Hawks’s laptop hops into the air for a brief moment before hitting the ground.

“That didn’t damage the hard drive, did it?” Hawks’s head snaps back to the IT worker, who withers.

”That’s what you care about?!” Dabi snaps. “Tell him he’s a moron!”

Mera exhales, looking more tired than his entire term as acting president.

Out of nowhere, a trill pierces the air, no different from an insect of the night. Crickets are supposed to clean up messes. Then, Agent Cricket smiles at them with an unpleasant smile that causes goosebumps across Hawks’s forearms.

“We appreciate your commitment to the Commission and the amount of progress you’ve made towards this rehabilitation, President Hawks,” Cricket says, “but—respectfully, it’s a quarter to six o’clock on a Friday and I’ve been called to handle another dispute between the two of you in a way that does not pertain to the job.”

Hawks grimaces. For once, he bows his head in apology.

“I appreciate the work you do for us, Cricket-kun,” he says. “I’m in agreement with you. Please, go home. Dabi and I can handle this like grown adults.”

“Ah, yes,” Cricket agrees, “like you mentioned the last three interventions.”

”Then stop intervening,” Dabi grumbles. Hawks actually bats him on the couch.

“This isn’t couple’s therapy.” Their Chief of HR’s voice slices through them icily. “Normally I wouldn’t be so frank in this position, but if there’s tension between the two of you, then perhaps it’s best that we let Todoroki Touya go—”

”No,” is the immediate response from both of them. The first thing Dabi and Hawks have agreed on in weeks. They spare a slight glance at each other.

Dabi needs the financial security. Hawks needs this project to succeed.

“It’s not that bad,” Hawks backtracks eventually, as Dabi says, “He did agree to pay me triple.”

“Triple?” Mera balks. Hawks waves a dismissive, talk later, hand, in hopes Mera will simply forget.

Her eyes narrow at them, unconvinced. “Has Todoroki-san—”

”Dabi,” Hawks corrects for her. She doesn’t look enthused to be interrupted. “Dabi is my bodyguard. More people are familiar with that name, anyway.”

“Very well. Has Dabi-san been performing well? She turns her attention to Mera. “Let me hear it from someone who is separate from this…situation.”

Their head of HR has the audacity to make a gesture at them like they’re a problem.

“What situation?” Dabi grumbles.

“No idea,” Hawks mutters back.

Mera glances their way with his beady little eyes. His shoulders descend with dismay and he rests a hand to his cheek. “We’re up this quarter.”

Hawks sits upright. Dabi’s hand falls, his face nearly colliding with the armrest.

“Really?” Hawks asks.

“Came to share the good news before I saw the shitshow,” Mera explains simply. “Work has been efficient. People are happier. More projects and assignments are getting logged and recorded in a timely manner. There are less assignments to handle—”

Mera’s gaze narrows, begrudgingly impressed.

“—but all signs point to less incidents rising rather than less incidents being reported,” he concludes. He sighs, finally admitting defeat. “There’s a stark difference this month versus last month. You’ve been doing a remarkable job.”

Hawks hadn’t even had the opportunity to view the financials.

“That’s because he’s been trying to complete his tasks at a break-neck pace so I don’t ride his ass,” Dabi grumbles.

“I don’t need you to ride my ass,” Hawks snaps. “I ate today!”

“Yes,” Mera agrees. “The log Dabi came up with to keep track of your eating habits shows vast improvements.”

Hawks’s jaw drops. He glances at Dabi, who looks smug for all of a second before scowling once again.

“What, am I supposed to just stand there for eight hours while you tap on a keyboard and mumble to yourself?”

“I thought you were doing that.”

“I’m a worldly man,” Dabi rebuts. “I can do both.”

“Worldly pain in the ass,” Hawks grumbles—

“Takes an ass to know an ass—!”

“ENOUGH!” Cricket utilizes her quirk again, but the chirping is nearly a siren. Dabi and Hawks both stumble before they fall flat on their asses. “We’ve reached the end of a productive conversation. I urge the two of you to go home and figure your shit out.”

“Agent Cricket.” Hawks lifts a hand to his chest, scandalized.

“God, there’s no place like home,” she grumbles.

Before they can rope her into another non-domestic dispute, she cracks a window open and leaps out. She descends into the crowd onto her own yellow brick road of peace.

Huh.

“Wow,” Dabi mutters. “Look at that. Little Miss Dorothy can fly.”

*

“Who the fuck does she think she is?” Dabi grumbles on the way home. He yanks Hawks’s jacket off and hangs it on the coat rack.

“I know!” Hawks exclaims. He lifts his chin so Dabi can undo his tie and dips his head accordingly. “We’re not a couple!”

“Fucking psychoanalyzing us like we need our feelings read,” Dabi grumbles.

Hawks jumps as a set of lips latch onto his neck. He kicks his shoes off and yanks his dress shirt out of his pants while Dabi unfurls every button. His undershirt is turned inside out as Dabi strips him shirtless.

“T—ech—nically,” Hawks breathes, “she told us to quit treating it like marriage counseling.”

Dabi stops siphoning all of the attention off Hawks's neck. He pulls away and narrows his gaze with purpose. “Couples therapy.”

“You know what I mean.”

Hawks stares back at Dabi with the same impassiveness. Marriage is a step above couple, and they were never either.

“Therapy,” Hawks settles on finally, with purposefully vague definition. “Which we are not supposed to use the head of HR for.”

Dabi snorts. “Maybe if you gave her a raise.”

“Mera might kill me if I keep burning money.”

“Who cares.”

“He said you did a good job today. We were up this quarter.”

“Excuse me if I’m not receptive to the government agency turning a profit.”

“It’s less about turning a profit, and—”

“Shut up—”

“Then make me.” Hawks flashes a devious, petulant smile. “You’re excused, princess.”

Are they sleeping together again? Yes. Is Hawks enjoying it just a bit too much? Maybe. Does pissing Dabi off provide for a more satisfying orgasm? Yeah, maybe—which may play into why Hawks will drag his day out.

Dabi’s nose wrinkles.

Do they talk? Flirt? Reason with each other? No, thank god. There’s a clear line they’re not going to cross. Not this time. They hadn’t spoken about this…situation, out of what has to be mutual necessity. Putting words to it means cementing something. A couple, like the head of HR suggested. Marriage is a laughable concept, more impossible than Todoroki Touya literally coming back from the dead to spite his father.

Profit margins are up—which really means, with the same amount of funding as before, the Commission is not having to allocate resources to pro-hero assignments. Those funds are getting allocated towards quirk rehabilitation programs and other projects that will provide a meaningful change to society.

“Do not think about work,” Dabi rasps, “while you’ve got my cock in your mouth.”

“Hmm?” Hawks glances upwards from his place nestled between Dabi’s legs. He’s planted on the living room rug, one hand coiled around the base of Dabi’s dick, with the other palm secure against Dabi’s knee.

The shudder under Dabi’s breath is unmistakable. Hawks reels back momentarily to grab their lube, which is so gracefully nested between the armrest and the couch cushion from the last time they did this.

(Which was this morning. Dabi made Hawks feel good in the summer like Olaf this morning.)

“Who said I was thinking about work?”

“You’re always fucking thinking about work.”

“Not true. Sometimes—” Hawks cuts himself off. He focuses on lathering his fingers with disgusting wintery smelling lube instead of an old, familiar dance of words. He knows what he was about to say. Dabi knows what he was about to say.

It’s like the job position that Hawks created just for Dabi. They need sexual stability and for this to work, and every reason they didn’t work has played in Hawks’s mind every day since their last day.

Fuck, something like that. Hawks would be kidding himself if he knew how Dabi felt about this arrangement, but he refuses to tread that line again. Just focus on the sex.

“Sometimes,” Hawks echoes instead, redirecting in the best way he knows how, “I’m plotting my revenge.”

Dabi doesn’t react to a finger. He hardly reacts to two in him, with only the hint of a satisfied sigh at the edge of his lip.

Dabi is earth-shatteringly sensitive on the inside. It’s almost unfair—big, bratty dick with an attitude and a sensitive prostate that elicits moans so heavy that they could melt polar ice caps. Hawks salivates at the few of Dabi’s abs twisting and tightening, as he sheathes three fingers inside Dabi.

“Mm,” is the low baritone of Dabi’s voice. Thick, like molasses. His eyes flutter shut, with only the snow of white eyelashes above his cheekbones. That infuriated wrinkle disappears between his brow, with nothing left but pure concentration on Hawks’s fingers. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“My impact is felt, not heard,” Hawks reassures. He twists his fingers for emphasis. “Jealous of my job?”

“Fuck no—fuck.” Dabi hisses, as Hawks presses full force against his prostate. Maybe more spitefully than intended.

“Need my attention more than my job?” Hawks asks kindly.

“Hell no.”

“Want me to stop?” Hawks curls his fingers once more.

“You better fucking not.” Dabi’s response is based on a lot of eyeballing and face contorting.

Hawks figured out a while back how to shut Dabi up. Obsessively so. Hawks fingers Dabi with immeasurable joy of a child discovering fingerpainting. He makes the strokes and Dabi provides the colorful sounds.

Dabi catches him thinking about work again. Particularly when Hawks gets the condom wrapped around himself, and entertains the thought of putting down a cranky Dabi for a nap so he can focus on work.

Instead, Dabi lets him get as far as the tip of his dick brushing against Dabi’s asshole before wrapping legs around Hawks’s hips and digging heels into Hawks’s back. Hawks is balls deep in Dabi in an instant. He’d gasp, but Dabi overtakes his mouth, ensuring the only thing that Hawks can think of is dick, ass, mouth, holy shit—

“Fuck,” is Dabi’s pretty keen, after a handful of thrusts. It’s a bolt of lightning cracking across the sky, branching out in several other delectable sounds and rivets that sends a signal to Hawks’s dick. Dabi’s raspy moans provides a choir, and Hawks is selfishly enjoying his Concert for One. Hawks rakes into Dabi, again and again, while his mouth throbs from the unsuspecting kiss.

Hawks grabs the base of Dabi’s dick once more with an intentional squeeze. The piercings dig into his palm as he strokes, and Dabi’s head bobs back with another savory moan that’s going to linger in Hawks’s ears for the days to come. They always do.

Dabi’s heels bury into Hawks’s bare hips, ankle bones pressed so sharply into him that there’ll definitely be bruises later. Hawks hasn’t had to worry about that in a long time. Dabi never gave a fuck.

One pent up orgasm (of the evening) later, and Dabi’s cum is tapering down chiseled, patchy abs like a natural disaster. Hawks robs Dabi the luxury of a moan, once again kissing Dabi for himself. Any sound Dabi makes belongs to Hawks—and tastes amazing.

Hawks cums only moments later, with Dabi’s legs shaking around him and arms wrapped around his torso like a tangled cord.

They allow each other a moment of rest before clarity. So Hawks can commit all of Dabi’s sounds between the pulsing of his own ears. Dabi looks beautiful with his back to the couch, dressed in a sheen of sweat and his own cum. His chest heaves and falls, alive.

Then he twitches, indicating it’s time for Hawks’s departure.

“How long until dinner, you think?” Hawks asks.

“Twenty minutes.” Dabi stands to his feet and wipes himself off with a discarded shirt.

“Cool,” Hawks says. “Just knock on my door when it’s ready.”

“Just fucking answer this time,” Dabi mutters. He pushes hair out of his face. It’s damp enough that it settles on the crown of his head and exposes the fair skin of his forehead.

After a brief clean up, they both get back to work.

*

“What’s your body count?”

It becomes a recurring thing. It’s procedural as any other assignment—this one just happens to be really long assignment. Dabi is also just much easier to deal with post-nut clarity. Three Twices held a round of applause when Hawks appeared for the weekend. Apparently Dabi has become more bearable in the last few weeks because of Hawks’s influence.

Dabi told Twice to shut up. Hawks said, How a-Dabi-able, and got told to shut up, too, before they stalked up to the bedroom and proceeded to annoy each other into climax.

Post-orgasm Dabi doesn’t give a shit if Hawks sticks around, so Hawks has weekends where he gets to sit in on meetings and understand the current plan. They’ve somehow fallen into this routine of clean up and quiet time before bothering to join the others. Hawks may reap the benefits of post-nut clarity, too, but he needs to rid himself of the euphoria before clocking back in for intel.

So, they sit there, cleaning off and stripping the bed (because villains are evil but apparently still hygienic), and Dabi fiddles on his computer, uninterrupted, like Hawks and he are just hanging out.

“What, death?” Dabi arches an eyebrow, barely moving from the monitor.

“Sex. How many people have you slept with?” Hawks asks. “Just curious.”

Dabi tears away from his computer screen, one eyebrow arched in the air. In the darkness of the evening, the light of the computer screen gleams against fair skin and darkens the shadows of fettered flesh.

“C’mon, don’t be embarrassed.” Hawks rests a cheek in his palm, fascinated. “I won’t laugh. Don’t tell me I was your first.”

“You think I’d be able to get you to scream like that if you were my first, birdie?”

The heat in Hawks’s neck is blisteringly hot. Dabi’s discovered a few things about him that Hawks didn’t even know about himself. Usually he falls in sync with whatever his current partner wants to get them off faster. Dabi cuts off every thought like the little shit he is, until Hawks has no choice but to enjoy himself too.

So maybe that’s what poses the question.

How many people has Dabi fucked to make sex enjoyable?

“Handful,” Dabi says eventually. “Couple people. Nothing long-term.”

“You never wanted anything long-term?”

“You think people actually want me?” Dabi counters almost immediately. There’s an empty laugh there. Hawks doesn’t realize it’s a sore subject until it’s too late.

Hawks sits up, taken aback. “Aw, c’mon—the league adores you.”

“I don’t fuck with ‘em like that.”

“Then who do you fuck?”

“You.” Dabi’s answer is blunt and honest. He shrugs and continues whatever report is important in front of him. Hawks is curious now. “Couple of people on missions. This one guy—saw him a couple times. Had a pretty nice cock.”

Something tugs on Hawks. “Couple, huh?”

“Been a while.” Dabi shrugs.

“You always know?”

“What, that I like dick?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess. You always know you’d be a slut?”

Hawks laughs despite himself. It’s become easier around Dabi these days. Genuine. “No, but I can’t imagine I’d ever be in a long-term relationship, either.”

Dabi, for the first time, pulls his gaze away from his laptop. He glances at Hawks with intrigue. “Your first time suck, too?”

“Too?”

Dabi shrugs. “He was an asshole, so I burned his dick off.”

“Jesus. What the fuck did he do to cross you?”

Dabi’s demeanor doesn’t change. Hawks wishes his brain was as fast as the rest of him at the moment. He’d catch up to the sour look in Dabi’s eyes.

“I’m the only one who gets to decide what I do with my body,” Dabi says with a cold resolve. “No one else.”

There’s no hesitation to his voice. No teasing remark. No matter the games they play, this is an unbendable truth. Dabi doesn’t elaborate further than that—but every bit of the statement suddenly sends a chill up Hawks’s spine.

“Fuck,” Hawks says before he can help himself. “Holy shit, I’m sorry.”

Dabi scrunches his nose. He doesn’t elaborate further than that. “What about you, golden boy?”

He doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. Dabi’s fun to fuck with, but this is an intentional pivot.

“Don’t remember.”

“Don’t remember?” Dabi echoes. He snorts. “What, you get into bed with that many people?”

“I guess.” Hawks scratches his head. He searches his memories. Genuinely. “Just that I was young.”

“How young?”

“I dunno. At least thirteen, with the Commission?”

Dabi freezes. He looks as still as a statue, no different from a monument at a random park. He turns around fully in his chair. Hawks has apparently earned his full attention.

“Thirteen?” Dabi asks.

“Well, yeah, they had to wait until I reached the age of consent. That was before they changed it to sixteen.”

“They,” Dabi dumbly echoes. “Not—not some rando girlfriend your age or some shit like that?”

“You think I had time to get a girlfriend at thirteen?” Hawks laughs at the thought. “I got a lot of training before that, so I guess that might count, too.”

“Training?”

“Coaching. Couldn’t fuck up during an assignment, you know?”

“Assignment?”

“You a parrot now?” For the first time, he glances back at Dabi with only light intent.

Dabi looks disgusted.

It’s that tone of voice from their first time, personified. When every time Hawks said something so foreign that Dabi’s reaction would actually make him self conscious.

“Hawks,” Dabi says—no birdie, no chicken joke. “You’re telling me the Commission sold you off as a kid to get fucked on missions?”

“I didn’t get sold off by the Commission.” Hawks’s chest clenches even tighter. He suddenly frowns. “It was just work.”

“Just work,” Dabi echoes, angry for some reason. “What the actual fuck?”

“How’s that any different from what we’re doing?” Hawks rebukes. Suddenly he feels combative. His wings flutter, aggravated, and his pulse quickens while Dabi looks ready to kill. “I go on assignment. I do what I need to in order to complete the objective. They get off, I get what I need, and then I go back to work.”

The longer he talks, the more self conscious he feels. Dabi’s gaze lingers on him like he’s grown a second chicken head. There’s no jest awaiting him, to push all his buttons. Hawks’s chest suddenly tightens with the silence.

There’s never been this long of a gap in their conversation. They both needed to have the last laugh.

So, Hawks laughs, because the situation is ridiculous. “You’ve been calling me the government’s lapdog and slut since we met, Dabi. I’m more surprised that you’re surprised.”

“How old were your assignments?”

Hawks tries to catch onto the game. Which answer would get him out of this situation? “Older.”

“Hawks,” Dabi says one more time. There’s a gravelly sound that scrapes his voice. “That’s fucked up.”

Dabi is looking at him with genuine concern.

“It’s just work,” Hawks repeats. “I get a physical exam after each assignment to make sure I don’t catch anything. You don’t need to worry about catching—“

“That’s not why I’m worried, dumbass.”

Every other statement takes a violent halt behind Hawks’s teeth. Dabi suddenly rolls back in his chair, one hand over his mouth. He’s embarrassed to admit something so vulnerable. Good.

“You worry about me?” Hawks muses.

“A bit, yeah dumbass.” Dabi doesn’t even hesitate. He’s not embarrassed—but Hawks is suddenly very confused.

“It’s not a big deal—“

“When I say I’m the only one who gets to decide what I do with my body, that extends to the people I’m sleeping with, too.” Dabi rips his hand off his face and actually leers. He’s angry.

“All the more reason it makes sense I want to defect,” Hawks points out. “Right?”

He's not sure what existential crisis Dabi is having. Dabi gives him one glance of blue eyes once more, and then seems to be imploding on the inside.

Then Dabi makes it clear. He just throws another curveball at Hawks, per usual. “I don’t want to fuck someone who’s not into it, birdie. I don’t play that way. Never.”

Wrong. Somehow in this conversation that started with such an innocent question, Hawks has answered wrong, and Dabi looks angrier than Hawks can imagine. His pulse actually quickens, dumbfounded.

“Why is this suddenly fucked up when it’s literally been our joke?” Hawks hears himself say weakly. It’s almost drowned out by his own heartbeat. He doesn’t get it. Why is Dabi so angry on his behalf?

“Because there’s a difference between a consenting fucking adult with a full frontal lobe and an actual child,” Dabi snaps. He actually has the audacity to raise his voice. “Fuck, when I was thirteen, I—“

He stops, halting with the same terseness as Hawks only moments before. Dabi ruffles his own hair with a hand. He recalibrates his poker face. Hawks can tell because his will always be better.

“You want to prove yourself in the league?” Dabi says finally. “Fine. But you’re not fucking your way to the top through me. I don’t play that game.”

Panic. More panic. Dabi isn’t like the assignments Hawks has had before—because every behavioral study Hawks has ever thought about around Dabi quickly gets bulldozed.

“You’re the only person I’m seeing right now,” Hawks confesses finally. “I don’t have any outstanding assignments.”

Thankfully there’s something in that statement Dabi likes. Dabi glances back at him skeptically.

“You’re not an assignment,” Hawks says next. “I’m trying to separate myself from the Commission, remember?”

He needs to reassess the situation. Emphasize his motive again. He’s gotten too far in the league for one random conversation to blow it up in his face.

He needs this to work.

“What about you?” Hawks asks weakly. “I’m not hearing any Grindr notification sounds or some shit when I’m with you.”

Dabi snorts, which brings them a bit closer to their usual dynamic. Hawks actually feels the panic lift off his wings. It’s quiet, but Dabi answers.

“You’re the only one I’m seeing too,” Dabi says finally.

Oh, again.

Something flutters. Maybe his wings. Maybe Hawks himself. He’s halfway back to his mental drawing board, only for it to suddenly turn into a blackboard with no tractions. Hawks can’t slip again.

“I’m,” Hawks says dumbly. Unsurely. “I’m sorry.”

Dabi glances at him. The apology is unexpected.

“Please don’t turn my dick into yakitori like the other guy’s.”

Another snort. A laugh, even, which makes Hawks’s shoulders fall with relief.

Hawks tries to laugh, too, but it comes out empty. Somehow Dabi has dissected it all out of him in this conversation. He’s fatigued.

“I’m sorry,” Hawks says once again. He isn’t sure to whom. Or why, but he feels like a disappointment somehow.

Dabi does something he doesn’t expect. He puts away whatever damn report he’s working on—the juicy underworld assignment Hawks was supposed to receive—and leans over to press a kiss to Hawks’s forehead. It’s wet. It tingles. It’s…surprisingly gentle.

“I don’t need an apology,” Dabi replies. Maybe there’s relief there. Hawks has never yearned more for their sense of normalcy to return where they press all of each other's buttons through sex or otherwise.

But he cradles his forehead. Dabi’s words usually start a flame. Instead, Hawks tingles.

“I’ve never not wanted sex with you,” Hawks admits. It’s surprisingly easy. And embarrassing. Hawks doesn’t even know what fucked up thing Dabi doesn’t want to share with him but somehow this whole song and dance doesn’t feel like a scapegoat. “It’s fun. We have hot sex.”

Hawks actually wants it. Dabi asks him every time, how does he want it. Maybe that’s what’s different. Dabi wants him to sass and piss off and snicker. He doesn’t want a compliant little bird. It’s just not them.

“S’pretty hot,” Dabi agrees under his breath. He crawls into the bed beside Hawks and just…sits there. Stroking Hawks’s back with fingers combing through feathers. Hawks shudders. His wings seem to fold with the touch, like that tiny gesture on his forehead has permeated through the rest of his body.

Hawks takes it as his cue to climb on top of Dabi—but Dabi stops him.

“No.”

“No?”

“Let’s just hang. I’ll give you that assignment in the morning.”

“‘In the morning?’” Hawks repeats. He’s puzzled. “You want me to stay?”

“Do you want to stay?”

No, is Hawks’s first thought. The double agent life is exhausting. He was supposed to play this same song and dance on repeat and report back to the commission. Whatever it takes. However long it takes.

But, if he goes home, he’s just going to think about work. What opportunity he missed. What he’s currently missing, now. And weirdly, between a simple chaste kiss and a gentle caress across his wings, Hawks’s fight or flight seems to have taken a vacation. Fierce Wings isn’t working right now.

“Not gonna make or break this mission I’m gonna give you,” Dabi mutters. “I need an aerial assist. I need the best.”

Hawks…doesn’t have to be working right now.

“The best, huh?”

“Did I stutter, Number Two?”

No, he didn’t. Hasn’t. He worried about Hawks. Worries.

“No,” Hawks reassures. “You’re annoyingly clear for someone who sounds like they need their muffler changed.”

Dabi snorts. A true, genuine laugh that Hawks is happy to pull out of him.

“Yeah,” Hawks decides finally. He shudders again as Dabi brushes a hand through his feathers. “I’ll stay.”

For the first time seventeen years, Hawks clocks out of work.

Chapter Text

It’s the last skewer of chicken yakitori. Hawks had grabbed two orders on his way to meet Dabi. The phrase dumbass birdbrain is decorated with this shit-eating grin. The hapless amount of sex helps. Like, a lot.

Turns out Dabi knows how to give a good dicking. Like, insanely good. Like—Hawks can’t get Dabi out of his head—either in him, or around him. He sat still once at his agency and just…shivered. Hawks had to stop midway through patrol earlier this week and just fuck the thoughts out of himself.

So maybe there’s a little more flirting now. Dabi says one or two good fucks isn’t just going to cut it, but the dread only lasts so long in Hawks’s mind. Dabi can be an ass, and Hawks can be an ass back.

In fact, he almost forgets he’s on the clock while he yammers on while explaining to Dabi what the best stir fry sauces are at the market.

“How the fuck do you know that?” Dabi snorts. “You never cook.”

“I support local businesses,” Hawks rebukes. “Even the evil ones. Obviously.”

Dabi rolls his eyes, but there’s no real indication that he’s annoyed.

It’s when they get to it. The last skewer of yakitori. They both stare at it.

Two things Hawks adores are suddenly in full view. Giving Dabi shit, and a mean piece of fried chicken. Dabi hardly looks like he’s reaching for it—

“I’ll suck you off for it.”

Dabi’s head whips back. Hawks smirks.

“How about a cock for some dick?” Hawks asks innocently. Dabi looks put out of place during this rooftop rendezvous. “I saw how you were looking at me.”

“That’s ‘cause I was wondering if you were gonna regurgitate it or something,” Dabi retorts. He growls a little.

“What, and feed you?”

“Fucking disgusting.”

“I’ve had worse in my mouth.”

Dabi wrinkles his nose once again.

Then, he slowly pushes the carton towards Hawks. Hawks sits upright gleefully, his wings fluttering behind him.

“Better be worth it,” Dabi mutters.

“Please. I know how to make you sing.” Hawks all but shoves the entire stick down his mouth intentionally.

First dinner, then a Dabi dessert.

*

The lunch is strategically coordinated. Dabi’s psych evaluation is arranged at 1PM on a Thursday. Hawks cuts a deal with Dabi. He’ll set a timer on his phone (“See? Pressing the start button right now. Check the digits.”) along with two alarm clocks (“Ringtone set. Second alarm clock for thirty minutes after my first one—”

“Hold up.” Dabi had actually snatched the phone out of his hand in the middle of Hawks’s convincing demonstration. “Your ringtone’s called Chirp?”

“Chirp, chirp.”)

He has an audio set up for his second alarm that screams in Dabi’s voice, GO EAT, ASSHOLE!

Dabi had chastised him for that one. (“You can remember to be a bitch but you can’t be bothered to take a lunch break?” “This was important.” )

It’s a performance, of course. This is important, and Hawks fully intends to proceed in the most conscientious way possible. Dabi isn’t giving him much to work with.

“You’re hiding something,” Dabi accuses.

“How dare you say that? How would you know?”

“Because—” Dabi stops, surprisingly. He wrinkles his nose and bows his head. “Whatever. I’ll be back in an hour. You better have eaten something by the time I get back.”

“Kiss me later and you might find out.”

Dabi snorts.

Hawks would normally pry, but he’s really trying to get Dabi out of here.

“If you don’t eat, a kiss is all you’re gonna get,” Dabi grumbles.

“Byeeeeee.”

The psych evaluation is only two floors below them, facilitated with a pro-hero outside of the room for security. Admittedly, Hawks has forgotten to eat on the days Dabi has psych evaluations and received an earful.

(Studies confirmed that one skipped meal was enough to trigger Dabi’s murderous intent. Which has resulted in multiple meetings with the chief of HR, who has even more murderous intent.)

This is a meeting Hawks can’t skip, though. He does run late. Fortunately, Rei also appears to be late. They meet each other at the front of the restaurant, while Enji is idly staring out a window.

“Rei-san,” he greets. He’s sure to block the door before either of them can make it in. “Sorry. Did you get held up, too?”

She holds a cooler demeanor than her son—but it’s no doubt where Dabi gets his elegance. She looks happier these days, actually.

“Are you okay meeting like this?” he continues. “I mean—I’m not sure how you and Enji-san have worked it out—”

“Yes,” she reassures before he can finish. “No need to worry. Enji and I have gotten into counseling. I’m seeing seeing someone.”

“Really?” That takes Hawks by surprise.

“Yes.” And, that’s as much as she’ll divulge. She’s not a big taunter like Dabi. Must’ve been an Endeavor-gene, when Endeavor could still roast people with his words. “Thank you, Hawks-kun. I appreciate your concern.”

There’s a strange peace that resonates in Hawks with her smile. He’ll have to figure out how to tell Dabi.

“Sorry, sorry,” he announces when they make it to the restaurant. “I got caught up in work.”

“Shouldn’t you be working less?” Enji arches an eyebrow. “What happened to wanting to make a world where heroes get time off?”

“Someone’s gotta coordinate that.” Hawks shrugs.

“You do so much, Hawks-kun.” Rei flashes a look of concern. Hawks almost forgets Dabi favors her, given she doesn’t look ready to punch him in the throat like her son. “Are you taking time for yourself?”

“I am now, aren’t I?”

Neither Rei nor Enji look convinced. Which reminds Hawks of all the handsome, beautiful, and downright annoying things about Dabi. So he’s able to brush off Enji’s disgruntled doubt and Rei’s jarring concern with ease.

The burns are permanent. Enji appears to be confined to a boot now, rather than a wheelchair. Rei and Enji sit a reasonable distance apart.

They make small talk at first. How their weeks are going. Rei and Enj have apparently started going to counseling and family therapy. He wonders if Enji knows that Rei is seeing someone—but that isn’t his information to share.

Hawks keeps separate tabs on Rei and Enji on top of together for everyone’s safety in this family.

Fuyumi-kun has apparently joined in on family counseling. Enji is grateful for that. When given the option to continue living on campus, Shouto decided to take it with a handful of other students. Rei and Enji still look solemn about the decision, but have come to terms with it. Natsu-kun still talks to Rei and primarily Fuyumi and Shouto about wedding planning. Enji is accepting of the decision, but it’s clear how much regret is in his eyes.

They tumble into the conversation about Dabi. Touya. They look reluctant to ask, as if Hawks couldn’t sense the motive from a while away, Luckily, bitch Hawks’s alarm goes off—

GO EAT, ASSHOLE! GO EAT, ASSHOLE! GO EAT, ASSHOLE!

—at max volume. Hawks doesn’t blink when he goes to turn it off. Rei and Enji jump in their seats.

“Sorry,” Hawks says. “I had to reassure him that I was going to remember to eat.”

The baffled looks on their faces don’t go away immediately.

“We get into fights about it,” Hawk continues. “Apparently I have a habit of working too much.”

“Well you do,” Enji answers unhelpfully.

“Do you have difficulty eating, Hawks-kun?” Rei’s demeanor suddenly flashes with concern.

“Oh—no. Just remembering from time-to-time.” Hawks waves a dismissive hand. “Dabi can be such an ass. He’ll make me lock my computer at 5PM when he thinks it’s time to go home, like I don’t pay him overtime. You know he gave Mera a log of my bathroom breaks and my eating habits? I think they’re buddy-buddy now, all because numbers are up this quarter.”

By the time he’s done talking, Enji’s jaw has dropped all the way to the table, while Rei looks at him with confusion reminiscent of their youngest son.

“Dabi works for me,” Hawks explains.

It still takes a second. Hawks can’t bite back a grin if he tried.

“Oh, sorry—” Hawks corrects himself. “Touya-kun works for me.”

“As…your assistant?” Enji asks eventually.

“My bodyguard,” Hawks corrects Enji. “As in, 24/7. Otherwise how would he turn in my bathroom logs for after work, too?”

“You make him work overtime?” Enji continues, offended.

“I pay him,” Hawks reasons. Then he huffs. “He gets time-and-a-half and double on weekends. Triple on holidays. But you know what? Everytime I try to bribe him with more money he just gets pissed off. He definitely has your temper, Enji-san.”

Enji makes another noise. “My—?”

“Ah,” Rei says, “I hadn’t thought about how difficult it would potentially be for him to find a job. It wouldn’t be a good look for the HPSC to release him and then have him find a job with the public. People would talk.”

Finally, Enji seems to get the picture. The vein in his neck looks less like a fifth Todoroki child. He clears his throat, even. “More than usual.”

“You can’t keep your head down and you can’t be nice without making a kid piss themselves.” Hawks sighs. “It’s hard being Endeavor-san.”

Enji wrinkles his nose in a very Dabi-manner. Hawks smiles with only the sincerest of sympathy.

“So,” Rei continues without any of Enji’s misplaced grumpiness, “he’s under your employment?”

“He is,” Hawks confirms.

“We have a trust fund set up for all of the kids. He wouldn’t have to work if he didn’t want to,” Enji reasons.

“That would involve getting in contact with you. Which we decided to approach very slowly and on his terms so we aren’t putting any strain on his heart,” Hawks reminds them. “And why we are having this lunch to catch up on current affairs.”

“We could arrange something,” Rei suggests. “Let me get in touch with our financial advisor. He doesn’t necessarily need to be in contact with us if his name is on the account.”

“I’ll run that by him,” Hawks says. “Though I have a feeling he has a bit too much fun riding my ass to just sit around and do nothing.”

In more ways than one, but that isn’t really polite lunch conversation.

“He can visit us,” Enji points out. “Our door is always open. He doesn’t need to feel like a stranger in his own house—”

”Enji.” Rei reaches for her (ex?)-husband’s shoulder. It’s almost eerie how effective it is. “We can’t force a relationship with him. We have to meet him on his terms. It’s what the therapist said.”

Enji ceases immediately like a doused flame. His shoulders fall under the weight of his own regret. “Right.”

The air grows heavy with the sadness of the Todoroki parents.

GO EAT, ASSHOLE! GO EAT, ASSHOLE! GO EAT—

Hawks presses snooze on his phone again. They earn a few looks, but it thankfully welcomes a change in topic.

Enji clears his throat tiredly. “So…he’s under your employment. As your bodyguard.”

“Yes,” Hawks says. “And he lives with me.”

“What?”

“Ah.” Rei once again catches on much faster than her husband. “He wouldn’t be able to get an apartment by himself or be able to afford the deposit.”

“Hard to prove your credit score when you’ve technically been dead for the better half of ten years,” Hawks solemnly agrees.

Enji once again settles into the fact, though with some clear reluctance.

“Hawks-kun,” Rei says out of nowhere. She stands to her feet and slowly descends into a bow—

“Oh, uh, Rei-san—”

“Thank you, truly, for giving Touya this second chance at life.” She stands to her feet with the same sageness as her youngest son. “I can’t even begin to express the amount of gratitude that we feel from the second chance that you’ve allotted him.”

“It’s my pleasure Rei-san, don’t—”

“But you’re doing a lot,” Rei continues. She raises her gaze and stares at Hawks with this…gentle concern that disarms Hawks. “You’ve done so much for our family. You can’t deny that we’re asking a tremendous amount out of you. You, too, need time to recover from this war.”

“Ah, Rei-san—I appreciate your concern, but a new roommate and a new employee to pay is hardly putting me out—”

“You lost a quirk that was a physical part of you for most of your life and are now housing an S-Rank arsonist and killer on top of a highly stressful job position with the Hero Public Safety Commission.” Rei’s words are blunt. Very blunt. Sure, everything above is true, but Hawks sooner expected the Todoroki Family to desperately try to sweep everything under the rug. Then again—that didn’t quite work out the first time.

“Rei-san,” Hawks says—once he can muster the ability to speak again—“I’m flattered you think so highly of me. Truly. It takes a certain…endurance to be able to handle the affairs of the Commission. So long as the people of Musutafu are safe, I can rest knowing that I’ve done my job well.”

“Trauma isn’t something to be compared, Hawks-san. If you invest all of your time healing others, you won’t be able to heal yourself.” Rei’s lips purse together in yet another frown. “Please, don’t ever make yourself small in front of us. Enji spoke highly of you even before Touya’s release. We care about you as a person before we care about the ways you’ve helped us.”

Her gaze is as eloquent as it is stern. Hawks’s mouth falls open, stunlocked. He glances over to Enji, who also didn’t anticipate the prose. While Rei isn’t a fighter, she has the poker face to rival the best of them.

Then, as the food arrives at the table, she takes her seat as though nothing happened. Hawks can’t even begin to muster a response.

Enji does, though. He awkwardly clears his throat.

“The therapy has worked wonders on our relationship,” he remarks.

*

It’s a chill evening. One where Hawks can finally tuck away how he needs to act around Dabi, after too many personal slip ups. They cuddle. Which is just weird because Hawks has never left a client cuddling.

Except—technically, Dabi isn’t his client. The Commission is, and this specific case required a special touch. Dabi is supposed to be his in. They’ve made progress. Hawks has made waves in his assignment. Dabi has given him more difficult evil assignments, and in turn, the commission has asked even more of him.

He hasn’t slept much—but success is always rewarded with more work on both ends.

Dabi makes him perch in a storage pod near the docks in a nearby town. Something about books.

“You need a bargain?” Hawks guesses.

”I haggle just fine.”

“So do I.”

“I’m better.”

“Yeah, but I’m the best.”

Dabi rolls his eyes. “Best pain in my ass.”

Hawks pauses for a moment. He presses a hand to his chest. “I’m honored.”

Dabi snorts, which inherently makes the corners of Hawks’s lips twitch. “None of that shit tonight, birdie. I just need an extra pair of eyes and ears to make sure I'm not getting swindled.”

“Say no more. You need me for my wings.” Hawks mock-salutes. “Told you I was useful.”

Hawks wants to think he’s gotten used to reading Dabi’s expressions. It’s varying degrees of shit-eating grins, zombie moans, and this underlying intent in his gaze that gives Hawks goosebumps to think about. Dabi is a dangerous guy.

Dabi’s lips shift by the slightest degree and he grunts. He points in a shifty corner. “Stay over there.”

“Yes, your grumpiness.” They turn separate ways for a moment—but then Hawks tugs at the back of Dabi’s jacket.

“What?”

“Your tag’s sticking out.” Hawks tucks it back into Dabi’s jacket and pats him on the back. “Go forth and be an asshole. You have the blessing of your best pain in the ass.”

This time, Dabi does give him a look. Dabi squints, looking suspicious (because why wouldn’t he be?) and presses a hand to his collared shirt.

Dabi’s meeting lasts about an hour. There’s some light banter—but otherwise stringent. Dabi wouldn’t hold such a high rank within the PLF without merit. If the Commission didn’t consider the League of Villains a threat, then they wouldn’t have assigned the job to Hawks.

He comes out of his hidey-hole at the single call of, “Oi, birdie.”

Hawks jumps off the edge of a storage pod, accumulating all of his feathers as he does so, until he lands with a grateful descent.

“Hear anything suspicious?” Dabi asks first.

“Wrote it all down,” Hawks reassures. He pocket a quill and notebook. Dabi gives him a funny look. ”Nice bargaining skills. Maybe I underestimated you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Red climbs the back of Hawks’s neck. There’s some truth to that, but Dabi doesn’t need to know. “Could’a gone faster my way. Just saying.”

“Faster ain’t always better.”

“Just a matter of knowing your audience.” Hawks smiles pleasantly.

To his surprise, Dabi doesn’t look pleased.

So, Hawks continues. “Hey, there’s a really good chicken karaage stand not too far from here. We should go.”

“You and your chicken.”

”Haven’t heard you complain about my cock before.”

Dabi entertains the jab with a snicker because Hawks knows his audience.

They go back to his apartment to eat in silence. It’s just quieter there rather than the villa. Twice would cry and wave dismissively about not getting to have any chicken. Toga would be “narrating loudly in her head” until they went upstairs to fuck.

And—in a way, Hawks enjoys the quiet. He isn’t constantly shifting through personas in his own apartment for different people. Just Dabi.

Dabi, as he makes fun of how empty Hawks’s fridge is, while quietly judging Hawks for the packed freezer. Dabi, as he ritually grabs plates from the cabinet and allows Hawks the chance to change into evening civvies.

By the end of it, Hawks is spent from his dayshift as a hero and his evening shift as a spy. At some point, he sprawled across Dabi, and Dabi didn’t call him a parasite, so Hawks got comfy. All that’s left are dirty dishes.

“Birdie.” Dabi snaps his fingers—which means Hawks really tried to fall asleep. ”I gotta leave.”

Hawks makes a noise. “No…”

He pulls Dabi closer. A full week’s exhaustion just piles onto him. For some reason, Dabi’s rigid.

“We’re done with the assignment. I’m outta here.”

“Stay the night.”

“What?”

Hawks pulls away against his will. “Stay the night. I’m just gonna have to go bug you later anyway.”

“We don’t do that.”

“Well, let’s do it.” Hawks rolls onto his back and stretches until he’s sprawled across all of Dabi’s lap. “C’mon, you’re so comfy…”

“You sound like a child.”

“You wouldn’t say half the things you say to me to a child. Not even you’re that heartless.”

“Wanna bet?”

“No, I want you to stay. Duh.”

Dabi scrunches his nose, somehow still suspicious. “‘Duh.’”

“Duh,” Hawks repeats cheekily.

“I could kill you in your sleep.”

“I could kill you in your sleep.” Hawks waves another hand and tugs at Dabi’s collared shirt. “We’re in agreement then. We’ll just sleep.”

“Just sleep?”

“Maybe more if you’re good.” Hawks yawns. “Or if you’re bad.”

Dabi wrinkles his nose. “Fine. But I’m not putting any dishes away.”

*

Dabi is waiting for home when he gets back to the office. Slouched, back against the cushion. A 7Eleven bag sits in front of him on the coffee table. He busies himself with a book. “You’re late.”

“Lunch plans ran long.” Hawks stops in front of the coffee table and candidly peruses the bag. There’s an unopened chicken onigiri. “That for me?”

“You had lunch plans,” Dabi repeats. “Who’s important enough that you actually remembered to eat?”

“Who said I ate during my lunch plans?”

Dabi gives him a look that confirms, no, that would be worse. “Who was it?”

“No one important.”

“So why’d you have it during my psych evaluation?”

Hawks bites back a sigh. A sigh would show Dabi was getting to him. “Your psych eval go well?”

“Stop changing the subject.”

“I’m not.” Hawks raises the 7Eleven bag. “What kind of onigiri is this?”

Dabi scowls. Hawks couldn’t roll his eyes further to the back of his head. “Why are you dodging me?”

“Why are you acting like it’s the end of the world?”

“Because I don’t trust you!”

The words hit Hawks to the core. His jaw tightens, and he whirls around, irritated. “What do you want me to say, Dabi?”

“Tell me who you had lunch with,” Dabi snaps. “Who was so goddamn important that for once since I met you, you actually stopped working for a second? Why’s he so goddamn important to you?”

Dabi already knows. He just wants confirmation. Hawks is taken aback for a second—but Dabi takes the moment of reluctance as all the confirmation.

“FUCK HI—” Dabi’s tantrum seizes.

“Dabi?” Hawks’s irritation diminishes immediately. “Dabi—”

Dabi clutches his chest and wheezes. He takes a sharp breath, heaving and trembling—

And out of nowhere, he collapses.

“Dabi!”

*

It’s not the sunlight coming through the window that wakes Hawks up, but the smell of breakfast. Maple syrup, eggs, and chicken. Eggs and chicken, separate.

He climbs out of bed and palms around for sweatpants. His first thought is an intruder—no one ever comes to his apartment. Then he remembers. If it was one thing Dabi and he could agree on, it was sleeping with the blinds up and curtains open. There was so little fight about that when it came to falling asleep that Hawks had to catch up to his own surprise.

He finds shirtless Dabi in all his glory, pouring some kind of batter from a pitcher into a pan and humming to himself.

“You get good sleep, Number Two?”

“What’re you doing?”

“Making breakfast.” The waistband of his borrowed sweats hang low on Dabi’s hips. Dabi has an intriguing frame that tapers more sharply and quickly than Hawks’s own, quickly concaving into narrow but very clutchable hips.

“Where did all of this come from?” Hawks glances at the kitchen set up. “Did you break into a Family Mart?”

“Just your kitchen drawers. You still had tags on most of these.” Dabi casually flips a pancake. It's strange to see him the lighting of an orange coil stove. “It was like walking into an IKEA display.”

“You’ve been into an IKEA?”

“Evil hideout ain’t gonna decorate itself.”

Hawks steps into his pristine kitchen. What once smelled like stale air from disuse now permeates with a sweet and savory flavor that makes his mouth water. Burned dust tickles his nose.

Dabi taps a cupboard without looking up from the pan. “Pancake mix was from your cupboard.”

“There’s stuff in there?”

Dabi arches an eyebrow. “I can’t tell how serious you are.”

“I can’t believe I have Lieutenant Dabi in my kitchen making me breakfast.” Hawks leans against the doorframe, mesmerized. So weird. “I assume you were trying to find some dirt on me.”

“Naturally.” Dabi gestures to the cabinet. “Then I found a bunch of unopened stuff in your pantry and a freezer full of fried chicken.”

He leans over to the fridge and opens it with one curled finger. Hawks gets a pleasant view of the waistband sliding lower on bare skin. Dabi really has elegant proportions under his stylistically raggedy clothes.

(A joke that earned him a snicker that Hawks might’ve been a bit too proud of.)

“You know your orange juice expires next week?”

“Oh, nice.”

“They shove enough preservatives in here to last six months.” Dabi shakes his head in disbelief and places it on the kitchen island behind him. It’s kinda hot. “You really aren’t home much, are you?”

“How could I possibly stay home when there’s so much work to be done?”

Dabi glances in Hawks’s direction. There’s a peculiar gleam in his eye that’s hard to decipher. Hawks has spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. What Dabi isn’t saying.

“Nice place you got here,” Dabi says. “Shame to give up that paycheck.”

“I’ll say. You know it bought me pancake mix?” Hawks reaches into the cabinet and inspects the box of mix. It’s still mostly full, covered in a thin layer of dry batter.

Dabi snorts—and then he laughs with a warmth akin to the stovetop. It’s a strange image. Dabi, the villain, cooking breakfast in Hawks’s kitchen. Laughing at a joke that Hawks didn’t tell at his expense.

It’s…peaceful. Disarming. “Anything I can help with?”

Dabi gestures to a cabinet without looking up. “Get the table set up to eat. If you know where that is.”

More teasing from Dabi this time. Hawks’s lips stretch into a grin. “I think I’ll manage.”

He forgets to go over his morning plans in favor of a homemade breakfast.

*

They get to the hospital quickly. Of course they do. It’s the damn Commission. The Commission knows how to turn even the basic principle of reality into something inhumane to magically get to where they are.

Hawks can barely hear the sounds around them. Everything is garbled. With Fierce Wings, he could pick up on every sound, every piece of gossip, every whisper. His mind is a fog while every sense is focused on Dabi beneath the respirator. Strapped to a hospital bed with dozens of doctors around him.

“—ly family allowed behind the door, President—”

“I’m his lover.” Or something like that. Hawks knows in times of panic, all that matters is finding the path of least resistance. The best way to pivot to get where he needs—and he needs to be by Dabi right now.

There’s a trail of cameramen at the door, scandalized at the claim—at any ounce of the ex-Number Two Hero’s love life after time in the spotlight—but Hawks pays no mind. The concept of saving face was something he had to learn because he was born without one. It holds as much value to Hawks as his wings ever did.

Toting around the big bad President title lets him in the gallery to watch them operate. It’s almost worse. Hawks watches them resuscitate Dabi twice. His own heart waits for descent when Dabi’s pulse finally steadies.

Finally, surgery finishes. His privileges allow him to wait into the room where Dabi resides. Less media that way. Eventually, Dabi is back in the room, asleep. Watching the heart monitor beep almost feels like a gamble.

“His secondary quirk thought he was in danger,” the doctor says. “It was…unforeseen. It flared and froze his pacemaker. The one we gave him was meant to withstand extreme heat. We replaced it with one to counteract the cold.”

“Is it heat resistant?”

“To…a certain degree.”

“So what happens the next time he’s in danger and his body melts it instead? You gonna cut him open again and put another one in?”

The doctor looks perplexed. Hawks’s scowl spreads.

“As I understand, the chamber at his holding facility was equipped to handle the fluctuations in his body temperature—“

“His two choices can’t be living in a cage or dead.”

The doctor startles. Normally Hawks has the social grace to stay calm. Every tone of voice is calculated, trained under high duress. No training could help him with this one.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor says. “A compact version of that technologically doesn’t exist right now.”

Then it needs to.

“We’d like to keep him overnight for observation,” the doctor says. “He’s in stable condition now. So long as the night goes smoothly he can get discharged in the morning.”

Hawks sighs. He massages his temples.

“Is there anyone I should call—?”

“No. I’ll make all of the necessary arrangements.”

The doctor leaves.

This industrial pacemaker is supposed to keep Dabi’s heart beating. In reality, he needs a new one—but he’s so far down the donor list that he doesn’t stand a chance. No one would willingly give a heart to an S Rank war criminal like Dabi.

Hawks would know. Toward the end of the day, when people stop needing him, he’s finally able to research every patent and product in hopes of finding a solution to save Dabi’s heart. Every time he gets close, Dabi, the dumbass he is, demands he stop working.

“You’re such a dumbass,” Hawks mutters under his breath.

Dabi, hooked up to all these wires and intubated. Pale skin laced with coarse scars. Burning with rage turned his body frigid with hate. Even when Hawks tried every possible way to avoid Dabi finding out, to avoid this possibility.

“Guess you can’t tell me to get off my damn computer now.” Hawks unzips his laptop case.

He gets to work finding Dabi a new heart.

*

“I’ll suck you off for it.”

Dabi’s had this smile all morning in this little bubble. This grin that seemed to grow each time Hawks took a bite of pancake and fried chicken. Hawks might be laying it on thick. He’s having fun following Dabi’s eyes. He’s having fun.

So he doesn’t expect Dabi’s brow to wrinkle, or that grin suddenly shift. It looks…different again, and Hawks isn’t keen on letting it fester.

“What?” Hawks licks the corner of his mouth, caked in maple syrup, and leans across the table, trying to keep his cool. “You’re enjoying me enjoying this, aren’t you?”

Dabi shoves the plate across the table. His like stretch into a grimace. “If you want a piece of chicken, just ask for it. You don’t need to proposition me.”

“What?”

“Stop doing that shit.”

Hawks laughs. Then he realizes Dabi isn’t laughing with him. “Dabi, it’s just chicken.”

“Yeah, it’s just chicken.” The crease of Dabi’s grimace grows. It’s not that he looks pissed off. Hawks has pissed Dabi off before—for fun, for joy. He looks genuinely…upset, and Hawks doesn’t know how a simple proposition could evoke such a reaction.

He pushes the plate towards Hawks, but it’s hard to tear away from the look on Dabi’s face.

The pit of Hawks’s stomach suddenly fills with concrete, his appetite lost.

What just went wrong? How does he recover from this?

Is there anything to recover from this?

“Hawks—”

“What?” Hawks. Dabi is calling him Hawks, instead of Number Two or birdie, and suddenly the absence of a derogatory pet name just feels…wrong.

Dabi is staring at him. Studying him.

A game with Dabi is always filled with careful strategizing and tiptoeing—an uncurated dance where they both failed to step on each other’s toes. Instead, Dabi’s lips are pressed into a stern line, and his eyes are a piercing blue. His gaze isn’t just to fuck with Hawks. Not this time.

There’s gravitas before Dabi’s response. A held breath in an arena—except Hawks is the sole player, and Dabi is a referee judging him.

“Take the chicken,” Dabi says finally. He says the phrase so simply that Hawks wonders if he’s hallucinating this game.

“Well now I don’t want it.”

Dabi sighs, annoyed. It’s not a result of one of Hawks’s antics. “Birdie—”

“What?”

“Don’t—” Dabi’s remark is sharp at first—which brings comfort. Then it’s soft. “You don’t need to do shit like that for me, okay? I didn’t make you pancakes just to get into your pants.”

“Why else would you?”

Dabi looks at him incredulously. Hawks has said some mind-boggling things before, but this one clearly takes the cake. He pinches the bridge of his nose slowly. Irately. Then his shoulders fall.

“Because I wanted to,” Dabi says flatly. “You had a mausoleum full of untouched pantry food supplied by the goddamn Commission, and I wanted to. Happy?”

Hawks runs out of words. He has no idea what’s crawled up Dabi’s ass, but the words are fueled with frustration and irritation. It’s charged. Hawks was trying to keep the problem from festering, but to Dabi, it’s clearly ripened and rotted before they ever got to this conversation. “Getting your dick wet is why you’re letting me in on all these little privileges, isn’t it?”

Dabi’s nose scrunches once more. The seam at the bridge of his nose looks more prominent.

There’s no smart remark that comes next. He just stares at Hawks.

“Dabi—”

“You said you wanna be free of that cage the Commission put you in?” Dabi cuts him off. “Consider this the first step.”

Hawks is speechless.

Apparently that act alone is enough to move a chess piece for him. Dabi shifts in his seat and glares at the plate.

“You’re still useful for assignments and shit. This doesn’t change anything.” Dabi stabs his pancake with a fork.

“What, am I not good enough for you?” Hawks sits taller in his seat, his jaw tightening. What went wrong? What went wrong? “I’m not adequate? I’ll—”

“What? No, dumba—“ Dabi stops short. He massages his temples and seethes. “No. But I’m not going to exploit you when you’ve had a fucking lifetime of that already. I’m evil, but I’m not fucking scum, birdie. I’m not a monster. Got it?”

This is a test.

This…isn’t a test.

This…isn’t something Hawks knows how to process.

It might just be chicken.

Dabi’s declaration signals the end of this discussion—one that’s apparently loomed for a long time. He chews on his pancake, keen on moving the topic along.

“So you don’t want to fuck me again?” Hawks asks carefully. It’s hardly breakfast conversation.

Dabi’s face scrunches all over again. It’s hard to describe, but he does look ready to smack Hawks. “I want you to want me to fuck you.”

Hawks can’t tell if he heard correctly.

“Don’t feel obligated, or whatever,” Dabi continues. “Seriously.”

Not a duty, not an assignment, not an obligation. Not even a test.

Failure is a fall that Hawks tries to avoid.

Somehow, instead of flapping helplessly in the sky, there’s a weight lifted off his shoulders.

“Can I still have the chicken?” Hawks asks. At some point in time, his throat started to hurt. It’s tight.

Dabi pushes the plate towards him without hesitation.

Hawks is tentative as he pushes his fork into it.

As he takes a bite—nothing changes. They’re still sitting there, enjoying the morning.

Chapter Text

Dabi wakes up eventually. His head feels like shit. His mouth tastes even worse. The bleakness of the white walls and the ceiling come into center focus—and he jolts up, panicked—

“Easy.” A hand splays across his chest. Tan. Golden. Dabi knows this hand. And this voice, despite how hoarse it sounds. “You’re safe. It’s only been a few days.”

Dabi stares at the hand on his chest—then to the wiry scruff on the HPSC president, who has been his roommate for the last month. Hawks’s face illuminates with the bleak lighting of his laptop. His hair—normally perfectly coifed—dangles into his face, as though never touched. His eyes are sunken against his face, buried deep under layers of bags. But he doesn’t blink.

He’s still unfairly handsome, even hunkered over a laptop screen and splayed across a chair in the worst sitting position ever imaginable. That was always Hawks in a nutshell.

“It was Endeavor-san.”

The words echo throughout the hospital room, bouncing off each wall like the face of a cellar. Hawks doesn’t break concentration from his computer. Not even once. His voice is steady, but barely above a speaking volume. His palm hasn’t moved from the center of Dabi’s chest. His other hand is on his trackpad, scrolling through who knows what.

“I had lunch with Endeavor-san and Rei-san,” Hawks repeats.

The stupid old man and Mom.

“They want to see you. I told them I’d talk to you about it to make sure you were ready, or that you even wanted to.” Hawks’s face twists, but the whites of his eyes are all-consuming. Streaks of red strain the space outside of his irises until they’re dead center of an empty painting. “I know that even the thought of Endeavor puts undue stress on you. But I already promised them I’d keep them in the loop about your progress.”

Because he’s Hawks’s responsibility. Hawks’s stupid self-imposed assignment.

“I was trying to avoid this.” Hawks finally shuts his laptop. A crease appears between his brow, and it furrows. “But clearly, even the thought of the idea of him is life threatening.”

He’s annoyed. Of course he fucking is. Dabi was never going to tip the scale when it came to Endeavor.

Even with everything out in the open, Hawks chose to give Endeavor the benefit of the doubt.

Endeavor’s worst helped sculpt Hawks’s best. Dabi met Hawks, but Endeavor made an impression on Keigo first. Endeavor became part of the reason Takami Keigo shed his identity and treated it like a goddamn chalice.

“I’m sorry.”

The hand molds against Dabi’s chest at the dip of his chest between his pecs. It’s thin and wrung out.

“Maybe if I was honest in the first place we would’ve been able to avoid this,” Hawks continues. “I wouldn’t have gotten you so worked up.”

He’s not blaming Dabi. Touya isn’t at fault for…expressing himself.

“Watching you collapse like that was fucking awful,” Hawks continues. “I thought you died.”

He bows his head and folds a hand over his eyes, defeated.

There’s a crack again. This thin, hairline fracture in the theater mask the Commission groomed into the hasbeen Number Two Hero. One that Hawks has always been hyper aware of, when it happened. Hawks’s ability to rebound and recover was even more impressive than the velocity of his wings. Shed of his feathers, Hawks doesn’t seem to care if he’s fast to recover his usual demeanor.

Dabi had a lot of time in his holding cell to think about it in retrospect. The less-than-handful of times he was able to catch the contusion in the mask, and the plentiful where he’s narrowed down the little imperfections when they’ve appeared. He made a game of it once upon a time.

The wrinkle between Hawks’s brows and the bags under his eyes are chasms. Wide ditches of stress, unearthed for an audience of one. Dabi has a front row seat.

“...n’s the last time you slept?” Dabi’s voice sounds like ass. Broken glass rattles in his throat like it’s grinding against asphalt.

Hawks peeks up, gold eyes unsettlingly glum. Another crack—a simple crease that outlines his brow. Then a perplexed laugh. In hindsight, Hawks had done a lot of that, too. “How is my sleep schedule the first thing you ask about waking up? Instead of you calling me a dumbass or asshole or dumbass birdbrain asshole?”

Someone has to care, since the Commission conditioned Hawks out of caring about himself. It’s asinine.

It’s the last thing Dabi expected of himself when he first met the hotshot hero. To care so much. “‘Cause dumbass.”

Hawks’s chuckle is heavy. His mouth dips into some vague semblance of a smile. It nearly glows through the Commission’s mask because it’s his smile. “I’ll get someone to check you out and arrange a ride for us.”

Good. The less time Dabi needed to spend in a hospital, the better.

There’s no doubt he’s in the most secluded wing of the hospital. There’s likely no one around him, out of their safety. Only Hawks would be stupid enough to lay a hand on him like Dabi couldn’t burn them to a crisp.

The doctor inspects him. Apparently, Dabi is supposed to avoid cold drinks until their next checkup. Three helpings of warm soup a day, until he felt better. The chasm in Hawks’s faltered expression closes enough for him to bust a joke about chicken noodle soup. Even with this easy, rehearsed smile, the doctor still seems rattled.

Hawks stares through him more than at Dabi. Likely going through all the days of work he missed. When Touya was younger, the old man found the visits to the doctor a waste of time, too. Touya tried to prove himself. Touya tried to be good and aimed to make his hero father proud. Endeavor only ever got angrier.

Dabi’s waiting for the same scowl to appear across Hawks’s face—but it doesn’t. Hawks apologized, and the rest of their evening is mindful of not mentioning Endeavor again.

Not that Dabi could even have a conversation avoiding mentioning Endeavor without winding up in a hospital. Dabi actively has to push Endeavor out of his mind, but it’s not like the old man ever cared for his goals or aspirations.

Hawks can admire Endeavor in daylight, but he’s basically chained to Dabi in the backseat of the windowless van for every over aspect of this sorry excuse of a life. For discretion, of course. Anyone who knows the current status of the President of the Commission may try to kill him.

President Hawks, for some goddamn reason, chose to put himself in this circumstance as Dabi’s caretaker, Dabi’s keeper, Dabi’s everything.

Well—everything that spelled the words, self-induced cage.

Despite everything that’s happened, Hawks has treated this circumstance between them without any sign of remiss. Like yesterday happened, and now they’re in tomorrow, with no pained beats in between.

Maybe there aren’t any pained beats. Maybe it’s all in Dabi’s head, and nothing was ever there, like he suspected. After all, that’s why he knew he couldn’t trust Hawks in the first place.

It was always just going to be work for Hawks.

Dabi had to let go because there was no guarantee that Hawks was ever holding on.

They don’t talk on the car ride home. No—poise and charm is reserved for everyone else but Dabi. There’s an itch in Dabi’s throat. A gnarled wound that knows exactly why he had the outburst with Hawks days ago that refuses to go away. Dabi isn’t at a place to pick at that scab.

Hawks breaks the silence when they make it home. Hawks’s apartment, or whatever. “We’ll stay home for the next couple of days. I’ll work from home.”

So no social experiment making other people uncomfortable around them, then. Dabi was back to full house arrest.

“I’ll get food delivered in the morning. Don’t strain yourself. ‘Kay?” Hawks says softly.

It’s not the poise, but it’s more than the hairline fracture that Dabi knows to pry at.

“Don’t worry.” Hawks smiles and nudges him gently. It lacks the sharp movements and precision of their argument, like it never happened. “You’ll get back to riding my ass about shit sooner than you think.”

Hawks is being consciously gentle. Of all the things they’ve ever been to each other, soft was never one of those things. Neither of them had it in their lives to put a name to it.

Hindsight was 20/20, and Dabi had more than enough time in isolation to recall everything in the last ten years of his life. Between unwanted visits from Endeavor and the heartbreaking encounters with the rest of Dabi’s family, where they were all counting the seconds between hours on the analog clock right above the exit of Dabi’s holding cell. Where they could at least say they tried, while that damn itch in Dabi’s throat continued to fester and choke him.

There was a moment of relief when Dabi found out he wouldn’t be incarcerated and required to endure his family anymore. The tiniest notion before Dabi traded the grief of lost time with his family for new time with Hawks. Dabi couldn’t even determine what the lesser of two evils was here. The visceral hate he’d always have for Endeavor, or…birdie.

“‘Kay,” is all Dabi can muster. Talking still hurts. Every time he’s given a chance to reclaim his own body, he has to remind himself that his voice is coming out of a damn corpse.

His room is quiet. Much like the hospital room, Dabi’s blinds are open. It was the worst thing about maximum security incarceration. No idea how much time passed except for a dusty old clock. Dabi wouldn’t know if minutes had passed, hours, or—

Years.

So he preferred sleeping with the curtains pulled open. Getting rudely awoken by the sun was a goddamn pain in the ass, but better than not waking up at all.

But there’s no way one of the nurses would’ve pulled all the curtains and welcomed in sunlight. Not the way the room looked when Dabi woke up.

He has this fight with himself more often than he wants to admit—but they would never be on solid ground around each other. Everything always had to have a different meaning and shit. An ulterior motive and goal that, ultimately, they both pursued for their own goals. The only way to keep two feet on the ground around Hawks was to accept that eventually, it’d get set aflame. This was supposed to end in Wakayama. Dabi was supposed to get the last laugh because no one was allowed to control his life but himself.

Even if in some fucked up way, that time spent with Hawks was the closest Dabi felt to being normal again. Late night dates, flirting. Cohabiting the same space and making each other breakfast. Caring about someone. Things that he never got to experience because the opportunities burned away atop Sekoto Peak.

With Hawks. Japan’s Number Two: Winged Hero, Hawks. Double agent arrogant infuriating dumbass Hawks.

He didn’t sign up for this second chance at life. This fucked up, twisted second chance at…cohabiting with Hawks. Fuck.

Just like last time, Dabi didn’t realize he was in over his head until he was already drowning.

But sometimes a cigar needed to just be a fucking cigar, and Dabi is better off not reading into a goddamn piece of fried chicken being a piece of fried chicken.

So Dabi lays in his bed, where the curtains are open and natural lighting broke through the window before the room was ever deemed his. Moonlight and city sounds carry on seamlessly on the other side of Dabi’s walls—as smoothly as sunrise and sunset, which painted his room in different hues of time without leaving Dabi behind a second time.

*

Fights were so much easier to get through when Dabi could just burn a whole forest down and be comatose for a couple of years. It’s way less of a hassle than being roommates. Worst of all—when that roommate is President Hawks.

The first week of cohabitation involved tiptoeing. Dabi was still digesting the idea that the Commission paid for some fancy pacemaker for his shitty anti-fire heart and that he was free from incarceration. He couldn’t figure out Hawks’s motive. Still can’t.

They bickered in this rhythm that glossed over how things ended. Maybe Dabi should’ve been relieved at this fresh new start, but the idealistic approach never worked out for him. Instead, he had a habit of assuming the worst, and making sure they got to the worst if it meant allowing him to keep the reins of control.

Which—would’ve been a philosophy to be proud of if he hadn’t collapsed in the middle of the president’s office like a wilted daisy from the nagging, tormentous thought that Hawks was always going to like Endeavor more than him.

That was a bag of shitty worms they ever opened in the…before. There isn’t necessarily a lot of wiggle room to open it now.

Dabi doesn’t fall asleep. He stares at the ceiling until sunlight creeps through. Normally Hawks’s loud ass blender wakes him up, as Hawks seemingly slaps and jostles every surface area from the end of the hall to the edge of the kitchen island. It’s second only to his volume over the phone as he trolls whatever commission agent he feels like on that day. Usually, it’s Mera.

Dabi has gotten snippets of conversations. Hard not to, when he’s the hot topic for criminal reformation—but Hawks always manages to steer the conversation in a different direction. The transition is so smooth that if Dabi didn’t spend the better part of a year scrutinizing a double agent, he wouldn’t have picked up on the cadence.

This morning in particular, the day after getting discharged from the hospital, is silent. Any deviation from routine for Hawks is suspicious—but Hawks also thrived in the chaos of unpredictability. Dabi studied Hawks long enough to know all the different machinations. Obsessively, to know when a chaotic stroke is actually a strategic play. Hawks has always known how to give a good performance.

Dabi would never admit to winning on dumb fucking luck alone—but he knew approaching Hawks by never trusting the hero in the first place was his best bet.

Those words just hadn’t been uttered since Wakayama. And somehow unwound to their current weird ass predicament.

He pays no mind to the quiet morning. With luck, Hawks is finally resting. The food Hawks promised sits outside the front door. Must’ve put a preorder before turning in for the night. Sometimes, when Dabi tried to force Hawks into the bare minimum of self care, Hawks put up hurdles. Like automated food delivery so he didn’t have to move. Or offering Dabi raises at work instead of actually going home at a reasonable hour.

All of the anger and frustration of Hawks meeting with Dabi’s parents is tangled up in the fucking awkward…thing with Hawks. They didn’t label it before, and they sure as hell haven’t labeled it now. Everything’s the fucking same and messed up about it and somehow worse.

Whatever the fuck it is. The reason Hawks wants to keep him alive, and why he’s got Dabi in a chokehold. Dabi knows why he’s submitted but he doesn’t know what this game is. Purgatory, maybe, for all the shit that went down.

But, for Hawks to be torturing Dabi would involve Hawks admitting he had a fucking heart. Instead, the world just won’t let Dabi’s heart give out so he can pay penance for all the bad fucking things he’s ever done in his life. Like, existing.

They aren’t anything.

But they are some fucked up thing.

Dabi turns on the TV. If Hawks isn’t going to provide senseless chatter for background noise, then something else would.

“…eek since former Number Two Hero and current HPSC President Hawks, informed the public that he is romantically involved with well-known S-Rank Criminal and former Number One Hero’s son, Todoroki Touya—“

Dabi chokes on his rice. “WHAT?!”

“—known commonly as Dabi. This came moments after the war criminal was ushered to Musutafu’s finest hospital in a private wing. According to sources, as Todoroki, 25, was whisked into the emergency room, Hawks, 24, passionately exclaimed he was the villain’s lover—“

“WHAT?!” Dabi shakes the TV down for answers. Never mind the fact that his voice sounds like absolute shit.

“—at this time, both the Hero Public Safety Commission and Todoroki Family have declined to comment on the situation. We’ve reached out for an exclusive with Todorki Touya’s youngest brother, rising hero, Shouto—”

Dabi freezes for a moment, as a low-quality recording of his youngest brother appears on TV. Shouto, in his school uniform and flanked by the two other twerps from the war.

“What are you doing at my school? Is there media training today, Midoriya?”

“FUCK OFF AND MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!”

“K-Kacchan, your heart—!”

“—cut the cameras, we can’t air that!” someone hisses. “Cut it, cut it now—!”

The screen cuts to black as Dabi accidentally yanks the TV off the wall mount in shock.

“What the fuck?” Dabi demands. Then, “Oh, fuck.”

Dabi stumbles away from the TV, baffled.

Lover.

Hawks fucking told the entire city they were lovers?

Hawks told the entire fucking world they were fucking.

“What the fuck?!” Dabi shouts even louder this time. It takes him a moment to realize Hawks isn’t responding to his Dabi tantrums like normal. He skirts down the hall without second thought, breakfast forgotten, and slaps the face of Hawks’s office door repeatedly. “Hawks, what the fuck did you do while I was out?!”

He reaches for the office door—

Which opens way too easily. Dabi isn’t a stranger to Hawks barricading the door so the asshole can get work done—

But no one sits at the office desk. All of his monitors are shut off, and Hawks’s hoard of snacks sit in their forgotten garden at the other side of his desk. No Hawks—no loud ass protein shake sitting there to rot and mold.

Okay, fine.

“BIRDIE!” Dabi kicks the door of Hawks’s bedroom. “Why does the whole world think we’re dating?!”

The room is dark. Every window is shut, every blind closed, and every curtain dropped. Dabi would write off the whole circumstance—but the dark, cold room is unsettling.

He sees a lump coiled on one side of the bed, almost forgetting his chagrin.

Ever since Fierce Wings was taken away from Hawks, Hawks looks smaller. In frame alone, of course—because Hawks’s words always have the gusto and vibrato needed for his gigantic personality.

But at this moment, he’s quiet.

“Oi, Hawks.” Dabi leans over the bed and jostles Hawks. “You have some explaining to do—”

Hawks is shivering, and Hawks is sweating. Hawks is so light that he moves far too easily with one jolt of Dabi’s hand.

“Shit.”

Hawks is sick.

*

Dabi pulls his hand away. His first reaction is to teeter out of the room, unnoticed, before he can regroup in the other room, but Hawks has never been good at compliance. In fact, Hawks stirs. His head bobs slightly, and he uncurls from his little nest.

Languidly, Hawks reaches for his nightstand for his phone. Then, “Shit.”

The curse is hoarse and groggy. Hawks sits up, but his shoulders are quick to cave. He tries crawling out of bed like a cockroach—but Dabi blocks him.

“Oi.” Dabi scowls. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Hawks squints at him. His eyes are blurred and abstract, hardly focused. “Dabi…what are you doing in my room?”

The tone of his voice is brittle. Hardly Hawks’s usual gusto.

Dabi stares at what Hawks is wearing, first. Then notices just how pale the current HPSC President looks in comparison to the blanched shirt.

Hawks sighs sharply and wrestles out of his blanket. “I’m missing the first part of my meeting—I can’t do this right now. Why don’t—?”

Dabi nearly bodies Hawks back into bed. “Stay down, birdie.”

“What?” Hawks retorts. Each wrist is cuffed in Dabi’s hands. The interjection seems to take all the wind out of the former hero. “You want sex now? What are you—?”

Dabi presses a hand to Hawks’s forehead and his scowl depends. “Jesus Christ, you’re a fucking furnace.”

“I’m so hot I’m burning your skin?” Hawks remarks. “Knew that. Let me go…”

As normal as the first jest sounds, Hawks sounds even more like a petulant child by the end of his request.

“You’re sick.”

“I’m late.”

Good god, was Dabi really gonna have to fight Hawks’s lack of self preservation while Hawks was sick? Hawks was already a pain in the ass at full health.

Dabi has just enough time to lament the situation—before Hawks feebly flops onto his stomach and tries to crawl across the bed.

“Let go…”

There’s no other way to describe Hawks than an bratty child. But it’s lacking its usual underlying motive.

“Fine,” Hawks snaps. He starts shirking off his pj pants. “Just be quick.”

God. Nothing made Dabi’s blood boil more than when Hawks started pulling this shit. He claws the waistband of Hawks’s pants and pulls them as far as he can without giving the damn birdie a wedgie. “I’m not fucking you.”

Hawks sighs. He has the audacity to sound pissed. “Then what do you want from me, Dabi?”

“For you to take care of yourself, dumbass!” Dabi’s voice cracks. It strains and twists, more painful than when he first woke up. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted you to do!”

Why was it so hard for Hawks to get that? Why did it have to get here, with Hawks thinking he needed to solve every fucking problem with a proposition?

Why didn’t Dabi catch onto how fucked up this was the first time Hawks ever sized him up?

Hawks falls limp against the mattress. His entire body has the same weight to it as a flimsy piece of paper. He peers over his shoulder, craning his neck in some weird way only a bird could, and his usually vibrant eyes look dull like the rest of him.

“Don’t yell, dumbass,” Hawks mutters. “Your heart.”

Hawks always did this. Any word about him always went through one ear and out the other, only to be utilized like a schoolyard game of hopscotch.

“Keigo—”

“Don’t you fucking dare call me that.”

Because Hawks stopped being a kid the moment the Commission sunk their teeth into him, and Keigo was nothing more than an inconvenience.

“You,” Hawks breathes, harsh. His eyes flicker—but only enough for a bluff. “Are not allowed to call me that. Got it?”

Dabi’s jaw tightens. Once upon a time, he would’ve relished in a game of making birdie suffer. “Right. ‘Cause you’re disposable and shit to the Commission. Objects and weapons don’t have personal names. Just project codenames, right?”

“Good,” Hawks retorts. “You’ve picked up on a few things at your job. Employee of the Month.”

“So if you miss a meeting, it doesn’t matter, right?” Dabi struggles to control his temper. “If you die, they’ll just replace you. So what’s the point in missing a day of work? The day’ll just go on without you, Prez. You’re nothing to them.”

Hawks finally stops wriggling. Dabi wonders if he’s gotten through to the ex-hero—before he realizes Hawks has fallen asleep from fatigue.

Thank god.

Dabi collapses beside Hawks in relief.

Fuck.

“Mm,” Hawks mutters. Without warning, he rolls into Dabi and buries his face in the crook of Dabi’s neck. Even unconscious, he’s a fucking terror.

There’s no guarantee that Hawks will stay put for the whole day. Hawks will subject Dabi to torture all day if it meant getting his way. Rude bastard. Dabi would just need to beat birdie at his own game.

In a way that didn’t involve arson, if that was even possible.

“God dammit,” Dabi mutters under his breath.

He spends a good ten minutes cursing out every deity and every stupid feather Hawks no longer has before Hawks’s phone catches his attention. It vibrates. Three times. Four more times. Two more times—and just keeps going.

Hawks, blindly and unconsciously, reaches into empty air. Dabi swats it away and grabs the phone himself.

129 Missed Calls from several people.

200 Unread Messages from even more people.

76 News Pings.

”The fuck?” Dabi grumbles. He peruses the phone (after cupping Hawks’s face to unlock it, of course)

The oldest message dates back to a week ago, when Dabi first landed himself in the hospital. Hawks hasn’t taken a single call or responded to any of his messages. Even his emails have Out of Office set up.

There’s a wall of read messages from Endeavor trying to get ahold of Hawks all week. Several questions—god—about their supposed love life that go unanswered. One single, I’ve got it handled that dates back to six days.

Hawks claims he needs to attend a meeting at the asscrack of dawn. Dabi switches to Hawks’s calendar—

Which is password protected, with one header that just says, NICE TRY, DABI.

“Oh, fuck you,” Dabi snaps. Hawks doesn’t stir—but he’s probably cackling in his sleep. No doubt this was payback from the bathroom schedule Dabi submitted to Mera.

Dabi hopes not. Hawks has been busy doing something that required all of his energy, but it wasn’t work.

Hawks was with Dabi at the hospital for seven days straight. Hawks…apparently didn’t sleep a wink.

This was fucking agonizing.

But—Hawks’s health takes precedent over the rest of their bullshit. Someone had to think so. Since Hawks wouldn’t.

Dabi peruses Hawks’s contacts until he finds the right number. His chest bubbles anxiously.

Fuck it.

It rings twice. “Hello? Hawks-kun?”

That lump reappears in Dabi’s throat. It hurts to swallow. “Fuyumi. It’s me.”

*

It’s not the life Dabi imagined for himself.

He’s had that thought plenty of times since Touya died. Dabi isn’t the life that Touya imagined for himself. Once Dabi was born, his only purpose was to destroy Todoroki Enji in every sense of the word. He didn’t leave much room in his goals to consider anything else. Touya never grew old enough to start considering what life he wanted for himself, other than the pathetic pipe dream to follow in Endeavor’s footsteps.

It’s not a headspace Dabi seeks often. Where he would be now, as Todoroki Touya, at age 22 instead of this decrepit angry bitter image of revenge. Dabi.

Normal Touya, if he ever pulled his head out of Endeavor’s ass, could’ve been at the cusp of graduating college. Could’ve been roommates and shit with his brother. Maybe, could’ve had a normal life and given up the child-dream of being a pro-hero. Maybe he would’ve found love.

Maybe he wouldn’t. It wasn’t like he grew up yearning for it. Nothing was louder in his household than Endeavor’s disappointment.

Maybe this only works because it’s Hawks. Because it’s this messy. Because it’s so unexpected. Not like anything Dabi was ever part of met expectations anyway. He never met Endeavor’s, and he would never meet Touya’s.

With Hawks, there’s a cross-section—where Dabi finds himself craving something that Touya never lived old enough to yearn for. Peace. The ability to breathe. Weightlessness.

Normalcy.

Waking up beside someone he didn’t detest—in their clothes, no less, with their head buried in the crook of his shoulder. When they’re asleep, they’re not Hawks and Dabi—just two more still additions to this world. They don’t matter in the best way possible.

He’s not sure when this shift happened. Earlier than he’d ever admit aloud. Maybe from having a consistent fuckbuddy, maybe from it being Hawks—Dabi has no fucking idea. It’s not like it came out of nowhere. Birdie’s M.O. always involved over-talking, over-sharing, and getting into Dabi’s personal space with all that disgusting cologne. Birdie was cocky enough to think he could just do that, and Dabi knew it came with sizing him up. Birdie took up all the space that allowed for his wings.

Like hell Dabi was ever going to allow a Number Two Hero make him feel small again.

Of course, there was the initial thought when he first met Hawks: that could’ve been him. He could’ve been that. A hotshot hero riding the coattails of his old man—just as powerful, just as awesome, and set up to take on the mantle himself some day. Touya was made to be a hero.

Turns out he was just the prototype. He’s the springboard before the perfect product—but Hawks is the product. Japan’s sweetheart, age-appropriate, fucking K-Pop Pro Hero star that has everyone wrapped around his finger.

Finding out the stupid bird wanted to defect should’ve made him more smug. Dabi learned to find light in the imperfections of other things. He was basically one giant imperfection for this world anyway.

If Hawks has been telling the truth this whole time, knowing there’s a blemish in Number Two Winged Hero: Hawks doesn’t bring a feeling of joy. Dabi wants to be smug about that one—but he can’t.

Here’s a kid who actually made it. Here’s a kid who knocked every fucking pro-hero goal out of the park and got to the top quickly.

Maybe the only thing waiting after achieving a top rank is just a rotten tooth. Dabi knows the asshole is arrogant—but with good reason. He’s damn good at his job. Charming, dashing, and knows how to put on a good fucking show.

He’s damn sure better at it than Endeavor.

Hearing more and more about the Commission only made Dabi’s stomach rot—because he can’t tell what’s real or fake. What he can tell is the lack of connection in Hawks’s eyes when the HPSC was so fucking awful.

Dabi had his reasons to be angry with the hero world. Every reason he’s seen of Hawks is just as valid.

Hawks exceeded his expectations.

Expectations Touya never got to yearn for, and expectations that Dabi thought were no longer in his reach.

Like…staring at the ceiling of this damn apartment, instead of their usual hideout. The sunlight is warm. Dabi has felt the heat of his rage, but he’s never felt warmth. Hawks’s breath is warm against his shoulder, and his body is warm. For once, it’s heat that doesn’t burn Dabi against his will.

Yet, is the word that always comes to mind.

Shut the fuck up, are the next four that usually come up. It’s an ongoing battle that doesn’t ever leave him alone, just like birdie.

Dabi’s not necessarily on duty. He doesn’t skulk around the apartment while Hawks is passed out—but he’s compelled to wake up. There’s a normal living room, and a normal kitchen. Nothing like the tatami mats and fancy fucking koi fish ponds of the Todoroki Household—but…off-putting, somehow.

No photos. Minimal living room decor. Hawks’s apartment looks ripped out of an Ikea warehouse, where everything was put in place with a purpose. Hawks’s bed was great. His couch fucking sucked.

Everything in the apartment is pristine and clean—laminated in this air of a mausoleum that doesn’t sit well with Dabi. The times where Hawks didn’t have some type of street food in his mouth or a bag full of goodies from the 7-Eleven are few and far between though.

So no dishes needed. Chopsticks practically still have the scent of their manufacturer. Hawks hauled ass between his day job as a goodie-two-shoes hero and a double agent of evil. There was hardly time to come back, other than to sleep—and Hawks was stupid enough to spend a couple of nights at the hideout.

(Dabi had feigned sleep for an entire night once to see if Hawks intended to lurk around. To his surprise, birdie was out like a fucking light, like he was nestled in his natural element. Just like the night before, sprawled across his lap.)

It’s a nice three-bedroom, two-bath apartment. Good view of the city. A garish balcony—because of course, it’s necessary for the whiny bird wonder.

Dabi doesn’t know what compels him to do it. He flips through the cabinets and cupboards without much thought. Then he checks the fridge. Sure enough, there’s a bottle of untouched maple syrup, too.

“You eat like a bird,” Dabi grumbles, “for someone who eats as much as a fucking pig.”

He finds the pancake mix in a cabinet and turns the stove on almost mechanically.

Making breakfast for the both of them just feels like the normal thing to do.

*

Dabi can’t help staring out the window every few minutes—just so he doesn’t get caught off guard. He wouldn’t—considering he’s been counting the minutes since hanging up the phone—but it still makes him anxious.

He makes the mistake of going to the bathroom at least once—only to return to Hawks perched over an office chair like a gargoyle. It results in him dragging Hawks by the ankles back to his room—which proves far more difficult than Dabi would like—but the act of defiance was enough to send Hawks into another bout of sleep.

Forty-five minutes later, Hawks’s phone rings.

❄️👓👧TODOROKI 

His sister is on the other side of the line. She might’ve picked up thinking it was Hawks the first time, but…Fuyumi called him back.

The phone stops ringing—

❄️👓👧Todoroki: Touya-nii? Are you still there?

“Fuck,” Touya—Dabi breathes.

 

 

❄️👓👧 Todoroki: I think I’m here.

She sends a screenshot of the front door, and Dabi rolls out of bed.

“Do not move.” Dabi points to a sickly, unconscious Hawks with ire. For the time being, the dumbass doesn’t budge. Dabi tucks the duvet beneath Hawks for extra measure, then darts to the front door.

“Eep!” Fuyumi squeaks as the door opens, eyes wide.

Dabi stares at his sister. The burn mark across her cheek has slowly started fading. Her hair frames her face and hides the remains of any baby fat from their childhood together. Her glasses are bigger. They’re both just. Bigger. Older.

“H…Hi, Touya-nii,” she says.

Dabi’s brain finally catches back up to him. “Fuyumi—”

He’s not sure who startles more at the name coming out of his mouth. She jumps once again, skittish—and Dabi finally notices the grocery bags between her fingers.

“Here, let me get those for you.”

“Oh, that’s not—”

“Shut up. You’re a guest.” Dabi places the bags on the kitchen island. He glances over, where Fuyumi’s gaze somehow gets wider. “Fuck, I mean—fuck. Dammit, sorry. God dammit.”

“Touya-nii—?”

“Yeah?”

Fuyumi’s eyebrows furrow together with an air of amusement. “Are you…trying not to swear?”

She stares at him. Dabi stares back.

“It’s rude to say fuck,” Dabi reasons.

To his surprise, she laughs. It’s tentative—but her lips seem to curl upward, instead of in terror. Somehow, it eases the tension. She welcomes herself into the kitchen more easily. “Where are the pots and pans? Cutting boards?”

The questions come with an ease that carries further than the tension in Dabi’s chest. He reanimates and helps with the items. “In the second shelf of that cupboard. Let me get that for you.”

Eventually, Fuyumi has a cutting board, knife, and a medium-sized pot. She studies the stove thoughtfully before tying an apron around her waist and getting to work. “Okay.”

Again, the tension seems to be nonexistent. Dabi doesn’t know what to say—but she starts unbagging the grocery bags.

“You used to make this soup for when Natsu and me got sick,” Dabi explains. “Always got our asses out of bed.”

Fuyumi perks at the name of their brother. Theirs. The name sounds weird on Dabi’s own tongue. But she nods.

“I got every ingredient for it,” Fuyumi promises. “We’ll make sure Hawks-san gets better.”

Another smile carries across her lips. It’s warm enough that Dabi believes her.

He falls back into a chair on the kitchen island, his legs giving out on him.

Fuyumi starts making work of cutting up various vegetables and herbs for them. She heats up a pot of water. The kitchen isn’t the same as the one they grew up with, but a Fuyumi in her early twenties isn’t deterred by the idea of change the way a five-year-old one might be.

In fact, Dabi suddenly can’t tell if the nerves he’s feeling are all up in his head. Maybe he just hallucinated how fucking horrible things would be between him and his siblings.

He called Fuyumi with the intention of telling her Hawks was sick. Instead, the first thing out of his mouth was, “What’s that soup you used to make?”

Not a, hi, how are you, or a, what’s up, sis? Not that they were ever like that. A greeting like that would’ve gone better if Himiko was still around. That was the dynamic he got to have with a little sister once he became Dabi. Eating blood and arson weren’t conversation starters Touya ever had with Fuyumi.

She volunteered to come over without further explanation. She didn’t hesitate. The longer she spoke over the phone, the bigger the knot grew in the back of Touya’s throat. But those words seemed to die as fast as Touya did.

Now, they’re here.

Dabi hasn’t seen his family since before leaving the hospital (the first time), and it wasn’t on speaking terms. He wasn’t ready to see them since his release.

Given he nearly keeled over from the thought of Hawks seeing his family, but Fuyumi was different. Fuyumi saw him as her older brother before ever seeing him as her prototype.

“I’ve been watching the cooking channel,” Dabi says eventually. His voice scrapes the back of his throat in effort to free some of those nerves. “Y’know. To cook.”

Fuyumi glances up from her cutting board, intrigued.

“Heard you like to cook,” Dabi finishes lamely. “I know how to julienne shit.”

Fuyumi blinks.

“Aghh. Julienne crap,” Dabi corrects. He grumbles under his breath.

Another smile curls against Fuyumi’s lips. She reaches for another cutting board now that she’s familiar with the kitchen, then another knife. “Would you cut the carrots then?”

She makes room on the other side of the kitchen island and smiles at him expectantly.

Dabi obliges.

They go on a few more beats with silence. Dabi slices through the carrots carefully, unsure of where else to look. He doesn’t want to startle Fuyumi by catching her watching him. He doesn’t want to just outright stare, either.

“What…happened over there?” Fuyumi points to the TV leaning against the wall.

“Came like that,” Dabi lies.

That warrants an outright stare from Fuyumi. Dabi pretends not to notice.

“Must…be hard to watch cooking channel then,” Fuyumi remarks.

“I memorized what I could.” Which isn’t a lie.

“Oh, you were always really smart, Touya-nii.”

God. Touya wedges the knife in the middle of a fat carrot. Touya.

“Thank you for coming,” Dabi says eventually. Quietly. “You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to, Touya-nii.”

Dabi’s hand tightens around the handle of his knife. It’s even harder to look up at her. His chest clenches, so close to the same pain that he felt only a week ago.

“I’ve…been seeing a counselor,” Fuyumi admits eventually. “One that could help me figure out the right things to say when we could eventually see each other again. I wanted to make sure the next time we spoke, I had the right words ready for you.”

Another lump swells in Dabi’s throat. He doesn’t know what to say.

“The counselor told me it would take time. For both sides. You may not necessarily be eager to talk to me—but…not because of me. So I just wanted to be ready,” Fuyumi said. “In case you were ever ready to talk to me. I’m glad you did.”

“You don’t have to put on an act for me.”

“I’m not.”

“Fuyumi—”

“I’m not,” Fuyumi repeats—this time a little more assertively. More than Dabi ever saw when they were kids. In fact, she breaks their wall of tension first by looking at him. Dabi turns, only to meet her gaze. “I want to make sure whatever conversations we have—i-if we ever would have one again, that nothing would be left unsaid. So it needed to be the right things.”

Dabi’s throat swells. He doesn’t know what to say.

There was no way he expected getting his siblings back to come easily. Not like this. Dabi hardly believes it now.

Fuyumi’s shoulders fall and she wobbles.

“O-Oi, Fuyumi—” Dabi reaches and forces her still.

“I’m fine, I’m fine!” she reassures. Fuyumi waves a hand airily, sheepish. “I was rehearsing that all the way here from the subway. I wanted to make sure I got it r-right.”

She fans herself, looking more relieved now. In a way, she feels just the same in his arms. Dabi can’t believe it.

“You did good,” Dabi reassures. He never said that enough when they still lived together.

It shows on Fuyumi’s face as she peers back at him, still surprised.

“Thank you,” Dabi repeats. “You were the first person that I thought of.”

That’s true, too.

Dabi couldn’t leave things unsaid between them again, either.

Thankfully, the tension seems to disappear. If only a little.

“How’s…your…day going?” Dabi tries eventually.

“Pretty well. It’s nice outside,” Fuyumi says without missing a beat. “Oh! I went by a booth this morning that served mapo tofu. Their chili oil was so spicy! I had to buy some to try and make at home myself.”

“I’ll…have to try some.”

“Oh, yes! I’ll bring some next time,” Fuyumi promises. She pauses. “If…uh, there is a next time.”

Oh, god. Fuyumi actually wants to see him more than once. Dabi can hardly believe it. He bites back the impulse to pinch himself.

“Yeah,” Dabi says. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” She actually sounds hopeful.

“Yeah,” Dabi says again. “Definitely.”

Is it too much? Too forward? Too presumptuous?

Dabi has walked so far from his family that he doesn’t know the path back. It’s not a path he was allowed to find again.

He fucking hates this. This fear of finding a reason for his family to leave him once again.

“You see the news?” Dabi asks eventually, His voice is tight.

“Ah,” she says quietly. “Yes.”

Dabi swallows hard. He clears his throat.

“I, uh,” Fuyumi continues, “was taken aback. But then it seemed to make sense.”

“Make sense?” Dabi repeats. He slaps the knife back against the cutting board and stares at his sister in disbelief. “Hawks tells all of Japan we’re fucking and you’re telling me it makes sense?”

Fuyumi turns bright red. Dabi doesn’t think much of it until he realizes the words he used.

“I mean,” he says, ignoring the way his own cheeks seem to burn. Fuck. “That we’re fucking going steady or some shit like that.”

“I—w-well—” Fuyumi’s voice comes in these high-pitched hiccups before she scratches her head. “It was a surprise—but he was the one who proposed getting you out of jail. Then he mentioned to Mom and Father that you were living with him…and you’re his bodyguard. Hawks-san has never been public about his love-life, so it left a lot of people to speculate. So…”

She trails off—

Then she nods conclusively.

“It…just made sense,” she finishes.

Dabi’s mouth falls open, gobsmacked. Fuyumi seems to double down on cutting vegetables. Her cheeks glow.

“I hope he makes you happy,” she continues, as though just commenting on the weather. “How long have the two of you…known each other?”

She’s careful how she addresses the question. It’s a nuance the rest of the Todoroki Family never quite mastered.

“When he said he was double crossing the commission and wanted to defect.”

Fuyumi yelps.

“Fuyu—!”

“I-I’m fine it’s just a nick!”

Dabi pulls the first-aid kit from beneath the sink and shuffles for a bandaid. He makes quick work of fixing up her finger.

“Don’t be so careless,” he chides before he can help himself.

It takes a moment for him to realize he’s touching Fuyumi. Her hand is still small in his own. Smaller, even. When they were little, differences in their height teetered close to each other. Now, the gap between them is wider. Years have passed since he’s done something as simple as hold his baby sister’s hand to save her from her own klutzy self.

Fuck.

He carries a glance back to Fuyumi, his chest tight.

”You okay?”

It takes a moment, but Fuyumi eventually nods. “Y…Yeah. Thank you, niisan.”

The knot is tight in his throat. He bites the inside of his mouth.

No matter the number of years that have passed between them, he falls into the role of big brother with ease—like a jigsaw puzzle piece finding its place after being wedged behind the couch for years.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says almost immediately. “Sorry.”

The word tumbles out of his mouth with more weight than intended. It snaps free from the lump in the back of his throat—one that festers with all the things he had time to think about while imprisoned. All of the feelings he thought died with Touya—like…missing his sister.

He’s pathetic. Dabi is pathetic. Touya is pathetic. He’s a coward in every sense of the word because he couldn’t muster up the fucking courage to stand in front of his own family like this and just…talk. They’re here because of Hawks.

Of all the fucking people in his life, Hawks is the one most familiar with Dabi. He’s never going to fit in that skin suit of Touya again because half of it was burned away with stupid, childish ambitions, and a part of him would never actually be him anymore.

Dabi built a wall to protect what little of Touya was left in him. He’s a fraud in his own skin around his family. Nothing is in his control.

“S’complicated,” he mutters eventually. “I don’t know what the fuck he wants with me. I’m just here.”

He’ll just have to get used to the bewildered look on Fuyumi’s face. It’s not going away anytime soon. Not that he’s been conscientious of his own fucking awkward surprise.

“Oh,” Fuyumi says eventually. “And…wh…what do you want?”

“For him to actually fucking take care of himself,” Dabi says. That’s all he ever wanted. Dabi accepted rotting in jail for the rest of his life. He would’ve rather that than freedom, knowing Hawks decided to sign his life away for another job with the organization that doesn’t give a shit about him.

“He must mean a lot to you,” Fuyumi remarks. “For you to care this much.”

“I don’t fucking know.” Dabi grunts. He glares at the cutting board in front of him, where he’s been forced into this game of domestic bliss. That’s what it is. A game. A dance. Nothing serious. Nothing that reeks of love—just an endless exercise of propositions, favors, and pissing each other off.

“Ah,” Fuyumi says after an unintentional bout of silence.

It’s hard to say how much time has passed. Dabi has enough anger to keep him burning for a long time.

Out of nowhere, the door to Hawks’s bedroom opens. Both Fuyumi and Dabi both fall silent as Hawks saunters out, cocooned in the duvet Dabi wrapped him in before answering the door.

He stares at them blearily from the other side of the kitchen island.

“Hawks-san,” Fuyumi greets. “Are you feeling—?”

”Get the fuck back into bed,” Dabi snaps. “You are not working right now, asshole.”

He’s ready to toss Hawks over his shoulder and throw him back into bed—but Hawks looks semi lucid for once.

“You are so loud,” Hawks mutters. He only sounds mildly congested.

There’s a giggle. Fuyumi is quick to slap a hand over her mouth.

“Fuyumi-san.” Hawks slowly turns his gaze, addressing Fuyumi much more civilly than he ever did Dabi. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Ah, y…yes—Touya-nii mentioned you were sick. He asked me to make some soup.”

”She gets to call you Touya-nii?” Hawks petulantly turns back to Dabi.

Hearing the name on Hawks’s mouth makes Dabi’s skin bristle again. ”I’m good with it.”

Hawks studies Dabi, even with foggy golden eyes. Then he turns back to Fuyumi. “You can call me Keigo if you want. ‘Cause I won’t let Dabi call me that.”

“Fuck off,” Dabi snaps.

Fuyumi looks puzzled.

“I’m trying.” Hawks unfurls out of his cocoon. His gaze flits between Fuyumi and Dabi once more with this unreadable expression. “Glad you’re able to reconnect. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get any work done here. I’m heading to the office.”

Dabi and Fuyumi stare at him—but this haughty bird always had a tendency to move before everyone else.

“The fuck you aren’t,” Dabi snaps.

“H…Hawks-san,” Fuyumi says slowly, “you should really rest.”

“Nonsense. I feel great. Especially after being smothered in a duvet.” Hawks glances their way blearily, only mildly annoyed. He waltzes towards the living room. He barely pays a glance to the broken TV on the floor. Thank god.

“I am not playing this game with you again,” Dabi snaps, trailing after him.

“But we’re so good at them, aren’t we?” Hawks replies cheekily. He pulls the balcony doors open and sticks his head out. “God. Wish I could smell that.”

Then, out of nowhere—a wingless Hawks jumps off the balcony.

Chapter Text

Hawks has the most amazing ass. It’s a shame more people don’t get to see it under those baggy pants.

It’s a privilege Dabi is allowed to split it open with his own bare hands.

Each cheek just fills the palms of Dabi’s hands, supple and firm. Dabi could drag a finger down that asscrack with the same satisfaction of turning the page of a hardback book, relishing in the texture of skin beneath his fingers and the slew of words that followed from Hawks’s pretty mouth.

Fuck.

Just the very thought of spreading birdie across his bed sends Dabi into heat. It was criminal to hide an ass like that. Prying them apart is like unwrapping a present.

He can still count on one hand how many times they’ve done this, but it’s crazy how easy it all feels, like Dabi’s hands are meant to grope bare skin and he’s meant to nip at the freckles that decorate Hawks’s thighs.

Dabi thought he’d get a good fuck or two out of this at best. He doesn’t know when they stopped hinting toward the bedroom and just ended up there—but it only took a few quick fucks to fall into this pattern.

That pattern being Hawks sprawled across Dabi’s bed like he belonged there. He’s in nothing but that compression shirt and the pants that draped over the divots of Hawks’s hips like a goddamn magician’s curtain, ready for unveiling of the hottest ass Dabi’s ever had the pleasure to fuck.

This new recruit could be an ass—but he also had an ass.

And weirdly enough, the banter isn’t the worst thing in the world. They talk about shit. Dabi doesn’t go into an arrangement like this expecting for them to continue working together. Of all the people he’s been with (which, admittedly are very few), Hawks annoys him the least.

And, is the most fun to annoy.

“You spread your legs for everyone?” Dabi rouses. He’s beside Hawks, admiring the view from behind. They’d sauntered into the room and collapsed without a second word. Sometimes, Number Two does know when to shut up.

Fucking with Hawks is almost as fun as fucking him. Birdie actually knows how to keep up. Dabi almost likes him now.

Hawks is on his stomach. His wings splay on either side of him, folding against the comforter with ease. “Only the pretty ones.”

“Fucked your way to the the top then, I see.” With an ass like that, it's almost a desperate yes to have it around Dabi. Not that he would admit that out loud. It’s even hotter making birdie squirm. “Obviously no other way you’d make it to Number Two, Number Two. Bet you ran out of gas.”

“Not doing a good job if I only made it to Number Two.”

“Please. You couldn’t suck enough dick in the world to pry Number One from Endeavor’s dead body.” The old man would probably kill anyone who got in his way after chasing All Might’s coattails for so long.

Hawks titters, because he isn’t a sensitive little bitch.

“You’ve caught onto my plan,” Hawks says with this ease that could slice through paper. He’s so fucking good at it. “You’re so smart, Dabi.”

“Stroking my ego isn’t gonna get you anywhere, Number Two.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Gonna do it as many times as the Commission tells you? Bet they’ve taught you to cum on command, too.”

“A good presentation goes a long way.” Hawks shoots a finger gun and a wink.

He says it with such ease that Dabi can’t help but linger. Dabi tries to imagine Hawks presenting himself anywhere but this bed. “Bend over for anyone then?”

Hawks looks at him peculiarly—in this fragment that Dabi clings onto when it shines beneath that stupid face.

And again, he reiterates, “Only the pretty ones.”

“The ones the Commission tells you to fuck.”

“If that’s what’s getting you hot and bothered tonight, princess.”

Dabi’s nose wrinkles. He's learned a few things about Number Two in the last few weeks. More than the veil of assignments would have gotten him.

“Sounds like a shit life,” he declares. “Doing everything like a slave for the fucking Commission.”

Hawks laughs sharply. “Tragic, right?”

He props onto his elbows, looking genuinely curious. As close to genuine that a conniving spy could be, at least.

“What’s with all the questions tonight?” Hawks asks. He’s pivoting for a reason. Sure, there are plenty of reasons to defect as a hero and from the commission. Hawks has a talent of evading Dabi’s curiosities and addressing only when he sees fit. “Thought we were gonna fuck one out tonight before the assignment. Put that mouth to better use.”

Dabi has plenty of ideas on how to put his mouth to better use. He can hardly hide his excitement behind his grin. “If you insist, princess.”

As he pushes onto his knees, Hawks readjusts to make space for him. Few words have to be said. He presses up against Hawks, cock already waking up against the curve of a perfect birdie derriere. Dabi arches over Hawks until most of Hawks’s back is pressed up against him.

Fierce Wings flitter.

Dabi knows just how to lean against Hawks, over folded wings, to press a kiss behind the crook of Hawks’s neck. It elicits a shiver that Dabi clings onto until the very last breath of a moan leaves Hawks’s mouth. The wings weren’t happy the first time Dabi got into their space. Birdie endured it without comment, but Dabi found a noticeable change when he figured out where to slot his arms.

He descends down Hawks’s spine, fingers creeping beneath the hem of Hawks’s compression shirt, then presses his lips against Hawks’s feathers. Dabi learned a while ago it’d make Hawks jump.

Red climbs Hawks’s neck, while the rest of his body grows stiff.

Dabi pulls his mouth away. Then, more loudly, he asks, “Something bother you?”

“Please.” Hawks actually scoffs and pretends to yawn. “I thought you fell asleep back there.”

Masochist.

Dabi rolls his eyes and whispers something into red plumage. Something he knows this little spy can’t block out.

He’s gonna make a birdie sing tonight.

Hawks leans back as Dabi pushes his shirt upward. A band of bare skin greets Dabi, right at the groove of his ass and hipbone. Dabi rests his lips on golden flesh between back dimples. He curls his fingers into the hem of Hawks’s pants and slowly drags them down with his path of kisses.

Hawks hums at first. Then he freezes when Dabi gives his tailbone a hard suck. His entire body stiffens in a completely different way.

Dabi’s hands mold around each ass cheek, and he pries Hawks open.

Hawks’s breath hitches. Particularly as a thumb grazes his asshole. “Wh…what are you…?”

Dabi dares kiss lower, grazing his teeth into pert skin—but not hard enough to break. Not yet. Dabi intends to savor the flavor of Hawks’s skin and trembles and moans before he fully takes the hero into his mouth. He strokes and massages Hawks’s cheeks like unraveling knots with his hands, coaxing Hawks to spread wider beneath him. His fingers imprint against flesh—taut and firm.

Finally, Dabi dares to sink his teeth in, and Hawks gasps.

“Dabi,” Hawks starts. His breath shakes. “Wh…why are you…?”

He sounds as baffled as when Dabi first gave him a hickey, and—

Oh. Oh.

Dabi grins into the inside of Hawks’s ass cheek. The contortion of his own face seems to make Hawks’s leg tremble.

Of all the ways to fuck with birdie, this is it. “You ever been eaten out before, birdie?”

“Have I been what?”

That was definitely a no. Dabi is salivating.

He climbs down the aperture of Hawks’s ass, teeth pressed against bare skin with each kiss. Hawks’s limbs seem to shake with every gesture, like it’s foreign.

Fascinating.

Dabi massages the outside of Hawks’s hole with either thumb, which elicits another gasp. He bites and sucks Hawks’s left ass cheek, and suddenly Hawks is bucking into the mattress.

“Oh,” is Hawks’s soft chirp. It goes straight to Dabi’s groin.

Dabi wants to mark him. He wants to bite Hawks and imprint him with the same mismatched skin as his own, like leaving an artist’s signature on a masterpiece. No one has made Hawks sound like this before. No one has pried Hawks open with every finger, kissed his perineum and sucked at the rim of his asshole.

Every new sound is foreign territory and Dabi is a damn pirate seizing the booty.

He plunders into Hawks with his tongue, hands clenched so tightly around either ass cheek to ensure they’ll bruise later. Hawks bucks into the mattress again with a shaky gasp. His legs shake, propped up by Dabi alone. Dabi propels himself deeper into Hawks, filling in every space with his mouth while stroking Hawks’s ass from the outside in.

“Oh fuck,” Hawks whispers. Even Fierce Wings flops with each jerk of his body. Dabi gives Hawks a hard suck, which makes Hawks’s tight ass clench even tighter.

Dabi licks the inside of Hawks’s asshole, filling in as much of Hawks’s space as he can. He knows how to finger birdie. Knows how to fuck him good. Tongue-fucking offers yet another way to please Hawks into nothing but croons and trembles. He imagines every flex and contortion of Hawks’s face—from arrogance to charm to scorn to shit-eating grin, and pours the same energy into the hero. The hero liked to size him up, so damn straight Dabi was going to make sure Hawks felt that in him.

Dabi hoists the hero into his mouth, so he can nip right beneath that pretty asshole. His bottom teeth graze the ridges of Hawks’s entrance—and if a body could tremble from the waist-down, then birdie was doing it.

“Fu—ah…” Hawks can’t even form a solid word. Dabi makes damn sure each moan punctuated with satisfaction. He pets Hawks from the inside out, tongue wet and flexed against Hawks’s inner walls.

Hawks jolts again. His wings flutter—not necessarily alert or threatened—but stimulated.

Dabi lifts one hand away from Hawks’s ass. Not before appreciating the impression of his fingerprints against round cheeks, or the marks that blister Hawks’s bare ass. Then he presses a palm into the small of Hawks’s back and curls his fingers.

Hawks nearly flops into the mattress, cooing.

Dabi watches precum smear his sheets. Birdie is into it. So he does the only reasonable thing: retract. Hawks lets out a breath, practically deflating without Dabi at his spout. His shoulder blades part with each heavy breath, red feathers fluttering with them.

Hawks actually needs a minute to catch his breath. “You done already?”

“Couldn’t tell if I was boring you.”

Hawks won’t turn around. He fists the sheets beneath himself for leverage. There’s a sheen of Dabi’s saliva at the crease of his asshole, while little welts of Dabi’s mouth cover skin and thighs. Even Hawks’s balls are a pretty pink from this angle.

“Just,” Hawks seethes finally, “so bored.”

“You want me to stop?” Dabi grins even wider. He wonders if Fierce Wings is taking it in from every angle.

Hawks shifts his weight, and his baggy pants shuffle down his hips. He pretends to stretch, uninterested. “Do what you want.”

“So I can stop?”

That puzzles Hawks. He finally turns to look at Dabi fully, one eyebrow in the air. It’s hard to read Hawks’s expression. That’s what makes it fun, though—Dabi could spend all day trying to figure out what birdie is scheming. “You…cum already?”

”Nah. Just don’t want to bore you.” Dabi taps Hawks's pretty hole and feigns disinterest.

Hawks stares at him, gobsmacked.

“What?” Dabi rouses now. “You want something?”

“There’s no way you’re not hard,” Hawks protests. He points to Dabi’s dick like a music conductor.

”You want it in you?”

“What if I do?” Hawks doesn’t miss a beat. Even when he’s baffled.

Dabi grins with gleeful delight. “Beg for it.”

“What?”

“Beg, birdie.” Dabi’s hand skates up Hawks’s thigh. It twitches beneath his fingers, folding from familiar contact from only moments ago. “Tell me what you want.”

“Really?” Hawks snorts. “That what you into?”

“I’m into pretty birds who tell me what they want.” Dabi climbs over Hawks’s lap now, his fingers catching the edge of the hero’s shirt. He’s watched Hawks strip enough times to keep from catching on those wings. Another pet peeve that Hawks never voices.

Dabi leans into Hawks’s space, until he can see his own reflection in the pools of Hawks’s eyes. Hawks follows his every move. Then he sinks in.

“Tell me,” Dabi murmurs, with just the heat of his breath against the skin at the base of Hawks’s neck, “that you want me.”

“Your breath smells like ass.”

Dabi snorts. “Want me to keep going?”

The flush of Hawks’s skin reminds Dabi of a watercolor painting. It’s moist, swirled in red and gold hues of the hero’s fluster. Hawks is intoxicatingly warm in a way that’s never burned Dabi—and Dabi wants nothing more than to drown in this good heat.

Eventually, Hawks answers. Dabi commits the way Hawks’s mouth moves to memory.

“…ease.”

He has to, because he can barely hear Hawks’s squeaky request. Dabi leans closer to the hero. “What was that?”

“Please,” Hawks says a little louder. More annoyed, more razzled. He shudders as Dabi squeezes his thigh. “Please fuck me. I want you to fuck me.”

Now that’s a song that Dabi could listen to on repeat.

Dabi throws his head back in victorious laugh. “God, you’re so desperate, aren’t you—?”

He doesn’t expect Hawks to catch his face, or for Hawks to climb on top of him. Dabi gets to enjoy his laugh for only a few seconds. Hawks nestles his bare ass over the zipper of Dabi’s pants and stares at him fully.

“Did I stutter?” Hawks makes sure Dabi can see every word at his mouth. It’s all that smugness from the cheeky bastard that Dabi invested into Hawks’s ass.

He’s so fucking hot, it’s infuriating.

Hawks takes purchase on Dabi’s fumble with that smug grin. He holds himself high above Dabi, despite the many marks that add to the freckles on his legs.

“Bet you came now,” Hawks murmurs cheekily in his ear.

He grips Dabi tightly around the shoulders in their usual game.

“Beg for it and I’ll make sure you do, birdie.” Dabi knows better than to let go first.

*

“Let go.”

“Not a chance.” The advantage to spying on a spy for nearly a year: Dabi got really good at anticipating Hawks’s next move.

He didn’t know what the exact next move could be—but he knows that Hawks always takes the path of pissing Dabi off the most.

Dabi has one hand wrapped around the iron railing of Hawks’s balcony, and the other cuffed around Hawks’s ankle. His bare feet dig into the cement wall on the other side of the platform, gambling for any leverage Dabi can find while Hawks dangles like the end of a drop claw machine out in the open air.

Hawks has spent all day trying to get under Dabi’s skin. Unfortunately, he’ll resort to dumbass, life-threatening tactics to get his bratty fucking way.

“Oh my god,” Fuyumi squeaks—from the safe side of the balcony where she isn’t situated in a literal cliffhanger like her big brother. “Oh my god, oh my god—”

“Fuyumi,” Dabi reassures, “It’s fine. He pulls this kind of shit all the time. I’ve got it handled.”

She stares at him, eyes wider than the soup pot she’d fished out of the cabinet to help. “Sh—Should I call the—”

“No,” is the response they both give her.

“Go back inside,” Dabi orders. “Please.”

Fuyumi stares back at him, horrified. “But Touya-nii, y-your heart—”

“I’ll be back up in a second,” he says. “Promise. Start working on the soup.”

She looks reluctant. It was only an hour ago where she confessed she never wanted them to have a moment unsaid again. So, Dabi has the responsibility of not dying right now.

“Y-You better,” she says finally—then inches back into the apartment, her eyes never leaving him.

Somehow, the discussion about Dabi’s stupid heart forces Hawks to stop wriggling.

“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?” Hawks retorts. Despite his name, he looks like a bratty bat with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I’m the pain in the ass?” Dabi gawks. “If we don’t die here I’m going to kick your ass as soon as we’re free!”

There’s a noise in the kitchen.

“You didn’t hear that!” Dabi calls. He hates that threatening Hawks’s life is the most he’s felt in his element since Fuyumi came over—but at least they don’t have to worry about a goddamn icebreaker anymore.

Hawks is lighter without his wings. Thank fucking god. Dabi could pull both of them back to the edge of the balcony—if Hawks wasn’t being so fucking annoying.

“It’s time for patrol,” Hawks insists. He tries to twist out of Dabi’s grip—but Dabi is well-trained in not knowing how to let things go.

“Fuck that. You’re sick.”

“It’s my job.”

“Fuck your job!” Dabi yanks on Hawks’s leg with sheer force of will. “You’re not a prohero anymore, stupid. If I let you jump right now, I’m not doing my job!”

That confuses Hawks long enough that Dabi can reel them both in like a fisherman pulling in his catch. He heaves a sigh as they’re finally back on the safe side of the balcony.

Hawks stares at him blearily, ass to the floor. Knowing him, he’s just going to pass out again.

“You don’t have wings,” Dabi wheezes between heavy breaths. “You’re not a hero anymore, dumbass. How about you do us both a favor and remember you’re not actually Winged Hero Hawks anymore?”

“Then what else am I good for?”

Dabi steadies long enough to realize Hawks hasn’t moved from his perch.

The question comes out of the blue without its usual air of arrogance. It’s as hoarse and confused as this morning. Hawks doesn’t sound like…like Hawks.

Hawks looks lost.

“Plenty,” Dabi blurts out despite himself. He stays on guard. This teetering between lucidity and absolute insanity will be the death of him.

Hawks looks small. Smaller without his wings—which was Dabi’s first observation when he first saw the ex-hero again, but that Hawks knew how to fill the space again with his personality. This one looks too small to even fill his own clothes.

“I’m nothing,” Hawks answers, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’m—n-not…even…”

His voice trails off. Rarely does he ever let someone else get the last word.

“Birdie.” Dabi grounds Hawks before the ex-hero can fly away with whatever life-threatening thought is on the mind.

Birdie gets a reaction. Hawks is birdie.

He plants both hands on either side of Hawks’s shoulders, voice level. “Let’s take a shower. You’ve been in those clothes all day. You look like shit.”

Fuyumi makes another unidentifiable sound—but Dabi doesn’t care. She just doesn’t know their relationship like this.

So, Dabi lays claim to what he knows once more.

“Birdie,” Dabi says again.

There’s a flicker in Hawks’s eyes. The gleam is dull—but it reacts to the nickname. A name.

Dabi wobbles onto his bare feet and lifts Hawks with him. Again—Hawks is feeble in his hands. Puzzled, incoherent—and still at the risk of hurting himself. “We’re gonna get you cleaned up and we’re going to eat soup. Okay?”

He’s burning up in Dabi’s arms, but Dabi’s been through worst fires.

“Told you I’d come back,” Dabi says into the empty air. Fuyumi smiles at him nervously from the kitchen, while he coaxes Hawks back into the bedroom.

Hawks has his own bathroom. Another amenity to keep awkward roommate interactions to a minimum for them.

Dabi hasn’t been in Hawks’s bathroom in a long time, but he knows how to work the shower. He places it on a tepid heat while Hawks stands at the doorframe in some incoherent state. Exhaustion.

There’s no telling how many days Hawks went without resting at the hospital at Dabi’s bedside, but the fatigue has clearly caught up to him.

“I was supposed to die,” Hawks observes finally. Softly. “You didn’t kill me.”

God.

Dabi’s entire heart tightens beneath the grip of his own hard head. “You didn’t kill me, either.”

He freed Dabi and granted him privileges Touya never would’ve imagined.

He made Dabi care again. Dabi cared so much that he felt it through every ounce of his intertwined soul of both his godforsaken identities, while Hawks seemed to struggle with the thought of lacking one at all.

Hawks made Touya feel again, after Dabi accepted he’d no longer be able to.

At all the wrong times with the worst possible person.

Hawks stares back at him with an expression Dabi finally recognizes. It’s one he sees in his own face every night in the mirror, wondering what they are. What they’re doing. Why is this so fucked up and why haven’t either one of them cracked yet? Who’s fucking winning their game this time?

And—is Hawks as scared to pull out as Dabi is? Or is it just another mindfuckery?

Hawks breaks out of his stillness, as though relinquishing orders. Slowly, he pulls at the back of his shirt.

“Here,” Dabi says quietly. “Let me—”

“I got it.” Hawks turns his back to Dabi—which is as loud of a response that Dabi needs. Hawks preferred taking off his own shirt. Plenty of people didn’t understand how to work around his wings.

What was once warm and golden skin is now discolored and blemished. Hawks had a decent amount of scars from before they met. Dabi found them as fascinating as he did the wings that once flanked Hawks’s shoulderblades.

Hawks was already a masterpiece—between how the Commission sculpted his image and his own cheekiness. Dabi basically took the whole canvas and set it aflame.

Death would’ve been less ugly. It would’ve been less painful, than staring at Dabi’s handiwork. Dabi should know better by now. His flames only ever burn him.

They’ve seen each other naked plenty since Dabi got out of incarceration. Usually in haste, in quickies, and to blow off steam. Nothing like this, which suddenly feels far more intimate.

Dabi’s compelled to look away out of respect. “I’ll be out here.”

He doesn’t stay long enough to hear if Hawks responds.

With a wall between them, Dabi lets his legs give out against the mattress. He exhales a painful breath.

Fuck.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

How the fuck can he think about what they are when Hawks is a walking symbol of how they ended up?

Fuck.

Out of nowhere, Hawks’s phone buzzes. It’s loud and obnoxious enough that Dabi glances toward it.

Sure enough—Hawks’s phone had moved. Hawks had checked it before he came out of the bedroom earlier. Dumbass.

Four unread messages.

In…English.

The phone opens up to Hawks’s last window—which appears to be from the same English-speaking person. Probably for discretion.

Except… they weren’t discreet.

🦇🌜: How long are you going to make me wait, songbird?

Songbird. Dabi’s eyebrows furrow together. He tries to pick apart the emojis on who it could possibly be—but nothing comes to mind.

“Why do you put everything in your phone in code?” Dabi laments aloud. Not necessarily at Hawks. Hawks responds anyway.

“Because it’s funny,” Hawks says from the bathroom.

Dabi doesn’t take the time to decipher the words. He rises at the sound of a semi-more coherent Hawks and makes his way to the bathroom.

Hawks is staring at the bathroom mirror. He hasn’t moved in the time Dabi left, arms still cuffed in the t-shirt Hawks didn’t want Dabi to touch.

The burn marks are even more prominent beneath the white light of the bathroom. Warm, glowing skin versus ashened and dulled. Hawks’s back faces Dabi, like preparing for a second burning.

Hawks is completely still.

Dabi considers looking away, but he’s cautious of what awaits him if he meets his reflection’s gaze.

There’s a reason why it’s still a game.

”You see them too,” Hawks says softly, “right?”

“What?”

Hawks twists his body in an uncanny way. He reaches over his back and just…claws his own shoulder blade. He drags fingernails across his skin until there’s a trench of red streaks beneath him.

”They’re there,” Hawks breathes. “They—they’re there.”

His voice shakes. There’s the faintest illusion of a laugh at the back of his throat.

“They fucking came back,” Hawk repeats. Another laugh—but something is off about it.

“Birdie—”

”Fierce Wings came back, Dabi.” Hawks claws at his back again, fingers bruising skin. He sounds giddy and panicked and relieved somehow. “I—I have wings again.”

“No you don’t.” Dabi steps forward—but Hawks shrinks further into himself, as if trying to accommodate him and missing appendages.

“I’m back to being an agent,” Hawks mutters under his breath. He starts clawing at the other shoulder blade, raking nails across scarred skin. There’s a tremor in his voice. “I’m going to be an agent again.”

“Hawks, you’re president.”

“I can go back to the field,” Hawks continues. He buries his nails deeper into his skin, eyes never leaving his reflection. “I—I—they’re going to want to test me again.”

Hawks is making himself bleed. He knows how to be gentle with skin, so of course he’d know how to hurt it, too. Hawks drags his fingers across flesh like sowing seeds, leaving only a trail of red in its wake.

Oh, fuck.

“Hawks,” Dabi says more firmly—“Birdie—you’re hurting yourself. Let me—”

”Heroes get hurt all the time.” Hawks blisters and claws at his own skin in the same dragging motion. His voice is distant. “It’s just how it goes. That’s why we have so many. No one would notice.”

”Hawks.”

“I’m fine,” Hawks bites back, in a one-sided argument. His eyes are glued to his own reflection, drenched in this morbid sobriety. “I was made for this.”

“The fuck you were.”

Dabi charges across the entryway of the bathroom. Hawks doesn’t move. You’re more than the commission, Hawks—”

”I’m not.” The words are punctuated with finality. “I don’t exist without the commission. I’m here because of the Commission.”

“Bullshit. You were Takami Keigo—”

”I wasn’t supposed to exist.” Hawks laughs once more—with a bit more color to his voice, but it’s bleak. His palms flatten across the bathroom counter. “You know why I hate that name? Because it was an afterthought. I—I was an afterthought.”

“Birdie.” Dabi’s voice softens. He ignores every reluctant thought and makes his way to Hawks, who seems to shrink in his bare image across from his reflection.

He’s shaking.

“They’re there,” Hawks says more forcefully. More feebly. “I—”

Hawks looks distraught.

“I don’t know if I can keep doing this,” Hawks mutters. “I—I can’t. Not again. Not to you.”

To Dabi.

Dabi loses the nerve on whatever else was about to come out of his mouth.

He completely misses Hawks reaching for a pair of scissors from a bathroom drawer.

“Hawks—what the fuck?!”

Hawks drives them into his shoulder.

“Need to cut them off,” Hawks murmurs hurriedly under his breath. “Can’t—they can’t know—”

Hawks yanks the scissors out of his shoulderblade and goes to drive it in deeper—

“QUIT IT!”

Dabi grips Hawks tighter than at the end of the balcony. He makes Hawks look at him—and nothing else. He knows what it’s like to stare at his own reflection and have to digest that horror.

“Stop,” Dabi says. Begs. “Please stop hurting yourself.”

As steady as Hawks’s words sound, it’s the parts where he waivers in his illness that Dabi focuses on. Hawks was good at spinning words. That’s what made him so valuable.

Dabi grimaces at his own words.

Calling him valuable is like calling an antique priceless. Hawks isn’t an object.

“Why do you care?” Hawks asks finally. He does laugh this time—a tiny chuckle in that fracture that Dabi spent so many months trying to widen. The space where Dabi’s Hawks was prominent.

“Because I—” Dabi stumbles over the hurdle of his own pride, his voice cracking. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Hawks stares back at him.

“Why did you stay with me in the hospital?” Dabi asks before he can help himself.

Golden eyebrows knit together, suddenly confused. And he repeats, word-for-word, gentle-tone-to-gentle-tone—“Why wouldn’t I?”

A sob burns at the back of Dabi’s throat, desperate to break free.

This isn’t a game. Games end.

But neither one of them like to lose, either—in any situation. Not to each other. There’s always a loophole—always something to exploit, always a secret.

Dabi knows, because it’s the only way he’s able to survive Hawks. He won’t get hurt if he hurts Hawks first.

Neither of them can be surprised by the pain if they saw it coming from a mile away.

“You don’t trust me,” Hawks says. If he says it now, then he can’t be too upset later.

Dabi would know. He’d do the same damn thing.

His hands tremble over Hawks’s own. Dabi wouldn’t feel a thing if it wasn’t because of Hawks. he’s cognizant of everything when he’s around Hawks, because Hawks has always made him want an after.

“I don’t trust your sense of self-preservation right now,” Dabi admits. Telling the truth would be submitting to Hawks’s whim—but Dabi desperately wanted to do that a long time ago. “I—I need you to persevere.”

Hawks is trying to find the flaw in his words. Dabi would fucking do that, too.

“I need you to want to persevere,” Dabi continues, his voice shaking. His grip is tight at first around Hawks’s wrists—but slowly, he loosens it. Dabi never meant to cuff Hawks the way the commission did. “I…can’t…want to be a better person without you here. I can’t…like myself without you.”

Hawks’s eyebrows furrow together. It’s hard to tell if any of it is getting through—but fuck it. They’ve played this stupid game and burned each other long enough. Dabi is tired of setting every aspiration he has on fire.

“You’re not that old person anymore,” Dabi whispers. “And. I’ve…always liked myself better with you.”

Hawks’s own resolve seems to falter.

”Why?” He asks, still so confused.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Dabi only says again, more adamant this time. He’ll fight Hawks every step of the way to understand, if he has to. It’s a battle he won’t lose.

He’s confused Hawks enough to make him complacent. Thank god.

“Now,” Dabi says gently, “can I give you a fucking bath? You stink.”

Hawks doesn’t combat him for once. “You’ll stay?”

“I never planned on leaving.”

Chapter Text

Hawks’s fever breaks eventually. He wakes up groggy, but not alone. He’s nestled against something. Someone.

“Feeling better?”

With Dabi. In Dabi’s room, where the curtains are withdrawn and sunset is blooming through the window. Hawks looks up, only to be greeted with tired, blue eyes.

No laptop in sight. No cellphone, either. Just Dabi sitting against the headboard that Hawks asked an assistant to buy on Amazon before Dabi was released from incarceration.

Hawks coughs, despite himself. Dabi meets him with a glass of water

“Can you sit up long enough to eat?” Dabi asks. “Fuyumi made soup.”

Fuyumi.

Fuyumi was here. Hawks’s eyebrows knit together, trying to recall the events of today.

“Oi, birdie.” Dabi suddenly waves a hand in front of his face—but not necessarily annoyed. “Are you lucid or are you still out of your fucking mind? I need to make sure you’re not gonna try to fly off the fucking balcony again.”

Suddenly it comes back to Hawks. “Ohh.”

A couple things come back to Hawks.

Like—trying to tell his coworkers he was too busy to make meetings this morning. He couldn't go on patrol or anything. No one seemed to be getting it, so Hawks came up with the bright decision that he needed to fly to work to remind them he was quirkless.

He had an oh yeah moment between falling downward instead of upward, and Dabi grabbing him by the foot.

“‘Oh yeah’?” Dabi echoes after an unintended narration of the day. “You jump off a fucking balcony thinking you could fly and the only thing you can give me is, oh yeah?”

Dabi’s tone is a mix of irritation—and this weird calmness. Hawks expects to rebuke Dabi with a comment of his own but it seems out of place. Dabi’s arm is wrapped around him carefully, less tight than a blanket burrito. Hawks hated blanket burritos. It was how others could keep him immobile.

“I used to piss Mera off all the time,” Hawks confesses. He lays back into Dabi’s arms—but is cognizant how sore his back and arms feel, as though he’s done an entire chest and bicep workout. “You know what he finally said? A sick hero on the streets is bad for the Hawks brand.”

Hawks is—was—good at his job because he was a damn good hero and knew how to put on a good performance. And unfortunately, Mera got him good with that one. Hawks can imagine Mera’s smug, diabolical grin from here.

“You shouldn’t have to push yourself that fucking hard to begin with.”

Parts of the evening play through Hawks’s mind. What little he thinks he remembers. Waking up in Dabi’s arms was definitely not a surprise by any means—but…he can’t remember every detail that led them here.

“You wear my shirt to bed,” Dabi mutters. “Thought I lost it.”

Oh, crap. Red burns in Hawks’s ears. His first instinct is denial—because he’s too tired for some smartass remark. But when he glances at Dabi, there’s no hint of smugness in those eyes. It’s an observation and a question, waiting for Hawks to answer.

“Didn’t have any shirts after the war without any holes in the back,” Hawks admits hoarsely. “Gets cold at night.”

“After the war?”

“You left it here once.” Months and months ago when Hawks still had Fierce Wings. “S’my favorite shirt. I don’t sleep without it.”

They’re in a staring contest. Dabi doesn’t blink, so Hawks doesn’t either. Or—maybe Hawks is just putting it all out there for once, given he had the gumption to jump off the balcony earlier. This shouldn’t feel more unnerving.

“Fuck,” Dabi says aloud.

“Yeah,” Hawks repeats. “Fuck.”

“I don’t like that side of you.”

“Didn’t know I had a bad side.”

Dabi snorts—so at least they’re not…feuding, or whatever. His gaze is intense. It’s not a leer or a scowl by any means. Hawks can’t remember the last time they actually stared at each other like this.

But they did. Once upon a time. They both did. Hawks knows he did, in the evenings he didn’t realize he was allowed to have.

“I don’t want to be a good person without you,” Dabi whispers.

Each word makes a lump swell in Hawks’s own throat. “We’re talking feelings now?”

“Woulda been a lot easier if we did it in the first place.”

“Were there feelings to begin with?”

“Were there?”

They never asked this question in their first go-about. Posing this question meant admitting there was something there that needed to be addressed. Something only needed to be addressed if one of them fucked up somewhere.

And, well—Hawks had other pressing priorities than addressing it during the war. So did Dabi.

Now there’s no war. There’s just Hawks and Dabi, and Dabi has never been the type of combatant that Hawks could wash his hands clean of.

And should they question it? Like, seriously, why does it feel like there is, in this weird limbo?

Dabi breaks their silence first with this bitter, ridiculous laugh. “I burned you bad.”

They’ve both hurt each other. “I killed your best friend.”

Dabi’s eyes flicker, but not with the same vengeful heat as that day in the mansion.

“You had a mission to fulfill,” Dabi says. “Bigger than yourself.”

“I was getting in your way,” Hawks points out. “I wasn’t supposed to be in the picture. I was—”

“A liability.” They both were.

Hawks nods. “Something that was just waiting to get exploited.”

“Had to get rid of loose ends, both of us.” Dabi tucks his other arm beneath his head. They’re reliving that day. “You…were—“

“—not part of the plan,” Hawks finishes.

This time, Dabi nods too.

They both had missions and had their sights set on a goal. The longer they continued seeing each other, the more they became the weakest link in the war.

Hawks and Dabi weren’t supposed to go off the rails the way they did.

“What’s that thing they say in Frozen?” Hawks asks finally. He shifts his weight and winces. “We finish each other’s sentences?”

“Sandwiches.” Dabi snorts. He, too, flops onto his back. “She ended up falling for a bad guy with an inferiority complex.”

“Hey, me too.”

“Fuck you, bitch. I’m the oldest.”

Hawks laughs now. For the first time, it makes him feel lighter. It’s a familiar warmth in the center of his chest.

They’re quiet.

“This shouldn’t work,” Hawks points out. He’s thought that more than once.

“Why’d you let me out of prison?”

“Because I want us to work.” Hawks swallows a hard lump in his throat. “Why did you let me let you out?”

“Because I wouldn’t for anyone else.”

Hawks chokes back another noise. It’s a phantom pain that’s haunted him in the months since the war. One that’s wrestled him until he’s gone mad.

“Then what is this?”

“What do you want it to be?”

Dabi never failed to ask him what he wanted. Dabi always fucking asked.

Hawks shudders. “You…weren’t supposed to see me like this—“

“Birdie.” Dabi rolls on top of him in a fashion that isn’t unfamiliar. It’s not the haste and the anger of a quick fuck to blow off steam—but the continuation of a brushstroke from their canvas before the war. Before where they ended up.

Dabi’s eyes are an intense blue. Hawks forgot when he started noticing that. He sees himself in the light of Dabi’s irises, grounded by a stable voice instead of drowning between his own yearning and his sense of duty.

“I’ve been trying my damndest,” Dabi mutters above him, “to get you to see you like this.”

It’s not a prowl. Not a proposition. Hawks watches Dabi’s mouth move, and Dabi’s eyes focus on him. Hawks isn’t in the way here. He’s front and center.

Hawks is at a loss for words. He sees his own face in Dabi’s reflection, agitated and haggard. He hadn’t looked like himself since Dabi landed in the hospital.

Dabi won’t submit here. Hawks knows that by now.

It’s hard to chew on the next few words. The ones he feared to even think about back in the day in case it all went horribly wrong.

It already did go horribly wrong even when he didn’t say them. Hawks swallows hard. “I…don’t want it to just be sex—“

“Me neither.”

Hawks exhales a heavy breath. It’s the only way to hide a pathetic sob. “I want you to be happy.”

“I want you to be happy.” Dabi pours all the emphasis into him. Hawks.

“We might fuck this up again.”

“We won’t make the same mistake twice. We’ll fuck it up a different way. Make it unique.”

Hawks snorts now—which he recognizes as a very Dabi reaction. Dabi was in all of him for a long time now—and made sure it wasn’t just physically. Dabi was a stubborn stain in Hawks’s objectives that turned itself into a statement. A beauty mark to admire.

“Why…” does it sound like Dabi wants it as much as Hawks does? “Why do you care?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Hawks remember those words very well. Dabi had said them with such certainty like there wasn’t an alternative. There was only one answer, and it was obvious.

And to Hawks—it’s always been like that. Nothing in the world operated smoothly or went according to plan—but something was right. Something worked. In the noise of it all, they found a space for each other.

“Dabi?”

“Yeah?”

“I’d…really like to eat now.”

*

Hawks has never seen so many people in his living room. Dabi made the comment once, how his apartment looked like it came from a mausoleum or from an Ikea showroom. Rarely did Hawks ever have to entertain people in his own living quarters.

Except, he reminds himself, he’s not on a mission right now. There’s no target, no underlying mission, and nothing at stake.

Instead, the Todoroki siblings play a card game around his coffee table, along with—

“Tokoyami-kun?” Hawks asks.

Immediately, every guest lunges to their feet.

“Oh thank goodness!” Fuyumi is first. “You’re awake! Come, sit at the table. I’ll get a bowl of soup ready for you.”

“Hawks-san—T-Touya-nii—“ Todoroki Natsuo stands tallest in the clan. He swallows hard, the lump in his throat even visible from the other side of the living room. “I, um—we locked all the windows and the balcony!”

“We baby-proofed the toilet,” Todoroki Shouto supplies. “It’s an interesting design.”

Hawks makes a noise. He looks to his loyal sidekick, who seems weary.

Then he looks to Dabi, whose expression hasn’t changed. Dabi hasn’t seen his siblings in months. Hawks was supposed to approach that conversation before Dabi ended up in the hospital.

“Wow,” Hawks says, voice suddenly hoarse. The sickness catches up with him outside of Dabi’s room, nearly knocking him off his feet once more.

The last thing Hawks wants is to accidentally send Dabi back to the hospital. One scare from the insinuation of Hawks seeing Rei and Enji was enough to send Dabi into dire medical need—but the Todoroki siblings are another story. One that Hawks would’ve preferred to thoroughly address when he returned to good health.

He glances toward Dabi out of habit more than anything, to make sure everything is calm. They may have agreed to be more than fuckbuddies ten minutes ago, but they’d never been the hold-each-other’s-hand-for-support type. Hawks buries that urge before he can help himself.

“Touya-nii.” Shouto doesn’t waste a second.

Dabi’s blank demeanor shifts with the slightest bit of tension. At full height, they mirror each other. They stand parallel to each other outside the landscape of battle—Dabi in sweats and a t-shirt, and Shouto in his UA High School uniform.

Everyone in the room looks ill at ease.

“Shouto,” Dabi greats eventually. It’s clearly hard to get out. His voice is gravelly as ever.

Shouto doesn’t seem used to hearing it, either. “Is it true you and Hawks are lovers?”

There’s a squeak in the air. Hard to say from who.

Hawks looks at Tokoyami first, to see if his disciple heard the same thing. Then to Shouto, who looks genuine in his curiosity. Then to Dabi—whose face suddenly twists into this strange hybrid scowl and pout before he leers in Hawks’s direction.

“What are you lookin’ at me for?” Dabi snaps. “You’re the one who told all of Japan we were fucking.”

Natsuo makes a noise. That anxious smile suddenly twitches. Despite towering over his two brothers, he suddenly shrinks into himself. Fuyumi reddens.

Hawks takes another glance around the living room and squawks. “What happened to my TV?!”

“It came that way!” Dabi protests.

There’s no denying it. For all the blue eyes and blistered skin, a flustered red heat has found its way to Dabi’s face.

“I did what?” Hawks asked.

Somehow, based on Dabi’s reaction, the question is Hawks’s worst offense of the night.

“Touya-san.” Suddenly, someone else appears in the crowd of people, having gone unnoticed before. She’s in her late teens—early twenties, maybe. “We made a whole meal for you, too. Shouto-kun mentioned you liked soba.”

It’s enough to disarm them both.

“Ah,” Natsuo suddenly says. Again, despite being the tallest person in the room, he looks like a child in his big brother’s presence. “T-Touya-nii—this is my fiancee. The love of my life. Kyoko-chan—this is my brother, Touya-nii.”

“Sasagawa Kyoko.” She bows courteously. “Pleasure to meet you, Touya-san.”

Hawks looks to Dabi. Then to Natsu. Then to Kyoko.

Dabi, of course, has a nicer look than his murderous intent earlier with Hawks. She’s unfazed by his scary dog demeanor, but that only seems to make Dabi hone in on his leer.

Hawks would know. He’s fluent in Dabi tantrums.

“You should really put your chest into it, Natsuo-kun,” Hawks says before he can help himself. He puffs his own chest out for emphasis, wheezing and sniffling as he does so. “Like, this is the love of my life and my intended. Be proud of that.”

Unsurprisingly, those eyes reroute to Hawks. But a glare at Hawks is probably more familiar than playing big brother for Natsuo.

Natsuo looks intimidated anyway. His face reddens until it matches the highlights in his hair.

“He’s right, you know,” Dabi agrees eventually. “Say it like a man.”

Natsuo makes another noise, while Sasagawa Kyoko blinks, confused.

“Th-This is Sasagawa Kyoko-chan,” Natsuo says again, this time louder. He gestures awkwardly—but quickly corrects himself until he looks more confident. “My soon-to-be wife.”

“Touya,” Dabi says. He extends a hand.

The change in Kyoko’s demeanor is palpable. She smiles even wider and shakes it. “Thank you for having me. And—ah, Mister President—“

“Hawks. The boyfriend.” Hawks sniffles and smiles pleasantly. “I’d shake your hand, but—“

“Wait—“ Natsuo’s demeanor changes from its initial confusion. He looks between the two of them, baffled. “Wait, wait, wait—“

“Boyfriend?” Shouto’s eyebrows knit together. “Since when?”

“About ten minutes ago,” Hawks continues—but Dabi looks ready to smack him again. “What?”

“We hadn’t decided on labels,” Dabi hisses. He looks—actually, he just looks grumpy. Not the typical intent to kill that Hawks is used to.

“Well I’m not introducing myself to your family as your fuckbuddy,” Hawks protests.

Tokoyami clears his throat. “You said you were lovers on TV.”

“I did?” Hawks asks once more. “How is calling myself your boyfriend worse?”

Fuyumi doesn’t look surprised in the slightest. Neither does Tokoyami, but Hawks wouldn’t expect anything else from his former student.

“Hawks-san,” Fuyumi says. “Here’s your soup—”

“Keigo,” he corrects.

Dabi’s gaze snaps back to him so fast that he almost jumps. It’s enough to put their current argument over label to rest.

A siren goes off—a reminder that the name Takami Keigo was conditioned out of him when he was still just a kid—but he turns it off. Keigo decides not to deafen his own name in his head.

“We’re…not on the clock right now,” Keigo says. “Right?”

Keigo. Takami Keigo.

Dabi and Hawks aren’t performing for each other in this instance. There’s no act to keep up—not that either of them believed each other anyway. There isn’t a game for them to win this time.

Just…Keigo, away from Hawks, and Touya beside him, if Dabi would allow it.

“Yeah,” his boyfriend says eventually. “Time to clock out.”

Touya and Keigo sit down for family dinner with their house guests.

The soup is heavenly.

“Oh my god,” Keigo croons. “This is the best soup I’ve ever had.”

“Fuyumi-nee used to make it for us when we got really sick!” Natsuo leans in with more excitement than before. “That’s why you called, right, Touya-nii?”

“I don’t remember eating this soup,” Shouto notes.

“This soup’s got a lot of carrots and meat in it. You weren’t on solid foods yet,” Touya replies almost immediately. He stares at the bowl of soba in front of him, made so graciously by his sister and future sister-in-law. “You were breastfeeding.”

Fuyumi might’ve been invited over to help nurse Keigo back to health, but the Todoroki siblings gathered for family dinner.

“Todoroki,” Tokoyami says—which causes all four Todoroki siblings to glance his way. “Why do you look like that?”

Shouto is blue in the face, staring at the eldest sibling oddly. “Why do you know so much about me?”

Touya makes a face—but doesn’t look fazed. “I changed your diapers.”

“Touya-nii—” Natsuo gapes. “You remember that?”

“Jesus—I turned evil, I didn’t lose my memories.” Touya rolls his eyes animatedly and slurps another set of noodles. He’s quiet for a breath. “It’s good. Thanks.”

Fuyumi and Kyoko look even more excited than before. Natsu, too.

The mood isn’t nearly as tense as Keigo anticipated. The conversations tentatively carry on across the dining table while Keigo swallows carrots and warm broth whole. He keeps an eye on Touya—who, in turn, keeps meeting his gaze.

Touya, for Keigo’s health. Keigo, for Touya’s nerves. They’ve spent so much time watching each other that it’s hard to turn off—but there’s a comfort knowing Touya is keeping tabs on him. Touya is keeping tabs on him.

There is a glare once or twice. Like—stop staring at me kind of glaring, but there’s no way in hell Keigo would keep his eyes off Touya in this situation.

(Keigo thinks he could get used to fights like this. So far there’s less bloodshed.)

He sits higher in his seat with each bite of food, rejuvenated. Every once in a while, Touya’s name gets thrown into the mix, or he’s asked for opinions. Shouto eventually lets go of the absurdity of his big brother changing his diapers once upon a time. All three siblings are conscientious of pulling Touya into the conversation.

Keigo moves beneath the dinner table before he can help himself. He brushes a hand over Touya’s knee and gives it a squeeze. Touya’s curious glance is subtle.

Fuyumi and Natsuo are yearning for old conversations with their long-lost big brother, but that’s not the only side of Touya’s identity.

(And if it’s too forward of a gesture, Keigo can blame it on being sick. After all, he jumped off the balcony earlier today.)

Eventually, there’s a subtle shift. Touya stares less at his food and makes eye contact with the rest of the dinner table. He hangs onto the conversation, engaged, and pauses from his own bites to contribute.

Keigo takes the free moment to get Tokoyami’s attention.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Keigo confesses.

Tokoyami flashes a tired look akin to Keigo’s new boyfriend. “Todoroki mentioned needing to see his siblings and your name came up. You haven’t answered any of my messages. I was worried.”

Keigo had plenty of messages. He’s spent the past week mentally deciding to respond to them later. But—his phone was pointedly not in Touya’s bedroom, and Keigo is making a conscious effort not to seek it out.

“You didn’t have to,” Keigo reasons. “Awful nice of you, though.”

Tokoyami’s eyebrows knit together. “You’re my teacher. Why wouldn’t I?”

He says it with such certainty that there’s no room for doubt. Like Keigo would be a fool to ever think otherwise.

Touya had said the same exact thing only hours ago.

Huh.

Keigo’s heart is warm. His belly is full of soup.

“Oi, birdie,” Touya suddenly says. “You ready for a second helping? You better eat it.”

“Here, let me.” Fuyumi stands to her feet and takes the bowl from Keigo before he can protest. Keigo can’t remember the last time he didn’t have to question the motive of someone trying to feed him.

Kyoko is unfazed by the firecrackers presented in the Todoroki Family. If there’s risk to Touya’s heart, then it’s hard to believe. Touya seems engaged. Neither of them expect a turn in their conversation.

“The wedding is in two weeks, Touya-san.” Kyoko brings it up out of nowhere. “It would really mean a lot to us if you were able to come.”

Touya chokes on his soba noodles.

“Kyoko-chan!” Natsuo exclaims. Then, “T-Touya-nii—”

“I’m fine,” Touya snaps. It’s clearly more harshly than intended by the way Natsuo suddenly flinches—but Touya adjusts. “You just…startled me, is all.”

“Here,” Kyoko says—and out of nowhere, she appears with a glass of milk.

Touya studies the glass of milk before tentatively accepting it. He downs the whole glass in silence, while Keigo graciously licks his bowl clean.

“For a second,” Touya says eventually, “I thought you said you actually wanted me at your wedding.”

Of all the things that have happened tonight, Natsuo looks surprised by Touya’s surprise. “You’re my brother. Why wouldn’t I?”

Keigo doesn’t expect Touya to look in his direction for a sanity check. Turning to Fuyumi is less of a surprise—then to Shouto—but none of them look fazed.

“Uh,” Natsuo continues when he doesn’t get an immediate response, “it’s going to be at a shrine in Namimori, where Kyoko-chan is from. Usually both sides of the family—”

“Have dinner before the wedding and formally introduce each other,” Touya finishes. “I know.”

“You…do?” Natsuo asks. “I didn’t even know.”

“I keep wedding magazines in my office,” Keigo explains.

“Oh?” Kyoko asks, surprised. “Have you two been talking about it?”

Touya swallows a noodle wrong around the same time Keigo chokes on his fourth bowl of soup. Keigo rasps for air.

“No,” he wheezes, as Touya says, “Absolutely not!”

The table gets resoundingly quiet, while Keigo’s face burns red from asphyxiation and embarrassment. Somehow, they’ve turned into a worse spectacle than the engaged couple. Keigo glances at Touya. Touya glances at Keigo.

“He’s a spy,” Touya spits out. “He just has that shit laying around.”

“A good reconnaissance mission involves staying up to date with pop culture. All types,” Keigo says. “And it prepared Touya-kun over here for conversation topics with you all. He’s been worried about what you guys would talk about.”

Touya makes a noise.

“Wait, really?” Natsu’s eyes widen.

“Fuck you,” Touya snaps. He nudges Keigo beneath the table with his knee. “Why’re you fucking putting words in my mouth?”

“Clearly I need to lay out more magazines since you can’t watch the cooking show for Fuyumi-kun now.” Keigo titters.

“Your TV came like that!”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Boys!” Fuyumi cuts through their nonsense with an exclamation louder than either of them expect. She arms herself with a ladle and a tired expression. “Please, I can’t handle any more dramatics tonight.”

Keigo shrinks at her voice—but he’s surprised to see Touya and Natsuo react, too. Natsuo’s ears are up to his neck, while Touya wrinkles his nose.

“Sorry, Fuyumi-kun,” Keigo says.

“Yeah,” Touya mutters. “Sorry, ‘yumi.”

Much like the rest of the evening, an instant of the old Touya is reason to mystify his siblings.

“So…would you consider it?” Natsuo asks once again, once the air settles. “Um—Mom will be there. Dad isn’t invited and there will be security to make sure he doesn’t sneak in.”

“Not that he’s made an indication of that,” Fuyumi says quickly. “It should go smoothly.”

“We want to have as traditional a wedding as possible. I know—not having both parents there is nontraditional,” Natsuo continues, “but I—I never thought I’d get to have my big brother again for an important milestone in my life.”

Touya’s leer has softened into something else. He’s less tense than before. Instead, he ruminates over the words with delicate care.

“I,” he says, “am not allowed to go anywhere unsupervised.”

“I’ll clear my calendar.” Keigo picks something out of his teeth. “Wild way to ask me out on a first date, but I accept.”

Touya looks gobsmacked that Keigo would honor such a request.

“So you’ll come?” Fuyumi squeals. “Really, Touya-nii?”

“Really,” Keigo answers for Touya—because Touya still looks so shocked.

There’s a sigh of relief that exhales out of the room. The tension disappears altogether—and Keigo can tell the Todoroki siblings are going to leave happier than when they arrived.

“What?” Keigo asks when he notices the sour expression on Touya’s face. It’s a straight line. He’s annoyed.

He grumbles something that Keigo isn’t sure if he heard correctly.

“What?” Keigo asks once again. Loud enough that the rest of their guests can hear them.

Touya’s scowl deepens.

“I said that’s not what I want to do for our first date,” he snaps. Regardless of the softness he meets his siblings with, there’s an extra layer of charming grumpy pissiness that’s reserved only for Keigo.

Wait.

Keigo practically squawks. “You have plans?”

“What—not part of your grand scheme with those fucking date night magazines too?” Touya snaps.

“You haven’t been on your first date yet?” Shouto’s eyebrows knit together. He turns to Tokoyami. “Do they know how relationships work?”

“Ah…” Tokoyami looks like he wants to comment, but is speechless.

“Shut up, Shouto,” Touya snaps. His face is red, while Keigo is dissociating. “Like hell you know how relationships work.”

Shouto’s lips press together. He leans into Tokoyami. “He’s doing that thing Bakugou does to Midoriya.”

“You want to ask Keigo-kun on a date?” Fuyumi asks, gleeful. “You should!”

“Are we here to witness this moment?” Natsuo asks. They’re practically cooing. “You should ask Keigo-san out!”

“Let me get the camera!” Almost immediately, Natsuo whips out his phone.

“What if he says no?” Shouto asks.

“Ah,” Tokoyami says, looking mildly disarmed, “I doubt he’d say no, Todoroki. Right, Hawks-san?”

“Keigo,” Keigo corrects. “And Shouto-kun is right. I could say no.”

Touya’s gaze darts back to him, looking utterly betrayed.

“If it was already a yes, then you wouldn’t need to ask,” Shouto says with certainty.

Touya groans. “Fuck off! All of you!”

There’s a sharpness in his tone, like a flare gun in the air. Natsuo nearly drops his phone.

Keigo bats his eyelashes at a flustered Touya.

“Well?”

“I hate all of you,” Touya announces. “You, especially.”

Keigo laughs. He hears the back end of a conversation between Touya’s youngest brother and his own student.

“The bickering is normal,” Tokoyami reassures quietly. “Dark Shadow and I do it all the time.”

“That makes sense,” Shouto says. “Dark Shadow has been known to inflict psychological warfare on you, too. And lose.”

*

There’s something nerve wracking about being alone with Touya after everyone leaves. Fuyumi gives thorough instructions on how to heat things up. Natsuo and Kyoko insist on having dinner at least one more time before the wedding. Shouto keeps eying Touya, and Touya keeps eying Shouto—but there’s no animosity there.

Tokoyami chastises Keigo privately.

“Please don’t bear the weight on your own again, Keigo-san.” Tokoyami’s tone is surprisingly stern. Even more so, it’s directed at Keigo.

“I won’t,” Keigo promises. “This one’s been riding my ass since I got him out of prison.”

He gestures to Touya, who looks at peace with his siblings for once.

Keigo nearly misses Tokoyami’s wary stare. Then he realizes what he said. “I mean—“

“I think it’s best for our relationship if you don’t finish that sentence.”

“What a great idea.” Keigo clears his throat—but Tokoyami’s troubled look remains.

“And you’re sure you’re safe?” His protege asks. “Last time I found you with him…”

He trails off.

“Oh—yeah. I hired him. My name’s on the paperwork.” Keigo waves a hand dismissively. “It’s complicated.”

It’s…something they’re trying to uncomplicate. Hawks and Dabi are complicated. Touya and Keigo are…a work in progress.

Hawks and Dabi have been alone plenty of times, for better or worse. Once that door shuts behind their house guests, they’re…still Touya and Keigo.

The eldest Todoroki son, after a family dinner with his estranged siblings. Keigo, who’s…just Keigo.

“You okay?” Keigo asks before he can help himself. “I didn’t expect to see your family here.”

“Fuyumi asked if it was okay if she called them.” Touya doesn’t even bat an eye. He starts cleaning off the dining table, so Keigo trots after him. “You’re a pain in the ass when you’re sick. I needed backup.”

“But are you okay?”

There’s different clangs and clattering that goes with stacking plates. But all noises as Touya ceases, and truly weighs his answer.

“Better than I expected,” Touya mutters eventually. Truthfully. “You?”

“Better, knowing that.” Keigo sighs in relief.

“This isn’t some trick for you to raise my blood pressure again, is it?”

“Fresh out of energy to keep doing that, I think.” Keigo yawns. He joins Touya to clear up the dining table, but his hand is immediately smacked away.

“Go lay down,” Touya orders.

“But I’m not—“

“Going to argue with me again tonight,” Touya says. “Please go lay down and I’ll join you when I’m done.”

Keigo’s mouth hangs open. He waits for a punchline, but there isn’t one. “You’ll keep keep me company?”

“Till you fall asleep.”

“What about until I wake up?”

He catches Touya’s eyes this time. A piercing gaze beneath a fringe of snowy hair. Touya is full of surprises, but Keigo enjoys a taste of unpredictability.

Keigo does. Not just Hawks.

“You really want that?” Touya asks quietly.

“Yeah.” He’ll blame it on the fever if he has to. Except Keigo doesn’t think he will.

“Isn’t that a little…” Touya hesitates. “Fast?”

Keigo stares. Touya’s expression doesn’t change. They look directly at each other, both aware how stupid the question sounds.

He could make a smart remark that they’ve shifted from enemies to lovers to fuck buddies to never holding each other’s hand all in one night—but it doesn’t come.

“I want to wake up with you next to me again,” Keigo says. “In your bedroom.”

That’s more effective than a smart ass comment. Keigo can see the exhale in Touya’s chest as he takes the words in.

“Okay,” Touya says eventually. His voice is raspy, eyes not quite meeting Keigo’s this time. Instead, Keigo can see him assessing how long it’s going to take to clean the kitchen. “Give me twenty minutes.”

Keigo’s heart flutters so high in his chest he could skip back to bed. It’s an odd feeling—but he doesn’t reject it.

He washes his face in Touya’s bathroom. Keigo changes into a fresh pair of clothes for bed and climbs between Touya’s bedsheets until he’s nestled tightly in the corner of the bed.

It smells of fresh linens. None of the ash or incense that Keigo had grown accustomed to during his time as a double agent.

That Hawks had grown used to, in Dabi’s presence. The Todoroki siblings sought out who their brother used to be. Hawks has only ever known Dabi.

So, Keigo laying in Touya’s bed like this just feels like foreign territory. Keigo’s chest is a cacophony of screaming bees. Keigo is nervous.

Eventually, the bedroom door opens. Keigo can’t tell if he drifted. He knows he’s comfortable.

The mattress dips to accommodate Touya’s weight. Neither move for a second—then the instinct is almost mechanical. Keigo lifts his head so Touya can pull him closer against his chest. Keigo can practically feel Touya’s pulse against his back.

“That’s my shirt,” Touya mutters.

“Can’t sleep without it,” Keigo reminds him.

“That’s not the same one.”

“Boyfriends share things, don’t they?”

He tests the word after catching Touya off guard earlier. His own ears tingle—which should be ridiculous. It’s so simple, and yet Keigo has never had his heart so firmly pressed against his ribcage.

“You called me Touya-kun,” Touya mutters.

“That okay?”

“S’weird,” he admits. Another sounds comes out of his throat. “Fuck, I don’t know. It’s different coming from you. I don’t hate it.”

“I don’t have to—”

“No one’s called me that outside my family since before I went missing.”

Oh, fuck.

Touya’s gaze flits back to him. “You’re the first to call me that after.”

There’s gravitas to his tone. Keigo struggles to find his next onslaught of words. He can’t blame it on the fever here—he’s just taken aback.

“News outlets will have a field day with it,” Keigo points out.

“Well I’m not sharing a bed with news outlets, am I?”

Touya snorts, so Keigo snickers.

Then, Keigo brings up his own observation. “You didn’t call me Keigo all night.”

Again, Touya snorts, sounding disbelieving. “You really want to start with that loaded gun on the table?”

“You think it’s smart of us to try this and pretend there isn’t a loaded gun on the table?” Keigo tries to laugh, but it comes out all congested and full of snot.

Still, Touya seems reluctant. “I want this to work.”

The earnestness of his voice wraps around Keigo’s own heart as comfortingly as his arms around Keigo’s torso. He fits well against Keigo without wings to obstruct them—but Keigo suddenly remembers how Dabi would go out of his way to accommodate for Fierce Wings, too.

“Me too,” Keigo confesses. “You…said I was plenty outside of the Commission—”

“You are.”

“You make me feel like I am.” There’s hardly a beat in the exchange of their words. “You’re the only person who’s called me that outside of my family, too.”

He wonders if Touya has the same mini-existential crisis Keigo did two seconds earlier.

“For bad reasons,” Touya protests.

“Then help me make it a good reason.” Keigo’s chest tightens. He wrestles the thought in his head. “Help me feel good about being Takami Keigo.”

The breath is warm against the crook of Keigo’s neck. It’s comfortable against his skin. Touya holds him close. Every small graze or touch just reminds Keigo how real this whole thing is, for the both of them.

“Touya.”

“Keigo.”

Keigo’s chest flutters. Keigo, Keigo, Keigo. Suddenly it’s the only word he wants to hear out of his boyfriend’s mouth. “Will you make me those pancakes again in the morning?”

Touya’s lips curl against his neck into what Keigo hopes is a smile.“So long as you actually remember to eat it and take a morning shit.”

Keigo makes a noise, but it’s quickly deafened by a familiar, devious snigger. “Well maybe now I don’t want them.”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah.”

The gaps in their exchange are practically nonexistent. Keigo snickers because Touya does. Keigo leans into Touya because Touya pulls Keigo in.

“I’ll be here in the morning,” Touya reminds him. “Don’t plan on leaving.”

Keigo’s next sigh of relief turns into a yawn instead. “Good.”

Chapter Text

He fucked up.

He really, really fucked up.

Dabi wasn’t supposed to care this much. He’s never ached like this when it came to someone.

He’s never worried this much.

They’re different after their talk. Which isn’t where Dabi fucked up. The words were going to come out regardless of Dabi getting in over his head with Hawks.

There’s an extra step of hesitation in how Hawks acts around him. Hawks takes a second longer to assess him now before he gets into Dabi’s personal space. Before he leans into Dabi’s comment and delivers another one.

Dabi only notices because Hawks doesn’t realize he’s doing it. Dabi found the crack. Hawks seemed to malfunction anytime Dabi questioned his motive. Not assignment related—no coercion. Just everything else.

He can’t get that image out of his head—of Hawks giving him a strange look that made Dabi question if he was misreading the situation.

What, am I not good enough for you? Am I not adequate?

Hawks’s eyes were an inhuman shade of gold that day. He rattled off questions like running a query on a piece of code. He wanted notes. He needed notes in order to function. It wasn’t a matter of craving attention or some sort of wounded pride, but birdie physically looked like he couldn’t go on without a successful order.

Which made Dabi beg the question—how often did Hawks do this, for him to physically malfunction when he was asked not to?

It could’ve been a weakness for Dabi to exploit—but he’d never exploit anyone like this. Not the way the commission has with birdie.

Dabi’s evil, but he’s not evil.

He played this game, fully intending to leave the ball in Hawks’s court. He wasn’t going to initiate anything—but he didn’t realize sliding a screen in front of their sexual intimacy meant Dabi lost all chance of being intimate with Hawks ever again.

Dabi might care, but there is no guarantee Hawks cares, too. And Dabi might’ve fucked that up.

You want to be free of the cage the commission put you in?

“Consider this the first step,” he mutters under his breath. “Fuck.”

It’s so fucking corny. Why did he have to be fucking corny?

Somehow it makes seeing Hawks the next time all the more nerve wracking. There’s a strange mix of excitement and fear that trades blows in the pit of his stomach.

There’s peace in seeing Hawks. The first breath after waking up in the morning, reminding Dabi that he has a beating heart.

Seeing the hesitation in Hawks’s usual haughty demeanor crushes every piece of Dabi’s soul. There’s a howling laughter in the back of his mind, reminding him that every good thing he’s ever tried in his life resulted in catastrophe for a reason. He’s complete shit at it.

He shouldn’t care this much.

He’s scared he ruined a perfectly good thing because he fucking cares. Hawks might as well have shut the door on them because Dabi got all fucking sappy. Dabi looked forward to these visits.

The feeling always rattles his chest and blares sirens in all directions until he sees Hawks again. That mischievous glint in Hawks’s eye knows how to deafen the noise in Dabi’s chest.

Assignments and villainy aside, they still hang out. Hawks seemed to fear the idea of their relationship—their dynamic—changing as much as Dabi did.

Hawks was enjoyable with or without clothes on. Dabi had come to that conclusion a while ago. He thinks Hawks is getting there, too, the more they do this.

The more they what?

He mulls it over all the time. Dabi didn’t care to plan much after Endeavor. Hawks made him want to.

The most terrifying thing about hanging out with Hawks in this too-big apartment is how normal it all feels. Normal to other people. Normal in another life.

Hawks is still an ass. Thankfully that wasn’t off the table the same way intimacy was. Sexual intimacy. Hawks still berates and teases him, like before. But it’s different now.

Dabi knows that it’s different because he can compare a before to an after. Before he started wondering about Hawks’s life outside the double agent shit. Before he started worrying about Hawks’s life, with every fucked up detail.

They had to wait until I was the age of consent.

At least thirteen.

Dabi was barely a teenager when the agency of his own body was taken away from him. At least he could choose when to endure the pain before Sekoto Peak. Hawks spoke his own words so blithely that Dabi doesn’t know if the hero realized the weight in them.

No one is ever allowed to take Dabi’s bodily autonomy away from him again. It’s like Hawks wasn’t aware he ever had it in the first place.

What they do now feels intimate in a different way that almost scares Dabi more.

The after is different because Hawks is asleep on his lap again. Before Dabi’s intervention, Dabi was quick to upturn his nose and ignore the Number Two Hero until he shut up. Before, Hawks would never let his guard down like this, nestled into Dabi’s lap, because Dabi’s legs are propped across the coffee table. Before, they never would’ve gotten into a situation like this without asking—or at least goading each other.

Before, Dabi never would’ve allowed it.

Before, Dabi never would’ve thought he was allowed to have this. Never thought he’d be running his hand through Hawks’s hair—which is so soft that Dabi questions if he’d suddenly lost the feeling in his finger tips.

Before, Dabi didn’t realize how quiet a room could sound, or how silent his own mind could be. Normally his brain was as loud as a burning building crumbling over itself beneath flames. Loud, too remind him that he isn’t an actual corpse. He's still alive in the loosest definition possible.

Hawks’s apartment is quiet. The movie Hawks suggested was something absurd, but Dabi could separate it in his on head. He could focus on the rise and fall of Hawks’s chest and feel Hawks’s breath at his lap as much as he could hear it.

Before their intervention, Dabi never would’ve thought he’d have a moment like this in his life. He was too young to mourn the loss of something he never had—and now he wondered how he was able to go twenty-three fucking years living without this peace.

Hawks looks small when his eyes are closed like this. When he isn’t putting on an act. The baby fat of his cheek presses up against Dabi’s leg and hides his scruff. His skin is a warm, golden tone, with the lightest dust of freckles that could hardly be called a blemish.

High intensity heat scorched Dabi’s skin. Everything about Hawks is the warmth Dabi desperately yearned for to feel good about himself.

About existing.

Hawks croons when Dabi rakes a hand across the crown his head, like a bird. Then he leans closer into Dabi’s hand and nuzzles Dabi’s palm.

Cute.

“I wake you?” Dabi asks.

“No,” Hawks mumbles. “Feels good. Keep going.”

With much encouragement, Dabi grazes Hawks’s scalp once more, earning more coos and sleepy trills.

“You watching this movie with me or what?” Dabi asks. “Oi.”

“I am, I am.”

“You’re dozing.”

“Sue me.” Hawks sits up and stretches into a long yawn. Even his wings seem to reach for extra space. “You’re staying the night, right?”

Right. Like it’s the obvious decision.

In truth, their schedules hadn’t aligned in the week after their serious talk. It was nothing vindictive. Recruiting Japan’s Number Two Hero also meant competing with Hawks’s agency, the Hero Public Safety Commission, sponsors, interviews—and so on.

The few times they saw each other in between hardly allowed them to have more than a single conversation. Maybe Dabi was reading into it. Maybe he wanted to read into it, in hopes of sabotaging himself. He feared he’d have to trade something for this intimacy again. Worse—he hated it because he was sure that birdie would do it.

But this came naturally. Breaking into Hawks’s apartment, scaling the building until pulling himself up into Hawks’s balcony. Sniggering to himself as Hawks returned home for the day. Hawks wasn’t even surprised to find him there. He announced, To whatever candlestick who broke into my apartment again: I’m home.

Dabi can’t describe it. It’s not surprise, per se. Something akin to relief hearing the question out of Hawks’s mouth. Something close to hope.

Maybe he didn’t fuck up a good thing again. Everything was always a slow burn Dabi was unaware of until it was ash on the ground.

“Oi,” Hawks says in a staunch, gruff tone. “You hear me?”

“I don’t sound like that.”

“The fuck you don’t.” Hawks howls with laughter while Dabi throws a couch pillow at him. “Seriously, are you staying over or not?”

Hawks looks him in the eye, all smiles beneath a face full of constellations. He’s the warmth of a kiln beneath an autumn sky, with nothing but the peace of crickets in the woods. Dabi loves that kind of warmth.

“Do you want me to?”

Hawks’s smile is a hearth. It’s peace and happiness and a campfire up at Sekoto Peak that illuminates against the night sky. Dabi used to enjoy the evenings because they made his flames brighter.

“Yeah,” Hawks says. “I really do.”

It’s hope, warmth, relief, and terrifying excitement. Dabi didn’t bring a night bag with him, but he finds the toothbrush from a week ago in Hawks’s bathroom. It sits in the same slot he placed it in during his last stay.

Hawks’s bathroom is big enough that they can get ready for bed at the same time. A couple’s setup.

Dabi notices Hawks staring into space as he gets out of his clothes. “Birdie, you’re dozing off.”

“Wha?” Hawks asks with a mouthful of toothpaste and spittle.

So cute that it's not even funny.

Dabi leans into Hawks’s air, the edge of his lip curling into a smile. He’s close enough that he can inhale the mintiness of Hawks’s mouth.

“Save the sleep for when we get into bed, dummy,” Dabi ruffles Hawks’s hair, scraping at Hawks’s scalp and soft-hair like he did in the living room. Hawks makes another bird-like coo before Dabi walks around him and back to Hawks’s bed.

Hawks is a stomach sleeper—which comes as no surprise. Dabi caught himself googling, ‘how do birds sleep’ when he was trying to understand the logistics of Hawks’s wings. Perching, roosting, hanging upside down, and even swimming are what came up.

His wings retract against his back like a protective cocoon, taking no more space than needed.

“You’re staring,” Hawks mumbles into his pillow.

“Thought you were dozing,” Dabi reports. There’s a slight twitch in Fierce Wings—and while not expanded to full length, they’re still adept in watching Dabi’s every move.

Before he can help himself, Dabi runs a hand down Hawks’s back against bare skin. There are scars, but birdie isn’t scarred. People spared Hawks a second glance for different reasons than they do Dabi. Hawks damn well deserves it for being so fucking hot—but the public didn’t have the privilege of watching Number Two Winged Hawks, nestled in bed with his face buried into a pillow without a care in the world.

“Mm,” Hawks mutters under his breath. He twitches slightly, kicking against his own mattress like a child. “Feels nice.”

“Oh?” Dabi muses. “Birdie likes getting petted?”

“Birdie absolutely does.”

Correction: the public didn’t have the privilege of watching birdie—Dabi’s birdie—like this, splayed across the bed without a care in the world. When Hawks sighs, his entire body seems to melt into it. Wings included.

Golden eyes peek from Hawks’s garish pillow, offering Dabi their full attention. Dabi isn’t just some afterthought like a loose feather.

The bed dips beneath Hawks’s weight as he sits up.

There’s no lead up to this kiss. No banter, no smartass comment trying to size the other one up. It lacks the vigor Hawks normally has beneath a snicker and shit-eating grin.

It’s…delicate. So undeniably gentle that it’s nearly foreign against Dabi’s mouth. He questions, yet again, if he’s suddenly lost the feeling of his own lips, but he’s aware of the smoothness of Hawks’s lips against his own chapped mouth.

When Dabi kisses back, it’s a dance on a winter pond. Each movement is careful and concentrated, as not to agitate the nerves sitting beneath the ice.

They hadn’t kissed since sex was pushed aside. Kissing led to sex, so while Dabi might’ve enjoyed exploring the inside of Hawks’s mouth, they didn’t necessarily do it casually. That was couples shit. They weren’t fucking, but they weren’t a couple, either.

This, though—makes Dabi’s heart do a triple-fucking-axel.

When Hawks pulls away, there’s a lingering ache in Dabi’s chest, but not necessarily hunger. Not in the way that he’s used to. Hawks glances at him, looking as poised as ever, even with hair falling into his face. He starts the climb across Dabi’s lap—

“Hey.” Dabi blocks the gesture. His voice is soft, even his own ears. It lacks the grit Hawks mocked him for earlier. “I was serious. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, birdie.”

“I want to.” There’s certainty in Hawks’s voice. It’s different the same way Dabi’s own voice feels foreign.

Hawks takes Dabi’s momentary lapse of thought to perch in Dabi’s lap—looking even more at home there than his own apartment. He wraps his arms around Dabi’s shoulders like a worn scarf, grinning.

“You sure?” It takes a moment for Dabi to retrieve his words. He’s distracted by the boyishness of Hawks’s face, and the unweathered glint that no news station or interview could ever capture.

“Absolutely sure. Hey.” Hawks leans forward. There’s no denying the shudder Dabi feels as Hawks’s crotch presses against his own. His mouth brushes against Dabi’s ear. Hawks’s question tingles even more than the graze. “Would you eat me out again?”

Oh. Fuck.

“Please?”

There’s just enough mischief sprinkled in Hawks’s request that undeniably feels like Dabi’s Hawks—but there’s something different to this compared to the past.

Maybe because they aren’t trying to piss each other off. There isn’t some trade or bargain, deal or no deal, aspect to this. Dabi didn’t even come here for an assignment. He decided to make himself comfortable on Hawks’s couch, and Hawks decided to kiss him out of the blue.

What was sex like without a transaction? Fuck—what was anything like, without an ulterior motive, or vengeance, or all the other shit Dabi was left with once the wildfire over his life was doused?

Hawks is chirping, making less innocuous sounds with Dabi between his asscheeks. Dabi trades bites for kisses, just to taste the difference in Hawks’s reaction. Hawks is wings up, belly pressed against the mattress. He kicks and squirms and moans with each flick of Dabi’s tongue inside his ass. Dabi has a week’s worth of yearning to catch up on. He sips Hawks like a crisp bottle of water after a long journey through the desert.

“Fuck,” Hawks rasps under his breath. “God, your tongue—”

Birdie has a thing for his tongue. Which is great, because Dabi has a thing for sticking it in Hawks’s ass.

Dabi’s grip is tight around Hawks’s ass cheeks. He eats Hawks out like it’s his last meal on death row, savoring twitch and squirm as Hawks does so. Hawks bucks from the graze of Dabi’s tongue over every reachable nerve, like an overcomplicated game of hopscotch. He gives Hawks a hard suck, and feels every groove of Hawks’s rim against his mouth.

Hawks heaves with him. Then he wiggles his ass so Dabi can finish his last helping.

“Hey,” Hawks breathes. He looks coquettishly over his shoulder, bare skin flushing and matching the hue of his feathers. “How do you wanna fuck me?”

Fuck. Dabi swallows hard. He’d be lying if he said the question didn’t make it all the way to his cock. “Birdie—“

“I want you in me. I just want to know how you want to do it.” Hawks wiggles his shoulders, hardly batting an eye. “Duh.”

Duh, Hawks wants to get fucked. Duh, Hawks wants to feel Dabi.

Fuck.

“Ride me, birdie,” Dabi murmurs. “I wanna see you fly.”

A quick reshuffling occurs. Dabi’s borrowed sweats are on the floor instead of his ankles. It’s not a quick fuck on the way to the next engagement, but a punctuation to an impromptu night that keeps surprising Dabi.

Hawks ducks his head so Dabi can peel his shirt off. He guides Dabi’s hands. “You can stretch out the slots. It catches on feathers less this way.”

“Got it.” Dabi notes it for next time. His chest sings at the possibility of a next time.

Hawks positions himself over Dabi’s cock with his perfectly pert ass. It practically fits against the curve of Dabi’s shaft like exquisite chocolate against a candy mold. Dabi intended to handle prep, but Hawks had grabbed the bottle and dressed Dabi’s cock before Dabi had the chance to move.

A moan erupts from Dabi’s mouth as Hawks’s hand glides down his length. He enjoys the view of Hawks chewing at his own lip, refusing to break concentration until Dabi is slick and coated.

“Fuck, birdie,” Dabi murmurs.

Hawks actually grips onto Dabi’s cock like it’s an extension of himself.

There’s a sigh between them when Hawks slides on top of him. It’s hard to say whom—but suddenly he’s inside Hawks, sheathed with the same satisfaction as the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle locking into place.

“Fuck,” Hawks hisses—which stretches into the opening act of an orchestral duet. He clenches around Dabi, and Dabi bucks into him with immeasurable hunger.

Dabi claws Hawks’s hipbones with a deathgrip, guiding the hero for the perfect descent. Dabi knows he’s accomplished his goal when Hawks’s eyes roll into the back of his head, and his thighs tremble beneath Dabi’s palms.

“Oh,” Hawks murmurs—which is even less coherent than before. Dabi can see every stunning, individual lash above him. His gold eyes glitter with an ember of light, suddenly concentrated on Dabi’s own face. He’s determined to match Dabi’s pace, sliding onto Dabi as Dabi thrusts upwards—

“Goddamn, birdie,” Dabi whispers.

He’s so fucking stunning it’s unfair.

Upon Hawks’s next descent, his thighs tremble. The ridges of muscles in his abdomen are prominent. Fierce Wings expands—at first looking like a safety precaution, or a defense mechanism. Then Dabi realizes they’re fluttering with the pace.

Hawks’s fingernails drag across the frame of Dabi’s shoulders, making it clear that Dabi can feel all of him—inside and out.

They’re on a mission. The most non-mission mission, where Hawks is mewling in Dabi’s ear and Dabi’s objective is to turn a simple moan into a whole birdway production.

He can see the pleasure across Hawks’s face, and feel the heave of Hawks’s chest every time the hero moans. Hair flutters across Hawks’s face, tousled against a sweaty forehead.

Hawks dips his head back like a rising sun, while he sinks onto Dabi’s cock. Up and down, while Dabi helps him compose a fantastic song.

“You are so pretty,” Dabi mutters before he can help himself.

Hawks laughs between his ascent and plunge, the sound brittle as he’s busy with other things. He cups Dabi’s face, devilishly handsome as he is angelically pretty, while his wings seem to create the valley beneath his jawline. “Take a picture, handsome.”

The simple phrase plucks at Dabi’s heartstrings. He can’t help his smile—and the silent vow to commit every inch of birdie to memory.

“I’m—” Hawks’s steady words waver into a shaky whisper. “So close.”

He’s melting into Dabi’s touch with each rut. Dabi steers Hawks’s hips into him as Hawks slides down his lap. Locks of hair fall out of place. Hawks’s face flourishes in a pretty hue of red as he’s concentrated on getting off by Dabi’s cock alone.

As he loses his composure, so do his wings. Red plumage trembles to the very tips with each thrust. Dabi knows when he’s fucking Hawks right, when even Hawks’s feathers start to lose their tenacity.

“Fuck,” Hawks mutters. His words melt together, too, as the friction burns between them. “Fuck, fuckfuckkeepgoing—”

He lets out a soundless cry as Dabi strokes him. Hawks’s cock shines in a coating of precum, while Dabi’s hand bobs from the head of his cock down to the blond and copper curls at his shaft. Hawks rakes up and down Dabi’s cock like a one-man carousel, bobbing and providing an addicting carnival song that would be stuck in Dabi’s head for the incoming future.

Dabi squeezes as Hawks clenches, and groans as Hawks croons. He feels Hawks, inside and out, from the breath buried at the crook of his neck, to the fingernails scraping his shoulders, and the legs trembling outside of Dabi’s own.

The color red has never suited Hawks more than in this moment, stretching over taut and bare skin that glistens like sunlight against a capricious river.

It’s that heat again. The fire that doesn’t burn Dabi, but envelops him. Something only birdie could ever give him between the cheesy and shitty banter. Hawks’s bare skin is full of constellations, and Dabi is settled into a patch of grass at the valley of Sekoto Peak, stargazing where he once dreamed of something bigger. Of his future.

Hawks reminds him of that feeling.

At his next descent, Hawks cums. He’s at the peak of his own mountain—of pleasure—and sinks onto Dabi with a full-body shudder. His toes are curled deep into the duvet, and his pretty cock throbs against Dabi’s hand while his adam’s apple trembles.

Fierce Wings falls with Hawks’s climax. He spills all over Dabi’s chest like a snowy avalanche, while red feathers flutter to the end of the bed like autumn leaves. Hawks has been fully harvested of pent up energy, leaving only Dabi’s birdie. Not plucked or preened in anyway by the commission—

Just a lively birdie enjoying the changing of the seasons. Dabi always loved those months, where summer heat faded and met a comforting autumn before fading into frigid, accursed winter. It’s a space in between, where things decay but aren’t really dead, in a never ending dance of orange and red leaves in the wind. Like every year, Dabi caught too caught up in his surroundings to notice the change. Too caught up in Hawks.

Dabi moans—but the real treat is watching the way Hawks shiver as Dabi comes in him.

They clean up before they talk about it. They strip the bed, Dabi brushes his teeth (again), and Dabi puts his boxers back on. Red feathers sit in piles on the floor, but Hawks pays them no mind.

“What was that?” Dabi asks. He doesn’t realize how quiet it is until he hears his own voice echoing.

Hawks yawns. It takes all of Dabi not to search for an ulterior motive—but it’s an empty manhunt. Hawks is jello next to him.

“I just really needed you this week,” Hawks murmurs sleepily in his shoulder. Without his wings, he’s only human. With a pale shoulder compared to the tanned skin of the hero’s own, Dabi guesses he’s only human, too.

God.

“That okay?” Hawks asks. It’s a casual question—but Dabi has an answer ready almost immediately.

“Always, birdie.”

It’s so…normal. All the things Dabi wishes he had with Hawks could be wild, but it’s the mundane things that make him the most hopeful. Like, maybe they could go on a date after all of this was over. Dabi could experience the things that were robbed of Touya—with the person in his life, as he is, now.

Dabi could go the rest of his life like this. He’ll have to bring it up after the war. Because there might actually be an after for him after all.

*

The wedding is a traditional affair at a Shinto shrine in Namimori. Touya wouldn’t expect anything else. Endeavor has forever left his mark across Japan, but the Japanese traditions would always be older. Natsu could get married without rooting it to their lineage. He wanted out of this family as much as the rest of them do.

Keigo gets them nice suits for the affair. The turnaround time is stupid fast. At this point, it’s the fanciest thing hanging in Touya’s closet. It shouldn’t bother him so much—but he can’t help but think of how it’s yet another way Keigo has taken care of him.

Touya tried to pay. Keigo had purposefully shown him a bill with so many zeroes that Touya nearly went into cardiac arrest.

“We could’ve gone anywhere for this,” Touya had snapped—but of course birdie had a rebuttal.

“It’s your little brother’s wedding,” Keigo protested. “You should look your best.”

Touya has too many flashbacks of their old man in a nice suit attending business functions. Everything was business for him—including the genetic engineering of his own children to build a better hero than All Might.

Seeing himself in a suit now is just…weird. He felt more like himself in his last ensemble as a war criminal than he does now.

Everything fits like a glove. From the neck down, Touya looks normal. He even asked for gloves to be discreet.

It’s his face that ruins it all. Even under a mop of Himura Snow White hair, he just sticks out.

“You took your piercings out.” Keigo sounds surprised when he comes into the hotel bathroom. Touya can’t fathom why.

“Figured Natsu didn’t want any of the attention pulled away from his bride-to-be.” Touya brushes a hand across his own cheekbone where weathered and burned skin meets what remains of fair skin.

“It won’t be that bad.”

“You’re the President of the Hero Public Safety Commission and I’m the villainous S-Rank War Criminal that helped All For One try to decimate all of Japan.”

“Stop looking so hot in that suit and we’ll attract less attention,” Keigo says, completely sidestepping Touya’s irate claim.

He inspects Touya from a neutral distance, with a few footsteps of space between them.

“You told all of Japan we’re lovers,” Touya points out.

“And Namimori is a small and unassuming town with very little going for it.” Keigo waves a hand dismissively, because he’s just fucking like that. “Natsuo-kun wanted something small and discreet, even before you accepted the wedding invitation. Otherwise the wedding of the Number One Hero’s son would be seen as some giant royal affair. Notice how this wedding hasn’t seen a news station even once.”

If it’s one thing Touya can count on: Hawks was trained in the art of espionage and discretion. He’s proof that manipulating public perception and media is simpler than most people think.

Which goes to show how outing their situationship really was just one big fucking oopsie.

“Hey, can you help me with my tie?”

“Really? Birdie can’t tie a fucking tie?”

“Maybe I just want an excuse to see you up close and personal.”

Touya snorts. Sure enough, Keigo offers him the tie along with his usual mischievous smile. He wouldn’t describe Keigo’s reaction as complete surprise that Touya knew how to clean up. In fact, he used the words, it takes effort to look that dramatic on a camera.

“Your face looks fine.”

“I didn’t say a damn thing about my face.”

“Please. I saw the concealer in your travel bag.”

Touya’s nose wrinkles. There’s a knowingness in his tone that usually rouses Touya. Touya can hear it because Keigo’s just that good at riling him up.

“I just don’t want to stress them out today, okay?” Touya says. “I think they deserve that.”

“You are such a softie.”

“Fuck off.”

“Want me to help?” Keigo doesn’t combat with another quip. As Touya finishes situating Keigo’s tie, he sees golden eyes studying him. “I’ve got some experience in this department, you know.”

The tone is sincere. Touya can’t describe how it undoes him—this earnestness laced in the shitty personality that he’s grown fond of. It’s not even that—but Keigo just sounds more boyish. He sounds more fond, which holds a starkly different tone from sounding like a flirt or a damn tease.

“You know what going to something like this means,” Touya asks quietly, “right?”

This territory is still new to them. Hawks hadn’t bothered with any media releases about his current relationship status, despite the constant speculation over the years. He had a lot of work to catch up on.

They had an awkward sit down with Mera, some board members, and the head of HR again, where Cricket asked them a bunch of questions as superior and subordinate.

Like, did Touya—Dabi—ever feel coerced into a position where he felt Hawks was abusing power?

Always, Hawks had said cheekily, because it’s just the Hawks thing to do. But anytime I try to offer him a raise he just wants to threaten me.

There was another string of questions that just felt stupid and unnecessary. Dabi would’ve berated Hawks for being so unserious about it, but in truth, he couldn’t keep a straight face, either.

You’re asking me if I’ve ever been forced to trade favors in order to secure my position as his bodyguard? Dabi asked wryly. Isn’t that in the job description for your employees?

There was this long, awkward silence. Hawks, to Dabi’s chagrin, didn’t blink. One of the board members cleared their throat and answered for everyone.

Just the agents adept for those roles, he said.

Dabi had given Cricket and Mera the evil eye—but they were as poised as Hawks.

They haven’t bickered once, was Cricket’s only tired observation.

Mera rubbed his temples and slid the disclosure form across the table. According to Hawks, giving Mera a headache was normal.

That took care of them in a professional sense. Dabi and Hawks were skilled at that.

Touya and Keigo, though—this is new to them in more ways than one. A calm facade was still just that for the public. A facade. Touya and Keigo were never supposed to happen. Yet somehow, Touya was able to bring the purest part of himself forward into his new life as Dabi, to one of the best things in his present life.

He’s both. Dabi and Touya. Dabi fell for Hawks, Hawks brought out Touya, and both Dabi and Touya were enamored by a man named Keigo, away from the commission’s branding.

He’s more careful tying Keigo’s tie than his own. There isn’t much difference—but Touya fears having Keigo’s heart this close to his hands and burning it again.

“Yeah,” Keigo says softly. “That okay?”

Touya never imagined someone in his life seeking out his opinion or what he wants.

“Yeah,” Touya agrees quietly. Whispering keeps misfortune at bay. He stares at his travel bag reluctantly. He doesn’t expect Keigo’s palm to find his cheek.

“For what it’s worth,” Keigo says, “this is the face that Natsuo-kun asked to attend the wedding. I think he’s just happy at the prospect of having you there.”

His hand grazes skin, both scorched and unscathed. There’s something comforting about Keigo’s touch on his own skin since the rest of him is covered from the shoulder down.

“Might take a while anyway,” Touya mutters eventually.

“Yeah,” Keigo says. “You’ve been known to take the long route.”

Touya snorts as Keigo grins. Then, Keigo holds up two shuugi-bukuro envelopes.

“Don’t worry,” Keigo says, “I’ll let you decide how much money to give your brother and soon-to-be sister-in-law.”

Keigo had custom suits made for them. Keigo made the hotel reservations for when they’d get to Namimori. He helped Touya pick out the gift envelopes. As his date to the wedding. The degree of separation with their relationship is the gap between both envelopes. Otherwise, writing Takami-Todoroki Household on a singular envelope would really set the tone.

Two envelopes was logical. Two envelopes didn’t hold the same weight as one shared wedding gift. This relationship was still new, after all—a fragile label over the ditch that was their previous situation.

Touya could only hope they shared the same fear. They were taking it slowly because they burned too fast the first time.

And at the same time, Touya is at a loss for words at how much Keigo was willing to do for him. Just when he’s sure his cup is full, Keigo finds a bigger glass to surprise him.

They aren’t in the car very long when Touya finds what he’s looking for. He taps at the driver’s headrest. “Stop here.”

“Here?” Keigo looks confused. “The shrine’s on the other side of town.”

“We have a couple hours.”

“We do?” Keigo fishes for the wedding invitation out of his pocket. “It says 12PM.”

“It’s at 2PM. I forged the 1.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d work up to the very last minute if you knew the real time,” Touya retorts. “And there’s shit I want to do.”

Keigo stares at him blankly, but there’s no denial. Touya makes his way to Keigo’s side of the car and opens his boyfriend’s door. Keigo steps out of the car without much of an usher and stares.

“This,” Touya announces, “is the best oyakodon stand in all of Japan.”

He gestures to the countless number of plaques that make up the foundation of a scrawny booth in the narrow alleyway. Then he points to another vendor.

“That place makes good chicken yakitori,” Touya continues. He gestures to a third stall. “That place sells a special type of balut. The bird eggs they use are special to this region of Japan.”

“You took me to get street food?” Keigo asks, baffled.

Touya’s gaze narrows at his boyfriend, lips pressed into a straight line. “Have you eaten?”

“You know I haven’t. But—”

“Then accept the damn date invitation, birdie.” Touya’s cheeks blister with a heat that might actually kill him.

For the has-been fastest hero alive, Keigo takes way too long to actually process Touya’s declaration. “Wait, this is a date?”

“No shit. Are we going or not?”

Touya would toss his head back and laugh at how big Keigo’s eyes get if he weren’t so fucking nervous.

“Is this you asking me to go on a date?”

“It’s a yes or no kind of question birdie, no need to keep answering me with another question.”

Keigo makes another noise, dumbfounded. “It’s not a very well-constructed question.”

“Fuck you.”

“You make time for that, too?”

The driver chortles under his breath—which is when Touya exercises scary dog privileges and scowls until the idiot takes the hint and leaves. When he looks back to Keigo, his boyfriend is smiling. It’s a shit-eating grin, but there’s a softer quality about it, too.

“You planned this?” Keigo asks.

“I told you I had plans.”

Dabi and Hawks always have an unspoken game between them. The way Touya shocks Keigo, though, is one for the books.

“Uh, okay,” Keigo says eventually, once the thought has settled. Keigo himself, though, still sounds unsettled. Taken aback. It’s as cute as it’s suddenly worrisome.

“You don’t like it?”

If it’s an act, Keigo’s doing a good job selling it. He rolls his eyes at first—then looks flustered. “I’ve never been on a date before.”

Oh.

Touya is about to call bullshit, that Hawks practically sweats sex appeal—but the thought stops short on his head. Keigo’s never been on a date before.

‘Neither have I,” Touya confesses. He tucks one hand in his pocket, over his wallet, and offers the other to his boyfriend. “Wanna see if it’s actually worth all the hype?”

He’s relieved that Keigo grins. Touya made Keigo smile. Keigo reaches for his outstretched, gloved hand, and suddenly, they’re two well-dressed assholes in a street food alleyway of Namimori.

“Just to be clear—we’re eating fried chicken while dressed in nice suits,” Keigo says. “We might make a mess.”

“Please. I’ve yet to see you take a bad picture.” There’s enough bite in Touya’s retort that just makes Keigo grin again.

He’s thankful for the gloves—otherwise it’d be obvious how sweaty his palms are. They never had the handholding, lovey-dovey PDA before the war. The idea of it shouldn’t make him so nervous—but he’s spent too many years protecting his own life as Dabi to remember how to be tender as Touya. If that Touya even knew how.

“Hey,” Keigo says. He tugs at Touya’s glove. “Let’s try this stall first.”

He’s not the Touya from before, but Keigo brings out the best version of himself.

They share a bed now. Handholding shouldn’t be so terrifying. They share a fucking bed now. Their first kiss after finally putting a label to their relationship shouldn’t have made Touya’s heart skitter and reinvigorate it with a new life—but it did.

He’d taken the plunge when Keigo finally recovered from illness, just to see what would happen, and Keigo had turned a thousand shades of red while Touya was in the middle of pouring batter into the waffle maker to pretend he wasn’t suddenly contemplating if it was a dumbass decision.

But—like those other firsts for Keigo and Touya, this first date is only nerveracking for the initial leg of time before they settle into something comfortable. Touya had done the research on couple-y things to do in Namimori while President Hawks was busy with back-to-back meetings. Dabi spent enough time with Hawks to know the old hero went nuts for street food and chicken.

Keigo gorges on what has to be three or four sticks of chicken yakitori before requesting oyakodon from Japan’s Best Stall. Considering how he’s always been a bottomless pit, Touya doesn’t understand why Keigo is baffled when he forgets to eat.

No one pays mind to the president of the HPSC or S-Rank War Criminal here. Touya wears a mask and Keigo wears a pair of shades that block the color of his eyes—but otherwise, it’s probably an ordinary day for the people of Namimori.

Which means this is how an ordinary date should feel like, garish suits aside. Letting Keigo tug him in every which direction and light up with excitement over every stall.

There are birds, akin to yellow canaries, that chatter in the neighboring trees. They chirp what Touya later realizes must be the Namimori Middle School alma mater.

They catch the attention of a few girls—because of course Keigo does. Surprisingly, Keigo just doubles down and leans into Touya, like they’ve done this for years.

“My boyfriend’s pretty handsome, isn’t he?” Keigo asks cheekily.

Boyfriend. Boyfriend. Saying it in the privacy of their own apartment is one thing, but kissing, holding hands, and saying the words aloud in public is just exciting for some reason. Touya’s useless and pathetic to it.

When civilians stare at them, it isn’t out of horror or disgust.

“Oh,” says a woman, “you two make a beautiful couple.”

Thank god for the mask. Touya doesn’t want to be caught grinning like an idiot beneath it. He wishes he could see Keigo’s eyes to get a better look of what’s going through that head.

“Thanks,” they both say at the same time.

Touya doesn’t realize how hard he’s squeezing Keigo’s hand until Keigo squeezes back.

The end of the alleyway leads them to a public playground, where kids climb over jungle gyms and build sandcastles. The area is far quieter than even the most suburban parts of Musutafu.

“Reminds me of Fukuoka,” Keigo suddenly says.

Touya doesn’t expect it. Somehow, hearing the name of the city from Keigo’s mouth feels as strange as his siblings insisting on calling him Touya-nii. “Yeah?”

Keigo actually looks sentimental. Maybe something at the brink of wistful. Touya had experience parsing through fond and unfond memories from a past he overall labeled as awful.

He chuckles to himself, still mystified by the playground. Despite his countless snacks, he’s no less poised or distinguished in his wedding suit. It’s when he pushes his glasses aside that he looks soft.

“My mom used to promise me a bowl of oyakodon if I was on my best behavior at the supermarket,” he confesses. “I’d always get something wrong. My steps might’ve been too loud, or I didn’t push the shopping cart to the right aisle. Sometimes I’d get it right, though.”

God. Touya can never say he was denied food when he was growing up.

“Never got a chance to play on the monkey bars, though,” Keigo continues. He stretches, and Touya can almost imagine Fierce Wings flexing at his shoulder blades. “The old man was afraid Tomie and I were colluding against him if we were gone too long. S’not like I could just blend in with the rest of the kids either, you know?”

Touya spent a good half of his life reminded of his place in Endeavor’s shadows and the shoes Endeavor deemed him unfit to fill.

“Bet you guys had your own indoor playground or something,” Keigo says cheekily. “Am I wrong?”

Touya shrugs. “A kid called me too short to play basketball, so I buried his All Might action figure in the sandbox.”

Keigo makes a noise. The longer he thinks about it, Touya actually smirks.

“The old man gave me a high-five and offered him a free Endeavor action figure to replace it,” Touya continues. “Kid cried even harder.”

Keigo chortles, which is worth uncovering the bittersweet memory. At some point, Dabi had to make terrible memories louder than the nice ones to pursue his mission. Touya was unboxing the happy ones like uncovering buried treasure.

His little brother is getting married today, and he gets to attend it. Natsuo actually found someone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with—and it’s not for quirk-breeding.

It’s actually mind blowing.

Sharing old memories like this doesn’t hurt.

“Weird we never knew that about each other,” Keigo mutters. “Right?”

“Is it?” Touya retorts. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that Keigo didn’t devolve into contempt at his own legal—his own birth name—while Touya made it clear that he didn’t go by Touya anymore. He thought he’d lost that right until all of his siblings came rushing to their front door because they heard he was worried about Keigo.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

Keigo hops in his dress shoes like he’s about to take flight, his expression mischievous. “You gonna show me how to use the monkey bars or do you only go to the park when you want to commit toy larceny?”

Touya ducks his head back with a laugh. “Toy larceny—?”

Keigo yanks them both across the street.

*

They’re almost late to the ceremony. Touya should know better, given Hawks’s notorious reputation for never showing up on time, but somehow he’s calmer than when they left the hotel.

Keigo and he had somehow fit in an order of boba tea, played a few games of basketball, and got involved with a turf war between the preschoolers and kindergarteners.

Their delay was because of a stalemate in the anklebiter war. Neither Keigo nor Touya wanted to let up, but time wasn’t on their side with the wedding venue still a few blocks out of the way.

Natsu isn’t even mad. His eyes light up like when they were kids—and before he realizes it, Touya has an armful of his younger brother, who’s since towered over Touya since their teen years.

“You came!” Natsu shouts gleefully. “You actually came!”

Touya’s dress shirt is wet. “Oi, Natsu—”

“Natsuo-kun,” Keigo interjects, “you need to save your ugly tears for their actual ceremony. You can’t look happier seeing your brother over your future wife.”

Touya shoots Keigo a look. Keigo shrugs.

After one long sniffle, Natsu retracts. There’s a sprightliness to his steps, like they’re kids again.

“C…Congratulations on your nuptials.” The words are harder to get out than anticipated. Touya clears his throat. “Proud of you.”

Natsu is two whimpers away from openly weeping.

“Cut it out,” Touya hisses, his cheeks burning.

Natsu sniffles again and bobs his head in a vigorous nod. “R…Right.”

Touya knew today was going to be nerve-racking. After begrudgingly admitting to his health issues in the last few weeks, Fuyumi and Natsu insisted on giving him the full guest list to ease his nerves.

Absolutely under no circumstances was Todoroki Enji invited to the wedding. Touya still doesn’t understand how he cleared the guest list—but that part of him that feared the worst was reassured by Natsu’s relief to see him.

He’s far less nervous with Keigo by his side. Apparently a date in a street

food alleyway and a turf war between toddlers is all he needed for the idea of holding Keigo’s hand to feel less terrifying.

They’re here, at a normal function. Together.

“Hey,” Keigo whispers to him as they pretend to mingle in the pre-party. “You doing okay?”

He squeezes Touya’s hand, as if proving a point. Touya never saw himself as the lovey-dovey type, but there’s a tiny part of his heart gleefully screaming at the tenderness in his boyfriend’s tone. Keigo is his boyfriend at this very normal function, where two people are getting married.

“Yeah,” Touya reassures—and it comes out with more relief than even he expects. “You been to a lot of weddings?”

Keigo hesitates for some reason—then shakes his head. “Only if it was a commission-affiliated function.”

“So, work.”

“So, work,” Keigo agrees. “So, no.”

Keigo and Touya are attending their first wedding together the same day they have their first date. Fuck, it’s all so surreal.

Fuyumi appears, dressed in a suitable kimono for the function. Touya’s reminded of old New Year traditions as a family, where they would hop up the steps of the shrine in Musutafu and he’d plead the gods to make him strong enough to handle his quirk.

That wish took up only an ounce of the rest of the day, where Fuyumi, Natsu, and he would be running around playing cops and robbers until their parents were finished tending to their own errands.

It’s enough that Touya really forgets his nerves. There’s relief in seeing her. .

“You two enjoy the date?” she asks sweetly. She smiles knowingly in Touya’s direction, while Keigo’s curiosity is piqued.

“You knew?” Keigo asks.

“Touya-nii asked specifically.” Fuyumi smiles even more brightly.

“It was wonderful,” Touya reassures. “Thanks, ‘yumi.”

It’s one of those names Touya didn’t think he’d ever have the opportunity of hearing out of his own mouth again. It might as well have been buried under the right of ever being called their big brother again.

But…Yumi looks as tickled as Touya felt, when he heard her utter the words Touya-nii for the first time on the other side of the apartment door.

“Anytime!” Fuyumi gushes. “You two look handsome together!”

“That’s…what one of the vendors said,” Touya admits. It’s hard to stomach. The more it’s spoken into existence, the more he’s starting to believe it.

“This one had a big ol’ goofy smile as soon as he heard that,” Keigo chimes inopportunely.

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Make me.”

Touya rolls his eyes while Keigo holds a shit-eating grin—but there’s no venom between them. The longer the afternoon stretches, the more he feels in his skin.

“So,” Keigo says, “did our surprise make it here okay?”

“Ours?” Touya repeats. He glances suspiciously at his boyfriend and sister—who are too chummy.

Fuyumi only nods, like swapping compartments from Touya secrets to Keigo secrets. “Out in the back with Mom. He seems…really nice, actually.”

“They all were,” Keigo reassures. “C’mon, I’ll take you out back.”

“For what?” Touya’s lips press into a frown.

“Oh, c’mon.” Keigo waves his hand dismissively. “Just trust me.”

It’s hard to take that phrase at face value—but for Keigo, Touya holds his tongue.

The shrine doesn’t have to try very hard to look beautiful for weddings. Touya is immediately stricken with the ache of old childhood memories. The groom’s side of the guest list had a modest amount of people. Kyoko’s side of the family proves to have their own colorful bunch of individuals that shine on their own.

Kyoko’s older brother introduces himself before Touya has the chance to register what’s happening. He’s definitely an All Might fan.

“SASAGAWA RYOHEI!” The older brother shouts. He stands out against the crowd mostly by deafening voice—but also by the bandages around his fists, like he stepped out of a boxing match before showing up to the sign. “I’m Kyoko-chan’s oniichan! I’ve heard a lot about you, S-Rank War Criminal Dabi!”

Touya arches an eyebrow. He hears Fuyumi squeak.

“You like soba!” Ryohei declares. “Make sure to stop by I-Pin’s booth. I believe the youngest Todoroki son is already over there!”

“That all you hear?” Touya asks cautiously.

“Let’s have an eating contest later,” Ryohei says. He grips and violently shakes Touya’s hands. “We must make sure we’re worthy brother-in-laws since there is this union of our families. It’s extremely important to me!”

“I—“

“Will not take no for an answer!” Ryohei barks, like a golden retriever. He turns to Fuyumi for a second and lights up like the goddamn sun. “Always a pleasure to see you, F-Fuyumi-san! You look stunning!”

“You too, Ryohei-kun.” Fuyumi smiles. Touya huffs.

Keigo snickers.

Then, he darts away like a golden retriever chasing after a stick.

“Does Namimori have a hero agency?” Touya asks. Something about that handshake felt weird.

“I wouldn’t know,” Keigo admits. Which Touya just glares at.

A bigger pile of bullshit has never come out of that mouth. Keigo laughs, unprompted.

“The Vongola Family Agency protects Namimori and the neighboring town around here. They prefer to stay under the radar.”

“What’s their backstory?”

“Not important to us unless you just want some crossover trivia,” Keigo admits. “They started in Italy.”

A grunt is Touya’s only response. He’d rather focus his attention on his brother and his boyfriend.

Then he sees his surprise.

Off in the distance, he notices something—someone—green and reptilian waving frantically overhead, as though spending the last few minutes trying to catch Touya’s attention.

“Wanna go say hi?” Keigo asks softly. His smile is full.

He takes Touya’s stunned silence as a yes.

Spinner isn’t dressed to the nines in a fine Italian suit like the bride’s side, but it’s the most well-kept that Touya has ever seen him. Surely, Spinner’s thinking the same thing about him. Touya didn’t know much about Spinner after the war aside from the fact his old ally was still alive. Surely, the risk of collusion between old members of the PLF seemed more dangerous than Keigo’s deadbeat father—but no one appears worried to see them together. Least of all, the President of the HPSC, who looks awfully pleased with himself.

“You look good,” Spinner says after a long silence. Which is when Touya realizes they’ve spent a good few minutes just staring at each other. Assessing if this was fake. “Congratulations to your brother.”

Touya hears the words and watches them come out of Spinner’s maw, but he’s still speechless. “Thanks.”

And again, the staring contest continues. Touya doesn’t feel like a dumbass at all, because Spinner’s giving him the same disbelieving stare.

“Why are you here?” Touya asks—and he hopes it doesn’t sound as callous aloud as it does in his head.

“Natsu and Kyoko-chan wanted a live-wedding artist to capture the moment,” Fuyumi interjects. She doesn’t sound the slightest bit scared. “Keigo-san had a few recommendations—”

Touya’s attention snaps back to Keigo, whose demeanor remains unfazed. Hes smiling, even.

“—and after a sufficient interview,” Fuyumi continues, “Kyoko-chan and Natsu thought Shuichi-kun would be a good fit.”

Shuichi-kun. Touya exists in a reality where his little sister and one of his old accomplices are existing in the same space without a war between them.

“Natsuo-kun wanted you to have someone you recognized here to provide comfort,” Keigo translates. His smile widens, all smooth and clever, but it’s not a competition. It’s content for Touya. “Spinner has been making waves at the prison already. He’s the star pupil in art class.”

Spinner, Shuichi-kun. Spinner admittedly looks receptive to both.

“You bent the rules again?” Touya asks. He pretends his voice doesn’t sound off. It’s a shit-ass interrogation attempt.

There’s that shit-eating grin. “Spinner is part of the rehabilitation program in order to reintegrate him into society. He’s currently working.”

Touya has no idea what to say. Suddenly he feels bad dismissing Natsu’s dramatics.

“Not all of us can get a ritzy job being a bodyguard for their boyfriend,” Spinner suddenly says—which evokes a noise out of Touya.

What a weird fucking timeline.

“You saw the news,” Touya guesses.

Spinner arches an eyebrow, looking very much like the chucklefuck that Dabi is used to. “My bedroom was three doors down from yours at the villa.”

Fuyumi makes a noise. Keigo snickers.

Touya makes another noise. “Fuck you. Same to you, asshole.”

If reptiles could blush, this asshole was definitely doing it.

“I love a good game of chicken,” Keigo whispers to Fuyumi.

Touya would be mad, but the sudden back and forth with an old friend refreshes him. He’s grinning like his old self, ready to fling another insult Spinner’s way like hocking back an energy drink.

“Oh—I see your mom.” Suddenly, Keigo gestures off in the distance. “Wait—is that Nagant?”

“She escorted Mom and Shuichi-kun from the prison this morning,” Fuyumi explains.

Touya was more prepared to see his mother before finding Spinner at the wedding. It must show in his face.

“Hey,” Keigo says suddenly, “catch up a bit. I’ll go check on Rei-san. Yeah?”

Touya shouldn’t feel so relieved. He is, anyway. “Yeah, okay.”

To his surprise, Keigo plants a kiss to his cheek before scampering off with Fuyumi in tow. She looks at him with all this love and adoration, too.

God.

Touya isn’t sure if it’s possible to go into cardiac arrest again from the opposite of stress. Whatever he’s fucking feeling right now.

Based on the look Spinner sports, at least he knows he isn’t alone in how he’s feeling.

Nervous. Terrified. Confused. Relieved, maybe.

“Shuichi, huh?” Touya can’t help but ask first. “That what you going by these days?”

The name is unfamiliar on Touya’s tongue. He’s in no position to judge, though. Spinner bobs his head up and down—then to the side, halfway confirming Touya’s suspicions, and also not really doing so at all.

“Spinner fought so Shuichi could be seen,” his old accomplice says. He looks dimmer in Touya’s presence. No—he’s allowing himself to be. “That was important to Shigaraki, so it was important to Spinner.”

Touya can hear the pain in Spinner’s voice. Their old boss’s name is hardly ever spoken with a good connotation.

Out in an open field in the small town of Namimori, though, Spinner could speak it without someone turning in absolute fear.

Of all the fucked up things Dabi’s experienced, Shigaraki and Spinner’s relationship was the closest thing to normal that he was present for. It was the sincerest form of devotion either Dabi or Touya had the privilege to see.

(And forced to hear, to his chagrin, between all-night Smash Brother mini-tournaments and Mario Kart, but Touya almost misses the jeering.)

“I don’t remember you painting much, back then,” Touya says, to break the tension. He knows what it’s like to live in an episode of remorse.

Spinner-Shuichi chuckles. It’s weathered. They both are.

“I was going to write a book,” he confesses. “About Shigaraki’s dream and aspirations. Why he was the hero we needed. That Deku brat suggested I make it a comic book. You know—”

“‘Cause the boss was always nerdy.”

“Yeah.” Spinner’s smile is wistful. It’s nostalgic in a way that neither Keigo or Touya could muster because there were very few bad memories to sift through for happy ones with Shigaraki.

Damn.

“Well.” Touya clears his throat and awkwardly shoves a hand in his pocket. He gestures towards Keigo with the other one. The words die in his throat anyway. “I came here with him.”

Spinner looks confused. “Yeah, I know.”

“No. I mean, I came here, with him.”

“Yeah? I’m aware. I wasn’t kidding about the villa—”

“Spinner, you dumbass, you’re my friend and I’m trying to introduce you to my boyfriend.” Touya huffs and waves in Keigo’s general direction.

Spinner looks confused. Then his eyes widen. “Oh. Oh!”

“Yeah.”

“So it’s not just—?” Spinner cuts himself off, baffled. He leans forward. “Or was it never just—? You know introductions usually involve all parties being present, right?”

“Fuck off,” Dabi snaps irately. “I’m new at this.”

Spinner looks bemused—but he doesn’t flinch the way others have from the gruffness of Dabi’s own words. He’s used to it the way Keigo is.

“You happy?” Spinner—Shuichi asks instead.

Of all people to ask him that question, Touya doesn’t know why Spinner’s inquiry feels like a bullet to his chest.

Spinner is asking if Dabi is happy, knowing better than anyone else at the wedding what history they have together.

Touya needed Dabi to protect him the way Spinner protected Shuichi, for a long, long time. These days it felt like they stood beside each other, than shield one another.

Spinner is an important title to address the new painter by the same way Shuichi-kun is. Keigo respected the weight of it.

Keigo was currently talking to Rei as a precursor for Touya’s own nerves. Keigo pulled the strings to get a piece of Dabi’s life here. Keigo knew how much Dabi missed those aspects of that life, even if the rest of the world thought the worst of them.

He’s quiet for too long, mulling over the question.

Spinner the Stain Stan would never be elated to know someone dating a hero—but he answers before Touya can.

“Doesn’t sound like a no,” he points out.

“Yeah.” It isn’t—but the one-sided fear is a constant in Dabi’s life. It’s the only way to protect himself from the worst.

He doesn’t want to be a better version of himself without Keigo. Which means unraveling that one-sided fear, eventually—but he’s closer now than he was when he was incarcerated.

“Hey, Sasagawa-san’s brother—”

“Never shuts up, right?” Touya interjects. “Just like Twice.”

“Exactly!” Spinner says with a boyish gusto. It’s nice to see him excitable.

“Kinda annoying,” Touya says.

“Incredibly,” Spinner agrees. “I’m glad he’s here, though. Seems like a nice guy.”

“Me too.”

They both miss their old friends.

*

The biggest surprise of the night doesn’t come from Keigo or Touya.

It’s Mom.

Eventually, Spinner hypes him up to go talk to Rei. Dabi may have kept his family secret close to his useless heart for years, but Spinner was unwaveringly sympathetic.

Lady Nagant casts Touya a look that’s eerily similar to Hawks—but it wanes quickly. Keigo is prattling on about who-knows-what—but Mom and Fuyumi are both engaged until they notice him.

Mom is…well, Mom.

Fuyumi may have inherited Mom’s smile—but there’s a warmth in hers, compared to the cool composure of their mother’s.

“Touya.” A smile stretches across her face eloquently. It’s not mystified like Fuyumi, or buried under a heap of tears like Natsu. “Hello.”

“Hi, Mom.” Touya can hear the words in his own voice, but he can’t register it coming out of his own mouth.

Touya can see it in her eyes. She reaches out impulsively at first—then hesitates, out of fear. However, the reluctance disappears more quickly than it appeared, and she cups his face fully. “You look so handsome, my son.”

He used to blame her for making him incompatible with his own quirk. Now he would give anything to trade Endeavor’s short temper for her steadfastness.

“Fuyumi said you discharged Spinner from prison for me,” he says when he finds his voice again. “He’s a friend of mine. Thank you.”

Touya tries to remember the last time he made his mother smile. He was young. Too young to understand he wasn’t the reason she stopped smiling—or that he was one of the few reasons she could smile after marrying their bastard dad.

She might be thinking what he is.

This is the first time they’ve said anything to each other since before the incarceration.

Since the family pulled him back from a flaming cliff. Since before he died.

“I was happy to do it,” she reassures. “You’re welcome.”

God. Touya distracts himself from getting choked up. Rei’s smile stretches so far that he can feel it in the dim chasm of his own stupid heart. He catches both Nagant and Keigo staring at him with this same look and decides he doesn’t like it.

“Fuyumi said you escorted our mom for us,” he says. “Mister President over here flex his executive powers for you too?”

“Well, Spinner is technically also an S-Rank criminal and should be escorted by a pro-hero at all times,” Keigo says. “I told Rei-san she could have whatever pro-hero she wanted to be her guard today and I’d sign off on it. I didn’t expect to see Nagant, either.”

“A-Ah! N-No, no—” Suddenly Fuyumi flails her arms. “You’re mistaken, Keigo-san. When I said Lady Nagant was our mother’s escort—”

“Kaina is my wedding date,” Mom says. Suddenly, she loops an arm around Lady Nagant’s.

Wait.

Wait.

Touya makes a noise. Keigo squawks.

Nagant nods curtly. “We’re together.”

“Like, together together?” Touya loses any composure he was able to muster on his trudge to his sister, boyfriend, and mother. Immediately, he looks over his shoulder, where Spinner suddenly jumps and feigns interest in his empty canvas.

Then he looks back to Keigo, even more shocked.

“Why do you look surprised?” Touya demands. “You know everything!”

“Well definitely not this,” Keigo rebukes—and it’s definitely not the same pile of bullshit from earlier, when Keigo claimed to know nothing. He points an accusatory finger to Lady Nagant. “You didn’t mention you were seeing someone!”

“I did.” Rei raises her hand voluntarily.

Then Touya really sees the resemblance between Keigo and Kaina.

Nagant tilts her head and sticks her tongue out, looking too damn similar to Hawks. “You didn’t ask.”

“How would it occur to me that you found time to meet someone behind a jail cell?” Keigo retorts.

Silence.

“Birdie,” Touya says. Four fingers point to Touya, including his own.

It’s so obvious that it’s stupid. The best way to troll a commission spy is with another commission spy. Touya would be more mortified, if it weren’t so fucking funny.

Keigo’s words might as well have been lost with the stolen All Might action figure Touya buried in the sandbox when he was a kid. Not that Touya is much better.

“A couple of months ago, I reached out to Keigo-kun for advice on how to open a dialogue between the two of us,” Mom says next. “He recommended exchanging prison letters with Kaina. Kaina could offer the perspective as a pro-hero and a villain, and knew you personally. Keigo-kun was confident in her ability to remain impartial.”

Mom leans into Lady Nagant, and Touya sees it. That warmth he just so happened to claim their mother lacked. Fuyumi sure as hell didn’t inherit that from their old man. He had no idea it was just tucked away in their mother. She’s smiling.

“It proved to be helpful,” she concludes. There’s not a fracture in her voice. No hesitation. “We grew fond of each other. I hope that it helps with any future conversations you and I may have, Touya.”

Touya is at a loss of words. But only because he’s stunned into silence how happy their mother looks.

“Is that okay, Touya?” Mom asks next.

Touya can’t believe it. “Do you really need me to tell you if it’s okay?”

There’s a familiarity in the way their mother smiles now. She ducks her head and a steadier version of her old self holds her smile now. Mom looks at him.

“I don’t ever want you to feel like you’re unheard again,” she says softly. “So yes, Touya. I’m asking. I want to hear you.”

Fuck.

“Yeah,” Touya says. It comes easier than he expects. “Yes, Mom. I just want you to be happy.”

If what Touya wanted even mattered.

Which…Mom is emphasizing does.

“I am,” she says with no hesitation. Her smile reaches her eyes. “Thank you for hearing me, Touya.”

A bell chimes and echoes through the shrine, reanimating them all.

“Oh—” Fuyumi grabs their attention. “Festivities must be starting soon. Touya-nii—you and Keigo-san can just take your seats. Natsu and Kyoko-chan didn’t want to overwhelm you with any familial requests. Mom, Shouto, and I’ll—”

Before he can help himself Touya throws arms around both his mother and sister. Fuyumi squeaks—and Mom definitely doesn’t expect it. Touya can’t even remember the last time he hugged his mom when he was growing up. He was a shitty kid.

But Fuyumi had already said it once before. There was no telling if their current conversation would be their last one.

And maybe Keigo is just a little right. Touya is a softie.

He finally lets out the breath he’s been holding since they left the hotel.

*

It’s a beautiful ceremony. Kyoko looks stunning, and Natsu shares a comically large amount of tears that guarantees a picture perfect ugly cry. They’re flanked by friends, left and right, that Touya never had the chance to meet. Kyoko has this one friend in particular, who just hypes her up.

She’s surrounded by a lot of people that are like that, actually. Touya is proud that Natsu was able to find someone who could support them in that way.

Just like Mom and Lady Nagant, who seem to share secret smiles when they think no one else is looking.

He could cry.

But he doesn’t, because Keigo teasingly calls him a softie again and the last thing he needs is to attract unwanted attention to his own ugly tears.

No one bats an eye when Touya’s name is announced as the eldest Todoroki son. Keigo says ties to the Italian mafia makes the Vongola Family Agency judge individuals by their own rules. Touya reminds Keigo that he supposedly doesn’t know anything about Namimori.

It’s not until after the ceremony during the social hour that Touya and Shouto find each other. Not that Touya is actively avoiding their youngest brother. He sees the same fondness in Shouto’s cool demeanor as their mother as Shouto hangs out with the invited brats from UA. Touya didn’t want to ruin that.

The wedding of Natsu and Kyoko is stunning. Touya is admiring Shuichi’s live painting like everyone else, who completely ignores the criminal status of the actual painter. Once the newlyweds have their first dance, the floor is open for others to join.

“Care for a dance?” Keigo asks.

Touya stares at him—and Keigo is cheeky as ever. “Was just about to ask you that.”

They’ve already experienced a lot of firsts today as boyfriends, Touya, and Keigo, so they might as well add it to the list.

Not that either of them are strangers to a song and dance. Especially theirs.

The longer the evening goes, the easier it is for Touya to settle into himself. He’s more relieved than he can even put into words. It’s not really clear who’s taking the lead. Keigo may be purposefully allowing Touya to do so—or he may be toeing the edge of Touya’s own shadow. It wouldn’t be the first time they didn’t conform to an expectation. Their whole relationship is just like that.

“Beautiful ceremony,” Keigo muses. “Right?”

“It’s what they deserved,” Touya says. He sneaks a quick glance to Natsu and Kyoko, who are surrounded by friends and drunk with happiness.

He’s at peace.

That sanctuary he didn’t expect in birdie’s wake—but it’s not limited to just Keigo and him. It’s still new and fragile compared to the rest of the corruptness Touya’s found himself in the last few years—but it’s there.

“I could get used to this,” Keigo admits. “Dates, dancing, and all that kind of stuff.”

“You don’t find it boring?”

“I don’t find you boring.”

It would kill his old self how disgustingly happy Touya is to hear that come out of Keigo’s mouth.

Outside the confines of Musutafu and Dabi and Hawks, the best part of Touya is waltzing across a wooden dance floor, practically flittering in the wind with the parts of Keigo that he loves the most.

It feels possible. Achievable.

Because they’re here, after all of the bullshit from the world. Words for Keigo ignite in the back of Touya’s throat—hot and besotted, and it absolutely doesn’t burn him. Touya thinks he may drown in his own feelings—but if he left the world today, at least he’d be beside Keigo. At least he finally found a middle ground with most of his family.

“Hey,” Keigo says next. He brushes his hand across Touya’s cheek again. Scarred Touya, survivor Dabi. “I’m really proud of you.”

One stroke of Keigo’s thumb at the corner of his mouth is all it takes for Touya to smile. Fucking asshole.

“Same to you,” Touya teases. “You ate a meal and took a shit today.”

Keigo guffaws, so Touya laughs.

“Turns out putting my phone on mute for a whole day has its benefits,” Keigo says. “Who knew. I should ignore work calls more often.”

“No shit, birdie.”

Keigo titters. He actually leans into Touya, like a hummingbird to a flower. “I love it when you call me birdie.”

Love.

Love.

“Good,” Touya says. “‘Cause I’m not gonna stop calling you that.”

“Promise?”

“Obviously.”

“Good.”

It’s the best piece of their old selves to continue on in their new life.

Coincidentally, Keigo’s phone rings after the song ends.

“Oh,” Keigo says. “Oops.”

Touya snorts and rolls his eyes. “You were saying?”

Keigo flashes one of his stupid smiles. When he looks at his phone, there’s a hesitation.

“Go.” Touya rolls his eyes. “I’ll allow one phone call tonight.”

“Really?” Keigo asks. “Okay—I won’t be long. Promise.”

Touya watches Keigo’s retreating back as President Hawks scurries off to fuel his workaholic addiction. They weren’t going to kick that brainwashing in a day or two—but a whole day ignoring his work phone was progress.

“Is it my turn to have your attention now?”

“Fuck—Shouto—”

Of course, Shouto finds the opportune time to sneak up behind him. Touya’s instincts should absolutely be better than that—but Shouto is also the only sibling who got actual training for this kind of stuff.

Off in the distance, his invited classmates are peering at them with absolute fascination.

Shouto has two party-platter bowls of soba noodles. He doesn’t look Touya in the eye at first. Then, he clears his throat. “I got us noodles.”

Touya stares at the appetizer-sized meal, baffled. “Ah. I didn’t know they had cold soba.”

Surprisingly, Shouto’s lips press into a pout, and he glares at the noodles like they personally betrayed him. “They got cold.”

Touya takes in the words. He reaches for the bowl, still bemused. “You have trouble finding me?”

“I found you. I just hadn’t figured out what to say to you.” Shouto still stares at his feet, like his shoelaces hold his script. “A…a beautiful ceremony, isn’t it?”

He says it with clear rehearsal. Which Touya can’t judge, because he’s spent the entire time he hasn’t figured out what the fuck to say to Shouto, either.

“Yeah,” he says eventually. “Natsu deserves it.”

“Will you and Hawks have a ceremony like this?”

Touya has a second flirtation with death as he nearly chokes on a noodle. “No—at this rate I think Mom and Nagant are closer down the aisle than Keigo and I.”

He’s not immune to Shouto’s impassive stare. Shouto takes one long sip of noodles in his bowl.

“Yes, Shouto?”

“I expected you to yell and curse me out. That’s what Bakugou does with Midoriya.” He gestures behind him—which is the equivalent to cueing a sound effect, as the rambunctious bomberanian asshole is suddenly shouting about shitty nerds.

“Yeah—well,” Touya huffs. He stops. “I’m…trying to be better.”

“I know.”

There’s no hesitation in Shouto’s response. Of everyone, he may take Touya’s abrasiveness best. He doesn’t flinch, but he doesn’t sob, either. They barely had a childhood together.

But, Shouto sounds earnest, and Touya actually believes him.

“I can always take you down if I need to, anyway.”

“Oi—”

“I didn’t realize weddings were such happy affairs,” Shouto admits, as though his previous comment didn’t happen. “Natsu-nii and Kyoko-nee have a lot of friends. I hope all of 1A can attend mine when the time comes.”

What a thought. Even Shouto was thinking about the future. It shouldn’t be all that surprising. Then again, Touya never expected to exist in a plane where their family’s perfect byproduct was heading in the same direction.

Not byproduct. Touya’s little brother, just like Natsu.

“Yeah, well,” Touya says, “hopefully you find yourself someone who makes you even half as happy as those disgusting lovebirds.”

And, hopefully, this isn’t the only family event Touya will ever attend. He might actually be looking forward to more.

“I do. He’s over there.”

“What?”

Shouto points. Among the trio of highschoolers, the green one and the loud one have settled into their own dance. A tall kid with glasses remains, monitoring them from a distance nervously. Monitoring them just like how Keigo was nearby for Spinner and Touya.

“That’s my boyfriend, Iida,” Shouto says.

Touya makes a sound. Shouto remains unfazed. Lady Nagant evidently brought out the warmth in Mom’s smile, which Fuyumi captured well. Shouto is cool as a cucumber, his tone no different than commenting on the weather.

“You sure he knows that?” Touya asks. He looks at this so-called boyfriend, who jumps skittishly upon eye contact.

“Yes. We were very clear about labels from the beginning, unlike you and Hawks.” Shouto holds up a hand. “This is date number four.”

Touya only stares in disbelief.

Keigo might be right. This family might just be full of dramatic assholes who liked to surprise each other.

“You know,” Touya says, “I’ve been told that introductions usually involve all parties being present.”

“Oh.” Shouto blinks and strokes his chin. “That would make sense. I’m new to this.”

No shit.

But Touya can’t blame him. Being happy in this family seems to be new for everyone. It’s an overwhelming, pure feeling compared to the rest of their family history.

“We should have a double date, then,” Touya says. “You can introduce him properly to me.”

Shouto actually lights up like that. Because of Touya.

“That enough attention for you?” Touya asks. He swallows the lump in the back of his throat. The one that wouldn’t hesitate to say he’d give more to Shouto in a heartbeat.

“It’s…a good start.” Shouto nods, his fingers curling over his bowl.

“We can have warm noodles next time,” Touya offers. “And cold soba the time after that.”

The longer he talks, the less nervous Shouto looks. He looks relieved even. “I’d like that.”

Surprisingly, so does Touya. “Good. Now go tell your little classmates you did a good job and take your boyfriend to the bathroom before he shits himself.”

“Oh.” Shouto looks over his shoulder again. “Good idea. Bye, aniki.”

The brat scampers off before Touya has a chance to react.

Touya doesn’t think he could be happier.

He decides to cut Keigo’s phone time short, before it becomes a gateway drug to the rest of the birdie’s tedious schedule.

It’s a day of happiness and celebration and love. Touya wants to enjoy the day.

He rounds the corner of the temple and catches a glimpse of golden hair.

The words are at his throat again. Warm, but not a searing burn. A pleasant emotion that’s made a home in Touya’s chest, where he didn’t think anything could survive.

“Hey,” Touya shouts, “birdie—”

A head turns.

Hawks stares back at him for the fraction of a second before something—someone—dares to turn his face back. Dares to touch Touya’s birdie.

“Songbird.” There’s someone with him. “You know I don’t like these games.”

Chapter Text

“Agent Hawks. What went wrong with this assignment?”

At twelve-and-a-half, Hawks’s assignments are still simulations. It isn’t just a matter of clearing a mission, but exercising every possible solution in order to achieve the goals expected of him. He has to go beyond expectations, or he fails.

There isn’t a degree of imperfection in his stance as he stands before Madam President. His feet are positioned at a perfect right angle, and his chest is puffed out to take up more space than expected of him. His shoes are double-knotted to limit the risk of tripping.

“There was another civilian in the building,” Hawks says. “I could’ve saved twenty-one, instead of twenty. Leaving them to be saved by someone with a fire-quirk puts them at risk of smoke inhal—ay—tion.”

Madam President eyes him. There isn’t much Agent Hawks can do about his prepubescent voice. Fierce Wings threaten to flutter with protest.

“I didn’t dispel enough feathers,” Agent Hawks continues anyway. Any hiccup in his own report is an opportunity to be exploited. To have the entire board reaffirm that he isn’t ready. “I didn’t smile at the camera.”

“And how do we remedy this, agent?”

“Send more feathers out on the front end. Strengthen flying with less to begin with. Presume there’s a camera present at all times, from all angles.”

“Do you think that’s a sufficient answer, agent?”

Agent Hawks struggles against the urge to frown.

What went wrong in his hypothetical?

Oh.

“Assess the terrain first,” Hawks says next. “If the enemy caused the building to collapse, then they’re likely still in the area. Don’t give them an opening while saving civilians.”

Madam President’s face reflects a pokerface.

“Wink at the camera. Make sure the audience is enraptured.”

Finally, she smiles. Agent Hawks’s answer is finally adequate.

“Define the word enraptured for me, Agent Hawks.”

Hawks wrinkles his nose. He should’ve known better to brush up on his vocabulary before the debriefing. He’s supposed to be good at thinking on his toes.

She tuts, after Agent Hawks mulls over the request a second too long. “Have I stumped you, agent—?”

“Enraptured. Verb. Give intense pleasure to.”

“And in layman’s terms, agent?”

Agent Hawks fights the urge to make another face. Again, he’s subject to a disappointed tut.

“Agent,” she says with palpable disappointment, “it isn’t enough to know the dictionary definition. You must be able to adapt and put these actions into practice. You’re too rigid.”

Damn it.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Hawks promises. His chest is tight, clenching at his own ill performance. “For next time.”

There has to be a next time. Hawks needed to stop failing these assessments.

“Excellent. I recommend reviewing the video footage and see what else you missed,” she says. “You’re dismissed, agent.”

Agent Hawks nods curtly.

He’s quick to return to his room, and bring up the recording of his simulated assignment. He may have failed the assessment, but he’s still good at following orders.

*

“Agent Hawks. What went wrong with this assignment?”

“...ned…”

“I was led to believe you were cognizant—”

“I almost drowned,” Agent Hawks says louder. Firmer. He grinds his teeth together in order to hide the clattering. “I didn’t d-dispel enough f-feathers. They a-anchored me down into the water.”

“How many feathers do you think you could’ve gotten away with, agent?”

Agent Hawks hesitates.

“Agent Hawks. Are you capable of a mission debrief, as you assured the medical staff, or are you still suffering from the consequences of your own inadequacies—?”

“I needed enough feathers to assure flight out of the water,” Agent Hawks says finally. He shakes his head firmly. “I’m better in the air. Not as good at swimming. I needed to be resourceful.”

Madam President eyes him stoically from the other side of the hospital bed. It’s not enough to point out the holes in his own actions. Mistakes were failures unless there was a way to remedy them.

“My wings are a risk in the water. Which means I need to adapt to swimming with the additional drag,” Hawks says. “I need to adapt to swimming without them, too. And I need to increase my output of feathers for bystanders.”

He’s not done. Not until Madam President is satisfied with his answers. There are still more mistakes to uncover because she’s hardly ever happy with his first attempt. There was always room for improvement. It isn’t just a matter of doing something first—but also doing it better.

Madam President sighs, evidently disappointed with him. Damn it.

“Review the footage,” she says. “Clearly you need more time to think about this.”

“But—”

She looks at him sternly. Agent Hawks was too slow. He needed to be faster. Needed to get ahead of his own shortcomings.

“Yes ma’am,” he says.

The sooner he obliges, the quicker he can go review footage.

*

The world isn’t supposed to be this loud. Hawks doesn’t realize that until a day after his thirteenth birthday, when Madam President summons him.

Agent Hawks takes his position, hands secured behind his back and wings filling in space to announce his presence.

They don’t meet in her office. They’re in a private training facility a few kilometers out from headquarters, which means Agent Hawks will spend the rest of the day training under Commission watch (without regard to the training he’s already done in the early hours of the day.)

They offered him a day off for his birthday, but Agent Hawks feared the thought of falling behind expectations. He couldn’t fail Madam President, let alone his own expectations that force him to do better.

He’d voiced his confusion why they needed his birthday to begin with, instead of giving him a new one when he became an agent. But he decided against throwing away the opportunity to see his mother again.

An established birthday was a good thing. It was more to solidify his profile as a hero, which meant he was closer to missions that weren’t just simulations.

“Agent Hawks,” Madam President greets. “What—“

“I dispelled approximately two hundred feathers to reduce casualties. The target tried to exploit the remainder of my wings, so I rid myself of the rest. I was two seconds late in my reaction, resulting in a minor injury,” Agent Hawks reportes. “The two second delay allowed the enemy to focus on me, and Fierce Wings was able to locate a child in distress beneath all of the debris.”

He’s reviewed the tape dozens of times. He’d applied the improvements as promised. Agent Hawks may not be there, yet, in the eyes of the Commission, but he was at least adequate. A quirk like Fierce Wings allowed only one direction for his development. Up.

“Agent Mera’s fly is down,” Hawks announces next.

Madam President blinks at him. So does Mera.

Mera clears his throat. “That fact—“

“Is something to consider, because the greeter found him attractive when we arrived. A day may come where we have to rely on that.” Agent Hawks’s demeanor remains cool. “It’s important to anticipate problems before they occur and use solutions as preventative measures.”

Agent Mera gives him a withering look—but it doesn’t go far. Agent Hawks had recited the mantra forwards, backwards, and upside down in order to prove his point. He thinks he’s figured it out.

He has to be quick to the draw. Not just wings, but arguments, too. It’s not enough to know what went wrong, or to remedy the solution. He needs to get there before Madam President even notices. Before the rest of the Commission notices.

Eventually, Agent Mera clears his throat. “Hawks. How is your hearing?”

“Fine.”

Agent Mera frowns. “Can we skip to the part where you stop lying?”

“I don’t lie,” Hawks lies.

If he wasn’t convincing enough, then he needed to work on his deception skills.

A facility worker appears with a briefcase. She places it on the table behind them and disappears.

Agent Mera undoes the clasps and pulls out a headband with large ear covers. “I’d like you to put these on.”

Agent Hawks stares at him. “Why?”

“Because it should help with your hearing.”

“I don’t have any issues.”

“Put them on.”

“Why?”

“Agent Hawks—“

“Questioning the motive of the other party when the intent is unclear is essential to survival,” Agent Hawks insists. “I’m exercising my right to all available knowledge.”

Agent Mera’s nose wrinkles, while his lips twist into a scowl. However, Madam President looks pleased. Mostly.

“Some subtlety in inquiry would do you some good,” she says.

“I’ll incorporate that in the future, ma’am.” Agent Hawks stands his ground and hides a triumphant smile. It’s not often Madam President sides with him.

“Mera,” she continues. “Explain to the young agent what this contraption is.”

Mera eyes him warily, as though to assess whether Agent Hawks will interrupt again. Clearly, the ideal strategy is to conceal his motive so Mera can’t see it coming.