Chapter Text
Shouting. Screaming. Crying.
It all rolled over Touya in waves, making the boy pull in tighter and tighter on himself. The young boy was currently curled up into himself as tight as he could, tears falling from his face.
The young boy was in a darkened room, where the only piece of furniture was a stiff bed shoved in the far corner. The only light that entered the room was a thin sliver peeking in from under the locked metal door, not enough to see but enough for Touya to tell that he was all alone. That and that there was no way out.
Outside the room, shouts followed by screams followed by crying and the slamming of things being thrown continued. Growing louder and louder with each passing minute, drilling right into the small boy’s skull along with the whispers of voices that didn’t belong to him siblings, couldn’t belong to his siblings because why would they say something like that-
All his fault.
All of the screaming, the shouts of pain that echoed with a voice that sounded too much like Shouto’s for comfort. It was all his fault. His body was useless, to weak to handle the quirk that he had been cursed with. Too weak to protect anyone that he loved from the bastard that paraded himself as a hero whenever he came hunting for one of his siblings or his mother.
Weak.
Disappointment.
These were all things that described him perfectly, in the would-be-villain’s eyes. After all, that was what his father had always shouted at him before stalking away from their training session, snarl evident on his face. Someone who never should have been given the quirk that he had because he didn’t deserve it. He could never use it, so what was the point of having it?
Touya held himself tighter, hands digging into the burn that covered his upper left arm. Burns from when he first got his quirk, and had gotten it right in the middle of a training session with his father.
He had almost died that day, body temperature rising so fast that it threatened to consume him along with the flames that danced across his skin, eating it alive. That had also been the day that he was thrown aside, a scoff from his father being all that he had to say on the near death of his first born. Training would resume a year later, after he healed as much as he could and since Natsuo was still too young to withstand everything his older brother could.
A headache shot through Touya’s skull at that moment, forcing a whimper out of the boy. The shouting of what sounded like his mother joined in now, crying for him to stay away. He looked too much like his father, always would and it never mattered what he would do to change that. Getting piercings? Not enough. Dying his hair? No. Burning himself past recognition, adding to the burns that he already had from both himself and his father? It would never be enough to hide the bastard that he looked like underneath.
“Touya! Stop it, please! Don’t add to this!”
The voice of his sister joined in, begging him to stop. He was already ripping their family apart even more, his mother couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him and he took care of his siblings from behind the scenes in favor of smoking in an alley with the street dwellers he called friends. Fighting with their father only made it worse, why did he have to lash out? Why couldn’t he just go along with it like everyone else did, get by and be there like he used to be.
“Go away” the small boy whispered, blocking his ears with the palms of his hands as the three voices echoed together, twisting and hitting him head on. Demanding answers for things that he he didn’t know. “Please! STOP!”
The voice of his brother joined in now, asking where he was going in a scared whisper. His brother had always looked up to him, always laughed and followed him whenever Touya would take the lead as kids. Touya had been the one he came to when his quirk first manifested, and he was scared of the training all those years ago.
In return, Touya had ditched him starting at the age of thirteen, finally leaving him (and everyone else) to the burning hands of the bastard when he was seventeen, favoring fighting for his next meal and struggling on the streets over being in that gateway to hell for a second longer.
Natsuo had always called him strong, always looked up to him because he knew what to do when it had seemed like their whole world was falling apart. Touya had been the one to comfort his younger siblings, the one to protect them if the old man was trying to hurt them. Well, Touya had showed his true cowardness when he fled home all those years ago instead of staying. It didn’t matter anymore.
Now the voices of his family, the family that he had loved, all echoed together. The hushed cries as someone tried to hide from their father to avoid training. The screams as everything just became too much. And the sounds were getting louder and louder now, uncontrolled and hell bent on making the boy go deaf.
“Why did you leave? We needed you!”
“Touya?”
“Help me!”
“Please… I need a moment. Just… Leave, please Touya.”
He couldn’t take it. Not then, not now, not ever. It didn’t matter how hard he pressed his palms to his ears now, the voices found a way in like water through a crack. Touya couldn’t take it, face buried as far into his knees as it could be. Opening his mouth, the young boy began to scream in an effort to overpower the voices in the dark room. The room that now felt like it was closing in, with feet moving down the hall outside the door that he somehow knew belonged to that bastard he called father, here to take him away-
“Dabs!”
The voice that ripped through the room then was sharp, a whisper compared to the others but clear of the same static they seemed to carry. It cut straight to his head, but felt more like a refreshing wind than the slam that the others had been.
“Come on… Wake up!”
The voice was louder now, slowly but surely fighting off the screams and cries of his family. Reaching out to him, pushing out the rest of the voices and making the footsteps outside of the room more distant, less dangerous. And slowly, Touya was moving out of his curled position, looking around for the source of this new voice.
“Come on, Dabs. It’s okay… I promise.”
Touya wanted to cry, but he just shook his head. The room around him was slowly becoming more and more dizzy, less there.
And the next thing he knew, Touya awoke in his room (well, not his technically, he could never afford something so nice). Hawks was leaning over him, worry etched as plain as day into golden-brown eyes. Though, after seeing the other man finally wake up, the hero let out a sigh a small smile crept onto his face. “Finally” he began “you woke up. I was getting worried there, hot stuff.”
“Aw, you? Worried about a villain like me? How touching.”
“Oh shut up, of course I care! But that’s besides the point. Are you okay? I haven’t seen you like that in a while.”
“I’m fine, hero. It was just a dream after all.”
“Are you sure? You were really thrashing around, Dabs.” Hawks leaned in as he spoke, slow and watching his boyfriend's face for any signs to stop. Instead, Dabi leaned into Hawks’ grasp and closed his eyes. The hero's head leaned against Dabi's shoulder peacefully, and he secretly relished in the comfort that came with the small gesture.
“Yeah, pretty bird. I'll be fine… Just, give me a minute.”
“Hm, okay. You can talk if you want, or we just stay here. No pressure.”
Dabi sighed and rested his head over Hawks’ now, feeling his heartbeat slow down now that he was here with Hawks and not in that horrible place anymore. At some point (though he couldn't quite remember) Dabi reached his free arm over him, grabbing onto Hawks’ and rubbing small circles into it. It was four in the morning, the villain realized with a pang of guilt. He hadn't come home until late last night, only to find Hawks passed out on the couch fast asleep. It must have been a long day for the hero, but he hadn't gotten the chance to ask.
And now, even though he knew Hawks would insist it was no problem, Dabi had unintentionally woken him up from what was probably some much-needed sleep with his bullshit.
“Hey hero?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you really want to know what that dream was about?”
Hawks froze for a second in his grasp, then slowly shifted up until he was on his elbows next to Dabi, fixing him with probably the most serious look the burned villain had ever seen him wear. “Of course I do, Dabi. I'll listen to whatever you have to say, as long as want to say it.” The untold question of do you? Wrang between them for a moment as Dabi looked into those golden eyes, taking that whole look in.
“I mean, not really. But you deserve to know by now” Dabi said, looking away from Hawks now and up to the tan ceiling above. Beside him, Hawks settled back down with his arms folded over Dabi's chest, head resting there as well. Slowly, the villain brought a hand up to the blond hair and played with it while he tried to gather his thoughts.
“Just do what you want, Dabs. When you are ready, okay?”
Hawks didn't think he would end up hearing anything, Dabi knew that. Maybe he didn't even really want to know anything, at least not right now, before the sun had risen. He sure as hell wouldn't want to know after Dabi said what he was preparing to say, that was something the taller man was sure of.
“You know my house wasn't exactly what someone would call… Peaceful growing up. I've told you that my father was an abusive piece of shit who liked to work me and my siblings to the bone, right?” The villain felt Hawks nodded. “Whenever he wanted to 'train’ me or one of my siblings, he would stalk around the house looking for us. Once he found either me or my youngest brother, well that was that. How hard the training was always depended on how much we pissed him off” Dabi said with a dry laugh. He could feel Hawks’ eyes on him as he spoke, but refused to meet them. The taller man knew that he would probably break the moment he did, so it was just easier to stare down the ceiling.
“... Is that what the dream was about then?”
“Yeah, something along those lines.” Dabi pulled Hawks closer, relishing in the comforting warmth that came from the other man’s body when he did. “I was in a dark room, and I couldn’t tell if I was hiding from him or if I was trapped there. But I could hear him coming down the hall, right before I woke up. I could hear the screams of my siblings and my mother when he found them, but I couldn’t do anything.”
Dabi didn’t realise how tightly he was holding Hawks until the hero gently tapped him, squeezing his hand in reassurance as the grip in him loosening. “That sounds horrible, Dabs. I can’t even imagine. Though,” and now the hero was looking nervous, a little uncertain as he gripped Dabi’s hand tighter. “I can understand where you are coming from. With the nightmares, that is.”
Dabi raised an eyebrow at the hero, finally shifting to make full eye contact with that. “What do you mean?” He knew that there were nights where he would wake up with the light in the kitchen on, and Hawks sitting at the table with a coffee cup in hand. Nights where the hero would stay on the balcony, watching over the streets below with a lost look. They were all emotions that Dabi knew, emotions that naturally came with being a hero. So of course the hero would have nightmares, but for some reason Dabi had never considered them when thinking of his own.
“My Mom and Dad were never... Great parents. I spent a lot of time listening to them fighting, locked in my room and trying to hide from it all. After the government scooped me up, it was all work and no play. You were hurt? The villains wouldn’t stop just because you broke your arm, so keep training. You didn’t complete the work that we gave you? Better prepare yourself for a few days of intensive training. I remember cleaning beer bottles up after my Mom was too drunk to and my Dad had stormed out as a kid, though I also remember having to withstand hours of harsh training to ‘toughen up’. Let me tell you something, the government doesn’t hold back just because you’re ten.” The hero said the last bit almost too quiet to hear, but Dabi heard it nonetheless and in that second turned off his back onto his side, so that he was staring straight into the harvest golden eyes of the person next to him.
“They sound like shit, hero. Fuck ‘em, and anything they did to you as a kid. No should ever have to go through any of that shit.” As Dabi spoke, he reached out and hugged the hero close to him, Hawks going ridged for a second before hugging back. A quiet sob filled the air, but it wasn’t a sad one, not really. No, if you were to ask Dabi, he would say that they almost sounded relieved.
For the rest of the night, the two layed there, just holding each other and savoring the other’s gentle embrace. By the time the sun had peaked over the horizon and into the room, Hawks was asleep in Dabi’s arms and the villain was drifting off again himself.
The two of them would stay like that for a few more hours, until Hawks inevitably got up with a loud and panicked squawk. “I’m so late!” He shouted, bolting around the room as Dabi laughed from where he still lay on the bed.
“See you later, Hero” he called out as Hawks ran out of the room, still stumbling to get his shoes all the way. The sound of things getting knocked over by what were probably the giant pair of red wings on Hawks’ back brought an amused look to the villain’s face. No doubt he would be picking all of that up later.
“Bye Hot Stuff!” Hawks yelled from the next room, balcony door whipping open before being slammed shut. Though he couldn’t hear it, Dabi could easily picture the beating of crimson wings as Hawks took to the skys.
Smiling, the villain stayed where he lay for a few minutes, taking in the remaining heat that Hawks had left behind.