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They had this place they’d go, when the world got to be too much.
Dabi found it first. As was par for the course, he waited to tell them about it. He did that a lot. Kei always tried not to over think it; he worried about the man enough as it was. Yet, if he were to let himself speculate, he’d say maybe Dabi just liked to keep some good things to himself. So that when the world decided to bowl all of them over, he’d have some good to share.
Or maybe he just forgot.
It was Dabi, Kei was playing a losing game trying to guess.
It wasn’t anything amazing or luxurious, but it was one of Those places. The kind people just didn’t go. The kind that the scorned city rats made nests and had babies in, the kind of place just far enough from civilization that no one complained about the smell, but close enough that the sunsets were still laden with smog. Just the kind of place for a family of misfits.
It was pretty. A giant glass dome on the top of an abandoned building. The glass was cracked, it wasn’t a particularly tall building so most of the view was other abandoned buildings, but it was pretty. To them. The sun would make the broken, dirty glass shine pinks and yellows. They could, if they all crowded into one side, see the sun set and rise.
It was their place, not that anyone had bothered to try and steal it away. They’d bought a lock. Or, rather, Kei had bought a lock. They never really locked it, but there was a lock that dangled from the rusted door, like some kind of symbol. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, he’d been put in charge of the key. If he had to guess, it was probably because Dabi could lockpick like a motherfucker and Tomura could, if he so chose, just disintegrate it.
He’d kept it on his person at all times, since then. He couldn’t wear it as a necklace; he was on display too much, every visible centimeter of him carefully observed and controlled. So he’d yanked the belt off one of his night robes and tied it around his chest, hung the key from it. There were a lot of videos of him touching his chest absently. People had begun to just think it was something he did.
He dangles his legs off the broken side of the dome. They’d long ago swept the glass off the floor, using Hawks’ feathers no less, but elected to leave the jagged edges and damp, musty smell in place.
“You aren’t going to bring some fancy perfume here, are you birdie?” The smirking goth asshole had said, flicking his head in an amused sort of challenge, “Make it smell more like the riches you’re used to?”
He kicks a leg, absently. He doesn’t even notice he’s smiling, staring off at the sky, reminiscing.
“D o n ’t…if I sneeze…I will k i l l you.” Tomura hadn’t even looked up from his game, at the time. Their casual teasing, despite it’s implications, was so…domestic.
He laughs, gently. He clutches the key in his hand. It meant more to him than anything else he owned, sad as that might be. He’d almost lost it dozens of times, too. Every time he found it he was met with the most overwhelming relief. Like maybe it could be the one stroke of fate he’d understand, how he’d somehow managed to keep it so far.
He brushes the cold metal gently against his cheek, his lip, his chin. He hears the footsteps, knows who it is without a thought. Doesn’t bother to look up. They’re heavy but solid sounds, like the full flat of the foot is being smacked into the ground. Stupid platform shoes. “Hey,” he mumbles.
“Hey,” Dabi says back, practically twirling himself to the edge of the building.
“One day, you trying to get your coat to swirl is going to make you fall off the building,” he still doesn’t bother to look up, eyes distant, key still gently pressed against his chin.
“You’d catch me.”
Finally, Kei looks up. He’s smiling, wide, unabashedly. Not his tv smile, but a genuine, face-distorting smile, eyes squinted. “Yeah. I would. But I’d wait till you were so close that you’d think I wouldn’t.”
“Asshat.”
The silence they fall into is comfortable. Warm. They both stare off into the sky. Kei knows from experience that Dabi’s view is half obstructed. Figures as nice as that must be…he scoots further down, gently taking Dabi’s elbow and directing him closer. Nothing was said, Dabi doesn’t even bother telling him to “fuck off, don’t touch me”. He hadn’t for a while, really. If anything…
The sun starts shining through the thick smog, orange spreading like flames across the horizon. A few birds start darting in and out of view, a rat or too scurries around behind and below. Dabi shifted, to his right, the unspoken weight on both their shoulders acknowledged wordlessly when their fingertips brush. Their blank faces didn’t shift when their hands folded together. Kei squeezes, Dabi squeezes back. Hawks does his best not to spoil it, not to think about it too hard, to not even breathe too hard less it end somehow. He doesn’t remember the exact time it started. All he knows was since then, it somehow miraculously hadn’t stopped.
Slow, light steps announce Tomura. Neither of them make to move. Aa while ago, when this…thing had been. Fragile. They’d have jumped apart as soon as Tomura arrived. Yet Tomura, as he did then, fit himself next to Dabi, throwing a leg over theirs. He said nothing, either. The sun cast on them couldn’t explain away the deep, satisfying warmth, the smiles that slowly creeped onto their faces, the way their shoulders relaxed, the tension bled like a river down into the world below.
Soon they’d have to go back out there. Play their roles, get crushed, drown and choke with all the world threw at them.
But for just a little bit, just for these moments they shared, things were okay.
Sometimes that was all that mattered.