Chapter Text
They were supposed to meet in a dark alley, pretty far from the city center.
A black market merchant had been the one who had procured Hawks with his contact to the League. The hero had found him after weeks of gathering information and tracking the sneaky man's movements. When finally making contact with him, he had assured him that he just wanted to get in contact with the League of Villains and wasn't planning on arresting him.
The man, Giran, had immediately slipped into business mode without dropping his look of suspicion and procured him with a burner phone.
"Keep this with you and don't turn it off. If they accept meeting you, they'll give you directions through here"
Two days later, a message came.
Today. 3:00 AM
[Location attached]
Hawks had felt his feathers bristle and nervousness tingle under his skin. This is it.
His handlers words echoed inside his head. You are to win their trust so we can destroy them from the inside. Don't disappoint us, Hawks.
As he got closer to the meeting place, by walk to avoid being spotted, he prepared himself for what he was about to do. Deceive them. Make them think you are on their side.
He was deep in thought but shook his stupor off upon arriving at the agreed place. His senses immediately alerted him on the fact that he wasn't alone. His eyes caught the silhouette of an obscure figure surrounded by the shadows, leaning lazily against the wall. Hawks tensed in anticipation, but the only thing that came from the figure was a contemptuous laugh.
"You have to be fucking kidding me"
The figure detached from the wall, revealing itself to be a tall man. He stood with visible distrust in his stance and didn't make any move to come closer. Instead, his eyes darted around, scanning the alley walls. He looked behind himself and then craned his neck to see if there was anything behind the hero, probably making sure they were actually alone. Then hid his hands in his pockets and set his eyes on the shorter man again.
"Fine. I'll take the bait. Why do you, mister number two hero, want to join us, the League of Villains?"
Hawks crossed his arms, trying to reassure himself, and slipped into his recently constructed brand new villain persona, carefully shaped and developed following his handler's instructions on how to act undercover.
"I wouldn't say I want to join you. I just think you can help me accomplish my own objectives, and you need me for yours as well"
He couldn't make the other's face yet, but by the tone of his voice, full of irony, Hawks could tell the other man was narrowing his eyes.
"Oh, and what would that objectives of yours be?"
"I didn't ask to be a hero" Nothing wrong with telling the stranger half truths, right? He was prepared to have this conversation. He had debated with himself before coming here how much he wanted to share. "I want to be free. I was almost literally purchased by the Commission when I was 7 and they started training me. No one ever asked me what I wanted to be" That was the truth. "I've been watching the system from the inside for years. It-It's twisted, and it's wrong. The Hero Public Safety Commission is corrupt and they only care about public opinion, it doesn't matter who they have to throw under the bus to save their own sorry asses. I want that to change, but I can't do anything. I've tried to make a difference, but I really can't. I'm nothing more than a pawn for them. There's no way I can change anything from the inside" That was also true. He paused, almost drowning in his own bitterness. Saying those things to someone felt kind of liberating actually. After taking a deep breath, he resumed talking. Here came the lies. "It has to be you guys. I want to help you do it. You've made more damage to the public image of heroes than anything or anyone else ever. People are starting to question the system. You're showing them that things needs to change. I want to help you destroy the current society, and create a new one where there are no heroes or villains, a world in which the Hero Commission doesn't even exist. Just free people"
"That's some serious discourse you got there, birdie. Did you practice it in front of the mirror?"
Hawks blood ran cold. He had practiced it, but he felt kind of hurt for being dismissed so quickly. At least half of what he had said were his true feelings, after all. Before he could talk back, the other man turned on his heels and started walking away.
"We don't need you. We've been doing just fine without a top ranked hero amongst us. You're not worth the risk"
"Wait!" Hawks called, trailing behind him.
Clearly feeling threatened, the man turned swiftly and grabbed his collar shirt before he could react. His other hand lighted up, blue fire wrapped up around his closed fist. Hawks could finally see his features and he swallowed heavily at the sight of his purplish scars and the silver staples barely holding the villain's face together. He knew who this was, he had read the intel on him. Well, fuck.
"You seem pretty desperate for a man who just said he didn't want to join us"
Hawks recoiled slightly and tried to regain some composure, which was a difficult task given the fact that Dabi was still crumpling his shirt and looking two seconds away from burning him on the spot. Apparently his villain persona wasn't working, so he dropped it. Better do things his own way. He raised his hands, lowered his wings in submission and offered a cocky smile.
"You may not need me, but I sure as hell would be a valuable asset. I'm willing to do anything just as long as I can see the Hero Public Safety Commission dismantled and I can fuck off to some island to spend the rest of my days" He lowered his hands, looking into the other's eyes intently. "Let me prove myself"
Dabi didn't let go of him but he let the flame disappear, still holding his gaze so close to the hero's face that there was nothing more in his field of vision. Hawks squirmed under the piercing blue stare but didn't look or step away. He knew that the villain was trying to discern wether he was being sincere or not, and he was determined to prove that he had nothing to hide.
Finally after what felt like hours, Dabi sighed heavily and released his crinkled shirt.
"Do you have a pen?"
Hawks blinked.
"Uh- a pen?"
The villain crossed his arms impatiently.
Hawks palmed his jacket searching for what he had been asked. He usually had one or two ready to sign autographs in case someone in the streets asked him for one. He pulled a red marker from his right pocket and handed it to Dabi.
The man took the cap with his teeth and brought his left hand closer to his face.
"Your number, hero"
Hawks listed the digits, inwardly grimacing at the awkwardness of giving his contact to one of the most wanted criminals in the country. He would find it funny if he wasn't just plain scared. What was the Commission getting him into?
"I thought you already had my number. I got a message from an unknown number telling me to come here"
Dabi didn't even look at him, tossing the marker in his own pocket and shrugging casually. "I don't want to contact you on a stupid burner phone. It'll raise questions. Aren't you the one who should be worrying about his public hero image or whatever?"
Hawks pouted. "I'm sure my public image would-hey, that's my marker, give it back!"
Dabi was already walking away, and Hawks knew better than to go and trying to stop him again. He watched his hunched figure fading away as it became one with the darkness again. The echo of his raspy voice lingered in the cold alley after he was already gone.
"I'll contact you"
As promised, he was contacted a few days later. They met at night again, in a warehouse this time.
Dabi was already there when Hawks arrived, standing somewhere above him behind the dusty rails of the balcony of the first floor. Hawks stood in the middle of the open space, trying not to fidget. He had considered the possibility of having been called just to be killed, and the fact that Dabi of all people was his contact made him even more nervous. From what he knew about the League, he was the one with a better chance of killing him if he really wanted to. With his wide range, powerful fire attacks, Hawks knew he had little to no chance of surviving in a closed limited ground. Like, for example, an abandoned warehouse.
The already becoming familiar husky voice pulled him from his thoughts.
"We've decided to make you prove how useful you can be, hero"
Hawks smiled triumphantly and immediately slapped himself mentally for doing so. It was clear as day that the villain didn't trust him yet, if the way he spat the word hero like it was a curse word was anything to go by.
"How?"
The man looked away, feigning disinterest. "We have a deal coming around in a few days. In the port. We'll be carrying around heavy stuff and we don't want nosy heroes interrupting us, you know?"
Hawks considered this. Heavy stuff? It was almost funny, picturing the members of the League, wanted dangerous criminals, unloading boxes from a boat and carrying them hurriedly somewhere in the middle of the night. Didn't they have minions for these things?
"What kind of heavy stuff?"
"Whatever, it's none of your business"
"I mean, I'd probably be more useful if you had me there with you to carry your whatever, with, you know" He gestured vaguely to his own wings, even though Dabi still wasn't looking at him.
"I'm not making you an offer, hero. This is an order. We want you clearing the area and making sure we're left alone, not snooping around our business"
He didn't answer, but he huffed and dropped his shoulders in acceptance. Fine. This was fine. This was more than he was hoping for, actually. He could still prove himself and get closer to them.
The last encounter with Dabi had left him unsure of his own performing, but seeing that he was being entrusted with a task, he supposed they were willing to give him a chance. He wasn't going to mess this up.
Dabi motioned for him to come up and so he did. With two swift flaps of his wings he landed behind the railing and found himself sharing the space with the villain again. Dabi extended his arm, handing him a paper with a direction, a date and an hour written in red. That was probably his sharpie. Hawks opened his mouth to protest for his loss, but closed it on second thought. He wasn't petty enough to ask for a pen back, and Dabi wasn't going to return it anyway.
"Memorise that and figure out a way to guarantee us a safe perimeter. We'll need at least three hours"
Hawks eyed the paper, making sure to push the information into his brain. Only then he realized how tired he was. Between his official work and now the late encounters with certain arsonist villain, his sleep schedule was certainly doomed.
Dabi was looking at him expectantly, and after what he must have considered enough time, he extended his pale hand for Hawks to return the paper. As soon as the sheet touched his slender fingers, it burst out in blue flames. In less than a blink there was nothing left of it.
Hawks took that as his cue to leave, and so he did.
Only when he was a few blocks away, high in the air, he dared take out his phone and get in contact with the Commission, briefly letting them know that the encounter had gone well and asking them to reschedule the routes of whoever had patrol around the zone the day of the deal to make sure no one wandered around the villains as they carried on with their shady business, whatever that was.
Three weeks had passed since that first assignment.
They had seen each other more times after that. Dabi had given him more unimportant, almost mundane jobs and Hawks had done them all. But the villain hadn't praised him once. In fact, he seemed to grow more wary of him every time Hawks cleared whatever task he was entrusted with.
Not that Hawks wanted his praise, of course. It was just, he had been raised with so little positive reinforcement. He really craved attention and compliments now that he was older. And he did get plenty of those, but... Nice words from the public always seemed insincere and empty, since they didn't really know him. The flattery from his casual lovers seemed hollow, since they were just using each other. And compliments from his handlers.... Well, he didn't really get any out of them, save from rare occasions, but usually he wasn't really happy or proud about whatever they were complimenting him about. He knew those praises were just their way of making sure he was still under their control. Like, they pointed out how nice he looked with his visor on since it prevented him from using his third pair of eyelids to protect his eyes while flying. Or, how nice his hands looked when wearing gloves, keeping his rough skin and his dark nails from showing. Heaven forbid the public from realizing he had any other bird characteristics aside from his wings and the black rings under his eyes. Not that they liked those, either.
Meeting Dabi, with his sharp tongue and zero interest in sugar-coating anything, felt like the perfect chance to get a sincere compliment. Okay, maybe Hawks did want Dabi to praise him. So what.
He was doing a great job, risking his career and sacrificing his much needed sleeping hours to get it done. Fortunately, he wasn't stupid enough to confront Dabi about any of it. He was sort of his boss, they had a professional relationship. And most important of all, he knew he'll eventually have to betray him. So, he wasn't about to do something dumb like confessing how much he craved the words of encouragement and then getting attached to him as a result. The Commission had been pretty clear about this during his double agent training. Which had been more like a quick tutorial, actually.
Don't get too close in any personal way.
Make sure you tell us everything that may be important for dismantling the League.
Always inform us on their plans and general whereabouts if you know them.
Don't forget you are to betray them. If you waver, if you harbor any doubt, you'll be considered a traitor and we'll have no mercy on you.
So there was that. No attachments.
Tonight, Hawks was feeling especially tired.
Early that morning he had been heading to a radio station to give an interview, flying without a worry and enjoying the feeling of the cold morning air in his wings and its salty scent due to the closeness of the beach when he had spotted something sketchy going on. Three men seemed to be cornering on a young man. One of them had two long anthenas and was in a fighting stance. The other two were also menacingly displaying their quirks, one surrounded by water droplets and the other producing a dark substance from his shoulders that was running down his arms. None of them seemed too be really powerful, but they were closing in on the other. Hawks approached and the three men turned to look at him as he landed. Before he could ask what was going on, the young man surged forward, stomping his fisted hand square in the face of the man with the anthenas. He scrambled to his feet as he attempted to run away. Keyword here being "attempted", given that Hawks easily caught him with a couple of feathers and then hurried to he side of the confused man laying on the floor. His nose was bleeding and his gaze was unfocused. A strength amplification quirk, maybe?
As he was kneeling, he felt the young man wriggle out of his jacket to escape. He groaned and followed after him, after entrusting the other two men with the care of the poor beat up man and urging them to call the police and maybe an ambulance.
Long story short, the young man was apparently a burglar and had a magnetic quirk, which allowed him to polarize any part of his body and whichever part he wanted from his opponent, and the force of the attraction was equivalent to the force of the second pole. Which was, in this case, Hawks. So, Hawks captured him, but not before taking two good punches to his cheekbone ans his jaw. He almost felt bad for all the villains who had ever received one of his blows, he thought as he massaged his still throbbing jaw. After handing the thief to the police, he had headed to the radio station.
He was obviously late.
He explained what had happened and the host quickly assured him that it didn't matter because the interview wasn't live, and profusely thanked him for doing his job before accommodating him to start the recording.
Hawks charmed his way into the interview, pointedly avoiding the last question about his relationship status, then went back to patrol, missing lunch and also getting a hearful from his handler for what happened. Aren't you the number 2 hero? We were really expecting better from you, Hawks. Getting punched by some petty burglar and then arriving late to an appointment isn't going to do your public image any favors.
The evening had been rather calm, but when his shift was nearing the end he picked the sound of screaming voices and followed it to find a whole ass enormous building on fire. Rescuing people was easy. Rescuing people from fire, well, that was tricky. He had to use twice the amount of feathers he would normally need to carry each person, because they kept catching fire and disintegrating. His lunges were filled with dark smoke and he couldn't even fly with the few plumes he had still attached to his back. On top of that, he could feel each and every one of his feathers being mercilessly consumed by the flames as they dragged scared civilians left and right. The stinging sensation had him gritting his teeth to keep himself from pulling all of his feathers out of the building at once. He had to get the civilians to safety first. Seriously, how could a building so big and full of people be consumed by flames without no one noticing until it was almost completely engulfed?
Well, apparently the answer was simple. A woman with a fire quirk had suffered a full panic attack and flames had erupted engulfing everything flamable around her. The fire had spread at an alarming pace, eating away all the papers and archives in the office, and isolating her in a ring of fire. He sensed her trembling presence and carried her away as fast as he could and did his best to help her calming down. From what he could get from her shaky sobs, she didn't have the power to create flames, but she could make flammable objects ignite around her. After the initial outburst of flames, she kept getting more and more nervous and couldn't stop it. He assured her that it was fine, that no one was severely hurt and surely the building would be fine once the fire was put out.
So, when he was finally done talking to the shaken civilians, the firemen and the police, he headed to his flat, feeling his shoulders heavy. Walking home wasn't something he did often. Most days he could just fly there and enter through the balcony. But not this time, because his back was almost bare without the familiar weight of his wings. He let his feet guide him and when he was about two streets away from his building, he felt his phone vibrating.
Oh, fuck, no, please, please not today.
But because the universe hated him and his sorry ass, there it was. A message from the unknown number he had come to recognize as Dabi's.
So, tonight Hawks was feeling especially tired. Although that might have been an understatement. He was sitting across Dabi, on the top floor of some abandoned building that had probably been an office some time ago, and the man was making him look at some plans and a list of guards and asking him questions, but Hawks couldn't bring himself to keep his attention on the task at hand because he was hungry, and dirty, and his face hurt, and he really just wanted to take a hot bath and have something to eat, and he smelled of fire and burnt feathers and his leg was bouncing because he couldn't wait to get out of here and grab something to eat so his stomach would stop chewing itself. Dabi kept eyeing him and was visibly getting more and more annoyed as the seconds passed.
Finally, he seemed to reach his limit. "What the fuck is wrong with you today?" he blurted out.
Hawks winced internally. He really shouldn't try Dabi's patience since the man didn't seem to have much of it, but he was tired and he had been doing fine until today, hadn't he? Maybe he could ask for permission to leave soon and they could, uh, meet another time? Sure, the man was a villain, but he was also human, wasn't he? He must have some sort of sense of empathy. So, Hawks mustered as much courage as he could get and told him about his awfully long ugly day. Dabi listened to him with his arms crossed, rocking back and forth in his chair.
"So, uh, that's it. I'm just starving, and exhausted, and I would give anything to get out of this clothes and have some decent slee-"
"Why didn't you say anything?"
Hawks hesitated. "Uh..."
Dabi stood up and headed to the door, turning to wait for him when Hawks didn't follow.
"You're no use to me in this state. You're obviously distracted. Let's go"
Where? The blond wanted to ask, but Dabi answered before he could even open his mouth.
"There's a kebab just two streets down from here. We'll grab you something to eat and then you can head home to get your beauty sleep or whatever. We'll reschedule this for tomorrow when you're not being a big baby"
Was that... kindness? He was expecting the villain to be mad or maybe disappointed, but not to take him out for dinner. A big smile crept his way into his face as he took in the absurdness of the situation and something inside him flickered. The tiny fun Hawks within himself awakened and pushed aside the boring fake villain Hawks.
"Is this your way of asking me out on a date?"
Dabi looked as unimpressed as ever as he craned his neck to look at him. "Are you stupid?"
Hawks laughed quietly, ignoring the ache of his muscles as he followed the other man. Sure enough, not even 10 minutes later he was paying for their food and after two more agonizingly slow more minutes he was stuffing his face with a giant chicken dürüm and gulping it down with the help of a canned coke. The villain was at his side, munching quietly his own meal. They were sitting on the stairs of a residential building, protected by the shadows projected over them.
They didn't talk much. Neither of them were stupid enough to think that this meant they were friends now. But Hawks couldn't help but feel kind of nice. He didn't usually share time with anyone when eating. Food was something he did hurriedly, without thought, only a mandatory step to keep his body properly functioning so he could rush back to work again. Miruko, the only person with whom he shared some free time here and there, claimed that he was a workaholic and that he needed to learn to take care of himself better. Have a regular sleeping routine, eating proper homemade meals instead of so much takeout, drink less energy drinks, make some friends, all that stuff.
Hawks realized Dabi seemed pensive too. He felt like thanking him, but he didn't know for what exactly.
When they parted ways, his tiny inner villain Hawks was fuming. He really shouldn't get close to the arsonist criminal outside of their working environment. Fun Hawks, though, was chirping way louder.