Chapter Text
Dabi swore up a storm, angrily tugging on the rope around the cow's neck in a futile attempt to force her into the trailer. She flicked her ears at him, then her tail, before lowering her head in pursuit of the grass poking through the concrete.
"Fancy beef tonight?" Dabi asked his husband without looking, glowering at the animal.
Hawks, Asuka in his arms and the last few boxes trailing behind on his floating red feathers, laughed openly at his irritation. Their baby son, only barely awake, shifted about as the sound rumbled through his father's chest, blinking his blue eyes blearily at Dabi.
"Why are we taking this thing with us?" the ex-Villain said furiously, scrubbing at his hair in frustration, "At least we get eggs and meat from the chickens . . ."
The poultry, already imprisoned in their own carriers, cooed somewhat aggressively at him. Asuka fluttered his little red wings, cooing back and beginning a loop until Hawks took him to his car seat.
"Asuka needs the milk; thank God our bones aren't hollow, but they're still more bird-like than someone without our Quirk and more fragile. I mean, it's not like we can just run to the convenience store if we run out . . ."
He trailed off, a shadow crossing his face. Even now the new Hero Ministry had officially pardoned him and the League of Villains for their crimes, Hawks and Dabi had agreed that, for Asuka's safety, it would be for the best to continue to raise him in isolation, to prevent any of the Commission Agents who had escaped the destruction of their corporation from seeking revenge, or worse, on their little family. Dabi watched his husband guide the last few boxes into the boot and slam it shut, observing the slump to his shoulders. Hawks didn't want Asuka raised the way he was and the decision was hurting him, even though it was made in their son's best interest rather than their own.
Dabi abandoned the cow for a moment, coming up behind Hawks to slot himself in between his red wings with practised ease. Hawks, his senses back on track, felt him coming and fanned his feathers a little more out of the way. Dabi pressed his chest to Hawks' back, wrapping his arms around his waist and kissing his cheek. Hawks leant into the affection, knowing it carried all the things Dabi had already said and all the things he couldn't think to say to comfort him.
Asuka yawned sleepily, his head lolling to one side against his car seat. Dabi smiled at him over his husband's shoulder, reaching over to bop him on the nose with a finger. Asuka's little face scrunched up and he swatted at Dabi's hand, cooing irritably at him.
"Don't like that this morning?" Dabi asked casually, "You usually do."
"He isn't usually up and out in the cold this early," Hawks remarked, turning to kiss Dabi on the lips and then step out his embrace, Asuka safely strapped in, closing the car door, "Speaking of which, we better get going."
Dabi nodded, heading for the drivers seat. His motion sickness didn't act up nearly so quickly or so badly if he was the one driving the car. He still shuddered at the prospect of basically three days on the road, even if they would be stopping for several hours at a time.
"Is the cow in the trailer?"
Dabi stopped, grunted and got out of the car. He came back a few minutes later, muttering curses against Spinner, Twice and Toga for stealing that thing in the first place. Hawks smiled, not bothering to reply.
They hit their first snag an hour out. In the months they had spent dancing around each other as Hero and Villain, then raising Asuka before their relationship turned romantic, Dabi had noticed that Hawks could be frighteningly still, laser-focused on something in a manner that screamed "apex predator", especially given he sometimes forgot to blink while doing so. That reaction had usually been a response to him until Hawks had begun to trust him and relax in his presence, then it became a remnant of his Hero life, an instinctive reaction to something that could harm them or their child, in the way a dog gets it hackles up when it scents danger.
Dabi noticed it immediately.
"What's the matter?" he asked, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Asuka, eyeing the tension in Hawks' shoulders.
"Nothing," Hawks said with a fake smile, strained at the edges. That meant it was something bothering him, not an external threat.
"Keigo, we both know something's wrong and we both know that I'm not going to drop it until you tell me," Dabi said flatly, "So save us both the trouble and spill it now."
". . . My wings hurt," he said quietly, reluctant to admit it out loud.
Dabi just about managed to keep a straight face, pushing down on the instinctive anger and guilt that statement caused, knowing Hawks was observing his face for signs of it. "Is it because you're sitting on them?"
"That's making it worse," Hawks admitted, "But it's where . . ."
Where they were cut off at the bone. He didn't need to say it. Dabi's hands clenched tighter around the steering wheel and he pretended to be focusing very intently on gliding around the corner. There were barely any other cars on the road at this time, this far away from suburbs and cities.
"D'you wanna take a break?"
"I'd rather cover more ground."
"Okay. Tell me when you want to stop."
The second snag occurred another hour or two later. Asuka was roused back to consciousness, at first cooing sleepily as his blue eyes shifted from his parents to the outside world zipping past his window. Eventually though, he began to fidget, wriggling around in his car seat. Now he had begun to crawl, he didn't like being stuck in one place for too long. The straps were constricting but without the right kind of deep pressure to make him comfortable and his wings were squished. Daddy's feather floated over to him, offering him his bird plushie. He took it and squeezed but the feeling got worse until he started to cry.
Dabi glanced at him in the rear-view mirror and made to pull off the road when Hawks put a hand over his, stopping him. "Don't - he won't calm down until you take him out of the seat properly."
"So let's do that then?"
"If we do, it'll be all but impossible getting him back into it. I'll try and distract him," Hawks insisted, wincing as Asuka kept pulling at the straps, rocking hard in his seat in an attempt to get out, "Keep going for as long as we can."
Dabi's ears were ringing by the time the third snag hit. Asuka cried for an hour and a half non-stop, until he tired himself out, his face bright red and wet, still visibly unhappy. Hawks had kept up his attempts to calm him, popping feathers out to rummage through the boxes for toys and books until he realised that wasn't going to work and the only thing to do was let Asuka cry.
Their baby son was still sniffling piteously in his seat when Hawks couldn't take his own discomfort anymore, his wings aching upgraded into nagging, insistent pain as he spent so much time twisted around trying to talk to his son.
POOF.
Dabi jumped hard in his seat, his hands automatically jerking the steering wheel so they nearly swerved into another lane. He swore loudly and yanked them back in a straight line, spitting red feathers out of his mouth, feeling them resting in his hair and slipping down the back of his shirt. He glanced around at the interior of the car, covered in every feather Hawks had apart from the tiniest ones, which he could now comfortably fold against his back. Hawks gave him a sheepish look as he said, "What the hell, Keigo?!"
"Uh, sorry - instinct? I feel better now if that helps," he gave Dabi a winning smile, which vanished as he glanced in the rear-view mirror at Asuka and saw the look on his face, "Asuka, no, don't copy -!"
POOF.
Dabi grunted as he felt a barrage of little feathers hit the back of his head, "If he spontaneously learns to control them with his mind and makes a tornado in here, I'm kicking you out of the car."
"Fair enough," Hawks shrugged, trying to look contrite as they both heard Asuka giggling in the backseat, grabbing his own feathers and tossing them over his head happily. If he happened to notice Asuka frown really hard at some scattered on the car floor and then one or two float back to his hand, where he crowed in triumph - well, Dabi was focused on driving. He could tell him when they arrived.
Dabi saw, trying and failing to repress a proud smile that Hawks tactfully didn't comment on.
They stopped at lunchtime, staying in the car as it was December and there was no way they could go outside. Asuka was freed from his car seat and sat on Dabi's lap, the food sitting on Hawks' as they ate. Both his parents went for a quick walk to stretch their legs and get some fresh air, neither occasion Asuka responded well too. Dabi and Hawks shared a look as he settled down; they both knew some kind of trauma response to what he had witnessed in Osaka was inevitable but his age made it difficult to determine what was trauma they needed to fix and what was Asuka just going through a phase like any other baby.
The real fight came when they had to put him back in the car seat.
Even without his feathers in the way, Asuka had decided that he hated the car seat and was resolute in not returning to it, kicking and screeching, some of his small feathers even floating up to pelt at his parents. He hadn't learned to sharpen them yet, so it was more of a nuisance, if they even noticed it, but it still wasn't good.
"Daddy!" Asuka yelled, "Daddy!"
"I'm not gonna help you, kid," Dabi grumbled, sticking his head out the window to get some air and calm the pounding at his temples, "I'd put you in too."
Hawks muttered something he wouldn't usually say around the baby as he finally strapped him in. Asuka's screaming had set off the animals in the trailer, mooing and furious clucking adding the to cacophony and the sensory input of his already-strained feathers were giving him the beginnings of a migraine. Finally, he clipped him in, straightened his back and marched away. It took Dabi a moment of watching his son tear defiantly at the straps to realise Hawks wasn't coming back to the passenger seat.
Dabi's eye's widened as he saw his husband return to the car with a chicken - one of the smaller brown ones - in hand. He opened the car door, Asuka turning to glare at him. His little face abruptly slacked in surprise, mirroring his ex-Villain father's, as Hawks dumped the chicken on him, closed the door and returned to the passenger seat.
". . . Is this some baby-book thing I didn't read . . . ?" Dabi queried, utterly bemused as Asuka started cooing quietly at the chicken, who cooed back and on it went until it seemed like they were somehow having a conversation in the backseat, the avian fantastically indifferent to its sudden change in circumstances.
"He likes the chickens and I thought it would shock him out of it," Hawks said shortly, scrubbing a hand over his face, "God knows what we'll have to do to calm him down tomorrow."
Dabi blanched a little, quickly setting off again, "That's tomorrow's problem."
When it went too quiet, they both looked in the mirror to see Asuka very intently focusing on his feathers, making them flutter. The chicken copied the action and he did it again, hyper-focused on his feathers. They glanced at each other, smiled, shrugged and started chatting. Next time they looked, Asuka had fallen asleep, the chicken escaping his grasp to hop around the backseat and boxes.
"Huh. That was atypically easy," Hawks noted with a raised brow, "Maybe we should bring a chicken into his bedroom for naptime."
"Not in my house," Dabi said immediately.
It crapped on a box.
***
"Are you serious?" Dabi said, frozen in the doorway with an expression of disgust on his face, Asuka in his arms, "A love hotel?!"
"It's anonymous and reasonably priced," Hawks said nonchalantly, depositing Asuka's crib by the tiny couch not too far from the bed, "Did you see a single staff member on your way in here? No one's going to notice us."
"Don't you think someone might find the sound of a baby crying in a love hotel a bit concerning?" Dabi demanded even as he stepped past the threshold and locked the door behind him, balancing Asuka on one arm.
The baby, for his part, was looking around at the new location curiously, shrinking into Dabi's chest and closing his fist around his father's shirt. He spotted the cluster of objects in the corner and shrieked, kicking his legs enthusiastically.
"Oh my fu - why are there teddy bears in here?!" Dabi's face was a mask of disgust, holding on tight as Asuka tried to escape his grasp and dive on top off the pile, "No, Asuka, you don't know what they've been used for!"
Hawks rolled his eyes, filling up the kettle in the kitchenette provided, "This place has a great reputation for cleanliness. Gone over with a black light and everything. He'll be fine. Also, soundproofing."
"Of course, essential in a love hotel," Dabi muttered, reluctantly letting Asuka clamber out of his arms and throw himself head-first on top of a brown teddy bear that was probably the same size as Dabi himself.
"I would say so," Hawks agreed, fishing out the coffee and making them both a cup, "Discretion is the name of the game here."
Dabi cut him a look, "You've been here before," he said flatly.
"Not this place specifically but yeah. Not for sex, for meeting with contacts."
"What?!"
"Like I said, discreet," Hawks shrugged, forcing Dabi's mug into his hand and skirting around his husband to find the menu, his stomach already growling. "No witnesses, nearly impossible to overhear you and they wanted to get out as quickly as possible, so over and done with sooner."
"You never met me in a place like this," Dabi said, his voice almost accusing as he blue eyes narrowed at Hawks.
The ex-Pro Hero smirked at his reaction, "If I recall correctly, it was you who called all the shots when we first met up," his eyes went hooded and his voice flirtatious, "If you wanna make up for lost time . . ."
Dabi gave him an extremely unimpressed look, wordlessly gesturing at their one-year-old son, cackling as he attempted to scale Mount Plush, squawking when he rolled off and trying again relentlessly, fluttering wings that were no longer there (he lacked Hawks' ability to re-attach his feathers at such a young age and would have to wait for them to regenerate on their own).
"That's rich coming from you, Mr "He sleeps through anything"," Hawks snorted.
"He does and he wasn't in the same room when I said that . . ." Dabi protested, sitting down beside his husband, pressing their sides together.
Hawks chuckled quietly, turning to kiss him on the lips. They stayed like that for a long moment, pulling back but keeping their foreheads together, just taking a moment to breathe. Their eyes slid open at almost the same time, small smiles pulling at their lips as they relaxed against each other. Asuka shrieked in triumph as he sat atop Mount Plush, flapping his hands wildly in victory. They both laughed at the sight of him and focused on ordering dinner, which was somewhat creepily delivered by a staff member rolling up a tray outside their door, knocking and then waiting out of sight for them to take it into the room, so no one saw anyone else.
"Should've met you in a love hotel . . ." Dabi grumbled later as they brushed their teeth, Asuka already snoozing in his crib, "Why the fuck is the door between the shower and the rest of the room completely transparent?"
"Voyeurism," Hawks replied cheerfully, pointing to a small circle with waterproof cushions built into the floor, directly across from the shower.
Dabi gave a full-body shudder, "That . . . Ugh, I don't even know anymore."
"Presumably it would be consensual voyeurism if you brought someone with you to a love hotel," the winged man said mildly, standing on tiptoes to peer over the counter at Asuka's crib, wanting to make sure he was definitely asleep, his bird plushie in one hand, a giant rabbit he had refused to part with behind him. Hawks lent back and gave Dabi a slow smile, running his eyes over his body appreciatively, ". . . You know, the shower counts as a different room. He wouldn't hear us over the water even if he was awake."
Dabi cut him a deeply offended look, trying not to think about the fact that his wing injury had made sex all but impossible for them over the last six weeks, "I think that's the weakest attempt to get in my pants you've ever made."
"Is that a no?"
". . . He's definitely asleep, yeah?"
Hawks smirked, shedding a great deal of feathers to surround Asuka's crib like a moat, hiding them under furniture and around the doors and windows. Nothing would get near their baby without alerting him immediately. Dabi swooped in for a kiss and Hawks, laughing into it, dragged him bodily into the shower room.
***
They decided a different approach would be necessary for the next day.
Asuka, as was becoming a habit for him, was awake before either of them, sitting up in his crib staring at their bed silently, waiting for them to wake up and tend to him. They spent the morning playing with him, having some time together as a family that didn't involve destabilising a cult or bringing down Hero Society. Asuka was currently very attached to his first birthday present, a set of "voodoo dolls" as Dabi dubbed them, tiny cloth and wood recreations of the entire League of Villains, sans his parents, because that would be "weird" according to Toga. Asuka babbled happily as he had his miniature Uncle Shigaraki pummel his miniature Uncle Compress, cackling in an eerily reminiscent way. Dabi met Hawks' eyes over the baby's head, both of them smiling.
They bided their time until Asuka began to rub at his eyes blearily, yawning. Dabi rocked him to sleep while Hawks gathered up everything they had with them, checking them out as their son finally drifted off. They strapped him into the car seat as gently and quickly as possible, his little blue eyes opening only once. They got in another two hours on the road before he finally jolted back to consciousness with an betrayed squawk as he realised where he was.
Luckily, he only yelled at them incoherently for ten or so minutes before falling silent, glaring out the window. He fluttered his wings as much as he was able to - either his Fierce Wings had a higher regeneration rate than his father's or it was simply easier to reform the lesser amount of feathers his smaller wings possessed as they were almost entirely back by now. He could feel them pushing against the seat, feel the fabric scraping against the delicate skin underneath and kept fidgetting, occasionally voicing his displeasure in a squawk, trying to pry himself free. He fluttered them harder, feeling a warmth grow against his back the harder he did it, concentrating to make it happen again, something in his brain telling him to do it until - something - happened.
"Is it getting hot in here?" Hawks asked.
"We've been in an enclosed space for too long," Dabi grumbled, "Put the window down a bit if you want."
"Sure the cold won't bother you?"
"I'll be fine."
Hawks nodded, opening his window before glancing in the back at Asuka, who was still wiggling in his seat angrily, his little face screwed up in concentration. He pressed the button for the back window. His son immediately looked up at the noise it made, cooing as the cold air hit his face.
"That nice, baby boy?" Hawks asked with a smile over his shoulder.
Asuka looked at him, babbled, then went back to staring out the window.
"Cold air and chickens," Dabi drawled, "We should start taking notes."
"It's just different stimulus, isn't it?" Hawks replied, resting his head back, looking Dabi up and down, "How ya doing?"
"Fine. I'm a better driver than Spinner at least."
"That wouldn't be hard, would it? Although Spinner is pretty good given he learnt how to drive from a video game."
"I learnt from a crackhead thug," Dabi said conversationally.
". . . From back with Kishimoto?" Hawks asked gently, watching his face intently for any sign of discomfort.
"Yeah," Dabi said calmly, "As I got older they wanted to include me a little more in the gang. Thought I'd make a good getaway driver."
"Hmm. You ever do it?"
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"I puked on them during my first heist," Dabi grinned widely.
Hawks burst into laughter, covering his face with one hand as he imagined Dabi doing that. He could hear his husband faintly chuckling under his own glee. When he ran out of breath, he smiled and ran a hand over Dabi's thigh, sparing a moment to look at his focused blue eyes and thinking about how different his life had become and how happy he was. Dabi side-eyed him, his smirk softening into a smile of his own. Hawks craned his head over his shoulder to look at their son and bolted upright, screaming, "Asuka!"
Dabi instinctively slammed on the breaks, the tyres making a horrendous squeal as they skidded to a stop, the ex-Villain twisting around, his jaw dropping in shock. Asuka was gone, the straps of the car seat burning, smoke at the edges. Entirely on autopilot, his parents dived out of the car, another one blaring its horn as it nearly hit Dabi, already swerving around their frozen vehicle. The fire starter didn't notice or care, both of them whipping around in dizzying circles, shouting for their son.
A giggle cut through the air. Hawks grabbed the front of Dabi's shirt as he heard it, pointing upwards in wide-eyed shock.
Asuka was hovering ten feet above their roof, flapping his little wings hard to stay upright, kicking his feet in an instinctive attempt at rudder-ing himself, flapping his arms as if that would help. He had the biggest smile either of them had ever seen on him, laughing loudly as he got higher.
"Get him down from there!" Dabi yelled in alarm. The sound broke Hawks out of his trance; he summoned all of his scattered feathers out of the car to re-attach to his back and launched himself into the air, arms outstretched the grab his son.
Asuka jolted as Daddy was suddenly right in front of him, the motion sending him into something like a cartwheel as he rolled and righted himself again. He cooed in surprise at his own actions, copying it as Hawks tried to grab him a second time. Now convinced they were playing a game, he laughed again and started going higher. Hawks pursued him, his own concern rapidly fading in the face of pride and joy as he watched his son take to flying like a duck to water, instinctively finding the air currents and gliding as he was born to do. He might have helped keep him on track with a few stronger wing-beats every now and again, following him closely to make sure that he didn't fall but most of it he did entirely alone.
Time flew by in a blur, Asuka rolling, diving and gliding, having the time of his life while Hawks hovered above or beside him, smiling in encouragement as he watched his son find his wings. Hawks ending the game by speeding up and scooping Asuka into his arms when the baby's strength began to falter, not wanting him to get a fright - or worse, actually get hurt - by falling when his wings inevitably gave out. Asuka babbled at him joyfully, clutching onto his shirt as he dropped them both back to solid ground.
Dabi had pulled the car off of the road at some point and was sitting, arms and legs crossed, on the hood of the car, glowering at them both in a manner that could only be described as pissed off. Hawks struggled not to laugh at the look on his face.
"Uh - hey, you were right!" he said cheerfully, "He did learn to fly before he learnt to walk!"
Dabi scowled at him, pushing himself off of the hood, reaching into his pocket and menacingly pulling out a roll of -
"Is that our bondage tape?" Hawks blinked in shock.
"Duct tape would hurt him. This'll keep him in place without damaging him," Dabi growled, yanking Asuka out of Hawks arms and stomping back to the car seat, "God dammit, kid, you were already born with the fu - freakin' wings, can't you wait until you're four, like a normal kid, to get my damn fire?!"
"He's a test tube baby," Hawks reminded him, hovering over them as Asuka was tied to the burnt chair, cooing and kicking his feet - all that was visible under the tape apart from his head and shoulders - idly. Either the flying had calmed him down a lot or Dabi had exerted the right amount of deep pressure to make him happy, "They wanted him to have strong Quirks fast."
Dabi grunted, making sure the window was rolled all the way up before he slammed and locked the back door, "What part of that meant throwing himself out of the window of a speeding car?!"
"I didn't do that until I was nine," Hawks remarked casually, smirking a tiny bit as Dabi did a double-take at that, roused out of his fear-driven annoyance.
"I'll blame you for this then," the ex-Villain declared as they got back in the car.
"If you like," Hawks let his husband stew for five or so minutes as they got back underway before breaking the silence with, "He really was amazing, though, wasn't he?"
Dabi was quiet for so long Hawks had resigned himself to silence before his husband said quietly, "You were both incredible. Are."
Hawks smiled, relieved and happy. Reaching out for Dabi's leg again, he squeezed the muscle under his hand and said, "I love you."
"Yeah, I know. I love you both and I happen to like your company so do me a favour and don't scare me to death," he glared at his son through the rear-view mirror at his tiny son, "Either of you."
"We'll try," Keigo laughed at the exact moment Asuka squawked happily, "Daddy!" apropos of nothing.