Work Text:
dabi
hawks
dabi
unlock the door
dabi
did you forget we were meeting today
hawks
no
dabi
hawks
hawks
maybe ,
dabi
let me in. i’m going to kill you
hawks
to err is human bestie : )
dabi
have i ever mentioned how much i don’t like you. it’s nearly midnight. let me in
dabi
& did nobody ever teach you that you shouldn’t call a villain bestie
hawks
:/
They don’t end up having a meeting anyway.
Dabi sits on Hawks’ couch with his legs up on the hero’s table, watching him clean his living room; he picks at his nails as Hawks sets a picture frame straight and takes a dirty glass into his kitchen. It’s horribly… domestic, especially while there’s a villain in his home. Lazing around because he has nothing better to do.
Hawks is completely off his guard, the lights are off, nobody knows he’s in and Dabi isn’t doing anything. Some villain he is. Most of the Paranormal Liberation Front would kick him to the curb if they knew he was lounging around with Hawks because he liked it.
Hawks is watering a half-dead pot plant when Dabi says it.
“What do I give to you?”
It’s a weak question spoken into the night. His voice falters and thin drops of water fall off of the dead leaves Hawks is trying to breathe life back into.
Dabi isn’t sure why he says it, but he has to know. It’s a whirring in his brain that won’t be shut off until he does, and he hopes the conversation is easy as Hawks looks up at him.
“My birthday isn’t for another six months,” he says, taking a wispy leaf in between his finger and thumb, sighing when it crumbles underneath his touch. “Didn’t you know we have the same star sign? I thought I told you. Or, I thought Toga would’ve told you.”
With a deep sigh, Dabi tips his head back onto the couch as Hawks busies himself around the room, setting books upright on his shelf. The plant lies forgotten on the table; a withered, dying silhouette of its old self. Dabi will take it out later, he thinks. A small favour for the hero.
“Not like that,” he mutters.
“Like what, then?” Hawks asks. Dabi can’t see him in his field of vision, still staring up at the ceiling. There’s a thin line running through it that Dabi isn’t sure is a crack or not.
When he tips his head forward, Hawks isn’t looking at him, instead finding a job of reorganising his bookshelf, keeping his hands busy as Dabi talks to him.
“You know,” Dabi says.
“I really don’t,” Hawks laughs, and his face does that strange thing where his cheeks push up and his eyes crinkle. As a villain, Dabi can’t say he sees that expression on people very often, but he doesn’t mind it.
A horrible, jealous part of him deep in the pit of his stomach envies Hawks for making that face. He’d tear apart if he even tried.
“We should have a joint birthday party,” he continues, and Dabi’s inner jealousy quiets a little as his face drops back to his normal expression. “They’re close enough together, and we hang around enough now, so-”
“I mean you can hurt me,” Dabi says. “If you want.”
A leaf falls off of the plant Hawks was watering earlier.
Hawks pauses from where he’s brushing the dust off of the top shelves. Looks at him with confusion. Shock, even.
“That’s a shitty birthday present, Dabs,” he says blankly.
“I’m being serious,” Dabi tells him.
And now, Hawks doesn’t go back to sorting out his room. He stares at Dabi, gold eyes not warm like they usually are, but horribly piercing; a sharp, unforgiving metal.
There’s a lot you can tell in someone’s eyes, Dabi knows, but Hawks is good at hiding things. Hawks is good at cooling rich, warm gold into a cold, blank nothing.
“You’re being stupid,” Hawks answers bluntly. Dabi sees where he’s taken his gloves off (why he’s comfortable enough to do that in Dabi’s presence, he’s not sure) and his talons dig into hardwood. “You’re a villain. The last thing I’d expect is for you to want a hero to be above you. For you to act like a martyr.”
“I’m not-” Dabi huffs as Hawks’ eyebrows raise angrily. “Don’t get mad at me. I’m offering, that’s all. I mean I don’t understand why you stay with me.”
Hawks’ shelf splinters underneath his nails.
“Because you’re my friend,” he spits, like it’s obvious. Like Dabi should be used to friendship and all the concepts that come with it. “Friends don’t want things from each other. Especially not those kinds of things.”
Turning away at Dabi’s lack of response, he removes his hand from the broken wood, stares at the other plant on his shelf. It’s better than the first, but still a little worse for wear.
The leaf doesn’t turn to dust underneath his fingers, though the stem is still bent and drooping. Dabi watches him frown at it and brush his hair out of his face, and there’s a more sorrowful, almost melancholic expression that overtakes him, weaves itself into golden eyes.
Hawks just sighs. Dabi’s not sure whether it’s at him or the plant.
“I know things were never good for you,” he says, gentler, trying to coax the stem back upright, “But I’m not friends with you to hurt you. I don’t hang around you to get- to take something.”
Dabi crosses his arms over his chest, ignoring the pull of staples in his upper arms. “Then why?”
“Why what?” Hawks asks. A question to match Dabi’s. He’s not sure whether the hero is trying to change the subject or he just genuinely doesn’t understand.
“Why are you friends with me? Why do you hang around with me?”
Hawks frowns as he looks back again, his back straight and firm as he looks down at Dabi; slouched, hiding, covering himself. In defence or in insecurity, Hawks doesn’t know, and Dabi’s not sure he does either.
The plant accepts the water Hawks gives it, as it drips gratefully off of fading green leaves and soaks into the soil.
“I don’t have an answer to that,” Hawks says eventually. “Why are we all here? When did time start? What came first, the chicken or the egg?”
“Hawks, I’m being serious.”
“Dabi, you’re being stupid,” he repeats insistently.
With a deep, pulling sorrow in his chest, Dabi stands up and begins to make his way over to the tiny plant on Hawks’ shelf where he stands. His shoulders are hunched and his spine bends, curls forward like a wilting, broken plant.
He doesn’t mean for it to happen. Maybe it’s just instinct, trying to hide himself, trying to protect from the hurt. Maybe he just doesn’t want Hawks to see him.
“I don’t get what you don’t understand,” he says, and it’s supposed to be angry, it’s supposed to be an angry sentence spat out packed with venom and bitterness, but his voice trembles on a tear and it hits him that he-
He’s scared.
Scared that Hawks will leave him, but also scared that he’ll stay. He doesn’t know what he wants, doesn’t know what he should want, and everything tonight has unfurled in such a new, unfamiliar mess - everything happening now is foreign to him, and he’s terrified of breaking further, but also being stitched back together.
Damn Hawks. Damn Hawks for being kind to him. Everything would be so much simpler if Hawks hated him.
“I don’t get why you want me to hurt you,” Hawks tells him, looking up into Dabi’s eyes now that he’s closer. Even though he’s taller than Hawks, he feels intimidated, daunted, and most of all afraid.
He feels like a coward under the hard, metallic gaze of someone who isn’t physically taller but still towers above him. His heart beats quickly but not in a giddy, happy way, instead a horrible, unstable way that makes him feel sick.
You don’t need to get it, Dabi wants to tell him.
“I don’t understand you,” Hawks continues, and suddenly the venom in him is back, biting in Dabi’s throat and waiting to be let out.
“You need me to lay it out for you, hero?” Dabi asks, and this time it’s mocking. This time he wants to look down at Hawks, he wants to crane his neck down, wants to make the hero feel small. (Small, like he does).
Hawks just nods, unfazed.
“Then, I don’t understand what you’re getting out of this,” he says, gesturing between the two of them. “I’m not- not good in any sense of the word and you have no reason to be my friend or even be around me at all, because I don’t give you anything back.”
And then the freezing, distant gold has thawed into something gentler. Something warmer, softer.
Something that looks like concern. Pity. Dabi’s gotten a lot more used to that expression after meeting Hawks.
He'd begun to see happiness. Worry. Excitement. Sympathy. All woven into golden eyes and perfect skin, etched into smile lines and pearl-white teeth.
Dabi doesn’t understand why Hawks shares any of those feelings with him.
“You don’t owe me anything, Dabi,” Hawks says. “Ever. And I don’t want anything back.”
The venom is gone again, dissipated into simple water that’s now backing up behind his eyes, ready to spill. He bites the inside of his cheek so his lip doesn’t wobble and part of him, part of him enjoys the concern that laces Hawks’ face.
Not in a sadistic sort of way, but it makes Dabi’s heart feel giddy to even think of the notion that… Hawks could genuinely care.
Somehow, it makes him feel sick at the same time.
I know you don’t, Dabi doesn’t say. You’re too good for any of this.
With bony, frail hands, he grips Hawks’ shoulder and pushes him back to the wall. The hero doesn’t even make a noise of complaint, just lets himself be led until his back hits smooth wallpaper and Dabi inches closer.
“Why,” he insists, trying to search for something, anything that his eyes might give away.
The eyes are the window to the soul, he remembers hearing, and so he scans every little part of gold, every different fleck in his eyes that’s a different shade of honey.
He searches for Hawks’ soul somewhere in there. In between amber and beige, deep gold and soft yellow. It must be a huge, beautiful thing, to stretch far enough to want him.
“What do you see in me, Hawks?” Dabi asks, trying to hide the desperation that stems from somewhere deep in his chest. Hawks doesn’t struggle under his touch. He doesn’t even seem bothered.
“What?”
“What do you see in me that I don’t? Because if I really, truly look at myself, I can’t see anything that would make me worth being around. That would make somebody want to stay. That would make me… deserve anything.”
He doesn’t mean to say that last one. It comes out in a horrible cocktail of desperation and loneliness and truth.
“Dabi,” Hawks says gently. Kindly. His hand reaches up to cup Dabi’s face, and Dabi lets it. Welcomes it, even. “Why do you want me to hurt you so badly?”
“Because- it would be easier,” Dabi begins to list, his voice catching in his throat. “Because I wouldn’t feel like a burden, I wouldn’t feel like I owed you, I’d know I was giving you something in return. Because… it’s something I can understand.”
Hawks soothes his thumb over Dabi’s cheek, and Dabi’s hand drops from his shoulder.
He feels small again. So horribly small.
He tells the truth for the sake of it.
“That’s something you can understand?” Hawks asks softly, and it doesn’t feel like he’s angry anymore. Just like he wants to understand, make things better. “Getting hurt?”
”Getting hurt by people I love,” Dabi tells him honestly.
With a quiet exhale, Hawks uses his free hand to hold Dabi’s other cheek, holding his face in his palms. Hawks holds his face like it’s something to cherish. Like Dabi is someone he cares about. Like Dabi is worthy of love.
It’s… strange. To even consider that idea. That he deserves someone to care for him. Hawks, no less.
“Doesn’t that hurt, in itself?”
“Not as much anymore.”
Hawks pulls him into a hug. A warm, tender, genuine hug. A hug that is just that, no strings attached. His hands find Dabi’s back within seconds, soothing his tired skin, his weary bones, bringing him closer and letting him fall.
He finds he doesn’t mind falling so much if it’s in the company of someone else. (Somebody he trusts).
“And you can’t understand love?” Hawks asks him quietly, voice rumbling in Dabi’s ear, vibrating against his skin. His lips brush Dabi’s hair as he speaks and it sends a quiet shiver down his spine.
“I don’t know,” Dabi murmurs into his shoulder. “It’s just easier when it hurts. Or… when they hurt me. Because they have a reason to stay. To want me.”
Hawks grips him like he’s never going to let go.
Dabi feels like he has courage, in Hawks’ arms. To keep talking, to tell him anything, to let his walls down and fall into the hero in front of him. And Hawks lets him like he never wants to do anything else.
Unconditional love isn’t something Dabi knows. He’s not sure if he even knows how to learn it.
“You’re not a monster,” Hawks comforts, rubbing gently between his shoulders. “You’re not bad. There’s more to you than being hurt.”
“But I understand when it does,” Dabi says. “I don’t get why you stay when- when I can’t give you anything in return.”
As he sighs into Dabi’s hair, Hawks’ arms just fall further around him, pulling him closer with a tight hold around his waist. If he can feel Dabi’s hip bones against his stomach, he doesn’t say anything, embracing him anyway, wholly and completely.
Dabi finds he enjoys it. Hawks not caring about scars, staples, bones that may or may not stick out. It’s been a while since he’s been hugged.
Hugged genuinely. Lovingly, maybe. To give him comfort, make him feel better.
“I don’t want anything in return. And I won’t, ever. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Dabi breathes out shakily, pushing his head into Hawks’ shoulder. “But I want you to,” he whispers quietly. “I can take it, if you need.”
He notices Hawks’ wings come to settle around them both, encasing them in a flurry of red - but they only really curl around him. Protectively, maybe. Posessively. He feels feathers brushing his neck and his back and they blanket over him, shield him from view.
From view of anyone but Hawks.
He leans back to rest against the wall, taking Dabi with him and tucking his head underneath his chin, fluttering his wings close to his back; it’s warm, it’s warm and loving and Dabi’s never felt so held in his life.
Not even by his mother. He doesn’t remember a lot from his early childhood, but he’s certain he’d remember if she’d cradled him like this.
No-one, no person in his life has ever held him like Hawks does. So clear and assured and kind, no strings and no catches and no fine print. Hawks has even told him multiple times he doesn’t want anything back.
Damn heroes, Dabi thinks.
Hawks holding him so fondly, so delicately, is a drug he’s yet to crave.
Now that he’s had it, he’s not sure he’ll be able to live without, and he doesn’t want him to let go. He doesn’t want to have to yearn until he can be touched like this again.
“Did you ask because I’m a hero, and you think I’d want to hurt you? A villain?” Hawks asks him; the question isn’t pressing, just curious, as his hands massage the back of Dabi’s neck and his wings keep him entangled, safe.
Hawks keeps him standing like a sapling that needs help to grow upright. Hawks keeps him there and lets Dabi curl around him, lets him lean on him, depend on him.
“Or because that’s the only kind of love you’ve ever known?” Hawks says, quieter.
“The, um,” Dabi trails off. “the latter.”
Hawks sighs. “You’re fucked up,” he says, not unkindly.
“Yeah,” Dabi hums, shutting his eyes against Hawks’ skin.