Work Text:
Dabi has been thumbing through the same book, the same page, for several minutes. The paper crinkles against his thumb and forefinger, a page he's read over and over. He's sitting on Hawks' couch, a mechanical pencil in one of his hands, tapping the rubbed down eraser on the staples of his chin until they barely scrape at the bone of his chin.
The familiar kanji looks back at him from the pale page. He knows the novel was originally written in english, and while he certainly picked up more english growing up and in the few years he'd been in school, some of it is lost on him. He's silently grateful, for whatever reason, that Hawks decided to pick up this book while he was on patrol––and in a language he could read. Hawks had begun, during patrols, walking by bookstores, and just zipping in to grab books he thought looked interesting, appealing, with almost zero interest for what might have been on the inside.
"Why'd you get this one?" Dabi had asked about a different book.
Hawks had wrinkled his nose, scrunching up the constellation smattered freckles over his nose, while looking over the book Dabi had pulled out of his bookshelf.
"It has a bird on it," Hawks grumbled. There had indeed been a bird on the cover, though tucked and hidden in a faux tear in the page. Dabi wondered if Hawks had known the original artwork of the bird on the cover––that it came from a painting in the pre-quirk era, that the rest of the painting showed a bird sitting on a blue feeder, with a thin chain around its foot leaving it attached to the rings around the feeder.
"Little bird, through and through," Dabi replied, preparing himself for Hawks' outraged squawk.
The book he looks at now, he thinks is by the same author. It's one that had been sitting on Hawks' bookshelf before Dabi came around, almost four months ago. One of the books he knew Hawks would never get around to reading, not in this lifetime at least, but remained settled on what was once a mostly empty bookshelf. Now the bookshelf had become fuller, like flowers blooming in spring until Hawks had eventually had to order another bookshelf, one they'd taken an afternoon to put together. It only has a couple books on it now, a couple little knick-knacks Hawks had picked up and decided they either weren't quite worth the special box he has carefully hidden in the back of his bedroom closet, or maybe that he actually wanted to show these items off.
The book had been staring at him for those weeks, as he picked up others, read through others, scrawled notes in others and underlined and circled with another pencil. Maybe it had been the black spine that drew him in, with a small white block and the black text of the novel's name engraved inside.
He's been reading the same line, underlining what could have been translated to: Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming. He underlined it, then double underlined, then stared back at the kanji of the words.
He thinks briefly about what it means. Hawks isn't soft or consolatory, though maybe at one point he would have thought so––and he, stupidly, has begun to think of the ways Hawks has given him comfort. But he thinks about seeing Hawks on the news, falling from the sky, plummeting to earth, before stretching his wings out––the genuine terror and adrenaline those moments have given him. The terror of wondering momentarily if Hawks didn't have wings, if he fell and didn't open his wings, if he dropped and then he was just gone. Is that genuine beauty? Being alarmed by what terrifies, and what's also given him joy and fucking comfort and ease of all things? He hasn't felt so at ease in his life in years.
He traces lines, traces the kanji, and lets the lead of the pencil scratch into the page.
Hawks.
Then: Takami Keigo.
Hawks' true name. His hidden name, just like the box Hawks hides in his closet. A name disclosed to the public in an underground files department of the HPSC facility.
Takami Keigo.
Hawk. See. Idea. Disclosed. To be disclosed. Say. To say. Understanding.
Enlightenment.
He traces over the written kanji, stares at their lines, and the kanji of Hawks' name, and he feels like what a little kid would in school, writing out the name of their crush in the margins of their homework. He's almost tempted to draw hearts and stars to spite it. It's a startling, embarrassing thing, that has him grinding his teeth.
He scoffs at what he's done.
He gazes at the elegant scrawl, so different from Hawks' very literal chicken-scratch that sometimes can't even be read or considered words. Dabi's seen him write out notes quickly, watched him take notes in the PLF meetings, jotting information down in the corner of files as if with the speed his mind moved he would somehow forget the information being spoken.
He looks at Hawks. Hawks who's fallen asleep on the opposite end of the couch. It's afternoon beyond their little liminal space, and there's sunlight streaming in from the large floor to ceiling windows surrounding the entrance of the balcony. Hawks appears like a near-divine image with the golden rays caressing his face, softly tracing the slope of his nose. His hair is like a shining halo, disheveled in wild curls that turn up like devil's horns on the sides of his head. His eyes are screwed up, eyelashes embracing the tan skin under his eyes. His lips are parted open, and Dabi can almost feel where the drool is dripping from Hawks' mouth and over the sides of his chin to the overly expensive cabric of the couch they take up. His wings are shed, and take shape in a piled lump in the corner of the living room, in a basket.
Dabi's lips lift with a smile.
Dabi–god–Dabi feels like a goddamn idiot.
Enlightenment. The state of being enlightened. Keigo. Coming to awareness. A movement that spread through a couple of pre-quirk centuries defined through philosophy, progress, and rational change.
Finding reason.
Dabi has found himself more and more intrigued with philosophy and philosophical thinking as it applies to the quirk world. Morality. Mortality. Nihilism.
Enlightenment, though? Finding a reason? He's never been nihilistic and never thought that all life had no meaning. He, himself, has his meaning. He has his reason. Or thought he had his reason. The death of his dear old dad was supposed to be the end of an age old tragedy.
The tragedy being: the oldest Todoroki child not being enough. That was his telos ––his objective and aim, his end.
Even now, he sits with the skin of other people overlapping his crumbling body. Even his death couldn't be enough for his father to change his ways–and how fucking stupid that after that he looked to the sky, to the stars and to the universe for some answers as to why. Looked for a sign, for something. His reason now is supposed to be proving he lived, through no amount of luck either from waking up in that goddamn hospital after three years and hearing what was supposed to be his voice––but it wasn't. He woke up and felt as if everything that made him had been burned away, and he'd been the one who burned it.
(He can still, despite the skin on his cheeks, and the piercings on his nose and ears, and the staples holding him together, he can still sometimes see in a mirror the familial resemblance. Even burning himself to that ashes that he'd been born from hadn't been enough to erase that. Not enough. Nothing is enough.)
Hawks shifts next to him, drawing his attention away from his thoughts.
Hawks' bare feet push over into Dabi's lap, and Dabi feels doubly fucked over by the universe.
How many nights as a kid had he asked for one sign, asked for one thing to go right––looked up to the glowing stars on his bedroom ceiling? Then as an adult, looking over the docks at the ocean, blood leaking from the corners of his eyes, and asked that things go right and that he be able to fulfill his persistent purpose.
He's never truly been one to believe in fate–not after those many, many unrelenting years of just begging the stars for something in return.
But what the fucking hell, because here he is now: tracing the word 'enlightenment' into the pages of a book near a line about beauty being alarming. In his chest, his heart beats like a six winged seraphim has made a house in the cavity just looking over at Hawks.
It has to mean something. all of the times he's asked the world for something, and Hawks, like a goddamn angel , in the name that's been disclosed, feels like he has all the secrets and answers in the world. in his palms, in his pencil, enlightenment . Enlighten. Enlight, or to shed light upon. like Hawks is the sun trying to shed fucking light on him or something.
Is Hawks supposed to be this unspoken symbol for shedding light on a new direction––away from his original goals? His very reasons––what were his only reasons for years?
He clutches the pencil a little tighter, and feels like gnawing at the eraser. He writes the kanji again in his carefully taught script, the thin lines, and lets out a long breath through his
nose. Hawks' feet shift again, until they've pushed up under Dabi’s t-shirt and onto the cool skin of his torso.
"You still readin'?" Hawks murmurs, sleepily, bits of his hidden accent slipping through.
Dabi hums, placing the book and his pencil in between the pages on the table nearby.
"Yeah," he says, before leaning over, one hand on Hawks thigh, and the other on the couch cushion for balance. he places a barely-there kiss on Hawks' lips, feeling the slow smile growing under his own. "Go back to sleep."
Hawks yawns in his face, and Dabi is fond as he gazes over the freckles right in his face, and Hawks' eyes barely open. He mumbles something, incoherently, and Dabi does in fact notice a pale line of dried drool on Hawks’ face. His skin is warmed and smells exactly what he thinks sunshine and stars might smell like–if he's going to go ahead and give into the sappy and confused feelings–all encompassing warmth, raw honey straight from the source, burning like he'd been in the sun for hours but they hadn't gone outside all day. Hawks hadn't had work that day, they'd truly just spent the day inside, with their phone put away, likely in a drawer in Hawks' bedroom.
Dabi moves one of his hands to rub at the drool with his hand, and Hawks takes it as an invitation to press his face into Dabi's palm, before whispering to Dabi, "You've got your thinking face on."
Dabi raises an eyebrow. "Thinking face?"
"Yeah," Hawks says, letting his eyes slip closed, before opening them to sleepy but still knowing slits. "There's lines on your forehead from where you were frowning."
Dabi scoffs, "Well, you have drool on your face."
Hawks' eyes widen and he takes his hand to place it where Dabi's own hand is. He grimaces. "Is it a lot?"
Dabi moves their hands up and looks at where the drool has made a dried path down part of Hawks' chin and neck. "Well, it's not a little."
“Fuck,” Hawks grumbles, and blinks his eyes in quick succession, trying to wake himself up, before he sits up, moving like he intends to go away to wipe the drool off in the bathroom.
Dabi, just as Hawks tries to move off the couch, pulls Hawks back to him, so they’re both smooshed together in the corner. Dabi holds him by his waist, still intrigued by the trail of drool on Hawks' face.
He realizes, in a moment, that no one has seen Hawks like this. Ruffled, rumpled, wings tucked away and off his shoulders like a fallen weight. With drool on his face. No one in the HPSC, none of his modeling gigs, no half-hearted and half-dicked one night stands had ever seen this, and Dabi is more than sure of that. He’s the first, the very first to experience not just Hawks . But Takami Keigo and all his undisclosed bits, all of the unshielded, revealed secrets.
Enlightened.
Hawks’ arms have made a home around Dabi’s shoulders, folding together at the base of Dabi’s skull. Dabi feels the dull shift of Hawks’ fingers twirling at the ends of his hair.
“You not gonna let me go wipe this mess off my face?”
Dabi’s smirk is positively devilish, “Why, when I'm right here?”
Hawks narrows his eyes, looking down his nose at Dabi. “What are you—”
Dabi doesn’t have to lean too far until his tongue is on the slope of Hawks’ throat, tongue piercing dragging at his pulse, tonguing the dried mess of drool.
“Oh my god,” Hawks says, like he can’t believe what Dabi is doing, but he still tilts his head away letting Dabi lap up his neck, up under his chin, “cleaning” what was left from Hawks’ extended nap.
“Don’t leave,” Dabi whispers under Hawks chin, nosing at the skin there.
Enlighten. Let me enlighten you.
He sends of a silent, begging, pleading whisper into the universe:
This one thing. Let me touch, let me have, this one thing.
Hawks lets a small huff of laughter escape his mouth, breath falling over Dabi’s face—sun, warmth, sun-touched, light, touched by light.
“I'm right here, Dabs,” Hawks says. “I'm right here.”
And after Hawks moves again, when Dabi's arms release him, he lays with his head in Dabi's lap, pressing his warm face against Dabi's stomach. Dabi reaches forward, for the book again and finds himself staring at the opened page, with the book between his fingers next to Hawks' face.
There's a line gazing up at him:
Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.
(And Dabi’s a fool. Up until their last day together, he’s still a fool. Hoping.)