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This is the second kitchen Hawks has managed to get himself banned from.
It’s been nearly a year since he’s set foot in Rumi’s, and she doesn’t seem keen to let go of the fried shrimp incident of 2XXX anytime soon.
(“You did fucking what?” she’d screamed over the roar of the fiery pan.
“I saw fire and went with water! Sue me!”
“You saw a grease fire. And added water.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Oh my god-”)
It’s just as well, he supposes. Rumi makes a mean karaage. She hasn’t got much else in her arsenal, but she shares his love of low-quality takeout, so it all works out at the end of the day.
He sort of figured he’d be banned from another kitchen at some point; though he really does try, it isn’t like he’s got much confidence in his own cooking ability.
(Not much time to earnestly learn how to make a frittata in between Commission-sanctioned training sessions, you know.)
Here’s the thing, though: he didn’t really expect the next kitchen he’d be banned from to be his own.
It’s been a couple months since the Commission’s batshit decision to have him infiltrate the League of Villains, and things are not going at all how he anticipated they would.
They’re not bad, per say. Just… weird. Really, really weird.
He’d ended up in contact with Dabi, the mysterious, scar-faced arsonist with eyes such a luminescent turquoise they're as off-putting as they are alluring. Hawks' preference really would have been that magician guy with a penchant for showboating, but alas.
Turns out Dabi is their main recruiter (which explains the suspicious number of petty criminals’ charred corpses they’ve been finding in alleyways), and talking to him is just… well, it’s odd.
Hawks had gone into this with exactly zero intel on him — as far as the Commission is concerned, Dabi’s a ghost, one that materialized the day he led the attack on UA’s summer camp. All of Hawks’ assumptions of him had come from the few grainy photographs they were able to supply.
As it turns out, Dabi’s a lot younger than he’d initially suspected. The scars make him look older than he is; after a few conversations and a closer inspection, Hawks begins to think they’re probably around the same age. He’s cold and aloof, sure, but he’s also far too cleverly funny for his own good. His biting wit and sarcasm is simply unmatched, and, to both Hawks’ shock and chagrin, he finds himself actually looking forward to their midnight meetings. He has so, so few people in his life that he can drop his mask with, even just a little bit, and talk to without the peppy persona of Hawks .
He’s disturbingly close to being Keigo when he’s with Dabi. It makes his palms sweat.
What he discovers, also, is that Dabi’s got some quirky tendencies. He has older brother energy, big time, in the way he teases without the malicious undertone, the way he begrudgingly, secretly cares.
(He ripped Hawks’ sleeve up, hiking it to his elbow.
“What the hell is that?”
With a few stunned blinks, Hawks glanced down at his arm, and realized Dabi was referring to the makeshift bandage he’d applied during patrol.
“Oh,” he says blankly. “Villain nicked my arm during a fight today. It’s really not that bad-"
Dabi scoffed, folding his arms across his chest.
“Yeah, not yet. It’s too loose and it’s wrapped all shitty, it’s gonna keep re-irritating the scab.”
Hawks rolled his eyes indignantly, yanking down his sleeve.
“Okay, mom,” he said sarcastically. “Wanna fix it for me while you’re at it?”
And the strangest thing happened.
Dabi did.)
It’s near-impossible for Hawks to imagine a specter like Dabi having family, tending to cuts and scrapes on little knees with soft and gentle hands. But there’s fleeting moments where he can see it, even if it’s blurry and strange to picture.
One of Dabi’s notable oddities is his aversion to dirt and grime, an impressively fierce pursuit of cleanliness. It makes an ugly sort of sense, with his staples and seams, but Hawks really can’t help but view it as an endearing idiosyncrasy.
It’s also the key factor in how Hawks finds himself heading back to his apartment with a villain in tow.
Towards the end of one of their late-night warehouse rendezvous, it begins to rain. The onset is quick, and in what feels like the blink of an eye, it’s coming down hard, sheeting and pounding on the roof and walls.
And Dabi stops mid-sentence and lets out the most dramatic, chest-rumbling groan Hawks has ever heard.
“Gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”
Hawks cocks his head, a silent question. Dabi rolls his eyes, then grumbles, “Wasn’t in the forecast.”
“What?” Hawks teases lightly. “Scared of the rain? It’s not even thundering.”
Dabi looks at him like he’s the one being ridiculous, then slowly elaborates, “I didn’t bring my raincoat. Or an umbrella.”
There is something, something that Hawks is simply missing. But he just doesn’t know what it is.
(Though, he supposes, if he knew what to look for, he wouldn’t be missing it.)
(What makes this so notable is that he always knows what to look for. It’s been his job for fifteen years to pick people apart using his charisma, to be the perfect hero, the perfect spy. But looking at Dabi is like staring into an empty well, or a blank canvas. It’s sort of terrifying, and maybe a little exciting.)
(For fifteen years, he's been setting the traps. Now, he can't help but feel he's walking right into one.)
“Why don’t you… just walk home anyway? Even though it’s raining?” Hawks suggests innocently. Dabi looks at him as though he’s recommended he walk straight into the open ocean with cinder blocks tied to his legs.
“You’re joking, right?” Dabi retorts. “Rainwater’s been too polluted to consume for decades. I don’t want that shit in my seams, who fuckin’ knows what’s in there.”
Hawks blinks several times. This whole situation is giving him a headache; he’s thinking far too hard. With the gears of his brain grinding this furiously, smoke’s about to come out of his ears.
“Didn’t take you for a germaphobe,” is all he can manage.
Dabi tips his head noncommittally.
“Yeah, well. ‘M basically a walking infection risk, so. Wanna avoid it when I can.”
It’s obvious, blindingly so; Hawks should’ve guessed it off the bat. But for now, his pesky hero instincts are churning, kicking into gear, searching for a solution. They happen upon a very ridiculous fix, and the moment he parts his lips and opens his big dumb mouth it just-
“We’re way closer to my place than the hideout. You can lay low at mine until the weather passes.”
Dabi looks about as shocked as Hawks feels at himself. In a weird way, even though he’s honestly enjoyed his time with Dabi, Hawks is sort of praying for a no. He doesn’t want to explore what the hell is going on between the two of them, what it is exactly that's making him throw his vigilance out the window and act like this. But Dabi seems to take it as a challenge, so he cocks his head and, through a half-smirk, says, “Alright, hero. I’ll bite.”
So that’s how Hawks has managed to get himself into this mess, twiddling his thumbs, sitting in his own living room opposite a known arsonist and wanted criminal.
Funnily enough, Dabi literally could not be bothered. He’s made a home for himself on the couch, lying horizontally and flipping through a trashy magazine Hawks had left out on the coffee table. There’s an elegance to the way he’s sprawled out, all long limbs and willowy build. His blue eyes are half-lidded, face droopy and relaxed.
Hawks’ heart is in his throat and it’s choking him.
He springs up.
“I’m going to make food.”
There’s a pause, then Dabi lazily turns his head to look at him.
“Okay,” he drawls, like he’s just been told the most boring story of all time.
“Yes,” Hawks assures himself aloud, “I’m going to.”
Hawks does not know how to cook.
Hawks has been banned from a kitchen once before.
Hawks is just looking for something, anything, to distract himself, so he doesn’t have to analyze why he’s so enthralled by the way Dabi’s slender form is draped over his furniture, so graceful and easy it might as well be straight from a renaissance painting.
He doesn’t have time to unpack all that while he’s fighting for his life frying some chicken.
He chooses karaage because Rumi’s made it quite a few times, and he figures he’s watched her each time she’s made it, so he should be able to figure it out, right?
Wrong.
He’s not very far in the process before things go horribly awry. He’s had the oil on the stove long enough for it to be bubbling and spitting, thinking to himself about what he needs to grab (chicken, right? Definitely chicken, there was flour involved too, he thinks…), when he turns to Dabi to ask if there’s any particular way he likes his karaage (surely he should have asked that before. He probably likes it spicy, right? Or is that stereotyping fire types-) and he’s gearing up to say something-
His wing smacks into the handle of the pan, sending it tumbling off the stovetop and skittering to the floor.
Dabi, witnessing the whole thing happen, jolts upwards and Hawks, damn, damn his hero reflexes, reaches out to catch it without thinking.
“No!” Dabi shouts, and it rouses Hawks from his stupor just quickly enough to save him.
Mostly, at least.
One droplet of hot oil hits its mark, splattering and forming an ugly, bottle-cap-sized red circle on Hawks’ inner forearm, a few inches above the junction of his wrist.
A shriek rips its way from his throat because he can feel his skin sizzle, growing rawer and rawer, and he tries to focus on breathing because at the moment, it’s the only thing he can control. In and out, he tells himself, biting back another cry as the pain somehow increases the longer he stands there.
The seconds feel like lifetimes, and he’s so flustered that he doesn’t even notice that Dabi is suddenly right by his side, wrapping thin, nimble fingers around his bicep and jerking his arm to the sink. It's Hawks' knee-jerk reaction to try to wiggle free, but Dabi puts an end to that quickly.
“Don’t fight me,” he warns steadily. “You’ll make it worse if you panic, just- come on, hold still, moron.”
“It- hurts-” is all Hawks can gasp.
Dabi rolls his eyes, using his free hand to turn on the tap.
“Yeah,” he mutters, “you’re telling me.”
Oh. Right.
Hawks lets his eyes fall to the deeply scarred forearm pressed up against his, and he promptly shuts his mouth. The purple skin is rough against his, thick and leathery, but strangely it’s… well, it’s nice. The sensation is so unique, so distinctive, that Hawks knows the person by his side can’t be anybody but Dabi. And oddly, he finds that bringing nothing but comfort.
Dabi tests the temperature of the tap, before yanking the burned arm into the flow of water. Hawks is expecting ice cold relief, but is greeted with lukewarm mediocrity. He can’t fight the groan of protest that rises from his throat.
“Don’t,” says Dabi, with a suspiciously maternal warning tone, “even think about touching the faucet.”
“Can’t you make it colder?” Hawks protests. “It fucking- it hurts so bad-”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Dabi snaps. “If the water’s too cold, it’ll shock the wound and kill the tissue. That’ll fuck you up even more than you already fucked yourself up. Do you want that, birdbrain?”
“No,” Hawks replies meekly, with the petulance of a child.
“That’s what I thought.”
Hawks drops his eyes to Dabi’s hand, slim and lithe as the rest of him, and thanks whatever deities may reside above his head that Dabi didn’t take hold of his wrist, that he can’t feel the rabbit-like thrum of his wild pulse. It also does not go unnoticed how unexpectedly strong Dabi is; for someone with so little meat on his bones, his grip is like steel.
Much to think about.
The pain is beginning to spider up his arm, a firecracker in his veins, and it’s bordering on unbearable. As Hawks blinks tears from the corners of his eyes, he glances over to his fridge, needing something, anything to relieve the burning, fiery ache. He slowly reaches over for the handle, and-
“Hey!”
Dabi smacks his hand away from the freezer.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Hawks winces, rubbing his arm.
“I- you’re supposed to ice it… right?”
Dabi rolls his eyes with the force of a thousand suns.
“No, moron. Please, just… let me help you before you do even more damage, okay?”
Hawks sighs. “Okay.”
“Good. Now get your arm back in the fucking sink. If you move I’ll give you an even bigger burn to worry about.”
“That’s kind of counterproductive, don’t you think?”
“Shut up, pigeon.”
Begrudgingly, Hawks sticks the burn back under the room-temperature water, finding very little solace in it. Dabi looks on like a proud youth baseball coach, arms folded across his chest and nodding.
“Good,” he grunts. His eyes flicker to the side, then back as he asks gruffly, “You got a first aid kit?”
Hawks grimaces, flexing his fingers.
“Yeah. Under the bathroom sink.”
Promptly, Dabi turns on his heel and heads in that direction, calling over his shoulder, “Stay there.” Hawks can do nothing but watch, the white noise of water falling over his arm pairing nicely with the static in his head.
It’s sort of funny, when he thinks about it. One of the most feared villains in the country, dark coat flowing and tall boots thudding, in pursuit not of spreading terror or burning bodies, but scrounging through a hero’s house for band-aids and gauze.
He takes this short reprieve from Dabi to just… think . About him, of course.
Dabi.
Lately, every free moment seems to be filled with thoughts of Dabi, Dabi, Dabi. The confusing, alluring, absolutely and wholly perplexing mess that is him .
He’s loath to believe this is the same person who slinks around the shadows with the League, illuminated only by the ghostly glow of his blue flames and glint of the staples that hold him together. When it came to choosing a contact, the Commission had tried to steer him in the direction of Compress or Magne, even that stab-happy little gremlin Toga, practically anyone but the one he got in the end. It was wordless, unsaid, but Hawks knew them well enough to deduce the amount of fear in those suggestions. There was no doubt about it, Dabi frightened them; his aloofness, his eerie anonymity, his silent deadliness had them quaking in their boots.
Dabi. Who’s returned, first aid kit cradled in his arms, dedicating his night to making sure Hawks is doing okay. Who sets the kit down and wraps a long arm around Hawks’ shoulders, turns off the tap and guides him to sit down on the couch, eyes trained on Hawks’ feet so he can match his pace.
“Don’t touch it,” he warns, though softer than before, lacking any real edge. “Hands are basically petrie dishes. We’re trying to keep the wound as clean as possible.”
We.
Oh. Okay.
Dabi drops into a squat. It’s almost comical with the length of his legs, how they fold up like a lawn chair; his knees seem to almost brush his chin. He pops open the kit and looks down. Hawks stares.
Dabi's dark hair is falling in his face, and the angle hides his jaw and shadows his eyes, mostly shielding the scars from Hawks’ view.
He’s…
He’s just a boy.
Well, not a boy. A man, technically. But a man in the way that Hawks is a man, a young adult who was exposed to the cruelty of the world far, far too early. It just happens to be written on Dabi’s skin, etched in a permanent, ugly reminder.
Or maybe not so ugly, to be frank. It’s only now Hawks realizes that, from the moment the two of them set foot in his apartment, he just hasn’t been able to tear his eyes away from Dabi. And he doesn’t stare out of shock or revulsion, as he figures others have before, as even he did a bit when they first met; now, he stares in awe.
From this angle, he can fully study the delicate curve of Dabi’s nose, the length of his lashes, the heart-like point his chin comes to, the pretty rings in the scarred shells of his ears. His hair is thick and full, lusher and softer than Hawks would have expected. God, god, he’s just so-
He’s rubbing aloe vera onto Hawks’ burn, and it really fucking hurts.
He releases a mighty whine of pain, to which Dabi responds, “Shut up,” though there’s no real venom behind it.
“Are you almost done?” Hawks begs.
“Are you five?” Dabi responds hotly. “Wounds heal better when they’re wet. This is for your own good.”
“You know way more about this than you should.”
Dabi snorts. “Yeah, but you know way less than you should, hero. You’ve got piss poor first aid knowledge for someone who’s at risk of getting hurt all the time.”
Hawks bites back a comment about how he doesn’t need to know these things, thank you very much, because he’s got easy access to top-shelf medical care whenever he wants it. But, considering who he’s talking to, it feels a bit insensitive.
It ends up not mattering, however; Dabi once again flexes his ability to (somehow) read Hawks like he’s an open book, cut straight to his core in a way that no one has ever been able to do in his entire life.
“Ah, that’s right,” he grits out, snagging gauze from the kit. “One scrape and your precious Commission probably ships you off to one of the top doctors in the country. You heroes always get the world laid at your feet, whether you deserve it or not.”
It puts Hawks on edge, the way he spits out “heroes” like it’s a despicable curse. It feels painfully personal.
“You said it yourself,” he counters, a bit defensive. “We lay our lives on the line all the time. We deserve good care, don’t you think?”
“Other people deserve it, too. The special treatment heroes get shouldn’t be special treatment.” There’s something dark in Dabi’s voice when he adds, “If you’re as sympathetic to our cause as you say, you should understand that much.”
Hawks’ breath hitches. He’d been talking with his guard so far down that the double agent gig had slipped all the way to the back of his mind. He’s being so, so candid with Dabi, so, so… Keigo.
That’s someone he hasn’t been in a long time. And he just can’t figure out why it’s Dabi, of all people, that brings it out.
It’s scary. It’s enticing.
“I do believe that,” he says, more earnestly than he expects, “I really do.”
Dabi rolls his eyes.
“Right. Sure.”
Pulling the end of the gauze, he begins to bandage Hawks’ arm slowly, winding around and applying loose pressure.
“Should it be tighter?” Hawks asks tentatively. Dabi responds by glaring absolute daggers, so he holds his free hand up placatingly.
“Right. Sorry.”
“You sure talk a lot for someone who was going to ice a burn.”
“It felt like the logical thing to do-”
Dabi huffs out a laugh.
“Careful, pigeon,” he says wryly. “You keep up like that, and you might end up looking like me one day. And what would you do then, huh?”
And for some reason, some cause that he just can’t place, Hawks’ chest tightens in a feeling dangerously adjacent to protectiveness.
“Dabi…”
“What?” Dabi snorts, and, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, says, “Nobody wants to be rescued by someone with a face like mine. You’d find your options pretty limited.”
This is fairly par for the course for Dabi, who’s made a few jabs at his own ghoulish appearance during some of their conversations. It’d always stricken Hawks as strange; for someone who, at a distance, exudes nothing but condescension and cool confidence, he appears to actually think very little of himself, even if he’d likely deny it if asked.
Hawks doesn’t like it. He doesn’t know why, but he just can’t stand to hear it.
So he finds himself saying, “I don’t know if that’s true.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“You’ve got an awfully low opinion of the general public.”
Dabi tips his head, dropping his chin a little. He hesitates before continuing, voice very soft.
“People aren’t born villains, hero. We’ve just learned to be shitty right back at a world that’s been nothing but shitty to us.”
Hawks looks away, eyes falling to the puddle of oil on his kitchen floor. He has no real answer to that. Even as a hero, he’s painfully aware that there’s so much cruelty, so much bad in the world that he can’t fix. And with Dabi scarred like he is, he should have figured that life hadn’t been kind to him, but had never really taken the time to think about.
(He didn’t want to think about it.
It hurt too much.
It hurts, he now realizes, to think of Dabi being hurt.
For some reason.)
“I’m sorry,” he says, though he knows it’s insufficient. After a beat, he adds quietly, “You didn’t deserve whatever happened to you.”
It gives Dabi physical pause, just for a moment. But it isn’t too long before he shakes his head and gets back to work.
“You don’t know that,” he grouses. “Monster like me deserves everything I’ve got coming. Right, hero?”
Hawks winces, and not solely from the thrumming ache in his arm.
“Would it kill you to go a day without insulting yourself?”
“Probably,” Dabi replies dryly, head still dipped down and eyes locked on the partially-bandaged wound.
With him otherwise engaged, Hawks takes the opportunity to shamelessly stare (as if he hasn’t already spent the evening doing so). Dabi’s face, only a few months ago, had unnerved him, but now, strangely, is a source of comfort. Even as a high-ranking hero, it had been natural, he assures himself, to look at Dabi and have unease pool in the pit of his stomach. After all, if he was able to survive whatever made him like… this , what the hell was Hawks supposed to do against him? Even Dabi himself seems to resent the way he looks.
But it’s strange, isn’t it? In such short order, in what feels like no time at all, that terror had turned to comfort, and apprehension melted into relief whenever he saw him. It’s stark today, especially, with how deeply he feels it; it has much to do with the comprehension of the fact, obvious as it should have been, that Dabi’s scars were once wounds, open and weeping and needing to be tended to. The parts of him now hardened were once hurt , badly, horribly.
Maybe that’s what it is, more than anything. Hawks is biting back all sorts of moans and groans of pain, fighting tears from his eyes, all because of a little button-sized burn that barely broke the first layer of skin on his arm. Dabi’s been through so much more than that.
God, what an understatement. Dabi’s absolutely covered with once-excruciating burn scars , from his face down his neck, his shoulders to his wrists. Hawks had even gotten a peek of scarred ankles when Dabi had first squatted down. The amount of pain, the absolute agony that caused him to look this way, makes Hawks’ stomach turn.
The whole affair makes him a little nauseous, if he’s being honest. Not in the sense that it’s bad, not in the least. Just… well, he isn’t quite sure what’s going on or, namely, why he feels the way he does. That, more than anything, has been the theme of this evening: not knowing a damn thing.
All he knows, all that’s clear, is that he can now look at Dabi’s patchwork face and admit to himself that he thinks it’s kind of beautiful. And that’s information that he has absolutely no idea what to do with.
Hawks lets out a little keen of pain as Dabi’s thumb presses into his burn through the bandage.
“Yeah, I know,” Dabi mutters. “Trust me, I know.”
Hawks doesn’t respond. He’s secretly grateful to have been shaken from his mental spiral.
That was enough self-reflection for the next year. Maybe for the next lifetime.
Looking for a distraction, Hawks studies a small blister that’s blossomed at the edge of his burn, and reaches his free arm over to thumb at it. But before he can, Dabi, flexing some previously-hidden catlike reflexes, smacks Hawks’ prying hand away from his own wound.
“No!” he snaps, that motherly (or older-brotherly?) scolding tone creeping back into his voice. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Hawks shrugs, then says sheepishly, “Kinda wanna pop it, you know?”
“Oh my god.” Dabi looks up at the ceiling. “You really are an idiot, aren’t you?”
“I just-“
“That’s a rhetorical question. I don’t need a response.” Dabi dabs a little more aloe at the edge of the wound, before continuing to wind the bandage around.
“Blisters are a good thing for burns,” he explains lightly. “They protect the damaged skin while it heals. Popping them, like a dumbass, exposes the burned area to infection. Your body does everything for a reason. Leave it the fuck alone, okay?”
Hawks snorts, tucking the offending hand back into his lap. “Thank you, Doctor Dabi.”
“Christ, I am not a doctor. Believe me, I’d be in a lot better shape if I was.” Dabi grimaces. “This is… forced, situation-based expertise.”
Hawks draws his brow, a bad feeling creeping into his gut. He almost doesn’t ask. But of course, he does.
“Did no one ever help you? When you were… whenever you got hurt, I mean?”
Dabi’s face darkens, and he pauses caring for the wound.
“Not really, no,” he says cagily, fiddling with the gauze between his fingers. “I’ve spent most of my life patching myself up. The people who used to help knew about as much as I did. It’s always been… slapdash, I guess.”
Hawks purses his lips, allowing his eyes to trail over the huge swathes of purple scarring, the staples securing damaged skin to healthy. He wonders if that’s why the burns are so poorly healed. He wonders if Dabi has any sensation there at all. He wonders what the scars would feel like underneath his fingertips.
Anyway.
“No wonder you’re so good at playing doctor,” Hawks teases, desperately trying to keep his mind off that path. To his relief, it lightens the moment; Dabi snorts out a laugh.
Then he looks up, and, for what feels like the first time in a year, Hawks gets to look at his whole face. So he drinks in everything, from his clear blue eyes, to the staples down his chin, to the half-moon scars underneath his lower lashlines, to the three studs glinting on the side of his nose.
God. God. It feels like breathing air for the first time.
“I try, little bird,” Dabi deadpans.
Oh.
Hawks likes being little bird.
Hero instincts. They’ve been the bane of his existence all night long. They’re what got him into this mess in the first place. Reflexes quicker than the brain, a body that moves before a thought can fully form.
Those damn instincts. There they go again.
Hawks, before it dawns on him how insane it is to do this, reaches out his free hand and places it on Dabi’s cheek.
Silence swallows the room. Suffocating, still, and deadly.
When Dabi speaks, it’s incredibly soft, but infused with such emotion that it seems to shake the room.
“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he says, voice low and rife with cold fire.
Hawks doesn’t answer because, as a matter of fact, he doesn’t know just what in the hell he’s doing. Heroes are supposed to move without thinking, right? That’s all he’s done here. Except instead of confronting a villain with violence, he's done just about the opposite, with tender fingertips finding their way to rest against Dabi’s face.
The feeling of Dabi’s arm against his hasn’t left his mind since it happened. It’s not at the forefront, but it’s been nagging and nipping at the back of his brain stem, refusing to go away, begging to be felt again. It was just a taste, just a drop. Here Hawks is, taking a metaphorical bite, palm cupping Dabi’s scarred jaw, running a gentle thumb over the line of staples beneath his cheekbone.
Dabi’s still as a statue, frozen like he's carved from marble. He stays put as Hawks begins to card through the hair by his ear, brows tipped up and turquoise eyes wide.
“Why-”
“I don’t know,” Hawks says honestly.
He really doesn’t. He doesn’t know a damn thing.
He doesn’t know why there’s this tether in his chest, pulling and tugging him wherever Dabi goes, like they’re north and south poles of a magnet, like Dabi is the sun and Hawks is a planet at his mercy, circling him like he’s the center of gravity for the entire universe.
Since beginning his infiltration mission, their midnight meetings have been the only thing on his mind. He’d brushed it off as typical — Hawks is an infamous workaholic — but the images he’d replayed over and over in his brain weren’t those of logistics or strategy, not in the least. Work had never been at the forefront of his thoughts.
It’s… Dabi. It’s always been Dabi.
Hawks shifts his hand back to rest on Dabi’s cheek, taking in and cherishing the feeling of scarred skin and healthy alike.
His eyes fall to Dabi’s lips. One plush and pink, one rough and dark, both the object of his complete and total desire.
He leans in.
“Don’t do this,” Dabi whispers. It’s soft, but firm with intent.
Thinking he’s crossed a line, Hawks falters, sitting back a little.
“Do you not want this?”
Dabi hesitates. His eyes fall to the floor.
“I do,” he finally replies, “and that’s the problem.”
Hawks shifts forward. He raises his freshly-bandaged arm, placing the hand on Dabi’s other cheek, cradling the face that’s lived behind his eyelids since this mission began.
“Please,” he whispers.
And this time, he doesn’t need those cursed instincts. He doesn’t need to move without thinking. Because this time, someone does it for him.
This time, Dabi takes the initiative, knotting a hand in Hawks’ hair and pressing their lips together.
Like a wave crashing on the shore, like the sun spilling over the horizon after a night of darkness. Like air after suffocation, music after silence, sleep to the tired and life to the dead.
This is everything, everything, that Hawks so desperately wanted and needed.
Dabi gasps against Hawks’ lips, and it’s absolutely electric in his ears. He leans in, kissing more deeply, reveling in the sensation of every single nerve ending, hoping and wishing that this moment never ends and if it does, that it won’t be the last time this happens.
When they finally do break apart, Dabi closes his eyes, tipping his forehead to rest against Hawks’. The normally porcelain skin on his cheekbones has received a dusting of color, flushed to a deep rosy hue. Hawks doesn’t let go, now using both his thumbs to gently stroke the staples by his mouth.
Dabi is so, so beautiful. Stunningly, strikingly, heart-stoppingly so. Hawks is at peace with that. He can admit it to himself now, fully and unapologetically.
The moment is quickly broken, though; Dabi turns away, brows creased and eyes hazy. Hawks lets his hands fall back into his lap and cocks his head.
“Dabi?”
“That was my first kiss.”
It’s whispered, so Hawks almost misses it. But he hears, and each word in the sentence is like a knife in his heart.
“What?” he gasps.
Dabi’s eyes flash with anger as he snaps his head back in Hawks’ direction.
“Don’t make fun of me-”
“I’m not,” Hawks assures, placing a comforting hand on Dabi’s own, “I promise, I’m not. I just- I- I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Look at me, hero. You really think people were lining up to be with this?”
“That’s not- it’s just-” Hawks hesitates, then flushes red and looks away before finishing lamely, “You’re a really good kisser is all.”
The pale skin on Dabi’s face goes an even deeper pink. It makes Hawks’ chest feel fluttery.
“And for what it’s worth,” Hawks continues, using his pointer finger to tip Dabi’s chin up, “I would line up to be with you, just as you are.”
Dabi scoffs.
“You don’t know me.”
“I’d really like to,” Hawks replies frankly.
“I’m not who you think I am.”
Hawks shrugs. “I’m probably not either, to be honest.”
“You idiot,” Dabi grits out, “you’re making a mistake.”
“Why won’t you let yourself have what you want?”
It completely freezes Dabi. He looks hunted, eyes wild like an animal cornered and caught in a trap. His scarred lower lip shakes, and he inhales sharply before speaking.
“Because I ruin things.” Dabi looks away, seeming to unnerve himself with his own candidness. “I ruin every single thing I have going for me. Nothing good in my life ever stays.”
Hawks takes Dabi’s hands in his own. The sting has subsided from the burn on his arm, so he focuses all his sensation of Dabi’s fingers against his, swiping his thumb across the shining staples in his wrist. He speaks bluntly, honestly, openly, because what he wants is right here, it’s new and it’s real, and he means this.
“Then let me be the first.”