Chapter Text
As much as Hawks wants to believe things will be different after his and Dabi’s conversation, they…aren’t. Dabi is a little more open towards him, but the rest of the League? Not so much.
It’s not like it’s that big a deal. It’s just…sort of constant.
————
“God, why does he have to be in here?” Toga complains loudly, standing at the end of the kitchen counter and glowering at him.
Hawks eyes his plate, rotating slowly in the microwave. “I’ll be gone in a minute,” he says quietly.
“This is our place, you know,” she says. “You shouldn’t even be here.”
“I know.” Just as softly. Hawks doesn’t know how to be loud around these people anymore.
“Just because you killed Jin doesn’t mean you get to take his place.”
“Toga, knock it off,” Dabi says from the other room. “Let the guy fuckin’ eat.”
She mutters something under her breath that Hawks can’t hear. He strains automatically with his wings, but of course, he doesn’t have those anymore.
The microwave beeps, and Hawks makes his escape.
————
“I’ll talk to them,” Dabi says, apropos of nothing, when they next have a scant moment alone. “Just…it’s gonna take a little bit.”
“Okay,” Hawks says numbly, but Dabi is already walking away.
————
A shadow falls over him where he’s seated on the couch, and Hawks jumps a little. The vibrations should’ve come through–
No feathers, right.
Shigaraki says something, a little muffled. Most of the world sounds a little muffled, these days. Hawks doesn’t know how anyone else stands it. It’s completely different from the days when he did have his wings, when everything was so much it sometimes made him want to cry, despite his control.
Hawks knows better than to ask him to repeat himself, but he really doesn’t know what Shigaraki could want with him. He’s just sitting here. He glances around for Dabi, but the only one in the room with them is Spinner, eyeing them both tersely.
“Hero,” Shigaraki snaps. He never uses Hawks’s name anymore. “I said fucking move.”
Hawks holds up his hands and slowly stands. Here is where he might have affected a casual, apologetic smile, said Sorry, man, didn’t know there were assigned seats, and ducked out gracefully. But he can’t. His back muscles twitch, bird instincts still unsettled at being snuck up on.
He starts to turn, and a hand lands right in the center of his back for half a second, shoving him hard enough to stumble to his knees. There’s the too-familiar crackle of decayed skin, and Hawks hisses through his teeth as it radiates out from where Shigaraki touched him.
“C’mon, man,” Spinner says nervously.
Shigaraki just huffs. Hawks doesn’t quite look to Spinner for help, but it doesn’t matter, because Spinner stays where he is anyway. Slowly, he sits up.
“Sniffling on the floor won’t help your case,” Shigaraki comments. Hawks forces himself to breathe.
He drags himself up and off to a secluded corner to lick his wounds. For the next few days, Shigaraki and Toga both go out of their way to bump into his back. Hawks keeps mysteriously finding bandages in his bag, though, so at least Dabi is looking out for him, even if he’s being weird about doing so directly.
————
“-have to stop attacking him for existing in front of you at some point.”
“No I don’t!”
Hawks pauses outside the safehouse door, glancing down at a bag of someone’s leftover takeout he just snagged. Dabi says something else he can’t hear, and Toga snarls.
“Look, this shit is more complicated than heroes and villains, Hawks didn’t-“
“It’s not complicated!” Toga shrieks. There’s a thud right near Hawks’s head; she threw a knife. “I loved him and he took him away!”
Hawks flinches back.
“I know, I know.”
“You think he loves you, don’t you?” she spits. “Heroes—heroes don’t love villains, they can’t. I know, I know. And he’s gonna kill you too if you’re stupid enough to believe him and—and where am I gonna get another big brother, Dabi?”
“Toga-“
“Shut up!”
There is quiet, for a moment. Hawks half-wonders if they’re actually done.
“He’s already got nothing, Himiko. Do you think torturing him is gonna bring Jin back?”
Another pause. Then, low, low enough that Hawks almost misses it: “Fuck. You.”
Toga storms off then. Hawks finds somewhere else to be for a few hours.
————
Toga, perceptive and obsessive as she is, is not the first one to figure out that Hawks is so much less without his wings. That honor goes to Compress.
He’s not even around their base half the time, to the point where Hawks keeps half-thinking he’s vanished for good, but then, like a magician should, he always reappears.
Hawks is hovering in the corner of their latest safehouse, a tiny, one-bedroom shack out in the woods, when something hits him in the side of the head. It’s not that hard, but he flinches away anyway and scans the room for a vindictive face.
“Sorry, Hawks,” Compress says, making everyone go quiet. Drawing more attention to him. “I called your name, figured you heard. But I guess your, uh, feathers…”
He stops talking, probably because Hawks is trying to school his expression from “moderate panic” closer to “concerned.”
Compress clears his throat after a couple of terse seconds. “Anyway. Um, sorry. I should’ve made sure you heard. That’s for you.”
Toga scoffs and Hawks tries to ignore it, picking up the object Compress lobbed at him. It’s a wrapped sandwich. They bought food specifically for him. Or was this Dabi’s doing?
Everyone is still quiet, so he manages to thank Compress and escapes outside even though it’s still spring and chilly.
It’s the best food he’s had in weeks.
————
By the time two weeks have passed, Hawks’s nerves are fried. Aside from a few comments from Dabi, Compress, and, surprisingly, Kurogiri once, there’s nothing to stop Hawks from being worried at, worn down slowly. Try as he might, he still can’t get used to not having his wings; between the phantom sensations and not knowing what’s going on around him, he barely sleeps.
Finally, they get to move to a larger safehouse for a longer stretch of time. He can’t even bring himself to be relieved about it, only standing off to the side as they divvy up rooms. Hawks is given the smallest, off by himself, but he’s hardly going to complain about the lack of space.
Dabi knocks on his door after everyone has collapsed into their own beds. It makes him jump; he didn’t hear footsteps.
“I’m sleeping,” Hawks mumbles.
“I know. You, uh. You look like you need it, so. Just. We have some space to breathe now, so I am gonna talk to them all more. And we’ll figure shit out. I’m sorry it’s been slow.”
Hawks is so shocked to get even a halfhearted apology that he says nothing at all, and after a long moment, Dabi walks away.
————
The conversation doesn’t keep him from jolting awake whenever he rolls onto a nonexistent wing in his sleep, or at random because his body can’t seem to be convinced that nothing is threatening him.
Hawks gives up on sleep after the sun is well risen, streaming through his window. He heads out to the kitchen. Maybe, if he’s very lucky, Dabi will have talked to the others some already.
He’s way too fucking exhausted to deal with them right now.
Which, naturally, means that they’re all gathered in the kitchen when he arrives.
Spinner blatantly leaves his spot, leaning on the counter, to sit on the table instead. Hawks ignores everyone watching him and pretending that they aren’t and heads to see if there’s anything for him to eat. Nope.
Out of momentum, unable to think of another step—god, he’s so tired of scavenging—he just…stops. Stares at the empty spaces.
“Oops, we didn’t go shopping yet,” Toga calls casually. “And useless birds that can’t fly don’t get included in the breakfast run.”
“Stop being a bitch, Toga,” Dabi says. Hawks shudders at the tone, at the tension ramping up behind his back, but he can’t turn to see it. He’s just staring straight ahead, stuck.
“Don’t call me a bitch or I’ll slit your-“
“Toga, he’s right, there’s no need to be so antagonistic this early in the morning.”
“And Hawks isn’t useless,” Dabi adds.
“Dunno about that one, dude,” Spinner puts in.
“Yeah, bet he can’t even hear us now without the wings,” Toga sneers.
Something hits his back, probably a stone or something that they tracked in, and he flinches far too hard for the barely-there sting. It hurts, though. His wings hurt and his ears are buzzing again, everything muffled.
People are arguing behind him now, and Hawks—knows that they’re saying words, that he should understand, but the half of everything that he can hear sounds garbled and wrong. Are they mad at each other, or at him?
Who is he kidding. It’s always him.
Hawks whines in the back of his throat, but tamps down on the sound as best he can. He needs to get out of here. It’s not safe.
He pushes away from the counter, stumbling back down the hallway.
“Stupid bird can’t even walk right!” Toga shouts in a rush.
Hawks squeezes his eyes shut, focusing everything he has on putting one foot in front of the other. Just leave. It’s not worth it, it’s not going to get better. He’s too bad. He messed up too much.
Something touches his shoulder, gentle, hardly a touch at all, but it’s toomuchtoomuch and it burns like fire is eating at his insides.
Keigo screams, whirling around, then trips and falls backward, slamming his wings (his nonexistent, phantom wings) into the hardwood floor. He screams again, curling onto his side to get away from the pain, and manages to look up and see Compress looming over him. The scream runs out of air and turns into sobbing.
“Hawks?” Compress crouches down. “Hawks, are you hurt?”
Toga shouts incoherently, and Keigo curls up in the smallest ball he can so that maybe she won’t hurt him anymore.
“‘m sorry,” he whines. “‘m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Dabi swears. Footsteps shake the floorboards under him.
“Okay,” Compress soothes. “It’s alright, we all need to take a breath. Can you sit up for me?”
“Mister, he—that—I need to take him, lemme take him.” Dabi is practically vibrating with energy, and Keigo whimpers, hiding his face behind his hands.
“Dabi, you are not helping. Step back and calm down.”
“You don’t get it, I need to-“
“I understand,” Compress says, a serious tone, but not as scary as everybody else’s, “that Hawks is very overwhelmed at the moment, and dragging him around while you are panicking is not going to help.”
“He wants me to take him. He shouldn’t be around you guys, he wants me, right, K—Hawks?”
Keigo is so confused, but Dabi seems the kind of scared his Mommy gets sometimes, when she grabs his arm to drag him away before Daddy finds out about something. He doesn’t want to get pulled. It’s scary and it hurts. He doesn’t want Dabi to hit him, either, or yell, and he’s been yelling a lot.
“N-no,” he whispers.
“What?” Dabi hisses. “Hawks.”
He reaches out, and Keigo—Keigo knew this would happen, because Dabi doesn’t listen when he says no anymore, but it hurts anyway, it hurts so much, because Dabi said, right? He said that he gets to say no.
So Keigo can’t resist, but he doesn’t want to go, so he just freezes up as Dabi grabs his arm and starts to pull.
“Dabi, stop that.” The hand lets go, and when Keigo peeks, Compress is shielding him bodily. “He said no. Move back.”
Dabi looks frantically between them with an expression Keigo doesn’t understand, but he does step back. “Fine.”
Compress nods once and looks back at him. “Hawks, would you like to be touched now or not? I won’t grab you, you just look like you need some support.”
Keigo nods, bites his lip. “Can…can I…hug, please?”
Compress leans back a little, looking startled, and Keigo—Keigo knows he’s ruining everything. But it was already ruined. So now, now it’s…double-ruined, which is probably bad. But he really, really wants to be held.
But obviously he doesn’t deserve that, because he’s bad.
“‘m sorry,” he whispers, shifting a little away. “Never…n’v’mind, I was bad.”
“The fuck is wrong with him?” Shigaraki mutters, not quietly.
“You can have a hug,” Compress soothes, gently pulling him into one. “I was just surprised. I didn’t think you would want—but it doesn’t matter. What you did is more complicated than most people want to admit, but it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be touched.”
Keigo doesn’t see how that makes any sense, but he melts against Compress’s side anyway, greedily taking everything he’s offered.
“Oh, fuck that,” Toga interrupts suddenly, voice quavering. She’s staring at them. “No. No, he doesn’t get to—get off of him!”
“Toga, calm down,” Compress says firmly. Dabi moves to stand closer to her, between them, guarding.
“I am not calming down!” she shouts, and she actually stomps her foot when she does. “It’s not fair, get him off!”
“Hey, let’s dial it back for a minute, at least,” Spinner tries, moving closer to her.
Kurogiri’s mist starts to shift and warble, ready to open a gate any second. Shigaraki just watches from the corner, looking bored.
Toga twists away from Spinner, rushing forward until Dabi catches her around the waist. She reaches for Keigo anyway, face twisted up in rage.
“Get off, it’s not fair, it’s not happening-“
“Toga, what the fuck, stop gouging my fucking seams-“
“Let go of me!” she shrieks. Keigo presses into Compress as hard as he can. “It’s not fair, it’s supposed to be me!”
Spinner rips her away from Dabi and she screams, thrashing more. “What does that mean?”
Toga just screams, and cries, and fights against the hold on her, shouting more about how it isn’t fair.
“Oh,” Keigo says softly, sitting up.
“Oh?” Compress asks. “What is it?”
“Dabi,” Keigo says, and miraculously he turns, a little bloody and ragged around the edges from Toga’s tantrum.
Because that’s what it is. A tantrum.
Keigo points at Toga while staring at Dabi’s face, then slowly, deliberately, goes kik-kik.
“Fuck,” Dabi whispers. “You—you think?”
Keigo nods, hides again. Toga continues to scream.
“Think what?” Shigaraki drawls.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Compress says.
Dabi ignores them, crouching down just out of reach of Toga’s flailing limbs—she and Spinner migrated to wrestling on the floor at some point. She glowers at him, tries to lash out with her feet, but Spinner holds her in place.
“Toga,” Dabi starts, shifting into that familiar gentle tone, “how old are you right now?”
“She’s seventeen, you idiot,” Spinner grunts. “What does that have to do with anything?”
But Toga spits in Dabi’s face and only says, “Don’t gotta tell you anything.”
Dabi wipes his face, nods, and stands up. Quiet as Toga stares at him, chest heaving.
“Alright, so how many of us have heard of age regression?”
More quiet, broken only by Keigo whimpering and trying to hide inside Compress’s skin, like he could escape this conversation.
“None of us, now get to the point,” Spinner hisses. Toga kicks him.
“Short version, the brain reverts to childhood to deal with shit. Stress, trauma.” He tilts his head at Keigo. “All of that. I’ve been helping Hawks with his for months. And given that no one else knows, Toga, I take it Twice helped you?”
Toga’s face crumples and she nods, fast. “Daddy.”
“Dude, gross,” Spinner mutters, pulling back.
Keigo starts crying. Of course they think it’s gross. They’re going to hurt him and Toga and Toga is just going to hate him more.
“Don’t say that,” Dabi snaps. “It’s not sex shit. She can call him whatever she wants, you’re the fucking gross one.”
“Dude, chill.”
“Shut up. This wouldn’t be happening if we could just fucking talk like normal people.”
Shigaraki gets up from his corner, wandering closer. “So Hawks and Toga are…?”
“Little,” Dabi supplies. “Hawks’s headspace….it’s usually around five, sometimes younger if he’s too stressed. I have no idea about Toga, but she’s at least old enough to talk and throw herself around, so maybe about the same.”
“Not the same!” Toga protests. “Not the same as him!”
“It’s just a number,” Dabi tells her. “We know you’re not like him, it’s alright.”
That seems to mollify her a bit.
“So basically, to recap, the former Number Two Hero has turned into a five year old because Compress touched his shoulder and it stressed him out,” Shigaraki says skeptically.
“He regressed because everyone has been treating him like shit for months and he’s just bottling it up,” Dabi snaps. His face softens as he glances at Keigo. “Myself included. You saw, he didn’t want to go with me.”
Compress’s arm tightens around Keigo. It feels safe.
He says, “That makes sense. What about Toga? Was that…just because she saw Hawks?”
Dabi shrugs. “I dunno if it works that way. But she’s probably been on a hair trigger, losing Twice. Yeah?”
Toga sniffles and nods, mumbles, “‘s not fair,” again.
Dabi glances between them and adds, “Actually…I’m betting she’s been working herself up to talk to someone about it for a while. Probably you, Mister. So when Hawks got there first, it would’ve felt like she missed her chance.”
A small, affirmative noise from the floor.
“Well, that’s silly,” Compress says, reaching out a hand to her. “I have two arms, Toga. Plenty of room for you as well.”
She scowls. “No! Not with him!”
Keigo makes a mournful noise and starts to retreat. Toga’s right. He doesn’t deserve to take space from her, to take up any space at all. Compress’s grip tightens, though, holding him in place. Of course they don’t want him to run, this was all a trap, they want to punish him for stealing Compress’s affection-
“Hawks, stay here. You’re fine. Toga, I know you’re upset about Hawks, but you can either sit with both of us or stay over there with Spinner.”
Toga pouts for a long moment, then slowly climbs to her feet and shuffles over. She crosses her arms, glaring down at them.
“Don’t let ‘im touch me.”
“Sure,” Compress agrees easily. “Opposite sides, no touching. Now sit, you look like you need a hug.”
Toga falls less than gracefully to the floor beside them, pulling Compress’s arm around her with a huff. Keigo carefully looks anywhere but at her. There’s another awkward silence while they’re both held, and surprisingly Toga does not try to attack him.
Kurogiri comes closer, lowering himself to peer at both of them. “You know, Dabi, a lot of things about you and Hawks lately are starting to make sense.”
“Yeah, they would,” Dabi sighs.
“Two weeks ago, when you two were alone. The cat?”
Keigo lifts his head hopefully. Jet?
“Yeah, she’s…Hawks’s cat. I forgot to bring her with us, he slipped, it was kind of a mess all around.”
“Slipped?” Kurogiri echoes.
“Regressed,” Dabi clarifies. “Less clinical.”
“Right.”
“I should grab her, probably,” Dabi says, glancing at Keigo. “Hey, Toga, do you have anything from your room that you want?”
She nods. “On my bed.”
Dabi waits for a beat, but she doesn’t provide any more information. “I’ll figure it out.”
As he turns to go upstairs, Compress says, “Wait, what should we do now? Just stay like this?”
“Yeah, how long until they’re back to normal?” Shigaraki asks.
“Sorry,” Keigo blurts out, trying to squirm away from Compress again. “I can, can be—“
“Hey, kiddo, no,” Dabi says, freezing him in his tracks. To Shigaraki, he says, “You can’t force it. I mean, technically, you can sometimes, I’ve seen Hawks do it. But this is their way of coping with shit, alright? You gotta let it happen. Usually it only lasts a couple of hours anyway.”
“And when it doesn’t?” Kurogiri asks.
Dabi shrugs. “You deal? The longest he was ever little with me was about a day, but he was also unconscious for more than half of it, so.”
“What?” Compress asks, straightening in alarm. “When was this?”
“When the Commission tried to kill him and he escaped and ran to my place. Stress, pain, obviously he was gonna-“
“The Commission tried to kill him?” Spinner asks. “I thought he was like, their best guy?”
Dabi starts to reply, but Keigo gets there first. “Not best. ‘m really bad.” He reaches over his shoulder, almost able to reach the place his wings used to meet his back. “Useless. No wings.”
“Shit, dude,” Spinner says. “That’s fucked up.”
Keigo sniffles and hides his face in Compress’s chest, like that will take all the eyes off of him.
“Hawks…”
“Wan’ Jet,” he whines, a desperate attempt to change the subject. “Pl’se.”
“I’ll get her, baby. Everybody just stay where you are and be nice, I’ll be like, two minutes.”
Dabi pounds up the stairs. Compress’s hand strokes up and down Keigo’s spine.
“Did he just call Hawks ‘baby’?” Shigaraki asks, judgment thick in his tone.
“We all heard it, Tomura,” Kurogiri tells him. “If you have a problem, I suggest you remove yourself from this room.”
“Is Jet your kitty, Hawks?” Compress asks, a touch louder than before, distracting.
He nods. “Mhm. Present. Fr’m Dabi.”
“Well, that was nice of him. What about you, Toga, do you have any animals?”
It takes Toga a few seconds to answer, and Keigo tenses, fearing the worst. But at last, she only says, “My bear. And my bat.”
“A bat?”
“Vampire bat,” Toga informs him seriously.
“Very cool,” Compress says.
Dabi comes pounding back down the stairs then, making Keigo tense, but he slows as he approaches them. He crouches down, offering Toga a pink stuffed bear and a brown bat with little white felt fangs.
“I didn’t see anything else in your bed, but let me know if I forgot something and I can go back and get it, okay?”
She tucks the animals close to her chest and nods. Dabi turns and holds Jet out to Keigo. After a brief second of hesitation, he takes her, rubbing his cheek against her fur.
Dabi holds up a small blue bag as well. “I grabbed your other stuff, too, if you end up wanting it.”
A shallow wave of unease sweeps over Keigo, making him still. No. There’s no way they won’t get mad at him if he gets any smaller, if he’s even more useless. They could do anything. They probably think it’s stupid, anyway, even more than Keigo is being already.
“No,” he whines, leaning away from the bag.
“No?” Compress asks. “Why not?”
Dabi sighs heavily, and Keigo shakes. Bad sound. Bad, bad sound. “He gets like this sometimes. Buddy, c’mon, you know you like this stuff, you’re allowed to have it. You’re not gonna get in trouble. Look, see, I have your-“
“Don’t!” Keigo yelps, batting at the bag as Dabi goes for the zipper. Not hard enough to knock it away, he’s not that bad, just enough to make Dabi stop.
“I don’t think he wants any part of that bag, Dabi.”
“He’s just being insecure, he does this like, every other time. We’re working on getting over it, I don’t know why he’s so freaked out. Right, little bird? These are good things, remember?”
“Not good,” he protests. “Go ‘way.”
“Hawks-“
“Said no!”
Dabi stills and slowly leans back. “Okay. Okay, I’m sorry for pushing. You don’t have to use any of it right now.”
Awkward silence for a beat before Compress says, “So, what should we do now? Any ideas, you two?”
Keigo nestles further against him. He’s fine. He doesn’t want to do anything except stay right where is, being held by someone who isn’t being mean to him. But before he can open his mouth to say so, Toga speaks.
“Movie!”
Compress turns his body toward her a little. Just a subtle angle, but Keigo is intimately familiar with rejection. “A movie sounds like a wonderful idea. Let’s go pick a streaming service to hack, hm?”
He stands up with a soft groan, Toga happily bouncing to her feet beside him. Keigo curls around Jet, staying in his place on the floor. Compress allows Toga to pull him two steps before he stops, looking back down.
“Hawks? Are you coming?”
Keigo frowns, confused. No? He’s not allowed to watch movies. Dabi said before that he can, but Dabi’s not the only one here, and everyone keeps calling him Hawks even though they know he’s little and it’s making his head hurt because they hate Hawks. Hawks is definitely, definitely not allowed to watch movies.
He ends up just shaking his head instead of explaining all of that.
“No?”
“He thinks-”
“Dabi, let’s let Hawks speak for himself on this, okay?”
Dabi huffs, but stays silent. Okay, so that made him mad. Keigo files it away.
“Hawks, why don’t you want to watch a movie?”
“Who cares,” Toga groans, tugging on his arm. “Movie time!”
But Compress doesn’t budge, instead crouching down to get a better look at Keigo’s face. Keigo hides in Jet’s fur, barely peeking out at them.
“I…I’m bad,” he mumbles. “Not ‘llowed.”
“Not allowed? Who said you aren’t allowed?”
“‘mission. ‘verybody. Don’ wan’ Hawks around.”
“The Commission?” Compress asks. He looks confused, which he shouldn’t. Shigaraki called Hawks the Commission’s lapdog a couple of days ago in front of everyone.
So he just nods and confirms, “Not allowed ‘less I’m perfect. ‘nd ‘m not.”
Compress does turn to Dabi then, already holding up his hand to stop whatever he is about to say. “One question, Dabi, that’s it. Why does the Commission get to control that?”
Keigo watches emotions flicker across Dabi’s face before he finally settles on saying, “They’ve raised him since he was six. Most of the shit he says is because of them.”
“And the rest?” Compress asks.
“You said one question.”
“Parents,” Toga says. She’s picking at the sleeve of her sweater, barely paying attention. “Duh.”
“Hm. Well, you’re not with any of them anymore, so I’d like it if you would come sit and watch a movie with us, okay? It’ll be fun.”
He says it gently, phrases it like a question, and offers his hand to Keigo instead of just grabbing him, but Keigo isn’t stupid. He doesn’t get a choice. He never gets a choice. So he takes Compress’s hand and allows himself to be pulled over to the couch, where Spinner and Shigaraki (mostly Spinner, it looks like) are combing through a selection of children’s movies.
Compress sits down in the middle, tugging them in on either side of him like in the hallway. Keigo squirms, uncomfortable with his back pressed into the couch, but he can’t move away. That might make Compress mad.
“Here,” Kurogiri appears in front of them with possibly the biggest, softest-looking blanket Keigo has ever seen. He’s not greedy enough to grab for it, but he stares and stares as Compress takes one end, helping to arrange it over all three of them.
Momentarily distracted by touching the soft blue fabric—it’s the nicest thing he’s touched in weeks, except for Jet—Keigo misses the movie starting. He jumps a little when Compress’s arm falls back over his shoulder, and it’s only then that it really hits him: They’re all sharing a blanket.
“Shh, Keigo, don’t let your mother hear.”
Keigo thinks that he could scream and she wouldn’t hear, even in the same room, dead eyes staring at the television screen like they are. His daddy’s hand slips under the blanket, rubbing over the front of his pants.
Keigo blinks hard, forcing himself to focus. He can’t—his daddy isn’t here. He’s safe. He’s supposed to be safe from one thing now, just one, but it doesn’t feel like it. Compress’s leg is all warm pressed up against his, and Keigo isn’t sure he wants to be touching anymore. But he can’t say no. He has to be good, good for the movie, good or they might get mad and hurt him.
But he’s—he’s scared, and it makes him look around for Dabi, finding him in a ratty green chair just next to them. He stares. Dabi has his chin propped on his hand, expression flat and disinterested as he watches the movie. It’s only a couple of degrees above the way his mother looked.
Keigo whines in the back of his throat. Dabi—he doesn’t understand Dabi now, and it’s scary, but he doesn’t want to lose him. He doesn’t want Dabi to not look at him anymore.
“Hawks?” That’s Kurogiri, but Keigo doesn’t even care, because Dabi looks at him.
“Yeah, little bird?”
But Keigo can’t say anything. If he says it, he’ll be bad, and, and they’ll get mad at him, and—he doesn’t know. He just can’t say it. But if Dabi says it, then, then that’s okay.
“What are you looking at me for?” Dabi tries again.
What are you looking at, brat? Leave me alone.”
Keigo flinches back, stung. Dabi says something again, but he can’t hear it. Nothing is going the way he wants, everything is different and he’s too hot and it’s scary.
“He’s shaking,” Compress reports softly, and it gets twisted up inside Keigo’s head to be a gentle croon. Oh, he’s shaking, look at that. Desperate little thing. “Hawks?”
His hand slides down, from shoulder to waist, trying to pull them closer. Keigo can’t breathe. He can’t see. He just wants them to get it over with, maybe, so he can stop being scared and be sad instead. That would be better. Anything’s better than scared.
There are a lot of voices talking, and at least one tells the others to get back, probably because it isn’t their turn yet—Keigo wants to sob. If they take turns it’s gonna last all night and it’s gonna hurt so bad.
“Hawks, you’re alright, just try to breathe.” A big, big hand lands on his thigh, warm, everything is warm and Keigo is just so dizzy, but there’s no time for that. The hand means it’s starting.
A lot of people start shouting, and Keigo realizes that there’s a different kind of warmth between his legs. Wet. He doesn’t care that he’s going to get into trouble—he’s already in so much trouble—he squeezes his eyes shut. Tears roll down his cheeks. He hopes they’re the kind that like it when he cries. It’ll still hurt, just different.
The body (bodies?) around him move away, and a familiar voice breaks through everything.
“-aby, baby, look at me. Look at me, it’s Dabi, you’re okay, you’re not in trouble. I’m gonna take care of you.”
Keigo can’t help it; he wails, curling in on himself. Dabi’s been so mean, and Keigo wants, wants so much for him to be good now, to stop treating him like Hawks or whatever is going on, but he’s terrified that if he goes with Dabi and trusts that that will happen Dabi might hurt him. If Dabi hurts him, Keigo thinks he really will just break into pieces. Nothing left.
He doesn’t even realize he’s sobbing out “No, no, no–” until hands are being pulled away from him and Compress is back.
“It’s okay, Hawks, you don’t have to go with Dabi if you don’t want to. I can help you clean up, don’t worry.”
That’s worse, that’s so much worse. Compress is gonna be mad that Keigo ruined the movie, or worse, he’s going to like it, and either way he’ll give Keigo his bath and touch him under the water and he’ll get out dirtier than he was before.
More talking all around him. Keigo can feel his mouth open, sounds coming out, but he can’t hear what he’s saying. A very soft, strange warbling makes him peek up to see what’s happening.
Kurogiri is in front of him now.
“Dude, you’re gonna freak him out more,” someone hisses.
Kurogiri tilts his head a bit, ignoring the comment, and says, “Hawks, would you like me to help you instead?”
Keigo sniffles. He doesn’t know if Kurogiri is mean—he gave them the blanket, after all. But he hasn’t hurt him so far, not like the others. And the longer Keigo sits here, the madder everyone is going to get because he’s dirty and disgusting and he ruined their plans to touch him.
“Okay,” he whispers.
“Are you alright with a gate? It will be faster and simpler than walking.”
Keigo nods. It’s not like he can say no.
Kurogiri’s black portal swallows him up, and a second later he and Jet are tumbling onto the bathroom floor. They’re alone. Alone with Kurogiri. For a bath. Water starts pouring into the tub. Keigo just hugs his cat and stares ahead, waiting for orders.
“Can I help you take off your clothes?” Kurogiri asks.
Keigo nods.
“Good. We’ll have to put your cat down, it can’t come in the bath.”
Reflexively, Keigo squeezes Jet one time before loosening his grip, holding her out just enough that Kurogiri gets the message and pulls her away. It’s for the best. The last thing Keigo wants is to make her dirty, too.
“Can you stand?”
It’s not an order, it’s a question, and Keigo doesn’t know the answer. He doesn’t know if he can stand. He doesn’t even know where his legs are anymore. Did he leave them behind when he came through the gate?
“Hawks, can you hear me?”
He nods, just a little. He knows that much.
“Okay. Can you speak?”
Keigo starts to tremble again. He knows the right answer, but he can’t make his mouth move, can’t even shift his gaze from the wall to Kurogiri in front of him.
“Okay. That’s alright, Hawks. I'm going to touch you so I can help you get in the bath. Just…try to let me know if you want me to stop.”
Keigo knows that isn’t how this works, but he likes that Kurogiri said it, anyway. His body gets moved, lifted up and stripped bare, then settled into warm water. A voice slips through and around him, but he doesn’t pay attention to it, and when he doesn’t get slapped for not listening, he keeps not paying attention to it. It’s easier that way.
Slowly, he becomes aware of warm water being poured over his hair, carefully kept from running into his eyes. It feels nice.
“Kuro?” he mumbles.
“Yes, Hawks?”
He hums, turning his head away a bit in denial. “‘m not Hawks.”
“Hm. It would make sense that you don’t want to use your hero name like this, wouldn’t it? What would you like me to call you?”
He wrinkles his nose. Nobody is supposed to know he’s Keigo. Dabi knows, and that’s bad enough.
“I ‘unno.”
“Alright. I’ll think of something, then. Are you feeling any better now?”
Keigo has no idea how to quantify better, especially not when he doesn’t know what’s going to happen, so he just shrugs.
“Okay. Can we talk about what happened outside? I have a few questions, but it’s up to you.”
Keigo shrugs again. There’s nothing he can really do to stop him, and he doesn’t care about questions.
“Why didn’t you want Dabi? I thought you two were close.”
Helplessly, knowing it’s eventually going to get him in trouble, Keigo can only shrug again.
“Has he hurt you? You’ve seemed very afraid of him.”
Another shrug, because Keigo doesn’t know what kind of hurt Kurogiri is asking about. Dabi never hit him, and Dabi never fucked him except for that one time that he is mostly sure doesn’t really count. But Dabi is scary.
“Hm. Was that too vague? I can rephrase.”
Relieved to be able to give a different answer, Keigo nods.
Kurogiri stops pouring water and starts to work something into his hair. Soap? “Has Dabi hurt you physically? Outside of normal hero and villain fights, I mean.”
Keigo shakes his head.
“Good. But he’s still scared you somehow, yes? Has he threatened to hurt you?” Another head shake. “Has he threatened to expose you, to kick you out of the League, to let any of us hurt you?” No, no, and no. Keigo shrinks under the questions, aware that he’s being a baby over something so small, compared to Kurogiri’s list. “Hm. Earlier…has he pushed boundaries with you?”
Keigo turns a little to look at him, confused.
“Has Dabi forced, or tried to force, you to do something even if you didn’t want to? Even if you said no?”
Keigo sniffles and nods.
“Oh, that is scary. I understand why you wouldn’t want to go with him,” Kurogiri says, very seriously. Keigo perks up a little. He understands? He gets it? “Is that the only reason, or is there something I forgot?”
He looks down, fidgeting with his fingers. “Yells ‘t me. Mad. A lot. When ‘m big.”
“Tilt your head back up, please? I don’t want soap in your eyes.” Water starts being poured over his head again. “So you remember things that happened to you when you are, ah, big, when you’re like this?”
Keigo nods. “‘m the same. ‘m just little.”
“I see. I’m sorry, I don’t know much about this.”
“‘s okay.”
“Perhaps for now, but I’ll do my best to learn for the future.”
Keigo has no idea what to do with that, such a blatant, casual show of care, so he just stares at Kurogiri until they make eye contact and he quickly looks away.
“So, Dabi is often angry at you when you’re big, but not when you’re little?” A small nod. “Okay. And you don’t like that?”
He shakes his head. “C’nfusing. Scary.”
“I understand. Thank you for telling me, I know that was difficult. Can I ask about Compress now, or would you like to be done with questions?”
Keigo shrugs. “Can ask.”
“Did you feel comfortable with Compress before the movie started? In the hallway?”
He nods. He did. He likes hugs.
“So what first started to upset you? Was it Dabi? We saw you looking at him.”
Keigo shakes his head, toying with his fingers again. He doesn’t know how to explain what happened, doesn’t want to think about it, definitely doesn’t want Kurogiri to know how gross and dirty he is, so he just says, “Blanket.”
“The blanket? Was it too heavy or too hot? Did you not like how it felt?”
Keigo hunches his shoulders. He doesn’t want questions anymore, and if he answers those ones, Kurogiri is going to keep asking more.
“H—little one?”
“Stop,” Keigo whispers, barely a sound at all.
“Okay,” Kurogiri says immediately. “No more questions. That’s fine. I’m just trying to figure out the best way to help you, but you’ve done more than enough. No more blankets for now either, is that okay with you?”
Keigo thinks he manages to nod, but he isn’t sure. Some time later—seconds or hours, he can’t be sure—he’s pulled from lukewarm water and dressed in clothes that hang off his skinny frame.
“You’re very thin,” Kurogiri says, something unpleasant coloring the edges of his tone. Keigo automatically tries to hide behind his wings, but it doesn’t work. “You haven’t been eating, have you?”
“‘m punish,” Keigo mumbles.
Kurogiri doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, he just adjusts the strings of the hoodie he tugged over Keigo’s head and says, “We’ll talk about that some other time. Would you like to go back out with the others now, or to your own room?”
Keigo closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to choose. For a long moment, his brain is just that: the sentiment of no don’t want and the question he can’t even make sense of swirling in the ether.
Kurogiri cups his chin. “Are you tired?”
“Mmmmmno,” he decides, even though he kind of feels like he is. Different sort of tired. “‘m ‘fused.”
He doesn’t feel small anymore, but he doesn’t feel big, either. He just feels heavy and distant, checked out, and he could come back down on either side.
“You’re confused? What are you confused about?”
He doesn’t know. That’s the whole problem, he doesn’t know anything.
“Little one. You’re dissociating. Can you hear me?”
He hums something like an affirmative, reaches blindly to grip Kurogiri’s sleeve.
“You want me to stay with you?”
“Mhm.”
“Okay. It wouldn’t be helpful to have you talk to Dabi now, would it? So why don’t we go upstairs to your room.”
He hums again, a rushing darkness closes around him, and then Kurogiri is steadying his body in the small room he gets to inhabit lately. Something soft is pressed against his chest, and he fumbles to hold it, instantly recognizing the texture and weight of Jet in his arms. Someone guides him gently to sit on something—bed. It’s creaky and the mattress is thin, but it’s better than the floor.
“I think sleep will help you most now. Would you like to try?”
He nods, letting go of Jet with one hand to grab Kurogiri’s sleeve again.
“Yes, I’ll stay. Until you fall asleep, I promise.”
He isn’t really aware enough to know if that promise gets kept, but at least when he falls into sleep, he does it without dreaming.