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Hawks has made lots of promises. He promises civilians he will save their loved ones, that they can trust him with their lives. He promises scared kids that it’ll be okay and he promises the commission that he isn’t a scared kid himself. Not anymore.
The first promise Hawks had ever made was to himself. I will never be like my parents.
He would sit in the corner, listening to the yelling and muffled screams, the quiet static of the TV, reverberated through his ears and each useless feather that itched on his back. When glass shatters in the other room, Hawks never flinched. The noise was a welcome normalcy, a reminder of something he should never be. He would never be his father: violent and dangerous, selfish to a fault, bestowed with the ability to never feel empathy, to never feel guilt. Hawks would make sure he was selfless, to make sure he was kind to everyone; understanding of their situation. Hawks made sure that he was always guilty. Everything was done for the sake of others. He would never be like his mother: empty and dissatisfied, only alive for one purpose in life, no meaning to her existence other than the villain she loved and the mistakes the love brewed. Hawks would never be like his mother, and he would never love anyone. Love is what destroyed his mother. Love is what allowed the Takami Thief to ruin lives, to create the feathery mistake that lingered in the kitchen; quiet and still like a toy soldier.
Now, fourteen years later, he wasn’t just a toy. He was a real soldier, a real, live hero. He was selfless, jumping into battle without a care for himself, feathers carefully placing civilians far away from the danger. Far away from the injuries Hawks would bear from his recklessness. His rescues were fast—in and out, so no one could ever see him hesitate. So no one could ever see him bleed.
He was empathetic, he liked to think. He held crying children in his arms or his feathers and his heart ached with understanding. He sees single mothers, exhausted, walking from work to their cars, ready to go home and work tirelessly for a life they never wanted. He sees heroes who are worked to the bone and he understands, he sees heroes who wish they had more freedom, and he understands.
What Hawks can’t understand, however, is the way his heart aches for the villains he is supposed to be digging up first on. He doesn’t quite understand the way his heart squeezes when he thinks of them, or how his mind reels when he thinks too hard about Dabi’s staples or the scar on Twice’s head.
Hawks is a finely tuned machine, a perfectly trained animal. He feels all the right things at all the right times, and his actions are quick, responsive, and perfect. Hawks doesn’t mess up; the HPSC taught him better than that.
Hawks’ perfection has a flaw. The guilt soaks him up at night, dragging him into a pit in his too-thin sheets that are white and clinical, never quite something he would like to own himself. Though, he’s not sure if he could pick anything else, even if he wanted to. He would let others make his decisions for him, it was the selfless thing to do. Hawks will feel the guilt of unsaved lives, of failed missions, of the release of a chirp or an excited flap of his useless wings. Hawks will let the guilt consume him, because it means he is that much different from his father.
He never expected this.
He never wanted this.
He never wanted to look into the mirror and see his mother staring back at him. It’s ironic, he thinks to himself, that the emptiness is the very thing keeping him whole, an emptiness so deep and necessary that it fills up every crevasse of his body. Hawks is selfless, he is kind, he is strong, he is fast, and he is a husk.
Hawks is guilty, he is slow, he is weak. Hawks is a shell.
The moment he feels dissatisfied with the life the commission gave him, the life his mother so graciously sold him to, he distracts himself. He will distract himself with saving lives, with losing lives, with letting the guilt consume him.
Hawks will distract himself from the emptiness his mother passed down to him by hanging out with a ragtag team of outcasts who play video games and feed each other shitty food from stolen ingredients. Hawks vaguely remembers scrounging for ingredients to make dinner with, but he’s never seen people so content in their misfortune. Compress didn’t seem to care that the food he was cooking with had been stale for days, nor that Dabi had stolen the pots and pans they cooked with. They didn’t seem to worry about their next meal; they just smiled as they ate together.
He will smile back, making sure he only eats enough food to convince them he is full, to make sure that they get the majority. They shouldn’t be feeding him, not when they needed it so much more.
Life felt repetitive sometimes. Patrol, training, sleep, patrol, league meeting, patrol, training, sleep, patrol… Sometimes he wondered if there was a purpose for him outside of this. Sometimes he wondered if he could have been like the kids who walk to school laughing, bags slung over their shoulders, laughing over inside jokes with their friends. Sometimes Hawks wondered if he could have been like the girls who banter outside the bars at night, laughing about their lives like every day was a new chapter of a novel. He would never say it, but sometimes Hawks wondered what he was living for. If there was anything for him beyond being a hero. But, he had to be selfless. A hero was all he needed to be in order for him to be happy. The smiles on civilians' faces when they are reunited with their families is more than enough. He doesn’t try to think about how he is going home to no one.
The worst thing that has ever happened to Hawks is when he does have a family to go home to. It’s unconventional and it’s for work, like everything is, but Toga keeps calling him part of her family and it makes his heart and stomach twist and turn, dropping like a bird shot down from the sky. He is invited to league game nights more often, and he finds Dabi at his apartment after patrols. His body pounds with guilt at all of the wasted time. The time the villains are spending on him, the time he spends on them.
Something new wracks his shaking bones when he meets Dabi’s eyes after a long patrol. Dabi is standing in his kitchen, fiery blue gaze focused on a pan that makes a quiet hissing noise. There’s a villain in his kitchen, standing, making Hawks food. There’s a villain in his kitchen, and suddenly the floors are broken hardwood and the TV is rumbling and there’s the crunch of glass under his feet.
There’s a villain in his kitchen and it makes Hawks feels like he’s five, makes him feel like he’s Keigo again, but it also makes his heart pound and his body ache. The emptiness that resides is temporarily filled with a fire that is searing blue and white, hot enough to swallow him whole. He wants to step closer, to be engulfed in the flames.
He follows his selfless heart, and stays still. He eats the teriyaki chicken that Dabi makes, and he smiles and jokes as he always does. The two move to the couch, watching the TV’s images move with a grace that Hawks has never seen before. The TV is only used when Dabi visits.
Gradually, the space between them on the couch grows smaller, and the heat grows warmer, and the guilt grows larger.
It all comes to a boiling point the day that Dabi enters his home, hair sopping wet, carrying two plastic bags filled with food and drinks. The villain has something akin to a smile on his face.
”Hey, birdbrain. Hungry?” Dabi pulls off his boots, and moves wordlessly to the kitchen, unpacking the bags. He doesn’t comment on Hawks’ silence.
”I’m making soba today. Aren’t you tired of chicken yet?” Dabi goes on, the sound of pans clattering together ringing familiarly in Hawk’s head.
Hawks is trying to be selfless, but some sick and twisted part of him wants to be selfish and keep Dabi to himself, to reach forward and grab the flame user’s hand and trace it with his talons, to trace every line and scar on Dabi’s body until it was committed to memory.
He nearly throws up at the realization.
Dabi is closer to him now, head tilted slightly to the right as he lifts Hawks’ chin with two fingers. This is fairly normal, so Hawks doesn’t move, but the touch sends jolts through his body. He doesn’t understand why Dabi can touch Hawks, why he wants to. Hawks doesn’t understand why he wants to touch him back, why he wants to lean forward and kiss the villain on the lips. He doesn’t understand why his heart is pounding, but now he is being forced to find out.
”You okay, Birdie? You’re shaking.”
Is he? He looks down, and his gloved hands are trembling beside him. He looks back up, and he crumples to the floor.
Hawks is a million things. He is fast, he is selfless, he is empathetic, he is strong, he is guilty. He is slow, he is weak, he is selfish, he is cruel. He is empty and he is dissatisfied with his life, and he suddenly realizes he is only full when cerulean eyes meet his.
Hawks is a lot of things, but he never wanted to be like his mother. He never wanted to look into the cold gaze of a villain and be ready to do whatever it takes to have his love. He never wanted to look into anyone’s eyes and have the fleeting desire to be selfish, to do something other than save people, to do something for himself.
”I…” His perfect training falters. In this moment, he is not a trained predator, but scared, wide-eyed prey that is backed into a corner. In this moment, he understands his mother. The emptiness and dissatisfaction she felt every day, except for when she was with his father.
He hadn’t understood. His father hurt her, he was a thief, he was a cruel, downright evil man who knew nothing but how to leave scars on those around him. His mother was empty without him, though. Her eyes were flat when he was gone, and she was scared of him. His mother hated his father, but her eyes lit up when she saw him, and in all of his family’s sickness, the most sick thing of all was his mother’s love. Hawks’ father was a cruel man, and his mother’s only purpose was to love him.
Standing in Dabi’s gaze, Hawks begins to understand. Love is not something you choose, it chooses you. The scars on his body are not love, the guilt he feels is not love. He is horrified to love a villain, he is horrified to be like his mother, he is horrified of being selfish and he is horrified of letting his guilt go. He is horrified to admit that this is the love he was scared of; and even more scared to admit that he was willing to let it destroy him.
Hawks is horrified of being like his mother, loving a villain who destroys the lives around him.
But Dabi is in his kitchen, and he is cooking, and Hawks’ face is in his hand. He feels only a little guilt when he surges forward and kisses the villain on his lips. Dabi is soft, and for a villain, he is kind. For a villain, he is selfless. For a villain, he is what makes Hawks’ empty body fill up with a sickening, jittery feeling that he doesn’t want to let go.
Dabi kisses back, and when they pull apart, he smiles. “Took you long enough, huh?”
Hawks tilts his head, and Dabi laughs wildly, claiming Hawks looks just like a confused bird. Dabi goes back to cooking, but now he has an arm around Hawks, holding and guiding his hand as he teaches him how to cut chives.
Hawks may be in love with a villain. He may be just like his mother. But that guilt can eat him up another time, because he knows for certain that despite the nomenclature of the word ‘villain’, Dabi is nothing like his father.