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When Hawks, the No. 9 Pro Hero, approached him demanding an in with the League, Dabi was obviously suspicious. Though it was only now, a measly two weeks later, that he was actively questioning his life decisions.
Why? Because there was something uncanny about Hawks.
He’d brushed it off as his own paranoia for the fact that a successful hero wanted to switch sides until now. ‘Now’ being just after a meeting with Hawks.
The hero had come into the alleyway with his clothes seriously wrecked, but he himself was uninjured. More importantly, however, his visor was smashed, and one side of it was completely missing, exposing one eye. One metallic, golden, predatory, unblinking, uncanny eye.
Dabi was certain he could feel it staring into his very soul, he was sure Hawks somehow knew all his deepest secrets, all his fears, all his thoughts and emotions—
He was also pretty sure that he was spiralling .
He inhaled sharply, counted to three, and exhaled slowly. It’s fine, he thought, you’re fine. Everything’s okay, you’re just panicking. You’re paranoid. It doesn’t mean anything, you’re fine.
Unfortunately, after that night, Dabi started picking up on some other things that would suggest his irrational fears were actually correct in this case. First, it was the way Hawks moved. Whether it was on TV during a fight or an interview, or when he was meeting with Dabi, Hawks would move deliberately. As if natural things like turning his head, or moving his chest to breathe, or blinking was unnatural to him and he had to manually perform those actions.
Second, it was, again, that weighted gaze. His staring-into-souls gaze. Dabi couldn’t quite peg what was wrong, but every time he met eyes with the hero, something inside him told him to run. It was something he’d never felt before, and he used to be viscerally scared of his father’s eyes when he’d been younger.
And thirdly… Okay, Dabi technically didn’t have a third reason why Hawks freaked him out, but the other two reasons were creepy enough on their own; they didn’t need any help in that regard.
Anyway, it was safe to say that Dabi had become something like shit scared of Hawks. And Hawks noticed, because of course he did. He wasn’t beating the soul-reading allegations by any means.
“You seem,” Hawks said to him one night, “a bit more on edge than normal. Are you okay?”
Heavy golden eyes tried to meet Dabi’s, so he looked down, repressing a shudder that wanted to roll through him.
“I’m fine,” he ground out.
“…Are you sure?” Hawks asked, sounding genuinely concerned. “If you’re not feeling well, we can do this another time—I really don’t mind.”
“I…” Dammit, Dabi should just come clean. If Hawks tried anything, Dabi could always just roast him. Gritting his teeth, Dabi forced his head up, forced himself to look at the hero. “It’s just…” the words died in his throat as Hawks’ predatory eyes locked onto him. Fuck, I can’t do this.
After a moment too long of silence, Hawks stepped forward, raising his hand as if to check Dabi’s temperature, and the villain involuntarily flinched back so violently he was honestly surprised he didn’t sprain something.
Hawks froze. Slowly, he retracted his hand. “Are you…” he murmured, voice and expression unreadable. “Are you scared of me?”
Dabi swallowed thickly, trying to get his body to cooperate enough that he could answer, but he couldn’t move .
Hawks seemed to take the silence as confirmation, however. “Oh.” He leant back against the wall of the warehouse, looking away.
Eventually, the adrenaline in Dabi’s system backed off enough for him to take a few controlled breaths. After his posture relaxed slightly, Hawks spoke again, but this time he didn’t try to meet Dabi’s eyes.
“You should know that,” he began, “you’re not… wrong , to be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you. But being afraid is rational, and certainly not something you should hold against yourself.”
“…It’s not intentional,” Dabi managed to mumble in a pathetically small voice.
Hawks smiled sadly, still averting his eyes. “I know. It’s an evolutionary thing, I’m pretty sure. A way for your brain to identify threats.”
Dabi frowned slightly. Hawks was talking about the uncanny valley like people talking about humanoid robots or CGI faces that freak them out.
“Does that mean you’re not human?” Dabi asked quietly. Hawks exhaled, and nodded. Oddly, this confirmation calmed Dabi slightly. “What are you, then?”
Hawks slid down the wall until he came to a seated position. He pulled his knees to his chest and looked down at them as he whispered, “I don’t know.”
Dabi frowned. After a moment, he sat down too. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean, I really don’t know. I don’t know what I am,” Hawks sighed, resting his chin on his knees. “I existed way before labels did, and way before anything else did. I don’t even know how I came into existence; I certainly don’t think I was born, at least not in any conventional sense.”
“How old are you?” Dabi demanded.
Hawks shrugged. “Probably as old as the Earth is, but I can’t say for sure.” He sighed again. “The most accurate label I’ve been given… is either, biblically accurate angel, or eldritch horror.”
Dabi raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “So… you’re a deity beyond my comprehension?”
“More or less.”
“Huh.” A pause. “Why the fuck do you want to join the League of Villains?”
Hawks laughed in surprise. “I mean, you guys are proposing a healthy dose of change to society, and I can get behind that.”
“What the fuck. Aren’t you a little, I don’t know, beyond that? Or, can’t you just change society with a flick of your wrist?”
Hawks frowned at him, and it shockingly didn’t make Dabi squirm. “I’m something akin to a deity; that doesn’t make me an actual all-powerful god. And if I did go all eldritch-horror mode on society, I wouldn’t be able to convince anyone of shit. Fear doesn’t promote change, it actively discourages it. I wouldn’t achieve anything beneficial, and I would need to go into hiding for a few thousand years until I’m able to blend in again.”
“Oh. Why do you need to blend in, anyway, though?” Dabi asked.
“Because, as far as I’m aware, I’m the only one of my kind. And I still get lonely . Humans are the only other intelligent beings, and I want intelligent connection. Of course,” he added with a bit of a side-eye, “you lot aren’t exactly the smartest, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Hey!” Dabi protested. “Humans are fine, thankyou.”
Hawks gave him a look. “Humans sit on their bums all day staring at a piece of glass because the moving colours drug your brain. You see any other species doing that?”
“Wha— you have a phone!!”
“Yeah, for the pure reason of blending in to your society, because owning a phone is a social norm. Giving away thousands of dollars to awful humans aka companies every few years because, ooh look, a shiny new product, is a social norm . You cannot sit there and tell me that’s not stupid.”
Dabi opened and closed his mouth a few times before ultimately giving up.
“Exactly,” Hawks said, pleased.
“Shut your smug ass up,” Dabi grumbled. “You’re acting like my siblings; I expect more from you.”
Hawks laughed. “I didn’t know you had siblings.”
Dabi blinked. He looked away quickly, blushing a little in embarrassment of letting that detail slip.
“I…” he said stiffly, “haven’t see them in a long time.”
When he looked back at Hawks, the hero was wearing a slight, sympathetic expression. Then he sort of… floated over to sit beside Dabi.
“You okay?” he asked.
It hit Dabi all at once that this was the most human conversation he’d had in over ten years. He couldn’t stop himself from tearing up after that realisation. Covering his mouth to prevent any embarrassing sobs, he shook his head.
Hawks immediately pulled him into a hug, like it was the most natural thing in the world, as though they weren’t technically still enemies. But perhaps that sort of thing didn’t really matter to him.
Dabi melted into the embrace because, disgustingly, he apparently still craved affection. And he cried. He didn’t know for how long, but Hawks sat there, holding him, wings wrapped around them both, the entire time.
It had been so long since Dabi had felt safe with another.
After Dabi had calmed down, he pulled away from Hawks, though, for reasons such as he’d probably completely lost his mind, he allowed himself to keep resting his shoulder against the hero’s. Hawks, in turn, kept resting one wing against Dabi’s back and shoulder, like a feathery blanket.
“…So,” Dabi mumbled after a minute of silence, “you don’t really look like this, do you?”
“Hm. Well, to be honest, I’m constantly changing my form when I’m relaxed, so I technically don’t have, like, a ‘true form’ or anything,” Hawks explained. “But, this is certainly not my natural state, no.”
Dabi ducked his head to meet Hawks’s eyes—when had he started doing that?! God, he had definitely lost it—shyly and asked, “Can I see what you really look like?”
Hawks hesitated. “Uh… I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he admitted sadly. “Humans are always scared of me. Hell, everything’s always scared of me. You were scared of me less than an hour ago, and I’m in a ‘comprehensible-to-all’ form right now.”
“Please?” Dabi said, unable to quell his curiosity.
Hawks studied his expression for a long moment. Finally, he sighed, “Alright, fine. But only for a few seconds!”
Dabi nodded, smiling stupidly and, seriously, what was with him? A pretty face is kind to him once and suddenly he has it in him that the world might not be so terrible?
Hawks nodded, still looking unsure, and closed his eyes. He seemed to expand before Dabi’s eyes. His features morphed into something unrecognisable as he grew, body changing colour and form and texture, until he took up most of the space in the old warehouse. He’d also grown around Dabi, leaving him still sitting in the same spot on the floor, but surrounding him on all sides. From what Dabi could process, he didn’t have a cohesive body; he looked like just an amalgamation of body parts from all kinds of animals.
Positively nothing about him was human, and yet Dabi wasn’t afraid. At least twelve different metallic golden eyes stared down at him, boring into his soul, and he wasn’t afraid. And, he couldn’t be sure, but Hawks seemed almost… insecure? Like he was truly worried about Dabi’s reaction.
Dabi rested a hand in the nearest part of Hawks, which felt furry but also scaly at the same time, in an attempt to reassure him. The largest eye—which had to be part of his ‘face,’ Dabi was sure—squinted like a mouth Dabi couldn’t see was smiling. Dabi smiled back.
After a few moments more, Hawks seemed to collapse in on himself, and he shrank back down to human-size—but he didn’t look human. His wings were much bigger and had doubled in quantity, and a long tail erupted from the base of his spine. He was suddenly wearing casual clothes, and exposed arms revealed odd patches of random textures and colours. Wicked claws extended from his fingers, each at least a good ten centimetres, and his feet looked much more bird-like. He also had two extra sets of eyes on his face, a single eye on his neck, one on his wrist, and another on his opposite forearm.
He looked beautiful.
“You’re beautiful,” Dabi told him out loud. Hawks blushed and ducked his head shyly.
“Thank you,” he mumbled.
They fell into a comfortable silence after that, neither really sure what to say to the other.
“So…” Dabi said eventually, then cleared his throat. “My place isn’t too far from here. Would you, um, want to come over?”
Hawks beamed at him. “That sounds lovely.”