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The rain was a cold, needling thing, the kind that soaks through feathers and chills you to the bone. My wings, usually a source of pride and freedom, were a waterlogged, leaden weight on my back. The world swam in a nauseating, oily blur—streetlights stretching into smears, the sound of the downpour muffled as if I were underwater. They’d gotten me at the charity gala. A doctored drink, slipped past my too-casual vigilance. I’d felt the wrongness too late, a creeping paralysis starting in my pinions, and had barely managed to stumble into this grimy alley before my legs gave their first warning tremble.
I was slumped against a wet brick wall, the rough texture the only real thing I could focus on. My breaths came in shallow, useless pants. I couldn’t get enough air. I tried to send a feather, a single one, for help, but the connection was dead, a static void where my Quirk should be. Panic, cold and sharp, began to cut through the drug’s haze.
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. Or should I say, what the alley drowned?”
The voice was syrupy, all false concern. He stepped into my narrowing line of sight—a man with a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He wore a slicker, but his shoes were too clean for the weather. “The Winged Hero, Hawks. All alone. Doesn’t seem very heroic, does it?”
He knelt, and his breath smelled of mint and something metallic. “I’ve been a fan for so long,” he crooned, his hand reaching out. Not to hit, but to touch. His fingers grazed the primary feathers of my nearest wing, a slow, possessive stroke. A full-body shudder wracked me, but I couldn’t pull away. “So unique. So pretty. Think of the studies we could do. The… private viewings.”
Revulsion, pure and icy, flooded my veins. My vision tunnelled, the man’s leering face the only clear thing in a world of dark, closing walls. I tried to speak, to snarl, but my tongue was a slab of meat. His hand moved from my wing to my cheek, his thumb tracing my jawline. I was going to be sick. I was going to be taken apart in some basement, studied, displayed—
“Get your filthy hand off him.”
The voice was a crackle of dry ice, familiar and utterly, terrifyingly out of place. The creep’s head snapped up. Looming at the alley’s entrance, backlit by a distant neon sign, was Dabi. Blue embers danced faintly around his shoulders, his eyes glowing in the shadows like a predator’s.
The man scrambled back. “H-he’s with me! We’re just talking!”
Dabi didn’t run. He walked, a slow, deliberate stalk that was more frightening than any charge. “You and I have very different definitions of ‘talking’.” He didn’t even look at the man as he passed him. His gaze was fixed on me, taking in my drenched state, my unfocused eyes, the way I was trembling against the wall. Something dark and furious flashed in his expression.
He stopped in front of me. “Idiot hero,” he muttered, but his voice lacked its usual venom. It was almost… strained.
The creep found a sliver of courage. “He’s mine! I found him!”
In a movement too fast to follow, Dabi pivoted. A jet of searing blue flame, controlled and precise, roared to life mere inches from the man’s face. The heat of it washed over me, a shocking contrast to the cold rain. The man screamed, stumbling back and falling into a puddle.
“The next one isn’t a warning,” Dabi said, his voice low and deadly. “Scram. Before I decide you’d look better as a pile of ash.”
The man didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled to his feet and fled, his whimpers fading into the night.
Then it was just us. The rain, the steam rising from where Dabi’s flames had licked the wet pavement, and my ragged, insufficient breaths. Dabi turned back to me, the fury bleeding from his posture, replaced by a stiff, awkward tension.
“Can you stand?”
I managed a weak, jerky shake of my head. My legs were completely gone, numb and useless.
He stared at me for another long second, conflict warring on his scarred face. With a sound of pure irritation, he bent down. One arm hooked under my knees, the other behind my back, and he lifted me as if I weighed nothing. My head lolled against his chest. I expected his staples to be cold, but through his shirt, he was warm. Surprisingly, solidly warm. The smell of smoke and ozone enveloped me, a bizarrely comforting anchor in the dissolving world.
“Don’t get used to this,” he grumbled, but his hold was secure, careful even, as he carried me out of the alley and into the night.
The League’s current hideout was a dusty, sprawling loft. Dabi didn’t announce our arrival. He just kicked the door open and strode in, dripping wet with an unconscious Pro Hero in his arms.
The reaction was instant.
“WHA— IS THAT HAWKS?!” Twice yelled, pointing. “He’s so pathetic! Kill him now! / Aw, he looks like a drowned chick!”
Toga skipped over, her eyes wide. “Ooh, is he hurt? Can I see? Is he bleeding?”
Shigaraki looked up from his game, red eyes narrowing. “Dabi. Explain. Now.” His voice was a dry rasp, itching with displeasure.
Spinner paused his sword polishing. “This is a huge security risk, man.”
Dabi ignored them all, walking straight through the common area toward a quieter, more enclosed space that served as his makeshift room. “He got drugged. Some creep was about to cart him off. I intervened.” He said it like he was reporting a minor inconvenience.
“Since when do we intervene for heroes?” Shigaraki hissed, standing up.
Dabi stopped at the doorway to his room. He looked over his shoulder, and the look in his eyes was flat and dangerous. “Since I felt like it. He’s mine to deal with. Back off.”
Something in his tone silenced further protest, for the moment. He shouldered his way into his room and kicked the door shut behind us.
He laid me on his mattress, which was just a pile of blankets on the floor. The drug was finally beginning to recede, leaving in its wake a crushing fatigue and a humiliating vulnerability. I could move my fingers, twitch a feather. My eyes found his as he crouched beside me, pulling a dry, rough blanket over me.
“Why?” I croaked, my voice raw.
He didn’t answer for a long time, just watched me with an unreadable expression. “Your smiling hero face was pissing me off,” he finally said, looking away. “Seeing you look actually scared… was worse. Now shut up and sleep it off.”
He stayed, sitting against the wall with his knees up, a silent, brooding sentinel until I passed out.
That should have been the end of it. A bizarre, one-off incident. But it wasn’t.
Dabi started showing up on my patrol routes. A flash of black coat on a rooftop. The smell of smoke on a quiet street. He never helped, but he watched. And I, against every protocol and shred of common sense, found myself landing near him. Our conversations were sharp, full of barbs and philosophical debates about heroes and society, but the space between us crackled with something unspoken.
One night, after I’d taken down a particularly nasty villain who’d threatened a school, the adrenaline crash was severe. I found Dabi on our usual rooftop. Instead of a taunt, he just handed me a stolen can of coffee. We drank in silence, watching the city lights.
“You saved me,” I said quietly.
“Don’t remind me.”
“Thank you.”
He scoffed, but didn’t deny it. When I went to leave, his hand, warm and scarred, caught my wrist. He didn’t pull me back, just held me there for a moment. “Watch your back, birdie. The world’s full of creeps.”
That was the start. A secret, impossible thing. We were a hero and a villain, meeting in shadows. He was cruel, cynical, and burned by a past he wouldn’t share. I was a government weapon pretending to be free, weighed down by expectations. Yet, with him, I didn’t have to be the smiling, fast-talking Hawks. I could just be Keigo. Tired. Sarcastic. Real.
He brought me to the hideout properly, once the League’s suspicion had dulled to a grudging, confused acceptance. Toga was thrilled, asking endless questions about my feathers and trying to steal my blood “just a little vial, please!” Twice alternated between threatening me and offering me a seat on the couch. Spinner was wary but respectful of Dabi’s… whatever this was. Shigaraki just watched, a calculating look in his eyes, but he allowed it. For now.
It was there, on a surprisingly calm evening, that the walls I’d built so high finally crumbled.
We were all in the common area. Toga was braiding a section of my feathers, Twice and Spinner were arguing over a video game, Dabi was slouched next to me, his shoulder a solid line of heat against mine. Someone on the cheap TV switched the channel to the news.
“—breaking report on the Hero Public Safety Commission’s former covert operations. New evidence suggests the systematic manipulation and conditioning of child heroes, including the current Number Two, Hawks—”
The room didn’t go silent. Twice kept yelling at the game. But for me, the sound bled away. The screen showed grainy, classified documents. Psych evaluations. Training schedules from when I was six. A photo of a small, blond boy with tiny red wings, standing at stiff attention, his eyes too old for his face.
The creep’s voice from the alley slithered back into my mind. “So unique. So pretty. Think of the studies we could do.”
But it wasn’t his face I saw. It was the stern, impassive faces of my handlers. The cold touch of medical instruments. The endless tests. The praise that was just a checkmark on a performance sheet. The Commission hadn’t wanted a son. They’d wanted a weapon. And they’d built one, piece by piece, conditioning by conditioning.
A pressure, vast and inescapable, settled on my chest. It was the weight of my own wings, of every expectation, every lie I’d ever told, every smile I’d faked. I tried to breathe in, but my lungs hit a wall. A sharp, painful gasp escaped me.
Dabi’s head turned. “Hawks?”
I couldn’t answer. The room began to warp. Toga’s cheerful voice became a distant, buzzing echo. The lights from the TV and the bare bulb overhead started to pulse, then stretch into blinding tunnels. All I could see was that little boy on the screen, and all the air in the world was gone.
My hands flew to my throat. I was drowning on dry land. A high, thin wheeze was the only sound I could make. The pressure turned to a vise, crushing my sternum. My heart was a frantic, trapped bird slamming against my ribs.
“Hey. HEY!” Dabi’s voice cut through the muffled haze, sharp with alarm.
I slid off the couch, my legs buckling completely, giving way as if the bones had vanished. I hit the floor on my knees, then slumped to my side, curling in on myself. Shudders wracked me, violent and uncontrollable. Black spots danced at the edges of my tunnelling vision. I was going to die here, on a villain’s floor, and the last thing I’d ever truly been was a good weapon.
“Everyone, OUT!” Dabi roared.
I heard scrambling, protests, a door slamming. Then he was there. He didn’t try to pull me up. He lay down on the floor behind me, his chest to my back, and wrapped his arms around me, pinning my own trembling arms to my sides. He hooked his chin over my shoulder.
“Listen to me,” his voice was a rough, steady murmur directly in my ear, bypassing the panic screaming in my head. “You’re not there. You’re here. With me. In this shitty, dusty room. Feel that?” He gave a slight squeeze. “That’s me. You’re not in their lab. You’re not in that alley. You’re here.”
I tried to shake my head, a desperate, weak motion. Can’t breathe.
“You can. Your lungs are just stupid. They forgot how. We’ll do it together, okay? Follow me.” He took an exaggerated, deep breath, his chest expanding against my back. “In….” He held it. “And out….” He let it go slowly, his body relaxing against mine.
I fought against him, against the rhythm, the terror was too loud. But his voice was a relentless anchor.
“Again. In… and out. You’re safe. No one’s taking you. No one’s testing you. I’m here, and I burn anyone who tries. Breathe, birdie. In… and out.”
Slowly, agonizingly, my ragged gasps began to hitch, then sync, falteringly, with his. The vise on my chest loosened one cruel notch. Then another. The tunnelling vision receded, bringing the dusty floorboards, the grimy wall, back into blurry focus. The tremors subsided from earthquakes to aftershocks.
Tears, hot and shameful, spilled over, soaking into the blanket beneath me. A broken sob tore itself from my throat.
Dabi’s hold didn’t loosen. If anything, it tightened, just a fraction. He didn’t tell me to stop. He didn’t offer empty platitudes. He just held me through the storm, his steady breathing a lifeline, until the last of the tremors passed and I lay spent and hollow in his arms.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than I’d ever heard it, stripped of all mockery. “They did that to you?”
All I could do was nod, a tiny movement against his chin.
A low, simmering sound, like the first crackle of a fire, rumbled in his chest. Not at me. At them. At everything. He pressed his lips briefly to the junction of my neck and shoulder, a searing point of contact amidst the staples. It wasn’t a kiss of passion. It was a brand. A promise.
“Then they can burn, too,” he whispered, the words a vow etched in smoke and blue flame. “But not tonight. Tonight, you just breathe.”
And in the dark, quiet safety of his hold, for the first time since I was a child, I finally could.The storm doesn’t come back.
That’s the strangest part.
After something like that—after your body turns on you, after your past claws its way out and drags you under—you expect it to linger. To echo. To sit in your chest like a live wire, waiting to snap again.
But it doesn’t.
Not tonight.
Because Dabi doesn’t move.
He stays exactly where he is, pressed along your back, one arm still locked around your middle, the other shifting just enough to rest his hand flat against your sternum—right over the place that had been caving in minutes ago.
Not restraining now.
Grounding.
“Still with me?” he mutters.
Your throat feels scraped raw. “Yeah.”
A pause.
“…mostly.”
“Good enough.”
His hand presses lightly once, like he’s checking something—your breathing, your heartbeat, maybe both. Whatever he feels must satisfy him, because the tension in his shoulders eases a fraction.
Across the room, the world very carefully starts existing again.
A floorboard creaks.
Someone—probably Twice—whispers something that gets shushed immediately.
The TV is off now. Someone must’ve turned it off while you were breaking apart.
Dabi’s voice cuts through it all without rising. “I said out.”
There’s a beat.
Then, quieter this time—less chaotic, more deliberate—you hear movement. The door opens, then shuts. The air changes.
It’s just you and him again.
—
You don’t realize your hand has moved until your fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt.
Tight.
Instinctive.
Like if you let go, something will drag you backwards again.
Dabi stills for half a second.
Then—very deliberately—he shifts his grip, not away, but closer. One leg hooks slightly over yours, anchoring you more firmly in place.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Do that if you need to.”
No teasing.
No bite.
Just permission.
Your wings twitch weakly behind you, feathers dragging against the floor with a soft, uneven rustle. They’re still half-spread from the panic, not quite under your control yet.
“…they saw it,” you say after a while.
It takes effort to get the words out. Each one feels heavier than it should.
“On the news. Everything. Or… enough of it.”
Dabi exhales slowly through his nose.
“Yeah,” he says. “Hard to miss.”
There’s no pity in it.
Just acknowledgment.
You swallow. “They’re not wrong.”
That makes his grip tighten.
“Don’t start.”
“They trained me like that,” you push, voice thin but stubborn. “Everything on that screen—it’s real. I followed orders. I—” Your voice fractures. “I was what they made.”
Dabi shifts behind you, enough to hook his chin more firmly over your shoulder, forcing your focus sideways, away from the spiral trying to open again.
“Listen carefully,” he says, low and sharp.
You go still.
“They made something,” he continues. “Sure. A tool. A weapon. Whatever label makes them sleep better.” His fingers press once, firm, against your ribs. “But tools don’t sit here shaking after the fact. Tools don’t choke on it. Tools don’t care.”
A beat.
“You do.”
Silence stretches.
Your grip on his shirt tightens again.
“…doesn’t feel like it counts,” you admit.
“Doesn’t matter what it feels like,” he shoots back. “It’s there.”
There’s something in his voice now—something edged, personal. Not just about you.
Something familiar.
You don’t call it out.
—
Minutes pass.
Or maybe longer.
Time’s gone soft around the edges.
Your breathing evens out properly at some point. Not forced. Not guided. Just… yours again.
The exhaustion settles in deeper now, heavier than before. Not the sharp crash of adrenaline, but the bone-deep kind. The kind that comes after holding yourself together for too long.
Your head tips back slightly, resting more fully against him.
“…hey,” you mumble.
“What.”
“…thanks.”
It’s quiet. Barely there.
But it’s real.
Dabi doesn’t answer right away.
For a second, you think he’s going to deflect. Make a joke. Say something cutting to break the weight of it.
Instead—
“…don’t make it a thing,” he mutters.
You huff weakly. “Too late.”
“Yeah, well. Regretting it already.”
But his hand doesn’t move.
If anything, it shifts—fingers sliding just slightly, brushing slow, absent patterns against your side. Not enough to draw attention.
Enough to be there.
—
Eventually, you manage to roll—slow, clumsy, like your body still isn’t fully yours—and end up facing him.
Close.
Closer than you’ve ever been when you’re both actually awake.
His blue eyes flick over your face, sharp, assessing. Checking. Always checking.
“You look like hell,” he says.
“Feel like it too.”
“Good. Means you’re alive.”
“…that’s your metric?”
“It’s a solid one.”
A faint, tired smile tugs at your mouth.
It fades just as quickly.
“…they’re going to come for me,” you say quietly. “If that report sticks. If more comes out.”
Dabi doesn’t even blink.
“Let them.”
“That’s not—”
“They try,” he cuts in, voice dropping, something dangerous curling underneath, “they deal with me.”
It’s not dramatic.
Not loud.
Just… certain.
The same way he’d said it before.
The same way he’d meant it.
You study him for a long moment.
This man—this walking disaster of flame and fury and broken pieces—who stepped into an alley without hesitation.
Who carried you.
Who stayed.
Who held you together when your past tried to rip you apart on a dirty floor.
“…you’re insane,” you murmur.
“Yeah.”
A beat.
“You sticking around or what?”
You don’t answer right away.
Instead, your wing shifts—slow, deliberate despite the lingering fatigue—and drapes partially over him. Not shielding.
Sharing space.
Trust.
“…yeah,” you say finally.
Soft.
Certain.
“Yeah. I think I am.”
Dabi snorts quietly, but there’s no bite in it this time.
“Good,” he mutters.
Outside, the rain keeps falling.
But in here—
It doesn’t reach you.