Chapter Text
And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure
that someone was there squinting through the dust,
saying nothing was lost, that everything lives on waiting only
to be wanted back badly enough?
I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky
thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands
even if it burns.
Tracy K. Smith, Don’t You Wonder Sometimes?
Hawks accepted the lowball glass Atsuhiro slid across the bar with a grateful nod and brought it to his mouth. The whiskey was smooth going down, a nice way to top off an otherwise boring day of patrols. It was a relief to not constantly worry about his drinks being laced anymore. He knew better than to think the League trusted him fully, but they’d at least moved past outright hostility.
One of his feathers intercepted the knife aimed for his throat, and it spun off course to sink blade-first into the polished wood beside his elbow.
Well, intentional hostility.
Toga’s stab-happy tendencies were second nature, and there was a fifty-fifty chance they were steeped in either affection or hate. Her grin as she slid onto the seat beside Hawks leaned more towards the former.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Hawks yanked out the knife and handed it back to her with a shrug. “I try not to.”
There was a snort, and something that sounded suspiciously like no surprise there from somewhere behind him, but Hawks ignored it in the face of Toga’s exaggerated pout. “Come on. You have to have some opinion.”
“I really don’t.”
“Hawks…” Toga began to whine.
He rolled his eyes, but kept a crooked smile in place so she’d know he didn’t mean it. “Fine. My opinion is that love is what you make of it.”
“That’s the most disgusting PR line I’ve ever heard. I love it!” Jin exclaimed while Spinner made a gagging noise on his way out of the room.
Thing was, Jin wasn’t necessarily wrong. The Commission had drilled the answer into Hawks for as long as he could remember. It was always better to take as neutral a path as possible. Appeal to the masses, those with marks and those without. Be vague enough that people could read it both ways and let them take what they wanted out of it. Blah, blah, blah.
Toga, however, narrowed her eyes. “So you’re saying you don’t believe in soulmates?”
“I don’t know.” Hawks remained hyperaware of the knife still in Toga’s hand, just in case she decided to get twitchy. “If there’s someone out there meant for me, great. I hope they have a killer sense of humor and a high libido. But I’m not gonna go out of my way to hunt them down or spend all my time wondering who they might be. I’ve got better things to do.”
“But you do have a mark?” Toga pressed.
Hawks bit back a groan. Why did this get turned onto him? How much money would he have to slide over the counter to bribe Atsuhiro into either taking control of the conversation or steering them onto a different topic?
“I mean, yeah, but—”
Toga squealed at a decibel shrill enough to make Hawks’ ears ring. “You do? Oh, what is it? Where is it? Can I see? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
It was easy to forget, sometimes, that Toga was still just a teenager, happily-ever-after dreams of her soulmate and all, twisted though they probably were.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up,” Jin interrupted before Toga could lift up the hem of her sweater. “Let’s shoot for a little common courtesy. This isn’t show and tell, and you’re not supposed to ask to see it. I mean, come on. Look at him. You’re making him anxious. The dude’s about to shit bricks.”
Hawks didn’t know if Jin was coming to his rescue so much as protecting Toga’s virtue – who knew where her mark actually was – but he appreciated the interruption either way. Any soulmate of Toga’s probably involved a lot more blood than he was comfortable with. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see whatever mark had been branded onto her skin.
Still, he pasted on a smile and was about to wave off the concern for the sake of appearances when Shigaraki cut them all off with a snappy, “Lay off,” that brooked no argument.
Hawks took a much deeper drink of whiskey when Atsuhiro topped off his glass.
Thank fucking whoever for small favors.
“You guys are no fun.” Toga huffed into the resulting silence, slouching forward onto the bar to rest her chin on her crossed arms, but it couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds before she tilted her head towards Hawks and whispered, “Tomura’s only testy because he doesn’t have one.”
It took more effort than Hawks cared to admit to keep a straight face. He really didn’t want to know why she knew that, how she found out, or if it was really true.
“Will you at least tell me what yours looks like?” Toga tried again.
Deciding to throw her a bone, he extended his wings a bit. “What do you think?”
Toga gave him a deadpan look. “Well, obviously. But what about the other person? The mark is supposed to be a combination of your quirks, so it should be more than just your wings. Something different and meaningful. Something symbolic.”
“Something idiotic, maybe,” Dabi corrected, speaking up for the first time from where he was sprawled sideways in a nearby chair, one leg draped over the armrest.
“Ugh, whatever.” Giving up, Toga returned to her pouting. “You’re all a bunch of unromantic losers.”
“So…” Dabi began from where he was crouched between Hawks’ legs later that night, and Hawks mentally braced himself. He knew that tone, that purposefully casual drawl. Good things never came out of a conversation where Dabi talked like that. “A soulmark, huh?”
Case in point.
Sometimes he hated being right. Not often, but sometimes.
“Can you—” Hawks issued a strangled groan that was only partially due to Dabi adding a third finger to the two that had been steadily working him open. “Fuck, can you not?”
“Pretty sure I’ve seen all you have to offer, and I’ve never come across any mark,” Dabi continued as if he hadn’t even heard. Honestly, Hawks didn’t know what else he’d expected.
“Maybe you just weren’t looking hard enough.”
Dabi withdrew his fingers and used the leg thrown over his shoulder as leverage to flip Hawks onto his stomach. Hawks’ wings flared wide on instinct, but Dabi ducked to avoid a passing blow to the head, then leaned forward to brace one hand on the bed. His cock pressed firmly to Hawks’ ass.
“Where is it? Let me guess…” Dabi ran a hand over the arch of one of Hawks’ wings, all the way from the base to the tip of his primaries. “Under these pretty feathers?”
“You think my feathers are pretty?” Hawks managed around a full-body shiver. “That’s sweet. I never took you for such a romantic.”
“Fuck you.”
Hawks pushed his hips back against Dabi. “That was the general idea I had when you cornered me after the meeting, but it seems like we’re getting off topic. What’s wrong, you having trouble back there?”
“You know, you’re awfully keen on avoiding the subject, birdie,” Dabi said, ignoring the jab. Grasping the base of one wing, he met Hawks’ resistance with an almost lazy roll of his hips.
“And you’re awfully interested for someone who thinks marks are idiotic.” Dabi’s only response was another slow thrust. Pinned to the bed, Hawks squirmed at the sensation, desperate for something more stimulating than sheets against his dick. He didn’t know why Dabi was so fixated on his mark, but if Hawks couldn’t goad him into getting on with the program, maybe he could embarrass him enough to drop the subject altogether. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re curious.”
“Only about why the number two hero hasn’t found his soulmate by now. It must be a pretty distinctive mark. Figured every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a wing tat would be crawling out of the woodwork, hoping for a chance.”
Hawks huffed a mocking laugh. “Now you just sound jealous.”
“Careful,” Dabi warned as the fingers still wrapped around Hawks’ wing heated considerably, but Hawks just continued because he’d never had any sense of self-preservation.
“Anyway, I don’t remember specifically stating it was wings. The mark could be anything. A feather, a symbol for wind, or flight, or—”
“It’s probably a fucking chicken.”
Hawks couldn’t help but laugh at that, this time more genuine. “At least make it a rooster.”
Dabi hummed. “You strut around enough to be one.”
“Ah yes,” Hawks said wistfully. “A nice, majestic cock inked into my skin. Very classy. But I guess you’ll never know for sure. You can’t expect me to spill all my secrets. Gotta leave something to the imagination.”
Releasing Hawks’ wing, Dabi pulled back enough to line himself up and sink into Hawks in one smooth glide. It was enough to punch the air from Hawks’ lungs, and his fingers fisted in the sheets as he tried to remember how to breathe. Fucking finally. He lowered his head and groaned when Dabi leaned forward to graze his teeth along Hawks’ shoulder, up his neck, behind his ear.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Dabi rasped into Hawks’ skin. “You’re just full of fucking secrets, aren’t you?”
Hawks was saved the trouble of having to answer when Dabi started up a punishing pace, which was fortunate because he actually had to debrief with the Commission on the progress he’d made in the morning, and he didn’t want to think about that. It did nothing to take the edge off the ache behind his ribs, though. When had accusations like that actually begun to sting? When had they shifted from background noise to something more?
Without warning, Dabi pulled out. A low moan tore itself from Hawks’ throat at the loss, but Dabi was already urging him to turn over, guiding him further onto the bed. His skin was borderline scorching everywhere Hawks touched. The air around him shimmered with heat.
“Eyes up here, birdie,” he said once Hawks was settled. “I want to watch you come undone.”
Dabi buried himself once again, and Hawks threw his head back into the pillow, panting into the otherwise silent room. He looped one arm around Dabi’s shoulder so he could sink a hand into that thick, dark hair and made sure to hold his gaze. Those icy blue eyes, so guarded and yet so open if one only knew what to look for.
Oh yeah, Hawks thought distantly, wryly. That was when.
It was a dangerous game. He and Dabi had progressed from those first few tumbles into bed, ones where it was hard to tell if the sex stemmed from attraction or hate or some toxic combination of both, but at least a trace of their initial animosity remained. It had to. Whatever trust they’d managed to build was delicate, paper-thin, a knife’s edge, and Hawks knew just how sharp the League kept their blades.
And yet…
He used the hand still buried in Dabi’s hair to draw him into a kiss as a heat that had nothing to do with Dabi’s quirk curled low in his gut and tipped him over the edge.
No, Hawks wasn’t stupid enough to trust Dabi. Not completely.
But he was stupid enough to have gotten attached somewhere along the way.
Takami Keigo had been born with a mark on his back.
He’d swiped a hand mirror the night his mother had first explained the concept of soulmates and angled it over his shoulder to see it: a pair of identical tattoos stamped onto the skin between his wings.
He used to wonder what the combination could be. To him, it just looked like wings, which was unoriginal as shit, but then, some quirks were hard to translate into a mark.
How was a mind-altering quirk depicted? Or one that affected people’s emotions? Hell, there was a girl in Aizawa’s class with an invisibility quirk. How did that work? Did she technically have a mark? If her quirk was cancelled out somehow, would they be able to see it? And what about her soulmate? Would theirs be invisible?
Physical quirks were so much easier, but even those weren’t always obvious.
The tribal-esque lines of Hawks’ mark curled intricately enough that it almost had to be combined with something else. Too soft for a basic shield quirk, but too sharp to be purely passive. A water quirk, maybe? Something that could be used offensively and defensively. Or maybe the universe was just being a giant dick by giving him a fancy mark when his soulmate was actually quirkless. Twenty percent of the population didn’t have them, so it wasn’t unheard of.
But there was also the fact there were two tattoos. Was it a manifestation of his own quirk – two tattoos for two wings – or did it mean he had two soulmates? Poly soulmates were rare but not uncommon. Neither were platonic soulmates. Maybe he had one of each.
There were so many variables to consider, it was almost impossible to decipher. You could come up with a thousand theories and never make any headway. Some people were so desperate to find their soulmates they drove themselves crazy obsessing over the smallest details, trying to find the hidden meaning.
Hawks had always told himself not to think about it too much. He didn’t want to become like that.
Then the Commission snatched him up, permanently erased both his mark and the boy named Takami Keigo, and forced him not to think about it. So he didn’t.
But something about the League changed all that.
No one had ever asked Hawks about his mark before. Not out of sheer curiosity, at least. That was the problem with being a pro hero, especially one in the top ten: everyone placed him on a pedestal. People propositioned him all the time on the slim chance that they were soulmates, so often that his rebuffs had become second nature. Just a way of life. All in a day’s work.
But it wasn’t like that with the League. There were no expectations or demands or ulterior motives to their interest. Everything came at face value. Toga hadn’t asked about his mark because she was hoping for a match, she’d just wanted to know something about him. For the simple fact of knowing him.
It was… sad, in a way. To receive more genuine interest from the villains he was supposed to be taking down than the people who had raised him. Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop thinking about it anymore, no matter what the Commission and his handlers demanded.
“Where’s yours?” Hawks asked Jin once, because if anyone would have a soulmark depicting doubles, it would be him, and Hawks couldn’t help but wonder.
Toga, who had been busy stabbing her knife as quickly as she could between the fingers of her left hand for the past five minutes, immediately stopped and perked up with an excited gasp. “Oh, you should guess!”
“Uh… I’m not…” Hawks chuckled awkwardly and looked to Jin, but it was hard to tell how he felt about the situation with his mask on. “I don’t know if…”
“It’s on his ass.”
“Dabi!” Toga and Jin exclaimed in unison, followed by a fast-flying knife that Dabi leaned to the side to avoid before it could skewer him through the eye.
At the bar, Atsuhiro sighed and leveled Dabi with a long-suffering look. “Must you always?”
Dabi just shrugged, but Toga was already on the rampage. “Oh my god! Does no one— around here— understand— the concept— of fun?” she growled, punctuating the question with several stabs of a second knife she'd pulled from somewhere before finally slamming it down hard enough that the tip poked through the underside of the table. “You guys are the worst.”
Hawks eyed the blade half-buried in the tabletop, then Dabi. There was a story there, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know it, not as long as he and Dabi were… actually, scratch that. He didn’t want to know, period.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, bird brain,” Dabi said when their eyes met, seemingly unfazed.
“But it’s such a fun place to hang out.” Hawks leaned back in the chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Besides, I wouldn’t be there if you two hadn’t been caught getting down and—”
“It ain’t like that, man,” Jin insisted, waving his hands. “My suit malfunctioned after getting hit with a glue quirk. The only thing we could do was burn it off.”
Hawks flashed a grin. “Sounds kinky.”
Beside him, Toga giggled as she finally wrenched the knife free of the table. Even Atsuhiro was chuckling. Jin pointed a finger in Hawks’ face but froze when Shigaraki chose that moment to shuffle into the bar, back from some meeting with the leader of a ragtag group of villains that had recently been in contact with the League. He took one look at them, made a disgusted sound, and disappeared down the hall.
Jin waited until the door closed before rounding on Hawks once more. “First of all, I’m not into shit like that. Secondly, fuck you. No way Dabi’s my type. The guy’s a total looker!”
“Hey, no judgment here,” Hawks teased. “I’m a free spirit. Whatever blows your skirt up, I say.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s hard, though, you know? Girls aren’t always game to strip down just to compare marks. Usually, by the time you’re at that point, you already like her, and you’d be a asshole to quit there just ‘cause your marks don’t match. Just send ‘em packing!”
“Which is why it’s a waste of time to bother with this crap,” Spinner grouched. “Do what you want. Have fun. Fuck what society thinks.”
Dabi lifted his bottle in a mock toast. “I’ll drink to that.”
“Why don’t you two shut it?” Toga demanded, brandishing her knife. “Just because you don’t like the idea of soulmates, doesn’t mean everyone feels the same. Some people like knowing there’s someone out there for them. And there are others who want that but have their choice taken away.”
Hawks stiffened.
How did she—?
Then he noticed Atsuhiro rolling back his sleeve. On the underside of his forearm was a mark that had faded into a silvery scar, the telltale sign of a soulmate who’d died. Toga crossed her arms and lifted her chin as if to say I told you so, and Spinner lifted his hands in a conciliatory gesture. No one, not even villains, made light of something like that.
“Thank you, my dear,” Atsuhiro said, although he didn’t appear overly concerned by being used as an example.
The tension gradually bled from the room, and Hawks relaxed by degrees, fluttering the ends of his wings to disguise the fact that the feathers there had sharpened out of habit. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from Atsuhiro, though. Someone always had it worse. Even those free to pursue their soulmates didn’t always get what they wanted.
Hawks was lying face down on the couch when he heard the quiet rap of knuckles on his balcony door over the sound of the storm. A reluctant glance at the clock showed it was late, well after midnight. Even if it wasn’t, he knew who it was. There was only one person who made a habit of climbing the fire escape to track him down.
Heaving a sigh, Hawks drug himself off the couch and over to the glass door. On the other side, Dabi waited with his hands shoved into his pockets, soaked to the bone and backlit by the city lights that flared brightly in the rain. At least he wasn’t sporting the insufferable smirk that was always so commonplace between them. Hawks didn’t know if he could deal with it tonight, not after everything that had happened.
They stared at each other through the glass without moving. After a while, Dabi crossed his arms. He obviously had no intentions of leaving. Hawks probably could’ve avoided this situation entirely if he hadn’t ignored the texts that had been blowing up his burner phone, but hindsight was twenty-twenty. Even still, he took a moment to envision a future where he shut the curtains in Dabi’s face before unlocking the door and sliding it open.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Dabi arched a brow and proceeded to shove past Hawks into the apartment. “You look like shit. Rough day?”
“Can we not do this tonight? I’m really not in the mood.”
“Do what?” Dabi asked lightly.
“This.”
“Well, if you want to skip straight to the fun part…”
Hawks took a deep breath, fingers digging into the door frame in a bid for patience. His head was pounding, his body was battered and bruised, at least three-quarters of his feathers were missing, and he just… couldn’t fucking deal with this. Slamming the door shut, he whirled around, hands clenched at his sides. Water pooled on the floor around Dabi as he shrugged out of his jacket. It landed with a sodden plop to join his discarded boots.
“You missed the meeting,” he said. “Shigaraki wanted to know why you were a no show.”
“I was busy.”
“Right.” Dabi gave him a cursory once-over, taking in the sweatpants and faded shirt Hawks had barely managed to change into when he got home before collapsing on the couch. “We’ll just go with that.”
Hawks frowned. “I’m serious, Dabi.”
“So was Shigaraki. He wants you to gather some intel on that new group he’s been talking to, find out what their quirks are.”
“Sure. Great. Whatever,” Hawks snapped. “Will you leave now?”
Dabi cocked his head. “Don’t you want details?”
“You can text them later.” Without looking, Hawks reached behind him and opened the balcony door. “Now get out.”
The rain had picked up from a steady shower to a downpour. Hawks could hardly hear anything other than the dull roar of it, interspersed with the occasional rumble of thunder. The storm had cut the power half an hour ago – not that Hawks had bothered with the lights to begin with – and Dabi had moved far enough into the apartment to be hidden by the shadows. However, a sudden flash of lightning lit up those narrowed eyes, calculating, contemplative.
Don’t, Hawks thought. His hand trembled around the door handle. Please don’t.
“I saw what happened,” Dabi said.
Fucking hell.
Hawks bit back another sigh. He briefly weighed the pros and cons of flinging himself over the balcony railing on the off-chance he had enough feathers left to slow his fall, then promptly discarded the thought. The only thing worse than getting into this with Dabi would be getting into it after having broken both his legs in a botched escape attempt.
Shutting the door once more, he sagged back against it and ran a hand down his face. No one could say he hadn’t tried. “Of course you did.”
“Along with that sob story interview you did afterwards.”
“What, did you expect me to be laughing and smiling?” Hawks asked. “That wouldn’t exactly be a great look for my public image.”
“Doesn’t explain why you’re still moping around now, though.”
They stared each other down across the apartment. Even in the dark, Dabi’s eyes spoke volumes, a thousand things unsaid filling the space between them. Things that Hawks was trying to forget. Things that he couldn’t. Things like new villain group targets high rise building and strategic explosions delay rescue attempts by pro heroes and twelve dead, forty-eight injured, dozens still missing and no arrests made, suspects still at large.
Dabi stepped forward, unhurriedly crossing the space between them. When no more than a couple feet separated them, Hawks let the pitiful remains of one wing swing forward to keep him from coming any closer. It wasn’t as intimidating a display as he wanted, but it got his point across. The edges of his feathers had gone razor sharp. There were enough of them left to do some serious damage if he wanted, if Dabi pressed him.
“You’re so keen on convincing us you’re not a hero,” Dabi said slowly. “Sometimes I wonder why you even bother trying.”
Hawks’ frown deepened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You sure about that? ‘Cause from where I’m standing, you’re a fucking wreck.”
“Just because I don’t want people to die doesn’t mean I’m a hero. It just makes me a decent person,” Hawks snapped. “You can want to change the world without burning it to the ground in the process. No matter how bad things are, there are always people worth saving.”
“Is that so? Tell me, then…” Dabi reached up to touch the end of a single feather, then sucked on his fingertip when it came back bloody. “Do you think I’m worth saving?”
Hawks’ teeth ground together. “There are always people worth saving,” he repeated. It was the truth. Hero or villain, that was what he believed. If only the Commission could hear him now.
Dabi’s lip curled into a knowing smirk. “See, that right there? That’s exactly what makes you a hero.”
“Shut up,” Hawks bit out.
“You don’t know how to be anything else.”
“I said, shut up!”
“No way you’d be spouting that rhetoric if you knew all the things I’ve done. How good it felt to do some of them. How I’m going to do it again.”
With a quick sweep of his wings, Hawks lunged forward, grabbed two fistfuls of Dabi’s shirt, and spun around to slam him against the door. Cracks spiderwebbed through the glass, but Dabi just grunted at the impact, then huffed a mocking laugh.
“There’s that fire,” he said. “I always forget you’re stronger than you look.”
Hawks’ hands tightened as he glared up into those icy blue eyes. Dabi knew what had happened earlier. He knew Hawks had failed to save those people and that it was tearing him up inside. So what was the point of all this? Why was Dabi purposefully goading him, pushing his buttons, trying to force a reaction? Was he trying to get Hawks to crack and slip up?
Why are you so intent on making me think the worst of you?
But before he could spiral any further down that train of thought, something about Dabi… shifted. It was almost imperceptible, but it was there. A softening around the eyes, the harsh edge of his smirk. Hawks knew better than to back off, but he did relax his grip at the sudden change.
“You can take it out on me, you know,” Dabi said. “Your frustration. I can handle it. Do it right and I might even enjoy it.”
Hawks blinked in confusion.
Then—
Oh.
Oh no.
Hawks yanked his hands back as if he’d been burned.
No, no, no, this wasn’t right. He didn’t do shit like that, use people, take advantage. But he felt so out of control. Of fucking everything. His ability to save people, to protect them. Even the mission. He was deep enough now to have seen the other side, and it had him questioning things more and more every day. The League’s beliefs on hero society, the Commission’s less-than-moral actions. The world he thought he knew was tilting on its axis. The lines were starting to blur.
Dabi moved forward as if to kiss him, and Hawks recovered enough to shove him back into the door again. A twinge of regret flitted through his chest when the glass splintered some more, but it passed quickly, there and gone again in its instantaneousness at the way Dabi’s pupils dilated at the rough treatment.
Hawks swallowed, exhales harsh and grating now in what little space remained between them as he struggled to rein it all in. He needed to salvage some semblance of control. He needed to stop this before it went any further. He needed to… do something. Anything else. But he was stuck somewhere between fight and flight, and his blood was singing in his veins, urging him to own something the way the overwhelming rush of uncertainty was beginning to own him.
Hands came up to circle Hawks’ wrists, but he didn’t pull away, just leaned his weight into the palms braced against Dabi’s chest and let his head hang forward, eyes slipping closed.
He shouldn’t—
He couldn’t—
He—
Let Dabi lower his hands and draw him closer. Let Dabi ghost one set of scalding fingers up the back of his arm to slide into the hair at the nape of his neck while the others gripped his hip hard enough to bruise. Let Dabi drag him into a kiss so intense it burned through him, all the way down to the marrow of his bones, setting him alight.
“It’s okay,” Dabi murmured against Hawks’ lips.
It was reassurance. That Hawks shouldn’t feel bad, that Dabi was willing to let him take whatever he needed for comfort, that he wanted to give it. And something profound turned over in Hawks’ chest as he finally let go of all those inhibitions. Surging forward to deepen the kiss, he began to walk them towards the bedroom.
Dabi didn’t have a soulmark.
Which wasn’t to say he’d never had one, but if he did, it had been burned off a long time ago along with approximately forty-five percent of his skin.
They didn’t talk about it. Dabi was prickly at the best of times. Hawks wasn’t about to instigate a repeat performance of their first encounter, where it had taken all his skill and training to avoid being roasted into oblivion, by asking about it. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder where it might have been.
Soulmarks could show up anywhere, but there were some places that tended to be more common than others, and Dabi was scarred in nearly every single one of them. His wrists, his calves, his shoulders, his neck. The ribs on his right side. The middle of his back.
Hawks flattened a hand over the scarred skin between Dabi’s shoulder blades and paused for a moment, brows furrowing.
What if…?
Then he shook the thought away and pushed Dabi down into the bed.
Dabi’s breath hitched into a moan at the new angle, and Hawks felt that fire in his veins spiral hotter and hotter. This was exactly what he’d needed. To get out of his head. To throw himself into something so all-consuming he didn’t have time to think about all the ways he’d failed, about all the ways he was still screwing up.
And wasn’t it ironic that a villain was the only one willing to help him.
Not the other heroes who’d fought beside him earlier that day, or the Commission who’d listed out the ramifications of his failure in the aftermath.
No, it was Dabi who’d offered himself up. He’d stoked the anger and disappointment Hawks hadn’t been able to shake, then given him an outlet. He’d let Hawks take the lead, manhandling him across the apartment and out of his clothes and into the bed. More than anyone else, Dabi had known exactly what Hawks needed and was trying to help him through it in the only way he knew how. He’d been the only one to reach out when Hawks felt like he was drowning.
Hawks traced his hand down the length of Dabi’s spine and back again as he continued to rock steadily into him. The rain had finally let up, and in the moonlight filtering through the parted curtains, Dabi’s skin glistened with a thin sheen of sweat. Bracing a hand on the bed, Hawks curled forward to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to Dabi’s topmost vertebrae. It changed the angle once again, bringing him impossibly deeper.
Beneath him, Dabi shuddered. “That’s— ah fuck, that’s it,” he all but growled into the sheets.
Hawks snapped his hips a little harder, and Dabi’s hand shot out to clamp around his wrist. They were already touching in more places than not, but something about that single point of contact wrenched the air from Hawks' lungs. It felt like he’d touched a live wire, a hundred thousand volts lighting up every nerve ending in his body.
“Shit,” he gasped, burying his face in the damp hair at the base of Dabi’s neck.
He smelled electric, wild and free, like the storm that had ravaged the city. And Hawks wanted him. So fucking bad. More than anyone or anything, now and always, nothing would ever compare, nothing could even come close—
Hawks reached around to grasp Dabi's dick, pumping him in time with his thrusts until he was spilling through Hawks' fingers all over the sheets with a string of muffled curses. The sound of Dabi losing it coupled with the way he tightened around Hawks had him closing his eyes hard enough for stars to burst behind his eyelids. It was all so much. Too much. Then he was following Dabi over the edge, free falling into release.
After they'd cleaned up and redressed, Hawks flopped onto the bed to lay beside Dabi. He kept his eyes trained on the ceiling, but he could see Dabi look to him in his periphery, felt the weight of his regard like a tangible thing.
“All right?”
“Yes.” With a sigh, Hawks draped one arm over his eyes. “No.”
The sound of staples catching on the sheets was the only warning Hawks received before he felt the back of Dabi’s knuckles run lightly over the road rash he’d received during the altercation earlier that day. “You can’t save everyone, hero.”
“That’s the thing, though,” Hawks said quietly. He didn't have the strength to argue the title, much less stop the confession. That bone-deep exhaustion had wrung him dry. He was too tired to care anymore. “I want to.”
Silence settled between them, and not for the first time, Hawks marveled at how easy it felt. Things should have been tense. Awkward, at the very least, especially after what he’d just admitted. Dabi could roast him, and Hawks wouldn’t even be able to fault him for it.
Instead, he just wanted to lay closer to Dabi, relax into that heat he always gave off, and forget about everything else.
So he did.
Rolling onto his stomach, Hawks inched over until he could feel Dabi’s arm against his. The warmth was immediate. He closed his eyes, pillowed his head on his crossed arms, and let his wings drape over both the bed and Dabi. It wasn’t long before careful fingers began carding through the feathers, and Hawks shivered at the sensation.
“Some people don’t deserve it,” Dabi continued after a moment. “You don’t want to hear that, but it’s the truth.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. But I stand by what I said.”
“Stubborn to a fault,” Dabi said with a snort. There was no heat to it, though. He sounded as tired as Hawks felt. “And what about the people who don’t want to be saved?”
Hawks thought about that for a minute, turning the words over in his mind. When he lifted his head, Dabi’s gaze was already fixed on him. “They need it even more.”
Dabi didn’t say anything to that, so Hawks did the only thing that felt right: he pushed up onto one arm, leaned in, and kissed Dabi. For no other reason than he wanted to. Just because he could.
How? How could this broken, scarred, spiteful villain understand him better than anyone? How did he know just what to say and do when Hawks was teetering on the edge of his breaking point? Why did Hawks feel so drawn to him, of all people?
Hawks pulled away just enough to stare down into Dabi’s eyes, fingers still splayed across his cheek, one of them running absently over the line of staples there.
What the hell was he doing?