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The mission had been a disaster.
Hostage situations were always tricky, and bombs made everything worse. Endeavor and Hawks had both been on the scene, and while Endeavor had worried about the exploding part of the problem, Hawks had handled the people - and things had still gone south. Three people were dead. They’d got a criminal they’d been after for ages (no one from the League of Villains, but still a dangerous individual with a murderous Quirk), but three people were dead. Out of the thirty-five they’d saved, another five more were going to be in the hospital for a while.
And they were giving him a fucking award for it.
“Courage under extreme danger” - “Reduction of the loss of life” - “Would have been so much worse without the #1 and #2 heroes” - “Would be worse still if this dastardly villain had not been stopped here and now.” The words to the speech floated over Hawks’ head, tuning in and out like a bad radio station, punctuated regularly by cheers and claps from a grateful crowd. Hawks was just remembering the three people they hadn’t saved, and how their bodies probably weren’t even at the morgue yet.
Apparently some of the people they’d saved were well-known. Not quite famous, per se, but known enough that the person giving the speech and the award had said their names and the crowd had gasped and then cheered harder. Hawks looked over without consciously telling his head to move, as it looked like a family member of one of the rescued individuals walked over first to Endeavor and then to him with… it looked like a little statue of some kind. How had they made an award faster than the rubble could even be cleared?
It was just a gap-toothed kid giving the award, so Hawks smiled on autopilot, years of training by the Commission making it an easy reflex to access even when there was just this voice in his head screaming. Endeavor did his usual nod and grunt, the stone-faced pillar of lawfulness next to Hawks’ playful good-boy persona. The persona felt pretty fucking thin as Hawks took the award from the kid, heard everyone coo and make happy noises, and then turned naturally to face the cameras and felt like he was going to be sick. Three people had died . He was pretty sure the speaker had mentioned three more in ‘critical condition,’ but it had been said so fast that it was lost amidst everything else.
“This is why we need heroes like this - role models and protectors for our children!” the speech wentwhen gaily onwards, as Hawks’ cheery smile somehow stayed in place and he no doubt made a perfect newspaper headline with the guileless child looking up at him. The kid was actually staring at his wings more than anything, and would have dropped the shiny metal award if Hawks hadn’t already had a good grip on it. The golden metal reflected the camera flashes like blinding sparks, and Hawks wondered dazedly if Endeavor was struggling not to melt his. Endeavor hated publicity stuff like this. Hawks usually accepted it all as part and parcel of his job, but right now he just kept hearing the grinding rumble of a building collapsing and too many people for even his feathers to reach.
He’d had one feather right next to one of the people who hadn’t escaped. The feather had been crushed to dust, winking out of Hawks’ awareness forever like a severed fingertip, so he knew the young woman was dead.
Only years of practice and conditioning kept Hawks standing on stage with his mouth curved into a familiar shape, and he tried not to admit that his scanning of the crowd was less to make personal contact with his fans and more because his eyes were desperately seeking some sort of escape.
It wasn’t until he was jarred by a familiar face at the very edges of the crowd (thank goodness for raptor-sharp eyesight) that Hawks remembered that he had wings and he didn’t need a sign saying ‘ You can leave now. You can go .’ Of all things, it was the awareness that he’d been paralyzed by habit that had Hawks’ face reddening, even as he purposefully looked away from Dabi’s scarred face, hidden by a hood as he lurked in the mouth of an alleyway. ‘ Get it the fuck together, Hawks ,’ he told himself, even as he admitted that ‘getting it together’ wasn’t going to be enough to keep him up here on stage. Since the simple business of breathing was becoming tricky, he realized that a more achievable goal would be flying away before he lost his ability to cope entirely.
“Thank you, everybody!” he called out, having no sense of whether or not he interrupted the speaker, although he probably had. He lifted a hand and waved, amping up the brightness of his smile just in case his voice sounded as crystalline and fragile to everyone else as it sounded in his own ears. “Always happy to do a bit of saving!” Now he was sure the speaker had stopped talking, and everyone on stage was flustered for a moment while the crowd refocused on Hawks and went a little wild. It was perfect, because it meant it was too boisterous and noisy for anyone to tell Hawks that he had to stay put.
So he took off into the sky as fast as he possibly could without his smile completely shattering.
~^~
Fuck, the trophy-thing was still in his hand. He gave in to the instant instinct to throw it as far away from himself as possible, but couldn’t do it because of course he’d already stress-gripped - the damn thing was already getting bent by the pressure of his hand. A bubble of hysterical laughter tried to escape Hawks’ throat as he had a thought about the cheapness of the metal; someone was cutting corners. That didn’t change the fact that Hawks wanted nothing to do with the thing, and why couldn’t his stupid bird hands just let go?! The manic giggle almost became a sob, and it was twice as hard to swallow down. Hovering in midair and hoping he’d blindly flown in a direction where no one was waiting with a camera (Hawks had no idea where he was), Hawks closed his eyes and finally got the noises to stop crawling up his throat by remembering his current Handler hammering into him that he couldn’t do stuff like that. People would lose faith in a hero who randomly blubbered in public. They put up with Hawks being silly and chatty because it was charming , but even Hawks wasn’t stupid enough to think that screaming in the middle of the sky would be remotely charming.
Somehow, not screaming didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment, despite it being something his Handers would be proud of. He was being so good - yes, he’d made an unplanned exit, but he’d made it seem normal and planned to all of the watching media. After that, it did seem like he’d found a quiet part of the industrial district, and he’d neither screamed like a lunatic nor thrown his award and hit anybody with it. Why didn’t any of that make him feel less like vomiting, and why did his hands just keep clenching harder?
Seeing Dabi of all people in the crowd had jumpstarted Hawks’ brain, and leaping into flight had managed to jumpstart his stiff lungs, but it seemed like all of that was temporary as Hawks found himself hyperventilating in midair.
Focusing on just breathing became almost all he could do, so it was a miracle he ended up actually landing on his feet instead of crashing into the side of a building head-first.
“Fuck,” he wheezed, then again, “ Fuck ,” when he tried to rub at his breastbone only to find that his right hand was still clenched around the damn trophy and his left hand was equally useless because it was locked into a fist, stress-gripped around nothing. It was like the world pressed in around him, tight and suffocating, even though he was logically aware that he’d landed in an empty, fairly wide alleyway. Of course, anyone could just walk up right now and see how monumentally stupid he looked: the #2 Hero, swaying like a newborn colt and barely able to figure out how fucking breathing worked, locked onto a trophy and fisting his other hand like a child in a tantrum. Unlike a child, he definitely wasn’t feeling possessive of this ‘toy’; but very much like a child, he wanted to cry. Birds didn’t cry, though, and good little heroes trained by the Commission certainly didn’t either.
Even though three people had died.
Hawks tried to pull himself together again, this time pressing his face into his wrists and squeezing his eyes shut. He reminded himself that he’d had people die around him before, and as a hero, it was just a fact of life - he knew he couldn’t save everyone, and it was unhealthy to hold himself to such high standards. Even as he thought this, though, an insistent voice in the back of his head said that they could have at least not given him a goddamned trophy for it .
Despite how he was more or less coming apart at the seams, the moment there was a sound down the alley from him, his ingrained hero reflexes kicked in: he lifted his hands and shook the primaries loose from his wings, sharpening them to knives with a thought. As soon as he opened his eyes and focused, though, he was greeted for the second time that day with the unexpected sight of Dabi.
The pyro was a few long strides away from him and looked like he’d just turned the corner into Hawks’ little alleyway, although his face didn’t look startled within the shadow of his hood. He did raise both hands in a frankly ludicrous harmless gesture, and when he opened his mouth to maybe say something Hawks couldn’t help but comment on that with all the dexterity of an injured bird tumbling out of the sky, “You know when you do that it just means you’re all prepped to shoot fire out of your hands, right?”
For a few long heartbeats they just stood and blinked at one another. Hawks silently thought back to one of his handlers who still firmly believed that Hawks shouldn’t be trusted to ever open his mouth, and how the old geezer was probably right.
And then Hawks started hyperventilating all over again and this time none of his coping mechanisms could even take the edge off.
He wasn’t aware of Dabi approaching, only that the scarred villain was standing down the alley from him one moment and then right in front of him seemingly in the next. Feathers swirled around them as Hawks’ ability to control them faltered, but not enough to cause him to drop them entirely. Dabi leaned and shifted around to avoid them, although his voice was inexplicably soft when he said, “Easy there, birdy. Try to keep those out of my face, all right? I’ve got a policy about crisping anything that takes a stab at me, but I’d rather not wreck so many good feathers.”
“Sorry,” Hawks wheezed, swaying. He briefly squeezed his eyes shut again, tightly enough that he saw stars, but it was evident in seconds that it wasn’t going to help. “I’m trying to focus. Just give me a sec.”
“No rush.” Dabi’s voice was low and smooth, a lazy tone that usually Hawks himself was pretty good at - even though it infuriated a lot of people in the Commission, and even Endeavor sometimes. It was his ‘lazy voice.’ It sounded good on Dabi, though, who generally had two settings: lazy or dangerous. “Just breathe. You’re okay.”
Hawks wanted to say ‘ I’m really fucking not ,’ but he didn’t have enough air as it was, and he kind of appreciated the positive (if incorrect) endorsement. Besides, Dabi didn’t seem all that invested in Hawks hurrying the fuck up and getting over it, so even if the last sentence was wrong, the ‘ No rush ’ part thankfully seemed to be the truth. Hawks went ahead and just focused on breathing, although he had enough additional headspace to be startled as a warm hand brushed his jaw and then another cupped his cheek from the other side. It was brief but so stabilizing for a second that Hawks almost gasped, the panic in his system momentarily shot through by a disorienting bullet of relief.
“What’s got you so scared?” Dabi went on. His hands had moved away from Hawks’ face but were lightly nudging aside his coat, brushing an arm - investigating and potentially looking for injuries, Hawks’ realized in a moment of inspiration. Hawks himself looked down as if to dumbly check, too, and while he had a worrisome amount of tunnel-vision, he managed to focus on a few drops of blood at his feet. For some reason that didn’t surprise him in the slightest, though. Some fragmented part understood the blood even if he couldn't even begin to fathom Dabi standing right in his personal space. Hawks’ feathers slowly twitched and wobbled through the air to either reconnect with his wings or clumsily give up to lie shuddering on the ground.
A hand touched Hawks’ chin again; he hadn’t realized that he’d tucked it down against his breastbone in a vain effort to get deeper breaths. Once again the contact felt like solidity , and despite all logic that pointed towards Dabi being no more physically corporeal than Hawks himself and certainly not a safe part of anyone’s life, Hawks’ would have leaned into this touch even if there was a knife pressed between them. It was not a normal response, and unfortunately a small part of his brain was cognizant enough to notice that and start up another layer of tiny internal screaming. Externally, he only stared dazedly at Dabi’s unbothered expression and jerked his hands back when he felt Dabi’s other hand brush against his wrist. “Sorry,” the apology tumbled out, even as he realized that he’d follow Dabi’s hand on his jaw if it were to retreat. That would be the only possible way for this to get more mortifyingly embarrassing. “I was holding it together really well-” he tried to explain the drastic descent into not okay that he didn’t understand himself. He stuttered on his words while trying to drag in air and speak at the same time, all the while almost desperate to keep his chin in Dabi’s warm, scarred palm, “-But then… this.” It was an utterly inadequate explanation but by now his whole body was shaking like he was frozen again and his damn hands still hadn’t remotely unclenched. The stress-grip was one of the worst ones he’d had in a while, and he distantly felt wetness dripping between the fingers on his right hand. Drip. Drip.
Dabi’s eyes were in shadow from his hood, but half-lidded - the sleepy look he adopted even when in the middle of fights. It meant that he could be exquisitely lethal without looking like he was even paying attention, but right now something about his eyes was calming rather than alarming; a fire that warmed rather than burned. “So what set you off?” he asked. This time when Dabi’s free hand tried to touch Hawks’ wrist, he let it, tamping down on the reflex to hide his stress-grip from people whose approval he cared about. He briefly gritted his teeth and made his body stay still, even as Dabi just lightly stroked the backs of his fingers against Hawks’ wrist at first, testing the waters. He went on in that same smoky rasp that Hawks remember from that snowy evening in his apartment barely a week ago, “I can see it in your eyes. The panic. What’s got you so spooked, birdy?”
Somehow the questions combined with the ridiculous things his body was doing combined to allow Hawks’ throat to unlock - but only to emit a wild cackle of manic laughter. It was honestly a relief when his lungs seemed to falter again, and the sound choked off, but the mania was still a bright, unpleasant bubble in his chest. “Oh, just stupid things,” he somehow regained his ability to tell jokes. It seemed like only two things were working right now: the reflexes that the Commission had absolutely drilled right into the depths of his hindbrain… and the sass that they lamented as the one thing they couldn’t train out of him. He gave his right hand a little twitch, unintentionally dislodging Dabi’s increasingly bold hand that was trying to touch it. “They give me a medal and I guess I sort of just…” His words petered off. His eyes drifted downwards against his will, drawn like metal shavings to a magnet to stare at the bent trophy. He was careful not to remove his jaw from Dabi’s hand, but once his eyes were on the twisted, cheap (probably fake) metal, it was like he couldn’t drag his gaze away. And the various screaming voices in his head started to seem increasingly like white noise.
He didn’t realize that Dabi was staring, too, until the villain said in a voice that finally sounded shocked instead of enviably calm: “Is that blood?”
Hawks tilted his hand this way and that obediently. More redness dripped between his fingers from where he knew, and had known for a while now, that the award was cutting up his hand. “Yup.”
“Fucking hell, Hawks.” Now that was a voice Hawks recognized; it was almost comforting to hear someone exasperated with him. Dabi’s free hand lifted so that he could rub it down his face, stopping with it over his mouth as he just looked Hawks over again with a more critical eye than before - but also perhaps a more knowing eye, as if he was realizing he should have expected shitty surprises. “You didn’t even tell any of your people on stage about this?”
“Didn’t want to drip blood on the stage.”
“Fucking-” Dabi started again, and this time he cut himself off but also needed both hands on his face. Hawks felt the narrow straw that was his airway close off entirely as he did indeed lean forward in a worthless attempt to chase Dabi’s hand, but at least he didn’t whine audibly at the loss of contact. He didn’t even know why he wanted it so much, and tried to reign himself in before Dabi could lower his hands and look at him again.
‘ Pull it together. Pull it the fuck together ,’ he kept repeating, and maybe it was just because he’d done this so many times before, but it sort of worked. Or at least he went back to something resembling breathing before the tunnel vision obscured everything. He tried for humour again, because while it had lost him the gentle cradling of his jaw, he was still unsettled by his hunger for that touch, so maybe some distancing was a good thing. “I know what you’re going to say.” His smile felt like it was made out of cracked glass and he felt another one of those manic giggles threatening to climb up his throat (or vomit; that could be vomit) as he spread his hands out to either side and was forced to think again about how they were stress-gripping with no end in sight. Because he was going to make a fool of himself regardless, he decided to do it on his terms, and therefore finished breezily, “I’m lucky I’m pretty.”
“You’re pretty un-fucking-believable is what you are,” Dabi grumbled, looking at Hawks between parted fingers. But he dropped his hands and stepped forward again, and Hawks nearly stumbled back. “Come on. Pick up your feathers so no one comes by and finds them here,” he ordered, hands gripping the open edges of Hawks’ jacket and giving a brisque tug. This close, it was incredibly obvious how much taller the dark-haired villain was. His hoodie wasn’t zipped all the way up, giving a glimpse of scarred skin over strong collarbones and the contrasting flash of his white undershirt just above the zipper. For a second Hawks wasn’t sure if he was still hyperventilating or just not breathing, eyes fixed on the hollow of Dabi’s throat so close in front of him. “Your fans have already had enough of you.”
“Where are we going?” Hawks managed to get out. Most of his focus was on getting his feet to move, but the one fist Dabi still had in his jacket - now tugging him along behind as the pyro started striding down the alleyway - was surprisingly helpful.
Dabi tilted his head to look back over his shoulder with a suspicious look. “Don’t you recognize where you are?”
“No…” Hawks started, then looked around. Like, really looked around. His chest still felt tight and achy and he was surprised that his breathing didn’t sound like wheezing, but he didn’t have as many spots in his vision. So it took him only a few glances for his eyes to widen, realizing that he was actually at a spot where he often met up with Dabi when he was feeding Commission-sanctioned information to the League of Villains. It was closer to the ill-fated ‘pep rally’ than he’d realized.
For his part, Dabi must have thought that the look on Hawks’ face was answer enough, because he grunted and went back to dragging the Hero forward again. Soon they were at the door that Dabi himself usually popped out of, where Hawks had thus far never been invited to follow after their brief meet-ups. It was a crying shame that Hawks was still a little [a lot] too messed up to be properly curious about that.
His feet felt as awkward and alien to him as they had when he’d first had his tarsals and metatarsals rearranged into a human shape, but he made it through the door and into the dark room beyond. When Dabi’s free hand flexed around a sudden ball of blue flame, lighting up the darkness, Hawks let out a quiet little trill that he usually managed to not emit. As he squinted his eyes nearly closed against the sudden light, all his mind could think was that his handlers would be so fucking disappointed.
“Come on,” Dabi said again, as self-assured as probably anybody would be when they were the ones with fire at their beck and call.
Hawks had just enough wherewithal to mutter “Bossy” before he was tugged further into what looked like an abandoned building. He gave both of his hands a shake to test his stress-grip, sighing when he could find no signs of it loosening. Striking blue eyes glinted in the fiery light as Dabi glanced back at him briefly, but Hawks’ eyes hadn’t adjusted enough yet to know if the pyro smirked. A few more strides in and they belatedly reached a light switch, although only one naked bulb replaced Dabi’s fire. By the time Hawks had gotten used to the fire’s eerie light, he had just enough time to register that there was some rudimentary furniture in the room before Dabi was grabbing the open front of his jacket in both hands and pulling Hawks around in front of him. Already less agile than usual, Hawks was stumbling and staring at Dabi in surprise even before the taller man was deftly hooking a boot behind Hawks’ ankle - more or less knocking his feet out from under him. Hawks let out a sharp sound that was more than half avian and there was also the sound of crunching metal as his grip managed to tighten impossibly further all at once. Dabi added to the chorus by swearing even as he kept his grip on Hawks’ jacket to control his descent onto… an old mattress on the floor.
Realizing that Dabi hadn’t just tripped him for fun and that there was definitely more blood seeping past his fingers and even down his wrist now, Hawks tried to get his bearings even as he murmured a reflexive, “Sorry.” He tried to hold his bleeding hand so that it wouldn’t drip onto the mattress, which had a blanket and seemed to see at least some use.
Dabi just grabbed his wrist and pushed it back into a more normal position, even as he growled, “Stop apologizing for things that aren’t even your fault, birdbrain.”
“Soooo don’t apologize for dripping blood on someone’s bed?” Hawks gathered his humour together enough to hazard, just in case Dabi hadn’t noticed the redness in the yellow lighting. Then he looked around and belatedly put a few more pieces together, thinking of how Dabi often came out of this building when they met up. “Wait, is this your bed?”
“Whenever I’m here,” Dabi grunted. He dropped down onto his haunches so that he was more on Hawks’ level, and domineeringly reached out to grab Hawks’ right wrist again. This time he pulled it towards himself and this time Hawks let him without fuss, even though he cringed instinctively at the thought of anyone looking at him stress-gripping. He knew full well that it was one of the most inconvenient side-effects of his Quirk, although he reminded himself that Dabi had dealt with it pretty well last time. Tolerated it, even.
Plus, Dabi’s hands were warm and they weren’t shaking like Hawks’ were and he was still trying to figure out why he’d reacted as he had to the villain’s hand cupping his chin. So the best way to deal with that was to fall back on snark. “Oh, in that case I guess I’m not sorry,” he threw out in a drawl that was totally faked but sounded totally like him.
Dabi gave him a gimlet look. Then he responded in the worst possible way, which wasn’t to yell at Hawks, but to call him out on his bullshit, “Stop playing around like you’re fine. I know you’re not. I can tell that’s a lie.”
The words were said with nothing more than a regular-Dabi-level of grouchiness, but Hawks felt his heart-rate speed up and the invisible band constricting his chest tighten. The reminder that he had an awful lot of lies floating around him was a sickening one, even though Dabi only seemed to be calling out this relatively small one. Trying not to fall back into the same hyperventilating spiral again, Hawks grit his teeth briefly before forcing his jaws apart, wetting his lips with a quick swipe of tongue. “Can’t blame a dude for trying. If I whined as much as I wanted over every little scrape, I wouldn’t get anything done, you know?”
“This?” Dabi lifted Hawks’ right arm vertically, blood and award and all, and pointed at where the broken bits of metal were continuing to press right through Hawks’ flesh. “Not a scrape.”
Yes, he knew that, but if he was forced to admit it he just might cry. Since he couldn’t very well give that reasoning to Dabi, however, Hawks just kept his goofy smile in place and volleyed back, “Come on, hot stuff, you and I both know that we’ve had worse. And I kinda literally did it to myself, so I’ve got no one else to blame for it.” ‘ But three people died ,’ suddenly echoed in his head, and the sound of the speaker praising him through the microphone. Hawks’ smile froze like a dead thing on his face.
His hand clenched harder and he wondered if he just couldn't feel the pain or if he thought he deserved it, to make up for the pep rally that everyone was attending instead of the funerals.
“Uh-uh. None of that.” Dabi was focusing on Hawks’ hand. He was trying to curl his fingers in under Hawks’ to pry them up, and somehow that old trigger managed to at least jolt Hawks’ out of the current panic. It was almost comforting to slip into the old fear of having his fingers pulled at and broken, and he gave a wordless shout even as his wings started flapping defensively. He didn’t call out any feathers only because he’d never been allowed to do that with his Handlers, and he feared that Dabi noticed - even as the pyro backed off, he was looking at Hawks’ wings with a mix of suspicion and confusion. He didn’t say anything, though, even after Hawks calmed down enough to shuffle his wings back behind him, feeling put out as well as embarrassed. Even as the #2 Hero’s cheeks flushed red, though, he yanked both hands back again in avoidance of Dabi’s next reach for them. “I’m not going to pull at them!” Dabi said as if Hawks were being the unreasonable one. But then his demeanour and his tone softened, slipping into that register that Hawks still couldn’t believe he had - because it was gentle . “I forgot, okay? I’ll just warm ’em up like last time.”
It wasn’t an apology, but Hawks couldn’t even imagine Dabi saying ‘ I’m sorry ,’ so the soothing promise carried weight in a different way. Hawks glared distrustfully at Dabi’s outstretched hand for a second before sighing gustily and making a big show of grudgingly extending his hands - but even as he turned his head to the side in careless moodiness, he couldn’t stop his eyes from watching Dabi’s hands distrustfully or his wings from giving little quivers at his back. He wanted to call a few feathers free, to prove that he could defy his training, but doing it now felt too late and too half-hearted.
Plus, he needed all of his focus to not tense up every muscle in his body as he watched both of Dabi’s hands encase his right one.
Apparently he didn't quite succeed, because even as his long-fingers hands closed down around Hawks’ bloodied skin, Dabi was murmuring, “Easy, birdy,” like he’d done the last time when Hawks had clearly been freaking out about being burned. Embarrassed at being so transparent (he was supposed to be an undercover agent of the Commission, for crying out loud!), Hawks huffed and turned to look away in the other direction, propping his free (but still clenched) left hand beneath his chin. He tried to make it look nonchalant and not like he was hiding it. “Would it make you feel better if I let you point a sharpened feather or two at me?” Dabi said next. When Hawks looked at him in surprise, Dabi’s mouth was just barely quirked up at one side, even if his voice had been deceptively bland and dry.
“Pretty sure you already threatened to burn any offending feathers to ash,” Hawks reminded a bit more tetchily than necessary.
Instead of calling Hawks out on being a little bitch, Dabi just settled himself a bit more comfortably on the floor and slid one of his hands from Hawks’ knuckles up to his wrist, heat sinking into the vulnerable skin there to be pumped right up Hawks’ arm. It was all he could do not to close his eyes and groan. “Pretty sure I already said I don’t really need threats for you.”
Hawks opened his eyes part way - hadn’t he meant to keep them open? - and struggled to parse that out. It seemed that breathing was easier now but thinking was harder, his entire body on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs. He hoped that everything would even out, somewhere between overworking and nonfunctional, before he did something truly stupid and the villain in front of him realized that Hawks was a double-agent. It was sobering to realize that he really needed to be more focused right now, rather than the jittery wreck that he was.
Just as he tried to remind his brain and body of that, however, Dabi started massaging gently, pressing firmly but carefully, strong fingers briefly weaving between Hawks’ tensed ones only to slide calmingly up his knuckles; the thumb of his other hand pressed against the bones of Hawks’ wrist, not caring about the smears of blood. For the second time in as many minutes, Hawks failed to notice his eyes falling shut.
“Yeah,” Dabi said. His voice was knowing, like he was nodding, but also hushed and low like the crackle of a late-night fire. “Definitely don’t need threats. Just take deep breaths, birdy.”
The nickname should have been grating, being reduced to just a ‘birdy,’ but maybe after the Commission minimised his avian side for so long, it was nice to have someone focus on it. And when Dabi said it, it didn’t feel like a fetish either - not that Hawks could imagine Dabi as one of his obsessive, squealing groupies, who would probably suck him off in the middle of the street just for the promise of touching his wings. Hawks had a brief, unhinged thought that he'd suck Dabi off in the middle of an alleyway if it meant the pyro would cup his chin again and offer him some of that warm, ridiculously reassuring solidity.
Dabi’s fingers kept kneading at Hawk’s hand, fingers pressed against the back and thumbs pressing up his wrist and into his palm. He didn’t try to pull the trophy out, though, his touch a firm suggestion rather than a brutal demand.
“Does it hurt?” Dabi asked after a long stretch of silence.
“No, not really.” Hawks managed to blink his eyes open, distantly aware that his chest didn’t feel as much like it was in a vice anymore… although it ached if he looked at the thing in his hand too directly. He glanced at the hand in question and then down at his lap, realizing idly that he’d flown off without even putting on his ear- or eye-protection; both were still strapped to his belt. “I think I’m clenching it too hard to get proper blood flow. Or I’ve pinched off a nerve or something. I don’t know.”
Dabi lifted his head up fast enough that his hood actually fell back, black spikes of hair popping into visibility. He was giving Hawks his ‘ Are you fucking serious? ’ look, which Hawks was pretty used to by now. It was even familiar enough for Hawks to keep going, this time with a flash of a grin and a rueful tone, “I’ll get back to you once my stupid hand opens up. Whenever I stress-grip around something sharp, it kinda sucks that I only let go once the adrenalin wears off.” He shrugged, mouth still going, as he admitted the reality of the situation, “No normal endorphins for me I guess.” Right now he’d had quite enough of his body’s various chemicals - he felt like he’d run the gamut already from fear-spiked adrenaline to disorienting happy-chemicals, and would happily take a bit of pain so long as it cleared his head.
Shaking his head like he honestly didn’t know what to do with Hawks anymore (which made Hawks want to giggle, because - join the club; the Commission didn’t know what to do with him most days either and his handlers in particular despaired of him regularly), Dabi finally just said, “Stop hiding your other hand like I’m going to bite it off. Here - stick it under my arm.”
“Why?”
“So we can warm it up, asshat,” was the typical Daby response, eloquent as always. When Hawks snickered and rolled his eyes but went ahead and obeyed, Dabi grumbled a bit less combatively, “It seemed to work last time, and I’m not hearing any better ideas from you.”
“Oh, no, I got nothing,” Hawks went ahead and admitted, because at this point things couldn’t get any worse with Dabi knowing more. Besides, giving away secrets about his Quirk wasn’t dangerous; secrets about his intentions with the League of Villains were dangerous. “I usually just sit and wait it out and hope that nothing else happens to trigger it again before I can loosen my hands up. Which is hard, you know, because what you see now is pretty normal.” Okay, maybe he was saying too much. He grimaced, wishing that he had a Quirk that allowed him to erase memories selectively or rewind time… or maybe just button his own lips shut.
Dabi definitely didn’t have selective hearing loss either, so of course he answered in a deadpanned voice, “You running away from a speech in your honour and crushing an award in your hand is normal?”
The ‘in your honour’ bit hit wrong, and as quickly as that, Hawks felt like his insides were growing unstable. He also felt angry, the emotion flaring up so fast that he barely had time to name it before he was snapping, “It wasn’t an ‘honour,’ okay? And this isn’t an award, it’s a-” His eyes jerked to it involuntarily, and as quickly as that, the anger fell away to leave him feeling just hollow and sick. Three dead bodies, one of his feathers even touching one when the building crashed down. He managed to jerk his head away and glare at the shadows beyond the lightbulb’s reach, eyes stinging even if nothing ever came out of them. “It’s just a hunk of cheap metal,” he muttered less sharply, then added because he just needed to say it out loud, even if he couldn’t say it to any of the people at the Commission, “And it shouldn’t even exist because that mission wasn’t anything to celebrate. There were three people Endeavor and I failed to save.”
Dabi’s grip on Hawks’ hands tightened unexpectedly - one hand on Hawks’ right wrist still, the other in the process of guiding Hawks’ left hand up under his arm. It was just a brief clenching, though, and then Dabi was continuing his movements: thumb rubbing at the side of Hawks’ right hand, tucking Hawks’ left hand up under Dabi’s right armpit, everything as heated as sun-warmed rocks on a summer day. “You don’t seem too torn up about it,” Dabi said with more harshness in his voice than he’d shown in… honestly, quite some time. It would have stung if Hawks weren’t already wallowing in more emotional responses than he knew what to do with, and if Hawks hadn't already been saying worse to himself. “I don’t see you shedding any tears, and neither was Endeavor.”
Something about the end of that sentence got almost vicious, but suddenly Hawks was just… exhausted. “I can’t cry, Dabi,” he sighed tiredly. What was one more admittance? Dabi kept saying that Quirk side-effects were normal and cool and all that, so he may as well know all the messed up details. Letting his wings sag a bit against his back, Hawks just kept talking to the far wall even though he could hear and feel how Dabi had frozen at his declaration, “It’s another bird thing. No tear-ducts. Still think that everything about Quirks is amazing?”
“I never said that everything about every Quirk is amazing ,” Dabi grated, but Hawks still refused to turn his head forward to look at him. Instead the hero just arched his wings up again a bit more defensively, and he knew that Dabi noticed by the soft swear that followed and the brief flexing of his left hand still warming Hawks’ clenched fingers. “Why are you such a drama queen?” he thought he heard Dabi mutter in exasperation right before there was suddenly movement out of the corner of his eye - too late - and then Dabi’s free hand grabbed his jaw again. “Just look at me - do you really think that I-?” Dabi started to lecture.
But then he stopped, and it was probably for the best, because Hawks’ ability to focus had just evaporated.
Maybe the worst of the panic attack(s) from earlier had receded, but clearly Hawks wasn’t back to normal yet, because the instant he felt that beyond-human body-heat sink into his neck and face, it was just like last time it had happened. Hawks didn’t know why, and he certainly didn’t have the capacity to figure it out now, but it was like the steadiness and warmth of Dabi’s hand just checked all the boxes for Hawks going completely out of his head. The last time Hawks had had a panic attack around Dabi, he’d been exhausted, and Dabi had been understanding of that - even encouraging Hawks to just fall asleep, for fuck’s sake. This was beyond that, though, which probably didn’t say anything good about Hawks’ mental state.
It also didn’t say anything good for Hawks as a whole that Dabi was just staring at him in considering silence with too-keen, too-intense narrowed blue eyes. He'd definitely noticed something in Hawks' reaction this time.
By the time he eventually spoke, Hawks’ brain was still askew on its axis and his own eyes were half-closed, lost in the sensation of warmth and something solid anchoring him. “I guess I really don’t need threats for you,” he murmured in a voice like low-hanging smoke, soft and warm but dark. Hawks tried to react but instead his wings just sagged further. God, but he was tired. The knowledge that something was wrong with him, and he’d regret this later, meant nothing compared to the bone-deep awareness that this was easy . This wasn’t him trying to figure out if he was overthinking - if he really was a drama queen - or if those three deaths mattered as much as he thought they did; this wasn’t him trying to force his own body to work right while even his autonomic functions seemed on the fritz; this wasn’t him trying to navigate a conversation with a pyromaniac who tended to burn things instead of talking anyway. This was just warmth seeping into him and sizing his skin to fit right again, and he couldn't believe how steady Dabi felt.
And instead of laughing and calling Hawks a freak, Dabi started talking, still in that low rasp like a cat’s tongue, “You’re doing good, Hawks.” His thumb swiped Hawks’ cheek, a line of gentle fire that sank right through his orbital bone and got him to close his left eye as Dabi stroked again, this time on the inky mark that Dabi had once thought was eyeliner. “Real good.” Another soft stroke and Hawks involuntarily let out a soft trill, and that of all things was what nearly jarred him out of wherever his beleaguered mind had gone: his eyes snapped open as he realized that he’d made the sound and his wings started to flare. Dabi just let go of his stress-gripped hand to cradle Hawks’ face in both hands, and fuck , that was even better. When Dabi encouraged him to tuck his head down, hands firm but not painful on his face, Hawks went with it, eyes both closing again.
Hot breath fanned his forehead, a breeze over a forest fire, “I didn’t say all Quirk side-effects were great - I said they were a part of you ." Then, more unexpectedly, he reassured, "This is, too. So just breathe, birdy, you’re still all right.”
The screaming voice that persisted in the back of Hawks’ head even when he was just about limp was insisting that he was the farthest thing from okay: he was virtually out of commission with his face in the hands of a murderous pyromaniac that he’d spent months lying to. Not only was he not fighting back, but he was also hanging his head like a bird with its head tucked under a wing, and instead of freaking out at the fire-heated breath against his hair, he was just sinking deeper. Whatever part of him this was, it was fucking insane, and if the Commission ever found out, they de -commission him.
Dabi toyed a little with Hawks’ left earring. The metal immediately turned warm like a drop of honey on the tongue. Right before it became painful, Dabi moved his hand to cup it over Hawks’ ear - more heat, more heat, more heat, eating right into his brain and leaving more warm honey behind.
“You came to somewhere familiar to roost because you were tired,” Dabi explained, and damn him for sounding like he knew more about what was going on than Hawks did. “Nothing wrong with that.” Another breath of hot air, and Hawks listening to the thump of Dabi’s heartbeat from the palm against his left ear. “Let’s see if we can’t get your hands to sort themselves out?” was the next quiet, easy drawl, said like this was nothing but normal and easy.
Hawks’ wings gave a shudder and he let out another involuntary noise that was somewhere between a human whine and a bird’s soft shrill as Dabi’s left hand withdraw. It was reflex to chase after it, just as he’d feared he’d do earlier, but the hand on the other side of his head kept him in place - if he moved, he’d lose both points of contact, and at this point if felt like the right hand over his ear was tethering his head to his shoulders, or maybe all of him to the earth. All Dabi said was, “Easy, easy. You’re making some really sweet noises there, but it’s not going to make me rush.”
That managed to get Hawks to focus enough for one garbled, “Fuck off,” to which Dabi just chuckled, a deep, rough sound. The detached screaming voice in his head was joined by another voice that suddenly remembered Dabi saying he was good with his mouth and his hands, and maybe it was a good thing that Hawks didn’t have the capacity for deep thinking right now.
Still leaning against the hand cupping the side of his face, Hawks felt a light, fiery touch against his forearm, warm even through his jacket sleeve. It slid down until Dabi was touching his hand again, the one around the twisted metal. It had started to ache a bit - not from the sharp edges cutting into it but from the tension of staying gripped so long. Now that dull pain faded away beneath Dabi’s warm hand and Hawks’ let out a slow sigh. Dabi responded by massaging his thumb between Hawks’ thumb and forefinger; his other thumb sifted through the short hairs in front of Hawks’ ear like it had every right to be there. When Dabi’s other hand squeezed carefully around Hawks’, he barely managed to swallow down a bird-like churr , but when Dabi’s other hand pressed fingers deeper into his hair, heated fingertips scratching at his scalp, Hawks’ wings went altogether limp and he finally just stopped thinking.
He didn’t know that he’d stopped stress-gripping until there was a spark of pain and then Dabi yelping as the award was dropped ignominiously onto his crotch.
“Fucking dammit!” the pyro hissed as Hawks lifted his head and felt like he was coming out of a deep sleep. Dabi’s hands had left him in favour of protecting himself from the falling hunk of twisted, cheap metal, and… honestly, it was funny. The big, bad fireball-throwing dude who seconds ago had had Hawks metaphorically wrapped around his little finger was now swearing at an inanimate object and wincing at the delicate parts of his anatomy that had been ‘attacked.’ So instead of having an existential crisis about how he’d more or less been melting in Dabi’s hands, Hawks started laughing.
“Keep laughing and I won’t bandage up that hand,” Dabi growled, but even as he said it - casting Hawks a truly murderous, gimlet look from underneath his brows - the villain was standing. Long limbs unfolding from the floor, he walked off towards the room’s one lightbulb and then beyond it to a crooked old set of drawers that was missing one shelf. Hawks didn’t realize that he’d taken the award with him until he heard the thunk of it being placed on the far side of the drawers, almost entirely out of reach of the light. Dabi’s focus was on pulling something out of the bottom shelf - a first-aid kit. He wandered back, still glowering. And maybe limping a little.
“Wow, got you right in the balls,” Hawks was morally obligated to drawl playfully. His right hand was throbbing and did indeed have some pretty impressive cuts across the palm and fingers, but he sat with it cradled in his other hand, and stayed focused on the villain who had been felled by a broken trophy.
“I got me in the thigh ,” Dabi corrected tetchily.
“Oh yes, the-” Hawks waggled his eyebrows and pointedly flicked his eyes below Dabi’s belt. “- Thigh .”
“Keep staring at my junk and I’m going to sit on you - and not in the fun way.” It was growled in a very sincerely threatening voice, so Hawks made himself calm down as much as he could; he just felt very light after what had just happened, or maybe a bit manic because he was trying very hard not to think about what had just happened. It was better to focus on the simple, safe positives: his hands had unclenched, no one but Dabi had seen him stress-grip like a frightened falcon and Dabi had already seen it all before, and the panic attack had fully receded so he could breathe and think again. And the two of them were back to their usual vaguely-dangerous banter, in which Dabi always seemed two insults away from char-broiling Hawks and Hawks just kept egging him on to do it.
Okay, maybe that last one wasn’t a simple, safe positive. Hawks put that into the category of ‘maybe never think about that too deeply ever’ and pasted on a shit-eating grin to make it clear that he wasn’t done thinking this was funny.
Dabi rolled his eyes and muttered something about Hawks being in-fucking-tolerable, but when he reached out to hook two fingers around Hawks’ right wrist, there was no threat of fire. When he pulled Hawks’ hand forward and started cleaning the cuts out with antiseptic, though, there was a helluva lot of stinging. “Yeah, it stings, doesn’t it? Fucking deal with it,” Dabi grumbled uncharitably, clearly still grumpy.
They continued bickering back and forth as Dabi wrapped gauze and then bandages around Hawks’ hand. Despite his earlier assessment that he didn’t need threats for Hawks, Dabi made a lot of threats; despite being fairly tough and having a decent pain tolerance, Hawks whined just because it wound Dabi up. Even as they fell into normal patterns and seemed to put the moment of strange intimacy behind them, though, Dabi never once teased Hawks about his stress-grip, and he stopped mentioning the bird noises amidst his snarking, too.
And Hawks wasn’t sure if he was happy about that or if he wanted to return to… whatever that moment had been… where Dabi had said his bird noises were ‘sweet’ and Dabi had gotten Hawks to do exactly what he wanted with quite the opposite of threats.
~^~