Chapter Text
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
--- Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe
Hawks laughs at something Shigaraki says, and Dabi takes several minutes to catch his breath. It’s not like he’s never seen the bird laugh, but it still hits Dabi like the melody of it—lilting, melodious, rising like Hawks is laughing over waves and when he finally hits that crescendo he’s going to crash into the sea—like the melody of it is carried on a freight train.
No one else notices it, this break in the bitching and grumbling of everyone in their cramped little living room. Dabi watches. Waits.
Thing is, Keigo Takami is supposed to be dead. Thing is, Dabi still feels those feathers burning beneath his hands.
When he closes his eyes he can hear them, crackling like tinder. The smell of Keigo’s back cooking, evaporating as the walls of the PLF crumble around them. Burned, acrid, blistering.
He remembers. He will never forget the way Keigo writhed. The bared fangs, the useless spasm of his shoulders trying to jerk away from him until the heat singed all those nerve endings. Never once screaming out. Never once begging Dabi to spare him.
He doesn’t know which version is worse. In his nightmares, Keigo pleads. Twists. Runs away. In his dreams, he hunts Keigo down to the end of the world to make sure he kills him over and over.
When he wakes, Keigo gives up the fight before he starts. In his memories, Keigo surrenders as Dabi burns all the way through those feathers. That perfectly straight spine. All the way to the heart.
Dabi held that heart in the cradle of his fire. The second it stopped ticking, Dabi’s fingers uncurled and let it fall. Only then was the ravenous beast pushing against Dabi’s skin satisfied.
So, no. Dabi could no more ignore the sight of Keigo Takami sitting on their couch in their old hideout than he could ignore Endeavor or All Might walking through the door. Hell, those two would make more sense, in any context, than a dead man looking so decidedly Not Dead.
“Anyone gonna explain what the fuck is going on here?” Dabi’s feet don’t move. He should walk up behind bird boy and light him up again. Instead, his body just stays still, frozen like Hawks may not notice him if he doesn’t move. He’s never been fucking afraid before. Something akin to fear flits up his spine when Hawks turns to him and grins. Even his anger can’t smother it.
Shigaraki, on the other hand, only quirks a brow at him and reaches around—not around, no, through—Hawks to pull from a bag of chips Dabi can’t see. “Fucking Mario Kart, what’s it look like?”
Dabi studies Shigaraki’s face, carefully. If this is some elaborate bit, Shigaraki will give it away. His poker face is abysmal.
Not that any bit could include Hawks being not dead when he should very much be dead.
“I’m going to bed.” Dabi ignores the window where sunlight shines through ratty blinds. He ignores the way Spinner’s attention snaps to him. Dumbass lets his Yoshi drive right off a curve. “Don’t follow me.”
He leaves the room.
The Hawks, the not dead Hawks, the pro-hero every person in this room should be terrified of, follows him. No one bats an eye. No one watches him or questions him or tries to stop him.
Hawks grins, hands shoved in his pockets, those big, beautiful red wings lifted behind him. He glances around the room, eyes narrowed in mischief, before he puts his fingers to his lips and slips ahead of Dabi.
Dabi follows more than leads Hawks to his room. This impossible man.
Dabi doesn’t believe in ghosts. Not really, He knows what it takes to haunt. If he could have done it while dead, he’d have been dead long ago.
He believes in the fire under his skin more than he believes in anything. He stopped doubting his own eyes when he was thirteen. As a kid, Dabi refused to believe what he saw of his father. Chose to follow someone else’s truth and reality for years until it killed him. Until some mad doctor in some shit orphanage dragged him back from the grave and stapled him back together like some kind of fucking monster.
Dabi watches Hawks slip into his bedroom then sit on the edge of his bed. Should he ask him what he’s doing here? Would Hawks even speak to him? How could he—his fucking chest cavity got burned out. Dabi stares at the man perched on his mattress, who stares back at him. One of them smiles.
Dabi opens his mouth. Starts to say something—he doesn’t even know what. Hawks shakes his head. Wanders around the room when Dabi doesn’t manage to spit anything out.
What kind of room is this? When you said you’d show me the League Hideout, I kinda expected something a little fancier, hot stuff.
Dabi scoffs. “What? Thought all of us scruffed up orphans were living in some luxury mansion?”
Hawks quirks a brow at him, flutters his wings. Stretches. Your room’s tiny as shit, Dabs. We coulda been back at my apartment, you know?
Dabi’s voice drifts through the room, even if he doesn’t open his mouth. Even as he stares in bewilderment as Hawks picks up a book and starts to flip through it.
Didn’t take you as a reader, really. Hawks grins scanning the pages.
Every word fogs Dabi’s thoughts, like he’s filling up with his own smoke, choking himself off from oxygen even when he takes a deep breath. His throat burns raw as all his heat turns inward.
“I read a fuckton, birdbrain.” His voice, again, even as he can’t find any space for air in his lungs. “What, didn’t think a villain like me had an education?”
The war isn’t over. Even if somehow, the HPSC faked birdie’s death, they wouldn’t fucking send him right back in. He’d be working on the sidelines, giving intelligence from behind the scenes. He wouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here.
And this was the reason that, long ago, Hawks reads in his low voice, not teasing or mocking. Dabi can’t tell if this is memory or dreaming. In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling, My beautiful Annabel Lee.
Hawks never came here, never found this little slice of the League that Shigaraki hid from ReDestro. This never happened but it’s far too real to be some weird, grief-stricken fantasy.
“Never read Poe before?” Dabi’s voice layers over itself, the him that speaks so clearly, almost happy, and the him who coughs on the last word. As if he is two, split in half in this very room. Hawks looks up, grinning, and closes the book.
Not exactly HPSC required reading. Awful romantic for a horror writer.
“God, you don’t know anything, birdbrain.” The clearer Dabi, the one that speaks when he doesn’t, laughs. “Poe was the most lovestruck tragedy ever produced.”
I don’t think that’s the general way he’s described, Hawks grabs his hand and he’s warm. Solid. Dabi remembers the way Shigaraki reached right through him. He looks at the way his skin bends beneath Hawks’s fingers. Real, impossible.
He follows, climbing into bed behind Keigo. Curling up against the wall as Keigo settles beside him, wings folding up nicely over the covers.
They never shared a bed before, when Keigo was alive. They’d shared a couch, a couple of warehouse floors, even an alleyway or two. But never a bed.
Keigo pulls his hand around his waist. They’re lying face to face, and Dabi doesn’t know why his flames won’t answer him, why they lay so dormant when they’ve always jumped so quickly to his call. He feels half smothered, heavy like he’s under a blanket made of lead.
Thanks, Dabi, Keigo whispers. The sound blows across his cheek. Keigo smells like rain and fabric baked in the sun. The familiar scent swells when Keigo leans closer. They’ve kissed, vicious and cruel most of the time. Mournful, in the end. For bringing me here.
Dabi waits, and watches.
Eventually, Hawks is gone. Like he should have been from the start. It happens between one blink and the next. His bed is still warm.
##
He’s on an arson job in the broken-down part of the city. Hawks follows him now, like smoke follows beauty.
My mom used to say that, when we camped with Takami on the run, Hawks tells him, standing beside the old building. It used to house runaways. There are signs all over the floors and in the corners. Old piss bottles, broken down mattresses and abandoned bags. She said stuff like that when she was happy. Silly romantic phrases.
Dabi listens, even as Spinner stares at him like his head’s made of turnips. Try as he might, he can’t seem to hide his distraction from the heteromorph. Spinner keeps an eye on him, like he can see a stray feather on Dabi’s shoulder. Like his secret is written plain across his face.
Dabi is careful not to respond. Not out loud. He doesn’t have to.
His voice plays out, not even a whisper—loud as if no one else exists. “Your mom sounds like a trip. She would’ve had a hell of a time with Rei. Probably would have fought like cats, those two.”
He listens to himself talk about his mom with the bird like it’s not the biggest secret he’s ever kept. Like Keigo is going to understand. Hawks’s wings lay down, pulled in tight against his body, his cheeks pink.
Dabi doesn’t reach out to touch him, doesn’t check to make sure he’s real like he has when Keigo appears in his room. It happens more and more now, the bird slouching onto his bed, covered in bruises and burns, talking about missions that don’t exist and information that can’t be accurate because Hawks isn’t there to carry it out. In this open space, in this abandoned shithole, Dabi can’t reach for him.
Spinner doesn’t see Hawks. However much he pays attention to Dabi’s strange behavior, he never once looks in Keigo’s direction. No one does.
“You look like shit, Dabi.” Spinner’s voice breaks his concentration and Keigo’s image flickers ahead of him. “You been sleeping much?”
“They’re fucking stapled in, dumbass.” Dabi pushes on the scars under his eyes. “Not eyebags.”
“I’m not stupid, shit for brains.” Spinner’s tail thwacks him on the back of the leg. “You look more dead than usual. Figured you might be dealing with something since the bird… well, you know.”
“What, turned tail on us? Tried to poach—or worse—Twice?” Dabi snorts. “Don’t fucking think so, man. If I hadn’t caught him then, we’d all be wearing jumpsuits and quirk cuffs.”
Except the Keigo in front of him is grinning as he flies up to balance on a broken bit of the wall, whistling down at whatever he sees on the other side. Don’t think you’re ready for this, man. They really wasted all these files over here. You’re just going to burn them?
And he sends down a feather, but nothing comes up. Nothing comes up because what’s happening isn’t real. There are no feathers on the other side. There can’t be.
He reminds himself again that Hawks is dead.
Spinner slips through a sizable hole in the wall, hissing back an affirmation that Dabi can follow. “You never really trusted him, right?”
“That’s right,” Dabi crouches, through to the next room. There are files in there, just like the Not-Dead Hawks said. Spinner doesn’t bother to flip through them. Their job is just to burn it all, to get rid of the evidence so the ones who slipped through here would never be caught or brought in. So their names would never make it out of here. There are new identities here, covered in layers of dust and deceptions.
Once the files are burned, though, there’s also no record of who went through here that could hold anyone else accountable. The conditions are shit.
Not-Dead Hawks stares at the piles of boxes, hand over his mouth, eyes flitting between Dabi and the faded labels.
“Then what the fuck has been up with you?” Spinner doesn’t insult his quirk by bringing gasoline. The whole building will be ash by the end of it, no accelerants needed. “You’ve been distracted since he died. It’s almost like you regret it or something.”
This time Dabi’s fire comes quickly, blue shimmering over the red, blistered skin of his palm. “Don’t fucking speculate, Spinner, it’s not your strong suit.”
The fire misses green scales by no more than a few inches, catching all those documents like the hazard they are. Dabi stands and waits until the room is choked with heat and smoke. Spinner folds before he does, ducking out through the holes they followed in here.
Dabi watches as Hawks—the Hawks only he can see, the Hawks only he can hear—leans down and pushes off a nonexistent lid. Everything is ashes now. Hawks doesn’t notice, chattering away as the other Dabi, the Dabi that doesn’t exist in this room—not really—answers him.
Dabi leaves when the walls start to crack. The building falls to pieces behind him and he can still hear the conversation echoing off the bricks. Spinner spends the walk cussing him a hundred different ways. No bird follows them back. The extra Dabi, that voice that hovers whenever the Not-Dead Hawks is near, doesn’t have anything else to say. All the extra sounds and colors and sensations, emanating from Hawks like a heat-shimmer, fade.
“How’d the job go?” Shigaraki doesn’t look up from his game. The man rarely leaves the house now that the Paranormal Liberation Front has fallen and ReDestro is out of sight. He’s always dealt better with smaller groups. “We need supplies, so you better not have flaked.”
Dabi opens his mouth to snark, irritation boiling through him, hissing through his teeth like steam. Hawks interrupts him, smooth and cocky and so, so sure.
We did something better. You can bet your fucking ass they weren’t expecting anyone to actually look at those files, Hawks waves one of the files in his hand, bleeding color back into the room at his feet. They weren’t trying to protect shit. They were covering up their mistakes. Your job was to cover up a human smuggling ring.
And fuck, Dabi regrets not looking at those files. He should have. Spinner’s needling nosiness had cost them. No, he corrects. Spinner was annoying, pushy and concerned in a way Dabi had never warranted. But it was Dabi’s fucking temper that had cost him. He can’t be certain that this Hawks, this fucking spectre that follows him and yaps all day about bullshit, is right. But he can’t know now. The evidence is gone.
Shigaraki would have been livid. They’d have burned down the fucker’s whole operation if he was using the League to cover up fucking trafficking. Dabi’s stomach roils, nausea like he hasn’t experienced since he first stumbled out of that fucking sham of an orphanage gripping his insides in a tight fist.
“Something’s wrong with him,” Spinner’s voice floats above him, distant even though he knows the lizard man can’t be standing more than a few feet away. “He’s been like this all fucking day.”
“He looks pale,” Mr. Compress, approaching. Dabi takes a step back, stumbles.
Woah there, hot stuff, Hawks reaches out for him, hand solid and warm against his arm. Careful now.
“Fuck off,” Dabi rasps, fire burning up his forearm, over his jacket. The heat is too fast, consuming too much before Dabi can catch it. The Hawks who holds him only stares down at him in concern, untouched. “Why the fuck won’t you leave?”
At the very thought Dabi’s flames go out, snuffed into smoke like a lake dropped down from overhead and drowned all that hellfire.
“Uh,” Twice stands in the doorway, still in his sweatpants, scratching at his stomach with his shirt rucked up. “I think you need a break man. He’s fucking losing it.”
“Fuck off,” He snaps, again, though this time at Twice. He backs away, back into the hallway before he turns and walks—calmly—to his bedroom. He’s even careful not to slam the door.
Let Spinner give the fucking report. Let someone else deal with this bullshit.
Did he just cover up some fuckheads trafficking ring? Did Shigaraki not fucking check who he was doing work for?
Except that’s not fair. They’ve done work for this organization before. They’re small time smugglers. Moving people with dangerous quirks amounts to a fucking side gig. It’s not even a major part of their business. A dozen people or less move through at a time, usually people with dangerous quirks looking to get out from a tough spot.
Except.
Well, fuck. Isn’t that what Tomura was before he got picked up by fucking AFO? Isn’t that what Dabi was before the Doctor scooped his mostly dead body out of the fucking river? They were just people with dangerous quirks, stuck in a bad place, with a door held open to let them out of the frying pan and right into the fire.
He’ll talk to Shigs about it tomorrow. He closes his eyes, tries to slow the rabbiting of his heart.
Hey, Dabs. You ok? And Hawks, touch gentle against his chest, appears. Like he’s been waiting here, like he knew when Dabi closed his eyes he wouldn’t be on guard anymore. I should’ve known that would stir shit up for you, sorry ‘bout that.
Dabi doesn’t open his eyes. Can’t open his eyes to look at his birdie fucking standing over him all apologetic.
He’d tried to burn the ghost of him, tried to turn this relentless vision to ash. And Hawks had just watched him, excitedly contributing to a mission he never got the chance to take part in.
Would he have stayed? If Dabi had controlled his fucking temper, held back his flames, would Keigo Takami, the bird bought and paid for by the HPSC, have chosen to follow him into the League?
He never thought he would. But seeing it now, this alternate future playing out ahead of him these last few weeks, he can’t be sure.
He answers, mouth moving as if it already knows what he would say, in place of this other him, these other choices he never made. The words scrape over his tongue like jagged glass, painful all the way out. “Don’t worry about it, birdie. It was the right thing to do.”
Still. You think Shigaraki’s going to be ok? He seemed upset. A hand smooths over his hair. Dabi’s breath catches when lips press against his cheek, trailing a line to his mouth. A smile—even without opening his eyes he can feel Hawks’s lips curve against his skin.
They were never this tender before. Every kiss exchanged, every moment between them a battle, a stolen angry thing that haunted them in alleyways.
This Hawks, this dead thing that followed him and spoke to him and made him question everything, touches him like Dabi means everything. Keigo sighs against his skin and Dabi can feel the want seep into the cracks Keigo left behind.
What happened, in this other place, to make Hawks act like this? What decision did Dabi make when he chose to let Keigo live that the ghost of him follows Dabi to bed?
“He’ll get over it.” Dabi reaches up and runs his thumb over Keigo’s cheek, pulls him closer by the back of his head. He can indulge, once, in this impossibility in his room.
He’s alone in here. Who knows what the others would hear if they were listening. What would they see if they opened his door right now? Him, losing his mind?
Dabi scoffs. It doesn’t matter. When has it ever mattered if he was sane or not?
Keigo sighs into his mouth, lips moving together. Dabi follows until he can’t, until the mounting pressure in his chest threatens to split him open.
He doesn’t open his eyes until he feels the bed dip beside him. Until Keigo curls against his side. Several minutes later, soft, chirping snores break the silence.
Dabi opens his eyes. Stares up at the ceiling. He doesn’t look beside him, doesn’t look down at the arm draped across his stomach. His thumb runs over the golden skin beneath his hand, so real. Impossible.
The rest of them saw him unraveling, today. He won’t be able to deny it for much longer. The lashing out, the distraction. Listening to a man no one else can hear. They’re going to think he’s lost his mind.
He can’t say he hasn’t.
He can’t say he cares.
Dabi wants. He wants and he wishes and he dreams.
###
He wakes to a banging on his door in the morning. The dark of his room is complete—the window covered by some ratty blanket too rough to sleep with, the overhead fan clicking with burnt out bulbs. The only source of light at all is the thin line from beneath his door and even that is broken by the constantly shifting feet of whoever dares wake him up at—
His phone tells him it’s 11:30am. Which, fair, he doesn’t usually sleep this late. He doesn’t even remember falling asleep. At some point in the night, Keigo had thrown his leg over Dabi’s waist. He extricates himself, slow and careful.
Keigo reaches for him, talons scraping against Dabi’s hand as he doesn’t quite wake. Dabi allows himself a few seconds to take in the shape of the bird on his bed.
The door bows in with the force of the visitor’s banging fist. Keigo doesn’t stir. He must not hear it. The damn bird can’t be that deep of a sleeper.
Dabi creaks open the door to reveal a golden eyed, grinning cat of a girl on the other side. A plate of pancakes and eggs is balanced rather precariously on one hand, the other still stretched out to knock again. Dabi eyes the food warily.
Toga’s breakfasts are always a sign of three things:
1) She’s worried about something. This is the best way she knows how to be nice, to reach out and prove she gives a shit. She’s holding a plate of soggy pancakes and a too-runny egg. Dabi forces himself to keep a neutral expression.
It’s not her fault that sugar makes his stomach sick. She didn’t decide to make him breakfast out of some malicious intent. He knows it. He knows it, and he refuses to hurt her over it.
2) Whatever she’s worried about is about to be a problem. She’s going to make sure of it. The little teenager is relentless when she wants to be, sharp and vicious and so fucking caring. She grins at him, eyes scrunched at the corner, hands gripping the side of the plate too tight.
“So, you kinda flipped out yesterday.” She flashes her fangs.
3) Toga has every intention of watching her recipient eat every bite, under threat, while she interrogates them. Dabi won’t be free until he has either distracted her sufficiently to get rid of the meal or she is satisfied with his answer.
Dabi glances behind him into his room where the impossible Keigo still sleeps. The covers shift, a chirp tells him his absence has been noted. It feels strange, having someone in his bed. Even if he’s not really there.
“What’s this about?” He steps outside the room and closes the door behind him. He doesn’t know why he’s being so careful. It’s not like she’ll see him. “What did I do?”
“Well, you almost set Spinner on fire yesterday,” she shoves the plate into his hands so she can count out his transgressions on her fingers. “He told us about the warehouse. And then you almost set Shiggy on fire. And shouted at everyone. And you looked like you were dying.”
She glares up at him, squinting. “Well, you still look like you’re dying.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Pancakes will help.” She pushes the plate against his chest with a finger. “Eat.”
“Right.” Dabi walks towards the kitchen, leaning against a sliver of open space amidst all the mission statements, gear, and random things Compress has marbilized. He digs around in the drawers until he finds a fork and forces himself to take a bite. “I’m fine. Spinner’s just too pushy for his own good.”
Toga hums, rocking back on her heels as she stares at him. He manages two more bites before he allows himself to slow down. A film of sugar coats his teeth. He should have brushed before coming down here. “No, you’re not. You’ve been acting really weird since—”
“Don’t fucking say it, kid.” He likes to think he’s above burning a teen. He probably is. “I don’t know why everyone wants to talk to me about the fucking bird.”
“Just saying,” Toga clears her throat, stepping back just once. She doesn’t stop talking though, pressing on even in the clearly signaled danger. “Twice says Hawks was saying something about saving him, but…”
“He had his feathers pointed at him, Toga.” They all knew how dangerous Hawks’s feather’s could be. Of course, they hadn’t known everything. None of them had been sure about their spying abilities, or how much Hawks had already told the HPSC. “If I hadn’t stepped in like I did, Twice would’ve been skewered.”
“Yeah,” Toga bites her lip, fang drawing a thin line of blood. “Maybe. Twice isn’t so sure. He says… He says he thinks that’s what’s wrong with you. That you aren’t so sure either.”
“I fucking saved his life,” Dabi snaps, fork scraping against the plate as he crushes the pancakes beneath the tines. “You’d think he’d be more fucking grateful.”
“He is!” Toga scowls. She’s always been protective of the man, always certain he’s just one step up from the perfect big brother. “We’re all worried, Dabi. You’re acting weird.”
“I said I’m fine,” his anger dissolves into exhaustion. He barely slept last night. He wants to crawl back into his bed and not move. “Do you need me for anything? Is there a mission or a… I don’t know, errand or some shit Shigaraki needs?”
“Nah,” Toga stares at him then around the room like someone’s going to come back her up. “I mean, usually you’re up and out by now, so task assignment doesn’t really come until later.”
Right. Usually, Dabi has already started prowling the streets for new recruits and information, keeping his eyes and ears open for any signs of movement from heroes and rival underground factions. Usually. Today, Dabi is going back to bed.
He takes the pancakes with him. Ignores Toga following at his heels. “Thanks for the food,” he tosses behind him, and then shuts the door before she can get a full look inside.
Keigo sits up on his bed, stretching his wings behind him. They’re intact, healthy and freshly preened. Morning, hot stuff. What’s the plan today?
He sets the pancakes on the desk against his wall. His room isn’t big. Leaving the pancakes here will fill the space with their syrupy, sticky scent for ages.
He doesn’t care.
His voice, the him that isn’t him, answers. “Like you’re not going to do what you want anyway.”
Keigo laughs, hair brushing over bared shoulders. He’s out of his compression shirt, out of all that hero garb. Dabi’s white tank top fits him loose in some places, tight in others. When Keigo looks at him he’s too sharp, already determined. Well, you can come with me if you want. Pretty sure at least one guy’s gonna need to feel those flames.
Dabi scoffs, despite himself. He answers, notes that the other voice layers over his more easily, a barely discernible echo in his room. “Oh, you’re all for burning people now? What happened to being a hero?”
I’ve always been willing to dirty my wings, Hawks’s feathers sharpen, cutting into the soft cover of Dabi’s bed. Doesn’t matter which side I’m on.
It’s sound logic. Too sound. Keigo doesn’t even seem bothered by it, like this is always the outcome the HPSC had built into him. To defect, to finish the transformation from hero to villain by simply crossing the bridge they made him build.
Dabi lays on the bed. Keigo doesn’t shift to look at him.
The other Dabi, the one who listened, must be standing somewhere over there.
Dabi wonders if he’s being haunted by two ghosts, actually. The hero whose heart burned in his own hands and the Dabi who saved Hawks.
He stays laying in his dark room as the ghost of Keigo talks and plans and follows some version of him who doesn’t exist out of the room. He closes his eyes, hearing the conversation continue like a faint, far away dream.
Something is wrong, Dabi decides. Admits, really. He won’t say it to anyone else, but he’s never been fond of deluding himself.
It’s not that Keigo is haunting him. He could ignore him, if that was the only problem.
No, it’s much worse than that.
The problem is that Dabi doesn’t want him to stop.