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“What are you doing?”
Keigo pauses. He totally doesn’t jump. Nope. “Molting?” he replies. Who knows how long Dabi’s been standing there watching him struggle.
Dabi steps further into the room. “You look like you’re in pain,” he says.
“It’s fucking itchy ,” Keigo whines. “And I can’t reach the itchiest spot.” He flicks his wings, open and shut, and a few loose feathers drift to the floor.
He can feel Dabi getting closer, and then a too-warm hand settles on the upper ridge of one wing. “Where’s it the worst, Songbird?”
As Dabi smooths one hand down Keigo’s wing, feathers come off into his hand. He drops them. Keigo makes a rumbling noise, deep in his chest. “Good?” Dabi asks.
“Towards my back,” Keigo directs. Dabi pulls his hand through the feathers. “There, right there.” He sighs. Dabi copies the placement of his hand on the other wing.
He rubs the tips of his fingers over the soft, downy feathers at the seam of wing and back through Keigo’s slitted t-shirt. Several of them come off. This time Dabi keeps them in his palm.
“What do you want me to do with these?” he asks, showing the handful of feathers over Keigo’s shoulder. Keigo points to a pile of red, so Dabi drops them there. He focuses on Keigo’s left wing, and his thumb catches on a pin. “What’s this?” He flicks it.
Keigo winces. “It’s a new feather growing in. It’s fucking sensitive, asshole.”
“Sorry, Birdie.” Dabi doesn’t sound sorry. “Want me to keep scratching?”
The sound Keigo makes when Dabi presses his fingers back into the base of his wings borders on pornographic.
“That good, huh?” Dabi teases. He’s massaging more than scratching at this point, working his way out towards where the wing looks the least ragged—probably the end of Keigo’s reach.
“Shut up,” Keigo retorts, but there’s no malice behind it. “You try being itchy where you can’t reach for almost a wholeass week.”
“Nah,” Dabi says, briefly pulling one hand away to scratch firmly between Keigo’s shoulder blades.
Keigo melts back against him and makes a chattery, clicking noise Dabi’s never heard out of him.
It must be on purpose that he’s never heard it, because Keigo tenses up, wings twitching, and covers his mouth.
“Relax.” Dabi thumbs a loose feather away. “I’m not gonna tell anybody you make weirdo chirpy noises.”
Keigo tips his head back to try to look at him, and Dabi sees more of those weird new feathers sticking out of his bangs. “Thanks,” Keigo deadpans.
There’s little bits of vibrant red poking out of these ones in his hair, and Dabi can’t help but touch one. “These sensitive too?” he asks.
“Meh.” Keigo shrugs. “I think those are just ready to be opened.”
“How do I do that?” Dabi lets go of Keigo’s wing and barely resists the urge to bury both hands into golden hair. The staples catch easily, after all.
“Um…” Keigo’s ears turn pink. “You just…” He makes a weird pinching motion. Dabi does his best to copy it and watches in fascination. The shell flakes apart as he scratches against it. “Yeah,” Keigo says. “But I can do that myself, so…”
His voice has gone strangely quiet. Dabi tugs on a lock of hair. “What’s with that tone, eh? Going shy on me?” Keigo’s wings twitch again, little shivering flutters that knock the brand new feathers together in a weird muffled rattle.
“No, uh, I just… normally have to do this by myself?” he admits. “I was so close to just standing in the shower for a week. Making it as hot as I could stand it, y’know. The steam...”
“And then I came along?” Dabi guesses.
Keigo swallows hard and rubs a finger under his nose. “It was either do it alone or get hosed down with icy water. Before.”
Dabi pinches hard on a pin sheath and Keigo yelps. “My bad,” Dabi says, smoothing gentle fingers over it. “I just wanna know who—”
“Never mind,” Keigo interrupts. “It doesn’t matter. Molting is just… weird. It’s weird. But my feathers only live for so long, y’know?”
After that, the two fall quiet. Dabi scratches at more of the pin feathers, gently freeing them up. The more Keigo relaxes under his hands, the more Dabi lingers on the crest of feathers in his hair. He starts smoothing out the barbs, straightening out how they lay against his hair, and then eventually just carding his fingers through, looking for more feathers.
“How else can I help?” Dabi finds himself asking.
Keigo makes a noise, sleepy and thoughtful. “Growing all new feathers takes a lot of energy,” he says.
“I bet,” Dabi drawls. He keeps his fingers in Keigo’s hair, careful of the staples across his wrist. He scratches at Keigo’s scalp and gets treated to the clicking chirp again. This time Keigo doesn’t try to hide it, and Dabi laughs softly. He gives another tug to a lock of blond bangs. “How about you take one of them showers you said helped, but maybe not a week long? I can get you a snack or somethin’.”
All of Keigo’s weight is resting on Dabi. “Comfy,” he says. Dabi slides his arms around him and props his chin on Keigo’s head, slotting easily between his wings.
“I can and will make you get off me, Songbird,” he threatens. Keigo makes a dismissive noise, so Dabi jabs a finger into his side, and then his ribcage. Keigo jumps. His wings flare automatically and Dabi gets slapped by both of them.
“Okay!” Keigo hollers. “I’ll go!”
He shuts himself in the en-suite bathroom all the bedrooms in their stupid swanky new hideout have, and Dabi waits until he hears the shower running before leaving.
When Keigo comes out, towel around his shoulders, he stops dead.
Dabi’s turned the bed into a… nest of blankets and pillows. He had to have taken them from as many rooms as he could find them in, dragged them all back here, and arranged them in a ring with a divot in the middle on his bed.
Keigo’s heart beats double time in his chest.
Dabi grins at him, all narrowed eyes and the barest hints of it around his mouth, but Keigo sees it for what it is and reads it as being as wide and smirky as Dabi probably wants it to be.
“Well?” Dabi gestures from the middle of it. “Get in here. You said molting took too much energy.”
Keigo takes one hesitant step, and then another, and then he’s using his wings to propel him forward with a force Dabi clearly doesn’t expect, given how the air wheezes out of him when Keigo lands on him.
He laughs underneath Keigo, breathless and squeaky, and Keigo falls in love a little bit more.
But—the thought that he’s got any sort of feelings for this villain past vague ‘cooperation is required so play nice’ type feelings…
Keigo reorients himself in the pillow-and-blanket nest, shoving a wing up like a feathery red wall between them.
“Hey.” Dabi prods at the ridge of the wing. “You good?” he asks. Keigo nods. “Tired?” Dabi guesses. That gives Keigo an easy out. He nods again. “Hungry?” At this point, Keigo wants to be annoyed; Dabi just keeps pushing . He shrugs. “Okay, Birdbrain. Get some rest. Want me to stay?”
Yes, Keigo thinks, a bit desperately. God yes, please stay.
“Do whatever,” he says instead, and falls asleep.
Dabi chooses to stay, Keigo learns. He also learns that Dabi wears contact lenses, and that he’s been asleep long enough that Dabi left, took them out, and came back not only with tortoiseshell rimmed glasses but a thick paperback as well.
“Hey, sleeping beauty,” he says when he notices Keigo’s awake. “You hungry yet?”
It takes a minute or two for Keigo’s brain to connect with his mouth. “Glasses,” he says smartly.
“Yeah,” Dabi replies, more amused than annoyed. His eyebrows raise over the frames, and the way his jaw is working it looks like he’s biting one of the staples on the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. “I use them for seeing.”
Keigo, who’d been in the process of sitting up, lets himself flop back over. “Okay, smartass,” he says. Dabi laughs again, and Keigo thinks he could record this and listen to it on loop: when he’s not breathless from being tackled, it’s a creaky, wheezy noise, almost like Dabi isn’t used to doing it.
In all fairness, he probably isn’t.
“Seriously, Hawks,” Dabi says. “You hungry? I raided the fridge. Turns out someone was planning on cooking wagyu. Not anymore.” On the bedside table next to him is a foam tray with strips of raw meat, still shrinkwrapped but probably defrosted enough for him to peel the plastic away and just dig in.
Keigo stares for probably a beat too long. “What, not good enough for you?” Dabi sounds offended.
“No, I…” This has to be courting. And if it’s not, Dabi has to be fucking with him. Wagyu is a damn expensive cut of meat.
But Dabi touches him way too much for it to be fake, right? He reaches for the meat. Behind him, Dabi turns a page in his book. “What are you reading?” Keigo asks, peeling back the plastic wrap. The meat still smells metallic and almost bloody, and it makes Keigo’s mouth water.
“Y’know, I don’t really know,” Dabi responds. “I think it’s part of a series. It looked cool, so I picked it up when I was out the other day.”
The still-chilly meat all but melts the second it hits Keigo’s tongue, and he has to restrain himself so all he does is wiggle a little at how good it is. He hums his appreciation and picks up another piece. “Read me some,” he says.
He expects the annoyed noise Dabi makes, and can almost hear him roll his eyes, but his wings flutter in surprise when Dabi opens his mouth.
“ He had enormous destructive power, just as his father had had—but he didn’t use that power the way his father had done. Truly, he would rather not use it at all. But he chose to, so that he might stop other people from using power in even worse ways.
His power was his burden. He accepted it.
And he was nothing like his father. Neither were Garan and Clara; neither, really, was Nash. Not all sons were like their fathers. A son chose the man he would be.
Not all daughters were like their fathers. A daughter monster chose the monster she would be.
Fire looked into her own face. The beautiful vision blurred suddenly behind her own tears. She blinked the tears away. ‘I’ve been afraid of being Cansrel,’ she said aloud to her own reflection. ‘But I’m not Cansrel.’
At her elbow, Musa said blandly, ‘Any one of us could have told you that, Lady.’
Fire looked at the captain of her guard and laughed, because she wasn’t Cansrel—she wasn’t anyone but herself. ”
Dabi cuts himself off with a cough and clears his throat. Keigo stares, frozen, with meat halfway to his mouth, dripping off the ends of his fingers. “What?” Dabi demands, brows furrowing behind his glasses. “Never heard me talk before?”
Slowly, Keigo lowers the strip of meat. “No, uh, you just… read out loud well.” He would have been entirely content to let Dabi keep reading, if he’d just kept going.
“You’re dripping your meat juices everywhere,” Dabi points out, abruptly changing the subject.
“This is my bed ,” Keigo replies.
“Not all of it!” Dabi points out, gesturing to the nest.
Keigo hunches over the tray and forces himself to pretend he doesn’t see Dabi watching him eat raw meat like a fucking predator bird with this weird fondness he might be imagining.
He also shoves down the urge to ask Dabi what he’s doing , first by helping him groom his wings and his hair, and then by making him a nest, and now by bringing him food? Not to mention the reading thing? Dabi has to know what he’s doing. He’s been doing everything Keigo has to stop himself from doing in return.
The meat goes down fast. He must have been hungrier than he thought. It startles him when his fingers scrape against damp, empty styrofoam. “Get enough?” Dabi asks. Self-consciously, Keigo straightens from his hunched position and wipes the underside of his chin free from beef juice , ugh.
“Yeah, uh,” Keigo stammers, “was good.” He sighs. “After this molting is all over I have to go back to my other job for a few days.”
“Sounds about right. Shigaraki wants me to get back to work too. He says I’ve been too lazy.” Dabi adjusts his glasses on his nose and flippantly turns a page in his book. “I’ve been working harder than everyone but you, little bird.”
Little bird. As simple as the nickname is, Keigo has to fight to keep his feathers from happily fluffing up. They’re already starting to itch again, and he doesn’t want to accelerate that feeling.
He settles back into the nest and drifts off again to the soft sound of Dabi breathing and the sound of his pages turning.
—
The next time they see each other, Dabi knows something is off.
Hawks still smiles as Dabi lists off info for his next target, sure, but there are small indentations across his cheekbones, and along his neck, and his eyes have this weird glossed over look to them.
And then Dabi notices the crest Hawks had been happily preening when he left is gone. He points to his own head and arches an eyebrow, and when Hawks waves dismissively, Dabi's eyes zero in on red, irritated marks poking out under the cuffs of his gloves.
"What the hell is that?" He grabs at Hawks' wrist.
Hawks jerks his arm back. "It's nothing. I saw my personal stylist today." He doesn't sound as upset as Dabi thinks he should.
"Does your personal stylist chain you down to do their work?" he spits, anger flaring where Hawks' apparently won't.
"Well, yeah." Hawks sounds annoyed. "Plucking live feathers hurts when my quirk can't release them." His chin quivers and his cheeks go blotchy like tears are about to fall but nothing happens. It’s almost as if he’s doing his best to hold it back.
“And you just let them ?” Dabi demands. “What, did they muzzle you, too?” He intends it to be for shock factor, something to goad Hawks into expressing something—anything other than barely-there hints at emotion—but he has to hold back quite literal fiery rage when Hawks just… touches one of the marks on his cheek.
“Well, not at first, no. But then I bit someone when I was twelve. You’d think after eleven years they’d forget.” His voice wobbles, too, and fuck , Dabi wishes Hawks would just fucking cry already.
For his own goddamn sanity’s sake. “That’s messed up,” Dabi forces his tone casual, swallows back the anger rising in his throat. “You’re allowed to be upset, y’know, right?”
Another prod at making him feel something.
“I know.” Hawks’ eyes are still kind of glassed over. “I am upset,” he says.
“Bullshit.” Dabi clenches his fists. “I’m going out on a limb here, Songbird, but… Heroes cry too. It took me a while to relearn that, I guess, after hearing it for so long from my shitty old man, but you’re allowed to cry.” It’s a low blow; bringing up his past. He deliberately avoids it for a reason, and he knows Hawks is curious. Everyone is.
“I know,” Hawks says again. “Nobody’s ever told me I shouldn’t.”
Dabi rolls his eyes. “Oh, good. So this is high and mighty hero shit, huh,” he drawls. Something in Hawks’ face closes off.
“Sure,” Hawks replies. His tone’s gone flat. At least it isn’t pretending he’s fine. “Let’s go with that. You have the thumb drive, right?” He winces, a bit, as he flicks his flight goggles down from the top of his head and the fact that he’d had his crest ripped out of his head surges to the forefront of Dabi’s mind and makes him angry all over again.
“Yeah, got it. You know not to call me.”
The eyeroll he gets is legendary. “As usual. Is Toga still insisting on a pizza night?” Now he’s crouched, positioning himself to take off, and back to pretending everything is normal.
“...Yeah,” Dabi says. “She was talking about Thursday. Kurogiri figured out you ate the wagyu last week and is promising to get more.”
It’s always fascinating to watch the way those wings work, so Dabi stares as Hawks jumps and forces the wings down as he hits the peak. “I never say no to free food. See ya Thursday, then, Sparkles.” Like normal, Hawks offers a wink over his shoulder, fully expecting Dabi to be bristling at the nickname, but falters when he notices Dabi is just… looking at him.
There’s a beat, maybe two, of an awkward silence, and then Hawks leaves.
—
The week leading up to Toga’s ‘pizza night’ involves a lot of bullshit, in Keigo’s opinion. That stupid single night is the only thing keeping him going.
It’s all too much paperwork from the Commission, lectures on keeping himself presentable because they didn’t like having to hold him down and pluck his crest on Monday. Not like they have to do it every time new feathers grow in. At least they’d managed to get him in after the blood flow to the feathers had stopped, because that would have been a shitshow—showing up to his meeting with Dabi with blood soaking into the roots of his hair.
After the way he acted just seeing the marks from the cuffs and the muzzle, Keigo doesn’t want to think about how much worse it would have been if he’d bled.
What was Dabi on , Keigo wonders. Telling him that it’s okay for heroes to cry.
He would if he could.
He’d been doing his version of crying regardless, when they’d met up, and something about it had made Dabi weirdly mad.
Kurogiri definitely better have that wagyu beef Dabi said he promised.
Wagyu beef is what he’s thinking of when he enters the building, and it’s what he’s thinking of when he waits for an impromptu meeting with his handler. He’d hoped that they’d let him go handler-free when he went pro and started his own agency, but the Commission had a long running streak of proving him wrong about things he hoped for.
His handler is sitting behind her desk when she calls him into her office, and Keigo immediately knows that he’s in deep shit. She’s usually standing in front of her desk, trying to make herself look more welcoming. “Hawks,” she says, sickly sweet and simmering fury.
And Keigo knows that tone. He knows that he’s in deeper shit than he originally thought.
“Tell me why our PR department had to spend most of this week paying off tabloids because of you?” she asks.
Panicked and trying to hide it, Keigo glances at the smooth manila folder on her desk and can’t help but think of the way Shigaraki drinks coffee—mostly cream and sugar. He can’t think of anything he’s done that would have his handler steepling her fingers in front of her face like she is and glaring him down like one wrong move and he’ll catch fire like dry tinder.
That’s not her Quirk. Her Quirk is Ball And Chain, and she uses it to lock him in place so he can’t avoid her lectures. But he shuffles a foot, forward and back, and swallows hard when he realizes she’s not using it on him . That somehow makes this entire scenario worse.
“Well?” she demands.
Keigo wishes that her voice wasn’t high and simpering. He wishes that her voice was deeper and more gravelly and more horror-movie scary than it is right now. Maybe then he’d be allowed to be afraid of her. “I, uh.” He has to say something. But he doesn’t know what he did .
She slides the folder across her desk. “Come take a look.”
Keigo takes the six steps across her office and feels like he’s walking towards his death sentence.
The second he stops in front of her desk, he feels her Quirk clamp down on his left ankle. It’s always his left ankle. The one he broke two years ago while fighting a villain and they had to keep him down for two months—which they always said was far too long.
“Hawks, I want you to tell me—” She flicks the folder open with her pointer finger. “Why I had to buy thirty-nine pictures of you from paparazzi. And I want you to tell me why each and every one of them cost me nearly seven figures.”
Keigo wants to die on the spot. The top picture makes ice drop down his spine. He can’t breathe.
In the picture, he’s perched— perched , not sitting—on a half wall in a back alley of Naruhata with an entire raw flank steak clutched in his hands. It’s clear he’s eating it. It’s very, very clear he’s eating it. Myoglobin coats his chin and is dripping down his neck, and covers his hands where his shamefully long talons grip at the beef.
It looks bloody. It looks gruesome.
It looks humiliating .
He has to answer her, and he’s already taken too long given the tightening squeeze on his ankle. “I was hungry,” he mumbles.
“And that makes it okay to eat uncooked meat like this?” she asks, deceptively calm. She flips through the pictures slow enough to let— make —him look at every single one, and every single one is similar: Him perched on that wall, ripping into raw flank steak like an animal, eating sloppily and licking his fingers like nobody could see him.
Keigo had been absolutely sure nobody could before he’d torn open that butcher’s paper. He bites hard on the inside of his cheek to keep his chin from quivering.
“Not only that,” his handler continues, and Keigo feels his eyes well with tears that won’t—can’t—fall. Then his handler interrupts herself. “Hawks, look me in the eye,” she demands. He looks up.
He hates her expression. She’s smiling, but her eyes are filled with frustration. “Not only that,” she repeats, “But I’d believed we trained you out of wanting raw meat like that.”
“It’s—” His voice breaks, and he stops to clear his throat. “It’s the first time in a long time I gave in,” he lies. She makes a noise that sounds like she knows he lied, and it takes every ounce of self-control that his wings don’t react and answer for him by flaring out in defense.
She believes him. Or at least he thinks she does, because she picks something else to push into his face. “This is nothing to cry over, darling,” she coos. “Just a reminder to cook your food and make sure you sit on your bottom next time.”
Keigo realizes he’s trembling when she finally lets him free of her Quirk and clenches his fists tight to make sure she doesn’t pick up on that too; swapping to treating him like a child when she noticed his teary eyes is bad enough. His ankle throbs. Her grip had almost been too tight and there’s no doubt she knows that.
“ Don’t let this happen again,” she says, gathering the pictures back into the folder, and then she’s shooing him out of her office with a dismissive hand. As he shuts the door behind him, he hears her paper shredder running.
He knows he’ll just get dragged back into her office if he lets anyone else know that their meeting had just been a scolding session, so he takes a moment to school his face into a smile. Keigo tries his hardest to blink the meager tears out of his eyes, but everything stays blurry at the edges.
At least Toga’s ‘pizza night’ is tonight. Keigo honestly isn’t even sure they’re getting actual pizza, but it’s better than trying to do anything else after this shit soup meeting.
He spends the trek to the hideout not only making sure he isn’t followed but trying to make sure he doesn’t look as upset as he feels. Dabi might act weird again. But he can’t get those stupid, weird, half-formed tears to fall or go away. Not even flying as high as he can helps. It just makes him cold.
Keigo’s eyes are still weird and teary, but thankfully Toga doesn’t mention that when he makes himself at home in the living room of their stupid mansion hideout and peels off his gloves. She also doesn’t offer him a dead bird—although she’s only ever done that once. Spinner doesn’t look up from his game when he comes in. Then again, he doesn’t even look up when Shigaraki threatens to dust him for missing whatever the collectible is.
So Keigo spaces out.
There’s nothing at this point to stop him from thinking about how humiliating it was to get caught eating raw beef by a paparazzo or his handler’s lecture afterwards.
In fact, he gets so absorbed in his own thoughts that he doesn’t notice his lip wobbling like a child’s until Dabi settles in next to him and slings a warm arm around his shoulders. “You’re making that face again,” Dabi says.
“What face?” Keigo replies. He wants it to sound sharp and snappy but it comes out choked and upset. “Never mind,” he sighs.
Dabi shoves a styrofoam tray under his nose. “Will a snack help you feel better?” It’s more wagyu beef—the same treat he’s been thinking about all day.
Instead of making his mouth water, though, he thinks on his meeting with his handler and his stomach curdles. “I’m not hungry,” he says.
“Tell that to your grabby little fingers,” Dabi says, and—and he’s right. Keigo’s grabbed onto the styrofoam and raptored. He doesn’t think he could let go if he wanted to right now. Dabi rubs gently at his shoulders. “You look like you’re trying not to cry.” He drops his voice to a whisper. “You know it’s okay, right? I told you last time.”
“Yes, thank you,” Keigo hisses. “I know it’s okay.” He glares at his hands, willing them to loosen up on the styrofoam. His fingers are starting to cramp up.
“Don’t dust my PS4!” Spinner shrieks. Keigo’s fingers tighten in response to the sudden shout and he looks up in time to see Spinner straining to keep the controller out of Shigaraki’s waving hands. He tracks the movement.
Something drips down Keigo’s wrist, and a warm thumb smears it away. “You broke the styrofoam,” Dabi says. His voice is weirdly soft, and Keigo wants to love the way it sounds but after the meeting with his handler it just sounds patronising.
“I wouldn’t have to get rid of it if you’d get all of the pieces!” Shigaraki reaches further for the controller, but Spinner’s arms are just long enough to keep it out of reach.
“They aren’t required for story progression!” Something clatters as Spinner falls over and Shigaraki surges to his feet.
“They are if you want your story to progress!” As Shigaraki snatches the controller away, pinkies out, and directs Spinner’s character back towards the missed collectibles, Spinner devolves into shouting about unfairness and long arms.
It’s apparently enough of a distraction for his hands to relax. So Keigo peels his talons out of the styrofoam and stands to relocate to the kitchen. Dabi lets him, thank fuck, and doesn’t try any more of that it’s okay to cry shit.
Obviously Dabi doesn’t know that Keigo can’t cry. That hasn’t bothered Keigo much at all, really. Nobody needed to know that he can’t; it’s never been relevant, and it always makes people think he’s tougher than he is.
But Dabi thinks he’s holding back. And it bothers him.
Unfortunately, before he has more time to think on it, Toga announces her return by kicking in the door. She’d apparently left while Keigo had been spaced out and actually gotten pizza .
When he puts his gloves back on later, he finds a shiny gold ear cuff in the thumb of one and a pair of silver earrings connected by a chain in the pinky.
—
Seventeen days later, a building comes down while Keigo’s on patrol. Patrol for the Hero Safety Commission. Greeting civilians like he’s told and talking to them like close friends.
The explosion rocks the entire city block and Keigo just isn’t fast enough .
Six injured, two dead.
The ‘two dead’ is the worst part, because they were a mother and child pair. And it’s his fault they aren’t still here. It’s Keigo’s fault they weren’t evacuated quickly enough.
It turns out that the explosion itself wasn’t even a villain attack; just a mistimed demolition on a building set to come down anyways. It’d gone off far too early and everyone off site panicked. The six injured had been construction workers and experts on the scene.
But, as Keigo stands in his handler’s office, sweaty and dirty and exhausted, she chews him out for not being fast enough—like he didn’t already know that and hate himself for it—and for letting harm come to civilians at all, villain or not.
If he could cry, he thinks viciously, if he could cry .
There’s a scrape on his forehead that he’s not entirely sure where it came from, and a drop of sweat stings sharp as it rolls across it. Keigo wants to interrupt his handler’s lecture. He wants to scream in her face that he did his best and tried his hardest, but it’s hard to keep someone alive when they’re already crushed by debris.
He’d had to settle for digging out bodies.
Only two, but the point still stands.
She wouldn’t care anyways. His handler is just concerned about him staying where he is for their talk until she dismisses him and sits down hard at her desk. He doesn’t bother trying to smile as he leaves her office this time. He’s already disgusting; smiling won’t make him clean and visibly a hero.
Keigo doesn’t have enough feathers to fly to his meeting with the League. The walk is long and quiet despite Keigo’s choking sobs. He failed . He wasn’t good enough.
He cries—but no tears come, of course they don't, they can't—the entire way to the stupidly dusty warehouse. He doesn’t even bother collecting himself as he slides away the boards across the door and wiggles his way inside.
Mr. Compress and Toga look at him as he sits against a box, but don’t say anything about his dirty appearance or shuddering breaths. In fact, nobody even talks to him until Dabi arrives, kicking in an upper window and then dropping down from the metal catwalk above them.
That’s got to be terrible for his knees, Keigo thinks hysterically.
“What’s up with Birdie?” Dabi asks Toga, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at Keigo. Toga shrugs, giving nothing more than a bewildered look.
More tears spring up as Dabi approaches him, and he blurs at the edges as he squats in front of Keigo. “What’s going on?” he asks.
Keigo swallows hard. “Th—there, uh, was a building demolition at the wrong time in the city earlier,” he chokes out. “And I wasn’t fast enough.” His voice breaks and he trails off with an awkward whimper.
“Hey, hey.” Dabi’s voice is much gentler than the fury of his handler’s. “It’s okay, little bird,” he soothes, cupping Keigo’s face in both hands. The staples at the heels of his hands are points of ice against Keigo’s jaw despite Dabi’s palms being broad and warm.
Dabi’s thumbs brush away the dust from crumbled bricks underneath Keigo’s eyes, and his own eyes narrow when they come back dry. “You can cry,” Dabi says.
“I can’t,” Keigo says.
“You can ,” Dabi insists.
And Keigo realizes, not for the first time, that Dabi doesn’t know he physically cannot do anything but tear up. “I can’t ,” he sobs.
Dabi’s hands come away from his face. “So this is more high and mighty hero shit—” he starts, angry. Keigo’s hands curl into his hair.
“I’m sorry ,” comes bubbling out of Keigo’s mouth. “I literally can’t cry. I know it’s weird, I’m sorry, it’s just part of my Quirk. Birds only make enough tears to keep their eyes wet when flying and that means me, and I know you don’t like it —”
“Whoa, whoa,” Dabi interrupts, “When did I say I don’t like it—”
“You keep trying to make me cry!” Keigo wails. “I know it’s okay, and I know I can, and you keep telling me I can, but I’ve never been told I shouldn’t !” Keigo can’t stop tugging at his own hair, either, and he’s only vaguely aware of Dabi sitting back on his heels, and then on his ass, completely level with Keigo.
“I didn’t know ,” Dabi starts, hesitant. “I was just trying to get you not to hide this shit.”
Keigo knows. He’s far too aware of how pushy Dabi’s been about this. He yanks his hands out of his hair and several strands come out between his fingers, which are locked into the curve of a tight, raptoring grip. “I’ve never hid my emotions,” he grinds out, making himself look at Dabi.
Dabi looks surprised. Way more surprised than Keigo’s ever seen him. "I've always tried, and I know that you don't like it—"
"Wait, I," Dabi tries. Keigo shakes his head. "I didn't mean to—to make you feel bad. I just thought—"
"High and mighty hero shit," Keigo parrots his own words back to him. "Right." He pushes himself up to standing. “Y’know what, I think I’m gonna skip this meeting and go home. I can’t do this right now. Tell Shigaraki I’m sorry.”
He squeezes himself out the door again and walks to his apartment.
—
Dabi doesn’t see hide nor hair nor feather of Hawks for six days.
Which… is good, in a way, because Dabi has no idea how to respond to Hawks being so upset he rips out his own hair. And no idea how to respond to Hawks telling him that he can’t cry, and that he thought Dabi didn’t like it.
But it’s also bad because Dabi gets six days to work himself into a frenzy over what to do. He hasn’t apologized to anyone in years , but he wants to apologize to Hawks. He can’t stand seeing that scrunched up, glassy eyed, flushed face again, now that he knows it’s the hero-deserter’s way of crying and not holding back like he originally thought.
The only way Dabi can think of to apologize is by giving him stuff. The memories are blurry, but he remembers getting toys and extra servings of dinners shoved at him by his youngest two siblings when their father wasn’t looking. Especially on days where he came home from school only to be trained on a quirk that he isn’t built to use and get beaten when he complained of it hurting.
It still does hurt, using his Quirk, but all that taught him was how to hide it and how to use it in quick enough blasts that it doesn’t particularly matter how badly it hurts.
Dabi tries to think of the things Hawks likes. Too much processed food is a no-go; he’s seen the stomach aches, but the bird likes takoyaki, tamagoyaki, raw meat, finger foods, things that let him do his birdy instinct thing. The hunching and perching that Dabi thinks is more endearing than it should be.
More endearing than how Hawks treats it—like it’s shameful. He always gets weirdly flustered when he catches Dabi looking at him at group meals. Not that Dabi watches him eat. That’s a little on the weird side.
So Dabi will get him snack type things. Smaller things.
Hawks likes… blankets, and pillows, and more than once Toga has coaxed him into taking a scarf he doesn’t need because she saw him looking at it. He’s watched Hawks get the scarf and sling it around his neck like a medal, and then swagger over to Dabi only to say, “I’m not even cold. It’s just as soft as it looked.”
If Dabi was the kind of guy to make lists, he’d have a really sad small one by now.
So he just goes with what he’s got.
He leaves a blanket, still curled into a tight twist in its packaging, on Hawks’ bed in the hideout and finds out that the other man is there but avoiding him when he comes back with another and finds a corner of the first poking out from under the top blanket on the bed.
Dabi leaves a total of four blankets, two pillows, six scarves, and one of his hoodies in Hawks’ bedroom.
He takes to bringing snacks to their meetings, and it bothers him at every single one that Hawks claims he isn’t hungry and pastes on the fakest of smiles Dabi’s ever seen. And he’s seen a lot of fake smiles.
Ten days after the first blanket and six days after the warehouse meeting, Dabi buys—not steals, buys —a tray of takoyaki. He brings it to the meeting point, balanced carefully on one hand.
Hawks lands minutes later, fake smile in place, sees the takoyaki, and drops into a scowl. “What’s this?” he asks, hesitant.
“A snack,” Dabi replies. “Am I not allowed to feed you? You can’t say you aren’t hungry, it’s lunch time and you’re due a break.”
Hawks pushes his flight goggles up on top of his head. “I’m not hungry.” He bites the inside of his cheek, very visibly annoyed. What crawled inside him and died?
Yeah, yeah. Dabi rolls his eyes. “Sure you aren’t. Take at least one.” He holds out the tray. It’s almost slow motion, the way Hawks reaches out towards it. Dabi almost wants to admit success—
And then Hawks slaps the tray out of his hand. “Stop,” he snarls. “Stop giving me things.”
"Shit!" Dabi exclaims. "Fucking christ, Birdbrain, I actually paid for that!" He hadn't missed that the cuff on the curve of his ear is still the old one, titanium silver glinting against golden hair in the winter sunlight, and not gold like he'd stolen from the jewelry store six blocks away from their hideout.
The one he’d snuck into Hawks’ glove at Toga’s pizza night.
"I don't care whether you paid for it, honestly," Hawks replies, voice venomous. "I just need you to fucking stop."
"What is your problem ?" Dabi spits between gritted teeth. "I've been trying to make—"
"Yeah," Hawks interrupts, feathers on his wings fluffing out in fury. "Make fun of me? Make fun of the stupid bird instincts I can't control? First the... the fucking crying thing and now this? This fake courting shit is really driving me up the wall, you know."
"The..." Dabi stares between him and the takoyaki on the ground. “The what ?” Hawks is breathing hard, red-faced and so fluffed out even his hair is starting to stand on end, tiny newly-grown crest pushing his bangs from their slicked back style into something almost straight vertical.
“Fake courting!” Hawks shrills. “The food, the gifts, the nesting material ! Don’t think you’re slick enough to get away with sneaking me blankets. Or the stupid hoodie.”
“You kept them,” Dabi points out.
“They’re soft,” Hawks snaps. “Of course I did. But it doesn’t matter! You're driving me insane and I hate you so much right now," Hawks hisses. "I don't give a flying fuck about any fucking information you have for me until you get your head out of your ass and treat me like normal."
"I was just trying to make you feel better!" Dabi can't help the way his voice ratchets up in volume, and he hates the way Hawks' rises over him.
"WELL, YOU DIDN'T!" Hawks yells—actually yells, hard enough his voice breaks—and then freezes, like he's just realized what he's done. "Never mind." His volume's dropped to a mutter. "Never fucking mind." And then he's turning on his heel and flicking his flight goggles down to leave again.
“Wait.” The gears in his head are turning at top speed. "Fucking—" Dabi surges forward, grabbing at the strap of Hawks' shoulder bag. "Wait a fucking second," he begs as he gets a hand around the canvas, and hates himself for the way it sounds; sad and desperate and hurt.
Hawks stops. "What," he says, voice flat. "What now." He doesn't sound upset anymore—just... tired.
"Both of us are mixing this up. I'm not trying to make fun of you for shit," Dabi says. "But you think I am. Because I'm giving you gifts and shit. And the birdy part of you thinks I’m trying to get with you."
Hawks rolls his eyes over his shoulder and snatches his shoulder bag out of Dabi's grip. "Just let me go ," he says. And he sounds just as desperate as Dabi had. "I don't wanna talk about this right now. I don't wanna talk about anything. I just wanna go home ."
His voice wobbles, and his face is doing that thing where it scrunches up and his eyes go glossy but he doesn't cry because he can't, and Dabi hurts.
This is his fault . This is the first time in however many years that Dabi actually feels remorse about his choice in actions.
Yet, despite being free from his grip, Hawks doesn't move.
"I'm sorry," Dabi blurts out. The words taste weird and heavy on his tongue. "I'm sorry I made you think I was being a fuckhead. I wasn't, I never was. I didn't know how giving you shit would look to you. But you said it was courting shit, right?"
Hawks says nothing, but the silence and the way his wings shift against each other speak for him.
"I'll stop giving you stuff. I swear. I just... I want things back to normal too, y'know?" Dabi's voice has that weird desperate sad tone again. He hates it just as much as the first time.
Hawks watches Dabi carefully for a moment. It’s a really, really long moment. "You really weren't making fun of me?" His voice is so cautious, and so small, and Dabi feels like the skin on his chest is splitting open. Funny, because it’s in a spot where he isn’t stapled to Hell and back.
“No,” he rasps. “Never.”
It occurs to him, then—in a way that’s so inelegant and clumsy that he feels like he’s been hit in the face with one of Toga’s dead birds—that he wouldn’t mind courting Hawks like he thinks Dabi’s been.
There’s another one of those really, really long moments, and then Hawks takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, turning back around. “Let’s discuss actual work shit.”
Dabi gives him the information, finally, and they're getting ready to part ways on better terms than the last times either of them have left.
And Dabi, feeling either very brave of very stupid, blurts out, "If I'd court you for real I'd start with something more meaningful than stupid stolen trinkets. I mean, I'd give you those, too, but..."
Hawks stops, crouched to launch himself into the air, and straightens slowly. "Oh?" he responds, honestly curious. "What's more meaningful than stupid stolen trinkets ?"
"My name," Dabi says. He feels a bit lightheaded, heart pounding in his throat. "I'd tell you my name."
Hawks tilts his head, the motion jerky and instinctively birdlike in his curiosity. "Really?"
And then, before he can take it back, "It's Touya ," comes out of Dabi's mouth. Just like the last time he used it, it tastes like ash and metal and burning skin.
Hawks’ eyebrows shoot up, and his eyes go wide, and his mouth drops into a little o of surprise. Dabi meets his eyes, and squares his shoulders, and then Hawks breathes out, “Mine’s Keigo,” so softly Dabi almost misses it.
Dabi hums thoughtfully. “I like Songbird better,” he says, reaching out to prod at Hawks’— Keigo’s —face to show he’s joking. He sobers. “Keigo’s a good name. Pretty solid. You should use it more. Especially when you’re not being a Hero.”
Keigo’s cheeks turn pink and Dabi’s heart thuds in his chest. Yeah, he could get used to this.
Rather than hang around and make a fool of himself, Dabi turns on his heel. He makes it a point to step on some of the takoyaki as he leaves their meeting spot and smiles to himself when Keigo’s annoyed noise floats down from the sky.