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“Nice place,” Hawks remarks.
“Shut up.”
The building they’ve stopped in front of looks like it’s about a year of two away from complete structural collapse. Paint is peeling, bricks are missing, and as Hawks squints towards the night sky, he notices that there may or may not be a gaping hole in the roof. The surroundings aren’t much better. Under their feet, weeds are growing out of the cracks in the pavement. Most of the windows in the buildings across the street have been blown out entirely.
“Is this where you take me to off me once and for all?” Hawks asks. Somewhere in the local and presumably abandoned playground, the wind makes the chain of a swing creak.
“Wouldn’t it just have been easier to leave you on the floor to bleed out?” Dabi says. “Come on.”
They climb two flights of worn down stairs in silence, Hawks careful not to jostle his arm too much. Blood is slowly running down the inside of his sleeve, making the padded material stick uncomfortably to his skin.
Dabi stops in front of an unassuming door at the end of the corridor, fiddling with some keys in his pocket. There are three locks on the door, Hawks notices. The sign of a true paranoid. At least it doesn’t have that awful eye-scanning device that sits in the lobby of Hawks’ own apartment building. That thing is the main reason he’ll always enter through the balcony.
Dabi unlocks the middle lock, then the upper one, and the lower. Hawks is ushered in with an impatient shove, and then Dabi is quickly locking the door from the inside and sliding the security chain into place with a click.
When Dabi said he knew a place to crash at, Hawks had expected one of the dingy hideouts the League sometimes used for regrouping or recruitment meetings. Instead, he steps into a cramped little hallway with a worn leather jacket on a hook and heavy, black boots thrown in a corner. Realisation sinks in slowly.
“Is this your apartment?” Hawks asks, incredulous.
“It was closest,” is the only reply he gets.
Hawks kicks his sneakers off and wanders into the apartment, leaving Dabi behind in the hallway.
It’s just a single room, with barely any furniture in it. A mattress shoved haphazardly into a corner, an armchair with the filling spilling out though tears in the back. It looks as if it’s fifty years old, and was dug out of a dumpster. Most likely, it was. The kitchen is not so much a kitchen as a cramped counter with a sink and a rusty boiling plate on top. No kitchen table, no chairs. Just a large, antique-looking rug thrown over the worn floor, threadbare and faded.
It’s not messy though, Hawks notices, not enough stuff in here to create much of a mess.
He thinks of his own place, of the piles of gifted clothes and fan mail in every corner, piling on the chairs and tables. Merchandise sent to him from all kinds of brands hoping for an endorsement from the number two hero. He barely ever had time to look through it all, mostly just handed it off to his admin staff to do with whatever they pleased. It’s all just collecting dust these days.
This place is nothing like that, nothing like those empty grey walls and overly large panoramic windows. More like…
No, Hawks thinks, this place is clean. Smells a bit like an ashtray, sure. But there are no broken bottles, no piles of invoices and letters from the debt collection agencies, no empty takeout boxes littering every available surface… Well, there are a few of those.
“Snooping around?”
Hawks turns on his heel like a cat that had its tail stepped on.
“No,“ he starts to say, immediately on the defence, but he cuts himself off when he sees the corners of Dabi’s mouth twitch. “Not like you have much to see in here. Did a burglar steal all your furniture?”
“Oh, I’m sorry it’s not quite up to your usual standards,” Dabi sneers. “Do you want to get blood poisoning after all? Because you’re welcome to fuck off at any time.”
That reminds him of the gash on his arm, and the way blood is slowly trickling into his glove in little tendrils.
“No blood poisoning for me, thanks,” he says, carefully peeling his jacket and gloves off and hanging them over the back of the armchair. The blood has stained most of his arm a light red, the blood rubbing between his skin and the inside of his jacket. Good thing his undershirt doesn’t have any sleeves. “Do you have any rubbing alcohol?”
For just half a second, Dabi seems strangely frozen in place, just looking at him in a way Hawks can’t quite place. He snaps out of it just as quickly, turning on his heel and disappearing into what Hawks assumes in the bathroom.
He re-emerges carrying a damp towel, some cotton pads, and a bottle of what Hawks can only assume is antiseptics. Hawks accepts them gratefully, settling down on the mattress and rubbing the towel against his wounded arm, soaking up the blood and staining the fabric.
Hawks is no stranger to missions going haywire. Missions with a wanted criminal, on the other hand, he’s still getting used to.
Just gonna knock them down a few pegs, is what Dabi had said in beforehand. So Hawks had stayed behind in the shadows, acting the backup and lookout. No reason to show himself to these people, after all, considering the speed with which information spread in the underworld.
It was a pretty straightforward little task, mean only for posturing. Just to make a few of the second-rate villains eager to usurp the League keep their distance. There were three of them all in all, loud and boisterous. One of them had some kind of whip-looking quirk, trying to intimidate Dabi by slicing crates in half. All in all, it had been a pretty pathetic display.
He had watched from his vantage point under the roof as Dabi had said whatever he usually said to threaten enemies of the League. When one of them had thrown the first punch, Hawks hadn’t moved. Dabi was more than equipped to deal with a quick squabble with some low-lives stupid enough to pick a fight with the most notorious criminal organisation in Japan.
Dabi barely used his quirk while fighting, Hawks had observed, as if he was holding back. He had been mulling over this discovery, almost too distracted by his own thoughts to notice the whip cutting through the hair, heading straight for Dabi’s neck.
In a fraction of a second, he was falling through the air.
Hawks let his instinct take over, dropping from his position on the supporting beams and straight down, pushing Dabi out of the way. Too fast, as usual, no time to catch himself with his wings to break his fall. Instead, Dabi went one way and Hawks another, tumbling into some rusty equipment left in the warehouse to collect dust.
The whip slammed into one of the supporting beams, cutting it nearly in half before getting stuck. Hawks felt the whole building rattle on impact.
He also felt the wound that had opened up on his upper arm. His pulse was painfully loud in his ears as the blood began to pump out through the tear in his sleeve. Normally, the thick material of his bomber jacket would protect him against something like this, but he had smashed right into a metal ledge on his collision course with the concrete floor. It went straight through the leather and shearling of the jacket, through his skin and into his bicep.
Just my luck.
The looks on the other villain’s faces when they recognised the number two hero had been priceless. As if they didn’t know who they should focus on first, the villain or the hero. Who would do them the most damage?
The fight that followed was over in a flash. A few well-aimed feathers, the hot scorch of fire, and it was done. He had been left in a corner clutching his bleeding arm while Dabi burned their opponents into a fine ash.
So much for teaching them a lesson. He had to push down his nausea as he watched it happen, tuned out their screams and cries for help.
This is your life now, he had thought to himself, like a mantra. This is what you signed up for, accepting the mission.
Good thing, at least, that they hadn’t had time to whip out their phones and start taking pictures before getting fried.
Hawks tried not to think of how natural it had felt, fighting back to back in an abandoned storage building with a villain watching his six. Ignores the voice in his head whispering soft words about lies and treachery.
Now, he sits on the mattress in the corner, pressing alcohol-soaked cotton pads against his arm and dumping them on the floor in a little pile. The bleeding has mostly stopped, and cleaned up it doesn’t look too bad. He’s sure it will leave a nasty scar, all the same.
Dabi is rummaging through a cupboard above the sink, emerging with a clear, yellow pill bottle in one hand.
“You want one of these?” he asks, holding the bottle out towards Hawks.
He squints. Unlabelled. His arm may hurt like hell, but he still has enough wits about him to realise that accepting strange pills from strange villains is a very bad idea.
“Thanks,” he says, “but I’m sturdier than I look.”
Dabi just shrugs.
“If you say so,” he says, tossing the bottle back into the cabinet.
The silence between them is thick enough to slice with a knife. Despite himself, Hawks can’t think of a single reasonable thing to say.
Thank you for helping me, even if you don’t have to.
I just watched you kill three people, and I didn’t care as much as I thought I would.
I like being alone with you.
Do you trust me?
Hawks decides to do what he does best – his job.
“Why do you even have this place, anyway? It’s not like the League has a lack of hideouts nowadays,” he asks, voice as carefree as only he can make it.
“Why not? The others…” Dabi starts, and Hawks goes stiff, ready to absorb any crumbs of information he might be offered. For a heartbeat, everything in the apartment is still. “They’re always so fucking loud. I can never get any peace and quiet.”
Right.
Dabi stalks off again, putting the rubbing alcohol and cotton back into the bathroom. He hears the sound of a cupboard opening and closing.
“Do you even pay rent? Does someone actually own this place?” Hawks calls out to him, and is given only a non-committal noise for an answer. Well, it’s not as if he expected anything different. Always so vague, always so flighty.
The part about information gathering on hideouts on his ever-growing checklist from the commission will just have to wait.
For whatever reason, Dabi is still wearing his long black jacket indoors. Maybe he gets cold easily, Hawks muses, though it should be the other way around, considering his quirk. It rustles as Dabi moves over to the single window in the room, fiddling with the lock.
The window doesn’t even open fully when he pushes it open with an awful, creaking noise. Dabi sits perched on the windowsill and leans his upper body halfway out uncomfortably, looking anything but relaxed. Then again, Hawks doesn’t ever remember seeing Dabi truly relaxed. Putting on a mocking sneer, sure. Raising his eyebrows in that infuriatingly confident way, absolutely. But there’s always a tension still lingering there, coiled tightly like a wire. It’s evident, at least to Hawks, in the way he holds his shoulders just slightly too straight and rigid. The way his fingers are always curling and uncurling in his coat pockets.
His train of thought is interrupted by the click of a lighter. Once, twice, it flares up and disappears back into the inner pocket of Dabi’s jacket.
“Did you have fun?” Dabi asks then. “First real mission with the League.”
“Sure,” Hawks says, voice lighter than a spring breeze. “Not used to being the backup though. These types of underhanded missions… they’re not generally flashy enough for me, you know? It’ll take some getting used to.”
“It’s not like the hero commission doesn’t pull this kind of shit all the time,” Dabi says. “Most of their operations are in the shadows, anyway. Covering up whatever nastiness they don’t like or can’t be bothered to deal with in a better way. I’m sure you know all about it.” It sounds casual, an offhand statement, but Hawks can hear the vitriol behind his words. An exposed nerve, raw and open.
Hawks swallows.
Careful, careful.
“Like I said…” he starts, cuts himself off. “I was usually the person charging in head first. Whatever was going on behind the scenes never interested me too much. Well, until very recently.”
Dabi takes a long drag of his cigarette and Hawks watches, as if in a trance, the way the smoke curls through his lips. The line of his jaw as he turns to exhale into the night air. The movement of his chest as he does. The silhouette of his legs stretched out, strangely elegant and lean. He has spent a lot of time watching Dabi.
“Always so vague,” Dabi says. “Everything is just a handwave to you.”
If there's a bruise, he just has to put his fingers there and push. In that regard, they are the same.
“I could say the same about you,” Hawks shoots back, voice coming out more hostile than he had intended. “Is there anything you really do give a shit about? And don’t give me some speech about being loyal to the league.”
Dabi looks at him then, bright blue eyes boring straight into his own.
“I do give a shit,” he says. “About a few selected things.”
He lowers himself from his position at the window then, bare feet connecting with the floor. In two short steps, he’s right in front of Hawks. He’s towering above him where he sits, still awkwardly sprawled on the mattress.
Dabi takes another drag of the cigarette, just barely avoiding Hawks’ face with the smoke as he exhales.
Who are you?
He’s used to acting without thinking. Always too fast, ignoring the consequences and letting them catch up to him later if they can. He curls his fingers slowly around Dabi’s ankle, feeling the coldness of the skin, the raised, rough textures of the scar tissue there. Slides his hand up to the back of his jeans-covered knee, pulls it towards him.
Dabi gets the idea, follows the movement of his hand and lowers himself onto his knees somewhere between Hawk’s feet, putting the stub of his cigarette out on the floor. Even in this position, Dabi is still a head taller. Infuriating.
“That’ll scorch,” Hawks remarks, unhelpfully.
“Uh huh,” Dabi says. His eyes are impossible to read, his expression completely neutral, pensive. As if he’s just sitting back, waiting to see what will happen next.
It will catch up with you eventually.
Hawks leans up, sliding his fingers under the lapels of his jacket and tugging them down towards his chest. Dabi follows, easily, fluidly. Their noses are just a hair’s width apart when he stops.
“Tell me,” he says, barely louder than a whisper. “What do you give a shit about?”
Dabi just looks at him for another beat, then blinks and pulls back. The moment fizzles out, crushed like the cigarette stub Dabi just ground into the floorboards.
He leans back, settling down in a lounging position on the floor, stretches his legs out towards the window.
“You jumped in back then,” he says. “Pushed me away.”
That’s what heroes do, Hawks almost says, but he catches himself, bites back the words before he can blurt them out. He’s pretty sure Dabi wouldn’t appreciate them.
“Sure,” he says. “Can’t have my new favourite associate turn into minced meat so easily.”
“Associate, huh? You follow all your sidekicks home? Sprawl out their beds like this?”
Dabi’s teasing, he can tell by the lilting tone of voice, lighter than usual. Hawks is getting better at reading him after all. It’s like learning a new language, slowly, word by word. He takes the bait.
“You admit to being the sidekick? Very generous of you.”
“I never said that,” Dabi quips back. “You’re the rookie, getting all busted up on the job.”
“Got me there,” Hawks sighs. “Total newbie mistake. Never let the impatient overachievers rush in first without backup, because you’ll take out your arm having to save them. Lesson learned.”
Dabi huffs at that, something that could maybe be a laugh. “Overachiever isn’t quite the word you’re looking for.”
“No?”
“No.”
Who are you? It’s the question he’s been burning to ask since they day they first met. Who are you, and how did you end up here?
As always, he bites his tongue. His arm feels horrible, the injured muscle throbbing with every heartbeat.
“Maybe I should have one of those painkillers after all,” he says instead. Why the hell not.
Dabi stands, and only after he’s gone does Hawks realise how close he was just now, half-kneeling between his legs. There’s a person-shaped void left behind, like a rush of cold air against his face. Fuck. How did I end up here?
He doesn’t care to follow that train of thought, just knocks back one of the pills from Dabi’s shady bottle, swallowing it dry.
He gets the feeling that Dabi is answering his unspoken question tonight, in his own way. This is who he is – the person dragging Hawks home to his crappy apartment, making sure he doesn’t die of sepsis on his own. The person looking at him as if he’s solving a puzzle, requiring his full attention.
The guilt building in his chest is almost unbearable.
Liar. Traitor.
The painkillers kick in slowly, the pain in his arm gradually fading into a dull ache. He’s tired, tired like death itself. It must be the early hours of the morning by now.
“I should get going,” he says weakly, and doesn’t make any move to leave.
“Better if you stay,” Dabi says, quicker than he had probably intended. They both freeze. Dabi turns his head to the side, stares into the wall before continuing. “I don’t want anyone to see you flying out of here and get curious,” What a piss poor excuse. Anyone could have seen them enter together. “It’s already getting lighter outside. And we have to report back to base in the morning anyway.”
Making excuses up on the fly is one of Hawks’ specialities. Of course he sees right through it. And of course Dabi sees him see right through it. What else did he expect?
Still.
“You’re right,” Hawks says. “It’s probably for the best."
He offers to take the floor, only to be met with don’t be fucking stupid, and he just can’t argue with that. So he stretches out on the old mattress, leans his head into the pillow that smells of ash and some strange chemical that he can’t place. Dabi is on the floor next to him, smoking another of his cigarettes and blowing smoke up towards the ceiling. At least he’s finally taken off that stupid jacket.
The silence extends between them again. Hawks counts the minutes, sixty seconds at the time, until he’s fed up. There’s no way he’s getting any sleep tonight, anyway.
“We both fit on here, you know. I don’t bite.”
He’s not granted with a response, just feels the mattress dip next to him, senses more than actually feels the cold of Dabi’s skin, a hand’s width from his own. Back to back, just like in the warehouse a short few hours ago. The urge to stretch out and cover him with one of his wings is almost overpowering. Almost. Instead, he holds incredibly still, barely bold enough to breathe. He starts counting the seconds again, reaches the thousands, starts over.
It’s not easy, lying perfectly still on the cramped little mattress, and certainly not comfortable. He thinks of his own king-sized bed back in his apartment, the one he’s used to sprawling all over, tossing and turning as much as he pleases. He can hardly remember feeling any less relaxed than he does right now.
Finally, Hawks can’t take it anymore. He turns over slowly, incredibly slowly, carefully folding his wings up even tighter as to not create any disturbance with his movement. He’s met with a face full of black hair, coarse and rough. Slowly, painfully slowly, he hoists himself up to look at the stranger next to him.
Dabi’s eyes are closed. His face looks… not gentle, never gentle. But there’s no ill-natured sneer, no mocking grin, none of that constant tension pulling at his staples. Just his slow, even breathing, the steady rise and fall of his chest. His upper eyelashes extending over the scars under his eyes, the piercings in his nose gleaming in the dark.
He suspects that Dabi is only pretending to be asleep. Who in their right mind would let someone who until just recently was a sworn enemy into their own home, let them sleep on their crappy bed, and then let themselves be that vulnerable in their presence?
Letting go of that thought before it runs away with him, Hawks sinks back into the mattress. He stretches his wings out again until they touch the wall behind him. All he can see now is the back of Dabi’s head, his thick black hair unruly as always.
Who are you?
He still can’t voice the question aloud. Hawks shuts his eyes instead, finally letting the painkillers drag him under. He will know, in time. For once in his life, he will make an effort to be patient. For Dabi, he will try.
Outside, the sun rises.