hewwo hi have this

slight #dabihawks angst, Hawks-centric, canon-ish breakup arc thread, bathing

((this is a sort of addition to another thread that i've linked in the following tweet))

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u don't necessarily need to read this for /this/ thread to make sense but.... it certainly doesn't hurt https://twitter.com/spacedaichi/status/1496365963566067713?s=20&t=pxIjztviyB_rJb0fic2VAg

In Hawks' bathroom he's placed the decorative mirror from the entryway of his apartment and sat it against the wall in front of his bath. The first bath he took after Dabi burned his wings, after recovery girl did what she could to salvage his back, hadn't been the most pleasant.

He'd sat in the cold water, because hot water would irritate his healing burns and scarring, and stared at the blank wall across the tub.

He'd stared and stared until the coldness of the water seeped into his skin and down to his bones, leaving a chill in his body.

His next bath was the same. Quiet, cold, and starring at the wall ahead of him while he sat in the emptiness of his back––in the emptiness of the room with the stool Dabi would normally sit at pushed to its corner.

Eventually, he began to hate the blank wall. Eventually

he took the mirror from the entryway and carried it into the bathroom and let it lean against the wall for him to stare at himself in the tub.

It felt let empty with the double of himself mirroring all of his motions. The quietness still remained.

The times he'd taken baths before, even with his feathers in their designated basket while he bathed––he'd never felt smaller than this. Himself, hunched over the white porcelain, looking at himself––looking back at him. The scar crawling up his neck and over his face

was still pinky in its healing stage––despite all of Recovery Girl's efforts. It pulled tightly when he spoke, so he'd began speaking less: that was his excuse at least. He, morbidly maybe, liked to feel it pull when he yawned or brushed his teeth––but at least he had

an excuse in case someone asked why he'd become so quiet.

No one asked though, so he kept the excuse, and the secret of his fascination behind the scar to himself. From the way he sits now in the tub he can also see the pinky flesh that begins to map his entire back from

the bits that crawl over his shoulders.

He lets his arms hang over the edge of the tub, fingers barely touching the tug on the floor where he earlier placed on old pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

Ha. When's the last time he had to use a lighter? How many months ago?

Even then, when's the last time he smoke inside his apartment? Dabi and him always made sure to smoke outside but––the smell. The smell always followed them from the balcony back into the apartment. It was always left on his fingers, seeping into his nose as he fell asleep.

He wants that back––the smell, the feeling, the burning in his chest.

The pokes the pack of cigarettes, watches himself poke it in the mirror and lets out a breathy scoff at the sight of himself.

He'd been letting his hair grow longer before––before the fire. Dabi had pointed it out once, when they sat in this same bathroom, with Dabi sitting on his stool, reaching over for his fingers to dance along the length of Hawks' hair.

"Is it long enough to tie back?" Dabi had

asked, and Hawks had wondered. He'd never let it get that long before––the HPSC had always also implied that having his hair longer wouldn't sell his image. He'd been surprised at that point they'd let him go the few months they didn't without pointing out he needed a haircut.

Hawks had moved his hand from the scalding water up to where Dabi's hand fingered the base of his neck, touching over the bones of his spine.

"Maybe," Hawks had said, letting his hand stretch with Dabi's up to his skull–letting their hands fist together in his hair.

"Do you wanna try to tie it? There's some hair ties under my sink, I think."

Dabi only hummed, leaving him without an answer, but Hawks let him leave it at that as Dabi's nails grazed over his scalp in a slow manner.

He grips the pack of cigarettes now thinking about Dabi's fingers in his hair––his hands and fingers going down his back, leaving strips of heat in their wake. With a shaky hand he shakes a cigarette out onto the floor and stares at its shape on the pale rug.

His eyes begin to

sting the longer he stares and doesn't move. He jolts himself for a second, to turn towards the faucet of the tub and turn on the hot water.

His scars are going to hurt. They're going to pull again.

Something in the back of his mind whispers: they're going to feel like Dabi's hands back on him.

He hates himself a little bit for the thought, but there's a fogginess in his head that clouds as the cold water in the tub turns lukewarm from the additional water.

The water at the foot of the tub is the hottest and he shifts so one of his legs stretches towards it––lets the influx of heat pass over the single foot and bloom around his calf. For half a moment, with his eyes half-lidded, and tilting his head onto the side of the tub,

he can imagine that it's Dabi's hands heating the water. That Dabi's hands move and are almost gripping below his shin and above his ankle. Like he's going to pull the foot from the water and let it kiss the cold air before Dabi presses his fingers over the skin warm it.

Hawks gulps and opens his eyes to look back at the mirror again––his eyes are red. Red rimming the gold of his irises. He blinks and holds a choking sound in his throat.

God, he'd always known their expiration date had been looming over his head.

Dabi might have in the end said he'd assumed Hawks was a traitor––but for how long? He'd never once let it slip around Hawks that he /could/ have been a traitor, but Dabi had always been calculative, smart, matching Hawks in almost every conversation. Like a weird game of chess

but neither of them appeared to be winning.

But Hawks had known the specific date that their end would come. He'd known and tried to prepare himself for the pain digging into his lungs as he tried to breathe.

He huffs out a sound––the scar pulls at the minor –and the scars on

his back pull as well as he shifts again to shut the water off and drag himself towards the edge of the tub again.

He takes the cigarette, and lights it with a flick of the lighter. The orange flame is a disappointment––but he's wondering if he should start preparing for

disappointment instead of continually holding onto the only thing he felt he truly had.

Dabi.

((tbc))

Hawks can't for the life of him even begin to understand why one of the only people in his life who he felt he.... connected with was also the person most likely to hurt him. Who did. Why, in the lukewarm bath, he's trying to get any semblance of the feeling for that person again

even if it's through breathing in the thick smoke of Dabi's old pack of cigarettes. Letting the haze of the post-nicotine drip flood over his skin and into his head.

It tastes just like Dabi when they'd kiss out on the balcony––not sweet by anyways, nothing like a candy

on his tongue––but the nicotine is no less addicting than sugar. It travels up to his head, and the more he breathes in the smoke the more the bathroom fills back with that same smoke.

Sometimes when Dabi got overheated, his seams would smoke. Occasionally, though usually

in the midst of fucking in bed–or the couple times on the bathroom counter––smoke would begin to fill the room until they got Dabi to cool back down. Dabi in those moments would watch him through the smoke, with his eyes near-glowing like pods of light. Hawks would

follow him towards the bathroom and get a cold shower running for him, or an ice bath in their most desperate moments, and then /Hawks/ was the observer.

"Don't know why you wanna sit there and stare at me," Dabi said once from his ice bath as Hawks

sat at the edge of the tub dumping another bucket in. Dabi's had been particularly flushed between his scarring and the staples but he'd held Hawks' gaze with no intention of looking away.

"You always sit with me," Hawks said. "Is it a crime for me to do the same?"

Dabi laughed, rolled his head back against the tub's edge. He licked his lips before taking the hand of Hawks' that wasn't dumping ice. "The worst crime."

"Really now?" Hawks asked, smiling then as Dabi's fingers–cold, so cold–wove into Hawks' own and held them against the rim

of the tub. "Why's that?"

"Hmm," Dabi's eyes slid away from Hawks down to their intertwined fingers. Hawks thinks he knows what Dabi wants to say: that Dabi letting Hawks do the same crosses an invisible line, that it puts them into unfamiliar territory.

All the territory to begin with was mostly unfamiliar to Hawks. The intimacy. The helping each other beyond the strictly "co-worker" like relationship. God, even the sex was crossing a line Hawks only crossed with a couple people and mostly because he'd thought it was

something he was /supposed/ to be doing.

It never, ever felt that way with Dabi. All of their pieces fell together in such a slow and deliberate manner that Hawks didn't realize they'd all come together until they /did./ Until a moment

like that where Dabi was letting him hold his hand while Dabi tried to cool himself off in a shower.

Hawks now, with the hand that's not holding his cigarette, grips the side of the porcelain tub and grapples at the chill that runs down him body at the cold ceramic.

This too feels like Dabi and he doesn't want to let go.