#DabiHawksWeek22 @dabihawksweek || Day 3 || Domestic || soft vibes, canon, pre-war shit ||

––

They’re having a picnic.

Sort of.

It’s nearly 10 at night, so maybe ‘picnic’ is a little far fetched considering the blanket that Hawks’ drug outside from the chest in his living room, and the few scattered candles that Hawks asked Dabi to light for “ambiance.”

Hawks had only come back a short time earlier

through the balcony doors, and he’d wandered over to see what Dabi was making a quick fried rice. He looked relaxed. Relieved even. He’d also looked happy to see Dabi. Dabi was, like many of their joined nights together

making dinner for them since Hawks, more often than not, continued to consider canned coffee a source of protein.

Before saying that it was nice outside, and they should eat on the balcony.

After finishing making food, and after Hawks had wandered back to Dabi stripped from his day-to-day hero-clown costume and into his own joggers and a t-shirt, they took the food outside. All while Hawks’ feathers pulled a blanket outside and carried along some candles with it.

The stars above them are distant and quiet, polluted from the light of the city. Dabi thinks that maybe one day he’ll take Hawks outside the city, and show him the stars and how much brighter they could be away from the noise of a city that asks too much of him.

The blue of the

is dimmer, like the stars, rivalling the gold of Hawks’ eyes as he begins to scarf down their food. The light from /his/ fire caresses the shadows under Hawks’ eyes, spotlighting the dappling of freckles over his cheeks and nose.

Dabi watches, leaving his food untouched, as Hawks’ cheeks puff out like a chipmunk, giving Hawks’ hero name a run for his money.

'Japan’s No. 2 Hero: Chipmunk,' he thinks.

Dabi snorts at the thought, and Hawks looks over at him with his bushy eyebrows raised. There’s crumbs of rice on the corners of his mouth likening him to an animal at the speed at which he eats. At least Dabi never has to question whether or not Hawks likes what he makes.

“Wha’ you laughin’ for?” Hawks asks around his mouth full. Manners, Dabi almost says aloud but keeps that lid closed, just quirking his lips up instead.

As Hawks speaks, his ears perk a little and the light shines over the red of his earrings. Earrings that Dabi plans on

replacing. The small box of the new studded blue topaz earrings sits heavy in his pocket. He’d been carrying it around all day, and had thought momentarily about just leaving it by Hawks’ bedside table to wake up to–––but he wants to see Hawks’ eyes light up,

wants to see Hawks’ put them on as his blue adorns Hawks’ ears.

The red studs he currently wears are a part of Hawks’ hero costume that Hawks’ never seemed to take off.

How nice it is for Dabi to be the person who strips Hawks down the barest of his bones, hero costume thrown away in a corner of Hawks’ bedroom, or rumpled around his thighs on rooftops, but the earrings remained. There’s a fresh burning in his stomach that starts as he

imagines replacing that one last piece of Hawks’ ridiculous hero costume with a sliver of himself.

Dabi pulls his hand from the box in his pocket and reaches over to Hawks’ face, to wipe stray crumbs from around the corners of Hawks’ mouth. “You look like a rodent.”

Hawks’ eyes trail over Dabi’s face, trace every corner of his expression and Dabi can feel the questions in his gaze, feel him dissecting the slight shift of mood in the air, and noting, but not asking aloud, why Dabi hadn’t begun to eat yet.

“Rude,” Hawks huffs but gulps down his bite. Dabi leaves the pads of his fingers over Hawks’ chin, the hair of his chin that barely makes up a goatee, runs his skin over wispily like a leaf falling to the ground. He brushes his hand past Hawks cheek to twist at a strand of

golden hair that flutters out of his digits in a sudden breeze over the balcony.

Dabi lends forward, presses a chaste kiss against Hawks’ cheek, before whispering, “How about we celebrate?”

“Oh?” Hawks says, putting down his fork onto his plate. “What would we be celebrating?”

'You,' he thinks. 'Having you here with me.'

“Who knows? Eating, being alive, us? Do you need a reason to celebrate?”

Hawks puts his hand on Dabi’s face and tugs him away, gently, so he can look into his eyes. “Us?” He asks and Dabi tries not to latch onto the smile that’s in Hawks’ voice, the sparkle that twinges in the corners of his eyes.

The part of himself that would have latched onto the look on Hawks’ face immediately is trying to surge up, but he gulps back down the pieces of Touya clawing up his throat, like a vine twisting up a trellis. He wants to throw himself into this. All of this.

The little box in his pocket is already betraying him for throwing him into a love that may or may not last. A love he’s starting to hold onto––a love that is larger than the blue skies he used to look up to and ask for help from.

Todoroki Touya asked for help from those skies.

Dabi just looks at them and asks Why. Talks to the sky but doesn’t expect any answers back.

There’s a sense of déjà rêvè that’s not lost on him. He’s dreamed pieces of this scenario before––though, the mornings he woke up after those dreams, he tried to wave it off, never dwelled on it for too long. When his endeavor to die has been his only reason for continuing to

live, he couldn’t grant himself the option of dwelling and dreaming.

The boy who loved too much could only dream about having that love returned to him. Of a house to call a home, and a person to come home to.

For some months now he’s had a semblance of a home to come back to. He’s called it home. Hawks has called it home.

[+++ TWT limit]

When they first met, when Dabi first showed up in Hawks’ apartment, Hawks hadn’t called the place as much. It had been: “How did you find my apartment?”

Not: "How did you find my home?"

Now it’s bits of, "Welcome home." And, "Welcome back," whispered across each other’s lips or said from the entryway of the apartment.

Hawks is rarely already back at the apartment when Dabi shows up, when he slips through the balcony door that’s been left unlocked for months now

The place, with its unlocked door, is always prepared for him. Now, Hawks isn’t shocked when Dabi is there in the kitchen or lounging on the couch like he owns the place, or reading one of the books that have begun to collect themselves in the apartment either.

As if that part of himself hadn’t started to leak through already. It does, more and more, anytime he’s with Hawks, anytime he wakes up with Hawks still in bed and he presses his fingers over the constellation of freckles on Hawks’ cheeks and gives the constellations names of

their own. These constellations deserve to have their own name, not names stolen from the ones existing in the sky. If Hawks was going to be grounded, Dabi would give him a sky here.

There’s a sense of finality that is also not lost on him. He knows when people are going to wave him off, just like he waved off his dream, but he’s hoping that Hawks isn’t one of those people. It’s been an unearthly amount of time since he allowed himself to dream––

and now he’s dreaming about Hawks, and keeping Hawks around for the long term.

A home, far, far away.

“Us,” Dabi replies, bringing himself back to Hawks’ looking at him with an uncountable number of stars in his eyes.

“Well, if we’re celebrating then, let’s do it properly,” Hawks smiles, and the smile is wide, glimmering, and has lost all the sharp edges from months previously. Dabi wonders if Hawks knows how much of the buried Takami Keigo has begun to slip through his carefully crafted cage

and coffin. Just like Dabi has noticed the shedding bits of /Dabi./

A couple of feathers zip out of Hawks’ wings and shoot through the half-opened balcony door, back into the apartment, off to get a bottle of something from the bar cart pressed against the furthest wall of the dining area in the apartment.

“Not the cheap shit,” Dabi notes, familiar with Hawks tastes. Earlier on he’d just get whatever he could at the store, until one of the first times Dabi had gone with Hawks’ to the store–both dressed in, albeit terrible disguises–but they walked the aisles and

and Dabi told Hawks about all of the best liquors. How Kurogiri would make drinks for them at the bar, and how he learned a bit from watching and trying to replicate the drinks.

Besides, who said villains couldn’t have hobbies?

“It's a wonder that you have such expensive taste,” Hawks says, and he presses his nose against Dabi’s ear, leaning on the meat of his palm close to Dabi and letting his head fall on Dabi’s shoulder. “My hero-salary has spoiled you.”

Dabi barks out a laugh that only brings a larger smile to Hawks’ face. “What else are you going to do with that money? Before I came around, your apartment looked like it was freshly renovated, not like someone had been living in it for years.”

Hawks tilts his head to the side and looks up to the Kyushu sky for a minute. He doesn’t focus on the stars, or the moon peeking out from behind the clouds, he doesn’t seem to focus on anything as he stares up, as if he’s trying to find something that doesn’t exist.

Like if he stared long enough, he could conjure it to life. He hums, before saying, “Maybe you should have thought about home decor, instead of villainy.”

Dabi shifts away, moving their food off to the side, off the blanket, and he stretches out his legs in the unoccupied space. He overlaps his ankles at their hinges, and feels the weight of the box in his pocket again, heavier than before with the food out of sight.

Maybe Hawks was right. He should have been a home decorator. Or maybe, the only home he wanted to help decorate was a home with Hawks. Their own home, far away, away from the sounds, away from the light pollution. Somewhere that Touya wasn’t suppressed to leaking through, but

but could bubble over and be Touya.

“I did a pretty good job,” Dabi teases.

And he did.

They did.

Since he’d been around, they’d managed to fill the apartment so it actually looked like some lived there.

Like two someone’s lived there if the two toothbrushes in Hawks’ bathroom were anything to go by. The additional clothes that lay around the bedroom. The multiple phone chargers, the extra food in the fridge, the two house slippers at the door.

Dabi wonders if there were ever HPSC people who came around sometimes, and if they checked out the place, what they’d think of the changes. If they’d scrunch their noses and try their best to ignore the additions, if they’d casually imply that Hawks needed to get

rid of the additions, if they’d go ahead and call for someone to clean it out.

If they did, then Hawks must have ignored them quite refutely considering none of the changes ever changed /back./

“Maybe someone should get you a T.V. series started,” Hawks said, like it would ever be a possibility after all the shit he’s done to be a /home renovator with a T.V. series./

Dabi indulges the thought though. “‘Villain Reno’s 101: What All Villain Lairs Need.”

A chuckle bubbles out of Hawks’ throat before he turns his attention from the sky back to Dabi. His chin presses into the bone of Dabi’s shoulder, and Dabi gazes down at him, lets their noses brush and once again admires just how pretty Hawks is.

Relaxed and happy, genuinely happy, not whatever hero-bullshit he puts on for the media and fans in the streets.

[++++ TWT limit again, sorry ]

Hawks’ feathers come back around, and tucked between a mass of coverts there’s a bottle of Yamazaki 12 Whisky, and in a couple other feathers hang two whiskey tumblers.

“Your favorite,” Hawks says, snatching the bottle from the air as Dabi takes the two tumblers.

They pull away from one another just enough to open the bottle.

“It is,” Dabi says. There’s that hope again creeping up his throat, that wants to gush and wants to rush forward and take Hawks’ face in his hands and smoosh his lips between his own like it would be their last kiss

(It’s not the last.)

(The last though, isn’t too far away.)

Dabi wishes he didn’t feel that encroaching ending. Growing closer and closer, and maybe it’s not the end, but something is waiting in the near future. The largest change of them all, and Dabi feels it right underneath his ribcage but fucking hopes and wishes, that it’s not the

end.

So he leaves his hope simmering, and leaves it tucked with the box he has. He’ll present his hope to Hawks, and that’ll have to be enough.

The whiskey, as it’s poured into the tumblers, from the bottle in Hawks’ hand looks just like the color of Hawks’ eyes, even with the flickering of the blue flames around them. It reminds Dabi of the first time he met Hawks, and how he just held a blue flame

in the air between them to light Hawks’ face––so he could see every lie in his expression. And how beautifully he had lied. How beautifully he continues to lie too. To the Commission. To the world about his job, and about his previous jobs: about the list of bodies in Hawks’ HPSC

file.

Dabi presses one of the tumblers into Hawks’ awaiting hand as he puts the whiskey down on the ground, near their food. Hawks takes the tumbler and raises it to the air.

Dabi’s lips lift in a smile, to mirror Hawks’ own, and follows Hawks’ movement so

both of their glasses hover beside one another, but not quite touching.

“To us?” Hawks says.

“To us,” Dabi echoes, and they clink the glasses, before swallowing the liquid likened to the ichor of gods.

There’s a cinnamon taste that wets Dabi’s tongue, and stays there long after he’s finished his own glass. That’ll stay there long into the night.

He swirls the leftover liquid in the glass and turns his thoughts to the box in his pocket, and the blue topaz studs sitting quietly

in their pillow.

He may or may not have rummaged around with Giran for some off-the-books––as if they’re not always off-the-books––sort of jobs so he’d be able to buy the earrings. The MLA had plenty of money to mooch from Re-Destro, if the upgrades in their own

uniforms and clothing weren’t enough to go by, but he’d wanted this to be one of the things he bought on his own.

He’d not done that for as long as he can remember. Buying things for himself.

After waking up in that goddamn hospital years earlier, after going back to the place he called home, to find out that no. It wasn’t a home at all.

He'd left that place as the newly created Dabi, but years later wished he’d stopped to see his mother,

wished to see if she was even still there in that wood burning house. Wishes for a moment he could have warned her not to build a home of wood with fire users under its roof.

He remembers as a kid, standing at a storefront, with Rei standing behind him, her small palm over his shoulder. She kneeled down in front of him, brushed the hair out of his face, and placed a few bills in his even smaller hands, to let him go inside the store and buy the toy he

wanted. As a kid it was thrilling to feel like /he/ was buying something for himself. His first bought thing.

Then, turning his back on that home, on his mother, on his younger siblings, he lived the following years not expecting or hoping to leave a piece of him in this world.

He would die, and that would be it, he would leave his ashes on the ground, hoping that those ashes would be enough for the world, for his father–for the people he once called /family/–to see the ruin that had been caused due to the society of heroics

and the hell that made of him.

Dabi aches then to reach into his opposite pocket and pull out a cigarette. So he does. He drops the earring box again into its small pocketed home, and pulls out a cigarette.

He lights it, but holds the cigarette against his lips, pulling in smoke for a solid few seconds. He hopes that in the couple moments he holds it there that some of his courage would gather itself. Because seriously, what’s with him?

He’s just giving him earrings.

Just giving /Hawks,/ of all people, /earrings./ In the back of his mind though it feels like the end of giving Hawks his heart and telling him to carry it with him wherever he goes.

“What’s that one song?” Hawks asks, dragging him from his internal crisis.

“Which song?” Dabi asks as he flicks ashes off the cigarette, then drags in another clutch of smoke into his mouth.

Hawks hums thoughtfully. “The one about cigarettes and coffee, you know, the one we play on my stereo sometimes.”

“Cigarettes and coffee,” Dabi says, looking at Hawks with raised eyebrows.

“Yeah, the one about cigarettes and coffee–something about it being early in the morning.”

Dabi’s smile is wiry as he says, “That’s the name of the song. ‘Cigarettes and Coffee.’”

“I think we should petition to name it ‘Cigarettes and Whiskey,’ make it our whole thing. You know?”

"Didn't take you as a romantic," Dabi says.

Hawks takes the cigarette from Dabi’s fingers, mirroring Dabi’s own actions. Dabi wonders if Hawks always had the potential for vices like smoking, or if that’s just part of Dabi’s own influence.

"Maybe I wasn't," Hawks replies, breathing the smoke back out.

/Maybe I am with you,/ Dabi hears in the silence.

[++++ TWT limit]

In the brief quiet, with Hawks looking away, Dabi takes the box out, rolling it between his hands. His tongue shifts in his mouth like he’s rolling pebbles and stones around in his mouth, before he says, “I have something for you.”

Hawks stares at the box. Then stares at Dabi. Dabi can see the brief moment of confusion––he’s not startled, thankfully. Almost everything in the beginning seemed to set him on edge as he tried to figure out the in’s and out’s of their relationship,

and Dabi knew too well that Hawks hadn’t been in a relationship before. Or at least not a relationship that went beyond fucking and sex and the occasional morning text. Gifts weren’t a part of any equation Hawks had been a part of before. Not the meaningful gift that is.

Any gift given to Hawks before had probably been to garner more attention from the No. 2 Hero.

Dabi already has Hawks’ attention. He doesn’t need to do gift giving to pull that off.

But, he’s the first then, to hand over a piece of himself that doesn’t want anything in return.

That thought simpers the heaviness in his mouth and the way his chest is trying to gape open and leak and speed into handing the earrings over to Hawks.

“A gift?” Hawks asks. He presses the butt of the cigarette to the ground, letting it die. “What’s the occasion?”

Dabi waves to their whiskey glasses. “Us.”

Hawks eyes are sharp as they look at the box. Sharp in the questioning way–not in the “I’m going to throw this box over the rail,” sort of way. That had to be a good sign, at least.

“Here,” Dabi says, and he places the little white box into Hawks now empty and awaiting hands.

“You gonna give me a hint or anything?” Hawks asks.

“Nah, that’d defeat the point of a surprise,” Dabi says, feigning any fear for confidence.

Hawks continues to survey the box: taking in the rounded corners, the black velvet, before he takes the box from Dabi’s hands. The tips of his fingers brush just over Dabi’s palm, briefly at the staples of his wrists, before he cocoons the box in both of his own hands. Dabi

can’t help but tap at the ground briefly with his foot while Hawks looks over the box.

Dabi’s been a patient man for several years now for his revenge escapade but for some reason–for every reason–Hawks discerning a seemingly innocent box with his raptor-like attention throws

his impatience into hyperdrive.

He’s quiet. One of the nearby candles flicks and grows higher with the rush of a breeze, and Hawks’ hair scatters across his face and forehead, while Dabi grips at the fabric of his sweats.

With a simple flick of his pointer finger, Hawks has the box open.

And there they are, the blue topaz studs, in their little pillow. gleaming like the eyes of a snake.

Hawks draws the finger that opened the box over the small little gems, almost cautiously touching their

pea-sized shapes.

“Please don’t tell me you killed someone for these,” Hawks says, but there’s a grin on his face when he looks back at Dabi. The rock in his chest dissipates at the sight.

“Well,” Dabi shrugs, shifting so his shoulder brushes against Hawks’ nearest wing, “I’m not going to use /your/ own card to buy you shit.”

Though, it should be noted that he has, on many occasions, just used Hawks’ card to buy shit, all of which Dabi took great pleasure in knowing Hawks had to somehow write off their lube purchases in his Commission reports as “work related expenses.” Dabi sends a silent

middle-finger to the bastard who has to look at those reports.

Dabi watches then, enamored, as Hawks takes out the red earrings from his ears, places them in Dabi’s hands, and he slowly puts the blue ones on.

It’s like watching a ritual, the speed at which Hawks moves: delicately, methodically. His tongue pokes out a little as he presses the last earring in. His wings are still even as the wind pushes through them.

The blue topaz shines brilliantly against the small flames around them. They hang from Hawks’ ears like little treasures.

“You look good in blue,” Dabi says, all too pleased at how well the blue matches the blue of his flames. He knew they did when he first saw them.

“You’re just saying that because they’re /your/ color,” he's smiling as he says it though.

Dabi hums. Dabi moves again so he’s leaning back on one hand, but with the other he stretches forward and runs a finger over the shell of Hawks’ ear.

His wings shake with a nearly indiscernible shiver but stretch open, one settling around Dabi.

He can’t take his eyes away as a soft blush appears over Hawks’ cheeks, rosey with his freckles. He brushes the pads of his first and middle finger just over the singular stud, and tugs gently at it until Hawks lets out a quiet sigh into the night.

“There’s a part of me that you don’t have to hide,” Dabi says, thinking of the days when Hawks looked all too grumpy to have to tug up the collar of his hero jacket to cover the hickies on his neck. Hawks liked having the secrecy of them on his skin,

liked tucking that piece of Dabi close to his chest, but he could see when they were with the League and with the other MLA cohorts, how he’s take off his jacket and wear some of Dabi’s shirts instead–none-too subtly showing off the markings on his skin, tilting his head more

when the occasion arose.

Hawks covers Dabi’s hand and fingers with one of his own, and he leans forward and whispers against Dabi’s ear, through his dark hair, “Maybe you can wear my red ones then?”

The feeling that rushes in Dabi’s chest forces the crack of his ribcage to open more. Cracking and breaking in the erosion of Hawks’ existence. The sound of Hawks’ voice. The hope. The wish and desire––and to most, Dabi

might have appeared to be the more possessive of the two in their relationship, and maybe sometimes he is, in more obvious ways like throwing his arm over Hawks’ shoulder when they’re at MLA meetings, pressing kisses to his cheek while whispering in his ear.

[++++ TWT limit]

But while Dabi did that, Hawks would spread his wings more around the two of them, encasing them, and give sharp smiles to people who tried to approach.

His little bird was more raptor-like–more hawks-like–in those moments and sent flares of unnamed emotions up Dabi’s spine.

Dabi huffs but he turns his head more towards Hawks so he’s nosing at Hawks’ opposite ear, at the earring he wasn’t playing with a second ago.

“There’s no way that’s sanitary,” Dabi says, responding to Hawks’ offer about wearing the red earrings, but he still looks down

at the red studs and rolls them between his fingers.

Hawks pulls back and gives him a deadpan look. He gives him that unblinking look that often sends a thrill down each notch of Dabi’s spinal cord. Right now the look just says, 'Are you serious?'

“Dabs,” Hawks says, “We fucked on a rooftop with Jeanist’s body in a bag nearby. I think we’ve moved past being unsanitary at this point.”

Dabi’s smirk is salacious as he puts both of the earrings onto his pierced earlobes.

He’d thought a while back about letting them grow out, but he sends a quiet thanks to his past self that he’d continued to put earrings in them often enough that they’d remain piercing-ready.

“We did do that,” Dabi says, earrings now fixed to his ears. He leans back again, with his palms pressing into the fleece of the blanket underneath him. “You looked so pretty too, with your face–”

One of Hawks’ hands is over his mouth in an instant.

Worth it. That entire night had been worth it, to be quite honest, if the bruises on Hawks’ knees and elbows the following day were anything to go by.

Hawks grouches, “I can’t with you sometimes.”

“You can’t pretend you didn’t like it,” Dabi says against the palm of Hawks’ hands. There’s the slight taste of whiskey coating his hand. His breath, hot, falls over Hawks’ fingers, and he watches Hawks’ face turn a bright and beautiful shade of red. If it hadn’t been obvious

already that Hawks’ was hot and bothered, the puffing and shaking of his feathers would be hitting the nail on the head.

Hawks jerks his hand back, turning his face away until he’s pressing it into his shoulder–like he still had his hero jacket on,

like the collar was flipped up and he could hide away for a moment.

As if Dabi didn’t want to capture and claim all of his expressions as his own. “Oh my god,” Hawks grumbles, “how are you so horny all the time?”

Dabi lays back, falling across the blanket, before crossing his feet over each other. He folds one arm behind his head, leaving the other stretched out as an invitation. “Ask yourself that question, birdie. That time on the balcony was /all/ you.”

With a puff of air, Hawks turns his head back to look over his shoulder, through the window several of his feathers were making from his wings. The red of his feathers frame the gold of his eyes, make them brighter somehow, like fire. The wing stretches away so he can look down

at Dabi, look at the red little jewels on Dabi’s ears.

“Red looks good on you too,” Hawks says. His smile is sly, teasing, knowing exactly what he does to Dabi.

“We already knew that,” Dabi replies. He tugs Hawks down into his open arm, an oof escaping Hawks’ mouth with the shift. He moves and rearranges his wings so they’re more comfortably sat as Hawks’ weasels even closer to Dabi, arm stretched over his chest.

Hawks’ noses at Dabi’s ear, at the earring, content where they are.

“Thank you,” Hawks whispers and the sound is a quiet breath to his eardrum.

Dabi hums, tilts his head to press a kiss over Hawks’ head, catching some of his bangs in the kiss. “No need to thank me, angel.”

A quiet falls again, and Dabi hears Hawks' content sigh just over the flickering flames.

“The food’s going to get cold,” Hawks says, but he makes no move to sit up.

“Let it,” Dabi replies. “We can always heat it up later.”

//// END ///

i'll be posting this on ao3 in a bit as well <3

also always s/o to @seabhactine for the shared brainworms!!! seriously!!