## Preface

Grounded
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/23888098.

Rating:
  Not Rated
Archive Warning:
  Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category:
  M/M
Fandom:
  僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Relationships:
  Dabi/Takami Keigo | Hawks, Dabi & Takami Keigo | Hawks, Hero Public Safety Commission & Takami Keigo | Hawks
Characters:
  Takami Keigo | Hawks, Dabi (My Hero Academia)
Additional Tags:
  Takami Keigo | Hawks-centric, Takami Keigo | Hawks is a Little Shit, Hurt Takami Keigo | Hawks, Hurt/Comfort, Abuse of Authority, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Wingfic, Wing Grooming, hawks is a bird, Takami Keigo | Hawks is a Mess, Takami Keigo | Hawks is Bad At Feelings, Protective Dabi (My Hero Academia), Implied/Referenced Torture, kinda???, Hawks is so done guys, he just wants to leave his house, raptor stress grip, I had fun writing this but I don't like it
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 5 of Hawks Needs Help (And He Actually Gets It)
Collections:
  Cheesing or crying I can’t tell, under penalty of death, My Hero Academia 💚❤🤍
Stats:
  Published: 2020-05-18 Words: 5,678 Chapters: 1/1

# Grounded

by Numanum

Summary

> The look that he gets is full of mock-sympathy.

> “I’ll call for a car,” she offers, not even bothering to wait for his reply before her heels start clicking across the polished floor. Hawks isn’t sure that he could give one right now, his voice still trapped somewhere in his chest, which feels too tight, so tight that he’s surprised that he can even breathe because they had grounded him and birds are meant to fly-

> The commission, displeased with his reliance on them, had taken his flight feathers, cut off the tips, and grounded him both literally and figuratively. He can’t fly like he’s meant to, like he always has. Instead, his wings are two useless, feathery lumps on his back, weighing him down as he blankly waits for a car to take him home for the first time since he’d moved into his own place. His wings flap, as if insisting that they could hold him long enough, that he doesn’t need a car to get home.

> Hawks ignores them as he watches the commission’s car pull up in front of him.

> Or: Hawks is grounded (ha) and Dabi just has to show up to be a little bitchy but also helpful because that's just who he is

Notes

> Fluffier than usual, but still a little angsty in the beginning! There's a blood mention, and implied torture, but it's not too bad??? Please be careful! <3

> ALSO, I GOT MY FIRST CASE OF FAN ART!!!!!!!!!

> https://twitter.com/shinyarticun0/status/1272984926527332360?s=19

> Thank you to ShinyArticuno for this beautiful art! <3 (I even noticed that you drew his clipped feathers, and your attention to detail is just amazing and I want to be your friend??????)

See the end of the work for more notes

## Grounded

By the time that Hawks is finally allowed to leave the Hero Public Safety Commission building, he’s close to shaking with anxiety, frustration, and a slew of other emotions that he can’t even begin to pick apart. His wings shake, and this time he can’t stop them, can’t even give the illusion of stillness by controlling his feathers. He can’t feel through them anymore, and he almost feels blind without all of the sensations that he usually gets, even if it can all be a bit much. Despite not being able to feel everything through his feathers, every sensation grates up and down his spine painfully, even the small breath that his Handler lets out when she sees him again.

“You know that we don’t like to do this to you, Hawks,” she sighs, like she’s disappointed that she has to say this. Like he takes her kindness for granted. He nods numbly at her, not saying anything and not looking her in the eye.

The look that he gets is full of mock-sympathy.

“I’ll call for a car,” she offers, not even bothering to wait for his reply before her heels start clicking across the polished floor. Hawks isn’t sure that he could give one right now, his voice still trapped somewhere in his chest, which feels too tight, so tight that he’s surprised that he can even breathe because they had grounded him and birds are meant to fly-

The commission, displeased with his reliance on them, had taken his flight feathers, cut off the tips, and grounded him both literally and figuratively. He can’t fly like he’s meant to, like he always has. Instead, his wings are two useless, feathery lumps on his back, weighing him down as he blankly waits for a car to take him home for the first time since he’d moved into his own place. His wings flap, as if insisting that they could hold him long enough, that he doesn’t need a car to get home.

Hawks ignores them as he watches the commission’s car pull up in front of him.

Hawks can’t do anything. His wings are a constant ache that can and will get worse, depending on what he’s doing.

Walking jostles his wings too much, the hop that he’d never fully been trained out of coming back to bite him in the ass.

Sitting involves chairs, which have backs that crush his wings to his back, a special kind of agony when his feather’s aren’t cut open and raw.

When he tries to sleep the blanket slides across his wings and it feels like he’s grabbed a live wire. Out of a small sense of fear, he’s kicked them to the floor and just tried to sleep on his stomach without them, but even then he couldn't.

He’s trying his best to ignore it, to go about his day like he’s supposed to, but Hawks is almost never home, and it shows; he doesn’t have anything to hold his attention, no movies or puzzles or books. His apartment, aside from clothes and canned coffee, is depressingly empty of anything personal. There’s just paperwork and a cream colored everything to keep him company, and he's slowly losing his mind. Having nothing to focus on makes him more aware of the burning itch of his wings, which makes him more and more desperate for something to distract himself.

Even if he wasn’t in pain at every breeze, he still couldn’t even go outside, because some villains just get the irresistible urge to start shit when they see a hero. You wouldn’t think that it was a thing, but it is. The first time it happened Hawks had been trying to buy a fucking mango, just one mango, and he still remembers the feeling of absolute disbelief as someone, who sure as hell hadn’t looked evil, met his eyes and exploded the self-checkout area next to him.

He hasn’t gone back since, and it’s the excuse he gives Rumi every time when she says he needs to eat fresh food. She always rolls her eyes, but given that she was the hero that showed up to the scene first, she can’t deny it.

So on the first day, he ignores the pain as best he can because he has to do something, he can’t just idly sit there anymore. He paces, and cleans, and rearranges the same seven pieces of furniture before moving them all back to their original spots, ignoring the sharp pain that shoots up his spine every time his wings brush against something.

On the second day, he finally, at Rumi’s suggestion, invests in a Netflix and a Disney Plus account. He also learns how to make one specific thing, eggs, and gets great at it, not stopping no matter how many disgruntled looks he gets from the grocery delivery woman when he orders carton after carton of eggs because the first batches weren't even really edible.

On the third day, he gets a Grindr account, which lasts ten minutes before he’s frantically deleting it after someone asks for pictures of his feet. He listens to a podcast that answers every question he didn’t know he had with research to back it up. He orders avocados and puts them on his face. He finds a small bottle of nail polish and paints his talons a cheery yellow that clashes horribly with his entire body somehow.

He’s in the middle of shoving the sofa so that it’s back faces the TV to make it more convenient for his wings, which still light up with pain every time he so much as shifts, avocado still smeared on his face, hair held back with a fuzzy headband, airpods connected to the movie in his ears, and eggs cooling on the kitchen counter, when Dabi shows up. At first, Hawks is so preoccupied with moving the couch, ignoring his cut feathers, and trying to keep watching ‘Tangled’ (who he now relates to so much, his Handler is kind of like the kid’s mom) that he doesn’t even notice he’s not alone, much less that someone has broken into his apartment again (Dabi is a repeat offender, and at this point Hawks is considering just giving him the spare key that opens the balcony door). He’s finally dragged the table against the back of the sofa, put his plate down, and is sitting with his wings spread out behind him when the screen is blocked and he startles so hard that he almost falls backwards off the couch. His wings scrape their cut tips against the couch, catching on the carpet, and he screams shrilly. He almost lands on his wings, but he catches himself at the last second. So he's there, gripping the couch like his life depends on it and blinking owlishly at the villain who’s regarding him with so much amusement that he can feel himself turning red under the avocado smeared across his face.

Luckily, Dabi had taken his scream as one of surprise, not unimaginable pain.

Dabi is gesturing for him to take an airpod out, and Hawks isn’t sure how badly he wants to hear himself being laughed at, but he complies anyway.

“Hawks, what the hell are you doing?”

The man in question slowly uses his hold on the back of the couch to pull himself back up, wincing as his wings drag behind him, before he answers.

“Day off?” he tries, smiling brightly at the villain, who obviously doesn’t believe him even a little bit. He looks a little irritated, and like he’s considering the pros and cons of just setting the hero on fire, before he pauses and eyes the area behind Hawks.

“Where’s the rest of your wings?” he demands, like Hawks’ feathers will just pop out if he asks about them like dogs that want attention. He’s stepping around the couch to join the hero as Hawks tries to find a response that won’t make him sound like a whiny kid. He fails, badly.

“I’m grounded,” Hawks mutters, his wings shifting closer to him at the admission and almost making him hiss in pain. Dabi throws himself down next to him, sitting sideways so that he can stare at Hawks without hurting his delicate, villainous neck.

“Grounded like ‘got in trouble’ or grounded like injured?” Dabi asks absently, his eyes catching on the clipped feathers as Hawks tries to hide them. The hero doesn’t answer, instead trying to sneakily fold his wings to hide the worst of the damage. The villain's cold hand snaps out and grabs his wingtip before he can pull it away fully, pulling it closer to his face like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “What did you do?” he asks incredulously, his fingers tracing over the cut edge of a flight feather. Hawks shrieks in pain before he can catch himself, his nails tearing holes in the fabric of the couch. Dabi immediately drops the wing, looking a little startled. Pretending like that didn’t just happen, Hawks clears his throat but doesn’t say anything. Dabi watches him warily from his spot on the couch, but he doesn't make a move to grab his wing again.

Luckily, the villain’s phone chimes, demanding his attention.

“You know what? I don’t care,” Dabi mutters to Hawks, reading whatever message he just got. The villain shoves himself off of the couch and breezes past a very confused Hawks who's very grateful that he doesn't have to explain why he's a useless flightless bird at the moment.

Dabi’s gone before Hawks can even ask what’s happening and be a good hero by doing his job.

Overall, Hawks lasts three days before he walks into the bathroom, his hands shaking the slightest bit as his feathers scream with his movements.

The feathers on his back twitch, like they’re trying to rip themselves free, and he flinches as he extends them and moves their tips closer to his face to stare at them dishearteningly. The damaged feathers are in his reach now, their cut ends seeming to catch the light, and they look awful. The usually uniform tips of the feathers have been cut short, making their tips look blocky. A shaky sigh leaves him before he steels himself, reaches for the nearest cut feather, and rips it out with a shout that he quickly muffles by biting into his balled up fist. Gods, it hurts like pulling teeth, but he has to do it, and he doesn't have the luxury of getting any help.

Even with the ideal angle, which he absolutely does not have, pulling such large feathers out would hurt. With the shitty angle, a feeling of strong resolve, and his own stupid ‘rip the baindaid off now and cry later’ mentality, he knows that the bathroom is going to be a mess of blood and Hawks is going to be sobbing around his clenched fist by the time he’s done. With this in mind, he keeps going. Flinging the bloody feather behind him, Hawks’ trembling fingers reach for another feather, his wings jerking away from his touch like they’re trying to escape from him. Wrapping his fingers around another, he twists and pulls and screams into his hand.

Twist and pull.

He bites into his fist and tastes blood.

Twist and pull.

His knees threaten to buckle, and he almost concusses himself on the edge of his sink counter.

Twist and pull.

Blood makes his grip slippery, but he doesn’t stop.

Twist and pull.

He can’t stop, he has to pull his ruined flight feathers out so that the new ones can grow in. It’s necessary, even if each feather adds to the bloody mess on his back and sends agony through his wings. His floor is covered in long, boxy feathers, each one leaving its own stain on the light tile.

His hand is so covered in blood that it looks like he’s wearing a glove.

He doesn’t stop, despite the pain and the mess he’s making of his bathroom floor, because this is something that he has to do. His feathers aren’t self-healing, it’s out with the old, in with the new, like teeth. He can't help but compare it to taking a set of pliers to his own mouth; there's a bad angle, a lot of pain, no way to get a clear visual, and better left to a professional. So yeah, it's like pulling teeth that aren't ready to come out.

Hawks just has to take the old out himself, which sucks. And without control of her feathers he can’t release them, so they’re coming out the hard way. If he could push past the pain, or if there were only a few feathers that had to be pulled, things would be fine. But his wings are big, so big that they cover the mirror in front of him, and it’s a lot of hard, painful, bloody work.

His shaking fingers are gripping the base of a feather closer to his back than the other ones, almost halfway done with the whole horrible grooming session from hell, when a shockingly cold hand reaches under his wing and grabs him and he hears a tired, “Hawks, what the fuck.”

He just cries around his hand, meeting Dabi’s eye’s in the mirror as the villain slowly forces his wing down from it’s arched position. The villain almost looks lazy, meeting his eyes in the mirror and raising a cool eyebrow. He’s calm, cool, and collected, smirking like he thinks that he’s caught Hawks having a long overdue teenage breakdown, until he releases the wing in his grip and that expression is washed away like sidewalk chalk in the rain. When he lets go, there’s blood on his hand, covering his palm like people do with red paint to stamp their hand prints for DIY art projects. Hawks wonders how many times he could print his own hand, absently watching a bead of blood slide down his wrist in the mirror.

“What are you doing?” the villain demands harshly, staring down at his red palm in surprise and grabbing the wing that he had just let go of. Hawks shakes his head again with a muffled whine, unwilling to take his hand out of his mouth. Cold fingers grab his face harshly, the other hand grabbing his fist and ripping it from his mouth. His canines scrape against the skin, leaving small gashes in the back of his hand. Mission accomplished, Dabi drops his hand. Hawks heaves in a ragged gasp now that his mouth isn’t full of his hand, and he stutters his way through the shortest and simplest answer that he can give.

“I have to get them out, or new ones can’t grow in, like teeth,” Hawks croaks with a small, humorless laugh at his own expense, reaching back for another feather while Dabi tries to process what he just said.

“Pretty sure that-”

With a sharp twist of his wrist, and a scream that he quickly smothers by biting into his hand again, he pulls out another feather. It’s the last one for that wing, which he lets drop to the floor in a useless heap immediately, almost taking Dabi down with it. Blood smears across the floor, still oozing out of where the feathers used to be, and the villain stares down at it while Hawks feels a wave of relief so strong that he almost falls over. His wing, without the pain of cut feathers being ripped out, feels heavy and numb and it’s absolute bliss compared to what it had been. It takes less than a second for him to decide that it’s a lot better than having the feathers cut, and he's desperate to do the rest. Hawks turns his attention to the other wing, fingers reaching for the closest feather that’s been giving him pain. Dabi’s hand grabs his and yanks it down before letting go, like he trusts that Hawks isn’t going to raise it again to do what needs to be done. He's wrong, but the trust is nice.

“Fuck- stop that, birdie. Just stop for a second.”

Hawks ignores him and reaches for another one again, and Dabi slaps his hand away this time. His wing’s twitch, the one on the ground hitting the villains foot as it slides across the floor.

“What happened?”

Hawks meets his eyes in the mirror and shakes his head. It’s a loaded question, and he’s not going to answer it with the truth. Going off of the look he shares with Dabi, the villain knows this, he doesn’t expect the truth, but is asking for it anyway. Hawks isn’t sure when Dabi stopped hating him (if he ever did) enough to care about what he does to his wings. Yeah, they're chill during league meetings, and they can get along well enough to kick ass sometimes during game nights, but that's it. Hawks has always gotten the feeling that Dabi doesn't like him all that much.

“Bad haircut,” Hawks half-lies through his teeth, smiling in slight humor despite his blotchy, tear streaked face. If he wore makeup, it would undoubtedly be running down his face, and he could complete the look of a girl who didn’t win prom queen and is throwing a fit in the bathroom during prom. The villain picks up a pulled feather from the floor, looking at the clean cut ends, and his face shutters just enough for Hawks to notice the difference.

“Hawks, who did it?” Dabi asks, keeping his voice light, like he’s asking about how the hero’s patrol went. It's a far cry from his question when he had stopped by earlier of 'what did you do', and Hawks isn't sure why Dabi now thinks that he didn't do it. He's not about to join the 'self-mutilation' club, but he still wonders why the villain thinks that Hawks wouldn't do this to himself. he had done it to himself, in a way; his punishment was linked to his crime.

"Hawks," Dabi calls, trying to get him to answer. It’s the same tone that his Handler uses when he’s done something wrong, and he curls into himself just a little bit at the thought.

(“Hawks, you know why this is necessary, don’t you?” his Handler asks, leading him down the hallway towards his commission-made appointment. She’s activated her quirk, a subtle way of telling him that she doesn’t want an actual answer. He nods slowly, unable to speak without a voice, and she smiles at him like he’s done the right thing. If he’s being honest, he likes that expression more on the people that he saves; something about seeing such a fake copy of it on his Handlers face makes him feel wrong, somehow.

“Good,” she smiles quickly before letting it drop from her face, and Hawks knows that it was as fake as it always is as she leads him into the room.

It’s the same room that it’s always been, but now there’s a bar on the wall, similar to a pull up bar, but set too low for someone his height.

“This is for you to grab, and we’ll allow a stress grip this time,” she tells him, warning clear in her voice that this is the only exception. Hawks finds his voice when she lets him.

“Why-”

His voice is taken away again, and the look he gets is chilling. “Asking why is ungrateful, Hawks,” his Handler frowns at him and he ducks his head before she sighs and tells him,

“You broke through the restraints last time, as I’m sure you remember. Allowing you to secure yourself with your own body is more cost effective, and you won’t be able to let go during the process and accidentally hurt someone or damage yourself. It’s a win-win, and very effective for all parties,” she explains with a bored tone, like she’s not talking about using his own quirk against him so that she can do what she wants.

Hawks nods again, trying to swallow past the fear in his throat.

His voice is back, but he doesn’t say anything else.)

Dabi snaps his fingers in his face, and it takes Hawks a second to realize that Dabi is actually in front of him now, he’s not just staring at the man in the mirror. The villain has squeezed himself between Hawks' body and the counter, and he's standing uncomfortable close. Hawks stares at the villain dazedly, and he gets a much sharper stare back. Zoning out with a short tempered villain is going to be the death of him someday soon, if not today. The villain in question looks impatient, getting more aggravated with every passing second. He sharply gestures in a ‘well, tell me’ gesture that Hawks flinches back from the slightest bit. He knows that Dabi catches it.

“Repeat the question?” Hawks asks, tacking on a charming press-worthy smile for good measure.

Dabi looks at him like he’s an idiot.

“You know what, I don’t even care anymore. I'm still gonna fix it for you,” Dabi grunts, like Hawks has begged for his help without even speaking. Maybe he had. It would really be a lot easier to have someone else do it, a lot less painful. In this scenario where he gets help, the one helping him ideally wouldn’t be an S rank villain who’s never had a problem hurting people he doesn’t like, and up until around ten minutes ago Hawks had been sure that he fit in that very large box. The thought of having his wings touched more than fleetingly by Dabi scares him, if he’s being honest. His hesitation must be horrible obvious, because Dabi rolls his eyes at him.

A cold hand grabs his wrist, the one that’s not horribly bloody, and drags him out to his living room. The jerking movement of being dragged around snaps him out of his head.

“No, not necessary, we’re not doing that. I’ll do it myself, you don't need to work for a 'good deed' sticker,” Hawks protests, trying to dig his heels into the carpet of his hallway. He’s wearing socks, and it hardly even slows Dabi down; he just drags Hawks behind him. He can do his own wings, it’s fine. He would rather do them himself and make a bloody mess of his wings than have them burnt off because Dabi doesn’t actually like him enough for this to not be a trick.

“I can hear you thinking, shut up,” the villain snaps, not turning around and not slowing down in the slightest. Hawks swears that Dabi is letting his numb wing run into door frames on purpose, but he can’t exactly un-numb it and do something about his suspicions, so he just lets it happen and winces at each thunk. Yeah, Dabi definitely doesn’t like him.

Eventually, the reluctant choo-choo train of pain and embarrassment comes to a stop in Hawks’ living room, where Dabi shoves him face first into the couch so forcefully that he has to stop himself from slamming his face into the back of it. Hawks immediately is trying to push himself back, not even caring if he falls on his ass, because they’re not doing this. Hawks refuses to just let Dabi pull feathers out-

Dabi man-handles him back onto the couch, uncaring of the way that Hawks tenses and thrashes just the slightest bit. He can't put up a decent fight with one wing numb and the other lighting up in pain like a pinball machine every time he tries to move it. The last time he turned his back to someone, he was made flightless and put into this awful situation in the first place, and that person was an official government employee. Hawks tries not to shiver at the reminder. His numb wing is lifted and tossed semi-carefully onto the couch next to him, and Hawks reaches out to it and pulls it closer to him protectively. It twitches in his hold, but remains loose and numb. Blood is smeared across his cream sofa, and it's definitely going to stain the already ugly thing. His other wing tries to curl closer to him but it grabbed by cold hands and pinned with one while the other pushes Hawks further into the couch. The hand remains firm when Hawks struggles against it, and he hears Dabi sigh at him in exasperation.

“If you’re that scared, grab the back of the couch or something, but this is happening-”

Hawks eyes trace his wing that’s still numb as his blood rushes in his ears, only half-listening. Slowly, his hands reach up to grab the back of the couch and he hangs his head between his hunched and shaking shoulders.

It’s a mirror image of what happened three days ago.

That thought alone has his fingers clenching anxiously, tearing into the back of the couch and keeping him in place. A cold hand smooths over his shaking back cautiously, seemingly to calm him down. If he could forget who's hand it was, it might have worked better.

“You’ll be fine,” Dabi says, awkwardly petting his back in between his wings. Hawks relaxes a little bit more for every pass of his fingers over the small feathers, and the other man doesn’t make any move to do anything else any time soon. Which is probably why the feeling of a feather being yanked loose makes him jerk and chirp in pained surprise. A hand, heated to be just relaxing enough that Hawks calms down faster, soothes over his smaller feathers again before another cut feather is pulled.

With Dabi doing the pulling, it’s almost painless. Hawks doesn’t get any warning, doesn’t have time to tense up and make it worse for himself, before a feather is yanked out, and he’s better off for it. There’s no blood because Dabi has the perfect angle, so the feathers aren’t tearing at the thin skin of his wings when they come out, and all he can feel is relief as the warm hand remains pressed to his back. Despite this, he never relaxes enough to release his grip on the back of the couch, all too aware that he’s a sitting duck and completely at the mercy of the man at his back. The second that Dabi wants to hurt him, he has the option, and even if Hawks doesn't think the guy hates him as much as he used to, he knows that he often brings out the worst in people. It's a talent, really, and it only gets stronger when he's around people like Dabi, for completely unknown reasons.

Finally the last feather is pulled out with a sudden yank, and the creeping numb relief that creeps through his previously tense wing almost makes him cry.

“You good, pretty bird?” Dabi drawls lazily, carding his fingers through the wing as it slumps against the couch.

Hawks nods at him tiredly, his head still buried from view. His hands flex around the back of the couch, and he winces a little bit. With the rest of his body being so relaxed, it almost feels like his hands are cramping.

"My hands hurt," Hawks breathes, closing his eyes and trying to just enjoy his wings not hurting for the fist time in days.

Dabi’s eyebrows furrow, “then let go.”

“I can’t.”

“Well, why not?”

“I’m too stressed.”

Dabi eyes his wings, both feathery puddles of numb bliss at his sides, and raises an eyebrow.

“Sure you are.”

“I won’t be letting go for a while,” Hawks tells him, resting his cheek on the back of the couch sullenly.

Pleasantly warm fingers run through the feathers on his left wing while the other hand continues to rest on his back, and Dabi laughs at him when he melts further into the couch. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Dabi’s hands never leaving his wings, Hawks speaks up.

“The commission thinks that I use my wings too much, and I need to learn to live without relying on them,” Hawks mumbles, rubbing his face into his clenched hands like he can sooth them into letting go of the couch. The hand in his wing stutters to a halt and the one on his back stops its soft petting. A small chirp leaves him in complaint, which Dabi huffs at slightly.

“They think you use your quirk, the one that saves lives, too much,” Dabi repeats with a bitchy tone, resuming running his blessedly heated fingers through Hawks’ wing.

Hawks wishes that he had a pillow up to act as a barrier between his hands and his face, “yeah.”

“So they did clipped your wings.”

The other pillow is chucked off of the couch and on to the floor, “uh huh. It’s alright though-”

“That’s bullshit, birdie, and you know it,” Dabi cuts him off, his hands getting slightly hotter as they continue to bury themselves into Hawks’ feathers. It feels amazing, and his brain is trying to fill with foggy bliss, but he has to focus. He wiggles a little bit, trying to get less comfortable so he can address this thing that’s happening right now. Pull the weed before it grows and stuff.

“They own me, you know that. I can't really do anything about it,” Hawks mutters, using his head to nudge the pillow over the back of the couch and on to the floor. Dabi’s hands clench in his feathers, earning him a hiss from Hawks, before he catches himself and lets go.

“That’s a thing?” Dabi demands, leaning closer in order to be able to look Hawks in the eye without stopping what he’s doing. Hawks feels his eyebrows furrow, “yeah?”

“Oh shit, that sucks,” Dabi says eloquently, leaning back. The response is so lackluster that Hawks slowly turns to stare at him with both eyebrows raised.

“Wait, did you think I was kidding when I said that?” he demands.

“It was a sharing circle, I make stuff up all the time,” Dabi defends, not meeting his eyes as he switches to the other wing.

“You make up stuff during the team bonding exercises?” Hawks shrieks at him in disbelief. Yeah, Hawks himself is guilty of omitting information and telling half-truths because his life is depressing and he only figured that out when Mr. Compress had started to sniffle during the first circle. Hawks can't handle his own emotions, not to mention other peoples. So he deflects, but just making something up?

"Wow. That's a dick move, Hot stuff."

Hawks can feel the way that Dabi shrugs in response, his hands shifting against his feathers. Silence fills the space between them, only broken by the small chirps Hawks can’t hold back and the little huff of laughter that Dabi gave each one. It’s annoying that he can’t stay quiet, but the villain has magic hands that would have gotten him places.

His hands fall over the edge of the couch’s back, fingers lax as Hawks tries not to slide off and become a puddle on the floor.

If Dabi notices he doesn’t say anything. Instead, one of his hands slides out of the wing and guides an arm around Hawks, just holding him, while his other hand continues to soothe his wing.

It’s nice, being held like he’s something to be cherished instead of just used. The arm around his wait tightens before gently pulling him back, closer to the man behind him like they're in a couple's yoga class.

Hawks stares ahead with wide eyes, but he doesn’t make a move to resist when Dabi pulls him closer by his waist. The villain pulls him back until Hawks can feel a long press of heat across his back, sandwiching his wings between them in a way that's just careful enough to not make them uncomfortable. Even though he can't feel them, it's a sweet sentiment. Maybe it’s the regard for his wings, maybe it’s the intense heat at his back, or maybe it’s the bonding moment that they had just shared- that they continue to share, but-

Hawks makes the first move, turning in Dabi’s arms until he can crush their mouths together. It’s a weird angle, and Hawks still feels a little too much like a puddle to really get into it, but it’s still perfect. The scarred bottom lip isn’t rough like he thought it would be, and Dabi is both wonderfully warm and refreshingly cold at the same time. As if reading his mind, Dabi huffs a laugh into the kiss, and Hawks can feel the villain’s smile against his own. They don’t take it any further, both content to keep it in their pants (for now) and just enjoy each others company.

A few minutes and a changed position later, Dabi looks down at where Hawks' head rests on his lap. Hawks looks back at him questioningly, pausing in his rant about not being able to go anywhere while he tries to shift into a more comfortable position.

“You can still drive places.”

Hawks stays silent, pausing in his quest to get more comfortable. His sudden stillness catches the villain’s attention quickly.

“Pretty bird,” Dabi calls, drawing the term of endearment out, “don’t tell me you can’t drive.”

Hawks feels his shoulders hunch a little bit and he pretends like he’s not avoiding eye contact

“Oh my gods, you can’t,” Dabi crows in delight at his expense, leaning down to look at him.

Hawks fluffs up indignantly, “I never had to learn, I can fly!”

Dabi snorts at him.

“Apparently not,” he mutters, and Hawks feels himself turning red. Dabi catches it and pats his head mockingly as Hawks buries his face into the villain’s thigh, hoping to suffocate himself so he doesn’t have to deal with this.

“Aren’t you too old to be grounded?”

Hawks throws an elbow into Dabi’s side, making the villain gasp for breath, and smiles innocently.

“Oops.”

## Afterword

End Notes

> Please leave a comment! Hopefully this wasn't too ooc, but I get the feeling that it is, so feel free to recommend ways to write these two idiots better! I'm always trying to get better at what I do, and I love interacting with you guys! <3

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