## Preface

Say No To This (I Didn't Know I Could)
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/24230200.

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, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead & Takami Keigo | Hawks, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead/Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, League of Villains & Takami Keigo | Hawks, Hero Public Safety Commission & Takami Keigo | Hawks, Takami Keigo | Hawks & Usagiyama Rumi | Miruko
Characters:
  Takami Keigo | Hawks, Dabi (My Hero Academia), Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Usagiyama Rumi | Miruko, Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Kurogiri (My Hero Academia), Sako Atsuhiro | Mr. Compress, Iguchi Shuuichi | Spinner, Bubaigawara Jin | Twice, Toga Himiko
Additional Tags:
  Takami Keigo | Hawks-centric, Hurt Takami Keigo | Hawks, Protective League of Villains (My Hero Academia), Protective Dabi (My Hero Academia), Protective Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Protective Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Touching, Attempted Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Panic Attacks, mild though, Dissociation, Abuse of Authority, it's just a matter of who gets to it first, Hawks has PTSD, Pedophilia, Hawks is hurt and he doesn't even know it, Victim Blaming, poor bird boy, But Also!, Getting Together, League of Villains as Family (My Hero Academia), Hurt/Comfort, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, but it does get better, so there's that, The commission will burn
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 4 of Hawks Needs Help (And He Actually Gets It), Part 1 of Using Hawks to vent but adding plot so it's okay I hope???
Collections:
  Wolfis MyHeroAcademia Library, My Hero Academia 💚❤🤍, Animes, under penalty of death
Stats:
  Published: 2020-05-22 Words: 11,321 Chapters: 1/1

# Say No To This (I Didn't Know I Could)

by Numanum

Summary

> Dabi is back, and if Hawks didn’t know better, he would say that the villain's expression looks confused. Dabi’s hand gestures around his own scarred mouth, where a smirk is slowly growing.

> “You’ve been busy,” he greets, and at first Hawks doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, but he knows that it’s not the impressive stack of completed paperwork on his desk. Tentatively, he raises his own fingers to his mouth and rubs lightly before looking down at them. They’re a bright red, too artificial to be blood, but his stomach still lurches at the sight. Hawks almost wishes that it was blood.

> “So, what, am I too ugly for ya? There ain’t no way that you’re straight,” Dabi’s smiling like a cat, the wide smile making the staples in his skin pull, and it’s just unsettling enough, and Hawks is already at the end of his rope enough to just tell someone.

> “I couldn’t move.”

> Obviously, that was not the response that Dabi was expecting.

> Or: Hawks works through some stuff and Dabi calls him a bitch (said softly, with love) as he does it.

Notes

> Sexual assault trigger warning!!! It's not horribly graphic, but it's there and I don't want anyone to be caught off-guard! Mentions of non-con, kinda, but nothing happens? Ummm, non-consensual drug use, but nothing comes out of it... I think that's it? Please let me know if I missed something! <3

See the end of the work for more notes

## Say No To This (I Didn't Know I Could)

The first time it happens, Hawks still lives with his parents, and he’s seven years old.

It’s night time, and he’s really not supposed to be up, but neither was anyone else. Sometimes, if she feels up to it and she’s sober, very rarely, his mom will remember that he’s there, that he’s her son, and she’ll come read him a story. His dad doesn’t do it, doesn’t seem to care as much, but it’s still nice. Having the attention of one of his parents makes his chest feel full and bright, like his heart has been replaced with the sun. His mother comes in, and she’s not sober but that’s all right, she’s here-

She reads him a story.

She tucks him in, her movements sloppier than usual and she has to steady herself on his shoulder more than once.

And she kisses him.

Her mouth is a lot bigger than his, she’s a lot bigger than him in general, and he can taste the alcohol on her breath before she lets go and leans back from him. It lasts less than a second, but he feels something tight curl in his chest and stay there. His mother doesn’t seem to feel it. In a rare moment of affection, one that he usually has to fight tooth and nail for, she smiles down at him, like he’s made her really happy. Her face lights up just like his does sometimes, and he can feel a smile pulling through his confusion at the sight. There’s nothing wrong about it, he tells himself after she’s long gone and he’s still awake. It’s just a kiss, but- it feels different from the kisses he sometimes gets from his dad. His dad kisses his forehead, his nose, the top of his head, even his cheek. It takes less than a second for Keigo to decide that he likes those kisses better. But he can’t be ungrateful, not if he still wants his mom to love him.

Later, when he goes to brush his teeth again because he can still taste the alcohol, he sees it. Keigo is barely tall enough to see his reflection in the dirty bathroom mirror, he can’t even see his chin, but he can see the smear of his mom’s bright red lipstick across his lips. He tries to scrub it off, his sharp talons carefully kept away from his skin, but it only smears the red until it leaves pink stains across his face. It’s just a kiss, and Keigo’s not gonna complain just because he doesn’t like where his goodnight kisses are, because they can be taken away just like everything else.

So he never says anything, and she keeps coming back.

And almost every night, unless he’s been bad, he gets a kiss.

He learns to cherish them, to want them, but the thing in his chest never really disappears.

When the Hero Public Safety Commission takes him in, Hawks just kind of assumes that those kinds of kisses will stop; his mom isn’t here, and all of the workers are too professional to be giving him ‘good boy’ kisses. Then, as a mandatory part of his new training, Keigo- Hawks, he’s Hawks now-

Hawks has to learn CPR.

The person teaching him, a man with some sort of animal quirk, is his teacher. He watches Hawks practice on the dummy very closely, correcting his compressions and form. When it’s time for the part where he pushes air into the dummy’s lungs, his trainer stops him and says that Hawks would learn better with a real person who has real lungs, and he replaces the dummy. Hawks tries to focus, to do it right, but he feels too nervous, and his trainer offers to show him how to do it. When he quickly accepts, wanting to do well, he gets a smile for his eagerness.

Hawks is the practice dummy this time, and he does choke when the man’s tongue is shoved into his mouth.

When his trainer stops, seeming satisfied with today’s lesson, he sends Hawks a smile just like his mother used to. On reflex, Hawks smiles back.

Years later, Hawks has a ‘hey, wait a minute’ moment where he remembers and only freaks out a little bit. He spends what feels like hours staring up at his ceiling, feeling too wound up to even move, like if he tries he’ll snap like a cheap piece of plastic that got a barbell chucked at it. Everything is fine because it has to be, heroes don’t get taken advantage of, and he wasn’t. It was just a kiss, and yeah, he was young, but it had been for training, right? It was to make him a better hero. And even if it was more, if it was less than innocent, what could he really do about it?

Hawks had never said yes, but he hadn’t said no either.

Something about it still doesn’t sit right with him, weighing on his mind every time he was brought into a room that even looked a little bit like the one with the CPR training, but it’s easily ignored once his actual hero training starts. He doesn’t think of it again, pushing it deep into the ‘fuck this shit I’m not dealing with it’ part of his brain and ignores the thing that screams at him to connect the dots.

One of his new Handlers, only a few years older than his own seventeen years, calls him handsome and he tries not to glow under the praise. He tells her that she’s pretty, like he was taught to when he was learning about social interaction, and she smiles that specific smile. The sight of it makes the light feeling drop from his chest on sight, and it only drops further when she puts her hands on his shoulders and pulls him in closer.

Hawks is twenty two now, and he still doesn’t think much of it. But sometimes, it’s hard, especially when he’s been dragged out to go drinking with a few other pro heroes for publicity reasons.

He feels too dressed up, put on display with his nice jacket and a tie that he had loosened the second he’d left for this thing. It’s not a suit event, thank the gods, but it’s certainly a nicer thing and he has to represent well.

The night starts off alright, with Hawks having found (and attached himself to) Rumi, who’s wearing a floor length dress and looking gorgeous in it. They quickly relocate to the bar, which is still crowded, but it has more order to it, and claim stools right next to each other. He’s not antisocial, he can meet and greet fans with the best of them, which he is, but crowds are horrible for his stupid quirk. Not only does his stupid bird brain want to be up high where he can see everyone, which isn’t going to happen inside a crowded one-story building, but his wings ache in overstimulation. He can feel every vibration, every bass drop and laugh, and it had made his wings twitch the second that he’d walked through the door and it’s only gotten worse the longer he stays. It feels like his feathers are crawling with ants, and he’s immediately reminded why he hates these things with a passion that he always abandons when the commission adds incentive.

Incentive could be anything from a smaller paycheck to an extra round of training, and it’s best to avoid it all together.

Someone tries to sneakily pet his wings for the fourth time in seventeen minutes and Hawks resists the urge to ‘accidentally’ slap them with it. Rumi must see the look of despair on his face, because she laughs at him and throws a hard punch at his arm. “C'mon Hawks. Don’t be such a chicken. Loosen up!” Hawks slowly looks her up and down (the dress does her justice, really, but the plunging neckline makes him wonder how things don’t just… pop out) before giving her his best sex look, “I’m always loose for you, baby,” he purrs, leaning in close and batting his eyes exaggeratedly. “Bottom,” Rumi scoffs with a mock-disgusted look, shoving him away but making sure that he doesn’t hit anyone behind him. They stare at each other and manage to make it only a few seconds before they’re cackling loud enough that even Present Mic hears them and looks mildly impressed with their volume. “Really though,” she throws an arm around his shoulder, “chill out before someone vibe checks you.”

“That was your idea,” Hawks accuses dramatically, pointing an accusing finger at her. Rumi cackles again.

“Yeah, but did you see the scum’s face-” her hand, which he thinks represents him, shoots through the air and slams onto the bar as she screeches, “vibe check!” and falls into a laughing mess. Hawks remembers the look of confused horror right before he landed on the criminal and starts to laugh at it himself because yeah, that was a good day. The commission hadn’t been thrilled about it, but they’d grudgingly calmed down after the stunt got posted on Tiktok and Hawks became more popular with the kids. They had said that it was ‘acceptable’, which Hawks took as an encore for a repeat performance at any point. While Rumi orders for both of them, he considers making ‘vibe check’ an official attack, just to see if the commission would let him.

A drink is placed in front of him, something sweet and girly looking with a rose accent piece that he rolls his eyes at because he knows that it doesn’t come with the drink. Rumi takes one look and slaps a hand over her mouth to smother her giggles, “I didn’t think that he’d do it, holy shit this is great! I’m gonna keep doing it and asking for random shit, watch.”

It tells him exactly who the rose is from, who it was really meant for, and that there’s gonna be a lot more.

In short, Hawks isn’t leaving this event sober.

“I hate you,” Hawks sulks, throwing the rose, unfortunately de-thorned, at her. Instead of looking insulted, Rumi glows even brighter with mischief, “I bet these tits can get me anything I want,” she boasts before adjusting her dress so that it sits even lower (Hawks really wonders how nothing has happened) and leaning over the bar to order more drinks.

It works.

By the time that the bartender finally stops staring at Rumi’s chest and catches on, they have quite the collection of flowers and other small things, and Eraserhead has shown up and is staring at them with exasperation clear on his face as Mic tries not to laugh. “We’re sharing,” Hawks defends, offering them a spiraling piece of chocolate that had been on a drink. Eraserhead swats Mic’s hand away when it reaches for the chocolate, making the grown man and teacher pout like a child. Hawks offers him a bright yellow worm on a string instead, which doesn’t get swatted away.

“Who’re ya sharing with?” Mic asks, weaving the glorified fluffed up yarn in between his fingers with a level of inattention to things around him that gives blondes a bad reputation.

Hawks sends them double finger guns and slaps on his best smile, “you guys!”

Eraserhead looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here, but he does help Hawks and Mic carry all of the drinks back to an empty booth. Rumi scoops up all of the little accent pieces and uses the dress of her skirt as a sort of pouch to carry them in. It works, really well, actually, but it brings the length up from the floor to mid-thigh, getting her some looks (and if feathers knock glasses out of hands when eyes follow her too closely, Hawks has nothing to do with it). Somehow, over the collection of very girly but shockingly weak drinks, they get to the subject of parents. Hawks thinks that it had something to do with Mic teasing Eraser about adopting his class, which Rumi had laughed uproariously at and called them the ‘dads of UA’, and things had snowballed so badly that the end result wasn’t even a ball. This was proven seconds later, when everything went pear shaped after Mic had admitted that his parents weren’t great about his quirk when he was a kid. Rumi had quickly swapped to weird shit her parents had done before, getting a laugh out of Mic when she complained about the lipstick stains that had always been on her forehead as a kid, to the extent that a classmate had asked if it was a birthmark. Hawks winces in sympathy at the story before contributing to the ‘make Mic laugh’ fund.

“I get you, my mom used to do full on mouth kisses!” He makes an exaggerated ‘yuck’ face that everyone but Eraser laughs at. Rumi launches into a story, dragging Mic with her as she gestures and practically shouts her tale. Hawks watches her, watches Mic as the man becomes loud at something that she’s said. Something in Hawks’ chest grows heavy at the memories he's unintentionally stirred up, and he can feel his smile become less and less genuine. The teacher notices.

“That’s odd,” he comments, careful enough to not be loud enough to pull Rumi and Mic’s attention.

“The kissing thing? Not really,” Hawks says, swirling the new drink that was just placed in front of him, despite the numerous half full ones on the table. The skeptical eyebrow he gets in reply makes him nervous, like he’s said something that’s weird.

“That's just how some parents are,” Hawks laughs, trying to quell his inner panic because what the absolute fuck. Aizawa nods his head like he understands, but the guy is a pro who teaches kids who probably try to bullshit him all the time, so him nodding could mean anything really. Hawks can read people pretty well, he’s infiltrating the league after all (so what if he’s not selling them out, he can still read them well enough to know that Shigaraki hates Disney and will try to disintegrate any disk that comes too close to him), and he gets the gut feeling that Eraser doesn’t believe him at all but is willing to drop it. Hawks knocks back part of the drink in his hand, almost choking at the sickly sweet taste and the unexpected bubbles in it.

He rejoins the story right as Rumi screams “vibe check!” and slams her hand into the table for emphasis. Hawks laughs even harder than he did the first time, and Eraser actually has to activate his quirk on Mic, who’s losing his shit and making eardrums burst because of it. Unable to find the words he wants, Hawks smiles widely and nods fast enough that he gets a little dizzy. He’s reaching for a drink before it even registers that he’s really thirsty. The drink, something iced and yellow that tastes like mango, does nothing for his suddenly dry throat as he chugs it. Something in his mind clicks as he’s drinking, and he almost spits the drink out onto the nice table. The mango drink, a sugary monstrosity, is less sweet than what is supposedly champagne or something.

How his weird champagne drink could’ve been roofied in a room full of heroes, he has no idea, but it happened and the effects are hitting him hard. You gotta have balls of steel to pull this kinda shit, Hawks thinks blearily as he tries not to fall over while sitting down. Yeah, he’d land in Rumi’s lap, but a lot of papers already think that they’re dating, which is gross and he’s not gonna willingly add fuel to that fire. He has a few options right now, all of them half-formed and not nearly as appealing as staying here and drinking mango. It’s either stay for a bit so it’s not suspicious and don’t say anything and hope that he doesn’t eat shit the second he tries to stand, tell someone and ruin the event for everyone and forever be the hero that someone roofied at a fucking hero party, or hope that he can leave without causing a scene and keep his dignity in tact. Honestly, he’ll take his chances outside, even if the blue worm on a string that's tied to the mango drink's stem looks really fun to play with. Hawks reaches for the drink in front of him, intent to finish it despite the way that the world is blurry and his mind is whispering for him not to, that it’s a horrible idea. His throat is so dry that it almost burns.

Hawks picks up the drink in front of him and knocks it back before immediately pulling back from it to stare at the empty glass in wonder. His tongue tingles like he’s been holding pop rocks in his mouth for hours.

“There’s bubbles,” he says in awe, trying to move his head low enough to see them as they cling to what little liquid is left in the cup. His wings are fluffed up in childish happiness, and his fingers itch to hold the cup closer. Eraser gives him an odd look, like he’s trying to puzzle something out like the puzzle-man that he is. He’s weird; you couldn’t pay Hawks to watch kids with quirks, especially teenagers. His feathers are flammable.

His wings are completely lax on his back, their tips dusting the floor slightly. As he’s plotting his escape from the chair, they swish back and forth a little bit, like they’re trying to fold against his back but they can’t. He’s saved from having to stand alone when Rumi grabs him, her grip being the only thing keeping him balanced as she suddenly hauls him up with her. A rush passes through his head and he startles but laughs at the spinning vision that he gets as he collapses into Rumi’s side. “Hawks, you’re wasted!” she laughs, tapping at his flushed face while he tries to tell if the world is supposed to move like that. He smiles at her, waving to Mic and Eraser as he’s pulled away from the table. They watch him go, Eraser looking from him to the bubbly drink's empty cup and narrowing his eyes.

On the way out, some guy falls into him with a small laugh, his hands landing on Hawks’ hip and waist as he tries to steady himself. Hawks knows that this man isn't drunk, he's a horrible actor, but he helps to steady him anyway, because he's a hero. When the man looks up, he smiles like a cat, and Hawks tries not to flail as one hand leaves only to run through his feathers. Despite trying not to make a noise, he whines at the touch; it’s painful, an overload of sensation to his wired body, but he can’t find it in himself to ask the man to stop. He sends Hawks that look, the one that makes the hero’s skin crawl, and Hawks paws at Rumi as she keeps going, dragging two people behind her. Rumi, ever the supportive best friend, turns and sees him, whistles and lets him go, which is absolutely not what he wanted. “Damn Hawks, get it! I’ll get an Uber,” she calls, already turning to walk away, to leave him here.

Hands grab his shoulders, holding him in place, before one glides up to the back of his head and a hot mouth closes over his just like one had when he was younger. The familiar taste of alcohol makes him feel vaguely sick, like his body’s trying to reject it but it doesn’t know how to. Hawks squirms, trying to get away, but everything is so nice right now, and he can’t connect to his body to ask why it wants to get away from the kiss. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s not bad-

Hands roughly separate them, before carefully passing Hawks off to yet another set of hands, and his body immediately relaxes into the new hold, happy to be away from the handsy guy. Blonde hair tickles his face, and he laughs, imagining it as a worm on a string wig. “Shouta thinks you’re drugged,” a voice says to him. Realizing who had saved him, Hawks feels a rush of relief flow through him. “Puzzle man!” he cheers, drawing a laugh from Mic. Hawks wonders at the vibration of it, feeling it hit his feathers and shoot up his spine. He glances back at Eraser and sees him laying into the young hero, sounding stern and bored at the same time. The guy looks thoroughly chastised, but he protests, “he was into it! Besides, he wasn't sayin' no.”

Eraser lifts an unimpressed eyebrow that the hero wilts under the sheer power of, "what did you give him?"

The guy, who Hawks now notices is wearing a server's costume, pales so quickly that he almost matches his white shirt.

“It’s true, ya know,” Hawks frowns, wiggling in Mic’s hold as Eraser walks back over. Mic hums in question, distracted and more concerned with the underground hero’s return than the puddle-of-hero’s mumbles. He still stiffens like he’s been electrocuted when the Hawks shifts in his arms and whispers to him like it’s a secret,

“I didn’ say no, so ‘ts ‘kay.”

Rumi comes back and takes one look at him before taking him from Mic, who looks like he wants to never let go. Eraser seems to share the sentiment, but they still allow Rumi to take him. Around them, the party is still in full swing, and the music’s sheer volume makes him paw at his ears and he can’t imagine how his friend feels. She’s got bunny ears.

When Hawks reaches for her ears she threatens to bite him and he frowns at her but lowers his hand.

A week later, pictures are circling every platform that can hold them, and all of them imply a relationship between the random guy and Hawks.

The pictures in question are a nightmare for him, because his phone is blowing up with messages from Rumi and his Handler, both having very different opinions about it for vastly different reasons.

Rumi is happy that Hawks is ‘getting some’ and ‘leaving the closet’ and is offering to throw him a party, but is also laughing about Eraser and Mic scaring the guy off.

Present Mic, who must have gotten his number from her, asks how he’s doing.

Eraserhead wants to talk to him.

Dabi calls him once and only once, but Hawks lets the phone ring until it stops.

His Handler just tells him that he’s due for more training that wasn’t on his schedule, and to call her at his earliest convenience. His fingers fumble as he dials her number and waits for her to pick up.

“Hawks,” she greets, her voice sounding sharp even over the phone. “I’m going to send you something, and you are going to look at it right now and be quiet while I tell you what’s going to happen."

He nods, even though she can’t see him, and pulls out a tablet so that he can see what she sends and not hang up. Immediately, he gets a notification from his Handler, a link that makes his stomach drop through the floor.

“You are going to look at these, and you are going to know what you did wrong and do better,” his Handler drones on as he hesitantly taps on the link. There's a terrifying moment while everything loads, and there’s a lot of it. Picture after picture, almost every single one containing him being blatantly groped at a hero party by someone who is obviously not a hero while Hawks himself looks drunk as fuck and very unhappy. Hawks doesn’t stare at them for too long, instead scrolling through what people are saying.

He’s tagged in a tweet that calls him ‘easy’, and his wings twitch at the sight of it as he tries not to shake. His Handler continues to drone on, and Hawks wants to scream that he did nothing wrong, that he’d been roofied and then grabbed, but he knows that she won’t want to hear it, that she’ll consider it a weakness. So he smiles, and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly and gives her a show as he apologizes and promises not to let it happen again. He uses his best embarrassed tone, making sure that the phone does it justice, and excuses himself.

This wouldn’t really be a problem; usually, everyone is more worried about the rise in crime rate than they are about what happens to tipsy (drugged) heroes. But the pictures are in every paper. Every. Paper.

The headline is usually something along the lines of ‘HOTTEST HERO AND PARTY HOOK-UP CAUGHT’ or something equally long and painful to say.

And Hawks knows that this is going to be a problem.

A week ago, if someone had told Hawks that the League of Villains read the newspaper, he would have laughed and assumed that it was Kurogiri who demanded that they get it each time it was printed, because he can’t see any of the others caring enough about it.

It’s not that Hawks had assumed that Shigaraki couldn’t read, it was just hard to imagine that reading lessons fit in with his ‘how to be evil’ lessons as a kid. He doesn’t have an excuse for the rest of them, he just never got past Shigaraki.

So when he shows up to the league because Twice wanted more mochi and somehow he was their sugar daddy, he isn’t expecting to see Toga cutting out pictures from the paper like a grandmother. Yeah, if they do something particularly impressive it gets cut out and framed like a certificate of villainy, but the league hasn't made a major move like that in a while. On reflex, he tries to remember if one of those students that she likes, a boy and a girl who she complains are dating each other and not her, got into enough trouble to be in the paper recently. Honestly, Hawks wouldn’t bat an eye if they had. As far as he's concerned, going to UA is a wild ride and would shave years off of your life, and he isn’t going to step foot inside unless he has to. He’s about to call out to her and hand off the bag before leaving, he’s got stuff to do, but he stops short.

Toga holds up a picture, obviously cut out of a newspaper, and it’s a closeup of his face pressed into the other guy’s face, from the night of the hero gathering thing. Hawks stares at it, at the placement of a hand buried in his wing and digging into his waist, and he can almost feel the hands still touching him. He shakes out his wings to get rid of the feeling, the rustle causing Toga to turn around and smile at him before turning back to her project. She pulls up a second one, this one on printer paper, like she’d zoomed in and printed it out. The second one is zoomed in on Hawks face, and he looks dazed and mildly panicked; it’s a horrible photo, and he can’t believe that they actually published it because he looks so uncomfortable that he has to suppress his wince of embarrassment. Toga taps on it, “you look... ugly, Hawks. And not cute,” she says with a happy tone that steadily drops as she keeps going. Dabi, who had joined them at just the right moment, snorts at the bluntness. Hawks wants to ask how he should look in the photo, how he should have responded to the situation. How she would have handled it if she couldn’t fight the guy.

Instead of asking, he stays quiet.

Toga leans in close, not stopping when Hawks leans back, and presses her small nose into his neck before breathing deeply and holy shit she’s smelling him. She’s like a police dog and Dabi, who hasn’t made a move to stop her, is her human partner. His pulse pounds in his ears, and he’s sure that she can hear it, can feel it against the tip of her nose as he fights the urge to push her out of his space. When she breathes out, war air hitting his neck in the worst way possible, he flinches.

“You’re not in love,” Toga declares before leaning back and looking confused, “so why?”

Dabi stares at him, but Hawks ignores him in favor of being reunited with his personal space and trying to calm his racing heart. He jumps at the question, willing to do anything to put her pressing him into a wall and getting too close for comfort behind him.

“Why what? Why am I kissing him in the picture or why don’t I like him?” Hawks asks, raising an eyebrow at her. She considers him with a seriousness that he didn’t think she could have before shrugging, “both.”

“It’s a party thing,” he explains, not looking her in the eye, “I was drunk, he was... there, and I guess that he thought I was into it,” Toga tilts her head at him and he hurries to tack on a quick, “I wasn’t.”

Dabi leaves the room, looking like he’s annoyed by Hawks’ very existence, and he feels his wings wilt a little bit on his back, drooping until their tips dust the floor. Most times, he doesn’t even know what he did, and this is one of those times. Hawks makes sure that his smile stays firmly on his face.

“Does he know that?” Toga continues to press, scratching at the other hero's picture until she rips a hole through his face. Hawks stares at his still intact face in the picture and wonders if he does, if the guy knew about the roofie thing or if he was just a horny party goer. It’s not like it would matter if the guy knew; Hawks is still kinda stuck in this situation because of him. Instead of a real answer, or a lie because he doesn’t actually have a real answer, he just shrugs at her.

“Not sure. I’ll ask the next time I see him.”

He’s gonna avoid the guy like the plague if he sees him, but she doesn’t need to know that.

Hawks gets an invitation to go to UA for some sort of Sexual Assault PSA, not as a speaker, oh no, but as an attendee. It’s phrased, very gently, as ‘chaperone’ but, as much as class 1-A needs more supervision on the best days, Hawks is positive that the only productive thing he’d be doing is practicing his poker face and holding a box of tissues for the students, that he absolutely will not need to use as well because he’s shoved all that behind him.

And the things that the invitation alone implies are things that he leaves boxed away somewhere in his mind under six feet of dirt and seven feet of cement, never to be seen again, but they slowly try to crawl out. Like it’s a zombie movie and every kiss he’s ever had is trying to come back from the grave and cut off his breathing, choking him every time he’s reminded of them. He forcefully shoves them back down, tying weights to their ankles in the form of reminding himself why he shouldn’t care- why he can’t care. Technically speaking, he’s not Keigo anymore, so anything from then, from his mother, is kicked off of the ‘freak out about it’ list and into the goddamned sun. His trainer was teaching him CPR, which is important, and which Hawks did learn, so that one can also be forgotten. His Handler, the one who used to watch over him, was around his age, so it doesn’t count. Maybe she tripped, the world may never know.

Besides, there’s nothing that can be done about it now, even if it was a whole thing, which it isn't.

Hawks responds to Mic’s text with a flimsy excuse and leaves it alone.

That’s not the end of it, why would it be, that would be too easy-

Nope, everything has to get even worse, even more mortifying, because Eraser and Mic make a house visit. Like he’s a kid who needs their help to do hard stuff, like making toast and breathing.

Currently, Hawks is trying to pick the shells out of the eggs that he’s cracked.

When he first hears the knocking, he thinks about ignoring it and just continuing his attempt to salvage the raw eggs. Rumi has a key, and Dabi doesn’t even use the fucking door, preferring to use the window like the edge-lord that he is, and it’s almost eight in the morning, so the villain wouldn’t show up here unless something was horribly wrong. That only leaves a few options of who could be at the door. After a few seconds, Hawks is almost dropping the bowl of eggs because his Handler knocks if she decides to visit, and it won’t end well for him if she has to knock more than twice.

So he almost runs through his apartment, the neutral colors blending into a smear as he gets tunnel vision for the door and only the door. He slams his foot into the edge of a wall during a turn, which hurts, but he doesn’t stop. Adrenaline is slamming through his system, making him feel like he’s invincible but still going to die.

So, to say that he's angry when he pulls the door open and sees two underpaid teachers who double as pro heroes and not someone who would kill him and make it look like an accident, is an understatement. He’s livid, nearly twitching from adrenaline because he’d thought that his Handler was here, and his foot is aching sharply in a way that tells him to make a mental note to make sure he hadn’t kicked a hole in the wall.

“Long time no see, Eraserhead and Present Mic,” Hawks chirps brightly, smiling through his rage and pain as the adrenaline leaves him in a flood. “I feel like I’m a kid again,” he jokes, and it is one hundred percent not true at all. They don’t do home-visits at the commission.

“Just call us our names, we’re not here on business,” Present Mic- Yamada says, smiling at him awkwardly.

“I prefer being casual anyway,” Hawks agrees in a heartbeat. Aizawa raises a judgmental eyebrow at him, like he’s a student who’s obviously trying to hide something. As an act of good faith, and to prove that he’s not up to anything (currently) Hawks gestures for them to come in. Also, he abandoned his eggs and didn’t turn the stove off, and he needs to get back to that. They step inside, and follow him when he walks back to the kitchen like the pleasant people that they are.

“So, what can I do you for? You guys here for some pointers for your kids? ‘Cause if so I gotta warn you, I’m not great with kids-” Hawks rambles on, continuing where he left off as he examines the bowl for any more eggshell shards.

“We’re here because you think that not saying no is consent, apparently,” Aizawa cuts in sharply, still looking bored but obviously going somewhere with what he’s saying. Hawks wants to throw out a quick ‘is it not?’ and get an actual answer, wants to throw them out of his apartment because he doesn’t want to think about this so early in the morning, and he wants to just make his eggs in peace. Still, knowing that the two probably weren’t going to leave until after his eggs were done and he’s not gonna just eat in front of them and not offer them any, he adds some more to the bowl for them.

“What? Where’d you hear that?” Hawks laughs, stomping down his discomfort and confusion as he pours the eggs into the pan. He picks up the spatula, an ugly little plastic thing, just to be able to hold onto something and have it look natural. The cheap plastic creaks slightly in his grip, which he ignores.

“You,” Aizawa tells him tonelessly, staring at him with that ‘I know more than you know don’t bullshit me or I will call you out’ expression that he’s been wearing for most of the conversation. It must be what he uses on his kids and criminals, because there’s no need to change a system that works for everything.

Hawks grips the spatula so hard that the creaking plastic finally snaps, the sharp ends scratching his hands. Yamada is the only one who flinches.

“Fuck,” Hawks mutters, abandoning his eggs in favor of digging through his drawers, not for a replacement- he knows that this is the only cooking thing he has- but for something to fix it because, again, it’s the only one he has. Finally, he pulls open a drawer, finds the flame duct tape that he’d bought as a joke (Dabi hadn’t been as amused as Hawks had), and tapes the two pieces back together. The handle half of the spatula is upside down, making it oddly curved, but it holds when he goes to stir his eggs, so it’s probably fine. The eggs are slightly burnt on the bottom.

Just like Dabi’s face.

“Hawks,” Yamada says, sounding quieter than he’s ever been, “we’re here for you.”

Desperate for a conversation change, Hawks tries to joke his way out of the corner that roofied-Hawks had backed him into.

“You’re here for breakfast,” he throws back quickly, pulling plates out of the cabinet. The eggs aren’t ready, aren’t even close, but he needs to have something to do with his hands and he was worried that stirring the eggs too much would somehow liquefy them past the point of being edible.

“And you,” Aizawa tacks on, leveling Hawks with a stare that tells him that the teacher knew what he was doing and he was tolerating it for now.

Because the universe hates him, and because Hawks just can’t catch a break, Dabi is demanding to meet up with him at the ungodly hour of two in the morning.

He doesn’t even get to straighten out of the crouch that he’d landed in before Dabi steps out of the shadows and is regarding him creepily.

“Get up,” he orders.

Unable to resist the urge to poke the bear, Hawks lowers himself from one knee to both and sits on his heels with a shit-eating grin on his face. He feels it tugging at his mouth, just like he feels the wave or irritation that Dabi feels.

“That’s so weird,” Dabi raises an eyebrow at him, looking impatient but willing enough to listen, “most people like me more on my knees,” Hawks purrs, before finally pulling himself up. He can stay down for a small joke, but the rocks on top of the roof were digging into his knees painfully, despite the thick material of his pants. He shakes his legs one at a time to subtly get them out.

“Seems about right,” is Dabi’s only reply, which makes Hawks whip his head around to stare at him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he sputters, his wings fluffing up indignantly behind him.

“A little birdie told me,” Dabi hums as he steps closer, “that you’re an easy lay.”

The last part is breathed against his ear, and Hawks is sure that if he could feel his body he would flinch back. But he can’t, so instead he’s left swaying slightly as he hands, fingers begging to clench onto something solid because nothing is feeling real at the moment. His mind flashes back to the comments that his Handler had sent him, had made him read and acknowledge and memorize.

Dabi steps even closer, their toe to toe, and Hawks almost throws himself off of the roof of the building in his haste to get away. A smirk is shot in his direction, but Hawks is too busy trying to figure out what the hell is happening to think about it too hard. Dabi had read the tweets, and even if it’s public information, it makes his stomach clench uneasily. Anyone could read them, but a dangerous villain who hates him reading it makes the well of shame even deeper.

“You’re all talk, how typical of a hero,” Dabi laughs, stalking closer to him again as Hawks starts to frantically backpedal to avoid him. It isn’t until his wings smack painfully against a rooftop shed that he realizes he’s somewhat cornered himself. The gasp of pain from the impact forces air that he hadn’t known he needed into his lungs, and then he’s gasping pathetically and trying to shrink into a crouch like he desperately wants to so he can hide. Hawks knows his smile is long gone, and he makes no move to bring it back. Dabi watches him silently, his footsteps still sending harsher and harsher vibrations through the air that strike Hawks’ feathers like fistfuls of loose gravel.

“Don’t,” Hawks breathes out, right before Dabi’s hand can come into contact with his jaw. The villain pauses slightly, and the hand that was intending to grab Hawks’ jaw shifts to clinically land on his cheek, like Dabi is a doctor and he’s trying to diagnose something without a name.

“You’re scared,” he says, sounding slightly surprised, like he hadn’t thought that the great hero could even feel fear. He stares into Hawks’ wide eyes for a few seconds longer before he quickly shoves away from him, leaving the hero gasping and trying to focus on something to keep him grounded. The distance from the perceived threat helps, but the way that Dabi continues to stare at him, like he’s making conclusions and connecting the dots, does nothing to calm him down. He’s so close, so so close, to just breaking down, to shattering and just letting people see him, but he can’t let that happen. He’s Hawks, the winged hero that people rely on. He shoots the villain a shaky smile, his wings still shaking on his back, and tries to calm himself down.

“Of you, Hot stuff? In your dreams.”

His voice is wrecked, scratchy in all of the wrong places and breathy because he’s still gasping and he can’t force enough air into his lungs to break the cycle. Dabi takes a single step closer, and Hawks’ heart beats so hard in his chest that he’s sure it’s going to kill him if the villain doesn’t do it first. What is he even doing? Instead of being a hero, instead of doing his job, he’s here, freaking out on a rooftop in a bad part of town at two in the morning because Dabi got too close. He’s losing his fucking shit because someone who he relies on for information popped his preferred personal space bubble of thirteen feet. Hawks huffs a bitter laugh.

Dabi hesitantly steps forwards with one foot, like he’s toeing the frigid waters of Hawks’ mental state, and he goes into orbit. He’s in the air before he even realizes it, slamming his wing into the shed with enough force that he’s surprised that he didn’t break it. Catching himself, Hawks quickly settles on top of the shed, like that was his destination all along, rather than as-far-away-from-Dabi-as-possible-ville. The villain in question sighs, just like he had when Toga was confronting him but somehow softer, like he knows something and he pities the hero. The thought makes his wings puff up anxiously. Dabi doesn't pity anyone.

“Fuck off, you dumb bird. I ain’t got anything for you.”

Hawks doesn’t need to be told twice before he’s diving off of the roof and flying away.

Dabi doesn’t call again, Rumi is busy, and Aizawa and Yamada seem to have given up on getting him to have an adult conversation with them. And Hawks, if asked, would hesitantly admit that he’s lonely. He still has routine meetings with his Handler, but they’re more about training and improvement and the next step of infiltration than they are about human interaction.

When Hawks wakes up, hands are pressed to his shoulders, a steady weight, and they’re shaking him awake. All it takes is the memory of his mother to have his eyes snapping open and his wings flaring out in alarm. Other than that, he doesn’t try to move, and he knows that he can’t. His previous Handler regards him warmly, the barest hints of morning sunlight glinting off of her perfectly styled hair like a halo as she holds him immobile under her quirk. The irony makes him feel a little sick. It somehow seems fitting that his last two Handlers have had a silencing quirk and a paralyzing quirk, each one taking away a choice in a way that Hawks doesn't think he’ll ever get used to. Slowly, she leans over him as her hand trails from his bare shoulder to trace up his neck and hold his jaw. If Hawks were to shift, her hand would be cupping his cheek, like Dabi’s had been only hours before. The look he sends her is full of panic that he makes no move to hide

“Just don’t say no, Hawks. It’s easier that way,” she purrs against his ear before pressing her painted mouth to his. Hawks obediently doesn’t say no, doesn’t even move, until she grows bored enough to get to the point.

“Your other handler requested a helper after the media scandal,” she tells him, smiling like that’s a good thing, like she hasn’t made his search history a mess of technicalities on what actually qualifies as an abuse of power.

“I have the best quirk for the job. Between the two of us, I think that we could get you to sit down and listen,” she whispers, lips pressed far too close to his ear. Then, ever the professional, she steps back and straighteners her skirt. The smile she sends him is warm, like she’s done nothing wrong.

“I look forward to working with your handler.”

And then she releases him and she’s gone, like she was never there in the first place. Mere seconds later, Hawks is spitting stomach acid into the toilet, gagging at the memory of her lips on his. When he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, red lipstick is smeared across it, looking like blood. He swallows against another mouthful of bile and pushes himself up from his pathetic position on the bathroom floor, because he’s a hero, and an adult, and staying on the floor isn’t going to solve anything.

There’s nothing to solve anyway; they’re both adults, it’s legal, and everything is fine.

Not wanting to think about it anymore, he throws himself into paperwork and forcefully shoves the interaction to the back of his mind.

Dabi is back, and if Hawks didn’t know better, he would say that the villain's expression looks confused. Dabi’s hand gestures around his own scarred mouth, where a smirk is slowly growing.

“You’ve been busy,” he greets, and at first Hawks doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, but he knows that it’s not the impressive stack of completed paperwork on his desk. Tentatively, he raises his own fingers to his mouth and rubs lightly before looking down at them. They’re a bright red, too artificial to be blood, but his stomach still lurches at the sight. Hawks almost wishes that it was blood.

“So, what, am I too ugly for ya? There ain’t no way that you’re straight,” Dabi’s smiling like a cat, the wide smile making the staples in his skin pull, and it’s just unsettling enough, and Hawks is already at the end of his rope enough to just tell someone.

“I couldn’t move.”

Obviously, that was not the response that Dabi was expecting.

“I didn’t tie you down,” Dabi defends with a slight look of confusion on his face, but Hawks interrupts him, shaking his head slowly to disperse the cotton that’s beginning to fill it.

“I couldn’t move,” he repeats, raising his hand to his stained mouth again.

“My Handler stopped by, and I couldn't move.”

His hand drops with even more red smeared across it. A dawning sort of uncomfortable realization crosses Dabi’s face before being suppressed, like he can’t feel bad for Hawks, like sympathy isn’t something to give in this situation. At this point, Hawks’ head is so stuffed with cotton that he would shake Dabi’s hand even if it was on fire and not even notice, but he still has to bite back unjustified tears because he was right. All these years, he was right; there was nothing to be unhappy about, nothing to search for.

“I didn’t say no,” he reminds himself in a whisper, trying to relax and let go.

A hand is waved in his face, noticeably lacking any blue flames.

“Hey, hey birdie. Come back,” a rough voice requests as Hawks dazedly watches the waving motion of the hand. He almost reaches for it, almost wants to see it light up with that burning color that could leave him as nothing but a pile of ashes.

“Kill me,” he slowly says, leaning closer to the hand, which is yanked away as Dabi yelps out a harsh, “what the fuck, Hawks!”

“Isn’t that what you want?” Hawks asks, partially gone, but not nearly as gone as he wants to be. It's certainly what Hawks wants, and there would hardly be a mess. Dabi stares at him, and Hawks tells himself that the villain is considering it. There’s a small sense of alarm at the thought, but it’s overrun by the relief that chases it. If he’s dead, if Dabi kills him, he doesn’t have to think about lipstick kisses, of being kept immobile by a soft grip on his shoulder, of being so weak that he thinks badly of his own mother and of the people who raised him.

Dabi still hasn’t answered him, but he doesn’t look like Christmas came early, which is an answer all by itself. Hawks is overwhelmed by the disappointment that fills him. It’s like he doesn’t know anything anymore; his previous Handler is back, Aizawa and Yamada think that something is wrong with his idea of consent, and Dabi- who hates him, despite the banter they usually throw back and forth- doesn’t want to put him out of his misery.

“Who told you that’s what consent is?” Dabi demands, grabbing Hawks wrist in a firm hold. He hadn’t even realized that he was trying to touch his mouth again.

“That bitch told you not to say no, and you just took that at face-value?” Dabi scoffs, looking disgusted. Hawks doesn’t understand why until Dabi speaks again, his expression stormy and his body tense.

“How many people have you told not to say no, Hawks?” he sounds angry, and Hawks tries to think of a single person that he’s even wanted to touch that wasn’t Dabi.

“None,” he eventually admits, “I don’t want them to touch me.”

The stormy look is still there, but the threat behind it is gone. Had Dabi actually thought that he had-

“Then why,” Dabi waves a hand at the hero, “do you let them?”

“I couldn’t move,” Hawks repeats for a third time, watching as Dabi’s face shutters and becomes slightly colder. The threat is back in his eyes, like he thinks Hawks is just begging to play the victim. Or like he's trying to put the full picture together but he doesn't have the light to do it. He looks confused and skeptical more than anything else, but the anger and impatience is still there.

“The fastest man alive couldn’t move-”

Hawks just chokes out a small, fearful chirp and gives a small nod, like that explains everything. And somehow it does, and Dabi’s usually bitchy looking face looks mildly horrified again, like he gets what Hawks is trying to say and he doesn’t like it. His wings start to slowly move around him, feathers brushing his neck. He jerks when one touches his shoulder.

“We’re leaving,” he says finally, marching over to the closet and ripping it open like he’s going to pack Hawks’ bag himself. A duffel bag is pulled out and roughly unzipped before the villain turns back to his closet and starts pulling things off of their hangers.

Hawks watches him tear the closet apart apathetically, “I can’t leave.”

“Yes you can, and you are,” Dabi replies, throwing a coat hanger out of his way and towards Hawks, who doesn’t let the aggression stop him. If anything, the slip back into their routine arguing helps to ground him, bringing him back and emptying his head of fuzz bit by bit.

“I shouldn’t, I have no reason to drop everything-”

“You have every reason,” Dabi’s voice is colder than ice as he shoves things into the bag at random, “why the fuck would you think that it was okay-”

Hawks snaps back at him, “because my mom used to do it!”

“Your mom molested you, right, I should’ve seen that coming. Your life is a goddamned clusterfuck,” Dabi mutters, the shock wearing off as he starts to pack even faster.

Dabi pauses before he quickly turns to look at him with a serious stare, "we're unpacking that later, by the way, because it's wrong and you've convinced me that you actually have a bird brain and don't understand anything."

The closet is empty in under three minutes. Dabi looks back at him, before his eyes make a lap around the empty room.

“Where’s all of your shit,” he demands. Hawks silently points to the half full bag at the villains feet.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dabi asks, staring down at the sad-looking and deflated bag, “Toga’s got more skirts than you do of anything.”

Hawks shrugs in response, not sure what the villain even wants him to say to that. Yeah, a broke teenager has more than him, so what? Heroes don't have what they don't need, and Hawks doesn't need a lot of clothes. He basically lives in his hero outfit anyway.

“Come on.”

“Where are you going?”

“We are going to the league, where you will stay until we can get it through your thick fucking skull that this,” he points to Hawks entire body with emphasis on his stained hand, then to the room around them, “is not okay.”

His feathers shift, and he twitches when one brushes his shoulder again, “they don’t really like me, Dabs. You don't even like me.”

A hand in waved in his direction, “they really do, but whatever. I'm not here to stroke your ego.”

Dabi doesn't deny the second part, but Hawks is too stuck on the first part's answer that he doesn't care.

“Oh.”

Dabi snorts at him, earning himself a quick glare from Hawks.

“Yeah, ‘oh’.”

Dabi stares at him for a bit before turning away to pick up the bag and toss it onto the bed.

“Don’t you have google or some shit? How did you not know-”

He’s still looking away, trying to shove a blanket into the duffel with limited success, and Hawks is hit with the realization that it would be so easy to take him out right now. He doesn't feel the urge to, not really, and he's a little horrifies that the thought even crossed his mind, but his brain is screaming about how simple it would be if he wanted to. And it would be; Dabi isn’t even looking at him anymore, he’d have the element of surprise. Hawks would finally be doing something right, something that nobody could shame him for or tell him that he should have known better or twist in his own head. It would be done in the flick of a feather, but- no, it wouldn’t be that easy. The flame villain is perceptive, he’d know what Hawks was going to do.

Maybe he’d kill Hawks first, and he could still die a hero.

Maybe he wouldn’t, and Hawks would be another tragic hero.

(Hawks is young, not even ten, when he finds out what happens to people who lose hope. He’s limping back from a rough training session, just wanting to get to his room and collapse, when every overworked feather suddenly goes on high alert. Unthinkingly, he lets them guide him to where he needs to be, bypassing his room without even pausing to stare at the door.

Three turns down a few hallways and an opened door later, he finds a body.

His Handler finds him minutes later, and she doesn’t look like she’s terribly upset by what she sees. She makes no move to pull him away, to cover his eyes, to protect him. Instead, his Handler nudges him closer, ignoring the way that his heels dig into the ground, because she sees a learning opportunity.

“Let this be a lesson, Hawks. Normally, the death of a citizen in any form is a tragedy, and you should have been faster to prevent it,” she pauses, letting the information sink in like this is a schooling lesson and there’s not a body in front of them. In that brief moment, still filled with confusion and grief, Hawks almost hates her. But in the end, he can’t even bring himself to look her in the eyes. She continues, despite his lack of response.

“However, not saving this man was a good thing. This, Hawks, is what we call natural selection, which happens when one organism is too weak to survive, and dies to make room for something greater,” she tells him, a hand smoothing between his wings as he continues to stare down at the bloody mess that’s seeping into the short carpet of the meeting room floor. It’s a commission worker, and the slits up his arms are deep and still oozing blood. His Handler leaves him there, tossing out a quick, “I’ll see about getting someone to clean this... mess.”

And there’s not a single doubt in his mind that she made him into who he is, something more, a hero in training.

But he can’t help but wonder if, in the end, he’ll become just another case swept under the rug by her.)

“Lets go,” Dabi’s voice pulls him out of his head, and Hawks doesn’t want to be weak right now but he is. He knows it, just like he knows that if he doesn’t go with Dabi something is going to kill him.

So when Dabi pulls the balcony door open and stands beside it, staring at Hawks expectantly, he slowly follows him out the door and onto the fire escape.

Despite Dabi saying that the league doesn't actually hate him, Hawks is still filled with dread as he steps into their base. The villain, looking at home, strolls up to the bar and leans over it, not bothering to walk around as his scarred hands blindly reach for a bottle. When he leans back, his fingers are holding two bottles of cheap alcohol and Dabi himself is wearing a grin. After some hesitance and a lot of insistence from Dabi, Hawks reaches out and just holds onto the bottle. There's no way that he's getting drunk right now, not here, not with Dabi and whatever is going through his head. Dabi leads them over to a couch and a crate before splaying himself out lazily on the couch. Hawks settles on the crate.

"So, it's later, we're unpacking your shit, and I'm not gonna be sober while we do," Dabi grumbles before taking a long swig from his bottle. It's vodka, and Hawks can't help but wonder how the man isn't coughing up a lung.

"We really don't have to do that," Hawks quickly places the bottle down on the floor and rises from his crate, "I'm good without that happening."

"If you don't sit down right now I'll make Compress put you in a fucking marble," threatens Dabi, sending a pointed look at his shifting feet. Hawks raises an eyebrow back at him.

"Mr. Compress isn't even here."

Mr. Compress and Kurogiri choose that moment to walk through the door and pause for the briefest of moments while they take in what's happening. Hawks, even though he was invited in, tenses the slightest bit, which Dabi rolls his eyes at.

"A pleasure to see you, Hawks!" Mr. Compress eventually greets, actually sounding mildy pleased to see him.

"Indeed," Kurogiri nods, and that's that. They stare a bit longer while Hawks chokes out his own greeting in return before settling at the bar together and talking in tones too low for him to hear. When Hawks looks back to Dabi, the other man has a smug look on his face and Toga and Twice have stolen his spot on the crate. Dabi quickly swipes the bottle from Toga, who pouts at him but quickly forgets about it in favor of talking to Hawks.

"So, did ya ever find that guy?"

Unable to admit that he didn't even look, Hawks pretends to think before lightly replying, "no, I don't think I did."

Toga smiles happily at him, kicking her feet in childish glee.

"Twice helped me hide the body!" she says, sounding way too happy for what she said.

"What?"

Dabi freezes and stares at her with the older sibling expression of 'shut up shut up shut up right now'. Thankfully for Hawks, she ignores him.

"Yeah, after Sparky there," she points to Dabi, who looks less than thrilled at the name, "scared you off because he was trying to figure something out, Twice and I got to hunt the guy down!"

"You did that on purpose," Hawks whispers, his fists clenching anxiously and not managing to unclench. Dabi opens his mouth to protest, but Hawks doesn't let him.

"I was scared," he admits, "I was so scared, and- and if you'd tried to go further, I would have let you!"

"Ew," Toga mutters. Hawks keeps going.

"I would have let you because you wanted it, but you didn't-"

"Oh, he does, trust me-"

Dabi finally stops slouching and tells him, "you would have let me because you've never said no a day in your life-"

"I didn't know I could!"

They've gained an audience by now, but the world is still narrowed to him and Dabi as they go back and forth.

"Get some free will-"

"From where, Target-"

"You always have a choice-"

Hawks almost screams in frustrated fear, "I. Couldn't. Move."

Dabi stops short, whatever he was going to say lodging in his throat. Hawks eyes can't meet his; instead they flick between everyone else in the room, doing a quick headcount. The gangs all here, even Shigaraki. Dabi claims his attention again.

"She used a quirk on you," which Hawks had thought the flame villain had known, but apparently not. He gives a slow nod, meeting Dabi's burning blue eyes.

"What did you think kept me down?" Hawks hisses, his anger returning with a vengeance.

"I don't know, fear maybe?"

"Yeah, when I was a kid!"

Ever the mom-friend and the glue that keeps the big bad League of Villains from killing each other, Kurogiri steps in.

"Explain yourselves and cease burning your shoe prints into the floor," he says calmly, giving Dabi a pointed look. Dabi ignores him, choosing to throw a finger in Hawks' direction and lay down the basics of the argument, which just so happen to include a not-insignificant portion Hawks' life story.

"This fuck-nugget has never said no to a sexual advance in his life because he's never had the option to and he thinks that's okay!" Dabi brings up his other hand and begins counting, "his handler, his mom, a drunk asshole at a party," three fingers go up, one after the other, "and that's all he's even mentioned."

Dabi turns back to him, "I wonder how many there are that we don't know about."

"Why do you even care?" Hawks explodes, throwing his hands into the air, which must look stupid because he still can't unclentch them from the painful fists that they've become. Dabi just stares at him, anger absent from his scarred face, as he slowly answers, putting emphasis on every single word like it would get through Hawks thick skull if he spoke slower and clearer.

"How could we not?" quieter, he adds on, "how could I not care?" and it rocks Hawks whole world because what-

"You hate me," he shakily reminds the villain, only taking a small amount of satisfaction in causing Dabi some irritation. The villain looks like he's thinking of lighting the building on fire and locking everyone, including himself, inside. The idea of death isn't as appealing as it was a few hours ago.

"Nobody here hates you, I told you that two hours ago," he grits out, eyeing Shigaraki like he thinks the man might try to contest his point. Shockingly enough, he doesn't.

"A dark backstory adds player interest," Shigaraki says with a shrug, like that's just something normal to say to someone in your average conversation. Toga positively beams at her leader, like that's the best thing he could have possibly said.

"We wouldn't hate you for being hurt, Hawks, we'd hate them for doing it," Spinner says, and Hawks didn't know that it was something that he needed to hear until it was said.

"They've accepted you as one their own! What idiots!" Twice chimes in, popping up from behind Toga, who smiles at him.

"Oh," he says, slightly touched and very surprised that he's not being thrown out on his ass. As everyone decides that the show is over and slowly go back to what they were doing before, Dabi snorts at him, copying him just like he had earlier.

"Yeah, 'oh'."

Scarred arms wrap around him from behind, careful to avoid brushing any part of his shoulder or making him feel trapped, and pull him to Dabi's side on the couch. The position forces his wings to fan out, and Toga is immediately petting them roughly. Hawks finds that he doesn't mind, especially when Dabi keeps an arm around him. His duffel bag is shoved into his hands, still sad-looking, but it brings him no small amount of comfort to hold it. Dabi's hand taps on his arm to get his attention before resting lightly on his neck, still steering away from his shoulder. Hawks appreciates it, leaning closer and tentatively looking up at the villain. Then his big mouth opens and ruins it.

"Is this a friendly cuddle session, or-"

Dabi kisses him and his wings jerk and fluff out in surprise as he crushes his duffel bag in his grip. When he pulls back, Hawks stares at him dazedly, question answered, and flops back into the villain's arms. Toga's hands quickly settle back into his feathers. They sit there for what feels like hours, Hawks slowly melting into the heat that Dabi is putting off, still loosely holding his duffel bag, before Hawks finally asks.

"What happens after this?" he whispers, staying quiet so he doesn't disturb the peace too much. Dabi doesn't answer, and Hawks is about the just assume that he's asleep, when he feels the villain sigh.

"I think," Dabi nudges him to get his attention as they sit there, looking down at him, "that whatever happens, you're gonna be fine."

## Afterword

End Notes

> Guys, I'm going to be honest here; please, if you don't think that what his mother did was abuse, keep it to yourself? I get a lot of writing inspiration from working through my own trauma, and that's all I'm really going to say about it so please, PLEASE, be nice? And please leave comments because I love hearing from you guys!!! You're all so nice, and I try to respond to every single one of you! <3!!!

> Edit: Part two is out guys!

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