Work Text:
If Hawks had his way, Dabi would never have found out about his son. No one would. He would remain Hawks’s to have and protect and dote on the way that he never was. Toma would never be vulnerable because Hawks wouldn’t allow it. He would grow up like a normal kid with a speed quirk and a pair of bright red wings on his back, going to school with friends and unbothered by the enemies his father has made throughout his career.
Number two hero or not, Hawks walks a fine line. Playing devil’s advocate with the League and the Commission is a dangerous game and the bloody arrival of his son one afternoon on the floor of his bathroom only ups the stakes impossibly higher.
Before Toma, he’d never even been certain that he wanted children, but once he has him, he’s never wanted anything more. Toma has wide, amber eyes with black markings at the corners, and soft, fuzzy blonde hair, and sharp little talons on both his hands and feet. He’s perfect and Hawks knows instantly that he will do whatever he has to in order to keep him safe.
He makes it a full two months before Dabi finds out.
It’s easily his worst memory in recent history, to be pacing the living room of his loft in the middle of the night, trying to sooth his crying baby back to sleep, and to hear the balcony door open only for Dabi to step through. Hawks has never felt fear like it before in his entire life. No battle, no mission, no meeting with Dabi has ever filled him with such a full-bodied sense of dread before.
They stare at one another, Toma wailing in his ear, and Hawks’s feathers quivering behind him, ready to detach, if he needs them. He waits for Dabi to make the first move, completely uncertain if it’s wise or not to do so.
Finally, Dabi pulls the door shut behind him and heaves an annoyed breath.
“Sudden possession of a child is not a good enough excuse to ignore my texts,” he says, pacing closer.
Hawks tightens his grip on his son. “Stop,” he orders, calling one of his feathers to his other hand, holding it out in front of him.
Dabi continues moving until the sharpened tip of it digs into his chest. He stops there, tucking his hands into the pockets of his impossibly tight jeans and tipping his head slightly. “Is that yours?”
“What do you think?” Hawks asks. Toma has wings, for fuck’s sake.
“I didn’t know there was a Lady Hawks.”
“There isn’t,” Hawks bites out, prodding Dabi harder with the point of his feather. “Just forget what you saw and leave.”
Dabi shakes his head. “I’m not gonna do that. Besides, you look like you could use a break. Your eye bags are worse than mine.” Hawks almost laughs at that. “What’s his name?”
Hawks hesitates. “Toma.”
“Let me hold him.”
“No.”
“I’m good with kids.”
Hawks snorts. “Somehow I doubt that.”
Dabi holds out his hands and Toma keeps crying. “Never know unless you hand him over.”
Hawks’s hand shakes around his feather. Only a select group of people even know that Toma exists. The Commission doesn’t, the League doesn’t, he has no family to speak of—besides Toma himself—and there certainly isn’t another parent in the picture. Hawks is flying completely blind on this, relying mostly on instinct and YouTube videos on how-to parenting.
He’s exhausted and he’s tired of going it alone. And, despite everything, he thinks he might actually kind of trust Dabi. Stupid as that may be.
Slowly, he lowers his feather and Dabi steps forward again. They maintain eye contact as Dabi takes Toma from him, careful to support his head as he holds up his squirming body to look at him.
“He’s like a little clone of you,” he comments before tucking the baby in against his chest.
Hawks watches with rapt, tired eyes as Dabi rubs gently at the small of his back, just under the base of his wings. Dabi’s fingers look massive against Toma’s tiny body and Hawks’s vision starts to blur. He rubs at his eyes, releasing his feather to return to its place in his left wing.
After a few moments, Toma’s cries begin to fade to whimpers, and then eventually to nothing as he falls silent, eyelids drooping, his head pillowed against Dabi’s scarred chest.
“How in the hell…”
Dabi takes hold of his wrist and guides his palm to rest against his collarbone. He’s warm, far warmer than a human, or even Hawks runs.
“Oh,” he whispers, his hand lingering a moment even after Dabi releases him.
“Gotta bake him, a little.”
“Incubate,” Hawks says with a snort.
Dabi shrugs. “Same difference.”
Hawks scrubs at his face with both hands. “What are you doing here, Dabi?”
“I came to see why you’ve been playing so hard to get, lately. Shigaraki’s getting annoyed.”
Toma is now fully asleep in Dabi’s arms and Hawks takes a moment to wonder what the fuck his life is becoming.
“I’ve been busy.”
Dabi lifts his brows. “I’ll say. Where’d he come from?”
“Me.”
“How’d you shit out a kid?”
Hawks gives him the flattest look he’s capable of. Dabi grins at him in return, his jack-o-lantern smile visible over Toma’s soft, blonde curls.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Obviously. We could have some pretty babies together, birdie.”
“I’d hit you if you weren’t holding my child.”
“I’m absolutely terrified.”
Hawks folds his arms against his chest, tucking his wings in tighter to his back. “Are you gonna stay?”
“We makin’ that baby, tonight?”
“Fuck off. I don’t want him to start whining again the second you put him down.”
“You don’t have to invent excuses to get me to stay the night, Hawks.”
“I hate you.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” Dabi says as he turns to go sit down on the couch.
Toma doesn’t do more than snuffle and curl his little body up further into Dabi’s warmth. He certainly doesn’t look put out, sitting on Hawks’s couch, holding his infant son. He looks almost content, drawing nonsense patterns with his fingers over the back of the pajamas that Hawks had to alter to fit Toma’s wings.
Hawks falls asleep beside them, his legs tucked up under him and his head resting on his arm against the back of the couch. He wakes up with a stiff neck and a cramp in one of his wings, but Toma sleeps through the night and Dabi holds him in the morning while Hawks makes them breakfast.
Overall, it isn’t the worst night of his life.
--
Toma is eight months old when things begin to pivot between Hawks and Dabi again.
D: meeting. midnight.
Can’t make it
D: why
Toma’s sick.
D: bird flu?
Not funny.
Hawks locks his phone and tosses it to the far end of the couch. Slumping down until the base of his wings hit the back of the couch; he stretches his aching legs out and then lets them relax, closing his eyes. The loft is silent for all of three minutes before Toma begins to shift restlessly against his chest again, a soft, weak whine bubbling up pathetically in his throat. Hawks rubs circles on his back, just under his wings, shushing him quietly.
“You’re okay, baby,” he whispers.
Toma rubs his face into Hawks’s chest, his little forehead burning through the fabric of his shirt. He doesn’t settle, whining and squirming around, clearly uncomfortable. Hawks strokes his sweaty hair and murmurs to him, soft little whispers that soothe him slowly until he lulls into an uneasy silence that Hawks just knows isn’t going to last long.
Still, he closes his burning eyes and tries to rest while he can. He hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, at this point, and he’s flagging steadily toward falling asleep whether Toma is awake or not.
Hawks startles when he feels Toma being lifted off of his chest. At first Hawks thinks he’s dropping him, jerking upright out of his slump. Dabi is standing over him, turning a whining Toma around to hold him against his own chest.
Hawks’s heart pounds in his throat as he blows out a breath, rubbing his bleary eyes with both hands.
“Shit, Dabi,” he rasps. “Don’t do that.”
Dabi ignores him, putting the backs of his fingers against Toma’s forehead for a moment as he whines, his sharp, little toes snagging on the thin fabric of Dabi’s shirt. Dabi, to his credit, doesn’t so much as wince as Toma’s talons dig into his stomach.
“Burnin’ up, little sparrow?” he asks, voice soft in the way that it only ever is when it’s directed at Toma.
Toma’s forehead thumps down on his shoulder and he yanks at a fistful of Dabi’s shirt, letting out a soft whimper. Dabi rubs gently at the base of one of his wings, scratching at the downy feathers there as he looks down at Hawks.
“You look like shit.”
Hawks snorts, raking a hand through his hair, fingers catching on a particularly stubborn knot.
“Thanks.”
“When can he have something for the fever, again?”
Hawks reaches for his phone, groaning when his stiff back protests the stretch. “Twenty minutes, give or take.”
Dabi grunts his acknowledgment, looking down at Toma who has his chubby, flushed cheek resting on Dabi’s collarbone.
“Set an alarm, I’ve got him ‘til then.”
Hawks doesn’t know exactly when he started trusting Dabi with his son, but Toma likes him and Hawks is too fucking tired to protest. He is in desperate need of a power nap.
“Okay,” he says, with a nod of his head. He’s not going to think too much about it, right now.
Dabi walks away without another word, patting Toma on the back as he goes. Hawks sets an alarm on his phone for exactly twenty minutes, and slumps over onto his stomach, pillowing his head on his arms. He drifts off quickly, listening to Dabi’s booted footsteps pacing up and down the hallway.
The sharp ringing of his phone seems to come mere moments later, jolting him awake with momentary panic that he doesn’t know where Toma is before he remembers that Dabi has him. Hawks sits up with a groan, not giving himself time to contemplate five more minutes, before he pads barefoot into the kitchen for the bottle of liquid medicine beside the sink.
He takes a minute to make himself a cup of black tea before he follows the light at the end of the hallway to his bedroom.
The bathroom door is cracked and the light is on. He elbows it open all the way, pausing in the doorway. The sight of Dabi on his knees beside the bathtub and Toma splashing his fat, little hands in the water isn’t one that he’s going to forget anytime soon.
Toma looks at him and coos a decidedly birdlike sound at him which Hawks returns. Dabi looks up at him with an arched eyebrow.
Hawks says nothing to him, moving to sit on the counter and taking a sip of his steaming tea. Toma’s face is decidedly less flushed than it was before; he certainly looks happier than he did earlier, even though his hair is wet and plastered to his head. He hates getting his hair washed. Hawks has no idea how Dabi did it without Toma screaming bloody murder.
The baby coos at him again.
“Is he actually saying anything to you?’
Hawks hums over the rim of his mug. “Not really. There’s no like, direct translation. He’s just happy to see me.”
Dabi makes a noise, flicking water at Toma with his index finger. Toma smacks the water with both hands, splashing Dabi’s shirt and the floor at the same time. Hawks hides his grin behind his mug.
“His fever’s down,” Dabi says, handing Toma the washcloth he’s holding. The baby immediately sticks it into his mouth, sucking the water from the saturated fabric. “Try a lukewarm bath, next time.”
Toma offers Dabi the washcloth and Dabi leans in and bites it with his skeleton grin. Toma coos at him in his soft, trilling voice, his eyes squinting as he smiles.
There’s a sharp, painfully familiar ache in Hawks’s chest as he watches the two of them. He flexes his toes, talons curling under his feet as he does.
“Do you have kids?” Hawks asks suddenly.
Dabi snorts, smoothing a hand over Toma’s wet hair. “Do I look like the daddy type?”
“Well…” Dabi shoots him a narrow-eyed look over his shoulder. Hawks holds up his free hand. “Hey, you’re the one who said the D word.” Dabi turns his attention back to Toma who is currently enamored with one of the staples on his wrist. “Toma,” Hawks says sharply, drawing his son’s gaze, “no.”
“He’s fine.”
“Those talons might not feel like much, but I’m telling you, they’re like little razorblades.”
Dabi shrugs a shoulder, letting Toma continue picking at him. “I’ve had worse.” If he was close enough, Hawks would kick him.
“So, you take care of a lot of sick babies, or what?” Hawks presses.
“Goddamn, Hawks, just shut up and enjoy the silence.”
Knowing that it’s pretty unlikely that Dabi is going to expand on or explain anything, Hawks just sips his tea until Dabi stands up, both of his knees crunching like gravel in the process. He doesn’t comment on it, so Hawks says nothing, setting his mug aside and sliding off of the counter to grab Toma’s towel from the hook on the back of the door.
Dabi picks him up, out of the water, and holds him out, dripping all over the floor, while Hawks wraps him up. His towel has a slit in the back for each wing and a little hood that Hawks pulls up over his damp head while Dabi pulls his wings through. The front of his white shirt is nearly transparent for how wet it is. Hawks huffs a breath through his nose, pressing his lips to Toma’s forehead; his skin is much cooler now.
“I’ll get you a different shirt after I get him changed.”
Dabi makes another non-verbal response and leans over to drain the water from the tub.
Toma is decidedly less fussy as Hawks dresses him in a light onesie and wraps one of his thinner receiving blankets around him. He yawns widely, burrowing in against Hawks’s chest as soon as he’s picked up again. Hawks hopes they’ll both finally be able to sleep.
Dabi is shirtless, pawing through his dresser, when Hawks steps back into his bedroom. He pauses just inside the doorway, watching him for a moment. He’s never seen Dabi without a shirt before, and has never seen the extent of his scarring, either. It’s not as bad as he’d imagined, stopping just above his shoulder blades but continuing around his right side in an oblong patch that doesn’t connect to anything else.
Finally, Dabi seems to find something that he doesn’t mind wearing, and pulls a plain, gray shirt over his head. It’s got to be one of the only tops that Hawks owns that hasn’t been altered to fit his wings.
Dabi turns, his damp shirt in hand, and freezes when he sees them.
“He asleep?” Dabi asks.
Hawks cranes his neck to check of Toma’s eyes are closed. “Looks like. I’m gonna lay him down in here with me, tonight.”
Dabi nods. “I’ll head out.”
“You don’t have to,” Hawks says, almost regretting the words immediately, because Dabi looks at him like he’s grown a second head. The back of his neck heats rapidly. “I mean, it’s late.”
“Shigaraki wants me back tonight,” Dabi tells him.
“Oh,” Hawks says. “All right.”
“He wanted me to check up on you.” Hawks’s entire body goes cold with panic. It’s everything he can do to keep from clutching Toma even tighter. “Make sure you’re not fuckin’ around on us.”
Hawks doesn’t know what to say to that. Dabi so rarely volunteers anything to him about the League or Shigaraki or anything, really. He doesn’t know why Dabi is telling him this.
“Don’t tell him about Toma,” Hawks whispers as Dabi comes closer, closing the distance between them until he’s within touching distance, watching him with those icy eyes. They’ve had this exact conversation before and Dabi’s response has never changed.
“I’m not gonna tell him shit, bird brain.”
For whatever reason, on this, Hawks trusts him outright. It’s definitely foolish and probably a little bit of denial, but he doesn’t want to consider the alternative where Dabi tells the League about his son. It would be nearly as bad if the Commission found out. He presses his nose into Toma’s hair and takes a slow breath.
Hawks doesn’t respond and Dabi reaches out and runs his pale fingers through Toma’s damp curls. A long moment passes between them wherein neither of them says a word, but Hawks feels like Dabi is telling him something he can’t hear but he desperately wants to.
A rumble of thunder in the distance breaks the heavy silence. Hawks swallows, his eyes starting to burn again with lack of sleep.
“You should stay,” he whispers. “Toma likes it when you’re here.”
Dabi cocks his head to the side, cool, blue eyes moving over Hawks’s face. “He tell you that?”
“You heard him cooing at you.”
“Yeah? What’d he say?”
Hawks gets the really strange feeling that they’re doing something frighteningly close to flirting right now. And they’re doing it through talking about his son. Something about it feels a little wrong and a lot weird. But still, not bad.
“Learn to speak hawk and figure it out.”
Dabi snorts. Thunder sounds again, closer this time. “You want me to stay?”
“Is Shigaraki gonna be pissed?”
“Fuck him,” Dabi says. “I’m sleeping in here, your couch is shit.” Without waiting for confirmation, Dabi steps around him and into the bathroom, hanging up his shirt over the shower door track.
Hawks nuzzles into Toma’s hair again and heads for the bed. It’s incredibly difficult to sleep in any other position besides on his stomach, and Toma is too young yet for his feathers to detach, so he can’t sleep any other way. Hawks lays him down and Toma draws his knees up under him, sticking his fist into his mouth and sucking at it without so much as a flutter of his eyelids.
Dabi quietly changes into a pair of his sweatpants and Hawks avoids looking at him while he does. Seeing the state of his back was enough, he doesn’t want to be caught eyeing his legs on top of it. He settles in on his stomach and Dabi climbs in carefully on the other side of Toma, lying on his back.
The wind picks up outside and Hawks hears the random spattering of raindrops against the window. He hopes that it doesn’t outright storm because he wants Toma to sleep through the rest of the night, so that Hawks can sleep too.
Dabi closes his eyes and tucks an arm behind his head; the stretch of scar tissue and staples looks painful but there’s no indication of it on his face. For what feels like the millionth time, Hawks wonders if it hurts him or if it’s just background noise to him, at this point. For the millionth time, he doesn’t ask.
“Thank you for helping me,” Hawks whispers, his own eyes falling shut.
Dabi doesn’t respond for so long that Hawks thinks he’s fallen asleep. Several seconds later, a quiet, “You’re welcome,” is barely audible over the sound of the rain.
--
Almost a month later, Hawks wakes up to the buzzing of his burner phone. After weeks of sleeping through the night, Toma has suddenly started waking up again for long periods of time, and fussing when it’s time for him to go to bed. That, combined with the stress of returning to a semi-regular patrol schedule, means he’s exhausted enough that he almost doesn’t even reach for it.
He answers just before it goes to voicemail.
“What.” It doesn’t sound like a question.
Dabi’s heavy breathing greets him, followed by a strained huff of laughter. “Didn’t think you were gonna answer.” It’s immediately obvious that he’s in pain.
Hawks pushes himself up onto his elbow and looks at the clock on the bedside table, suddenly feeling very awake.
“Dabi? What’s wrong?”
“You locked your balcony.”
Hawks shoves himself upright and kicks his feet free of his sheets. “You’re here?”
There’s a thump that Hawks can hear both through the phone and coming from the living room. “Don’t be a dick. Come let me in.”
Hawks doesn’t respond. He thumbs the button to end the call and sets his phone down on the back of the couch as he passes by it. Dabi is slumped against one of the balcony doors that Hawks had taken to leaving unlocked when Dabi’s nighttime visits started to become a regular thing.
He unlocks the other door and sticks his head out. The left side of Dabi’s face is shiny and black with blood in the moonlight, his hair matted to his head and two of the staples missing from that side of his mouth, leaving it gaping grotesquely.
“Shit,” Hawks whispers, reaching out for him, “get in here.” Dabi lets himself be pulled, which does nothing to steady the uptick in Hawks’s heartrate. He locks the door behind them. “What happened?”
“Got my ass kicked.”
“I can see that. By who?”
Dabi shrugs. “You got booze? I need a fuckin’ drink.”
“Shut up,” Hawks grumbles. “Can you walk?”
“Made it all the way here, didn’t I?”
Hawks doesn’t rise to any invitation to argue. “My room, go,” he says. “I’ve got first aid stuff.”
“Gonna take more than a band-aid, this time, little bird.”
”Go.”
Dabi does.
Hawks grabs him a bottle of water and a couple of towels from the hall closet before he follows. Dabi sits on the floor beside the bed, slumped forward with his face in his hands.
“Take off your jacket and your shirt,” Hawks instructs him, tossing the towels on the bed and setting the water down beside him.
It’s a testament to the amount of pain Dabi must be in that he doesn’t make a remark about Hawks getting him to strip off. Hawks wets a hand towel and grabs his medical kit from under the bathroom sink.
Dabi’s bloodstained shirt sits in a ball on top of his jacket as he stares dazedly at the far wall. There’s blood on his chest, dripping from his jaw, and more staining the white of his belt.
Hawks climbs onto the bed behind him, sitting on the edge with one leg on either side of him. He clicks on the bedside lamp for extra light and begins to gently feel for the wound on Dabi’s head.
“Talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
Dabi shakes his head slightly. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does. Was it a hero? A villain?”
“Why?” Dabi asks as Hawks parts his hair around the wound on his scalp and begins to clean it with the damp towel. “You gonna go fuck ‘em up for me?”
“If I have to.” Dabi huffs a breath before sucking in the next one and holding it. “What were you hit with?”
“A fist.”
Hawks wants to punch him in the back of the head. “What did this?”
“A brick wall.”
“Are you concussed?” Dabi shrugs. “Dabi.”
“Don’t use your dad voice on me, birdie.”
Hawks folds the towel over and pats at the cut. It’s still oozing blood but it’s sluggish, like it’s already mostly clotted.
“You need stitches,” he says. Dabi makes a noncommittal sound. “I can do it but it’s gonna hurt like shit.”
“Just do it, Hawks,” Dabi says, his voice tired and low, like his vocal chords have been dragged down a mile of dirt road.
Hawks pops open the med kit beside him and rummages through it for a needle and suture thread.
“Take a drink of that,” Hawks tells him, nudging the bottle with his toes.
Dabi does as he’s told, downing half the bottle before he sets it aside again. It’s frightening how well Dabi sits for the stitches. He doesn’t wince or take a single strained breath or make a sound to indicate that he’s in pain at all. Hawks still works as fast as he can while keeping the stitches neat and evenly spaced. Dabi sits silently the entire time. Hawks doesn’t comment on it.
“All right, done,” he says, setting the needle on the bedside table to dispose of later. “You still with me, hot stuff?” Dabi blows out a breath through his nose and nods. Hawks gently squeezes his shoulder, aware that there’s a very good possibility that Dabi has more injuries that he can’t see. “Let’s go clean you up.”
Instead of moving to stand, a hand curls around Hawks’s ankle, just under the cuff of his sweatpants, and Dabi tips his head over onto Hawks’s knee. For a moment, Hawks doesn’t breathe, his throat dry and his heart pounding in his chest.
“Dabi?”
“Give me a second,” he says. His eyes are closed.
Hawks’s hand is still on his shoulder and he squeezes gently, letting his thumb rub over the ribbed scar tissue there. Neither of them moves and Hawks just counts Dabi’s breaths as he watches the minutes tick away on his alarm clock.
Eventually, Dabi reaches up and takes hold of his wrist. Hawks thinks he’s going to push him off, but he doesn’t. He holds on and Hawks’s chest aches for another reason entirely.
“You still with me?” Hawks asks after minute of silence crawls by.
Dabi nods. “I have a headache.”
Hawks snorts quietly. “I bet. I’ll get you something for it after we clean the blood off your face.” Dabi just nods again, his body sagging in place, leaning against Hawks. When his hand falls away, Hawks reaches down to cup his jaw, tilting his head slightly and Dabi cracks his eye open to look up at him. Hawks’s thumb settles over the hole from one of his missing staples. “Do you have… replacements?”
“Not on me,” Dabi says, sitting upright with a nearly inaudible groan. “Fuck me, I’m tired.”
“I can tell. You’ve got some killer bags under your eyes.”
Dabi turns his head fully to look at him over his shoulder and then he laughs. Actually laughs. It’s quiet and brief, but his eyes squint up and he fucking smiles and Hawks feels like someone punched him in the gut.
“You’re an asshole.”
Toma chooses that moment to start crying. It’s enough to jolt Hawks out of the hazy stupor he’s in, looking down at Dabi, who is acting worryingly unlike himself. Hawks swings his leg up over Dabi’s head and gets to his feet, lifting his wings high enough to make sure he doesn’t clock Dabi in the head with them. He’s about to offer Dabi a hand, but he’s already pushing himself upright with a groan. Hawks waits long enough to make sure that he isn’t about to topple over before he leaves the room and pads down the hall.
Toma’s sitting upright in his crib, eyes shining with unshed tears, and he sticks his hands up the moment that Hawks pushes the door all the way open.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Hawks whispers, reaching for him.
Toma snuggles in against his chest, his cries quieting to soft whines almost immediately. Hawks stands there, rocking him side to side, patting at his bottom. He doesn’t need a changing and if he were hungry, he’d still be crying.
“Just wanted to whine, huh?”
“Sounds like you,” Dabi says from behind him.
Hawks flaps a hand at him. “Don’t come in here, he’ll never go back down if he sees you.” But it’s too late, Toma lifts his head up off of Hawks’s chest at the sound of Dabi’s voice, and then Toma is smiling at him, all big cheeks and prominent bottom, middle teeth. Hawks sighs. “Thanks.”
Dabi steps in beside him and Toma reaches out a chubby little hand. Dabi gives him a finger to wrap his little talons around. He’s cleaned the blood from his face and he’s changed into the sweatpants and shirt that he borrows whenever he crashes on Hawks’s couch. Or in his bed. Which isn’t something that Hawks wants to think about, that Dabi is apparently comfortable enough staying the night in his loft to have a favorite pair of borrowed clothing to sleep in.
He also tries not to think about the fact that his son’s first reaction upon seeing Dabi is to smile and coo at him.
Dabi’s fingers brushing aside Hawks’s wings to rest against the small of his back isn’t something that he’s going to think too much about either.
--
It’s a rare occasion when Dabi comes by before dark. Hawks isn’t sure if it’s because the League seems to be mostly active under the cover of night or if it’s because it’s easier to hide his appearance that way, or some mix of the two. Either way, it’s surprising when there’s a knock at the balcony door just before it opens, and Dabi steps in.
The living room is bathed in warm, early afternoon sun. Toma looks positively angelic with his soft, round face, his bright amber eyes, and his downy, blonde hair. Hawks is lying on the floor with his son, who is patiently waiting for Hawks to restack the block tower he’s constructing so that Toma can knock it down again.
They both look up at the sound of the door opening. Dabi wears a dark jacket over a hoodie, with the hood pulled up, and a mask that sits around his neck like a scarf, when he pulls it down.
Toma babbles happily at him once Dabi bares his face.
“Bet coming over here is only time anyone’s happy to see that ugly mug of yours,” Hawks says, adding another block to the tower.
“Why do you think I come over so often?” Dabi asks, shedding his jacket and pushing his hood down before he sits on the floor beside Hawks’s head.
“Pure vanity. I knew it.”
“Hey, little sparrow,” Dabi says, his voice taking on that gentle tone that Hawks still can’t believe he’s capable of.
Toma greets him by demolishing the stack of blocks before him and giving a full belly laugh that makes Hawks laugh in turn. He starts stacking up the blocks again.
“Wanton destruction and a gleeful laugh? You’re raising a little villain, Hawks.” Dabi’s tone is joking but the words make Hawks’s stomach twist a bit, unpleasantly.
“Look at that face,” Hawks says, reaching out to poke Toma’s belly and listen to him laugh again. “There’s not an ounce of villain in there.”
Dabi leans back against the couch, stretching out his long legs and crossing them at the ankle.
“Just like his dad, then,” he says, and there is no teasing there, only a matter-of-fact tone that makes Hawks’s hands go cold. Before Hawks can slip fully into a panic, Dabi reaches out and plucks the block from his hovering hand and adds it to the stack.
Hawks sits upright beside him and Dabi meets his gaze evenly.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Dabi tells him.
Hawks looks at Toma again, who is gnawing at one of the blocks, since no one is building him anything to smash with them.
“I’m not a liar. I’m sick of the way things are done from both ends. For what it’s worth, I don’t want to be a hero, either. I don’t want to be anything but a good father.”
Dabi watches him carefully and Hawks is afraid to look away from his narrow-eyed gaze; he’s never seen those cool, blue eyes appear so intense before. Finally Dabi turns his attention back to Toma, who is smacking two blocks together and babbling a bit to himself.
The silence is too much, however. He needs to know what Dabi is thinking because it’s not just his safety he has to be concerned with, anymore. Hawks licks his bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth and biting down on it briefly.
“Are you gonna tell Shigaraki?”
Dabi snorts. “I don’t give a fuck about Shigaraki. Or the League. Once I kill Endeavor, I’m done with them anyway.”
The confession is startling in its honesty, because Dabi is knowingly giving him insurance with his words. Hawks could easily use this against him, just the same as Dabi could hand him over to the League as a traitor. He doesn’t entirely understand why but he thinks he’s starting to see the bigger picture as it gradually comes into focus.
Hawks ignores the comment about Endeavor entirely.
Toma knocks his blocks aside and falls forward into a crawl. Hawks sees Dabi jerk, like he thought Toma was tipping over and he was going to grab for him. Toma rocks a bit in place before he gets the momentum to crawl forward toward Hawks, balancing himself with his wings arched and feathers spread.
Hawks smiles as he helps him to stand on wobbly feet, both thumbs lost in a tight-fisted grip. Toma coos at him and Hawks coos back. To his surprise—and Dabi’s, judging by the look on his face—Toma then turns and makes the same sound at him.
Dabi huffs a breath and reaches out a hand to stroke over Toma’s fuzzy head.
“I don’t know how to make that sound, kid.”
Toma lets go of Hawks with one hand to grab at Dabi’s wrist; Dabi lets himself be caught and the side of his hand dragged into Toma’s mouth.
“I think he’s cutting teeth again,” Hawks says. “Toma, stop.”
Toma babbles something sharply at him as he dislodges Dabi’s hand from his mouth. Hawks blinks as Dabi huffs a laugh, reaching over to take the baby in his hands and hold him up over his head.
“He told you.”
“I guess so,” Hawks says, grinning as Toma’s little wings spread out, fluttering a bit, like he wants to flap them. “Are you flying?” he asks as Dabi tosses him a bit, catching him soundly. Toma squeals in delight and Dabi does it again and again before settling him down on his thighs.
“What’s his other father’s quirk?” Dabi asks, just lobbing the question in as easily as if they were talking about the weather.
“What?”
Dabi lifts a brow at him as Toma busies himself smacking at the staples in Dabi’s wrist. “You heard me. Your traits are obvious; this kid looks like a much cuter clone of you. Do you know if he has another quirk?”
Hawks ignores the barb, rubbing at the side of his neck and looking at his son. “I don’t know. I hope not. I hope he’s just like me. The wings are distinctive enough without him having something else weird manifesting later.”
Dabi combs careful fingers through Toma’s feathers. “I like the wings.”
Heat warms Hawks’s cheeks.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because his hands are fuckin’ freezing.”
“What?” Hawks asks, reaching over to touch the back of one of Toma’s hands. Dabi is right, it’s absolutely frigid. “He’s too young to show signs of another quirk.”
Dabi tips his head to the side. “Apparently not.”
Hawks can feel himself deflating, leaning into Dabi without thinking about it.
“Warm his hands up.” He’s sitting close enough to Dabi, their biceps touching, that he can feel when his body temperature rises, even if it’s only slightly. Toma stares at Dabi’s hand, his big eyes filled with something like curiosity, before he sticks the side of his own fist in his mouth and sucks on it.
“It’s a good thing,” Dabi tells him. “It means he’s strong.”
Hawks sighs, tipping his head to the side and resting it against Dabi’s shoulder. The heat of him through the thin material of his shirt is enough to make Hawks’s forehead prickle with sweat, within moments.
“I don’t know shit about ice quirks.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah.” Hawks exhales and sits up again, leaning forward to plant a kiss on Toma’s forehead before he gets to his feet. “Guess we’ll have to, huh?” Toma coos up at him. Hawks turns his gaze toward Dabi, who is already looking up at him, words catching in his throat. What? part of him wants to ask, because there is something in his eyes that Hawks just doesn’t understand. But he keeps his questions to himself and nudges Dabi’s thigh with his bare toes. “You staying for lunch?”
Dabi holds his gaze for a moment longer before he turns his attention back to Toma. “Sure,” he says, at length.
Hawks tries not to think too hard about anything at all.
--
Hawks would be lying if he said he wasn’t just a tiny bit afraid that Dabi is going to turn on him and turn him over as a traitor. Either to the League or to the Commission; Hawks isn’t sure which one scares him more. Not for himself, but for his child. Toma never asked for any of this and Hawks loves his son more than anything. He’s the first real family Hawks has ever had and he’ll be dead in the ground before someone takes Toma away from him.
He rests easier in the knowledge that Dabi likes Toma, though. He makes it obvious that he does and Hawks doesn’t know if he just likes kids, in general—which seems at odds with just about everything he knows about Dabi—or if he just likes Hawks’s kid.
Either way, he trusts Dabi a lot more than he doesn’t. Especially when it comes to the safety of his son.
Hawks wakes when Dabi climbs into bed with him, blinking drowsily in the relative darkness of his room. The curtains are only partly drawn and the city lights filter in enough that he can see more than just the outline of Dabi as he settles in heavily beside Hawks.
It’s been a few days since he’s made an appearance at the loft or given more than a single word response to a text. He hasn’t contacted Hawks for anything League related in weeks, either, acting as a buffer between him and Shigaraki without Hawks asking him to. Hawks feels like they’ve hardly seen him.
“All right?” Hawks mumbles, face halfway buried in his pillow.
“Fine,” Dabi says.
Hawks had removed his feathers before showering and hadn’t called them back before climbing into bed. It’s easier to sleep without them, regardless of the position, but Hawks feels almost defenseless without them, so he rarely does it. Dabi hasn’t often seen him without them, either with them re-growing after a battle or with them voluntarily removed. He does nothing to make his staring less obvious.
Hawks watches with one eye as Dabi reaches a hand out and strokes the soft feathers that remain. His touch is careful in a way that Dabi so rarely ever is, carding his fingers between feathers and setting them to rights. Hawks’s arms crawl with goosebumps. Whether or not Dabi realizes it, the act of preening is wildly, incredibly intimate to Hawks. No one has ever done it for him but himself.
He hides the flush of his face in the crook of his arm. “Feels good,” he murmurs.
Dabi hums quietly, his fingers tracing down to where his wing sprouts from his back, human flesh meeting avian. Between his wings is a patch of soft, fuzzy feathers, where his body couldn’t quite decide if it wanted to be entirely human or not. Dabi strokes it, fingers digging in just enough to be felt.
Hawks’s dick twitches where it’s pressing against his thigh and he shifts his hips, easing his legs apart slightly. Dabi continues to stroke his feathers, seemingly unaware of what he’s doing to Hawks with the gentleness of his touch. It probably says something unfortunate about him that the first time Dabi puts a hand on him, without punching him, it riles him up.
He ignores it, though, because it genuinely feels good. The last time someone touched him in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant, he was getting knocked up. Hawks snorts into his elbow at the thought.
“What?” Dabi asks.
“Nothing,” Hawks says, lifting his face from where he’s been hiding it and setting his cheek against the pillow again, tucking his arm underneath it. “Just thinking that the last time someone touched me like this, I ended up with a kid.”
It’s Dabi’s turn to snort. “Now that’s romance.”
“Is it?” Hawks asks, meeting his gaze as Dabi’s hand follows the dip of his spine to the dimples at the base of it. He traces them both, brushing the waistband of his sweats every couple of passes.
“I don’t do romance, birdie.”
“Why not? You do domesticity just fine.”
Dabi cups his ass, over his sweats and squeezes; Hawks sucks in a breath and presses his hips into the bed again.
“I don’t know what you want out of me,” Dabi says, his grip turning painful for just a moment before letting go.
Hawks wants too many things. He wants too much for it to, in any way, be plausible or safe for any of them, Toma included. He shakes his head and reaches for the back of Dabi’s neck, pulling him in and down. Dabi kisses him hard. It’s strange, the feeling of his scarred bottom lip, rough in comparison to his upper lip, and stiff. The staples keep him from opening his mouth too far but it’s enough for Hawks to get his tongue in. The inside of his mouth is hot; his entire body is hot, even the scarred parts of him.
Dabi pushes him onto his back and Hawks goes willingly, kicking his legs free of the sheets as Dabi climbs in between them. He’s a hell of a lot harder now than he was a minute ago, his dick rubbing up against Dabi’s through their sweats. Dabi presses him down with a firm roll of his hips, and fuck, he’s hard too. Hawks wraps both arms around his shoulders, one hand fisting in his hair, holding Dabi tight against him as they kiss.
The roll of Dabi’s hips is relentless, angled just right so that their cocks are pressed together, rubbing up against one another. It’s a smooth, hard grind that has Hawks panting for breath against his mouth, leaking in his sweats in no time. It’s been entirely too long since he’s done more than jerk off in the shower, and even longer since he’s even wanted to get off with another person.
“Fuck,” Dabi rasps, biting his cheek before dropping his head to the sweaty crook of Hawks’s neck.
Hawks hooks a leg around Dabi’s, pulling him harder into each thrust, trying to keep from digging in with his talons. A hand grips his hip, pushing him down into the mattress.
“Dabi, shit!”
Hawks drags him back into a kiss with a sharp tug of his hair. Dabi gets to his knees and lifts Hawks with both hands on his ass, pulling them into a new position and changing the angle of his thrusts. Hawks lets go with one hand to press against the wall, giving him leverage to return the toe-curling pressure.
Dabi leans over him, one hand planted beside his head, bunching the pillow up, and the other still gripping his ass. “Wanna fuck?” Dabi asks, his voice rough and breathless.
Hawks claws at his shoulder, listening to him hiss when one of his talons hooks in the gap between flesh and scar tissue.
“Yeah, but—” he lets out a breath, eyes closing as Dabi gets the slide of their cocks together just right. “I don’t—have anything and I don’t wanna…”
“Get knocked up again?”
“Yeah,” Hawks huffs, reaching up to grab Dabi’s face with both hands. Dabi folds easily, laying himself against Hawks again, rutting him into the mattress with hard thrusts of his hips, smashing their mouths together, teeth pressing into lips. It hurts, it all hurts, but it’s so fucking good.
“Gonna come?”
Hawks nods, kissing him again. “Not gonna take much more.”
“Me either.”
Dabi doubles down on the force of his thrusts, making Hawks cry out, muffling himself against Dabi’s mouth. He’s so close to coming, minutes from spilling inside his sweats while Dabi ruts against him like a couple of idiot teenagers, when a sharp, wailing cry startles them both into stillness.
They’re both panting hard, Hawks’s legs shaking and his dick throbbing up against Dabi’s. Neither one of them moves, holding each other still as they listen.
“Tell me that wasn’t the kid,” Dabi rasps.
Hawks lifts his head off the pillow, listening with his sharp hearing. The door is cracked open because Hawks can’t bring himself to close it when his son might cry out for him in the night. He just really, really hopes this isn’t one of those times.
Toma chooses that moment to begin crying for real, loud and shaking, like he does when he’s genuinely upset or hungry. Dabi collapses against him with a huff.
“I was so close,” he grumbles.
Hawks doesn’t want to let him go. He groans, clinging tighter to Dabi for a moment before nudging at his shoulder. Dabi rolls off of him, onto his back. The front of his sweats are tented and wet at the head and where Hawks was leaking against him. He looks gorgeous lying there in Hawks’s rumpled sheets, breathing hard, eyes closed. There’s a faint trail of white hair low on his belly that disappears under his waistband that Hawks wants to sink his teeth into.
Hawks hurriedly changes out of his sweats and into another pair of pajama bottoms. He’s rapidly losing his erection but he can’t go comfort his child with precome staining his sweats.
“Nice ass,” Dabi says, head lifting up off the pillow, looking at him.
Hawks flings his balled up sweatpants at him and goes to get his son.
Toma continues crying, even after Hawks picks him up and shushes him. He presses his face against Hawks’s chest and cries louder.
“You hungry?” Hawks asks, making his way out to the kitchen. He doesn’t have to turn on any lights, his vision sharp enough in the dark that he can see just fine. He plugs in the bottle warmer and sets about mixing formula one handed until Dabi comes out of his room, blessedly boner-free.
“Come here, you little cockblock,” Dabi says, taking Toma from him.
Hawks smacks him on the bicep. “Don’t call him that.” He’s not entirely able to keep the laugh from his voice as he says it, setting the timer on the warmer and leaning back against the counter.
Toma has at least stopped crying, still whining and sniffing, but familiar enough with the process to know that he’s about to eat. When the bottle is ready, Dabi lifts Toma and presses a kiss to his temple before handing him back to Hawks. The ever-present ache behind his ribs sparks anew as he fits Toma into the crook of his arm, accounting space for his wings to sit comfortably, and feeds him.
They watch each other in the dark, both of them equally quiet as Toma’s eyes begin to droop again; Dabi with his arms folded against his scarred chest, and Hawks holding his son. This is not anything like what he’d imagined his relationship with Dabi would turn out like.
It’s better. It’s a lot better. But it’s still confusing as fuck because Hawks has no idea what’s going to happen next. Not just with Dabi but with his life, in general. Everything is on a razor’s edge, right now. Sooner or later, someone outside of the people who already know about Toma, will learn of his existence. And then absolutely everything could go to shit.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Dabi says, interrupting his spiraling inner monologue. Hawks mouths fuck you at Dabi, who laughs. “Just say ‘fuck’. It’s not like he’s gonna repeat you.”
“Dabi.”
“Speaking of fucking,” Dabi says, pushing himself off the counter and closing the distance between them.
“I’m holding a baby.”
“Are you gonna be holding a baby all night?” Dabi asks, putting a hand on his side; his fingers are just on the verge of being uncomfortably hot.
Hawks shakes his head. “Dabi...” he sighs. “What do you want from me? Besides an orgasm.”
Dabi looks down at him, his eyes so bright they almost glow. “What’ll you give me?”
“I don’t mean sex.”
“Neither do I,” Dabi says easily, reaching out to stroke the downy hair above Toma’s ear. “What do you want, Hawks?”
In all of his years of living, Hawks doesn’t think anyone has ever asked him that question before. Everything has always been decided for him, ever since he was a child, his options have been taken away, leaving him with a presented course of action to follow through on, whether he wanted to or not. Setting Toma’s empty bottle aside, he lifts the drowsy baby up onto his shoulder to burp him. It’s difficult with his wings, but he’s mostly perfected it with a carefully placed pat between them.
Dabi watches him from less than a foot away, eyes on Hawks’s and a hand on both him and Toma.
Hawks takes a breath and closes his eyes, tipping his head forward to rest on Dabi’s shoulder. “I want… you to stay the night. And to work the rest of this shit out after we make each other come at least twice.”
Dabi hums a sound of acknowledgment. “Okay.”
Hawks huffs and nudges Dabi away from him. “I’m gonna lay him down.” He pauses a few steps away and looks back, raising a brow at Dabi. “You coming?”
“In the next five to ten minutes, with any luck.”
Hawks narrows his eyes and Dabi grins, following behind him as he goes.