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Realistically, Dabi should be mad.
Dabi should be mad because Hawks got hit with a quirk on patrol and didn’t tell him until it was too late; he didn’t text to cancel their meeting at Hawks’ place and didn’t even tell Dabi anything was up until he was playfully patting his shoulder, conveniently forgetting that the quirk was touch-activated.
After a sharp burst of light and a good minute of loud ringing in his ears, he came to, finding himself in Hawks’ body instead of his own. Hawks hadn’t even looked apologetic, either, just a little shocked while Dabi was trying to get a grip on what just happened and not freak out.
Hawks had looked taken aback but the expression was on Dabi’s own face and it was just- weird. And it could have been easily avoided.
So, all things considered, he should be mad. But he’s… not.
“...shouldn’t last that long, just twelve hours so you’ll be all good when you wake up… I didn’t even remember until it was too late… it’s not gonna hurt, might just be weird…”
Hawks’ voice drifts in and out because Dabi’s too shell-shocked to even formulate a train of thought, let alone actually respond. He just stares at his knees - Hawks’ knees - where he sits on the hero’s couch, and breathes in deeply. Breathes out, then in again.
“...I’m really sorry…” Hawks’ apologies (too little, too late) fall flat, not even entering Dabi’s mind. “...you can totally do embarrassing stuff in my body to make up for it- I mean, you have my fingerprint to log into my phone… post on Twitter that I still sleep with my Endeavor plush, or something…”
Still breathing steadily (too steadily?) Dabi flexes his fingers, tests out his new joints. The easy way his wrists move, the silence in which they do. He’s so distracted by the new feel of this body, of Hawks’ body, that he doesn’t notice the hero getting closer to him.
“Dabi. Dabi?”
Ignoring how weird it is to look up and see his own face staring back, he tries his best to concentrate. He rolls his shoulders back and the weight of Hawks’ wings is strange, but a good kind of strange. The movement helps snap him out of his almost-trance, but he still can’t find it in himself to answer.
An aborted little noise forces its way out of his throat instead, like he physically can’t speak.
“Are you alright?” Hawks is cocking his head and looking genuinely concerned, an unfamiliar expression on Dabi’s own face, and he-
“I feel so… good,” Dabi says, sort of dumbly.
If Hawks cocks his head any further, Dabi thinks, it’s going to fall off.
“Good?” Hawks says incredulously, though he’s smiling like he’s happy Dabi is talking again and that means everything is okay. “I feel like shit. Maybe the quirk had different effects since I was the one who got hit with it, I mean-”
“It’s not the quirk,” Dabi interrupts. “It’s me.”
Dabi isn’t exactly open about having a chronic illness.
It’s not the first thing he goes around announcing when he meets new people, since he’s a villain and that’s quite possibly the worst idea ever, because he can’t even count the number of people who would use that information against him.
If he were to tell Hawks… he hadn’t even considered the possibility. He can kid himself all he wants into thinking the hero actually likes him, but there’s forever the possibility that he’s still a spy, a traitor. What the Commission would do if they knew that information about him, he doesn’t want to think about.
(He’s lying about the first part, of course. He’d fantasised about telling Hawks, about him soothing his aches, helping him through the worst of it, holding him when it got really bad. Maybe even taking him to a doctor. Could Hawks pay someone enough to keep his identity secret? And, would he?)
But now Hawks is trapped in his body, his broken and damaged body. He’s more aware of Dabi’s pain and fatigue and nausea and illness than anybody else has ever been.
After he woke up from his coma and his body split into its own pieces, after he became a boy so fragmented with hurt he was unrecognisable - who was there to even tell?
Dabi is just pain. That’s all he is.
It makes him feel sick and giddy and faint and terrified all at the same time, at the thought of somebody seeing all of his pain. Seeing how much he suffers on the daily. At the thought of Hawks possibly feeling something akin to sympathy for him.
“What do you mean, it’s you?”
“I mean,” Dabi clears his throat, trying to adjust to the foreign voice in his throat. “That’s what my body feels like.”
Hawks grimaces. “I know you’ve got the scars, I can feel those- but this is next level. The quirk’s gotta be taking something out of me, I’m never this tired after patrol. Like- yeah, your staples are kind of uncomfy, but I’m just so… ugh.” He waves his hands around like there aren’t any words to describe it.
Dabi feels a hot pit of shame pool deep in his stomach. Like he’s so broken, so defective that Hawks can’t even recognise it as something his body might do. Like it has to be a quirk because there’s no way that Dabi could feel like this all the time.
(Dabi wishes he didn’t feel like this all the time).
“Your whole body is aching,” Dabi whispers. “And you don’t know where it’s coming from. It’s probably in your shoulders the worst, and your hands, and you want to grip because it hurts but you don’t want to because you’re in my body so you’d hurt me.”
Hawks drags his head up to look him in the eye. It looks like it physically pains him to do so (and Dabi knows from experience that it probably does). He frowns as he looks at him as realisation slowly but surely begins to dawn.
“You need to sit down,” Dabi continues, trying to quell the shaking in his voice. “You’re getting dizzy even though you’ve hardly been stood up five minutes. You’ve been up that long you probably feel sick, too, and you’re tired. Hawks, I know it feels bad because it’s my body. It’s just like that.”
The silence is sickening.
The evening traffic is quieter outside than it was earlier and it’s one less distraction that he can use. Instead, his eyes fix on the sauce stain on Hawks’ clothes where he’s staring down at his knees again.
“...You feel like this all the time?” Hawks asks him weakly, almost apologetically. Like somehow it’s his fault.
“Some days are better than others,” Dabi offers. It’s not much consolation.
“But most days feel like this.”
Dabi doesn’t answer, because Hawks already knows the answer is yes.
The air between them is suddenly too tense, too familiar. It’s not enough like the hero and villain atmosphere they’re both used to - instead it’s morphed into more dangerous territory, more I’m sorry that you’re hurt. They can’t afford that, not when they’re still on opposite sides.
It’s dangerous for Hawks to say that because nobody’s ever said that to him, and he won’t know how to cope.
Hawks, attentive to the situation, tries to lighten up. “Makes sense you act like an asshole most of the time.”
Dabi laughs. It’s kind of pathetic. He doesn’t know what else to do.
He just sits in Hawks’ body and feels. Feels how painless his joints are and how freeing it is to not be hurting, to not be tired. He feels like he could run a mile and maybe he will, because when was the last time he did that? He thinks he could do anything and he probably could.
But not because of Hawks’ wings. Sure, he could do anything with those - he could try and control them telepathically, could flap them about, could detach the individual feathers and hell, he could even fly - and he feels stupid. Because anybody in his position would be doing all of those things.
For him, Hawks’ wings were an afterthought. His first and only priority is just… feeling. Savouring the moment. Committing the thought of this to memory because he’ll be back in his own fractured body tomorrow morning.
And he suddenly remembers that Hawks is in his body now.
“Sit down,” he says quickly, moving over on the couch to give him room. “You can’t stand up for that long.”
“Tell me about it,” Hawks says, breathless, gracelessly slumping onto the couch. “You go out recruiting like this?”
Dabi’s suddenly out of his depth. Before, he’d wanted Hawks to ask about it, he’d spent weeks wanting to tell him about it, and now it’s actually happening his throat is locking up because it’s so much more vulnerable than it was in his imagination. Is he really just going to reveal all of his weaknesses, just like that?
He supposes they’re already revealed, what with Hawks feeling them in real time.
“I do everything like that,” Dabi says, stilted.
Hawks curses, rubbing his elbows with a grimace. They’d not been aching particularly when Dabi had first come over, but he knows it doesn’t take very long for something to start. In a way that he knows is selfish, he’s kind of glad he’s not the one feeling that pain.
Cut him some slack. It’s been eight years of non-stop pain and somebody else is taking the burden of it for twelve hours.
“How long has it been like this?” Hawks asks him, then shakes his head. “Sorry, is that- rude? Can I ask that? Like, were you born this way, or…”
At his lack of an answer, Hawks trails off. And while Dabi doesn’t mind telling him - it’s just weird to have somebody ask. It’s weird to have somebody care.
Is this caring? Is this what it looks like?
“It’s fine. And I wasn’t,” Dabi goes to nervously pick at his nails out of habit, but is met with Hawks’ perfectly taken care of talons, shaped and filed. He decides against it and pinches the fabric of Hawks’ clothes inbetween his fingers instead. “Born like this, I mean.”
“Can I ask- um…” Hawks trails off again, not sure where his boundaries are. The look of apprehension is strange on Dabi’s features.
“How old I was? Why it started?”
“Both, if you’re comfortable with it.”
Dabi leans back into the couch cushions, trying to get comfortable in his seat and trying to stall for time so he’s sure that he’s comfortable with telling Hawks all this.
“I was sixteen. Was in a coma for three years and I woke up with all of it. Not that it was an instant thing - but… I was injured. That’s what put me in the coma in the first place. Messed me up real bad and I didn’t get out of it unscathed.” He gestures to his body, the scars. “It looked bad, that was the most obvious thing. But it screwed me up on the inside too.”
The words come out a lot easier after he starts, and he finds that he actually likes it. The attention. Hawks’ eyes on him, even if they’re not technically his eyes at the moment. The feeling of somebody actually, truly listening to him.
“Just… with my weak constitution, constantly using my quirk anyway, nearly dying, and all of the trauma- I don’t know. My body just gave up. I was never the same after that day and after I woke up, I was just… there was never a moment where I felt alright, you know?”
“...I’m sorry,” Hawks says weakly.
Dabi shrugs. “Not your fault.”
“Hero society’s fault,” Hawks mutters. “Just- if somebody had saved you, if none of those things happened, then-”
“Don’t spout rhetoric at me while I’m giving you my sad backstory,” Dabi frowns. Hawks laughs and whatever tension he’d been retaining in his body while he listened disappears. He smiles and realises suddenly that smiling in Hawks’ body, with Hawks’ face- feels good. It doesn’t pull or stretch or strain and it feels nice to smile properly, even have his eyes crinkle with it.
“I just wish I could’ve done something,” Hawks says.
“We’re the same age,” Dabi butts back. “What was thirteen year old Hawks gonna do, huh? Swoop in and save me from my shitty household all by himself, prevent me from getting a chronic illness?”
“When you put it like that-”
“It is like that,” Dabi says, the echoes of a smile still on his face, just because it feels pleasant to do. “Don’t guilt yourself over it. We didn’t know each other and you couldn’t have done anything.”
“I’d have to see some photos of baby Dabi,” Hawks tries to lighten the mood. Dabi doesn’t know whether it’s because he actually feels guilty or he’s trying to distract from the fact that he’s in pain. Probably a little bit of both, Dabi decides.
Dabi laughs but it’s dry and humourless, something quietly bitter. “I can’t.”
“Oh, you ‘don’t have any’?” Hawks teases, using air quotes. “They can’t be that bad, come on.”
Dabi’s smile is a sad little thing. He wishes he could. He would if he could. Do stupid things with Hawks like show him his baby pictures and talk about the few good parts of their childhoods, the sparse fond memories they had.
“...It’d give away too much,” he says.
He’s right, and he knows it. Hawks would recognise his red hair paired with the turquoise eyes and the Endeavor merchandise t-shirt. Hawks would recognise the Todoroki family home. His old man himself would be in the photos, too - and Dabi has no doubt that Hawks would recognise him.
But Hawks doesn't know all that, of course. He just knows that it’s ‘complicated’.
“I get it,” he says, sort of sadly. Like he wouldn’t be able to show Dabi his childhood pictures, either.
Hawks orders takeout not soon after they swap. He’s probably bored since Dabi isn’t much conversation, still just stunned with the liveliness of this new body, how painless it feels. It’s presumably not very interesting to watch one of the country’s most notorious villains be shocked at his hands moving.
Dabi doesn’t even talk while they eat, either, because he’s shocked at how okay that feels, too. He doesn’t feel sick, doesn’t even start to feel sick even when he’s probably eaten twice what he normally does. Is this why Hawks loves KFC so much? Dabi makes fun of him for it, sure, but if it feels like this when he eats it, then he totally understands.
He leans back into the couch once he’s finished and shuts his eyes, trying to simply bask in the feeling. He’d forgotten how good it felt to just eat and think nothing of it.
But, it only takes about twenty minutes before Hawks starts shifting awkwardly on the couch, clearly uncomfortable but not wanting to say anything. Dabi keeps thinking he’s trying to downplay the pain in fear of… what, offending him? Making him feel bad?
His verdict is confirmed when Hawks takes notice of Dabi’s constant glances towards him and tries to direct the conversation away from himself.
“Are you okay?” He asks, arms crossed tightly over his stomach.
“I just-” Dabi shudders. “I forgot what it felt like to be normal.”
“You are normal,” Hawks tries to reassure. (It doesn’t make him feel any better). “Just because you’re… sick-” He stumbles a little around the word like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to be using it- “Doesn’t mean you’re not normal.”
Dabi huffs a laugh, breathy and humourless. He does that particular laugh often because really, there’s nothing to be laughing about in his life - but it sounds strange coming from Hawks’ voice. Wrong, even.
“Thank you for correcting me,” he says dryly, “But it’s not, you know? I know you don’t feel normal right now.”
Hawks goes to interject but Dabi stops him, very much not wanting to hear the hero lecture him on inclusive language, because it’s his body and he’s very aware of how not normal it is. He knows that when he wakes up already sick and in pain, it isn’t fair, because nobody else he knows feels like that.
“Don’t bullshit me, birdie, we just ate and I know you want to puke but you don’t want to offend me ‘cause you think you’d be insulting my body or some shit. Your stomach probably hurts too even though I know you couldn’t eat as much as you normally do. And that’s- that doesn’t happen to you. It’s not normal, Hawks, don’t try to pretend like it is. There’s something wrong.”
Hawks shrinks in on himself, arms still perched over his stomach, and Dabi knows he’s right. Of course he’s right, it’s his body and it happens every day and it’s not normal. He never used to feel like this but the feeling of being healthy is such a distant memory that it doesn’t even compute in his mind.
There’s something wrong. Of course there is, it’s obvious - but Dabi isn’t lucky enough that somebody can tell him what it is, maybe even fix him. People like Dabi can’t go to doctors. People like Dabi spend three years in a coma in a shady, probably unlicensed hospital, and wake up with an ache that’s never going to cease.
Again, he speaks before Hawks can, not sure he’s ready for whatever he has to say. “You can go to sleep. You’ve probably got a headache by now and I know you don’t wanna feel the staples anymore. Go sleep the pain off, you’ll wake up you again.”
Hawks has this sad sort of pity in his eyes. Dabi wants to yell at him to stop, not just because it’s his face and it’s weird seeing that expression on it - but also because people don’t pity him. Nobody pities him. And it’ll kill him for anyone to see his pain, his suffering in all its true and ugly glory.
Dabi says go to sleep partly because he feels bad Hawks has to deal with his body, but partly because he knows they’ll switch back by the morning and he doesn’t want to have to deal with the consequences if Hawks doesn’t take proper care of his body while he’s in it.
And also (mostly) because- he wants to be alone.
He wants to be comforted, sure. But he likes this body, this feeling of being healthy, okay. Not having the constant pull of staples or the uncomfortableness of the skin grafts or the awkward strain of his skin. The constant everywhere kind of pain is just gone.
It’s been pretty much his only constant since he woke up from the coma. And now it’s gone it’s like the low background static of his life has been turned off; he didn’t even realise how bad the pain was until it was gone because he’d gotten used to it, had just made room for it in his body.
Dabi can’t fucking fathom how people walk around like this every day, just living. Just drifting. Just waking up and feeling.
And he wants to be alone, just to process it all. Just to enjoy it.
“You should come to bed, too,” Hawks says softly. It’s so gentle it makes Dabi’s chest hurt. It’s so kind but Hawks just doesn’t get it.
“I don’t…” Dabi presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I’m gonna stay up.”
“Why?”
The silence almost chokes him.
“I don’t want to wake up in my body again,” he whispers, and in the heat of the moment, he’d forgotten that while he can’t cry, Hawks can.
Dabi is trembling and on the verge of sobbing because he’s in Hawks’ perfect, working, able body, and he can cry. He barely remembers how it feels but suddenly it all comes crashing back in as his eyes start to well up - he can’t even find it in himself to hold them back, to be embarrassed about crying in front of Hawks, because it feels so good to properly cry.
The floodgates open then, and Dabi bursts into loud and ugly tears.
He can’t help it.
“I want to feel like this for longer,” he says through sobs and shallow gasps. God, he remembers this, he thinks as his nose starts to run and his voice starts to shake when he talks, all hiccupy and high-pitched.
“I know,” Hawks whispers sadly. “I know.”
“I’m sorry,” Dabi all but whimpers. “I’m so sorry, it just- it feels so nice to not be in pain, it feels so good, I don’t wanna go to sleep ‘cause I’ll never feel like this again.”
His words dissolve into tears and he knows this isn’t like him - but it’s the culmination of all of his pain and illness and exhaustion and hurt since he was sixteen, and really, it’s more like him than he’s ever been. Every second of pain he’s felt since he woke up has come to a head in this moment, now it’s finally all gone.
Touya had changed into Dabi not long after he woke up, while he was still learning to deal with the newfound illness - and so Dabi was built around the pain.
The person that he is now has hurt built in; he’s moulded himself around it, made sufficient space for it to keep himself alive. But now that he doesn’t have it, the persona of Dabi is failing, breaking down without the framework he built himself around.
Without his infrastructure of pain, Dabi just crumbles.
There’s no Dabi without pain. It’s impossible for him to exist without hurt because he’s never done it before; Dabi was born at the altar of Todoroki Touya with aches in his bones and heaviness in his body. Touya died to make space for Dabi and all of the pain that he held - and now that the pain has ceded, that space is just empty.
And he doesn’t know who he is.
Dabi cries so hard he almost breaks.
Hawks is probably thinking that he’s not acting himself but he really, truly couldn’t give a shit. He’s not felt painless in years and he’s losing his sense of identity trying to come to terms with feeling healthy for once - of course he’s not going to act himself.
“It’s not fair,” he says, so quiet it’s barely louder than a breath.
“I know. I know it’s not,” Hawks rushes over to him like an invisible force has been holding him back this entire time, and quickly places his arms around him. It’s so good, so good to feel all of it- not just muted sensations over his scarred skin and tentative touches because of his staples - Hawks is hugging him properly, tightly, like he’s finally not scared that he’ll break him.
The last time he was hugged like this was…
…he doesn’t even remember.
Dabi has no idea how to keep Hawks’ wings under control and so, on his back, they shudder and flutter and expand outwards in a beautiful show of crimson before coming to settle around them both, cocooning them in.
“That’s it,” Hawks murmurs, running deft fingers through his hair. Even that feels nicer than in his own body, because Hawks’ hair is silky and glossy and Hawks doesn’t have a fire quirk that fries it all to shit every time he uses it. “Just let them move, don’t fight it.”
The feathers give a contented little flutter as Dabi relaxes into his touch, leaning into his hand.
Dabi grips onto him, wrapping his arms around Hawks’ waist as tight as they’ll go, just so desperate to feel everything. He feels so light - even though he’s still crying everything feels so good; he’s still crying but he’s not nauseous or in pain and sure, he knows Hawks’ shifts are long, but he doesn’t even feel tired. He just ate a whole meal and he feels better than he did before; not sick or achey, just comfortably full and sated.
Dabi feels good.
And he’s absolutely ruined about it.
“I’ve got you,” Hawks slurs against his hair, then mumbles- “Shit, I’ve gotta sit down. Gonna fall.”
In his short moment of bliss, Dabi had forgotten that Hawks is still in his body, dealing with all of his awful symptoms. That’s why he feels so good - because somebody else is feeling his pain for him. Hawks is in his body and is overexerting himself without realising because he has no idea what Dabi’s physical limits actually are.
Sure, Dabi can pretend all he wants in dark alleyways and abandoned warehouses. He can act tough and well because he knows what his body does and he knows exactly how much time he can have with Hawks acting normal before everything goes to shit.
He’d had his little meeting with Hawks after High End. He’d acted like a villain, he’d pretended he was strong and unbothered, pretended like he was healthy and not feeling pure exhaustion after the fight, after overusing his quirk, physically fighting, reopening old wounds and trauma by seeing his father, staying on his legs for far too long and pushing through all the pain that was already there when he woke up. He put on his best show for the hero-
And then he crashed. He crashed so hard.
He slept for a day and a half and woke with the worst pains he’d ever felt, spiralling through his entire body; he felt so ill he could barely move and he thought he’d never be okay again.
Hawks thought Dabi was just ghosting him after their little argument, playing around. Dabi had wished he was just playing around, because in reality he didn’t even see Hawks’ string of annoyed messages coming through until at least three days after, when the pain had finally subsided to something manageable and sitting up didn’t feel like an insurmountable task.
He brings himself back to the present when he feels the couch dip by his side and a warm body presses into him. Hawks takes him back into his hold without missing a beat, rubbing soothing hands up and down his spine where Dabi can feel all of it, because none of Hawks’ nerve endings are fried off. It feels nice. Soothing.
With a ragged, quivering breath, he tucks his head into the crook between Hawks’ neck and his shoulder, ignoring the fact that it’s his body and he can just feel the roughness of thick, indigo scars. He doesn’t care what he’s touching, he just wants to feel it before everything ruins itself again and hugs don’t feel as good as they do now.
He doesn’t worry about Hawks in his body, because he knows he’s going to be fine. Because tomorrow morning, Hawks is going to get his beautiful, working body back, and Dabi-
Dabi’s going to have to resign himself back to pain, knowing it’s going to be so much worse now he’s had a taste of what life could feel like.
It’s like taking an animal out of captivity for a day, showing them the wilderness, and then trapping them again. It’s cruel. Hasn’t Dabi suffered enough? Isn’t he already in enough pain as it is, without having the tiniest taste of what it’s like to be okay?
His heart roars in pain and begs to be let out.
Hawks, ever too kind and ever too loving, just takes him to bed; gently coaxes him down the hall, into his bedroom, under the covers.
Dabi’s still crying. He hasn’t cried in so long he’s forgotten how to make it stop.
Even when he’s trembling and sniffling, Hawks holds him, cradles him as he falls asleep. It doesn’t take Hawks long because Dabi knows that his body is exhausted. But, even in the safety of Hawks’ arms, he doesn’t want to fall asleep; he presses closer into the warmth and lets himself be held but he can’t fall asleep, he can’t.
Of course Hawks can handle being in his body. Because Hawks knows that, after twelve hours, he’ll be better. He’ll wake up and it’ll all be over, like a prolonged bad dream. Hawks knows that there’s going to be an end to all of this.
Dabi, hopelessly trying to stay awake against Hawks’ chest, knows that there won’t be an end.
Dabi knows that it’ll end exactly like this. With hurt.
The dreaded morning finally comes and Dabi desperately tries to pretend that it hasn’t.
He screws his eyes shut as tightly as he can and tries to slip back into unconsciousness, tries to ignore the soft morning light and the sounds that filter through Hawks’ closed windows, tries to kid himself into thinking that he’s still asleep. He doesn’t want to wake up, doesn’t want to have to face the fact that he’s him again.
It doesn’t work. Dabi is awake and so painfully human.
He blinks his eyes open and starts to settle into the heaviness of his body. It’s uncomfortable and it’s so unfair and he’s falling apart where he lays on Hawks’ soft linen bedsheets, just a skin sack of pain and suffering.
Somehow, in the short time that he’d been in Hawks’ body, he’d forgotten how bad it was. How bad it felt all the time. How much he hates waking up because of it.
Sure, he’s back in his own body because the time limit on the quirk was up - but also, he thinks, he’s back in his own body because the universe hates him. Because it’s just not destined for him to be happy, healthy. It just wasn’t meant to be.
He’s too exhausted to be angry about it.
He realises then that he’s alone in the bed, not being held by Hawks like he was when he went to sleep. It’s a lot colder and a lot more vulnerable now he’s not wrapped up in somebody else, hidden by Hawks’ blanket of red wings and the safety of his arms.
He tries to pretend that he’s not upset about it, but he knows that he is, and there’s no mistaking it. Did Hawks get his own body back and realise how bad Dabi’s actually was? Did he realise just how much lower Dabi is than him?
With a quiet shudder, he curls his knees up to his chest, and finds bloody tears slipping down his cheeks against his will. It was cruel, so unbearably cruel to give him that short moment of euphoria and then take it away so quickly; it was cruel and just so unfair.
Life isn’t fair, his father had told him once, after he’d sobbed for him to pay attention to him, crying that it wasn’t fair for him to ignore him all this time. Life isn’t fair, Touya had heard, and committed to memory. Life isn’t fair is what he thought to himself after he woke up from his coma, fractured and broken, barely living through each day.
But having existed in Hawks’ body, robust and strong and healthy - he realised that life is fair, for some people.
Just not for him.
He knows that Hawks didn’t exactly have a good childhood, nor an easy life - but it’s hard to stamp down the jealousy knowing that Hawks can walk a mile without nearly passing out, knowing that Hawks isn’t constantly in pain that doesn’t have a source or a reason. Life was fair to him. Him and everyone else who doesn’t hurt the same way Dabi does.
Maybe in another world life would be fair to him, and he could share a bed with Hawks and have it be normal. He doesn’t even care about the fact that they’re on opposite sides - they could have this same dynamic, these same jobs, these same affiliations, but if Dabi was healthy-
They could’ve gotten a good, whole night’s sleep. They could’ve messed around with the bodyswap quirk, had fun with it and joked around while it lasted instead of dealing with Dabi having a breakdown. Hawks could’ve stayed in bed with him until the late morning. Could’ve held him closely without Dabi’s joints aching and his staples pressing uncomfortably into Hawks’ skin.
Life isn’t fair and Dabi’s so horribly, awfully aware of it. Because why can’t he have that life? Why doesn’t fate allow him to have it?
His shoulders start pulsing with a dull ache and his tears slowly bleed into Hawks’ pillow, red staining the white.
He zones out looking out of Hawks’ skyline window, since he’d rather just disconnect than have to deal with the pain. His bloody tears are hot on his skin and he’s just so upset, and because he’s not in Hawks’ body anymore he doesn’t even have the luxury of crying properly.
For a while, he’s dead to the world until he feels soft hands on him, gently rubbing up and down his arms, fingers ghosting over his ribs through his shirt, hands stroking through his hair while he’s still half in and out of his mind.
“Hey,” Hawks whispers, voice a little thick with sleep. He’s gentle for the time of morning that it is, knowing Dabi might be upset without even looking at him - and when he tenderly puts a hand on his cheek to turn Dabi’s face, he sees the tears. His face softens.
That’s the thing with Hawks. Anyone else would be repulsed at the blood, would be terrified, maybe even angry that Dabi’s dirtied his pillow with it. But Hawks just doesn’t care, for some strange and unknown reason - and instead, he wipes Dabi’s cheeks with his thumbs, an affectionate hum in the back of his throat.
“I made you toast but it burnt,” he says, which is slightly less romantic.
“It burnt?” Dabi repeats.
“I burnt it,” Hawks corrects sheepishly. “Anyway. Google said it’s easy on your stomach. I don’t know. I’m gonna remake it in a second, but I heard you wake up.”
Oh. Oh. The realisation that Hawks had left to do something for him makes his stomach feel weird, somewhere between nervousness and a dull ache. He doesn’t know how to feel about it - someone being kind to him. Someone being kind to him about his illness, because that’s just unheard of.
Dabi sighs, looking up into his eyes. (He’d never tell him, but he missed the deep, golden yellow, missed looking at it).
“You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me now,” he says. A quiet plea that means don’t take care of me if you don’t want to. I want to be cared for because you like me, not because you think that you have to. “I’m exactly the same as you knew me before. You don’t have to… do all that shit.”
In reality, Dabi does want him to ‘do all that shit’.
“I’m not walking on eggshells,” Hawks says. “I’m just trying to accommodate.”
“You didn’t accommodate before, and I was fine.”
Hawks laughs softly, tucking some of Dabi’s hair behind his scarred ear, his hand lingering there instead of flinching away disgustedly at how mangled it is. “Dabi. I was in your body for twelve hours. I was asleep for most of it and I couldn’t even handle that. Just… you’re brave. And strong. But you shouldn’t have to do that all the time.”
Dabi feels the rotten urge to cry again, mounting in his throat, and he just- he can’t.
“Hawks,” he warns, voice cracking and not at all as assertive as he’d like it to be. “Don’t.”
“I mean it,” he says, even quieter. “You don’t have to push through it all the time, not now I know. Let me take care of you. Just me, just us.”
Not now I know.
He says it like it’s so easy. Like after years of nothing, Dabi can just… let himself feel safe.
But instead of pushing him away at the foreign concept, Dabi leans in. He lets Hawks hold him for a while before he tries his second attempt at not burning toast. He lets Hawks brush through his hair while he wakes up all the way. He lets Hawks try to massage away the ache in his shoulders and while it doesn’t really work all that much, the fact that somebody- that Hawks- is trying to help, is…
It’s something.
It’s a start.