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It all begins with an innocent suggestion.
“Hey, you know what, Keigo? When we get older, we should get married!”
The nine years old that will one day become Hawks blinks in surprise, taken aback by Touya’s contagious smile. They just finished training together and they both are a bit out of breath, but his friend’s eyes are shining brightly despite the exhaustion. His friend is in the middle of helping him preen his feathers that got messed up during the fight when he asks the question.
Keigo isn’t exactly used to such display of affections. Hell, he barely talks to other children his age. The only ones he is allowed to spend time with are future heroes just like himself. From what he heard his handlers say, the goal is for them to have the best coordination possible in prevision of the day they’ll be working as pros together.
They are often pitted against one another to test their capacities, too. And since he is one of the best in battle so far, most of the heroes in training he already met now holds a grudge against him. Not that he can blame them. He knows just how terrible the punishments they get for losing are and he doesn’t wish for any of them to be set up against him.
As a consequence, no one really wants to chat with him when all is said and done. So much for the coordination the Commission keeps bragging about. Touya is the only exception, but that shouldn’t be a surprise, because Touya is unique in a lot of ways. First of all, he doesn’t live in one of the buildings owned by the Hero Public Safety Department, but with his father, which is strange for Keigo who can barely remember what it means to actually have parents. Even more surprisingly, he sometimes let Keigo win their fights on purpose, and he only shrugs when he’s asked in a whisper if he’s not afraid of the punishment he will surely get for it.
So, all things considered, it shouldn’t be such a shock that Touya has taken him by surprise, once again. Maybe the reason why he is left speechless for a second is that marriage is something he never considered for himself. Having a life outside of what the Commission wants for him is a very foreign idea. The only time relationships are truly evoked around him is when his handlers are forcing him into another surgery to conceal his bird traits because stop whining, we’re doing you a favor, no one would ever want you like this.
Keigo doesn’t really have any concept of what love is, not when he’s been abused all of his young life, but the one thing he knows is that Touya is the only person he likes spending time around, the only one whose presence doesn’t rhyme with tears and pain. That’s why he doesn’t hesitate for long on his answer.
“Sure, that would be awesome!”
His words make Touya’s smile grow even wider, and before he can process what’s happening, Keigo is being engulfed in a tight hug. He can’t repress a small gasp, because he’s never felt so warm and safe before, but then his instincts take over and he wraps his wings around his friend in what can only be called a protective gesture.
For a few seconds, nothing exists in the world except for them.
Touya isn’t stupid. Even though he is young, he already knows he will never be allowed to love whoever he wants. Once he gets of age, his father will force him into a quirk marriage with the single intent of producing powerful grandchildren, this makes no doubt in his mind. He will get stuck with a woman who despises him, just like his mother hates his father. As much as he loathes this fate, he understood a long time ago that he’ll never get a say in it.
So no, he isn’t delusional about his future, when he says Keigo and him should get married once they’re adults. But just for one day, he wants to forget about the burns hidden underneath his clothes, about the legacy that burdens him, and pretend he could be happy for once.
The little chirp of happiness that escapes Keigo as they hug is worth a thousand times the beating Touya receives later that day for showing weakness and failing once again to defeat his friend.
For some reason, their promise to get married one day is the first thing that comes to Keigo’s mind when he learns about Touya’s death. It hits him like a truck that his friend won’t have a future, that he won’t get married to anyone, that he’ll never get to become an adult. And among those things, Keigo also realizes that he’ll never see him again.
He cries and cries for days. Even the punishments he gets from his handlers for being weak are not enough to pull him out of his grief. At night, he curls around himself and pretends it’s Touya he’s cuddling with, the only friend he ever had. The friend who is now gone forever. It hurts more than the worst surgery he had to go through.
From that point on, the Commission limits his interactions with the other hero trainees to make sure he won’t ever get so attached again. Keigo barely represses a laugh when they tell him so in a reprimanding tone. As if anyone could replace Touya. He’ll never be able to love anyone else the way he did his friend, he can feel it deep in his bones.
Keigo is eighteen years old when he is proven right. It’s barely the beginning of spring when he jerks awake in his bed, feeling terribly anxious. All his bird instincts are screaming the same thing in unison: he needs Touya.
He hasn’t thought about his dead friend in a while and the sudden reminder fills him with sadness. His only consolation in this is that he doesn’t live at the Commission headquarters anymore, not since he opened his own hero agency. At least, he can hide this new manifestation of his quirk from them. He works on controlling his ragged breathing and waits for that odd urge to fade.
Three days later, it still hasn’t left and Hawks is starting to think something is wrong with him. He can’t do any research on his computer — the Commission has access to all his devices and would immediately know this has something to do with his quirk — so he heads for his local public library instead and goes through every book they own about raptor birds in hope of finding any relevant information that might help him.
It takes him a while to piece everything back together, but in the end, he narrows it down to two simple facts: Hawks mate in spring, and they mate for life.
Also, he is pretty sure that his dumb bird brain has decided that Touya was his mate because of that silly marriage proposal he said yes to when he was a kid.
Still, everything doesn’t exactly add up. From what he reads, hawks will find a new mate if their previous partner dies, so he logically shouldn’t be that obsessed with Touya.
There is only one way to check if his hypothesis is right though: he tries flirting, tries being the important part.
The moment he so much as smiles a bit seductively at one of his fans, a wave of disgust runs through him. It takes him all his willpower to maintain his careless persona when he can feel his inner bird thrashing in anger at his actions. A few other experiments lead him to the same results: he can’t even imagine himself in a romantic situation with anyone, man or woman, without feeling like he’s a horrible person and that he’s betraying Touya.
By the end of May, the longing feeling disappears, but he still can’t bear to flirt with anyone. And when spring returns, he finds himself aching for Touya once more.
Keigo resigns himself to a life of celibacy and focuses on his work as a hero even more than before.
Hawks didn’t think he would ever regret being stuck with a dead mate. However, he quickly changes his mind the moment he meets Dabi for the very first time.
It only takes one look at the villain to send his instincts into a frenzy. To them, Dabi feels perfect, feels like home, and the conditioning the Commission put him through is the only reason Keigo doesn’t start cooing and chirping on the spot.
He can’t stop himself from spreading his wings wide though, and Hawks can only hope the villain mistakes this tentative to impress him for an intimidation display. It’s a good thing humans and birds don’t exactly share the same seduction techniques, or he would be doomed.
After the first shock, Keigo manages to get a grip on himself and to focus back on his mission as a spy. Dabi sends him a questioning look, but he must have met stranger people at the League of Villains because he doesn’t press the issue any further.
Thanks to some miracle, the meeting goes well, even though Hawks still doesn’t understand why his instincts suddenly decided that Dabi, out of all people, would make a perfect mate. He shuts them up by reminding himself of what horrible crimes the other man has committed. He already knows that this mission will be one of his toughest so far, though.
Hawks figures that only meeting with Dabi sparsely to avoid suspicion would be a small mercy, that it will make his instincts forget about him.
How wrong he is.
Every minute he spends away from the villain feels like torture and he can’t even comprehend why. At least, there was a reason why his instincts made him long for Touya, while this new infatuation with Dabi has no logical explanation. The man isn’t even conventionally handsome, with his scarred skin and staples, and yet Hawks is overcome by the irresistible urge to kiss his burnt lips, to feel his body pressed all over his.
At times, he can almost hear his inner bird twitter in confusion, upset as to why he isn’t just running to Dabi.
To his great shame, he starts building a nest in his flat, and he only indulges in this instinct because it is either that or having sex with a villain, which is not happening, thank you very much. It still annoys him to no end that at every single step of the construction, he can’t help but wonder if Dabi will like it.
And then, there are the dreams.
They’re unrealistic, because Dabi doesn’t have wings and he definitely wouldn’t be doing aerial acrobatics to prove himself worthy of Keigo’s love, but that doesn’t keep the hero from blushing furiously whenever he thinks about it.
Sometimes, they turn into more explicit fantasies, ones Hawks doesn’t even want to think about, because imagining how good it would be to be taken by Dabi is the last thing he needs.
The worst, in all of this, is that no matter how hard he tries to ignore this instinctive part of him, he can’t help but be impatient to meet with Dabi again.
He hopes that the more time he spends with the criminal, the more witnessing his villainous activities will make him despise Dabi, bird instincts or not. It doesn’t.
Keigo expected to hate his time spent as a double agent, but instead, he finds himself enjoying it more than he should. No one at the League of Villains minds the weirdest traits of his quirks, the one he’s spent his whole life trying to hide, on orders of the Commission. And Dabi… Dabi, despite not being the friendliest to him by far, isn’t as much of an asshole as Hawks pictured him to be, which makes things even more difficult for the hero.
It isn’t until Keigo sees him use his quirk in person that he finally understands why his instincts have decided to latch onto the villain.
Of course, the Commission warned him beforehand about Dabi being a fire user. Not knowing what power his contact at the League wielded would have been downright suicidal. However, there is a difference between reading it marked in a file and witnessing it with his own eyes. Because Dabi’s fire is blue. The exact same shade of blue that Touya’s was. Keigo sparred with him often enough to recognize the color at first glance.
It makes him feel sick to his stomach, the moment the realization dawns on him. Everything is clear now.
Since he couldn’t have Touya, his bird instincts settled for the next best thing instead.
In this instant, Keigo hates his quirk with a passion, because how cruel is that, to make him feel attracted to a man who resembles his dead childhood friend so closely? To bound him to a villain who is nothing like the gentle boy he liked spending time with? He’s been good, he became one of the best heroes there can be, so why can’t good things happen to him for once?
By the time he realizes that his thoughts are spiraling into a panic attack, it’s too late to stop it. And he can’t leave without any explanation, it would make the villains suspicious. He is starting to have trouble breathing when Dabi puts a hand on his shoulder, looking slightly concerned. At some point, he must have stopped using his quirk, even though Hawks doesn’t remember it.
“Is something bothering you, pretty bird?”
His instincts revel at the nickname and that’s the last straw for Keigo, because he doesn’t want to feel this, doesn’t want to betray his memory of Touya by falling for an almost stranger with a quirk similar to his.
He doesn’t even care about the shocked whispers of the villains around him when he bursts into tears. Keigo is so far gone that when Dabi wraps an arm around him, he doesn’t register how the warmth that surrounds him feels just so familiar.
When he comes back to his senses, Hawks is laying on a couch, with Dabi towering over him. It might just be the product of his imagination, but the villain seems relieved to see him calm down. Warm hands are running through his feathers in a soothing gesture and Keigo can’t find enough strength in himself to hate it.
“So, are you going to tell me what this was about?”
Hawks freezes at the question, even though he knows he can’t stay silent. However, he feels too much shame in himself and in his instincts to reveal what’s troubling him to Dabi. Still, he must give him a credible answer or the villain might just burn him down to ashes if he believes Hawks isn’t being truthful.
He doesn’t hesitate long and decides to talk about the only other thing that made him break down in a similar way in the past: the harm his handlers put him through during his training. He expects the villain to laugh at his weakness, to tease him about how he could become number two hero when he’s so helpless, but that’s still better than admitting that his instincts want Dabi as his mate.
To his surprise, no mockery comes. Dabi just stares at him as he speaks. There’s something dark lurking in his strikingly blue eyes and Keigo fears that he won’t believe him. Once he’s done talking, the other man asks him a few questions about the Commission, and Hawks answers truthfully. Is Dabi testing him? Trying to detect a lie? Anyway, he must be satisfied with his answers because he nods, as if lost in thoughts, and doesn’t push any further.
Keigo is just happy to still be alive.
The consequences of his misstep come crashing down on him a few days later. Three of his handlers, the ones who were overtly cruel to Hawks, the ones he mentioned to Dabi, are found dead in mysterious circumstances. His blood runs cold. He knows it can’t be a coincidence. So the next time he meets with his contact in a dark alley, the first words on his lips are:
“Why did you kill them?”
Dabi raises an eyebrow and looks straight at him, as if the answer should be obvious.
“What do you think? No one messes with the League and stays unharmed.”
For a moment, Hawks is convinced that he’s been discovered. If so, Dabi probably came here with backup and Keigo has no chance in a fight, so he forces himself not to panic and to play dumb instead, because that’s his last card.
“What do you mean by that?”
Something in Dabi’s expression shifts and Keigo is ready to be devoured by blue flames any second.
“You mean you really don’t know?”
The hero shrugs.
“Should I?”
“They hurt you and you’re one of us now, so they had to pay. Maybe the heroes don’t care for each other, but here at the League, we protect our own, so you’d better get used to it, birdie.”
Even though his quirk isn’t activated, a wildfire burns in Dabi’s eyes. Keigo tries to reply something, anything, but he chokes on his words. No one has tried to shield him from the punishments of the Commission, not since Touya died. His handlers have reminded him times and times again to be careful not to be manipulated before he started infiltrating the League, but their words disappear from his mind as he can’t deny the sheer sincerity in Dabi’s stare.
And that’s without taking his instincts into account. Keigo swears he can basically hear them singing about how strong Dabi is, about how he’s been keeping him away from harm, about how there can never be another mate for him. His chest feels ready to burst with something he barely understands. He can’t take his eyes off Dabi, can’t ignore how much he needs him.
Before he can get a hold of himself, his hands are already buried in black hair — softer than he expected it to be — and his lips are pressed against the villain’s. Dabi seems taken aback for a second, but then Keigo can feel his smirk, and one second later he’s being kissed back with unrestrained passion.
His wings flutter with happiness as the villain’s hands settle on the small of his back to draw him closer. Someone else would probably be repulsed by the sensation of Dabi’s charred lips against his, by how the staples graze his chin, but all Hawks can focus on is how right this feels. He never wants this to stop, wants to stay in Touya’s arms forever…
And then, suddenly, the magic is gone, because the man in his arms isn’t Touya and his name shouldn’t be crossing Keigo’s mind right now. He stops responding to Dabi’s eager lips, and before the villain can ask him what’s wrong, he pushes him away and wraps his arms around himself, all while feeling like the worst person in the world.
“I’m sorry, I can’t… I shouldn’t…”
“Because I’m a criminal and you’re still pretending to be a hero? Because if that’s the case…”
“Not, it’s because of my quirk. Bird instincts, you know? I may look human, but I’m still part hawk. I’m supposed to mate for life and my dumb bird brain decided it had to be with my childhood friend because we promised to marry each other when we were kids. Except that I can’t because he’s dead and so my quirk has settled on you instead because you have so much in common with him, but I can’t do this, that would just be too unfair to you…”
Keigo keeps on rambling, even though none of this probably makes sense to Dabi, but once he’s started, he just can’t stop. Tears are rolling down his cheeks and he’s ready to be incinerated at any moment for putting Dabi in such an awkward situation.
Instead, the villain laughs. It isn’t sinister or sarcastic, but a light, amused laugh. With a gentle hand, he wipes away Hawks’ tears and forces him to look at him.
“You really are an oblivious bird, Keigo, you know that?”
The hero’s eyes widen in surprise, because Dabi isn’t supposed to know that name. He can count on his fingers the number of people he shared it with since he was adopted by the Commission. None of them had a fire quirk, except of course for…
“You get it now? I’m Touya. Guess your bird instincts are more perceptive than you are.”
And just like that, it all makes sense. Why Hawks couldn’t find it in himself to flirt with anyone, why his quirk told him to run straight into Dabi’s arms the moment he met him… All because he knew all this time, deep down, that his mate wasn’t dead.
He can’t repress his happy chirps, not when his inner bird is just ecstatic that he finally came to this realization. And instead of scolding him, like his handlers always did whenever he let this part of him show up, Dabi smiles at him with fondness, as if the small sound that escaped his throat is the most precious thing in the world.
There are a thousand questions Keigo wants to ask him, but it can wait, because right now he’s just too euphoric over the prospect of his mate being alive. And so, when Dabi stares at his lips for a second too long, Hawks takes the hint, closes the distance between them, and kisses him again.
It’s slower, gentler this time and Keigo is letting out all kinds of pleased coos even as their tongues dance together.
It ends too quickly for his liking, though. When they part, Dabi stares straight at him, a serious look on his face.
“As nice as this is, I have to warn you, Keigo. If you want this, us, to be a thing, you’ll have to stop being a spy. After all, I still want to burn down the Commission for what they did to you, and it would be kind of counterproductive if you just kept giving them intel on me and the rest of the League.”
Upon hearing this, Hawks is trapped on a whole new rollercoaster of emotions. Dabi doesn’t look angry, but maybe it’s just a facade. He wants to believe Touya would never hurt him, but they’ve been apart for too long for him to be one hundred percent sure.
“I’m not…”
Dabi brings a finger to his mouth to shush him.
“Don’t try to deny it, I’ve known your true intentions since our first meeting as Hawks and Dabi. The feathers of your left wing twitch slightly when you lie, you know.”
Keigo does, in fact, know it. He just never expected anyone to know him well enough to notice it, but of course, Touya would.
“Guess I’m busted, then. Although I must say I’m clueless as to why you let me integrate the League if you already knew that.”
“What do you think? I’ve always known the Commission wasn’t good for you, although I never truly realized to what extent until you told me recently. I wanted to set you free from them, from the hero system, to make you see that there can be a better life for you. So, will you stay with me?”
Keigo knows what his answer will be even before the villain asks. If he stays loyal to the Commission, he knows that one day, they will ask him to kill Dabi, or at least to orchestrate his death. To kill Touya. And there’s just no way he can do this, not when he can still remember how much it hurt the first time he lost him.
“Didn’t you listen to me? We’re mates for life. There’s no way you’re getting rid of me now.”
“I’m glad.”
By the time he lets out the words, Dabi is already hugging him tight, but Keigo can still hear the smile in his voice. He relaxes into the embrace, his wings wrapping against the villain in an ultimate gesture of affection, as if to prove that all the barriers between them are down. It’s easy to melt into his warmth, especially since he finally understands why it feels so familiar.
Now that he looks back on it, Keigo doesn’t mind how Touya’s innocent proposal backfired due to his bird instincts, because the man in his arms is the only mate he would ever want anyway.