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To be honest, Dabi hadn’t considered the insane logistics of acquiring 364 birds for a prank, but no matter the difficulty, his father hadn’t raised a quitter.
(Actually, his father had categorically encouraged quitting, but since it’d had the complete opposite effect, Dabi stood by his assertion, though the “raising” bit was definitely a reach.)
Regardless! He wasn’t made to throw in the towel, even when the reality of importing dozens of fowl came home to roost.
“And you said this was a highly important League requirement?” Skeptic asked skeptically, reviewing the manifest of pheasants, partridges, sandpipers, and more. It was a veritable potpourri of pleasing poultry if Dabi did say so himself.
“Extremely important,” Dabi assured seriously. “And it’s my… bird en to bear.”
That got him a disgusted look from the businessman, who signed off on the purchases without further comment. Just as planned.
Now to make sure the gift itself didn’t go tits up.
——
“Aww, Dabi, it’s not even Christmas yet! It’s too early to begin exchanging gifts,” Hawks said from his place on the couch, expression filled with sweet confusion as Dabi hauled a box, almost as tall as he was, into the penthouse living room. “It looks heavy, do you need -?”
“I got this,” Dabi grunted, dragging the gift right up to Hawks’ knees. Something inside the box made a fluttering noise, and Hawks’ eyebrows raised as he noticed the holes in the cardboard.
“Is there something alive in there?” he asked suspiciously as Dabi, sweating, stepped back from the package.
Dabi smiled mysteriously.
“Just open it, birdbrain.”
Cautiously, unsure what to make of Dabi’s Mona Lisa mug, Hawks reached for the ribbon, and slowly began peeling away paper.
To reveal… a potted tree. One with a bird nesting in the lower branches.
“You got me… a bird?” Hawks asked, further befuddled by his boyfriend’s baffling actions. “And a… tree?”
“It’s a partridge,” Dabi informed him smugly. “In a pear tree.”
Something about that sounded awfully familiar to Hawks, but he couldn’t place the reference for the life of him. Nevertheless, a sense of dread came over him that he couldn’t shake.
In the tree, the partridge cooed at him. It sounded like agreement.
—--
The next day, Hawks was overcome by a feeling of deja vu. Except this time when Dabi dragged the box his way, another, smaller box, was precariously perched on top of it.
Both made shuddering noises, like wings flapping against cardboard.
“Dabi…?” Hawks said cautiously, casting his eyes over to the corner near the balcony where he’d already situated his new pear tree and partridge, with water and food bowls bound aesthetically to the branches. The bird trilled at him, and Hawks could swear it was in warning.
“Birds need friends, right?” Dabi asked cheekily, patting the two boxes he’d hauled over. “Go on then.”
Hawks picked up the smaller box first, careful of the tiny heartbeats he could sense inside. A moment later, two little doves were revealed to him.
He blinked at them, and they cooed back.
“Turtle doves,” Dabi explained, without explaining a damn thing. “Open the other one too.”
Hawks did, revealing another partridge nesting in a pear tree.
Baffled didn’t even begin to explain his state of being.
Despite his confusion, later that day he acquired a cage for the turtle doves and set the two pear trees next to each other so the partridges could be little nesting neighbors. All the while, suspicion stewed at the back of his mind. Particularly as these gifts were being given almost two weeks before Christmas Day, which meant, if they continued to be daily…
He turned to Dabi, who was watching a movie as if nothing were amiss.
“Hey hot stuff…” he called. “There aren’t gonna be… more birds, are there?”
Dabi gave him another beatific smile, and Hawks felt a shiver run through his feathers.
——
Six days later, Hawks was at his wit's end.
He was up to six partridges, ten turtle doves, twelve French hens, twelve calling birds (which were just regular blackbirds? Where was Dabi getting all these weird names?), ten golden rings (also a weird name for just pheasants?), and six geese, which all seemed to be in the process of laying eggs on the mats he’d laid out in the kitchen.
In short - his penthouse was overrun with fowl, and he had no idea what to do about it, let alone how to make it stop.
Dabi refused to be confronted about the weirdness of his gifts and had taken to using Ujiko’s teleportation - whilst cackling like a fiend - as a means to drop off the menagerie of musical murder birds.
Because, oh yeah, the French hens had it out for Hawks specifically. Maybe because hawks were natural predators to chickens? Maybe because Hawks brought home KFC without thinking about it?
Regardless, his poor pinky had been ruthlessly pecked the last time he tried to feed the birds, and now Hawks approached the growing flock with his full bullet-proof hero fit, gloves and all.
Which made typing a pain, but between the blackbirds currently using his shoulders as perches, the chickens milling about his boots, and the turtle doves bobbing their little heads at the remains of their breakfasts, Hawks was on the phone constantly, ordering new supplies and trying not to lose his mind.
Finally, after placing an order for food and cages and enrichment materials, the price of which made his eyes water, Hawks decided enough was enough and googled:
Why is my boyfriend gifting me so many birds before Christmas?
Within moments, Hawks had his answer.
“Oh.”
"Oh, no."
——
On the twelfth day of Christmas, Hawks was prepared. Cages were ready, food had been purchased, his spare bedroom had been cleared, all to welcome penultimate seventy-eight birds in the form of the twelve drummers drumming (ruffled grouses), eleven pipers piping (sandpipers), ten lords a-leaping (cuckoos), nine ladies dancing (lapwings), eight maids a-milking (magpies), seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings (pheasants), four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and the final partridge in a pear tree.
His feathers bristled, tuned to all the chirping, honking, cooing, and trilling of the birds already overtaking his apartment, straining to hear the tell-tale squelch of Ujiko’s teleportation slime.
Because not only was he prepared for the influx of fowl, he was also prepared for his darling, demon, Dabi.
The splatter of black ooze heralded his boyfriend’s final entrance, and Hawks’ wings snapped up at the sound before sweeping down, propelling Hawks like a bazooka to the one clear space left in the entire living room. The clearing that Hawks had so painstakingly hemmed in so that Dabi couldn’t just ding dong ditch his bounty of birds before cackling back off into the ether.
Hero and villain clashed in a spray of feathers and scattered birds, and Dabi ‘oofed’ as his back hit the floor. He opened his mouth, presumably to call upon the doctor’s getaway quirk, but Hawks slapped a gloved hand over his mouth, eyes wild with glee and vengeance.
“Not so fast, Dabi,” he growled, wings flaring behind him as the birds of his apartment belted through the air at the sudden hubbub. Hawks hoped the backdrop made him look like a harbinger of feathered hell.
Dabi stared up at him with wide blue eyes, not having anticipated an attack. Clearly, he didn’t know Hawks well enough, then.
“You’ve been oh, so thoughtful,” Hawks crooned, digging his knees into either side of Dabi’s ribs. “Bringing me gifts every day, making sure I couldn’t sleep with all the chirping, forcing me to clean every surface in my house multiple times a day.” He grinned with far too many teeth, and he could see Dabi’s throat bob with his swallow.
Good, fear me .
“So I got to thinking - what could I do to repay the lavish gifts of my one true love?” Hawks continued, thrilled by the way Dabi’s eyes bulged.
“Oh yeah, I found the song, lover boy,” Hawks laughed, sounding a bit unhinged even to himself. “And I think I have the perfect gift.”
He plucked the little microphone from Dabi’s collar, taking away his communication with the Doctor. Then he raised his voice.
“Alexa, play All I Want For Christmas by Mariah Carey. Full volume, on repeat, with parental lock.”
He beamed down at Dabi.
“Since you like music so much,” he snickered. “Oh, and that’s not the only thing I locked.”
He sat up off of Dabi’s chest, then rose to walk to the window. Of his skyrise apartment. With no other exits than the front door, which Hawks had thoroughly booby-trapped.
Dabi glanced at the door and went pale.
“What did you do?” he croaked. Already, the hens were approaching, their beaks looking particularly pointy.
“It’s okay, Dabi,” Hawks said serenely, pushing the window open and breathing in the clean, unmusty air before he gave Dabi a delighted grin. “Toucan play at this game.”
“Wait,” Dabi called, sitting up desperately. He caught a goose wing upside the head for his trouble. “Wait, Hawks!”
“Later, one true love!” Hawks cackled, before dropping out of the window, which snapped shut behind him with finality just as Mariah hit her ear-piercing whistle note.
The birds reacted to the noise, all of them chirping, honking, cooing, and trilling, trying to match her pitch.
Dabi sat there, surrounded by seed bits, feathers, droppings, and birds, wondering how he’d been so bamboozled by his own gift.
——
Hawks did return eventually, having acquired the bird purchase orders from Skeptic, who absolutely knew about Dabi’s shenanigans because of the cameras on Hawks’ wings and had done nothing about it.
After politely letting him know how he felt about that, Hawks took the return forms he needed from Skeptic’s shaky fingers and made plans to rescue his (frankly undeserving) boyfriend.
“Oh, Da~bi~ ” he sang upon entering his apartment. He was greeted by a flurry of feathers and various bird noises, which eased his mild fear that Dabi might have decided on roast bird for Christmas. Particularly as Mariah was still belting out her best single over the speakers.
On the couch, a pile of feathers shifted, and Hawks sauntered over to find dozens of birds happily puffed up and nesting on Dabi’s prone form, likely drawn by his delightful body heat. Hawks beamed at the sight.
“Wakey, wakey, my love,” he chirped, poking Dabi’s feather-covered head. “Time to start bird rangling.”
“I hate you,” Dabi grumbled, shifting enough that a turtle dove tumbled off his crown as he glared at Hawks. The hero laughed.
“You brought this on yourself. Now, I have nets, cages, cleaning stuff, and return documents. If you get up and help, I’ll give you your actual Christmas gift even though you’ve done nothing to deserve it.”
Dabi’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of gift?”
Hawks smirked wide.
“A rooster. Of sorts.”
Dabi opened his mouth to protest acquiring more birds before promptly closing it as Hawks’ meaning became clear. Then he was snatching a net from Hawks’ hand and leaping from the couch in a flurry of feathers and fumbling fowl.
“C’mon, birdbrain, we don’t have all day,” he grumbled, cheeks flaming.
His sudden enthusiasm made Hawks laugh loudly, and all of the past two weeks of craziness became worth it.
(And really, that was the best gift Hawks could have asked for.)