i thought i would make an intro post on here since i haven't before :) this will include some about me's and also some guidelines (byf/dni)
my fics masterlist can be found HERE
and extra info below the cut !
about me!
i go by k ! my pronouns are she/they and i am lesbian :P
uhhhalso i post mainly just random snz thoughts but also fics occasionally!! at the moment i write primarily for s/hadow and b/one
(& my inbox is always open for questions and fic requests!!)
guidelines!
main guideline for this account (and all of snzblr tbh.) is MINORS DNI! this is not a space for you. i also ask that vanilla blogs do not reblog any of my content even if it isn't snz related! you're welcome to follow and like and lurk as long as your likes and following pages are on PRIVATE
also no age/age range in bio = block
and extra info just stuff you should know : i don't write smut sorry i just can't LMAO, i also will never write or interact with RPF. not my thing (so pls don't ask), also i don't roleplay on here 👍
that's all i think uhm Yeah ill add any extra info as it comes i suppose
ugh. in the trenches man. rereading my old k/az fics since im getting back into s/ab and like……. holy mischaracterising 🙏😭 whole time reading my old stuff im thinking “he would not fucking say that”
someone distracted during a conversation and turns away with the most desperate sneeze and their friend says “there it is! you’ve been waiting on that for hours!”
Summary: After Keigo realizes that he’s never once been witness to Dabi sneezing, he begins to orchestrate numerous scenarios in hopes of getting to see it happen. Not only do things completely fail to go according to plan, but maybe, in the middle of it all, Keigo finds himself falling harder for the man he’s trying to dupe.
CW: Kink!Hawks, Not-sneezy-at-all Dabi. 18+ please. [implied sexual activity and sexual foreplay, though nothing explicit. and umm they both sneeze in this, but the sneezes don’t happen until well into the fic. there is both allergies and sickness and a lot of other fun snz tropes, but mostly just mentioned/attempted. most of this is just hawks getting flustered…sorry]
12.5k words (I’m so sorry)
A/N: this has been a monster of a project!!! It is my first time writing a character with the KINK, but this idea took me by the neck and i just had to do it. Please please give it a read, let me know what you think, be nice to me, be mean to me, idc just talk to me. You do not need to know much about MHA to read this (i think. Just that it’s hero x villain. And Keigo=Hawks). I’ll share the ao3 link once it’s up. Ok ty! Enjoy!
———
It happens when they’re sitting on an open rooftop on the east side of the city, their usual meeting spot, with their legs dangling out over the city under them as they lean forward against the roof’s railing (in Keigo’s case), or lean back, balancing their weight on hands pressed into the concrete behind them (in Dabi’s case). It’s well past midnight, if Keigo had to guess, but he’s about three beers in and has been chatting his heart out with the villain sitting next to him since he first got there at half past eight, and no one’s been keeping track of the time.
It happens when Keigo’s telling him about his check-in meeting with the Hero Commission’s president earlier that week, how lately he’s been pushing back against the Commission’s dictatorship-like control and giving his hero agency more autonomy to focus on what he and his co-heroes care about the most— keeping the streets of his city safe. And Dabi listens. He’s always been a surprisingly good listener for someone who appears so aloof and self-involved. He’s attentive, makes comments at suitable times, and reacts with his facial expressions when appropriate so as to not interrupt.
It happens when Keigo’s expecting it the least.
Just as Keigo’s about to re-enact exactly what he’d said to Madame President, expression animated and the top half of his body facing Dabi to demand all the attention he can get for this particularly exciting part of the story, Dabi gets this hazy look on his face. His eyes defocus, his lips part, and he alternates between squinting and scrunching up his nose.
It goes on for a few seconds, as Keigo tries his damndest to retain his excitement and continue speaking and not be distracted, because he knows if he lets his thoughts linger on that expression for too long he’s going to shut down without even realizing it– and that would bring upon a level of awkwardness he’s not sure he can talk his way out of. He chooses to focus on a point on Dabi’s fringe as he speaks, one specific spike of black hair that falls over his forehead and sways lightly with the cool spring breeze.
The look on Dabi’s face fades shortly (bummer), and Dabi bobs his head once, indicating that he’s still there, still listening to Keigo, encouraging Keigo to continue.
So Keigo does. He tells him what he’d said— or demanded, really— to Madame, about how he, and he alone, will continue working jobs on the side for the commission until the end of his contract as long as they leave his agency and all of its employees out of it. And boy did Madame react poorly to that. He starts to rant about what she’d said, but it’s not long before Keigo finds reason to get distracted again, by the same foggy expression returning to Dabi’s face.
His lips part, top lip curling up, and he scrunches up one half of his face, squishing one eye completely shut while the other remains half-open by the sheer force of will, from the look of it. He looks quite strained. He even shifts all of his balance onto one arm, loosening the other one just enough for it to be able to move it with ease if needed. Keigo shifts his gaze completely off the man’s face this time, lest he start getting excited about things he should definitely not be getting excited about right now. It might not even come to pass. Keigo silently, secretly hopes it will.
Alas, the expression goes away with a soft sigh, before, once again, returning mere seconds later. This time, Dabi even lifts an arm fully off the concrete, hovering it in the air by his thigh as his body, once again, fights with itself on whether or not it needs to sneeze, displaying the debate so clearly through his features that Keigo feels his veins slowly turning cold with seeping anticipation.
Keigo feels a bit voyeuristic watching him. His expression is so vulnerable, so open, and he doesn’t even turn his face away or hide behind an arm like most people would. Instead, he keeps his gaze and attention on Keigo as Keigo speaks, like Keigo is the most important thing in the world, like nothing is worth breaking the flow of Keigo’s words despite the fact that it would take him maybe five seconds maximum to turn away and either sneeze or force the sneeze away.
And Keigo eventually falters, because of course he does. How do you watch someone’s face morph so much for so long with such an obvious need of release right in front of you and just pretend like nothing’s happening?
“Sneeze?” Keigo asks, biting the bullet in a moment of unprecedented bravery.
The look fades again at that exact moment, and Dabi closes his mouth, exhaling through his nose and returning his weight to both arms as he leans further back on them. He hums softly, shaking his head. He looks back out onto the skyline.
Keigo allows himself to stare after the man in silence for a few more seconds, admiring his side profile as he tilts his head to the sky— his cheekbones, his eyelashes, the slope of his nose… the way it twitches ever so slightly as he gives the softest and smallest of sniffles, prior urge to sneeze completely erased from his face. It doesn’t return again, gone with the wind, forced away with the little sniffle or whatever else Dabi might have done to keep it at bay or… just because.
Dabi turns to look at Keigo, snapping him out of his stupor. He raises a brow expectantly, and that’s when Keigo remembers he was in the middle of telling a story.
“R-right,” Keigo clears his throat, “where was I? Oh!” He plasters on a smile, and continues where he left off.
- — -
When Keigo finally takes to the sky to head back to his apartment, dawn has almost begun breaking. He’s officially been awake for over twenty-four hours straight, given his early morning patrol that day (the day prior?), but Keigo’s not tired– far from it, in fact. For the entire duration of the flight, his mind replays the scene of Dabi’s face scrunching up, straining, and relaxing, only to start the cycle all over again. He can’t get it out of his head. What had happened was so obviously an almost-sneeze, even though Dabi didn’t confirm it, and even though Keigo had never once seen Dabi almost-sneeze, much less actually sneeze, ever before to have something to compare to. Which maybe isn’t all that strange despite the increased frequency of their recent meet ups, but– he’s never once even looked like he needed to sneeze in all the time they’ve spent together, and all of a sudden, tonight, he almost does so on three whole occasions? Keigo was so close to seeing it happen, all up close and personal too, and maybe he’s not as disappointed over the lost moment as he is excited about the prospect of it happening again in the future, now that he knows full well it’s a real possibility.
Keigo begins to hyperfixate on what could have triggered such an incessant urge to sneeze. Was it just that it’s spring time? Was the man hiding some low-level pollen allergies? It couldn’t be, he’s never seen anything like that happen when they’ve spent time together before. Was Dabi taking any allergy meds to stop the symptoms from showing? But if he had allergies bad enough to warrant taking something for it, wouldn’t there have been more signs? Or maybe, most likely, it was just random, unexplained, caused by nothing in particular… because these things just happen sometimes. People have to itch their nose. They sniffle. There’s not always a known cause.
But Keigo chooses to entertain his fantasies for a moment longer, tries to come up with an explanation that suggests there was something that caused Dabi’s tickle. Could it have been… the alcohol? The only other thing they were doing was drinking beer, and Keigo’s heard of it somewhere before, that drinking alcohol can cause some people to sneeze. But even that was unlikely, given it wasn’t the first (or second, or third) time they drank alcohol in each other’s vicinity.
Keigo’s going to drive himself insane with this obscene line of thinking. God, he wishes he got to spend more time around Dabi to get a better idea of his habits.
Come to think of it, Keigo doesn’t actually know too much about the guy. Sure, they’ve been hooking up here and there, having more meetings – including apparently hanging out on rooftops in the middle of the night while drinking beer and staring at the the stars like they were some grade-school ex-lovers that drifted apart – and they’ve talked enough to develop a mutual understanding about the other’s values, background, and way of life. They might even empathize with each other, if Keigo’s going to admit it. But the only really intimate thing about him Keigo’s thus far been privy to is his post-orgasm face, which, incredible and really quite similar to a person’s pre-sneeze face, but Keigo kind of… wants to know more of the mundane things. How does Dabi take his coffee? Does he have a nighttime routine? What does Dabi look like when he first wakes up? He doesn’t even know that.
And, well… that’s an idea in itself, isn’t it?
He could discover all of these things himself if he could get Dabi to spend the night with him sometime. That would also get him at least ten consecutive hours with the man, and if Keigo was lucky, let him learn more intimate details about him than Keigo’s brain could even begin to imagine. And if the gods were really on Keigo’s side, maybe he’ll even finally get a sneeze out of him. He probably wouldn’t bring any allergy meds with him to a hook-up, if he was even taking any to begin with, so the possibility’s there.
Keigo lands on his balcony railing when he decides it. He’s going to booty call Dabi one evening, feed him the same beer they were drinking tonight (for, um, experimentational purposes), get to engage in… intimate extracurriculars, and hopefully be alluring enough to convince the man to stay the night. If all goes well, even if Keigo doesn’t have the pleasure to fuel his secret desires by catching sight of an involuntary reaction caused by external environmental stimuli, he would still get to: A) have sex with a very attractive man; B) sleep next to a very attractive man; and C) wake up next to, you guessed it, the aforementioned very attractive man. It would be a win-win situation all around.
Keigo nods to himself as he steps inside his apartment. He gets into the shower, head filled with longing thoughts and scenarios that decidedly do not involve the eight-hour patrol he needs to be up for in just a few hours.
- — -
The plan is set in motion the very next evening after Keigo’s patrol. He has successfully sent Dabi some suggestive yet not entirely blunt text messages that also conveniently contain his apartment address and has then stopped by the convenience store to pick up the beer. The bait has been laid and it’s up to Dabi to take it.
And take it, Dabi does, though he makes Keigo wait until much later in the night just as it’s started raining before he shows up, in typical Dabi fashion. He comes in through the balcony door, which Keigo left unlocked for him, and manages to bring in a good chunk of rain with him when he slides open the door.
“For fuck’s sake, man,” Keigo complains, watching as he shakes out his hair, letting more droplets fall freely onto Keigo’s hardwood floors. “Careful.”
“Might I remind you that you were the one who invited me?”
“Yeah, yeah, just– leave your coat on the chair. I won’t get my damn down deposit back if you cause any more water damage.”
“Tight on money, hero?” Dabi grins, but shrugs off his coat in the corner nonetheless. He accepts the beer Keigo holds out to him, but first runs his free hand down his face to rid of any lingering dampness and then once again through his hair. He gives one rough sniff, and Keigo’s ears perk up immediately. His sinuses probably got loosened up by the rain, and maybe he’s one of those people who are prone to getting runny noses in cold weather. The tip of his nose is a bit pink, now that Keigo notices it– which, cute– and Keigo files that particular bit of information away for safekeeping. Get it together, he chides himself, he hasn’t even taken a sip of the beer, which should be the real culprit here.
They move to the kitchen, where Keigo opens a beer for himself and takes a long drink, savoring the taste of the bitter liquid and allowing it to distract him from his thoughts. Dabi does the same, taking a longer drink as turquoise eyes rake over Keigo’s face, jaw, neck, and then the tiny, form-fitting t-shirt he has on. His gaze lingers on Keigo’s biceps for a second too long, and Keigo smirks.
“You’re staring, hot stuff.”
“Damn right.” He takes another gulp of his beer, before lowering the bottle and setting it down. A pink tongue darts out to lick some of the amber residue on his lower lip, his eyes never falter, and, well– there is no room on his face for anything but raw, unfiltered lust. There isn’t a trace of the previous hazy, itchy look he’d gotten the last time they drank this beer together.
And Keigo? Keigo doesn’t really care about that anymore. Not when Dabi’s hands find their place on the small of Keigo’s back and the nape of Keigo’s neck. Not when Dabi’s pulling him in and bringing their lips together in a slow, practiced rhythm, and Keigo finds himself surrendering completely to his warmth. And certainly not when Keigo encloses his wings around the two of them and slowly steers them toward the bedroom.
(And if he lets his mind resurrect memories of the pretty pink of Dabi’s nose, of the flared nostril accompanying a rough sniffle, of lips hung open with a desperate need of release all the while Dabi thrusts into him, that’s nobody’s business but his own.)
In the aftermath, Keigo feels like he’s barely closed his eyes before he’s jolted awake by a heavy thud. His eyes snap open and he instinctively begins searching for a possible threat, a sharpened feather already in hand. It takes him a second to register where he is, and when his vision clears, he spots Dabi, crouched near the bed and reaching for his dropped phone. “Sorry,” Dabi mumbles.
Keigo’s senses return and the remnants of drowsiness slip away. He exhales through his mouth, dropping the feather and letting it soften. The room is still dark. He watches as Dabi pockets his phone and continues getting dressed. “Leaving, at this hour?” Keigo croaks out.
“Duty calls,” Dabi answers, shrugging on his shirt. For a few seconds, the only sound is the soft patter of raindrops against the bedroom window.
“It’s raining,” Keigo says, a bit pathetically.
Even in the dark, he can make out Dabi rolling his eyes.
“I know that, birdbrain. Don’t worry your pretty head about it.” He grabs his wallet from the nightstand. “Go back to sleep.”
Keigo keeps his gaze trained on the ceiling as he listens to Dabi’s footsteps cross the room and slip past the door. He waits until he’s sure Dabi’s shut the balcony door behind him on his way out before releasing a long sigh. He lays there staring at the ceiling for who knows how much longer, knowing full well he has lost any hope of being able to go back to sleep, until the rain drumming down his window has slowed down to a weak sprinkle. He rolls out of bed then, scrubbing a hand across his face, and gets dressed quietly in a civilian outfit. He makes sure to grab his camera before heading out.
Perhaps he can catch a good shot of the sunrise.
- — -
Keigo waits a couple days before texting Dabi. He waits to reach out to the man, but that doesn’t mean he ever stops thinking about him.
Keigo thinks Dabi’s been taking up a big proportion of his brain space ever since he’d first met him all those months ago, but since the most recent fateful night on the roof, it’s like he’s been damn near unable to think about anything else besides Dabi. While the night at Keigo’s apartment was exhilarating, it had ended much sooner than Keigo wanted it to. He was a little confused about Dabi’s middle-of-the-night escapee act, but is also fully aware that this kind of behavior is probably fairly typical for the elusive guy. He’s more disappointed in the fact that he didn’t even get to catch a glimpse of Dabi’s sleeping face like he’d hoped. And that beer theory was a total bust!
But hey, Keigo’s nothing if not persistent. If alcohol won’t be what causes the man to sneeze, then Keigo’ll just have to work harder to discover what will. Operation: Get Dabi to Sneeze is still a go.
He shoots him a message mid-flight, just as he begins his patrol shift for the day.
<<<We on for tonight still? Got you some of the information you asked for
>>>Hot Stuff: Not happening
The response was immediate, and Keigo frowns, but he barely gets to stew in his disappointment before another text comes through.
>>>Hot Stuff: I’m sick
Keigo screeches to a halt mid-air, beating his wings erratically to try and keep a semblance of balance. He gapes at his phone, eyes bugging so wide at the blatant admission they could fall right out of his sockets. It could be a lie, a convenient excuse to blow Keigo off for other League business, but… what if it’s not? Could he really be sick? It wasn’t easy to picture a sick Dabi, but Keigo thinks he could conjure up an image if he really put his mind to it. He doesn’t really know how to respond. He racks his mind but comes up with nothing but absurd, rom-com-level cheese like “Aw feel better!” (something the heroes at his agency say to each other when one of them calls out sick), or “How sick? What are your symptoms? Not dying, are you?” (erm that’s probably inappropriate, given it’s mostly stemming from his morbid curiosity over Dabi’s state of being, and Keigo doesn’t think they’re at a level of closeness to warrant asking such personal questions), or, god forbid, “Can I just come by to drop off the information? I don’t care that you’re sick I can even bring medicine and—” (Jesus, get a grip).
In the end, he settles on typing out, ‘it's cause you walked back in the rain the other night, isn’t it?’
Keigo doesn’t get a response, beyond the read receipt that pops up, but he’s not expecting one anyway. He pockets his phone and lets his mind drift through all the possible scenarios while he hovers in the air above the city. If Dabi’s really sick, he seems like he would either be the type of person who would hole himself up and completely withdraw from civilization, or continue to push himself to a breaking point in the name of destroying society – he can’t envision an inbetween. Keigo knows a bit about the way Dabi’s quirk hurts him, the exhaustion it causes him, and he hopes he’ll choose to take it easy for a few days.
Maybe he’s just got a case of the common cold. Would that at least coax a few sneezes out of him? If he tends to stay alone when he’s sick, does he let his sneezes out unrestrained? Does this guy ever restrain his sneezes? He doesn’t seem like the type that would, but Keigo has no real point of reference to base his imagination on. Keigo so badly wishes he could see him right now.
He finds his mind drifting back to the memory of Dabi’s open expression as he built up to a sneeze on the roof earlier that week, and he begins to imagine that face morphing into something more taut, as all of his features crumple and finally give in to the itch, purging it from his system. At this point, Keigo thinks it’s the mere mystery of not knowing what that would really look like that has him worked up. It’s incredibly easy to get tied up dreaming about something when you’ve never seen it happen. He’s chasing a high he’s never felt in the dark, and now that he’s set his mind to it, it’s getting harder and harder to pull himself out.
The rest of his patrol flies by in a daze. So, when he lands on his office balcony to start on paperwork, the last thing he expects is to hear his agency be in a state of complete chaos. People are screaming, papers are flying, footsteps are scrambling.
“Woah, woah, woah,” Keigo projects his voice as he floats into the main floor of the office. He doesn’t see an intruder, no weapons, nothing violent other than the downright murderous expressions on some of his employees’ faces, so he’s really quite confused. “What’s going on here?”
“Hawks!” his top hero sidekick, Skystrike, exclaims, “Perhaps you can do something about the predicament your poor office has found itself in!”
“Oh-kay? And what predicament would that be, exactly?”
Skystrike huffs. “Well, you see. We called in some commercial cleaners earlier today because, you know, this place is a fuckin’ mess, and they came and sprayed a bunch of shit everywhere and yeah, it smells nice an’ all, but now half of these dumbasses,” she gestures across the room, “are havin’ real bad allergies from it! We’re out of fuckin’ tissues, no one can focus, everyone’s complaining, and I’m gettin’ a fucking headache from it all.”
…
What.
Is the universe dead set on overstimulating Keigo today?
Skystrike continues, completely oblivious to the color that’s probably drained from Keigo’s face, replaced by a new color, something more akin to bright fucking red. “So anyway, can we finish the rest of our work from home today? We’ve opened all the windows already to air it out, but Sasaki’s been sneezing non-stop for the last hour–”
“Hey! I’m perfectly fine now!”
“–and we really can’t take listening to it anymore! I’ve been trying to tell them you wouldn’t mind. We’d still be working and turning in our reports on time! So. Whaddaya say, boss?”
Keigo’s pretty sure most of these people are using the situation as an excuse to go home anyway. Like c’mon, is he to believe these heavily-trained pro heroes, capable of taking down no less than ten dangerous villains a day, can’t handle a little bit of sneezing? Keigo’s also pretty sure the agency’s first-aid closet is stocked with all sorts of antihistamines, if they even bothered to check. That said, if he really thinks about it, he guesses they’re probably deserving of an early day. His agency’s been working very hard in the last few months, and Keigo’s the one that’s been silently fighting for their freedom from the Commission’s egregious expectations on the sidelines. What kind of a boss would he be if he didn’t allow his staff a couple extra hours to see their families, a believable excuse for it or not?
“Um. Yeah… sure. Sure, go home.” He clears his throat. He chuckles, more at the absurdity of the situation than anything else, and waves an arm dismissingly. “Don’t worry about it, guys. I’m gonna head out soon, too.”
“See! I fucking told you idiots!” Skystrike yells. One of her interns flinches at the volume, staring up at her in bewilderment. She ignores it, turns back to Keigo and offers him a softer smile. “Thanks, boss. This is why we love workin’ for ya.”
Keigo snorts. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s the only reason.”
“Of course, definitely not because of your striking good looks and that sexy way you fight the bad guys, wings flared, muscles flexin’, you get the idea.” She winks, and Keigo would probably be a bit flustered if he didn’t know Skystrike was a raging lesbian and these kinds of probably too-descriptive comments were commonplace with her. As it stands, he just laughs her off.
Anywho, a spray that caused a number of his staff to develop allergic rhinitis, huh? He sniffs the air testingly, and it smells alright to him, if not a bit chemical-like, but he’s never exactly been sensitive to this kind of stuff.
He turns back to Skystrike. “You, uh, wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of that spray they used lying around here, would you?”
(For experimentational purposes, of course.)
- — -
Keigo texts Dabi again the next day.
<<<Feeling better? I do have files that I need out of my hands ASAP
Dabi takes a few hours to respond.
>>>Hot Stuff: Usual roof. 11pm
Aaand they’re back to the inconvenient, late night meetings, all the way across the city.
<<<Or you could just come over again
>>>Hot Stuff: Not tonight
Keigo sighs.
The rooftop it is. Nonetheless, Keigo spends the rest of the day looking forward to the meeting, because what can he say, he missed the guy. Maybe Dabi’s still a little sick and Keigo’ll even be able to get some delightful crumbs— sniffles, coughs, maybe even a sneeze, if he so dares to wish for such extremes. Keigo entertains the idea of bringing him a takeaway cup of hot tea to the meeting. Sure, it’s a bit forward, and leans a bit too much into ‘doting-housewife’ territory considering their current dynamic, but Keigo feels like he has to do something. This notorious, dangerous, fire-wielding villain had outright admitted to him that he was sick. Keigo couldn’t, in his good conscience, just ignore that.
When the time comes, he grabs his phone, wallet, and the papers with information he stole from the Hero Commission and takes off from his balcony. He stops by a cafe on his way, where he buys one Sencha tea for Dabi and one sugary, iced monstrosity containing nothing short of three espresso shots for himself, uncaring of the late hour—it’s become a habit at this point, what with his capricious sleep schedule.
When he touches down on the roof, he spots Dabi in their usual corner, sitting atop the roof’s railing with apparently zero care in the world for if he were to lose his balance and puffing out a thick cloud of smoke from the cigarette that hangs from his lips. Well— the smoking’s a bit counterproductive, isn’t it? Or maybe the whole ‘being sick’ thing was just a white lie, after all. Regardless, Keigo saunters forward and holds out the takeaway cup.
“Brought you tea.”
Dabi stares at the outstretched hand for several seconds before he slowly crushes his cigarette on the railing beside his thigh. “Uh. Okay?” He cautiously reaches out to accept it. “Bring me anything else?”
His voice is the tiniest bit scratchier than usual, Keigo notices, though he can’t be sure whether that’s a result of the cigarette he was just smoking, a side effect of inhaling the byproducts of his fire quirk, or plain old illness. He doesn’t comment, but allows himself to feel all the more glad that he made a pit stop for the tea.
“Of course.” Keigo rolls his eyes, reaching into his jacket to retrieve the small folder. Dabi takes it with his free hand. “There you have it. A comprehensive list of corrupt heroes with actions covered up by our very own Hero Commission. You should let me know if you plan to attack any of them, by the way, I’d be more than happy to lend my services for the cause.”
Dabi offers him a calculating side-eye. “Eager.”
Keigo watches silently as he flips through the pages. The movement is a little awkward with the tea cup still in one hand, one finger propping up the pages. He still hasn’t taken a sip of the drink.
“You can look at it later,” Keigo says. Definitely eager, but not in the way Dabi thinks. Dabi’s eyes snap up to him. Keigo nods to the cup in his hand. “Try it.”
Dabi raises a brow. He regards Keigo as he sets aside the papers and brings the cup to his lips. He takes a small sip, and then another, longer sip. “Grassy,” he comments after a second. “I’d usually go for Hojicha but… not bad.” Keigo tucks that bit of information away for future reference. “And what the hell are you drinking?”
“Oh, just a large, iced white chocolate latte with extra caramel drizzle, sweet cream, extra whip, and probably, like, three shots of espresso?”
Dabi jerks back with such an animatedly disgusted expression that Keigo can’t help but burst into laughter, head thrown back and all. He catches the corners of Dabi’s lip quirk up too, though the man tries to cover up his amusement with a cough hidden behind his cup. Then he coughs for real, deep and gravelly enough that Keigo can hear the phlegm dislodging in his throat, congestion he wasn’t even aware of loosening up presumably by the hot drink he’s been sipping.
“Oh, jeez,” Keigo says as his laughter dies down. “You really are sick.”
Dabi clears his throat loudly, openly, before raising a brow. “Thought I was lying? You’re the one that’s always saying we need to trust each other more.”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant. Just— we didn’t have to meet tonight if you weren’t feeling well—”
“I’m fine,” Dabi interrupts. “Was just a stupid cold. Almost done now, anyway.”
“Alright. Just checking.” Keigo inches closer, situating himself in between Dabi’s thighs, and reaching over him to set his cup down on the railing. He leans closer, intent written all over his face, intent to—
“Didn’t we just establish that I’m sick?”
“I don’t mind,” Keigo dares, gaze unwavering as he stares into Dabi’s blue irises.
“Well, I do,” Dabi counters, and his tone leaves little room for argument. He sighs, shoving lightly at Keigo’s chest before he hops off the railing in one fluid motion. And really, Keigo shouldn’t be as disappointed as he is. He’s not in the mood today, so what? Keigo himself has days when he’s not in the mood for anything, much less Dabi’s particular brand of mind games. He’s still recovering from an illness, for fuck’s sake.
Still, Dabi takes a step closer toward him, and a scarred hand comes up to rest on Keigo’s cheek, thumb rubbing softly against his skin as half-lidded eyes bore into Keigo’s– a much softer look than Keigo typically receives from the man. He can’t help but lean into the warmth, let his eyelids flutter shut. God, was he that starved for touch already? That night he spent with Dabi was just three days ago, but Keigo’s brain has apparently turned to a mush of want with all the obtrusive thoughts he’s been having about the man ever since. It’s ridiculous how much he wants to be near him. How much he wants to be the one to take care of him, nurse him back to health when he’s under the weather, pleasure him even when he’s sick and has no energy to give anything in return.
But it’s not really Keigo’s place to do any of that, despite how badly he wishes it were. He’s not sure Dabi’s ever let anyone in close enough to be that for him.
“I’ll text you, birdie,” Dabi says. And just like that, the warm hand on his face is sliding off, and Dabi’s walking away, leaving Keigo alone on the edge of the roof. Just him and the moonlight. He wishes he brought his camera.
- — -
Dabi doesn’t text him. He actually shows up unannounced and uninvited at Keigo’s apartment the next evening.
Keigo’s trying his hand at homemade yakimeshi for the first time, after engaging in some mildly embarrassing conversations with his sidekicks where he got smoked for his poor eating habits and supposed lack of “adult skills”. As if killing villains isn’t adult enough. But hey, they kind of had a point. So, after work that day, he went grocery shopping and brought home numerous bags filled with enough ingredients for four courses worth of every dish he even remotely craved over the last week. His goal? To self-cook five consecutive dinners at home.
He’s barely a quarter way through a recipe video on youtube– one that he keeps pausing every ten seconds, but at least he’s trying– when the balcony door suddenly slams open with a harsh screech.
“Gah! What the hell?” Keigo whips around, hand gripped around the kitchen knife.
Dabi looks unimpressed. “You seriously didn’t notice me coming?”
“Alright, fine, I did,” Keigo admits, “and I figured it was you. But seriously, man! Can’t you just knock on the door like a normal person?”
“No,” Dabi declares, coming closer and peering past Keigo’s shoulder. “Whatcha making?”
“Um, yakimeshi?” Keigo turns back to the war zone that is his kitchen counter. He feels a little foolish– a simple fried rice dish shouldn’t be the cause of such a mess.
“And you’re cutting the scallions like that? Shove over.” Dabi forcibly inserts himself into the madness, stealing the knife from Keigo in the process. “Go start on eggs and rice or something.”
Keigo blinks, a little taken aback. This isn’t at all what he expected when his feathers sensed Dabi climbing the fire escape. What he expected was closer to being jumped immediately upon being seen, forced to give up on his dinner and his plans to entertain a villain with no manners or respect for other people’s time. Now he stands there watching Dabi chop the onions with such practiced precision that he grows more and more confused by the second.
He decides it’s best not to question it. He does as he’s told and goes to start on the rice.
They prepare food together in comfortable silence for a bit, broken only by the rhythmic chop of the knife against the cutting board and the steady sizzle of oil bubbling. Keigo adds the meat— which he chopped perfectly well before Dabi got here, thank you very much— to the rice and eggs slowly heating in the pot.
He goes to crack open all the new seasonings he purchased, because really he had little other than salt and pepper before, when an idea strikes him. Keigo decides to initiate step two (or is it step three now?) of Operation: Get Dabi to Sneeze. That’s right, he hasn’t yet forgotten his secret mission. This time, he plans to enlist the help of a classic offender: pepper, the most common, well-known irritant there could possibly be. It’s not even something people are allergic to, per se; just the mere presence of it near a nose is usually more than enough to set off alarm bells in the body and force it out.
He sets about accidentally knocking over the pepper container after sprinkling some into the cooking pot, causing it to spill all over the counter space between him and Dabi and sending a rich, spicy, pungent aroma into the air. “Ah, whoops!”
Dabi simply glances at the spillage, shakes his head solemnly, and goes right back to his task of cutting vegetables.
Keigo doesn’t even get to feel a lick of disappointment, or excitement over the prospect, because he realizes all too quickly that he’s overlooked a major, and frankly disastrous, obstacle to his plan—he himself is in the direct line of fire! He’s completely unprepared for how fast the pepper particles travel up his nose, set off an itch, and burns with the urge to be expunged. He takes a step back and tries to stifle the explosion.
“h’ngt! Fuck!” Well, there goes any hope of the ordeal going unnoticed. And to make matters worse, apparently Keigo’s notfuckingdoneyet— “h’nXch! hih’kXt’h! H-hih… hh’ngXxt! Oh dear god.” Seriously, if there is a god, now would be a grand time to show Keigo some mercy. He’s not sure if he’s going red in the face from the pepper or from sheer embarrassment.
He hears Dabi snort from behind him. “Relax. You’re fine.”
“hn’gXtch’uh! Nguhhh, fucking hell.” Keigo drives his knuckle into the side of his nose, begging the sensation to stop already. His eyes water, and he needs to blink several times rapidly to keep any moisture from falling out. He gives a few weak sniffles, not wanting to accidentally trigger another sneeze by sniffing too harshly. How is the man right beside him, literally breathing this exact same poisoned air as him, so utterly unaffected?
“If you’re done back there, the least you could do is come help clean this up.”
Keigo grumbles, but moves to grab some paper towels anyway. Not only did his plan completely backfire and force him to get a taste of his own damn medicine— which honestly was probably deserved; that pepper burned, and he was really going to inflict that feeling onto someone else— but he’s also gone and made a fool of himself in front of Dabi while simultaneously proving himself to be completely incompetent in the kitchen. Seriously, could this situation get any worse? Scratch that, Keigo doesn’t want to jinx his luck any further.
He only gets through scooping up half the pepper he spilled before he ends up hitching again. He gives up on breathing entirely and begins to manifest the powers of supernatural entities. He squeezes his eyes shut to keep out the offensively bright kitchen light from triggering anything and grinds both palms into the sides of his nose, pressing it completely shut.
“Gonna sneeze again?” Dabi asks— no, teases. The man is clearly amused by this, much to Keigo’s chagrin, and despite it all, Keigo’s stupid brain latches on to the way that word sounds in Dabi’s raspy voice. Damn it all to hell.
Keigo lets go of his nose and takes a shaky breath. “No. Absolutely not.”
“If you say so.” Dabi shrugs, and Keigo hears him shifting. A cabinet door opens, then closes, and when Keigo finally cracks open an eye, it’s to the visual of Dabi standing in front of him with a box of tissues in his outstretched hand.
“Here. You look like you need it.”
Keigo’s jaw nearly drops at the sight of Dabi, holding a box of tissues. He snaps it shut, and quickly begins to get flustered as he accepts the offering. The tables have completely turned– Dabi’s the one watching him sneeze and making comments about his symptoms. Dabi’s the one handing him tissues, which, how had Dabi even guessed which cabinet Keigo keeps his tissues in?
The whole evening is catching him completely off guard, but Keigo has to admit to himself that deep down, he kind of likes it. He finds that he actually enjoys the attention, the complete lack of annoyance or disgust Dabi shows over his impropriety, and the quiet care in offering him the tissues. Of course, he still prefers it to have happened the other way around, but… Keigo has spent so much time yearning to watch the man in front of him fall apart into a sneezy mess and be the one to take care of him that he has apparently neglected his own desire, albeit less desperate, to be cared for as well. It feels… soft. He feels seen.
Ugh. Mission failed… successfully?
He’s thinking about the entire exchange later that evening, after Keigo’s gotten himself together; after they’ve cooked, eaten (a downright delicious meal, if Keigo’s allowed to say so himself, though most of the deliciousness should be accredited to his surprise visitor), cleaned, and inevitably tumbled into the bedroom, bodies entangled with one another. He’s thinking about it when Dabi’s on his knees in front of him, azure eyes piercing his soul while mismatched lips work over him with practiced ease. And he’s still thinking about it while he lies in bed staring at the ceiling, long after Dabi passes out beside him.
- — -
It’s the first time in a long time that Keigo wakes up leisurely, without the shrill of alarm slamming his consciousness into reality with no warning. He slowly blinks his eyes open, taking his time adjusting to the bright morning light that paints his room in golden hues. He’s pleasantly sore, well-rested, and he sinks further into peace when he remembers he doesn’t have to show up for work until much later in the day. He stretches, turning on his side and unintentionally coming face to face with another sleeping body, and— he practically melts.
Dabi’s fast asleep next to him, lying on his side. The morning rays from the window brush over his features, catching on the curve of his lashes and the faint rise and fall of the blankets wrapped over his chest. His hair’s quite a mess, black strands sticking out this way and that, and his lips are slightly parted. Keigo allows himself to stare. He’s beautiful like this, so serene, so unguarded, and so gentle in a way that he can’t truthfully be described when he’s awake and full of that volatile energy.
Keigo dares to bring up a hand and gently touch his fingertips to Dabi’s cheek. His skin is warm, more than usual from sleep, and Keigo thumbs over the edge of his scars, rough texture contrasting the smooth, pale skin of his cheekbones. He lets his fingertip creep over the corner of Dabi’s upper lip.
“Mmhh,” Dabi groans, head moving back against the pillow lazily. Keigo withdraws his fingers but leaves them hovering near his face. The man shifts slightly but his eyes remain firmly shut. He pulls up the blankets to cover the bottom half of his face and ducks his head down toward his chest, so that only the tufts of his fluffy hair are visible, splayed completely over his forehead and eyes. “F’ck off, e’rly bird.”
Keigo chuckles, unable to peel his eyes away despite his inability to actually see the man’s face anymore. Dabi is actually slurring his words. He sounds so sleepy, so relaxed, like he has no urgency to wake up whatsoever, like he has all the time in the world to spend right here in Keigo’s bed. Keigo’s never heard him sound like this, and it’s so delightfully mesmerizing. He wishes he could hear it more, and allows his brain to entertain the idea, just for a moment, that maybe he can. Dabi stayed.
Keigo can’t dream of a better sight to wake up to.
- — -
From then on, Dabi starts to come around much more. Sometimes he comes over with a bag of groceries in hand, sometimes he’s already cooking in Keigo’s kitchen before Keigo even gets home, and sometimes he’s just lounging on Keigo’s couch making himself right at home, like he has no other place he’d rather be even if Keigo’s not there. They cook together, they eat together, they watch shitty American rom-coms together and pretend that the teasing commentary they each take turns making at the TV is actually annoying and totally not conducive to a peaceful evening at home.
The more time he spends with Dabi in his apartment, the more Keigo gets to know about him and all his little quirks– the way he’s, oddly enough, a very tidy person and never leaves things just lying around. The way he steals all the blankets at night despite running warmer than most people. The way he hums to himself sometimes when he cooks, some old tune that Keigo hasn’t yet been to recognize but wants to figure out on his own anyway. The way he lets Keigo snuggle up close to him when they’re sitting on the couch together yet never says a word about it. Keigo treasures the moments, commits them to his memory along with a list of other items and behaviors titled “Dabi”.
And in turn, it doesn’t take Keigo long to divulge things about himself, like his side hobby of photography, for example. He’d picked it up just around the time he started standing up to the Hero Commission and spewing rhetoric to them about being his own person with his own sense of autonomy. The newfound hobbies are his way of figuring out who he is if he wasn’t Winged Hero: Hawks, the Hero Commission’s prized possession. And Dabi listens, with those attentive and thoughtful eyes always trained on him. He encourages him too— Keigo thinks he falls for him all the more when they’re standing out on the balcony one night, beers in hand and watching the night roll over the cityscape, and Dabi says, “Hey, you wanna grab your camera and take a photo of this?” No one else knows about Keigo’s hobby. Dabi’s the first.
Two weeks pass by in a blur. They begin texting each other a lot more too, particularly when Keigo’s out on long, exhausting patrols or Dabi’s away on villain business and they know they won’t be able to see each other that night. They spin up heated fantasies through the phone, detailing what they’ll do to each other the next time they do see each other, and boy do they take their sweet time exploring their desires— thoroughly.
Well… almost thoroughly.
It’s been over two weeks of regularly seeing the man, and Keigo has still yet to hear him sneeze. Even. Once. He’s barely coughed in Keigo’s vicinity, not since that night on the rooftop when he was recovering from a cold, and Keigo’s honestly starting to question whether he’s even a human underneath it all.
So, one day when Keigo’s patrol ends early, he sets into motion step four of Operation: Get Dabi to Sneeze. Honestly, he feels a bit silly doing it. The easiest way to go about this is to just come out and ask the guy. They’re close enough now, and it’s really not all that weird to bring it up. “Are you allergic to anything by the way? Do you get sick often?” Ordinary questions, but the thought of doing so, for some reason, mortifies Keigo. He doesn’t trust himself to be able to bring up such a topic completely out of the blue and not spike a sudden, high-grade fever and slowly begin cosplaying a tomato while doing so. He thinks he could do it if maybe the topic has already come up, or as a follow up to a sneeze. But that’s the whole problem – Dabi hasn’t ever fucking sneezed.
And whatever. Keigo’s having a bit of fun with this. It’s relatively harmless, and it’s become something of a game in his mind now.
So, in the privacy of his office on a non-descript Wednesday afternoon, Keigo gets to compiling a list of common, readily-available allergens. He rules out dust, because god knows he hasn’t cleaned his apartment in ages and Dabi hasn’t had a problem with that so far. He looks around his office, hoping that something will catch his eye and give him an idea, when… he suddenly spots the air freshening spray– from That Day From Hell– that supposedly set off half his office staff lying casually in the corner. And really, that’s as promising of an idea as any, right? It’s high time he gets around to cleaning his apartment anyway, whether or not his singular visitor is bothered by it.
He gets started as soon as he gets home. He vacuums, mops, dusts down surfaces, puts away stray items, and even goes so far as to organize his closet. It takes him a few hours, but his apartment is as clean as can be by the time the sun sets. It’s finally time to pull out the spray. He starts in the living room, spraying just a few times into the air around the couch, then a few times in the kitchen, and then many times in the bathroom. It really does have a nice scent, underneath the chemicals. He skips the bedroom, just in case the damned thing actually works and they end up needing a space free of the allergen. He stays in the bathroom for a good few minutes after he sprays, testing out the effects himself. He’s somewhat glad to admit that he feels a slight itch building up behind his sinuses and he takes a few deep breaths from his nose, trying to trigger something real.
He’s halfway through building up to a sneeze, and looking absolutely ridiculous just standing there with his mouth hanging open and eyes half-closed in front of the bathroom mirror, when his feathers sense movement in the living room. He immediately shuts off the light and books it out of the bathroom lest he be caught doing incriminatingly embarrassing actions by his lonesome.
Dabi’s toeing off his shoes when Keigo spots him. “Did you… clean?” he asks, foregoing any greetings.
“A little? Figured it was time, ya know. Don’t think I’ve really cleaned since I moved in here, like a year ago.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, eyes trained on the man like a hawk.
“Hmm.” Dabi sniffs once. “Smells weird.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.” Keigo watches with bated breath as he knuckles under his nose once, then twice. “Whatever.” He drops his arm. “Good on you for cleaning, birdbrain, but don’t think it’ll stop me from getting what I came for.”
He smirks, closing the distance between them in two strides, and crashes their lips together. It’s rough, a little awkward, slightly painful when their teeth clash, but mostly just desperate, and Keigo figures this was the real greeting he’d meant to deliver.
“Bedroom,” Dabi breathes into his mouth.
As if Keigo could deny him.
Damn it, he was so close. Probably.
- — -
The next time, Keigo decides to go for a strong-scented cologne. He has one lying around that he got for free from a brand deal he did ages ago, but he’s refrained from using it too much as it was a bit too spicy for his everyday taste. It’s got a strong smell, a little floral and a little woody to attempt to balance out the spice.
He sprays it all over his clothes, his neck, his wrists, and also sprays into the air in front of and walks into it like he’s seen women do during modeling shoots. He wrinkles his nose at the intensity of the scent but decides it’s fine. Dabi’s not going to be over for at least another hour anyway, though he doubts this thing is going to fade.
When Dabi does come over, he finds Keigo lounging on the couch answering emails on his phone.
“Hi, baby birdie.”
Keigo’s phone slips right out of his hands in utter shock and his feathers fluff up behind him. Dabi begins to laugh. He laughs the whole way to the couch, and is still laughing when he plops down beside Keigo. “Cute,” he says pointedly, in between the wheezing.
Keigo straddles him immediately, clambering on his lap and crushing either side of his thighs with Keigo’s own, trapping him there. “You are so annoying.”
Dabi closes the remaining distance between them, wrapping his arms around Keigo. “Mmm.” He nuzzles his face into Keigo’s neck. “You smell nice.”
Keigo’s heart begins to beat faster in anticipation. He covers it up with teasing, smirks. “Don’t I always?”
Dabi sucks in a deep breath and, just for a moment, Keigo allows himself to pretend that’s a precursor to a sneeze. But then Dabi opens his mouth again. “Whatever you’re wearing… you should wear it more.”
Then he sinks his teeth into Keigo’s neck.
Seriously?
- — -
Things keep progressing between them. Keigo goes to his patrols, does his paperwork, attends his meetings, and then comes home to Dabi. They eat dinner, they fuck, and sometimes, if the stars align, they’ll even go out together– on real dates. One day, near the end of one of Keigo’s longer morning patrols, he spots Dabi from the sky in a random alleyway, smoking by himself. He’s in civilian clothes, a black hoodie with a bright graphic on the back– one of Keigo’s that he claimed as his own– and for some reason the sight makes Keigo’s heart swell. He swoops down to greet him.
“Fancy seeing you here, hot stuff!”
Dabi nearly jumps out of his skin, dropping the cigarette in the process. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, warn a guy, would you?”
“Naw.” Keigo smiles sweetly. “I’m pretty much done for the day. Wanna grab a coffee?”
Dabi grumbles, which Keigo interprets as an affirmative and smiles wider. “Great! There’s actually a cat cafe around here that supposedly does a fantastic churro latte.”
“Isn’t it too late in the day for all of that?” Dabi says, but pulls on a black face mask and follows anyway.
The implications of a cat cafe visit don’t hit Keigo until they make it to the doorstep and spot over a dozen little furballs running around the open layout. Unknowingly, Keigo has orchestrated step five of Operation: Get Dabi to Sneeze. Could all the cat hair and dander be the thing that gets to him perhaps?
They walk into the store, and immediately a tiny white kitten comes up to their feet. It nuzzles Dabi’s boot, and Dabi crouches all the way down to run two fingers over the small of its head. The kitten purrs softly and arches into his touch, and he lets out a low chuckle, surprisingly warm. He scoops the little thing up with one hand and straightens, cradling it against his chest and, just for a moment, all of his sharp edges seem to soften. Keigo stares.
Turns out Dabi loves cats, and cats in turn love Dabi because of his higher body temperature. They end up spending over two hours at the cafe.
It was a long shot anyway.
Keigo supposes he still had a lot of fun, and he’d bet half of his hero salary that Dabi’s seriously considering getting himself a cat now— and by himself, Keigo means the two of them, since Dabi’s practically moved into Keigo’s apartment.
- — -
It’s officially been a month that he’s been seeing (dating?) Dabi, and he has still yet to see the man sneeze. Keigo finds himself revisiting the ‘he’s not actually human’ theory. He really could have transformed into a damn robot, there’s a quirk for everything these days. Or maybe Keigo just hasn’t been spending as much time around him as he thought. Maybe he does sneeze, but it only happens during the moments that Keigo isn’t around. Could Keigo have possibly come into contact with a weird quirk and transformed into an antihistamine? All that aside, Keigo’s unfortunately run out of options, and he fears it’s about time Operation: Useless comes to a close.
He lets out a long, loud sigh, uncaring of the man still sleeping next to him. It’s damn near ten o’clock anyway, how much longer is he going to sleep?
In an attempt to wake him up, Keigo decides to try one final, last-ditch, method. He reaches behind himself and pulls out a small down feather from his wing, one that’s barely bigger than his palm. He turns over to his side and, giddy with the last remaining bit of excitement over this particular prospect, touches the tip of it to Dabi’s nostrils. He moves it back and forth, letting the barbs tickle the skin around and inside the man’s nose.
Dabi gives a surprised sniffle, and a thin, scarred hand comes out from under blankets and shoves at the feather. “Mmnhhh, fuck off.” He rubs the palm of his hand forcefully under his nose for a few seconds and sniffles again, before reaching for the blankets and pulling them completely over his head, keeping all disturbances out. He curls up under them, and it takes less than a minute for his breathing to even out again.
Keigo laughs to himself, resigned. Yup, he’s officially exhausted all options. It’s officially the end of his operation.
It takes Dabi another hour before he shows any signs of wanting to wake up. And this time Keigo takes a more traditional approach to get him up– he pushes himself up and throws his entire body onto Dabi’s sleeping frame with a thud.
“Oof!” Dabi’s eyes open with a start, the wind clearly knocked out of him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He tries to wrestle Keigo off him but Keigo wraps his arms around Dabi’s upper body as best as he could with the blanket in the way, face buried in his neck and wings curled around them. Dabi yanks at Keigo arms. “Get the fuck off me, you fucking overgrown chicken, you piece of fucking—“
“No way.” Keigo tries to withhold his laughter. “Not until you agree to get up and make me pancakes.”
“Fuck you.” Dabi kicks his knee into Keigo’s thigh.
They wrestle some more and eventually Dabi gets the upper hand (only because Keigo’s too distracted from laughing) and rolls them over, his hands pinning Keigo’s down near his head. They stay in that position for a few seconds, Keigo smiling innocently as Dabi scowls down at him.
Then he leans down and connects their lips. Keigo supposes the pancakes can wait a little while longer.
- —- -
That night, after they’ve had numerous fantastic rounds of sex, eaten their fill of pancakes, and lounged about, Keigo longs for fresh air and voices this wish to Dabi.
“Gonna go fly?” Dabi raises a brow.
“I’m thinking of going on a walk actually. There’s this park a couple neighborhoods over that apparently has a small garden with really pretty flowers. Was thinking of checking it out and maybe even building up my photography portfolio.” He holds up his camera. “They say nature photography is a great start for beginners looking to build their skills and inspiration.”
“Right, ‘cause your career as a Top Ten Pro Hero is so unfulfilling.”
Keigo just shrugs, grinning. “You never know what could happen, man. Wanna come with?”
Dabi rolls his eyes. “Whatever.” He doesn’t answer the question, but he does stand up and grab his jacket off the back of the couch, so Keigo guesses that’s answer enough.
The short walk to the garden ends up taking them almost double the amount of time, since Keigo stops every few minutes to snap a picture of this and that, and when they get to the garden– a relatively small and secluded area of a larger park– they begin moving at a literal snail’s pace. The garden is lush and carefully tended, bursting with late-season blooms. A low hedge of white roses lines the entrance path, while marigolds burn bright orange and yellow in small beds near the singular bench.
Keigo’s too busy messing with the angles on his camera to get the most perfect photo of a section of passion flowers to notice when it happens. He manages to completely miss it, despite it happening barely two feet to his right. Unbeknownst to Keigo, whose eyes are intensely focused on the camera settings, Dabi suddenly gets a hazy look on his face. His lips part and stay parted in anticipation for five full seconds before he finally sucks in a sharp breath and yanks his face to the side, away from Keigo and away from the flowers, ducking down toward his shoulder.
“heH’tchErgHHhiew!”
Keigo snaps his neck toward the sound of the noise before the sneeze is even finished. Dabi’s still bent over and he blinks a few times as he recovers.
“Oh my god, bless you!” Keigo blurts out, maybe too loudly, too excitedly, and he knows the corners of his mouth have probably ticked up in some ridiculous smile as he just stares at the other man, but sue him, okay? He’s been waiting for this moment forever. He didn’t even orchestrate it this time!
Dabi gives him a weird look as he straightens, but it only lasts a second before his eyes cloud over again, and Keigo feels his heartrate spike immediately— there is no fucking chance he’s going to miss it if it happens again. He watches with wide eyes, camera completely forgotten and hanging limp in his hand, as the other man holds a fist against the underside of his nose. His eyes pinch shut and his head jerks forward with the force of the second (second!!!!) sneeze.
“ah’djErSHHh’iu!”
The sound is deep and throaty, more so his normal voice and…kind of exactly like what Keigo was expecting. Better than what he was expecting. Harsh and a little breathy and loud but not too loud and he’s polite enough to cover his mouth but Keigo doesn’t think he really covered the first time around and forceful enough to cause his body to jerk forward but not so forceful as to demand unnecessary attention and— Keigo just can’t bring himself to look away. He wants to see it again, wants to relive the last ten seconds of his life on repeat until he’s gotten to memorize every part of what just took place in front of him and lock it up in his brain forever.
“Mm, Jesus fuck,” Dabi mumbles as he exhales and lowers his arm. He seems to wince slightly, and the sneeze was big enough that Keigo could imagine it maybe hurting a bit. He itches lightly under his nose with a knuckle. Then he glances at Keigo from the corner of his eye. “What’s with the look?”
Keigo feels his neck heat up, and he finally tears his gaze away. He chuckles, aiming for casual but probably landing somewhere near strained. “Nothin’,” he says, before deciding in a split second to go for some honestly. Keigo just got to see Dabi at his most vulnerable, was witness to such an intimate and personal moment, even if the man himself wouldn’t describe it that way. Keigo feels like he’s got to give something back for intruding on that. For letting him intrude in that. So he adds, “Don’t think I’ve ever heard you sneeze before, hot stuff.”
Dabi hums, then clears his throat softly with another hum. “Doesn’t happen often.”
And boy, if Keigo didn’t know that. He’s really just glad it happened at all. “Well, bless you,” he says.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Keigo fears his soul might leave his body right here in the middle of this damn garden this very second if he doesn’t get his damn emotions to behave less erratically. He picks up his camera again and turns it back on. The normal thing to do now is move on right? Are his hands shaking? He can’t tell, he hopes not. He suddenly can’t wait to get home and take a big, long shower and daydream in private under the hot water with the look of Dabi’s adorable pre-sneeze face playing at the front of his mind. He can’t really focus on the flowers anymore, he’s clicking a photo without even looking at the screen.
Keigo’s still not fully present when they move on from the passion flowers and down the narrow brick path further into the garden.
Dabi presses the side of his hand under his nose and rubs, clearly still itchy, and Keigo finds himself lagging a half step behind the man so he can watch unabashedly. He feels slightly voyeuristic, again, but they’re basically dating now– Keigo should be allowed to stare at his lover without explanation, right? He wonders what’s brought on the itch now. Could it be, after all this time, that the man really is allergic to something? It wouldn’t surprise Keigo if it was something in this garden, given the variety of flowering plants and trees in such a modest area. Maybe the first thing Keigo should have tried in Operation: Useless was gift him a massive bouquet of every possible flower he could think of (Or not, considering that would’ve been a sure fire way to get himself cremated on the spot).
“Don’t you want a photo of those?” Dabi snaps Keigo out of his spiraling, pointing at a clematis vine littered with bright purple blossoms. The color is unlike anything they’ve seen so far in the garden, a deep, regal violet that shines even in the fading light of the evening. It’s beautiful enough to steal away Keigo’s attention, and he holds up the camera again.
“That’s gorgeous,” he comments after clicking photos from a bunch of different angles and lowering the camera. He begins swiping through his collection, and angles the screen so Dabi can peer over too. “I definitely got some good ones, look at this.”
Dabi steps closer, shoulder brushing Keigo’s, and they watch the camera in silence for a few seconds. Dabi hums his approval at the shot.
“And this one too–” Keigo starts to scroll, but cuts himself off when Dabi inhales sharply beside him. The warmth against Keigo’s shoulder disappears for a moment as the man doubles over to his side with another sneeze. He brings up an arm near his face, but lets out the sneeze sorta behind it into the air, like the arm was just there to either shield Keigo from the outburst or hide his own face from Keigo.
“hih’djRSHHh’uh!”
“Bless you,” Keigo says, completely stunned.
Three sneezes in one night? Is it suddenly getting real hot out here or is it just him? He watches Dabi scrub at his nose, now tinged slightly red, then pause with a hand hanging in front of his face as if he has to do it again, lips parted, eyes squinting, the whole shebang a spitting image of his face from that first time on the rooftop– a face that has made a reappearance numerous times in Keigo’s dreams.
It goes away, just like it did on the rooftop, and Dabi drops his arm. Keigo, meanwhile, is malfunctioning. His brain is off duty, his pulse is pounding, his blood pressure’s reached the stratosphere, and– how is he expected to think at all right now? There could be more incoming, Dabi could sneeze even more.
Keigo begins shutting off his camera and putting away the lenses, because he needs to find something to do before the last thread of his sanity snaps and he does something reckless like grab Dabi’s face and kiss him right then and there. Would that be weird? That would probably be weird. They can look at the damn photos later. Somehow, despite being pre-occupied with packing up, he still manages to catch the tail end of Dabi building up to sneeze again, all his features going slack and soft and so human as a dull haze appears before his eyes, and Keigo completely abandons his task halfway through to just… watch.
Dabi catches his eye when the expression fades this time. “Alright, what’s the matter with you?” He asks.
“Huh?” Keigo says, a little dazed, still watching Dabi, unable to peel his eyes off of this breathtakingly gorgeous man.
“You’re being fuckin’ weird.”
“You’re pretty,” Keigo blurts.
Dabi jerks back with a grimace. “Now? Seriously? I feel fucking gross and I really need to sneeze.”
“Yes! I mean, you’re pretty always, but just… look at you now.” If he hadn’t lost his sanity before he’s sure as hell he lost it now, because he reaches out with a hand and cups Dabi’s cheek, gently so as to not irritate the scarring, and runs his thumb down the bridge of Dabi’s nose slowly, from the top to the very tip. “Pretty,” he repeats.
Dabi catches Keigo’s wrist, holding it in place near his face. His voice drops to a low baritone when he speaks, and it comes out far weaker, less assured, but Keigo’s barely paying attention to that. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Admiring.” The response is instant.
“Admiring,” Dabi repeats flatly. He’s still holding onto Keigo’s wrist, and Keigo’s focus narrows in on the color that’s risen to Dabi’s cheeks and nose. He can’t tell if it’s from the sneezing or self-consciousness from the attention Keigo’s clearly giving him– he hopes it’s the former, because Keigo feels like he couldn’t stop giving this man all of his attention if he tried. His eyes are a bit glassy, moisture causing the lashes at the corners of his eyes to clump ever so slightly. “If you’re not careful, birdie, I’ll think you have a thing for sneezing.”
Keigo snaps back to reality at once, face heating up at the pace of a rocket launch. The implications of everything he’d just done and said come crashing into him full-force. What was he thinking, touching Dabi’s nose like that, calling him ‘pretty’ when he’s clearly fighting off a sneezing fit. Of course his behavior was weird, confusing, suspicious as hell, and fuck, now he’s taken too long to respond and the panic is probably displayed so clearly on his face and–
Dabi’s eyes widen. “You’re serious?”
“Uhh.” Keigo tries to laugh, tries to reach into the depths of his Hero Commission training to pull out the mask of easy-goingness he knows is hiding somewhere inside of him. He doesn’t get there fast enough. “Um. Maybe?”
“Well fuck me sideways.” He drops Keigo’s hand. “Didn’t see that one coming at all.”
“Um. It’s cute.” It’s hot, actually. “You’re cute when you do that.”
“What, when I sneeze?” He eyes Keigo skeptically, disbelief coating his voice.
“Yes?” Keigo is going to stand his ground, dammit. He did not spend so much of the past month trying to make this exact moment happen just to get flustered and start sprouting lies now.
“I–” Dabi stops, lets his features succumb to the pressure of another sneeze. Another false start. “Fuck, I feel exposed as hell now,” he says. He still can’t be bothered to hide his face when that happens. He still feels no discomfort or shame or self-consciousness– he really doesn’t care, even if he’s right in front of someone’s face, and that? That is so goddamn sexy.
“Sorry, sorry,” Keigo laughs awkwardly. He forces himself to look away. “Um, you okay though? Wha–”
“Tch.”
“–What’s setting you off so much?”
Dabi scrubs at his nose as he answers. Keigo can see it in his peripheral vision. “I dunno, but I wish it would stop. It’s so–” Dabi pauses. “Actually. Huh. Actually, maybe I don’t want it to stop.”
Keigo’s entire body flushes, head to toe. “Uhh–”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Okay! Jesus Chri– can you at least, like– I don’t know! Wait till we get back home?”
“Oh.” Dabi pauses, and Keigo can hear the smirk in his voice. “Ohhh. It’s like that, hm?”
“For fuck’s sake, Dabs,” he mumbles, growing physically incapable of handling this conversation anymore. It isn’t really ‘like that’, but of course this guy is a tease, it’s Keigo’s own fault for not expecting it.
“Ugh, hang on. Hh- Oh hurry look hihere– huh’djRRSHhiew!” Dabi jerks forward with the force of the sneeze, clearly exaggerating it, and lets it out freely toward the ground in front of him but still keeping Keigo out of the crossfire.
Keigo looks. Of course Keigo looks. As if he didn’t feel a visceral, bone-deep, inescapable need to look. As if he was going to be capable of not looking even with a gun held to his head.
Dabi blinks the moisture out of his eyes as he recovers, then immediately directs Keigo a look– half lewd and half like a little kid showing a parent their latest scribbly drawing and expecting praise.
Keigo sighs. That sneeze was a long time coming, anyway, what with all the false starts and teases. “Bless you.”
“Thank you.” Dabi smiles, wide and bright.
“Let’s just– let’s just go home. Something’s clearly setting you off here and it’s not normal.”
Dabi sniffles thickly as he follows Keigo, who has picked up the pace. “Yeah, you’d know that.”
Keigo doesn’t respond, and after a few minutes of speed-walking out of the garden in silence, Dabi nudges him with an elbow. “Hey.”
“What.”
“It’s fine, you know.” Keigo shoots him a nasty side-eye. “I mean it. It’s– it’s kind of interesting? I mostly just feel bad that I’m, like, the worst person for you to be with, with that kind of a kink. I probably haven’t done much for you at all.”
“Ugh,” Keigo groans. He slows the pace to more of a stroll. “It’s whatever. Don’t think too hard about it.”
“Hmm. But what if I want to?”
Keigo frowns, directing Dabi a look that encourages him to explain whatever the hell that meant.
“I mean, I don’t think I’m really allergic to much, but we could maybe try? Like whatever was in that garden, for example. If you want to.”
Huh. So… he’s not totally weirded out? A knot that Keigo didn’t even know was in his stomach lifts, just a little. “Whatever was in that garden is about the only thing that I haven’t tried.”
“What? Haven’t tried what? What have you–”
“Huh? Oh, nothing!” Keigo scrambles, mortified from the foot he’s shoved into his mouth for the millionth time this evening. “Did I say something? I actually don’t know how to speak!”
“Wait a second…” Keigo can hear the gears turning in Dabi’s brain. “So. That day when you wore too much of that cologne…. And that other day when—”
Keigo beats his wings loudly against the ground as he prepares to take off, drowning out the rest of Dabi’s words. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, hot stuff!”
“Where are you going?!”
“How about I just meet you back at home? Okay, bye now! See you later!”
“Alright, wait!” Dabi shouts, watching incredulously as Keigo becomes airborne. “Just– wait a damn minute!”
Keigo doesn’t. He’s had enough mortification for an entire lifetime crammed into a single hour, and maybe if he gets home before Dabi he can successfully hide away the cologne and cleaning spray he currently has lying casually on his dresser before Dabi starts to put more pieces together and look for them.
He pretends he doesn’t hear Dabi grumbling out a “dumbass birdie” as he flies away.
‘Maybe we could try,’ huh?
That was surprisingly really sweet, especially for the villain. Who knew he could be so understanding, much less so willing to indulge Keigo?
Keigo could work with this. And if he’s already drafting up a plan to bring Dabi back to that garden again, or even better, bring something from that garden back home (for experimentational purposes), well… he guesses that’s both his and Dabi’s business.
do u think u could do some fluffy Dabihawks? Where hawks is having a sneezing fit randomly in bed while cuddling with dabi
Yea sure
—
Dabi/Hawks
G-rated. Allergies. ~1.5k
———
“h’nXt’h!”
“Oh, it starts again,” Dabi says. He doesn’t stop Hawks when he ungraciously maneuvers the top half of his body to duck behind his arm from a half-laying position, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be silent about it. He actually misses the warmth of Hawks’ body against his own as soon as he loses it, even if just for a few seconds— though he wouldn’t voice such a thought if he had a gun to his head.
“huh’nGcht!”
“You really should have taken your allergy meds.”
“hnk’GXT’hhuh!”
“I ran out of ‘bless you’s like a hundred sneezes ago.” Dabi can’t help it. Once the bird starts sneezing, he takes fucking forever to stop. Hawks huffs, rubbing under his nose with two fingers and keeping his face firmly turned away from Dabi’s, which just means he’s got more in his system to let out before Dabi’s comfy again. And Dabi really wants to just be comfy again. With Hawks’ weight on him, specifically.
For all his complaining and feigned annoyance, Dabi’s body language does little to indicate he’s bothered by this at all. They’ve been lounging on the hero’s massive, and probably extremely expensive, cloud couch, watching some stupid American romantic comedy about two overworked office assistants who manipulate their bosses to date in hopes of getting some more time off work and, in the process, will more than likely end up falling in love with each other. Dabi doesn’t particularly care for these films, but he has recently discovered that simply laying around and doing nothing interesting with Hawks is a surprisingly enjoyable feat— the man is warm and always dresses in big soft sweaters and wraps his fluffy wings around both of them and he’s extremely touchy but somehow thoughtful in the way he holds Dabi to avoid rubbing too much against his scars. Dabi could care less about what movie they watch as long as it means he gets to just exist here, peacefully, next to this man he’s begudgingly come to love.
Today though, his peace is consistently getting interrupted. Every few minutes, Hawks has to disentangle himself from Dabi’s hold to tend to his demanding nose. And, yeah, after being forced to spend more than half a day listening to the bird’s hitchy little fits, Dabi can’t really help the thoughtless remarks that slip out. But it’s not like he’s going to be the one that puts distance between them, unwanted sneezing notwithstanding.
Like right now.
“Can youhh shut up?” Hawks croaks out, managing to land an elbow into Dabi’s ribcage despite being occupied with his needy ass sinuses. Seriously, Dabi thought he was needy, he’s got competition.
Dabi grunts. “I just don’t get why you’d rather take sneezing non-stop all day than swallowing a measly pill. Did all the itching knock a screw loose in that birdbrain of yours?”
“Hey! I- huhh... hh’ngSH’uh! ha’ngXsh’h! Ugh, okay. Okay.” He pauses to sniffle, then groans. “The allergy meds I have just make me sleepy.” He snakes his arm back around Dabi’s waist and nuzzles his chest.
Dabi makes a face, incredulous. “Let me rephrase. Why would you rather take sneezing non-stop all day than just fuckin’ sleeping?”
“Why would I wanna sleep when I’d rather be here spending all my time with you,” Hawks says into Dabi’s shirt. “You’re comfy as hell, by the way.”
PFFT, Dabi’s brain says. He grumbles unintelligibly, feeling his face heat up at the shameless, casual declaration. “I’d be a hell of a lot more comfy without the interruption every five minutes,” he mumbles under his breath.
Hawks pats his chest. “You’ll live, hot stuff.”
On screen, the two leads strategically organize a lover’s getaway for their asshole bosses and successfully manage to score a work-free weekend, and Dabi begins debating the merits of performing a similar set-it-up endeavor with the boss figures of his own life— fucking Shigaraki and, he glances at Hawks… and the head of the hero commission? The thought makes him want to simultaneously laugh and vomit.
He nudges Hawks lightly. “Hey. You think the commission president would lay off if she got some?”
Hawks lifts his head to peer up at him. Half of his hair is flattened against his forehead and the tip of his nose is red-rimmed. He looks stupid. Definitely not cute. His face contorts into a slight frown and he directs Dabi a small smile. “You know, she’s married.”
“Huh?” Dabi jerks back, aghast. “As fucking if.”
“Yeah. She’s got a wife, if you’d believe it. I’d feel bad for the poor woman but if she can handle Madame then she’s got to be at least part demon underneath it all.”
Dabi snorts. “No one that willingly chooses to spend their life with that old hag is getting any sympathies from me.” He smiles to himself, wide and maybe a little deranged. “They’ll all be burning in hell when this is over, anyway.”
“Mh. Guess so. I mean—” Hawks starts, then pauses as his breath catches and his face twists in anticipation, eyes squinting. He shifts, and Dabi is expecting it before it happens— better than having to listen to him stumble his way through whatever bullshit to try and dismiss the commission’s actions. Dabi doesn’t think he could control his anger if that were to happen again. And to reiterate, Dabi really does not feel like getting angry right now.
“Ugh, one sec,” Hawks mumbles out hurriedly, half-muffled by his shirt sleeve, and inhales deeply, desperately. “huh’ngxKt’h!”
Dabi guesses he got closer to fifteen minutes of peace without interruption this time. That should count for something, right? He watches lazily as Hawks brings up his free hand to support the arm pressed against his face and hold it in place as his head bobs repeatedly with sneeze after sneeze, ones that progressively get harsher until he seems to give up on trying to withhold them entirely.
“h’ngXSh’uh! hg’ISHH’h! ISHHh’iew!”
“Jeez, I can’t even hear the movie now.”
“h’ngSH’uhh! Snf… Yeah you can,” Hawks breathes out, a nasally sound. When he finally lowers his arm, Dabi notices the spray has left a wet spot on his shirt sleeve. Hawks grinds his knuckles into both of his nostrils, face scrunching uncomfortably. “My-hhih— my sneezing isn’t even loud, unlike a certain fiery villain’s over hehhre if I— hih, snf— Ugh— if I recall right.”
“Shut up,” Dabi groans, but pulls the man closer to his side by the arm around his middle, as if squishing the bird against his body will make him be silent.
“Hang on.” Hawks makes to put a little more space between them, turning and burying his face in the same damp sleeve again. “hi’ISHH’h! hih-h.. hg’SHh’iu!”
“Tch. This is just noise pollution now.”
“h’nkXT’uhh! Guhhh. Sorry.” He sniffles harshly, and this time Dabi has to cringe at the sound. He probably needs to blow his nose, but his feathers are more than capable of fetching him the tissue box if he so wishes. Dabi’s not moving. He eyes the box sitting on the kitchen counter, and Hawks eventually catches his drift and sends a feather to retrieve it. Dabi really can’t hear the TV for the next few minutes as Hawks blows his nose like a pipe right next to his ear.
Hawks sighs once he discards the tissues. “Fine. Fine, I’ll—snf— I’ll just take the allergy meds and go to sleep after the movie. Since I’m so annoying to you.”
Dabi rolls his eyes. “You are.”
“Since you hate being around me so much.”
The bird appears to be done with the sneezing for now, so Dabi pulls him back closer. He lays his cheek on top of soft, golden hair. “Mhmm. Hate you.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
On screen, the two leads begin making fun of each other’s outfit choices. Bonding, laughing, flirting. Openly.
“Or, I could—” Dabi’s mouth moves on its own before his brain can catch up and firmly stop him. He grits his teeth, barrels on. “I’ll just go pick up some meds that won’t make you sleepy.”
Hawks turns his neck upward so fast the top of his head just barely misses smacking Dabi’s chin. When Dabi chances a forced-casual look with a slow drag of his gaze, Hawks has a surprised yet soft look on his face. In a flash, his expression turns bright and cheeky.
“Awh, Dabs! You’d do that for me?”
Dabi narrows his eyes. He wants to backtrack, but hell if he was going back after saying something he actually means just because he’s not used to saying it. He’s still working on this ‘casual show of affection’ thing. “I’m taking your credit card, obviously. You’re paying for dinner too.”
Hawks laughs, a watery little sound. He leans his head back on Dabi’s chest, smiling and sniffling softly and then he’s snaking his arms around Dabi’s form and rubbing his fingers softly over Dabi’s forearm scars and just… honestly, this whole thing’s ridiculous. When did Dabi become such a sap for this bird?
“Love you, hot stuff.”
Dabi’s heart flutters, like it does practically every time he hears those words in the bird’s soft voice, as though his body would never just let him be comfortable and get used to hearing them already.
someone whose nose is itching ominously, the tickle growing sharper, trying so hard to hold back they're just going, "no, no, noohh'nNH'txXCHHh'huhh!!"
Person A who hand free stifles it looks like they don't snz at all and person B who worries Something Will Happen if they keep holding them in like that
Robot who sneezes so much that it overwhelms/overheats their processing system or sensors to the point of crashing...they reboot, only to resume sneezing, and the cycle starts all over again
robot who's sneezes sound glitchy/clipped/ staticky (bonus: if they have a screen/facial display, that glitches out as well)
robot getting "sick" and displaying symptoms because they got infected with malware or a computer virus. (Bonus if "I didn't know you could get sick" human caretaker is paired with "I...didn't know either" robot.)
robot sneezing because their fans haven't been cleaned in a while and are coated in dust or cobwebs
i will always be so fucking weak to sneezes that sound like a clear spoken “chuuh” just really breathy. like sneezes that are so small and stuttery and rapid that theyre almost a similar tone to just speaking
Sicktember prompt #9 — “Get your butt back in bed”
Dabi/Hawks
CW: G rated, sickness, SNEEZING (obviously)
———
“‘M coming in,” Keigo announces as he raps softly on the bathroom door, still exhausted even though he’d gotten a good six hours of sleep.
“Your funeral,” Dabi calls from the other side. His voice sounds rough, much deeper and scratchier than usual and definitely more congested than the night prior. Keigo has no idea why he wouldn’t just stay in bed for the day. What did he have to do anyway? Was he planning to not only plot a coup d’etat while terrorizing the general population but also infect everyone with his very apparent head cold while doing it? Keigo doesn’t want to ask and risk the distrustful, volatile man interpreting his concern as ‘spying for info on official League business’.
Dabi’s hair is damp when Keigo steps inside, and he’s in the middle of gel-ing it to get those messy spikes he always liked to don with his villain costume. The entire bathroom’s fogged up from the steam of his shower and smells like hair gel, but Keigo doesn’t really mind, and he’d already overslept by more than fifteen minutes to afford to waste any more time waiting around. He bullies his way in front of the mirror, nudging Dabi with his hip as he goes. He grabs his toothbrush and gets foam going in his mouth.
He has six hours of hero patrol that morning, and then a mandatory in-person meeting with the HPSC President that he is certainly not looking forward to. He’d need to come up with another semi-passable excuse for why his infiltration mission was as slow-going as he was reporting it to be. He’s leaving out the more compromising details of his connection with his league contact of course, but comprising—and highly dangerous, if not downright stupid— activities are the only things he’s got going on currently.
Keigo gets pulled out of his thoughts when Dabi suddenly wrenches his body to his side, putting his back to Keigo, and lets out a harsh sneeze, completely unrestrained. And then another one, curling in on himself and placing a hair-gel covered hand on the counter top to support himself from the force of it.
“ah’djESHhiew! huh’djISZHh’h!”
“Be-Shoo,” Keigo tries to bless him through the toothbrush in his mouth.
“hih’djEGHhiu! Fuck. Jesus fuck.” He grunts, and Keigo watches as he runs his hands under the tap, presumably to get the gel off, dries them, and then goes to tear off a few squares of toilet paper. He holds them to his face and seems to sway for a few seconds, squinting, but it’s not long before he’s sucking in a sharp breath and doubling over again.
“ah’tjEGHH’h! ha’gjESZHhiew!” He takes a second to sniffle and suck in another breath. “ha’djESHHhiu!”
Keigo barks out a surprised laugh and spits in the sink. “Man, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sneeze this much.”
Dabi sniffles, knuckling his nose and trying to blink back the moisture in his eyes. “Nguhh,” he groans, sniffling again. “It’s all the fuckin’ steam. It’s like—“ he grunts irritably and pauses, then squeezes his eyes shut, bringing his wad of toilet paper back up in front of his mouth. “huh’djSHHhiu! …Ugh, every time I try to breathe.”
Keigo continues to chuckle.
“So fucking gross,” Dabi mumbles, before holding the tissues up to his nose and blowing harshly. Keigo tries not to cringe at the graphic sound. He rubs at his eyes after he discards the used tissues. “I sound like shit.”
“You sound like you need to get back in bed, is what.” It slipped out before he could think twice. Oh well.
“Yeah, let me just make myself right at home here in your fancy little apartment.” Dabi rolls his eyes.
Keigo watches him through the mirror and tries his damndest to quell the sudden and completely unnecessary leap of his heart. He shrugs. “You can.”
“And wake up to the Top Ten surrounding the bed, quirks blazing with intent to shoot on sight? Nice try, hero,” Dabi manages to sneer despite himself, then walks out of the bathroom, slouching slightly and running a hand through his half-styled hair and immediately messing it up.
In the privacy of his now-empty bathroom, it’s Keigo’s turn to roll his eyes. It’s also Keigo’s own fault for thinking the guy wouldn’t jump through hoops to remind Keigo of how little he really trusted him. It’s the same stupid argument as always— all they do is go in circles. Just as Keigo starts to think they’re finally getting along, Dabi will spit fire in an attempt to prove, maybe to himself, what an ass he can be. Dabi is like a feral street cat, Keigo had recently come to realize— try to get close to him and he’ll hiss and scratch at you until he’s back in his comfort zone: alone, and self-wallowing.
When Keigo finishes up his own morning routine — which includes styling his own hair and also a five-step skin care routine because a pretty, front-cover-of-a-magazine worthy face like this ain’t effortless — and makes his way back to the bedroom, he is a little surprised to find Dabi laying back in bed on top of the blankets and against the pillows, eyes closed. He looks a bit pale and his hair has managed to turn into a bigger mess. He’s in just his boxers and has, for some reason, put on the same oversized t-shirt of Keigo’s that he’d slept in. His villain costume remains on the floor beside the bed.
Keigo slams the door shut behind him as he walks in, just to be a menace.
Dabi jolts, eyes snapping open and widening as he searches for the source of the sudden noise. “Have you died?” Keigo says.
“Not that lucky.” Dabi narrows his eyes, then seems to give up and sighs, which unsurprisingly turns into a cough. He rasps, “Just needed five. Has it been five?”
“How should I know?” Keigo keeps his voice casual and his back to Dabi as he pulls on his hero uniform. He then grabs his phone and wallet, shrugs on his flight jacket, and also downs an entire bottle of water.
When he takes another peak at the man, he finds him in the same position on the bed, unmoving and eyes shut once again. Not what Keigo was expecting, but nothing he can really complain about, he guesses. He leaves a few feathers on the floor before walking out of the room, much quieter this time.
Maybe sometimes, the way to get a stray cat to accept help is not to force help down its throat but rather place it in a position where help was readily available, and then leave it the fuck alone.
As he takes off for patrol, Keigo makes a mental note to stop by the pharmacy on his way back to pick up some cold medicine, just on the off chance that the kitten holed up on his bed realizes that it was in fact safe for him to rest for more than just five minutes.
vaporwave
areudirty
kianamaiart
dededos
janainaart
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
dailybridgerton
