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The commission is a bunch of bullshit.
That’s what Hawks had decided.
Like just now.
Look, okay, he just got his ass handed to him by the higher ups at the commission. He woke up, feeling like today was going to be a great day, only to get a call from his least favorite handler, telling him that he had to be at the main commission building asap. What a way to start the day. He threw on his hero suit and flew to the office as quickly as he could, being even remotely late wasn’t an option, unless he wanted to be reprimanded even more than usual.
Apparently the reason he was called in was because there had been a lot of pictures of him outside of work circulating twitter recently. Pictures of him getting fried chicken. A lot. Who can blame him? Chicken is great. Apparently not according to the commission.
His handlers sat down and talked with him, more along the lines of talked at him if he really thought about it, about the importance of eating healthy and how it’s good to keep up a balanced diet and blah blah blah. They ended up kicking him out about an hour later because he had some pro hero meeting to go to soon. Not before giving him a long, detailed meal plan that he was to follow. Strictly. Unfortunately for him, there was nothing fried on the meal plan whatsoever. Not a single fried item. And hardly any chicken, fried or no.
The pro hero meeting was long and boring, as they always are, with talks of crime rates this and the League of Villains that. Nothing interesting ever happened, and with his clearance, this was all information he already knew or didn’t care to know. Once the two hour meeting was over, Hawks went on patrol, which was usually the best part of his day, he was able to get some fresh air, talk to fans and maybe stop a criminal or two. Not today. Not 10 minutes into the patrol and someone collided with him.
He was knocked to the ground but quickly recovered, standing back up and brushing himself off, only to realize whoever had run into him had spilled coffee or something on him. He looked for who had ran into him and found a woman on the ground near him, she looked young, wearing a nice dress, now ruined from the coffee that had gotten on her as well.
He offered her a hand. “Sorry about that.” He said with his usual charming smile.
The woman sat there staring at him for a few seconds and then recovered. “Uh, no, it’s my fault, really.” She took his hand and stood up. “I’m incredibly sorry about that, Mr. Hawks.”
“It’s fine, really. And just Hawks is fine.” He crouched to pick up the papers the woman had dropped.
“R-right. Hawks. Sorry.” She said as he handed her the papers and things. “It’s nice to meet you but I really should be on my way, it’s my first day interning for the Hero Commission.”
“Oh, good luck, then. Sorry about the dress by the way.” Hawks still had his signature smile plastered on his face.
“It was my fault.” She glanced at her watch and squeaked. “Right, goodbye, Hawks.” She turned and jogged off, presumably about to be late.
Hawks let out a sigh. Great. He just got coffee spilled all over his hero suit, 10 minutes into his patrol, meaning he couldn’t exactly just leave early. He would have to patrol, smelling like coffee and wearing an uncomfy suit because of the spill.
He took off, hoping that a flight would dry the coffee faster. The flight didn’t last long enough to do much good because his attention was drawn to a robbery at some small convenience store soon after he took off.
He defused the situation quickly, leaving the thief for the police. For the next 4 hours of patrol, it was one thing after another. A screaming child that gave Hawks a migraine couldn’t find his mother despite her being just across the street. A small-time villain with a particularly annoying quirk that had to do with sand that got absolutely everywhere, including in Hawks’ wings and in between feathers, making them rub awkwardly and uncomfortably. Annoying civilians that kept pestering him about one thing or another, one lady felt the need to stop the number two hero and tell him about how her child’s school teachers are horrible people because they weren’t paying all their attention to her child and that since he’s involved with the government, he should be able to help in some way. She chattered away at him for 10 minutes straight, not giving him any opportunity to leave. When he finally got done with patrol and collapsed in his apartment, hoping to take a shower and try to get rid of all the annoying sand in his wings, his phone buzzed with a message. He hardly got messages unless he needed to do something.
The message was from Dabi, which brought some relief, that at least meant that it wasn’t his handlers telling him to come back for some other meeting. Though the message wasn’t much better.
The message told Hawks that the PLF was having a meeting today in about 30 minutes, he had to be there.
Hawks groaned and face planted onto his bed. Great. Just great. His day was already bad with all the little things piling up, and now he had to go to another. Freaking. Meeting.
He texted back that he’d be there and tried to make himself look a little more presentable.
He got to the Front’s headquarters with 10 minutes to spare and sat in his designated chair, looking absolutely done with the world, which Dabi picked up on immediately.
Dabi sat next to him. “Hey, pretty bird.”
Hawks sighed. “Hey.”
“You okay?”
Hawks hesitated. “Yeah. Fine.”
Dabi side-eyed him. “If you say so.” The conversation ended when Shigaraki walked in, sitting at the head of the long table. Dabi moved to sit in his chair next to Shigaraki.
Dabi said something to Toga, who sat across from him. The two of them and Shigaraki had a quick conversation, with Toga suddenly looking very excited.
Shigaraki stood up when everyone finally settled down. “Look, something came up. This meeting will instead be held tomorrow. That’s final. You can all leave now.” He sat again.
No one looked particularly pleased with this information but slowly shuffled out. Dabi came back over. “Don’t leave yet.”
Hawks stayed seated. “What’s Shigaraki on about? They schedule a last minute meeting and then cancel it even more last minute?” If Hawks looked done before, he looks even more done with the entire world now.
Dabi sighed and sat. “I figured you wouldn’t exactly want to sit through a meeting. Clearly everything is not ‘fine’. Now, I’m not going to pry because that’s your business so if you don’t want to tell me about your shitty day, that’s fine, but don’t try and hide the fact that you had a shitty day in the first place. Your act doesn’t work on me, pretty bird.”
Hawks looked at Dabi for a second and then, seemingly all at once, the tension in his shoulders disappeared. “You really made your boss cancel a meeting because I’m having a shitty day?”
“That’s not the only thing I did. Well, this was more of Toga’s doing, but still.” Dabi glanced at Toga and Shigaraki, Toga talking Shigaraki’s ear off excitedly while the latter looked bored.
“What did you sign me up for, hot stuff?” Hawks glanced at Toga.
Toga must have noticed them looking at her because she suddenly jumped up with a huge smile. “Dabs! Did you tell him about the sleepover?”
“Well, sounds like I don’t need to anymore.” Dabi leaned back in his chair.
“Sleepover?” Hawks asked.
“Yeah. Dabs over here told Shiggy and I that you were having a bad day and that we should have the meeting tomorrow instead. Then I said.’A bad day? Oh no, we can’t have that.’ And you know what always cheers me up? A sleepover!! So, you and Dabs and Shiggy and Spinner and Twice and I are all going to have a sleepover. And we’re going to watch that new movie that I stole yesterday. Mister would come too, but he has something to do today.” Toga said.
Hawks let himself smile. “That’s really sweet of you to offer, Toga.” Which made the girl beam.
So here they are, Hawks and the League of villains wearing PJs while discussing what they should do first.
“We should order KFC.” Dabi suggested. Normally, Hawks would have agreed eagerly, but now he hesitated, remembering the meal plan his handler had given him. Dabi saw his hesitation. “Rephrase. We are getting KFC, whether you guys like it or not. Hawks deserves it after a shitty day.”
“No problem here! KFC, really? Gross.” Twice said.
Hawks decided that yeah, he did deserve this. His handlers can fuck off.
While they waited for the KFC to be delivered, Spinner turned on the Xbox. “Games?”
“We are not playing GTA.” Shigaraki said from where he had curled up in the corner of the couch.
Spinner made a face. “You guys are lame.”
They ended up playing minecraft, which Hawks had never played before but found that he actually enjoyed it. So there they were. Dabi, Hawks, Spinner, and Shigaraki playing minecraft while Twice let Toga paint his nails bright red.
After eating, they somehow ended up with Hawks agreeing to let Toga do his hair. “That was a horrible decision. Your hair was bad before, Toga somehow made it worse.” Dabi said, eyeing the mess Toga had made of Hawks’ hair. It was too short to do much so he ended up with a ton of tiny little pony tails sticking out all over his head.
Personally, Hawks found it endearing that Toga wanted to do his hair in the first place, despite not being able to do much but messy buns with her own.
Toga tackled Dabi for the insult, which wasn’t hard to do, seeing as the man didn’t eat much and was basically a walking stick. The action resulted in laughter from the rest of them, even Shigaraki let out a small chuckle.
Toga jumped up suddenly, having had an idea. “We should bake cupcakes!”
“Great idea, Toga!” Twice encouraged.
Dabi, however, groaned. “Last time we tried that, you snuck blood into it, you vampire.”
Toga’s eyes lit up. “That was so good.”
“No, that was a disaster.” Shigaraki said, standing up. “I’ll be back.” To which he left.
“Oh my gosh, guys. Forget cupcakes, let’s paint Father’s nails.” Toga pointed to the dismembered hand that lay abandoned on the counter.
“Crusty McHands is going to turn you into dust if you even touch that thing.” Dabi said, recovering from the tackle and sitting next to Hawks on a couch.
“But it’d be so fun!” Toga argued.
“No, I think I agree with Toga here, imagine the look on his face when he sees.” Hawks said with a grin that made Dabi roll his eyes.
That made Twice and Toga laugh. “Let’s paint Father’s nails pink! No, green!” Twice said.
“Pink, go with pink.” Spinner said.
Toga giggled and got out her nail polish, quickly going to work.
When Shigaraki got back, he was absolutely furious and he glared at every one of them for at least 30 seconds each.
“I hate all of you.” He sat and glared especially hard in Toga’s direction, who was too busy to notice over her fit of giggles.
They ended up talking for an hour, with Dabi getting Hawks to spill about his bad day. When he told them about the meal plan, Dabi looked ready to burn the commission to the ground the second Hawks gave the word. By the end, most of them were sympathetic. Dabi was ready to kill someone and Shigaraki had mostly stayed out of the conversation, still mad about Father.
“Hawks, do we need to stab some people for you?” Toga asked.
“If I ever get my hands on the person that gave you the meal plan, I’m going to do a lot more than just stab them. They’ll be ash before they can say ‘fried chicken’.” Dabi said in a tone that very much said that he meant it. He’d make Hawks’ handler’s life a living hell if he could.
“I’ll disintegrate the place if you want.” Shigaraki muttered from his place on the couch.
“AWWWW! Shiggy, you do care!” Toga squealed.
Hawks laughed. “No, no. It’s alright. You guys don't have to hurt anyone for me. I appreciate the offer though.”
“Well, if you ever need someone killed, you know who to call. We’re officially family now so no one messes with you without messing with us.” Toga said brightly.
Spinner nodded. “We’ve got your back.” For the first time in a while, Hawks felt like he really belonged, sure it was among villains, but he’d found a family.
The conversation moved on and Toga roped Dabi into braiding her hair, though he didn’t seem to mind that much, and Toga started the movie she had mentioned earlier. It was some stereotypical romcom. One of the fake dating trope types.
There were two couches in the room. Shigaraki stole one, Twice and Toga on another, Spinner sat in the corner of the room and Dabi and Hawks sat next to each other on the floor by Toga’s couch.
The movie wasn’t interesting enough for Hawks to pay attention, so he let his mind wander. The day started off bad and progressively got worse. Then, when he was about to just leave and go home and shower and sleep for the next two days, his boyfriend noticed he was off and immediately tried to help, in his own way. The day hadn’t been great, but now, this was some of the most fun he’d had in a long time. He never had many friends and sure, the people around him may be criminals and villains, but they were more of a family than he’d ever had.
About halfway through the movie, Hawks started to doze off when he felt fingers in his feathers. They were warm and comforting, straightening his feathers and getting most of the sand out from that villain earlier. Hawks knew it was Dabi, they were sitting close and Dabi often did this to help Hawks fall asleep. The villain whispered to Hawks just before he fell asleep completely, ”Good night, pretty bird.” With the warm, comforting fingers working their way through Hawks’ feathers and the quiet, familiar voice, Hawks was lulled to sleep quickly.