Archive of Our Own ^beta

Hawks leant back on his hands, pressing his palms into the cold stone around him, and let his head tip back towards the sky, sighing so hard that he dislodged a piece of blonde hair stuck to the side of his face and blew it up into the air.

He was trying to be a good student. He really was.

But he was bored.

His eyes were naturally drawn to the lone source of movement above him in the clear and endless blue, and he pouted up at the single, slow-moving, wispy cloud as though it could solve all of his frustrations, pinching his eyebrows at the center of his face and pursing his lips into a petulant frown. Unfortunately, this cloud offered him nothing but a slowly growing crick in his neck, and so after a few seconds of moping he reluctantly lifted his head, and returned to staring out into the dense forest surrounding him on all sides.

The forest extended out from this spot for several miles, forming a vaguely circular shape that brushed up against The Commission’s School of Magic and attracted many of its students for various magical exploits. Hawks himself had set out into its depths before the sun had risen this morning, and had hiked without direction for several hours until his feet had led him here, to where he currently sat cross-legged upon the ground. The trees grew tallest in this part of the woods, he could tell - they stretched out limbs and leaves towards the heavens at heights he had previously thought unattainable, having lived for far longer than any man currently alive, and likely planning to live far after every man had died - yet none of these ancient trees dared to grow within the clearing that Hawks was currently occupying. Here, the hard, rocky ground was bare of any life, even grass, for a few feet in every direction, save for a ring of small white mushrooms that encircled a large black stone exposed at the very center. The stone was a smooth, iridescent black, standing dark and imposing where it seemed to have grown or perhaps erupted from the dead earth around it, and shiny enough that he had seen his own face and gaudy apparel in its reflection when he had first approached it over an hour ago.

The Commission had told him that this was a very important ceremony for a young student - finding a familiar was an essential part of becoming a mage and something that could very well change the course of his development from here on out. It was not something to be taken lightly, and not something to be unprepared for. Because of this, he was draped and wrapped in the best they could offer: opal, sapphire, and garnet charms decorated the brim of his hat, colorful potions of healing and destruction hung from the cord slung around his waist, and he had exchanged his typical cotton robes for ones made of silk and embroidered with powerful runes, all from the school of magic that he was enrolled in, namely, Transmutation.

The air practically vibrated with the intensity of the energy concentrated around him, shifting and shimmering as though sweltering with heat, and filled Hawks’ lungs with the cloying and sickeningly sweet scent of uncontrolled magic.

It was the biggest goddamn beacon he had ever seen.

And yet, no familiars had appeared.

He sighed loudly again, and let his shoulders slump forward as he slouched and placed his elbows on his knees, resting his head in one upturned hand and squishing his cheek. He was supposed to be meditating - had been meditating, for the better part of an hour - but clearly that had accomplished nothing. He started to idly pick at the detailed chalk rune that he had so painstakingly drawn earlier, no longer caring if he smudged or broke a few of the lines with his fingernail. Most of the words were in Latin, but he understood the basics - ‘to protect, to empower, and to serve, so long as this mage is a charge of the Commission’. His professors had reiterated over and over and over again that familiars would not be their friends. They were powerful, they were cunning, and they were often malevolent - they existed to help witches only so long as they received something of equal value in return, and thus it was important to establish an explicit contract, lest they fall to deception or corruption or worse.

They had failed to mention, however, that apparently it would be difficult to get one to show up at all.

“Hello?” Hawks called out into the forest, drawing out the ooo and listening as it bounced and reverberated off the stone and the trees around him. “Anyone out there? Anything wanna eat a young witch? I’m right here!”

Unsurprisingly, there was no answer, and Hawks let his head fall more firmly into his hand, causing the charms on his hat to slide free of the brim and dangle in the air, swaying lightly and colliding softly. He started to drum the tips of his fingers against his temple, staring indignantly out into the empty shadows beneath the trees.

“Hel-lo?!”

Still nothing.

Alright, I’m tired of this.

He straightened up from his slouch and slowly uncrossed his very asleep legs, pointing his toes out in front of him and rubbing out the sore muscles. He grabbed his hat next, ripping it from his head and tossing it towards the edge of the ring of mushrooms where it fluttered down and crushed a few under its unnecessary weight, before he ran both hands through his flattened hair and ruffled it until it had returned to its everyday messy state. He loosened his robe as well, setting the cord of potion bottles to the side with a loud clink! , and pulled open a few of the ties at the top, sighing in relief as the uncomfortable tightness around his neck was relieved. The black reflective stone he was sat upon had made it unbearably hot, and Hawks sighed as he was finally able to alleviate some of the sticky heat. He rolled his shoulders once, and popped his neck, and then he reached within his robe into an internal pocket sewn at the chest to grab a package of crackers that he had pilfered from the kitchen before he had set out.

He hadn’t given up entirely - he wasn’t going to just leave and go back to The Commission empty handed - but he was beyond tired of just sitting here, meditating, or whatever.

Hence, snack.

He had just unwrapped the twine tie holding his little meal together when a rustling sound just at the edge of the trees grabbed his attention, and his head snapped up as a mix of anxiety and excitement shot through his veins, fingers tightening subconsciously in his lap and crushing a few of the crackers. He located the source of the sound a moment later, and stared restlessly at the small, thorny bush that was moving and jerking unnaturally, eyes wide and breath frozen in his chest.

The bush lurched violently once more, and then parted, allowing a fuzzy raccoon to stumble free of the bramble and step into the clearing. It shook out its fur with a shiver, and then looked over towards Hawks with an insistent expression, staring not at the mage himself, no, but rather the package in his lap.

Hawks’ stomach dropped in disappointment before he could stop it, and he blew out a breath as his expression again fell to moderate annoyance. Oh well. No need to get too discouraged.

He returned to unwrapping his food the rest of the way while the raccoon lumbered around in his periphery and shuffled gradually closer, and peeled back the top of the brown cloth to grab the first cracker in the stack between two fingers.

“Hey buddy, you looking for food?” he called out softly, and watched the raccoon perk its head up where it was now standing just on the other side of the ring of mushrooms. “Want one?” He raised the thin, dry cracker in the air and waved it from side to side, smiling despite himself as the raccoon’s head turned to follow the food, before tossing it with a flick of his wrist and sending it to the ground just to the left of the small animal.

The raccoon grabbed it immediately in a tiny black hand and stuffed it in its mouth, and Hawks smiled as he took a few crackers for himself and did the same, not necessarily enjoying the hard crunch or the excessive salt, but at least enjoying the break from monotony.

“You know, you’re the first animal I’ve seen around here all day,” he mumbled through a mouthful of crackers, before he tilted his head to the side in consideration. “But I guess most of them are probably put off by the crazy magic around here, huh?” he asked, and watched as the raccoon chewed enthusiastically, small hand still pressed against its mouth. “But not you, I guess. Maybe that makes you special, then. … Or just really hungry, maybe…”

The raccoon finished eating, and sniffed the ground around it on either side before it paused and looked up at him expectantly, and Hawks laughed at the intensity and impatience in its black eyes. Honestly, it was sort of impressive how sternly this small, fluffy animal was able to glare at him, and he shook his head as he nevertheless dug out another cracker and tossed it to the animal, which snatched it up immediately. As he watched it eat, Hawks started to notice more about it, as well - what he had first assumed were shadows or patches of mud were actually sections of missing fur, scattered seemingly randomly across the back and legs of the raccoon and revealing shiny pink skin underneath. The damage was not insignificant, and Hawks felt his heart swell as his eyebrows dipped into a frown - luckily the scars didn’t seem to bother the animal or restrict its movement, but Hawks couldn’t imagine what it must have suffered before they healed.

He glanced down and wrenched a handful of crackers free from his quickly diminishing pile, and tossed them over.

Hawks bent one knee up in front of him, and let his eyes wander back over the nearby trees, searching for shapes and patterns as the wind blew through the leaves. “You don’t happen to know any magical creatures around here, do you?” he asked the raccoon, who paid less than no attention to him, and he huffed. “I’m supposed to be out here to find a familiar, but I guess my professors forgot to explain, you know, how to find one…”

He let his head fall to the side, pressed against his shoulder, and started to sway his feet back and forth aimlessly. “All they said was just be yourself, put yourself out there, and the right companion will find you, which is apparently - bullshit,” he scoffed. “I even researched the most common places that familiars tend to appear, and all kinds of history - did you know that there are rumors All Might met his familiar in this same forest?” He glanced to the side, and found the raccoon still idling nearby, now sitting with its hind legs splayed in front of it and both front paws wrapped around the end of a cracker. It met his eyes as he looked at it, and tilted his head almost as if it was listening, and Hawks smiled tiredly.

I am talking to a raccoon.

“Anyway,” he continued, and went back to staring out into space. “I thought I’d have a good chance of finding one here, especially with all the crap The Commission gave me - “ he lifted one hand and gestured in an arc to the discarded hat and string of potions “ - but I guess… that was incorrect. I know the potency of this stuff isn’t the issue, I mean, I’ve been choking on magic all morning, but, I don’t know … “ His smile fell, and his limbs went limp against the ground as the weight of his failures today caught up to him. “ … maybe there’s something wrong with me. It’s not like I’m from a special family or anything, maybe I just - maybe I’m just not cut out for this, and the familiars can tell.”

He laughed bitterly and bit the inside of his cheek. He didn’t even know if the raccoon was still here, or if he was now just complaining to the empty air. “The Commission was really hoping that I’d get a good one, I know. A really powerful one. Because without it, even if I studied for the rest of my life, I’d just never be all the great. They never told me outright because of favoritism or whatever, but it’s not hard to tell - they want me to be the best. Or, no - “ he paused, and dug his fingers into the unmoving stone. “ - they expect me to be the best. And that’s okay, I can live with the pressure, I just… I just don’t want to disappoint them.”

Hawks dropped his head, and glared down at his robe and the intricately woven spells embroidered on it, blinking his eyes in frustration. After a few tired breaths, he forced himself to look to the side, fully expecting to be alone once more, only to smile in quiet relief when the same raccoon was still there. It was standing on all fours again now, and watching him with an unexpectedly intense expression, dark and shadowed eyes peering directly into his own almost as though it was inspecting him.

Hawks frowned, and leaned minutely away from it as a building sense of unease started to push at the back of his mind, and he slowly pulled the hand that had been resting nearest to the animal up into his lap.

The raccoon’s tail flicked, and then it looked down.

Hawks exhaled, and started to mentally chastise himself for being ridiculous -

The raccoon raised one front paw and lifted it carefully over the fairy ring, and stepped onto the black stone.

The obsidian cracked violently at the point of contact, splintering and destroying the reflective surface into a million fragile shards that creaked as though a massive and sudden weight was bearing down on them, and Hawks yelped and jerked back. The fragments started to vibrate under his body, turning the creaking into a low, deafening hum that reverberated and magnified through the air, and the magic that had filled the area for hours suddenly peaked and collapsed, rushing in towards the center of the clearing with a solid wall of wind that Hawks struggled to keep from crumpling under, throwing both hands in front of him to keep from smashing his face into the ground. The energy solidified into a single point at the dead center of the ring and ignited, sparking into a dark blue that poured into the cracks in the stone, dancing and burning without heat as though the fire itself had been trapped and caged within the black, and illuminated the chalk ruin still drawn there that was now shifting and spinning and glowing a harsh, bright white.

Hawks heaved in a desperate breath and coughed, struggling to lift himself up on trembling arms and wrenched his eyes up to the figure now just across from him as his head began to pulse with a migraine.

The raccoon. Sitting calmly on the stone.

Hawks swallowed, and forced himself to meet its eyes - his eyes. They matched the stone beneath them so perfectly that Hawks almost thought it was a reflection at first - they were a deep, glossy black that hid a raging blue wildfire inside, and as the raccoon’s head moved, his eyes left faint blue trails of magic that kindled and flickered through the air.

Hawks’ heart pounded in his chest, but his fear was loosening and changing with every breath. “You’re a familiar,” he rasped.

And the raccoon smiled at him.

The pressure spiked at the back of his head, and he grimaced as he squinted his eyes. The rune was still blazing between them, throwing out sharp streaks of light and making the forest around them seem that much darker. Another burst of pain finally forced his eyes closed all the way, and in the darkness the unyielding strain at the back of his mind seemed to grow, pushing a groan from his lips and his head towards the ground. It felt like static was invading his thoughts, filling his head with buzzing and aggravating his emotions. It felt like drowning, or passing out, or using too much magic, or -

It felt like someone.

Hawks crushed his eyes closed even further as his breathing picked up, and he forced himself to focus, pushing back on the mind he felt squeezing against his own.

… What’s your name?

The static seemed to ignite, burning through his head and pushing an adrenaline and a power that he had never felt before through every cell in his body, and Hawks swore he could hear someone laughing.

Dabi.

II.

Hawks shifted in his seat, leaning to the side and tucking one leg up under the other, and brought the piece of parchment closer to the candle.

Hawks frowned and tilted the paper from side to side, cursing his own messy handwriting and struggling to read the last couple of ingredients needed for this potion. Technically, he could go ask the professor for clarification on the assignment if he really couldn’t figure it out, but he would rather avoid the embarrassment of having to admit that he wrote so fast it had become illegible.

He sighed, and tapped his foot against the ground.

Screw it. I’m pretty sure it says elderberries.

He set the parchment off to the side with little care, and ducked down to grab his rucksack from under the table, rifling through it until he found the old wooden box he used to store his potion supplies. He whacked the box onto his desk with a thump, and flicked it open, only to realize that his stocks were much lower than he had assumed. He huffed, and then squinted over at the list of things he needed, turning his head to the side to read - he should have everything, except for -

He rolled his eyes. Elderberries. God damn it.

He brought one hand up and pressed it against his face, pushing on his cheek and scrunching up one of his eyes as he glared at the list. It was already late into the night, and his body ached at the thought of getting redressed and putting his boots on to go and dig around in the storerooms. He could wait until the morning, but then he’d risk being late for the additional animal studies class he had just been moved into, and ugh -

He threw his head back with a sigh and stared up at the flickering shadows on the ceiling.

… Or … maybe?

He sat back up and turned around, looking back over his bedroom in the low light, and found his familiar sitting on the grey stone windowsill and staring out over the courtyard, head resting on his paws as he lay stretched out and seemingly comfortable. Honestly, he hadn’t interacted with Dabi all that much - he, along with the other students in his year, were all still adjusting to the concept of having another magical being bound to them, and besides, every familiar was unique. So far, Dabi had generally kept to himself, and seemed content to ignore Hawks entirely any time they were actually in the vicinity of one another. He was entirely self-sufficient (though this did not stop him from stealing Hawks’ food when the opportunity arose), unobtrusive, and equally unhelpful. His favorite spots seemed to be Hawks’ windowsill, the pile of robes draped over his chair, and the back corner of the college library, though half the time, Hawks swore he disappeared from the campus entirely.

But, regardless of the cold-shoulder thus far, they were supposed to be partners. Contractually obligated, in fact, Hawks reassured himself as he dithered with an unusual anxiety for a moment longer.

He took a deep breath, and tacked on a polite smile for good measure. “Hey… Dabi? Would you mind grabbing me some elderberries from downstairs?” he asked softly, breaking the silence that had filled the room for the past hour.

Dabi did not react, still staring out through the window without a care in the world, and Hawks’ uncertainties multiplied, heating and worming their way through his stomach. That’s not an unreasonable request, right? Simple and easy, nothing too difficult. Or is it too simple? Is it considered demeaning to ask a familiar to fetch stuff? I mean they are intelligent beings, but still, he can’t just laze around all the time, surely this is fine?

Hawks cleared his throat. “Hey, did you hear - “

Dabi’s head snapped to look at him suddenly, beady black eyes locking with Hawks’ own - in the dark, it was much easier to see the flickers of blue fire trapped under the surface, and Hawks swallowed uneasily. He had just opened his mouth to mumble some kind of apology when Dabi looked away, tail flicking irritably, and slowly pushed himself up from the windowsill, stretching his paws out in front of him and arching his back as he stretched. He jumped down from his perch a moment later, thudding against the wooden flooring, and padded his way over towards Hawks’ desk at the same leisurely speed he did everything. Hawks simply sat and watched, still turned awkwardly half around in his chair, in fear of somehow doing something else to seemingly aggravate his familiar.

But hey, he still listened, right? That’s gotta be good. You’re not a complete failure at this, Hawks.

Dabi jumped up onto the surface of his desk with a scrabble of his back claws against the side, and turned his head from side to side to take in the jumble of items in front of him - not only Hawks’ ingredients and current homework, but also the alchemy book still open from earlier, a mug full of quills, a cup half full of water, and a crumbled stack of papers of unknown origin - and Hawks suddenly felt a pang of unreasonable embarrassment that he didn’t have a cleaner workspace. Dabi’s tail twitched again, and then he turned his head to focus directly on the piece of parchment listing the ingredients needed, small black eyes squinting in the low light, and all at once Hawks realized that he was actually reading.

I guess that makes sense - familiars are just as smart as we are after all. Nevertheless, Hawks had to fight to keep his lips from tilting up into a smile. Still, pretty funny to see a raccoon trying to do my homework.

Dabi huffed through his nose almost as if he was sighing, and then shuffled back over to the edge of the desk before jumping down and meandering out the door without any further comment or indication of any kind. Hawks frowned as his eyes followed Dabi’s casually retreating form, eyebrows furrowing together, and started to fidget with the edges of the paper as a strange mix of awkwardness and annoyance swirled around in his head.

He had absolutely no idea whether Dabi was leaving to grab the ingredient he had asked for or just wandering off on his own again.

His question was answered a half hour later when the door to his room creaked open slowly to reveal Dabi’s return, but his genuine surprise and happiness at Dabi actually choosing to be helpful was immediately drowned out by confusion at the sight of what Dabi had clasped in his mouth. It was a sprig of many small, white flowers bunched together, held by its thin green stem and listing to one side as it was brought over and dropped on top of the desk just in front of him.

Hawks recognized it a moment later - elderflowers, not elderberries.

Hawks stared back at Dabi’s entirely apathetic expression, the familiar now sitting on his back legs at the edge of the desk and reclining as though he had just completed a great deal of work. Hawks’ frown returned in full force.

“Actually, I asked for elderberries, not elderflowers,” Hawks said slowly, only to watch Dabi’s ears flatten against his head in clear annoyance.

Dabi nudged the flowers closer to him with one of his feet.

Hawks tilted his head to the side and pursed his lips, looking between the dainty white flowers and the irritated raccoon. He hated that he couldn’t tell whether this was actually a misunderstanding or if Dabi was deliberately trying to harass him, and he sighed through his nose.

“Yeah, no, I see them, but - “ he turned to grab the piece of paper, and held it up into the light, pointing at the last scrawled ingredient with the tip of a finger “ - see, here it says that this potion needs elderberries. So… “ he paused as a low growl started to build in Dabi’s throat, and the paper crinkled awkwardly in his hand. “... I also need elderberries.”

I have no idea what I am doing wrong here but clearly I am doing something.

Hawks felt a pressure start to build at the back of his head as Dabi’s annoyance began to filter through their bond, and his growling seemed to reverberate around the inside of Hawks’ skull, but Hawks forced himself to hold Dabi’s gaze even as his fingers tightened around the parchment. This was supposed to be a partnership, damnit, he would not be bullied by a small furry animal, magical or otherwise.

Dabi’s tail twitched, thumping against the desk, and then he leaned forward and snatched the paper from Hawks’ grasp, tearing the corner in the process, and pointed at the same scrawled word at the bottom.

Hawks’ own annoyance started to grow, and he dug his elbows into the table and leaned forward towards Dabi.

“Yes, elderberries. That’s what I said.”

Dabi glanced up at the ceiling in apparent exasperation and then returned to glaring at him, tiny paw now tapping at the paper insistently and with a significant amount of noise.

“Yes, elderberries! What do you want?” Hawks exclaimed with a wave of his hands, and Dabi’s anger started to push so hard against his own mind that a headache started to form behind his eyes. Dabi continued to tap angrily at the paper, then pointed at the flowers between them, and then returned to pointing at the last word.

Hawks clenched his hands into fists where they lay in his lap, and stared at the horribly scribbled smudge of word, made even more illegible by the low flickering candlelight. He gritted his teeth together in frustration, only to squint his eyes and tilt his head to the side, blinking against the pain in his head.

Actually… now that I look at it.

He peered back up at Dabi, who had stopped drumming his hand against the paper but looked no less irritated, and offered an awkward smile.

“... It says elderflowers, doesn’t it?”

Hawks felt Dabi’s anger burst and melt away to a disappointed kind of relief, and the tension in his head dissipated as Dabi threw the paper down on the desk and turned away, jumping down to the ground with a wildly twitching tail and stalking over to the other side of the room, where he immediately threw himself down onto a pile of robes in the corner and turned pointedly away from Hawks.

Hawks watched him go and rubbed at the back of his neck, mouth contorted into a mixture of a grimace and a smile. “Thank you!” he called out cheerily, even as Dabi went back to steadfastly ignoring him, and he tried to convince himself that this whole encounter had not been a total failure.

It’s a step in the right direction. I will not be the only mage here that cannot work with their familiar.

. . .

The next morning, he brought back an extra plate of fruit from breakfast and left it on the windowsill; when he returned from class, the platter was gone, and Dabi was napping in its place.

III.

Dabi turned in his sleep, rolling towards Hawks and crumpling the page of the open book that he was currently using as a pillow, and Hawks felt his lips twitch up into an amused smirk.

There were not many students currently using The Commission’s library - many were out enjoying the unusually pleasant weather in the courtyard or buying lunch from one of the many shops that lined the perimeter of the campus - so Hawks and Dabi were virtually alone in the small corner on the second floor that they had camped out in. Rumi (another mage from the school of Destruction) and her own rabbit familiar had joined them earlier, but had gotten tired of the endless reading and researching a few minutes ago and left to bother some poor, young professor in the school of Illusion named Tsunagu Hakamada who had apparently dared to comment on Rumi’s outfit yesterday.

That, and Hawks was nearly certain that Rumi’s familiar had been begging to leave for the past half hour after Dabi had growled at her and she had darted away to hide on Rumi’s lap.

Hawks’ smirk grew at the memory, and he let his eyes drift lazily over Dabi as he twitched in his sleep, one paw clenching and unclenching as he dreamed. He had been warming up to Dabi more and more recently - his continuous apathy and ever present moodiness had a certain charm about it, once you got to know him, and Hawks appreciated the way he served as a constant in his otherwise very hectic and stressful life. He had realized that Dabi was incredibly intelligent, too, for as much as he loved to bury it underneath sheer laziness, and had even been able to convince him to explain some of the more difficult material a few times (though not without a fair number of bribes). Dabi still complained and whined about helping as much as ever, but he always followed through, and Hawks was pretty sure that Dabi had been choosing to spend time with him more often as well.

He counted that as progress.

“Hey, Dabi,” he spoke quietly, and drummed his fingers along the edge of the library table, “I got a question for you.”

Dabi, as usual, ignored him, and Hawks sighed amicably, closing and pushing aside the books on ornithology and anatomy that he had been perusing earlier to instead study the familiar in front of him.

“Hey, Dabs,” Hawks continued, slightly louder, and jabbed the end of his quill into Dabi’s exposed stomach, pressing down a patch of black fur and jostling him ever so slightly.

Dabi slept on without so much as a twitch, proving himself to either be an exceptionally deep sleeper or a particularly committed actor, and Hawks let his lips twist up into a half formed grin. He threw the quill to the side with a clatter, and leaned forward across the table on his elbows, sticking his face just above Dabi’s own and staring down at him through a few stray hairs that had slipped free from behind his ears.

Daaaabbiiiii, wake up!!

Dabi’s eyes opened slowly, sliding immediately into a squinted glare that drilled into Hawks’ delighted expression - he was still getting the hang of communicating telepathically with Dabi, and thus it was always extra rewarding when it worked, even if the result was just an increasingly annoyed familiar. Dabi exhaled loudly, and Hawks finally leaned away and sat back in his chair, kicking his feet out under the table as he did so. Dabi dithered in disappointment for a moment longer, and then slowly rolled to his feet, shaking out his fur and stretching out his legs before he sat back with a thump, and fixed Hawks’ with an expression that made him feel like Dabi would be raising an eyebrow at him if he had one.

“Right, so,” Hawks said, answering Dabi’s unspoken ‘what?’ and clasping his hands together on the table, “I was wondering … do you ever change your form?” he asked, and then continued on after a moment after a lack of response from Dabi. “Because I know that that red haired kid’s familiar, Baku - something? has been favoring a human form lately - “ Hawks turned to the side, tilting his head and looking out over the empty library as he thought, tapping his fingers along the back of his other hand “ - and I know that Rumi’s familiar has been changing between different species of rabbits pretty often, and they told us in class that familiars can generally take on any shape - even including like, turning into various magical objects - so basically, I was just wondering if there was a reason you had never shifted around me?” Hawks rambled, and then turned back to Dabi. “Do you just prefer the raccoon, or - ?”

Hawks’ pensive expression fell with a pinch of his eyebrows as he caught sight of Dabi - he was twisted away from Hawks, and staring down at the wood grain of the table intensely. His front paws were twisted into fists in his lap, and his mouth was so tense that he looked halfway to a snarl, and Hawks’ heart twisted in his chest.

“Hey, it’s no big deal! I really don’t mind if you don’t!” Hawks added quickly, and brought both palms up in front of him, “It’s cool if you don’t want to or whatever, it doesn’t bother me, I was just curious!” He didn’t quite understand Dabi’s severe reaction, or where exactly he had slipped up, but he felt no need to pry either - the last thing he wanted was his and Dabi’s budding friendship to be hampered by something as stupid as his own idle curiosity. “Seriously, I won’t mention it again. Raccoon’s make great companions anyway.”

Hawks swallowed awkwardly behind his smile, and watched as Dabi seemed to deflate. The raccoon closed his eyes for a moment, and then slowly uncoiled his paws before shifting and turning his back to Hawks entirely, yet for some reason, it felt more like an invitation than a dismissal. Hawks’ eyebrows furrowed further as he responded to the faint tug at the back of his head, and reached a tentative hand slowly towards Dabi’s back.

“You - you want to show me something?” he asked quietly, trying to puzzle together the vague feelings Dabi was conveying to him, and Dabi huffed, one ear flicking against his skull. “Okay, sure, got it,” Hawks mumbled, and rested the tips of his fingers lightly against the fur at the back of Dabi’s neck, realizing all at once that Dabi had never actually allowed him to touch him before, and a subtle sort of happy pride bubbled up in his chest. He brushed his hand down slowly over the soft fur and old scars, only to pause almost immediately with a frown as his fingers skimmed over something unusual, and he brought his other hand up haltingly to gently part the fur just at the top of Dabi’s back.

“You - oh, wow,” Hawks whispered, leaning forward and bringing his wide eyes closer to his finger tips. At the very top of Dabi’s spine, branded into his very skin, was an old and very complex ruin, woven over itself again and again in layers of scar tissue and powerful magic. It was warm to the touch, and seemed to only grow hotter the longer he examined it, sending pulses of static into his fingers and a sudden nausea into his brain.

His eyes hardened the longer he looked, and his frown turned into a scowl. “Someone cursed you, didn’t they?” he murmured, and Dabi jolted, tail flicking erratically from side to side as suddenly a burst of vertigo struck Hawks’ mind, leaving faint afterimages of red hair and an angry fist and the sharp taste of fear, and Hawks had to suck in a breath. He shook his head to clear it, and then forced his fingers to loosen where they had subconsciously tightened in Dabi’s fur, finding his voice again after a moment. “... I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said, before he tugged lightly at Dabi’s fur, pulling it farther to the side so he could get a better look. As intricate as the curse was, it was not entirely unfamiliar - words of power formed the base, upon which tangled clauses and rules spun and intertwined, where they were joined by fundamentals of Abjuration and lastly, Transmutation.

Hawks hummed under his breath as the wheels started to turn in his head, and he bounced his leg restlessly under the table, tracing one finger over the very outermost circle. “... This limits your ability to transform, right?” he mumbled, and squinted his eyes. “Maybe through painful or uncontrollable side effects, or … prevents it entirely maybe? … then again, with so much influence from Abjuration, it could just be limiting your magical potential all together, and the inability to shift is just a side effect of that… There are a lot of phrases about banishment, too, so maybe it’s several curses merged together…?“

Hawks let go of Dabi and shoved back, turning to the edge of the table to reach carelessly into his rucksack, shoving his possessions around until his fingers wrapped around a leather bound notebook. He slung it down onto the table with a crack!, and flipped open to the first blank page, where he began to write sloppily and quickly, scrawling out the symbols that he had seen burned into Dabi’s back. Dabi himself turned slowly at the noise, shivering and shuddering in an attempt to make his fur lie flat again, and looked down at Hawks with an odd expression, black eyes wide and suddenly vulnerable.

Hawks glanced up from his writing, and met Dabi’s eyes with a smile.

“You didn’t pick the smartest kid in the whole college for nothing, Dabi,” he said confidently, and Dabi’s ears twitched forward in attention as his paws tightened together at his chest.

“I will fix this.”

IV.

Hawks scowled at himself in the mirror, running his hands restlessly over the wrinkles at the top of his robe, and turned from side to side with a swish as he attempted to examine himself from every angle in the low light. His frown only deepened as he caught sight of another sharp crease running just between his shoulder blades, and he struggled to stretch an arm over his shoulder to reach it, contorting himself into painful angles and stretching up on the tips of his toes as he tried futilely to make his robe lay flat.

Behind him, Dabi started to laugh.

Hawks wrenched his arm out from behind his back, catching and twisting his sleeve around his bicep as he did so, and glared at the raccoon familiar in the mirror. Dabi was sitting on a pile of blankets at the edge of his bed and cackling into the still air, head tilted back and pointy teeth glinting in the candlelight. Hawks deflated, head falling to the side and shoulders slumping, and tried to keep himself from smiling as Dabi nearly rolled over backwards from the force of his laughter.

“Dabiiii, don’t make fun of me!” he whined, and anxiously returned to fidgeting with his clothes, this time wrapping his fingers around the thin tie at the top of his gown and trying to straighten it. “I didn’t know that my only good robe had gotten wrinkled at the back of my closet! What if she makes fun of me?”

Hawks ran his hands once more over the front of his clothes as he groaned, nerves and anxieties multiplying rapidly and bubbling quickly towards frustration. His hands twisted into fists in his robe as he sighed, before suddenly he moved to rip the offending garment off completely, undoing the clasp with one hand and shucking it off of his shoulders as his lips curled again into a frown. He caught the robe in one hand as it slipped free and tossed it at the bed as he turned, smirking as Dabi was accidentally caught beneath it and tangled in the fabric. Dabi hissed in anger as his chuckling was abruptly cut off, and started to claw his way free from under the heavy robe, while Hawks continued past and flung open his closet once more, dragging his fingers along the few options he had hanging up.

“Do you think she’ll hate it if I just wear one of the formal uniform ones?” he called over his shoulder, and plucked out a dark red robe patterned with Transmutation symbols that he then held up into the light. This robe, though clearly less extravagant than the blue silk now crumpled on his bed, was neatly pressed and freshly washed, and Hawks pinched the edge of the sleeve between two of his fingers. “I think this would be okay, what about you, Dabi?”

He tilted back to look at the creature in question, and found him now peeking out from under the robe he had been pelted with, head and front paws wiggled free and eyes squinted into a glare. Hawks’ met his judgement with a quirk of a smile, and Dabi sighed, long and drawn out, before poorly hidden amusement began to trickle into Hawks’ thoughts.

You’ll look terrible in whatever you wear.

Hawks’ smile swelled into a grin. “Why thank you, that’s very kind,” he teased, and knocked his closet door closed with his foot before returning to the mirror. He slid the robe up over his arms and onto his shoulders, tugging at the collar a few times until it laid flat, and then stepped back to evaluate how he looked. He did have to admit - red was a good color on him, and he felt some of his trepidations fade away as he smiled at his reflection, turning half way to watch as the long fabric fluttered out behind him.

Okay. Step one, success.

He heard Dabi thunk onto the ground behind him as he looked down at his desk, sweeping a pile of old homework to the side and reaching for his hairbrush. He grabbed it in one hand and brought it up to his hair, where it immediately snagged on a knot created by one or another of his bustling exploits around campus, and he bit the inside of his cheek as he forced the brush through the tangle. His eyebrows gradually furrowed in concentration as he worked methodically through golden chaos on the top of his head, tapping his feet against the ground and internally debating the merits of actually trying to style it tonight. He had just about finished combing it when he felt the prick of tiny claws on the back of his leg, and he rolled his eyes as he was forced to tilt forward to keep his balance.

“Look, I know that Rumi said this was cute or whatever that one time, but this cannot be your new thing,” he grumbled, and braced himself with one hand on the lip of the desk as Dabi finally hauled himself up his back and over his shoulder, hooking his paws into the fabric there to keep from slipping. Hawks raised an eyebrow at him in the mirror, and sighed even as he smiled when Dabi instantly tilted his head to the side to stare back, before he resumed his battle against his hair.

“You know, I feel like not having to walk places is only going to encourage your laziness,” he muttered under his breath, and felt Dabi’s tail flick against the back of his neck before the raccoon suddenly leaned over and grabbed at his hairbrush, and Hawks had to shove down a laugh as he jerked it out of Dabi’s reach at the last moment. Dabi growled in his ear in retaliation, and dug his back claws further into Hawks’ shoulder as he twisted around and planted a paw in the direct middle of his cheek, reaching again for his hand, while Hawks made every effort to continue brushing his hair as though nothing was happening. This back and forth continued for several minutes with increasing intensity, until there was a very determined raccoon clinging to the top of Hawks’ skull and Hawks himself was doubled over, pinwheeling his arms and tilting dangerously to keep from tipping back onto the hard floor.

Hawks laughed even as Dabi pulled viciously on his hair, and reached up with both hands to grab the offending familiar around the ribcage, yanking him off with no shortage of hissed protests and plopping him down gracelessly on his side on the desk. “Alright, that’s enough out of you, thank you,” Hawks said with one pointer finger jabbed in Dabi’s direction, though the familiar himself seemed to find his scolding profoundly hilarious, as evidenced by the presence of pins and needles of amusement tickling the back of his brain.

“Undoing all my hard work, such a terrible familiar,” Hawks joked as he threw his hairbrush to the side and ran his fingers through his hair, giving up entirely on turning it into anything presentable, while Dabi simply huffed and stretched out more comfortably along the table. “At least looking like a mess hasn’t hindered my chances so far…” Hawks considered, and rested his hands on his hips as he stared down at Dabi.
He chewed on the side of his bottom lip as he thought, and exhaled through his nose, nerves slowly seeping in again in the absence of any distractions. “Ugh, what if she just hates me, Dabi,” he said under his breath, and started to rub his thumb over a seam in his robe. “I mean, I’m not awful, but I’m so boring,” he drawled, head falling to the side in exasperation before the rest of his body fell with it, and he plunked down into his desk chair, landing with both elbows on his desk. “All I do is homework, Dabi, what if she doesn’t want to talk about classes? What else do I even do - work at the Aviary? Oh god, what if she hates birds?”

This single-minded studiousness was reflected clearly in the room around him - textbooks on various avian wing structures and human transmutation warred for his attention with the tomes on old curses and familiar magic, both tugging him toward progress and new developments and crowding every flat surface available. Any time not spent on mandatory homework was currently filled by either helping Dabi or preparing project ideas for his final thesis, and the messy state of the room - decorated by piles of clothes and yet-to-be-returned plates from the dining hall - only further supported that point.

In short, he didn’t exactly have time for normal hobbies.

Dabi’s ears twitched, and he bent forward to rest his head on his paws, peering over at Hawks with flickering blue-black eyes.

Have you tried not being yourself?

Dabi’s lips curled up into a half snarl, half smirk, and Hawks felt his own expression mirror it, and he rested his cheek on his hand. “Thanks for the great advice, as always,” he said sarcastically, and rolled his eyes.

At the door, someone suddenly knocked loudly, and Hawks jolted up from where he was slouched.

“Oh, shit, already?” he gasped, and jumped out of his chair, turning and darting towards where his keys and money were lying on his bed.

“Hey, Hawks, hurry it up! Takeyama doesn’t like to wait!” the new visitor shouted from behind the closed door, sounding entirely like Rumi, and Hawks called back a coming! before shoving his possessions in his pockets and vaulting over where his rucksack lay in the center of the floor. He reached the door in a flash and yanked it open, calling out a goodbye to Dabi over his shoulder with a wave before he was pulled out into the hallway by a very enthusiastic Destruction mage and disappeared around the corridor.

Dabi, now left alone, simply rolled over and unfurled himself across as many important looking papers as possible, and promptly fell asleep.

. . .

Hawks returned not more than two hours later, slipping in with a quiet click of the door and falling face first into bed with a groan, boots still firmly on his feet.

“I don’t know, Dabi,” he mumbled into the comforter, forehead pressed firmly against the mattress, “maybe I should just accept that I don’t like girls like that.”

Dabi, as expected, had nothing helpful to say, and instead started to cackle at him from the windowsill.

V.

“Okay, let’s go over this one more time.”

The air in the room was tense with both nerves and magic, and it made the small, dark hall that they were huddled in seem even more crowded. They were hidden in the basement of an old tower at the very edge of The Commission’s campus, and shrouded under layers and layers of cloaking and warding spells. The ritual they were about to perform was volatile, dangerous, and untested - they were risking immediate expulsion just by daring to attempt it, and the consequences for any mistake were severe.

Unbreakable curses were not meant to be broken.

“The Latin is correct,” Hawks continued, notebook held open in one hand and spinning a quill absentmindedly in the other, while Dabi watched him silently from the corner. “And that includes … word definitions, and connotations, verb conjugations, noun case . . . “ he rattled off, and paced slowly around the intricate chalk design on the floor, eyes darting between the notes in his hand and the translation on the floor, checking each line and each letter and each word with the precision of a hawk. “We’ve clarified everything ten times over, so there’s no opportunity for the spell to warp. Everything is written simply, and straightforward, and it all makes sense…” he mumbled, reading over the writing carefully and obsessively, just as he had been doing for the past two weeks, until the words had blended and mutated and blurred to the point that he couldn’t understand them anymore.

“... quae nunc tuīs ab unguibus reglūtinā et remitte…” Hawks whispered, pronunciation now seamless and fluid even at the speed at which he rambled under his breath, hunting for even the tiniest, most inconsequential error among the heap of jumbled text, and yet finding none. The words had not spontaneously changed since the last time he had scrutinized them, and yet this did little to assuage his fears.

They must be no less than perfect.

Hawks forced himself to take a deep breath, closing his notes, and tore his tired eyes away from the floor, plastering on a smile that looked a great deal more confident than he felt. “Okay, Toga, what about you?”

The witch in question was standing on the opposite side of the rune from Hawks, hands clasped together beneath her long sleeves and bouncing absentmindedly from her heels to her toes and back again as she stared off towards the door to the room. Her light blonde hair was pulled up sloppily into the same two buns as always, and her uniform robe had been cut off unevenly at the knee (against regulations) and transmuted to a garrish shade of hot pink (against regulations). At the top of her outfit, clinging to the fabric just around her collarbone, perched her first familiar - a dark green gecko named Spinner, whose tail was flicking anxiously and who seemed altogether unhappy to be participating in the evening’s events. Her other familiar, however - a scraggly golden retriever named Jin sitting just to her left - was smiling from ear to ear and appeared as at ease and happy as ever.

Toga’s head snapped over to meet Hawks’ eyes as he spoke, and she perked up immediately. “Ready to go if you are!” she said enthusiastically, and Hawks tried to keep his stomach from somersaulting. Toga was the best Transmutation mage in the entire college, but the more time Hawks spent around her, the more he was certain that was because of an overabundance of natural talent, and not any particular motivation to study or work hard.

He swallowed hard around his nerves, and drummed his fingers quietly along the notebook still clutched in his hands. “Mind running through everything once more for me?”

Toga rolled her eyes dramatically at him and shook her head, but stepped forward anyway, and began to point at various items gathered around them. “Sooooo I’ve already told you about the symbols,” she started, voice pitching up and down in an almost sing-song manner, and gestured in a wide arc to the chalk drawing on the floor, “and you double checked them yourself, so, obviously, those are good - “ she ambled around the circumference of the rune as Jin’s tail thumped lightly against the ground, and lifted one shoe to point “ - the candles are the right type of wax, and lit, the iron nails have been stuck through the door, aaannndd I coated the silver dowsing rod on the roof in Dabi’s blood when I first got here.” She tipped her head back to look at Hawks’ over her shoulder, and smiled upside down at him as Spinner scampered down her leg and onto the floor. “Are we good to go now?”

Hawks let his eyes scan once more over the shadowed room as his heart started to pound in his chest, watching as Spinner tucked himself behind Jin, and stood up straight.

“Alright … I guess it’s now or never,” he said slowly, and turned to his familiar. “Dabi?”

Dabi was sitting almost deathly still in the corner, in the same spot that he had been in nearly the entire hour they had been preparing. His eyes flickered up to meet Hawks’, blazing with blue flames that churned and scorched so brightly they seemed to illuminate the dark around him, and Hawks felt adrenaline start to gradually trickle into his veins. Dabi held his stare for several deafening heartbeats, before he slowly stood and stalked towards the center of the chalk spell with a scrape of his claws against the stone floor - a harsh sound that seemed to only magnify the already tense atmosphere.

Dabi laid down carefully at the very center of the rune, and curled his paws underneath his chest as his ears twitched and threatened to flatten against his skull, and Hawks felt the sudden need to reach out to him.

Instead, he clenched his hand into a fist, and stretched his lips into something like a smile. “Hey, no need to be nervous, Dabs,” he chuckled, “you’re in the hands of the two best Transmutation wizards at the school, right, Toga?”

Toga cheered from off to his side, complete with both fists raised in the air, while Dabi’s expression contorted into a more familiar scowl.

I’m n ot n ervo us.

Even without the pounding headache threatening to leak through their bond and overtake his mind, Hawks could tell that that was untrue, but he said nothing, and simply nodded. They were all nervous, after all.

Dabi’s tail tapped and jerked against the ground, while Hawks turned to the witch beside him, and held out a hand.

“Ready?”

Toga smiled unnaturally wide and snatched up his hand, meshing their fingers together and pressing their pointer fingers out and down towards the center of the rune, creating a conductive path through their own arms and bodies.

Hawks sucked in a breath through his teeth, and offered up a prayer to anyone that might be listening.

“Okay. Three, two, one … release.”

As the last syllables of the word left Hawks’ and Toga’s lips, there was the barest moment where the pressure in the room shifted and squeezed down against their jaws and ear drums, and the air smelled faintly of ozone, like an oncoming storm, before the tension snapped, and they were both hit with the full force of the magic they were attempting to channel. It arced through their bodies like a lightning bolt, crackling loudly and suddenly around them, and locked their muscles so tightly that even the gasp of pain stuck in Hawks’ throat was not able to escape his lips, and locked their palms around each other as the burst of energy erupted from their pointed fingers and struck the body of the familiar at the center of the room.

Dabi yelped and jerked as the magic found its target, limbs twitching with an overabundance of energy, as the candles around the circle started to blow out - the air in the room was still, and yet still the wicks were snuffed out as though they had never been lit at all, following one after the other counter clockwise around the circle, and Hawks forced in a breath to steady himself through lungs that still ached and refused to relax. In the near pitch black of the basement, Dabi’s form seemed to bend and distort, but the darkness did not last for long. Just as swiftly as the candles had first been extinguished, they were relit - this time by blue flames that flared and danced and all started to bend in towards the center of the rune as if magnetized by an invisible force.

Toga’s hand twitched in Hawks’ own.

Dabi’s spasms intensified until the motions of his limbs extended beyond their normal range, bending backwards at times while at others seeming to distend and elongate, and Hawks’ mind was assaulted by flashes of searing pain that seemed to pulse in time with the energy in the room. Dabi gasped again - in a voice, not an animal’s whimper, and yet entirely unnatural - and the pressure in the room started to build again as the hair on the back of Hawks’ arms stood up, and the buzzing sensation of electricity began to prick at his and Toga’s hands again, and the spell pitched and rolled and burned to a new intensity.

“... Hawks…,” Toga whispered beside him.

The magnetization, the pull, the unyielding force of the spell increased until Hawks himself could feel it, and he struggled to keep his head and back from bending down towards the center of the rune, as the blue flames of the candles extended into streamers that split at the ends and started to spiderweb, hovering over the chalk on the floor. Dabi groaned again, and then fell limp - head lolled back against the floor as though passed out - before something … before something started to move underneath his skin.

Hawks’ eyes widened subconsciously as fear started to drip into his veins, while Dabi’s listless form bulged and deformed as though his bones and organs were being uprooted and moved from the inside, pushing hard enough to be visible even through his mass of fur, which in itself suddenly began to change - in the perverse light of the room, each hair seemed to sharpen to a needle point, and then Hawks blinked, and Dabi’s fur had become a mat of pitch black, shining and oozing and beginning to drip onto the ground, splattering the pristine white chalk beneath him with festering corruption.

“Hawks,” Toga cried out quietly, and though Hawks didn’t dare to turn his eyes away from the transformation in front of him, he could see her face pale and shoulders hunch over in dread.

“Not yet,” Hawks urged, and tightened his grip on Toga’s hand - they themselves were a component in this ritual, and while trying to run away or somehow stop the spell before it had run to completion might save them, it might also destroy them.

He refused altogether to think about what might happen to Dabi if they tried to stop halfway through.

The pitch black tar that had once been the body of a racoon had lost nearly all of its original shape, and the eerie candlelight in the room seemed to be sucked into it, not unlike a black hole, where it thrashed and flickered from the inside. The smell of ozone peaked again, and then the mass on the floor changed - a bubble seemed to form from the very center, inflating slowly yet growing to nearly a foot in diameter, and the sloughing off to the side, only for the process to repeat, until Dabi’s form looked almost as though it was boiling, and the bubbles churned and built upon themselves until the lump was several feet tall.

This agitation seemed to only increased in speed and intensity, expanding and pushing out until the mass had filled the area of the rune, and Hawks could no longer see Jin and Spinner where they had been crouched across from him, and then the bubbles grew again and slipped over the edge - the boundary of the spell - and began to encroach on where Hawks and Toga were still locked in place.

Toga’s hand jerked in Hawks’, trying to retreat, but Hawks’ refused to move even as his field of vision was overtaken by black and the stone itself started to groan around them, vibrating dust down from the ancient ceiling.

Toga tugged again, and then whipped around to look at him, one bun starting to come loose and thin hairs flying free in the air, held separated by the electricity around them.

“Hawks!”

The walls trembled and shook, barely visible to Hawks now. One stone rattled free from somewhere behind him, sliding and skidding past along the ground to his right until it, too, was yanked in towards the center of the rune, only to collide with the black mass and shatter on impact as thought the solid stone had been made of glass.

“Not yet!”

The creaking and shuddering noise of the tower grew in volume until it felt like a physical weight in Hawks’ ears, pressing in on his brain, and he squinted his eyes and gritted his teeth against the force of it, while the blue fire churning with the black multiplied and spread under the surface, whipping against its confines and threatening to break free.

“Hawks -”

“No!”

It was almost touching them - another second, another heartbeat, and it would be around them, and Hawks felt the sudden urge to hold his breath, as worthless as the action would be, and then -

Pop!

The pressure, the noise, the swell of energy in the air - it all vanished in an instant, leaving behind a sudden silence that was almost as startling as the cacophony had been, and the black bubbles all popped, splattering Hawks, Toga, her familiars, and the rest of the room around them with a sticky black substance that was uncannily warm and already beginning to itch. Hawks stumbled backwards as the weight tugging him towards the rune vanished and gasped under the unexpected onslaught of tar, and his eyes jerked down to see -

A man. Fallen on all fours, turned away from Hawks and Toga, and shuddering at the center of where the now-covered chalk symbol should have been.

He was naked, with skin so pale that it almost seemed to glow in the low light - candles now burning a comforting orange instead of blue - interspersed with shiny pink and darker purple scars in a pattern that Hawks recognized. He was thin, too, limbs lanky and ribcage just barely too pronounced, with a mess of black hair that was currently plastered down over his forehead and the back of his neck, where just barely visible, were the white lines of an old curse branded into his skin.

There was a new mark there now - an angry, red cut that split the curse mark in half, running parallel to his spine, and Hawks started to smile when he saw it as lightheaded relief swept over him.

The man - Dabi - sucked in a breath and immediately choked as though he had forgotten how to breathe, and coughed onto the ground, body convulsing and shaking, only for his hacking to shift steadily into laughter, and he wheezed and cackled near hysterically as he slowly lifted an arm in front of his face, turning and inspecting it before he clenched his hand into a fist.

As he did so, the shadows in the room suddenly stretched and darkened, and raced towards Dabi where they suddenly became physical, moving like great streams of ink and swirling up and over his body. They formed into coal black clothes that wrapped perfectly around his limbs, save for one, which hung loose over his back and gradually solidified into the shape of a long black coat, torn intentionally into several ratty sections at the very bottom. Dabi relaxed his fist, and the transformation stopped, and stayed, cloth now fluttering softly to the ground and hanging as naturally as any other shirt or coat might.

Hawks’ smile widened into a blinding grin, while Toga slumped behind him, and from the very corner, Jin started to jump and bounce on his feet, tail wagging, while Spinner clung miserably from his fur.

Dabi himself stood slowly - bringing one leg under himself only to pause and sway before even attempting the other - and rose to his full height, and, oh -

He was taller than Hawks now, noticeably so, even as his shoulders slouched forward, and Hawks found his eyes glued to the back of his head.

Dabi ran a hand through his hair, pushing the wet mop back and off his face, and then turned to face the two mages. There was scarring covering the bottom of his jaw and the visible portion of his neck, which was matched by another patch of dark purple scars around his eyes that reminded Hawks of the black mask of fur around his eyes that he had had as a raccoon. Dabi looked up, meeting his eyes as Hawks stared at him, and his eyes were exactly the same - great pools of black filled with a ring of electric blue that shifted and burned and still left trails of magic through the air as he moved.

Oh, fuck.

Dabi’s mouth was half open, lips parted as he panted and still struggled to get his breathing under control after the ordeal he had just suffered, and yet, as Hawks watched, the corner of those lips twitched up into an unmistakable and familiar smirk.

Oh, fuck, he’s hot.

VI.

There was the sound of someone trying and failing to laugh quietly, and then the much sharper sound of glass clinking violently against the stone ground, and Hawks whipped around towards the noise.
“Mic! Keep it the fuck together, and shut up, oh my god!” Rumi hissed in a harsh whisper before Hawks could say anything, and kicked their other partner in crime in the shin before bending down and grabbing the bottle of alcohol where it had fallen and started to roll along the ground, her white hair shining almost unnaturally in the moonlight that was leaking in from the lone window in this storeroom.

Mic, a blonde, unruly Destruction mage and recent addition to his and Rumi’s two man crew, followed neither of Rumi’s suggestions, though he did at least stuff his hand into his mouth to somewhat dampen the sounds of his laughter. Rumi glared at him - half exasperated, half amused - and shoved the bottle into the black cloth sack slung over one of her shoulders, where it banged loudly against several of its siblings that had already been pilfered from the storeroom’s shelves. She shook her head once more at Mic, and then shoved him without looking - one slim hand colliding with his shoulder nearly sending him to the ground - before turning and stalking away towards the back of the room with a muttered curse under her breath.

Hawks felt himself start to smile as he exhaled, nerves quieting once more, and watched as Rumi disappeared around the tall shelves with a swish of her long hair, while Mic brought one trembling hand up to his face to wipe the tears from his eyes as his laughter finally started to settle down. Hawks rolled his eyes good-naturedly, and then turned back to what he had been doing before the threat of shattered glass had so rudely interrupted him, stretching up on the tips of his toes to peer into the shelf in front of him. The professors’ restricted supply room was much larger than he had imagined, and filled to the brim with many fascinating ingredients - phoenix feathers, dragon teeth, and countless others that he had yet to discover - but sadly, he would have to satiate his curiosity another time. They were on a strict time limit, here, and he would not jeopardize their mission.

He reached one hand into the shadowy depths of the dark oak shelf, and wrapped his fingers around the neck of a tall, skinny glass bottle, pulling it out and tilting the label toward the window. It was handwritten in a sloping, hurried scrawl, but was still legible enough to make out the words Fox Fairy Wine at the very top. Hawks raised an eyebrow in appreciation, and spun the bottle once more, examining the dark and unnaturally viscous liquid inside, before he shrugged to himself and slipped it into his rucksack.

Hawks. You’ve got company. Three corridors down.

Hawks’ heart jolted in his chest as Dabi’s words trickled smoothly into the back of his mind, and his eyes snapped over to where he had last seen his friends as he whispered sharply, “Guys! Time to go!” Beside him, Mic jerked in surprise as Hawks’ words split the stuffy silence in the room, banging his head against the bottom of a shelf as he did so, while Rumi poked her head out from around the cupboard at the back and grinned at him with a menacing mischievousness that only she seemed to be able to achieve.

Hawks gave one last look to the shelf in front of him, and snatched one more bottle without thinking - this one short and flared at the bottom - and shoved it into his bag before he tied it closed with a sloppy knot and swung it haphazardly over his shoulders. He crept silently to the end of the shelves and peeked through a small gap in between miscellaneous potion ingredients, discovering with a relieved sigh that the door to the storeroom was still closed, though it was likely not to stay that way for long. He ducked down and darted across to slip into the shadows against the wall, sliding along the stone until he was able to press his ear against the wooden door, and tried to listen for voices over the sound of his own blood rushing through his ears.

Silence, and then - One hallway. What are you still doing in there?

“We good?”

Hawks turned at the whisper, just enough to see Rumi and Mic standing behind him, and he nodded before his mouth twisted up into a smirk.

“For now,” he said, and then he wrenched the door open, and darted out into the corridor.

Hawks’ eyes flicked to the empty classroom just across the hallway, and he squinted into the darkness past the half open door before his face lit up as he recognized a familiar shape. Dabi’s eyes appeared first - two pinpricks of violent blue light against a background of pitch black - before the rest of his raccoon form slowly strode forward, ambling into the hallway with a flick of his tail and a ruffle of his fur.

“And you’re sure the seal on the door was broken? That’s kind of bold, isn’t it - ?” Both his and Dabi’s heads snapped comically to the side as a voice and the first flickers of torch light curled around the corner at the end of the corridor, and Hawks held his breath unintentionally as a tall and instantly recognizable professor turned into the hallway.

Tsunagu locked eyes with him, and for a moment, there was a tense, blissful silence before Tsunagu’s face contorted into shock and the flame on the torch held in his hand flared.

“Hey!”

Adrenaline exploded into Hawks’ limbs, and he brought two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute before he turned and started to run, shoes slipping on the slick floor and rucksack rattling incriminatingly, hotly pursued by Mic, Dabi, and a cackling Rumi.

Tsunagu shouted again for them to stop and was immediately ignored, and Hawks grinned, eyes wide, as the corridor blurred around him and his hair blew back as he sprinted through the dim castle. Rumi caught up to him in seconds, feet pounding much harder against the stone than Hawks’ own light steps, and instantly passed him, turning over her shoulder and whipping her hair to the side to stick her tongue out at him, and Hawks laughed in spite of the situation. Dabi reached him next, dashing on all fours and most certainly using magic to be able to keep up with him, darting in between the pockets of light created by the sparsely lit torches along the wall. Dabi disappeared into the next stretch of blackness, and when he reappeared, he had shifted forms, changing into a human in less time than it takes to blink, and looked over towards Hawks with a scorching smirk.

“You know, you’re leaving your friend behind,” Dabi said casually between hard breaths as he fell in next to Hawks, signature black coat trailing and flapping behind him.

Hawks looked back over his shoulder, hair whipping into his eyes, and cursed when he saw that Dabi was right. Mic - who was arguably running quite fast for a normal man - was no match for him or Rumi’s uncanny speed, and was now several feet behind them and falling back rapidly, panting loudly even over the smack of their footsteps.

Hawks grimaced, internally debating, before the telltale tingle of electricity crackled through the air. All at once, the hallway seemed to spin, rotating until it looked as though he and Dabi were running along the wall, and great cracks and divots splintered through the stone and loomed up all around them, aiming to trip them and splinter their ankles along the uneven terrain.

Hawks crushed his eyes closed without stopping or even slowing, and when he opened them not a second later, the hall had returned to normal. Illusion magic, Tsunagu’s specialty - incredibly potent and flexible in a way that other schools of magic could never be, and yet entirely useless once the target figures out it’s not real.

Dabi raised an eyebrow at him as though impressed, and Hawks let pride bubble through his chest for just a moment before he returned to focusing on much more pressing matters. Regardless of its efficacy, the fact that Tsunagu was using magic against them implied that he was not about to give up on this chase any time soon, and Hawks cursed before he suddenly stopped, bracing against one leg as he turned around without slowing down, and fell to his knees with a thunk.

“Hurry the hell up, Mic!” he shouted, and then pressed both palms flat against the floor, running through possible spells and scenarios for the handful of seconds it took a now disoriented Mic to splutter past him and round the corner after Rumi, before Hawks decided that the best solutions were often the simplest.

He leaned his weight into his forearms, and pushed magic so rapidly through his hands that his fingertips started to tingle, transforming the floor and the very bottom of the walls of the corridor into spikes and pits and other tripping hazards in a mockery of the false image that Tsunagu had thrown at them only a few moments ago. The man in question came into view just as the stone had started to creak, and Hawks released the spell with a gasp, falling forward slightly as the sudden fatigue from the massive energy drain washed over him. He saw the professor pause just at the boundary of the transmuted section, glaring daggers at him, and Hawks staggered to his feet with a goofy grin before he turned again and started into a jog. Tsunagu would certainly not be stopped by his little trick, but he would be slowed, and hopefully that would be enough time for Hawks to retreat and disappear.

He forced his tired legs to pick up the pace, only for the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up, and in the next moment, his vision went black as though he had been struck completely blind.

He stumbled slightly, and shook his head - not real.

The second his sight returned to him, another bolt of magic cracked through the air, and his stomach churned and swooped dangerously, and he stumbled more seriously as the urge to be sick nearly overwhelmed him.

Not real, shit.

Next, a near deafening, high pitched ringing sound that assaulted his ear drums and made him twist his expression into a horrible grimace -

Not real.

A piercing headache, now - the rapidly changing stimulus and mental strain was slowing him considerably, but he could at least see through his squinted eyes that Rumi and Mic had vanished, and would hopefully get away scot free. He hadn’t seen where Dabi had disappeared to, and didn’t know whether or not being bound to him as a familiar would cause Dabi any problems, but for the time being he would hope for the best.

Not real - fucking god damn it, Tsunagu, you really have it out for me.

Just as he overcame the latest spell, a sudden blinding heat pressed against his back, and he jolted forward as he turned back over his shoulder to look behind him, only to be nearly blinded by the intensity of the wall of blue fire that had sprung up seemingly from nowhere and filled the hallway. For a moment he thought it must be another Illusion, until he spotted Dabi at the base of the flames, hands extended and scar patches seeming to glow blue from within. Dabi glanced at him from the corner of his eye, and stopped channeling the spell once he saw that Hawks had recovered, though the flames themselves did not dissipate immediately, and remained a formidable wall separating the two of them from the angry professor on their tails.

Dabi turned and dashed towards Hawks, grabbing him by the sleeve as he passed and tugging him first into tripping over his feet before Hawks caught himself and broke into a run again as well.

“Come on, idiot,” Dabi mumbled at him as they darted away, though he truly seemed more happy than annoyed, and Hawks let himself smile tiredly. That smile grew more relieved as they turned the final corner and reached the stairwell leading up to the older students’ dormitories, and Hawks forced his wobbly legs to keep pace up the several flights of stairs they had to climb, though after a time Dabi did manage to pull away from him, taking two or three steps at a time with his long legs.

A few minutes later, Hawks himself finally reached the fifth floor, and paused at the opening to the stairs, one hand pushed against the wall and bent over at the waist, before he kicked himself into a jog and pressed on down the hallway. He started to slow with a sigh a few feet from their designated meeting place - Mic and his friend Aizawa’s room - and watched as Dabi’s head darted out around the doorway, looking down the hallway and fixing Hawks with a scowl. Dabi reached his hand out as soon as Hawks was in reach and dragged him bodily into the room by the front of his robe, causing Hawks to stagger and stumble against Dabi’s chest.

In an instant, Hawks’ exhaustion seemed to fade, and his eyes only widened further as Dabi reached over his shoulder to slam the door closed, now pinning him between Dabi’s body and the immoveable door now hard against his back. Hawks didn’t dare meet his eyes as it suddenly became much harder to swallow, but he could still see Dabi’s face, and could still see the way Dabi’s eyes darted down to his mouth before he finally leaned back.

“Slow ass, going to get us all in trouble,” Dabi smirked at him, and Hawks chuckled awkwardly as Dabi turned back towards the rest of the room.

“You were caught?” a low, tired voice piped up from a rocking chair against the wall, and Hawks looked over to find Aizawa frowning at him, head resting in one hand.

“Not caught!” Mic retorted, and skipped over to drape himself along the side of Aizawa’s chair, a bottle of mysterious content already open in one hand. “Pursued, yes. Followed, maybe,” he said with a smile, and gestured with his bottle. “But caught? Not technically!”

Aizawa looked up at Mic with an expression so pained Hawks almost wanted to laugh. “Did they see your faces?” he pressed, and Dabi snorted.

“Oh, he definitely saw Hawks’,” Dabi said, and Aizawa groaned before he seemed to simply give up entirely and covered his face with his hands. Hawks smiled at their poor voice of reason’s suffering, before he exhaled slowly and let his body relax against the door, reaching up at the same time to slowly slide his rucksack from his back. He tugged at the tie with one hand, loosening it eventually, and started to look through his spoils.

As he picked over the various bottles, Rumi ambled in from the other bedroom, rabbit familiar now perched comfortably on her shoulder, and crossed her arms as she leaned against the wall. “Besides, The Commission’s favorite little mage can just lie his way out of it, right, Hawks?” she said with a raised eyebrow, and Hawks’ eyes darted to the ground as a weird mix of pride and guilt washed over him.

“God, I fucking hate that - they’d let you get away with fucking anything so long as you keep your grades up,” a new voice rasped from somewhere between the window and Aizawa, and Dabi turned.

“Ah, but you fucking love when he brings you booze, so maybe a little courtesy, hm, Shigaraki?” Dabi sneered, and the man in question glared back at him even as he accepted the drink from Dabi’s hand, snatching it away with more force than necessary and whispering ‘Fucker’ under his breath as soon as Dabi’s back was turned.

Still, Hawks refused to let Dabi and Shigaraki’s constant bickering ruin his mood, so instead he finally worked his way into the room, deciding after a moment to sit on the edge of Mic’s bed and pull his rucksack in his lap. As Mic and Rumi started to laugh in the background, Hawks slid the last bottle that he had grabbed without looking from his bag, and tipped it back and forth, watching as the shimmery liquid inside sloshed back and forth. The bottle was vaguely pyramid shaped, made out of a smooth, dimpled glass, and labeled simply and unhelpfully as ‘Blue Ale’. Still, it was as good as any other, so after another brief moment of consideration, Hawks yanked the cork from the top and lifted it to his lips.

As the unexpectedly cold drink hit his tongue, the bed dipped beside him, and Hawks turned to see that Dabi had sat down next to him, shoulders slouched comfortably and legs sprawled out in front of him. Dabi looked at him with a tilt of his head and a sly smile, and Hawks forced himself not to spill his drink as his limbs started to suddenly feel warm, before Dabi extended one hand and opened and closed his fingers in a universal give-me motion.

“Come on, let me see what you got,” Dabi said, and nodded down towards the bag still in Hawks’ lap.

Hawks moved the bottle away from his lips with a smile, and re-corked it. “You know, if you had helped, you could have just gotten what you wanted.”

“Fucking excuse you,” Dabi scoffed at him, and then snatched Hawks’ rucksack impatiently, immediately ripping the top open and sticking on pale hand within. “I was the lookout, don’t give me that shit. And - oh, fuck yeah,” Dabi interrupted himself, pulling the tall bottle labeld Fox Fairy Wine out and spinning it between both hands. “See? -” Dabi looked up at him as he unscrewed the top, one eyebrow raised playfully “ - Didn’t need my help, you found the best shit all on your own,” Dabi finished, and knocked his ankle against Hawks’ own, pressing their legs together for just a moment too long to be unintentional.

Hawks’ eyes glanced down towards their feet as his something warm started to bloom and fill his chest, and then he chuckled under his breath as he smiled. He looked back up to Dabi, meeting his electric blue eyes, and held out his bottle.

“Cheers, Dabi.”

“Cheers, Hawks.”