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Hawks wakes up and finds himself a ghost. Translucid, floaty, feet and lower legs kinda not there anymore while he hovers half a metre off the ground. At least, the wings are still here even if they're the same bluish hue as the rest of him now. He flaps them a few times and looks around. He seems to be in some kind of apartment, modern enough. Not even a cool and mysterious half-crumbling ruin of a house to haunt.
He sighs. No rest even in death, then.
Turns out there is plenty of rest to be had as a ghost. Hawks can just "sleep" whenever he wants. He's not quite sure what happens when he does, if he disappears or dematerialises or why ghosts need the sleep (maybe they don't? Hawks just has a lot to catch up on. Years, decades worth of missed sleep.) It takes him a long time before he manages to motivate himself to visit the rest of the apartment and see how far he can go in his new spectral form.
Not very far, it appears.
Just the apartment. It's a spacious two-bedroom apartment, with an open plan living room sharing space with the kitchen. It overlooks a city with a skyline that looks familiar, yet Hawks can't quite place it. He can go on the balcony but not any further, and the apartment walls are just as hard and impossible to pass as they would be to a living person.
He's stuck in here.
The room he woke up in seems to be a guest room and study, lacking in decorations. It has a desk and a sofa-bed currently in the sofa position. Next door is the master bedroom with a man sleeping in it, and Hawks leaves as soon as he spots the mop of white hair peeking out from under the heavy comforter.
He doesn't feel like talking to anyone, and with his luck the person can probably see him. Maybe some kind of ghost hunter, even.
Hawks sleeps.
He sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and eventually gets bored enough to want some company and conversation. Time to see if his unsuspecting housemate can see him.
The first time Hawks sees the man's face is somewhat of a shock, and at first he wonders if he just met a fellow otherworldly creature, what with all the scars.
But no, the man yawns, looking exhausted despite just waking up. Every time Hawks wanders around, he always seems to be sleeping, night or day.
It's exciting to see him up today. He looks to be in his mid- to late thirties, maybe. A phone call woke him up, and Hawks hears the person on the other side call him "Dabi" before telling him to get his ass in gear and "fucking come over if you don't want me to drag you over by the nose piercings."
The man walks right through Hawks which, wow, rude! It doesn't really feel like anything much, it's just a shock to see it happen. The other man shivers, and Hawks is happy that he can still have an impact on the world, no matter how small.
Hawks follows him to the bathroom, barely hesitating. Ghosts don't care about privacy, he decides. The haunting opportunities in bathrooms are just too good.
Dabi holds onto the sides of the sink and leans forward, looking at himself in the mirror. Hawks floats behind him, curious. For a second, Dabi seems to see him: his eyes widen and he jerks his head to look right where Hawks is floating. He looks right through him though. His shoulders drop after, the weight of exhaustion seems to crush him even further. When Dabi looks up at the mirror, his gaze seems haunted.
Hawks takes his leave. This isn't the kind of haunting he wants to do.
No, the kind of haunting he wants to do is the fun kind. He starts swapping a couple of furniture items around. Moves the cactus pot from the windowsill to the TV stand. Turns a couple of books upside down on the shelves. Hides the remote between the couch cushions.
When Dabi comes out of the bathroom, his hair is black. He doesn't seem to notice anything wrong but Hawks doesn't mind and floats over closer to observe the change.
Black suits him well.
Hawks shifts all of the furniture in the entire apartment to be off by two centimetres while Dabi is out. The only things he doesn't touch are the face-down picture frames on one of the bookshelves; he'd like to say it's because that feels too personal but really, it's because his fingers move right through them. The ghost rules of haunting seem really random so far.
Dabi does a double-take when he's back. He walks around the apartment, uncertain, before pressing the heels of his hands into his eyelids.
"What the fuck," Dabi whispers.
When his face is visible again, he looks even more tired than before he left, if that is possible. Dabi removes his shoes, lets his jacket fall onto the floor and goes back to bed still wearing his day clothes.
Hmm. This still isn't fun.
Hawks doesn't know this man but he'd like to see what his face looks like with a smile on it.
The apartment is generally tidy, except for the jacket on the floor right now. The TV doesn't seem to have seen any use in a while and is covered in a thin layer of dust that Hawks is delighted to find he can touch.
Now, what to write is the question. "Hi, I'm your friendly ghost neighbour!" is a bit long. It's going to be spooky no matter what, but Hawks would like to make it fun too.
"Hello," he writes.
Urgh, maybe that still sounds kind of threatening, coming from a stranger. He adds a rough drawing of a bird - a couple of circles with a beak and messy wings, except he kind of runs out of space midway and even he has to admit the result is sort of awful. He's out of dust though, so this will have to do.
Hiding behind an armchair, Hawks waits for Dabi to wake up. The passage of time never seems long or short anymore. It just is. Being able to just exist is nice. Hawks has nowhere to go, he can just be and wait, patient in ways he suspects he never had the time to be while alive.
Dabi doesn't look in the TV direction when he wakes up, just goes to the kitchen corner to make himself some coffee.
A few minutes later, Dabi turns around and the cup crashes onto the floor, brown burning liquid spilling all over the tiles and Dabi's feet - oh, no. Dabi is staring at the messy TV screen in a trance. He looks at his own hands.
"Am I going crazy?" he whispers.
Hawks isn't sure he likes this new haunting gig. He doesn't seem to be very good at it. He's not getting the results he wants at all.
Dabi went straight back to bed after cleaning up the mess. Hawks stays in the living room for once, not feeling like retreating to the study just yet. He lies back on the carpet as much as a floaty half-formed ghost can lie on anything and stares at the ceiling, drifting on and off.
Time passes.
He doesn't seem to be thinking about anything.
It's nice. He has a feeling he spent a lot of time thinking about a lot of things while alive. That sounds so tiring.
Sometimes it is dark outside when his consciousness returns, sometimes rays of light shine right through him. He picked a good spot.
"Welcome back," he says one day when he hears Dabi shuffle back into the house after another errand.
There is no answer, of course. Hawks turns his head to the side and sees Dabi frozen at the entrance and looking straight at him.
Oh.
"You can see me?" Hawks asks, giddiness starting to spread. He comes to float around Dabi and sure enough, the man's gaze follows him, wide-eyed and mouth open. "I'm Hawks! I was a Hero before being a ghost so you don't have to worry about me doing anything bad! I'm so excited! It was getting kind of boring."
Dabi blinks a few times.
"Can... you hear me?" Hawks wonders, putting some distance between the two of them.
Dabi stares at him a bit longer before answering.
"Unfortunately, I can."
"Hey. That's rude."
"I need more fucking coffee."
They start talking after that. Dabi is wary, but slowly grows more comfortable. Sometimes, Hawks disappears mid-conversation without knowing why. The haunting rules still make no sense. Every time Hawks tries to ask Dabi about his life, Hawks disappears. Sometimes, he floats into a room Dabi's in, looking at his phone or something, and suddenly Hawks finds himself blinking his eyes open in the guest room, hours later.
"Why do you call me Dabi?" Dabi asks him one day.
"I heard someone call you that on the phone."
"Oh." Dabi pauses. "People close to me call me Touya, these days."
There's a moment of silence in which Hawks isn't certain whether this is an invitation or a taunt.
"So you can call me that too, if you want," Dabi adds with a sigh.
For days, Hawks hasn't been able to enter the living room. It's infuriating. But in the end, that's what gives them the hint they needed to start figuring out the rules; it’s only when Dabi pulls the picture frames back down once more that Hawks can enter the room again.
After that, Hawks stops asking Dabi about his life and doesn't disappear as much anymore. Dabi keeps his phone away when Hawks is around. Instead, Dabi asks more questions about Hawks and what being a ghost is like. Hawks realises how little he knows and they exhaust the topic quickly. He also realises he cannot stop thinking of Dabi as Dabi. Touya feels too intimate. Personal.
He's a ghost. The only reason they're close is because Hawks is haunting his apartment.
That doesn't leave a lot of options for conversation. The pranking opportunities are good, though. Hawks keeps them simple, gentle. There's a fragility to Dabi that feels like it doesn't belong here, and Hawks is still hoping to get a glimpse of his smile someday.
Of all things, it's "nice bum" written on the steamed up bathroom mirror that does it. The corners of Dabi's lips twitch up when he steps out of the shower, and Hawks feels on top of the world. He thought the prank with the cactus had more potential, but he can adapt.
"Do Heroes still exist?" Hawks asks one day.
Dabi stills, cup of coffee with a touch of milk stopping on its way to his lips.
"How long do you think you've been dead?"
"I don't know. I don't really understand time anymore, and you didn't recognise me so I figure it's been a while. I used to be No. 2, you know!"
Hawks flaps his wings proudly and wonders if rankings still exist.
"I know. You just look different, all bluish and transparent. How's... How's life as a ghost, anyway?" Dabi asks, hesitant. It's not the first time he asks him but the question seems more personal this time. More meaningful. "How do you find it?"
"It's great! I get to sleep a ton, I don't have to go anywhere or be anything. I can just exist, if I want. No expectations! And as a bonus, the guy I'm haunting is cute and friendly."
Dabi scoffs. It sounds kind of sad.
"Are you... are you happy?"
Hawks thinks about his answer. He has so few memories of his time alive; it's more like sensations coming back sometimes, overwhelming feelings that aren't attached to any specific event. They don't tend to feel very positive. Whatever he's feeling now is much better than then.
"I... think I am?"
A sob escapes Dabi's throat and he puts the cup back down to hide his face into his hands. A prickling sensation runs up Hawks' ghostly spine; a sudden sense of dread fills him and he wonders if he's about to disappear again. They had been so careful.
"Then why are you haunting our fucking apartment, Kei?"