Chapter Text
He holds his phone up and points to it. Hawks has good eyes; he doesn't need to get up in his face about it. <Don't make a sound or react. Take everything off.>
Hawks' face turns bright red, right up to his ears, almost immediately. But he doesn't say anything. He nods and pulls his jacket off, not breaking eye contact.
He needs to not do that while stripping.
<Bathroom. Turn the shower on.> He gestures towards his ears as he holds the phone up and pinches his earlobe. The jewelry especially has to go.
Hawks, still blushing, turns and slips into the bathroom. Even the back of his neck is red. Does he not realize what I want? Clueless, sometimes. Endeavor doesn't even want to know what's going through his mind right now.
It had been a pain in the ass to get him here. He didn’t want to call him, didn’t want to call his office, and they didn’t exactly run into each other on a regular basis. He’d ended up asking Burnin (MAYBE?) to track down one of Hawks’ sidekicks and pass the message onto him that way. Get Hawks to a particular hotel room at a certain time, and do it in such a way that nothing was vocally spoken. Endeavor hadn’t known if this would be successful, but he’d bought the ticket and come out to Oita anyway, far enough away from Fukuoka that Hawks could justify a suitcase and a hotel if he were being followed.
The message had gotten through, even though Enji had to go buy bath salts and omiyage for his sidekicks now. You can’t get within a hundred kilometers of Beppu without buying me some Yunohana salts; it’s the best. Pain in the ass, but he’ll buy some for Fuyumi, too. Maybe even some for Natsuo to give to his girlfriend. He’ll have to figure out where to get that particular kind.
Hawks comes out a moment later.
<Go drop the feathers in the bathroom.> He must have already done so to get undressed, only to summon the feathers back. He can just do it again.
That one he refuses. I'm naked, he mouths. It's probably something that he'd laugh about in any other circumstance, but he looks uneasy.
Endeavor realizes then that he's covering himself, the tips of his wings folding around his groin. He'd been so hellbent on getting him unadorned, he hadn't even noticed. So that's why he bothered to rebuild his wings.
<No noise.>
Touching his wings is probably off-limits. Hawks can hear with them, sense vibrations in the air keenly enough to understand language and find movement dozens of meters away. Endeavor has to assume it’s a skill he can tune out most of the time, otherwise the constant stimulation would make him even crazier than he already is, and so he has to assume that this won’t make the kid too uncomfortable.
He touches the tips first, the upper joint above his shoulders and carefully grips the longest outside feathers, the ones he most often uses as swords. Soft now. It’s such a strange quirk that it makes him wonder if Hawks himself is from a quirk marriage, if his parents tried to create him. It’s clearly a mix of two others, because functional wings alone is a far better quirk than most of the population has. And the ability to control every feather, the fact that he can make them as sharp as steel if he wishes, the observational and sensory skills. Endeavor was only born with fire. His height and frame were a matter of good fortune that none of his kids got, and his physical strength came only from relentless training.
He dwells on this as he combs his fingers through the feathers, avoiding getting too close to his back until the last minute. They’re so soft, and somehow relaxing to stroke. He’s touching a little too much, but Hawks isn’t complaining. In fact he might even be purring, but Enji isn’t about to acknowledge the soft noises or the way he keeps arching his back. He doesn’t want to touch where his wings meet bare skin, doesn’t want to squeeze the feathers that hide muscle and bone, but the size of microphones these days necessitate it.
Yes, Hawks is definitely purring, barely less awkward than moaning. Endeavor considers grabbing his wings now, tugging hard on them and telling him to stop, but he’s distracted by how small the actual wings are. Nothing but feathers except for perhaps six inches of bone protruding from his back. Impressive that he can even fly. He’ll have to ask him about these eventually.
For now, he steps back, immediately trying to forget the way the skin of Hawks’ back felt beneath his fingers. Unexpectedly soft.
Nothing on his wings. If there is, it's too small for him to catch. Hawks has to know where this is going by now; it's his own risk if he refuses to leave the feathers.
"Didn't expect you to be shy," he snorts. The brat has no reason to be. He had to admit, he'd been curious about Hawks' back, about how his wings grew from his shoulderblades, if the musculature of his back and shoulders, neck and chest, were any different from everyone else. Hardly something he could have, or would have, asked. But he's normal, no other indication of his quirk beyond the wings and the marks around his eyes. He wonders if he always had them, or if they emerged later like his sons’ hair color did. He must have been born with the wings though. That kind of quirk doesn’t just emerge. Must have been a cute baby. Unless he was born with no feathers and just had naked chicken wings. The thought almost makes him laugh, but he has to deal with a far more pressing matter.
"Why are you bugged?"
"Is that what this is about?" he twitches the corners of his mouth down. "I thought you were finally coming on to me."
"Bullshit. Answer the question."
"If I were bugged, I can't tell you why."
"Are you in trouble?"
He tilts his head and shakes it once.
"Hero Commission work?"
His head still cocked to the side, he nods. Once again as he flicks a hand up and turns it. A half truth. He's so damn obvious, like he thinks Endeavor is too dense to figure anything more subtle out. Maybe he'll bring it up someday, but probably not.
"You spying on me?"
This makes him grin as he jerks his hands up to his shoulders, his wings unfurling a little before he quickly covers himself again. "No. That's the one demand I'd refuse."
"Fine. So you're in trouble."
He waves his hand again.
"I told you to come to me if you were gonna keep going with this. You can't deal with Nomus alone." It's more than Nomus, but what he doesn't know. One of the villains is doing this to him. The Hero Commission must have put him up to something that got him in this fucking situation, just like they've used him all along. Another thing he might bring up someday; that one, he has to. Hawks' comments ever since they had met have told him enough. The kid is barely more than their slave, and that's all he's been ever since they got their hands on him.
This makes the pink flush return to his cheeks again. But he smirks again, even though it's damn obvious it's a cover-up for embarrassment. "I won’t tell you, but I won’t lie, either. Just stop asking. Now is that all, or was there another reason you told me to strip?"
"What else did you expect?"
One of those smirks again that makes Enji see red. "If that’s all then… I always take long showers. They know that. If I turn the shower off and get dressed now, it will sound strange."
He does not want Hawks to stand around butt naked for the next twenty minutes or however long he usually showers. He doesn’t need to think about Hawks showering, his small body slick and wet as he does whatever the hell could justify a man taking a long shower. As usual, Endeavor’s uniform is beneath his clothes, so he can spare a layer. He pulls his sweatshirt off and hands it to Hawks. It's a v-neck and Hawks could squeeze the top joints of his wings through it if he wanted; it'll cover his groin either way. He's so damn small for a pro-hero.
Hawks quickly puts it on and sighs contentedly, pulling his wings flat against his back so he can wear it as Enji figured he would. The arms cover his hands with a few inches more. Once covered, he turns and perches on the armchair in the hotel room, pulling his legs up under him.
"I'm sorry," he says suddenly.
Endeavor grunts in response. Doubtful Hawks can stretch it out.
"I haven't been able to talk to you the way I want to, these last few weeks."
Unexpected development. Because they meet sometimes. After the fight with the nomu in Fukuoka, they've met. Endeavor had texted him once he was on the plane, a stupid message. Tell me whenever you're in town. And of course Hawks had come to the Tokyo area a couple of times since then, never for any legitimate reason, but he was good at making everyone else think otherwise. Endeavor knew for a fact that the photo shoot for a collaboration with a mens' watch company was months off the mark when Hawks had used that excuse.
That's irrelevant though. What is relevant is what Hawks is getting at. The way I want to. They didn't talk much about hero work; it had come up, but nothing more. The younger hero was unexpectedly into international politics, and he could debate for hours about things nobody else his age cared about. Nothing they talked about pertained to their personal lives. Is that what he's getting at?
"I want all of this to be over."
"So do what you need to do and tell the PSHC to piss off afterwards."
He shakes his head. "Until heroes aren't needed anymore, I can't have a life of my own." He looks bored when he says it, that look again like he wants nothing more than to lie on the floor and play video games for five days at a time the way Natsuo did when he went through that phase. It had pissed Enji off to no end, but he was helpless to confront his son about it. He'd ignored it, and thankfully the kid got his shit together eventually and began training to be a paramedic. Hawks is still waiting for his chance to be a loser whose life allows him to slack off.
He doesn't know what makes him say it; they don't talk about themselves, don't talk about anything personal. And it's probably not just because Hawks has been bugged recently. "If you could do what you wanted, what would you do?"
He smirks, lolls his head around his shoulders and looks down his nose across the room. "Same as what I wish I could talk to you about."
He's flirting again, just as he's done on and off ever since they met. But he always flirts in such a way that Endeavor can't easily respond. Enji gets the impression sometimes that Hawks thinks he's dumber than he is, or maybe it's simply his arrogance, because as charming to the public as he is, anyone who spends any time with Hawks at all knows he has a very high opinion of himself. A spark of flame crosses his eyebrows and another over his left shoulder while he glares at Hawks. "We'll talk when you can."
The younger hero ducks his head then, chin to his chest. He's blushing again. Endeavor knows the conversation is over; Hawks overspoke and is backing out now.
He sighs and settles down on the bed, pulling out his phone to distract himself. He just has to hope that Hawks' average shower isn't another thirty minutes.