Chapter Text
Hawks woke up to bright lights.
This was the hospital. The same room he’d seen a hundred different times, that it no longer felt like separate things. It was just shards of the same fractured bone, taken in to X-ray and set into cold cast hands.
He was here again.
His wings weren’t. All For One had taken them.
Hawks was broken by the same lights that tried to welcome him back.
This is how it starts.
—--
Two moments before THE moment (the one that changed everything):
- Hawks finds a mirror.
It’s across the room, on the opposite wall. He asks the nurse, a cat mutant with a friendly face and long green hair, to bring it to face him. So he could look at what was there.
He didn’t recognise himself. His usual feathery plumes fell flat around his head, hanging over and into his eyes. Bandages wrapped over his forehead, and under his nose, obscuring his left eye beneath gauze padding. Rough, jagged scars crawled beneath his exposed eye, staining the skin red.
He could still see sharp as ever, though. And he realised, with a start, that he still had his mutation. Every part of it that haunted him, save for the one that had made it worth something.
Now he was singing his swan song, treading water as he drowned.
- The nurse makes him leave.
“Alright!” the cat nurse strode in, giving him an imperious look. “You’re going out and talking to people.”
Hawks glared at her. “Why?”
“Human contact and exercise are important parts of the recovery process, especially for trauma survivors. Since you haven’t let Tsukuyomi or Miruko visit you despite their requests, you need to try and engage with some of the other patients.”
She crossed her arms, and Hawks scowled, mirroring her look. She didn’t seem impressed. Dammit.
“Takami,” she started.
Hawks sighed, then felt another wave of emptiness crush out his resolve all at once.
“Fine.” His voice didn’t crack as he said it. He tells himself that as he stumbles out the door and into the hallway all over again.
—--
That’s how Hawks found himself sitting in the brightly lit common area of the Hospital, in a seat against the wall, close to the door in case he had to make a quick escape. Some instincts died hard.
People were talking, laughing. Some were reading. A few did a puzzle, and two played cards. None made Hawks feel any desire of joining in. It was another world now, one different from the one he’d passed out in. He’d died a hero and woken up alive. He wondered if alive was better than a hero.
It didn’t feel like it.
“Hey. Haven’t seen you here before.” A voice cut through Hawks’ silent reverie. “You new? Or just shy?”
Hawks turned, blinking in surprise as he realised someone had sat next to him.
His face flushed. The man looked young, but haggard, with long white hair that fell in his eyes and down to his collarbone in choppy layers. Faint scars, like track marks, covered his face - as if he was a patchwork doll, stitched together. Soft blue eyes gleamed at Hawks, filled with mischief.
“...both?” Hawks hazarded, not sure how to respond.
“Ha,” the man snickered. “Sure, idiot. What’s your name?”
“Uh-” Hawks froze.
The name Hawks felt wrong now, that he wasn’t a hero. He didn’t want to pretend that he was still a hero. He was nobody, now. So, Keigo then… but Keigo wasn’t nobody either. Keigo hurt. Keigo was a stab to the gut. “I- I don’t-”
“Heh-” his neighbor cut him off, chuckling. “It’s okay. Call me Tobi.”
Tobi. A soft, clever name for soft, clever eyes. “Tobi, huh? That’s nice. American, right?” Hawks started, trying to continue the conversation in a positive direction. “Call me… call me Kei.” That worked. It felt safe. Not too much of anything. Something in the middle.
Tobi frowned, looking serious. “You got a little something right there, y’know?” He pointed at his cheek.
“I… huh?” Hawks frowned, hand moving to touch his face- then registered, just as Tobi made a muffled snort. “Are you talking about my bandages?!”
“Maybe…” Tobi drawled, teasing. “Fuck off,” Hawks snapped back, glaring. But no real heat behind it. “Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time I’ve been bandaged and basically quirkless.”
He wasn’t sure why he said it. Maybe just to take Tobi off guard. Maybe this was his new idea of “opening up”. Either way, it did the trick. Tobi’s mouth opened slightly, eyes widening. “Quirkless?”
“Yeah,” Hawks said, regret pooling into his stomach. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”
“I wish I was quirkless.”
Out of all the responses Tobi might have given, that wasn’t exactly near the top of the list. “Yeah?” Hawks blurted, surprised. “What’s your quirk?”
“Don’t wanna talk about it,” Tobi mocked, raising a challenging eyebrow.
“Is it why your face looks like a quilt?” Hawks shot, a smug smile playing on his lips. Challenge accepted, bitch.
“Oh my fucking-” Tobi growled- then tugged up his shirt. “It’s not just my face! I got fucking full body skin grafts! These hurt!”
“Woah, woah, dude!” Hawks barked, holding up his hands in surrender before he paused to look at Tobi’s exposed torso. He wasn’t wrong - more small stitches covered his chest and stomach. Full body skin grafts… Hawks shuddered at the thought… though it didn’t exactly ruin Tobi’s looks, he noted. “Nice abs,” he said, smirking.
Tobi’s shirt was yanked down so fast he could’ve been Hawks late for work. “Shut up,” he bit out, looking like an annoyed cat. Hawks blushed, a short giggle escaping him. “Hey, hey. Don’t be prickly, cutie-quilt.”
Tobi just frowned deeper, staring at the ground. The expression sobered them both, Hawks’ almost-smile slipping away. “I thought you said you were shy,” Tobi bit out softly.
“Honestly…” Hawks realised that Tobi probably took the flirting as a joke- poking fun at him. And so Hawks would have to do the one thing he hated most. Be honest. “I think it’s less shy, and more just… hurt. Hurt and tired. I’m not really ready for people. Or heroes. Friends.”
Tobi’s head twitched. “Heroes, huh…?” Slowly, he looked up again, meeting Hawks’ eyes steadily. There was something new there. Something… dangerous. It sent Hawks’ heart beating fast. “I can drink to that. Allies, then? If you’re “not here to make friends”.” He laid the last part out in quotations, and his easy offered hand made Hawks’ stomach buzz with butterflies.
He smiled.
Genuinely.
Small. But real. It was the most real thing he’d felt he had since waking up. Since All for One.
“Yeah.”
-
Tobi likes horror movies and dark chocolate.
Tobi likes banana bubblegum and American rock bands and playing cards.
Tobi likes spicy sushi and cold soba and old sci-fi and bad conspiracy theories and the sound of rain against the windows.
Hawks likes Tobi.
—--
“Hello, Takami-san!”
The nurse (he’d learned in the past week or so her name was Ogawa) was back, smug grin and chirped greetings. Hawks didn’t mind her as much now- the cheeriness felt less like an insult, and more like an invitation. It was easy to grin back. “Hey, nurse.”
“How you feeling?” she followed up, pushing a cart in with her. Hawks considered it. “Better.”
“Someone’s looking chipper,” she hummed, raising an eyebrow and leaning over. Hawks tilted his head, letting her undo the hooks from his bandages and carefully unwrap them. “I heard you’ve been spending time with Tobi-san, hm?”
“Guilty as charged,” Hawks said, sighing.
“I’m glad,” the cat mutant appraised, approval in her curt nod. “He didn’t speak to anyone until you showed up, y’know? We were rather worried.”
“Really?” Hawks remembered how Tobi had turned to him, the “Hey” that had started it all. He played it back, viewing the exchange through new eyes.
“I don’t blame him, dear,” Ogawa murmured, sympathetic. “Both of you have quite the fraught history.”
Hawks considered that, as Ogawa brushed his face with a coat of aloe, and cream for the healing scrapes and burns. A fraught history… he hadn’t yet really talked about his past with Tobi, and Tobi hadn’t given him any grace in the opposite direction. And honestly? That might be the thing that made them work so well.
Tobi never much seemed to care about who he was- just who he is now. It was a relief to not have to be anyone, to not have a past or a life. Then Ogawa leaned down, a smirk playing at her lips.
“And looking past the stitches… he’s a cutie, isn’t he?” Ogawa whispered, conspiratorially. Hawks flushed scarlet, batting her away. “OGAWA-SAN!”
The nurse giggled, stepping back to grab the roll of bandages so she could finish the work with fresh wrappings. Hawks let her, a flustered pout on his lips.
The mirror across from him let him see all that went down - his limp blonde strands, the long gashes that covered his face beneath the cloth.
He didn’t see Hawks anymore, really. But he recognised himself, at least. It felt like him.
For some reason, he almost expected to see a shock of white hair and pretty blue eyes step out beside him, smirking and saying something stupid that made all the feelings and nerves Hawks hadn’t felt for months spark all at once.
There had only been one other person who ever had reached him like that. That ability to so easily grab him and hold him tight in their hand, electrocuting every nerve ending and brain wave until he was a mess of feelings and thoughts.
Maybe he was just a sucker for a blue eyed stare.
—-