Work Text:
His eyes are burning by the time he signs off on the last report. The smoke affects them more than it used to. Must be cumulative in some way—maybe it’s worn down his tear ducts over time. He used to be able to…
That doesn’t matter.
Now matters.
Now he is submitting the last of the month’s reports over an hour before the midnight deadline for them to be included in the county’s statistics and filed without a late fee. Considering that the agency had no fewer than six completely new incidents crop up after four o’clock today, he thinks his team handled it fairly masterfully, all told.
He double-checks that he has the final version of the file uploaded.
He clicks the button.
He watches the loading bar.
He screenshots the confirmation page.
He sits back.
He breathes out, slowly, and scrapes his left hand down over his face.
Burning the midnight oil was never easy, but it didn’t used to feel this hard.
He’s slipping.
He’s falling apart.
It’s a failure in progress.
He’s just too tired.
He just—
His phone bleeps at him—text tone.
Hawks, of course. The overlapping section of the Venn diagram of people who have a reason to contact him, people who want to, and people who are still awake doesn’t really have room for anyone else.
The preview says Call me?
It is equal parts bewildering and infuriating that Enji can hear the intended intonation in his head. If Hawks had meant that as an imperative, he would have punctuated it differently. If it was urgent, he would only have used the first word, if he hadn’t simply dialed himself. This is Call me when you have a minute, pared down to the essential part because he knows that Enji will understand.
Enji tabs over to his email to check for the confirmation of his submission, and then he picks up his phone, taps into the contact, and presses the button very deliberately with his fingertip.
Half a ring.
“Hi!” Hawks sings out. The enthusiasm is suspicious, as is the strange way his voice echoes. “You’re so sweet.”
Enji is no such damn thing and never has been. “What do you want?”
“Your undying devotion,” Hawks says.
And then he giggles.
Enji puts the phone on speaker so that he can drop his head into his hands, more gently on the right. “How drunk are you?”
“It’s not my fault,” Hawks says, even more petulantly than usual. “The guy—I got him to agree to all of it, okay? Nailed it. Like a fucking… carpenter. Nailed it like a crucifixion. Nailed it like a fancy salon. Only—this fucking guy drinks sake like it’s spa water, big guy, and obviously I had to keep up as a sign of—whatever it was—and my tolerance ain’t what it used to be. I’m not a spring chicken anymore, y’know? Gettin’ creaky. Decrepit. That’s a you word.”
He’s twenty-four.
He’s too young to be so smart, so jaded, so ravaged, so rare. He’s too young to have done so much, been so much, crawled through so much—to have had so much ripped out of him and pried away.
They all are.
“Congratulations,” Enji says, because Hawks has been working on this for months now—first with the Children and Families Cabinet Office, and more recently with the Minister of Education. He’s pushing for official legislation that restricts the intensity of quirk training for children under eighteen. “Go home.”
“That’s just it,” Hawks says. “I didn’t call you for the kudos, number one.” There’s a pause. His voice is still echoing oddly. “I mean—I totally did. And also just to hear you. And also—but mostly… I don’t know if I can get home like this.”
It clicks into place.
“Are you in the bathroom of the bar?” Enji asks.
Hawks giggles again.
“Damn, you’re good,” he says. “As always. Problem is I can’t stay here for long, or there’ll be headlines about me taking the nation’s most monumental shit.”
Enji does not sigh.
“Are you rubbing your temples?” Hawks says. “You’re rubbing your temples, aren’t you?”
“No,” Enji says, lowering his hands. “Just go d—”
“Cab’ll be just as bad,” Hawks says. “Driver’ll tell everybody I’m some fuckin’ lush or something. I mean, I guess I am right now, but it was business, you know? Anyway—I’m—my brain is performing suboptimally on account of the extensive poisoning. And… I…. Oh, hang on. I could sit on the roof ’til I sober up a little. Then fly home. See? Just talking to you makes me smarter.”
It is distinctly possible that this is all a rather mean little joke.
Enji deserves worse.
“Don’t you dare,” he says. “I’ll come pick you up.”
There is a silence.
Hawks’s next laugh is faint and a little bit unsteady.
“Not that that’s not the cutest thing anybody has ever offered to do for me,” he says, “but I’m not gonna—”
“Yes, you are,” Enji says, standing from the desk and snatching one of the sets of car keys from the top drawer. He picked one of the older agency vehicles, just in case Hawks throws up. “Was it that izakaya you mentioned, in the Waterfront?”
“Noooooo,” Hawks says, which clearly means yes, and which also resonates bizarrely against the tile around him. “Why aren’t you sleeping, anyway? Asshole. This doesn’t solve my hiding in the bathroom problem. It’s gonna take you, like, twenty minutes.”
Sixteen, on the sidestreets, if there isn’t much traffic.
Enji knows his city.
“Get in the elevator,” he says. “Go down to the eighteenth floor.”
Hawks whines from deep in his throat. Enji should have expected that, but it caught him off-guard. It makes his skin tingle and sets his teeth on edge. “Isn’t that level a bank or some shit? There’s, like, five banks in this stupid building. Why do we even need five banks? Nobody’s got enough money for five banks.”
“Apparently you have enough money for persuasive quantities of sake,” Enji says. He locks the office door from within, crosses back over to the balcony, swaps the call from speakerphone back to regular audio, and raises the phone to his ear.
Right in time for Hawks to laugh again, more than the comment merited. “It’s a business expense.”
Enji locks the balcony door behind him, spurs the flame beneath his feet, and jumps. This is a much more direct route to the garage. “Eighteenth floor. Their lobby will be locked, but there’s a lot of open space around the elevator banks, and no one will look for you there.”
“I could break into the lobby,” Hawks says. “Do they have comfy chairs? I want a comfy chair.”
“Do not break into the lobby,” Enji says.
“Stop telling me how to live my life,” Hawks says.
“You called me specifically to ask me what you should do next,” Enji says, touching down next to the back entrance to the garage. He balances the phone carefully with the metal fingers as he sorts through his keys. The number pad offers precisely two chances to input the code correctly before the system locks down, and a correct selection only opens the keyhole lid for thirty seconds. “Eighteenth—”
“I’m drunk,” Hawks says, “not stupid.”
“Then get moving,” Enji says.
“Fiiiiiiiiine,” Hawks says, but it scrapes out from low in his chest again, and Enji has to clench his teeth for a second to focus on the damn keypad. As always, the buttons are so much smaller than his fingertips that he has to be careful not to depress more than one. “Talk to me while I walk so that I have an excuse to ignore people.”
Enji turns the key, opens the door, and swallows the sigh. “Talk about what?”
“I don’t care,” Hawks says. The echo changes. Something scuffs. A hinge squeals. “What’d you do today?”
“Work,” Enji says.
Hawks laughs. “Yes, I am fast, but you’re going to have to be a little more detailed than that, darling.”
It’s for show—to make it sound to any observers like he’s talking to someone inconsequential, and they wouldn’t benefit from listening in.
And it’s—insulting. Demeaning. A diminishment. Enji is not darling. Enji has never been precious or dear to anyone. He’s never needed to be. He can take care of himself. He’s never had a choice.
That’s what’s making his skin feel hot and slightly too tight.
The garage is nearly empty, which makes it easy enough to stride directly towards the car.
“We had a shoplifter with a machine-gun arm,” Enji says. “And then a shit-starter who could make external objects temporarily invisible—including cars, fire hydrants, mailboxes, small buildings, and other people.”
“Please tell me you crashed into an invisible mailbox at high speed,” Hawks says. “Please.”
“Burnin hit the mailbox,” Enji says. “I hit the car.”
“Of course you did,” Hawks says. “Is the car okay?”
“No,” Enji says.
“I can’t believe I asked that,” Hawks says. “May I just say that I wish you would smash into me hard enough to dent my exterior?”
“You may not,” Enji says, entirely for Hawks’s amusement, since of course it’s too damn late.
“Okay,” Hawks says, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as the ambient background noise noticeably fades. “I am leaving the izakaya. Repeat—leaving the izakaya. Approaching the elevator.”
Enji sighs.
“You’re supposed to say ‘Roger that’,” Hawks says. “Or ‘The lion is leaving the den’ or something.”
Somehow the fact that that’s perfectly-timed, given that Enji just settled into the driver’s seat of the agency car and turned the key in the ignition, makes it a hundred times worse. “Over my dead body.”
“An unconventional sign-off,” Hawks says, and some merciful higher power makes the elevator ding in the background, “from an established maverick. I’m here for it. What else you got for me, sugar?”
Enji has his phone on speaker again, to free both hands for backing neatly out of the parking spot; and tightly-gritted teeth. Hawks is playing to the public again. It’s nothing new.
“Get to the place I told you,” Enji says.
“I’m trying,” Hawks says, voice rising to a whine again. “I can defy the laws of physics, but I can’t control them. Cut me a break. What kind of car was it?”
Enji can’t concentrate on driving and struggle to make sense of him at the same time. Priorities. As always. “What?”
“The car you banged,” Hawks says. “Spurring jealousy that will burn for a geologic age in measly little fans like moi. What kind of car was it?”
“Nissan,” Enji says. It had become visible as soon as he’d collided with it. He’d spend several seconds staring at it while he fought to breathe, and had then had to fight significantly harder to peel himself up off the pavement in spite of the pain.
“Oof,” Hawks says. “Great crash test ratings on that not-so-bad boy, huh? Did you get checked out?”
“Eventually,” Enji says. They’d had to move slower—canvassing the road ahead with enough flame that changes either to its shape or to the progress of the smoke betrayed obstacles’ locations—but they’d caught up. Endeavor always catches up. “No more permanent damage than usual.”
“‘Usual’ is a lot,” Hawks says, strangely quietly. “That was gonna be a ‘I’ll check you out’ joke, by the way. But then I made myself sad.”
“Knock it off,” Enji says. “There’s enough to be miserable about in the world without you making up more. I’m fine. The car had insurance. Are you there yet?”
“Am I where?” Hawks says. “At a peaceful equilibrium with the unrelenting universe?”
Enji grinds his teeth a little harder, and forcibly relaxes his grip on the wheel. “The eighteenth floor.”
“Oh,” Hawks says. “Almost. Like, just a couple of…”
There’s a distant shuddering noise, and then a cheerful ding.
Hawks imitates it, frighteningly well.
“Oh, no,” he says, voice going hushed, and Enji simply no longer has the mental capacity to imagine what the hell he’s on about this time. “It’s so shiny.”
“You love shiny,” Enji says.
“Exactly,” Hawks says, still quietly, like he’s trying to prevent his voice from echoing this time. “I wanna break into that lobby so bad. They’ve got comfy chairs. They’ve got an espresso machine.”
“You need caffeine right now like you need a hole in the head,” Enji says.
“You’re a genius,” Hawks says. “If I got one of those medication delivery ports inserted in my skull, I could just inject caffeine directly into my own brain.”
“That’s the second-worst idea you’ve ever had,” Enji says.
Hawks laughs. It rings off of what Enji remembers as, admittedly, slightly overwhelming polished mirrored walls. “Second only to getting the Minister of Education drunk in order to coerce him into adopting my agenda?”
“No,” Enji says. “That has, unfortunately, become a good idea by dint of the fact that apparently it actually worked.”
“Apparently,” Hawks says warmly. There’s some indistinct shuffling, and a little static, and then he sighs, loud and feelingly. “Not gonna count my chickens, though. We’ll see. He might change his mind when he sobers up, and then stab me in the back.”
If he does, Enji is going to show up at his office and loom over all of the flammable objects until he sees the error of his ways, but that’s a hypothetical for another time.
He needs to concentrate on driving.
And on… this. Whatever this is. The strange, tilting, reeling thing that passes for a conversation when Hawks’s mind is wandering too many avenues at once.
When he can’t help it, Enji wonders how many people have ever heard Hawks like this. He’s very, very careful most of the time. And he’s been very, very alone for most of his life.
“Huh,” Hawks says. “Their ceiling is weird.”
“What?” Enji says. He has been waiting at this stoplight for a significant slice of eternity. He clenches and unclenches his fingers around the wheel and makes himself breathe.
“It’s got these tiles, right?” Hawks says. “All fancy and ornate and shit, you know, like you would expect in a place where they just want to rub it in your face that they have so much money that you should give them yours. They’re four foot square. Whole ceiling. But like—they don’t match. It’s like they were gonna do a pattern, and then they just gave up and sorta threw what they had anywhere they wanted.”
Enji has learned that he can help who he is—he can resist it, reform it, restrict it, redirect it. He can change himself.
But some impulses are too compelling to overcome.
“That’s disgusting,” he says, meaning it.
Hawks giggles again.
Enji forces himself to devote his attention to the road ahead—he knows too well what can happen when you don’t. He glances to the left as he approaches a notoriously busy intersection welcoming him on with a green light. He keeps his foot evenly applied to the gas as he looks to the right—
Just in time to see the headlights swelling, and hear the engine roar.
He slams his foot on the brake and the heel of his hand into the horn, and the abruptness of the way that his momentum snaps him forward against the seatbelt chokes the first word down to an unintelligible gasp.
But not the others.
“Traffic laws exist for a reason, you fucking maniac!” he gets out, leaning forward against the tight imposition of the belt to glare better as the culprit sears blithely off underneath the obvious red light.
Hawks—
Laughs.
Uproariously.
Steam seethes around Enji’s ears as he breathes out through his teeth, easing his foot back onto the gas. He takes his right hand off the wheel to wave the cloud away before it fogs up the windshield. “The light was red. They could have fucking killed someone.”
“But they didn’t,” Hawks says.
“They probably will the next time,” Enji says, gritting his teeth harder still, feeling it tighten his neck and twinge in his shoulder.
“Maybe not,” Hawks says, warmly. “Think you got the message across.”
Enji doubts it. “Easy for you to say when you don’t have to be on the road with these fuckwits.”
“Lighten up, big guy,” Hawks says, voice lilting. “You can’t control the world.”
“I don’t want to,” Enji says, which may be an understatement, but he’s trying to pay attention to the turn. If people are driving like that at this damn hour, he can only assume that a myriad of tipsy pedestrians will be flinging themselves into the middle of the road next. “I just—”
“Want to change the part immediately around you,” Hawks says. “I know. Believe me, I know.”
Enji does—believe him, that is.
It’s terrifying.
Not as terrifying as the prospect of stealth pedestrians hurling themselves in front of the car, but close.
“You gotta let go,” Hawks says. “It’s gonna kill you.”
A lot of people would be happy about that. Many of them would be justified.
“Are martyrdom or nihilism my only options?” Enji asks.
Hawks laughs again. “You’re asking the wrong fuckwit, babe.”
There’s no one to hear that except the mismatched ceiling tiles—no one to deceive, no one to distract, and no one to impress.
Enji has to think about driving.
Enji has to think about checking his rearview and monitoring the road both ahead and behind. Enji has to think about directions, about shortcuts, about the locations of the crosswalks and the places where the lights brighten enough to glint off of the windshield and obstruct his sight.
Enji can’t think about Hawks sprawled out on the patterned carpet, shirt wrinkled, hair ruffled, lolling idly back and forth with the phone against his ear. Enji can’t think about the striking breadth of the wings spread wide beneath him, feathers trembling; or the way his genuine grin turns his eyes to gleaming gold crescents; or the likelihood of him arching his back off of the floor and stretching his shoulders to try to quell some of the frenetic energy loosened by the lowered inhibitions. Enji can’t think about the flush in his cheeks or the jump of his chest every time he laughs. Enji can’t think about his mouth. Enji—
Stops the car at a red light. Breathes. Swallows.
“Hey,” Hawks says, evidently unperturbed by the silence. He should be perturbed. He should be gathering his unsteady body up and making a break for it. He should run. “You know what you should do?”
“Drive safely,” Enji says.
“Yeah,” Hawks says. “If you don’t get here in one piece—well, two pieces—well, one piece and an add-on—it’s like an expansion pack—”
“My arm,” Enji says, “is not like an expansion pack.”
“Good point,” Hawks says. “It’s more like a patch. One you have to uninstall and reinstall, like, all the time. Anyway, if you don’t get here in a philosophically consistent number of pieces, I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“Fine,” Enji says, which seems nicer than I’d like to see you try.
“But that’s not what I was gonna say,” Hawks says. He pauses. He hums tunelessly. “What was I gonna…? Oh, yeah. You know what you should do? You should take a vacation to some remote-ass place with no cell service, and not tell anybody where you’re going, and just… relax. For real.”
Enji does not sigh.
“Then who would come pick you up after your next harebrained scheme?” he asks.
“Oh, I’d go with you,” Hawks says, calmly. “So you could send distress signals. By carrier pigeon. Ish.” His voice gets animated so quickly that Enji has to imagine that he’s waving his hands. “I’d be quiet! I’d be silent. Like a helpful spirit. You wouldn’t even notice I was there.”
Enji can’t control it.
He laughs this time.
“Hey,” Hawks says. “You saw how hush-hush mum’s-the-word and whatnot I can be when it counts.”
The point is relatively sound, although Enji would argue that it wasn’t actually that he kept his mouth shut—he just filled it with carefully-chosen inanities of a very different tenor, drowning out the dangerous truths to keep them all safe.
But the semantics don’t supersede a more interesting observation.
“Hawks,” Enji says. “Did you just equate the importance of my theoretical vacation with your infiltration of the League of Villains?”
“It shouldn’t be theoretical,” Hawks says, which is, obviously, nowhere near a no. “I’ve been trying to find a spa in, like, Norway that’s built around a hot spring or something. But you won’t be surprised to know that places that are off the grid don’t tend to have especially well-maintained websites. Would you go?”
“To a shitty website?” Enji says.
“To Norway,” Hawks says.
Enji has to focus, has to keep his head on straight, has to keep his eyes trained on the prize.
Which snaps his speech filter cleanly in half, and scuttles any hope he had of speaking thoughtfully.
“With you,” his idiot mouth says.
“With me,” Hawks says, cheerfully. “In case of emergencies. Do they have volcanoes in Norway?”
Nothing that they have in Scandinavia—or anywhere else, for that matter—will pose a greater danger to Enji than the wild and wonderful creature on the other end of the line.
“You said you were doing research,” Enji says.
“On spas,” Hawks says. “One thing at a time.”
Good advice.
“You didn’t answer the question,” Hawks says. “Would you go? Or do I have to make kidnapping plans?”
“Abduction sounds like a poor way to repay me for rescuing you right now,” Enji says.
“It’s for your own good,” Hawks says. “I’ll pencil you in as a maybe on the voluntary part.”
They both know damn well that anyone who tries to make Enji go anywhere he doesn’t want to go will get precisely what’s coming to them, promptly and propelled by flame.
But that’s part of the point, with Hawks—the playing. The pretending that things could be something other than they are. When your life’s one dream tries to bleed you out in the streets day in and day out, the stupid little fantasies are really all that’s safe.
“How close are you?” Hawks asks.
“Why?” Enji says. “Are you planning to make a run for it, or are you adjusting the kidnapping timeline?”
A part of him wishes Hawks would stop laughing at things that aren’t even particularly amusing, and a part of him hopes Hawks never does.
“I still can’t get my fingers to respond as fast as I want right now,” Hawks says, which isn’t actually saying much about how much he’s had to drink, since his standards are absurd in the first place. “Trying to kidnap you drunk would be a special kind of stupid, even for me. I just feel bad. You took all this time out of your night just ’cause I let my own Plan B kick my ass. If you get hurt by the shitty drivers out there, I’m going to have to burn down the entire world.”
It’s harder than it looks. “I’m fine.”
“Damn fine,” Hawks says, infuriatingly calmly like he always does, “but that’s not the point.”
“I don’t trust you with the point right now,” Enji says. “Or with any other sharp objects.”
Hawks laughs again.
But Enji is, at least, finally nearing the monstrosity of a gleaming gold and black skyscraper that sustained this farce.
“Sit tight,” he says. “Don’t you have games on your phone?”
“You’re more fun,” Hawks says, which is uncomfortable but unsurprising.
“Hold on,” Enji says.
There’s a stretch of dotted yellow curb in front of the place—miraculously devoid of taxis as Enji comes up. He must be leeching Hawks’s luck.
Five minutes should be enough time, if the elevator speed is relatively standard. If Hawks makes it take longer than that, Enji will make him pay the citation. Simple.
He takes his phone off of speaker again, lifts it to his ear, and strides into the lobby, ignoring the passersby who gape and then whisper. Unimportant.
He makes himself breathe out before he presses the elevator button. He jammed one, once. It was awkward.
“Are you going to be able to stand?” he asks.
“Up to your judgment?” Hawks says. “No. On my feet? Sure. Uh. Probably.”
There’s always the fire stairs. Enji could carry Hawks down to the lobby and then let the idiot lean on his arm like it’s an injury, not intoxication. They wouldn’t be outside and visible long enough for anyone to document it thoroughly.
“Am I to take it from your meaningful brooding silence that you’re here?” Hawks says, sounding too excited about the notion altogether.
Enji bites back Keep your pants on just in time. A sober Hawks would pretend to take that as a challenge. A drunk one might well be naked by the time he makes it up. “In philosophically consistent pieces.”
Hawks laughs again.
Enji breathes in, deeply, and out again. Hawks is floating on a sea of triumphant endorphins smoothed to euphoria by the addition of the alcohol. Everything is funny to him right now. He would probably laugh at a murder.
The elevator makes another cheerful simulated bell-like toll. The doors open.
The young couple that emerges from the elevator stares at Enji, but neither of them speaks. He eyes them, keeping the phone held to his ear, and then steps in as soon as they’ve cleared the car. He pushes the button for the eighteenth floor. He pushes the button to shut the doors. People say it doesn’t have any effect, but he’s convinced there’s at least a quarter-second improvement on most standard models.
“Are you in the elevator?” Hawks says. “It’s fuzzy.”
“Yes,” Enji says.
“I’m good with fuzzy,” Hawks says, which at least lends credence to Enji’s recent conclusion that he simply isn’t making any sense. “I can’t believe you came all this way to rescue me.”
“Why the hell not?” Enji says. “You asked for my help.”
“Sure,” Hawks says, “but I’m not some hapless civ who got tangled up in a grudgematch way above my pay grade. I did this to myself.”
Enji watches the number on the digital display climbing slowly, red LEDs flickering in and out of life.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he says. “If someone like you had had the guts to do this twenty-five years ago, a lot of things might have gone very differently.”
He can hear the shit-eating grin, right on cue. “But there’s no one like me.”
“No,” Enji says. “There isn’t.”
“I can hear the elevator,” Hawks says. “And feel the elevator. Eugh. TTFN.”
“What?” Enji says.
“’Bye,” Hawks says, and hangs up.
Enji lowers his phone and stares at the screen. It seems like the only option.
The elevator stops rising, shudders slightly, and settles.
The doors open.
Enji looks down at the carpet before he shifts his weight to move. The last thing he wants to do is step on Hawks after all this work to try to extract him from the situation intact.
There is, possibly-fortunately, ample room to step out into the hallway, because Hawks is splayed out in the middle of the carpet with all of his limbs flung out like a highly atypical starfish. He has his phone clutched in his right hand. He’s wearing a rather nice and remarkably understated slate-gray suit, tailored well to him, and has even paired it with suitable shoes. He apparently owns a plain navy blue silk tie, which he has admittedly loosened enough that Enji could lift it up over his head, and which he has wrinkled more than a bit by rolling around on the floor.
He points upward with the hand still holding his phone. “Look.”
Enji looks.
The ceiling tiles are indeed an abject embarrassment to the institution of interior design. At a quick mental estimate, they could easily have alternated the tiles into a neat checkerboard and then run the pattern piece that they had more of as a border around the edges. It would have looked nice. It would not have turned the stomach of anyone whose gastrointestinal fortitude was already somewhat destabilized by recent drunken escapades in the name of public safety.
Enji looks down at Hawks again.
Hawks’s eyes linger on the flame percolating against Enji’s chest for a long, obvious second.
Then Hawks’s eyes widen.
“You came from work?” Hawks blurts out. “Why the hell were you still working this late?”
“Tonight is the report deadline,” Enji says.
Hawks’s mouth falls open.
“Ah, shit,” he says, snapping it shut so that he can grimace instead. “With all—” He waves a hand. The mirrored versions of him on the glass redouble it near-infinitely into a wall of undirected gestures. “I totally forgot. You think they’ll give me a pass?”
He has a way of wringing goodwill out of everyone he encounters, when he isn’t breaking the rules over his knee.
“I suspect you’ll get away with it,” Enji says, “one way or another.”
Hawks sighs, shoulders slumping, and then brightens suddenly.
“I know,” he says. “I’ll take the Chair of Public Safety out to an izakaya next week, and drink her under the table, and convince her to—”
“No,” Enji says.
Hawks sticks his bottom lip out. “But it’s foolproof.”
“Revisit your definition of that word,” Enji says.
He takes a breath. He steps forward and holds out both hands.
Hawks seizes onto them. His right hand feels cool in Enji’s left—and very, very small, even though Enji knows full well what it’s capable of.
“I’ll revisit your definition,” Hawks mutters as Enji hauls him upright—which, between his minimal weight and some help from the wings, barely requires any effort at all.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Enji says. He lets go of Hawks’s hands. They’re standing too close together. Enji battles the urge to fix the tie, straighten the lapels of the suit jacket, brush off the tops of the shoulders. It’s not his place.
Hawks doesn’t step back.
His eyes are slightly hazy, but warm with the influence of a disproportionately sunny smile.
“How do you feel?” Enji asks.
“Like I’ve been hanging upside-down from a stoplight for about thirty-five minutes,” Hawks says, “and every drop of blood in my body has rushed to my head.”
Enji stifles the sigh and extends his left elbow to lean on.
Hawks’s eyes light up.
Enji makes the mistake of blinking.
By the time he’s opened his eyes again, Hawks has hopped up into the air to perch on his forearm, crouched there and grinning fit to crack his face. Enji can’t even feel his weight—the wings must be holding him. His dress shoes look utterly absurd resting on Enji’s metal gauntlet. If smugness saved lives, they could both retire after tonight.
Enji drops his arm. “Hawks—”
The laughter echoes off the mirrored walls even before his toes touch the carpet. “Come on, that was so funny! What’d you think was gonna happen, giving me an opening like that?”
Enji slaps the elevator button—unthinkingly, too hard, with his right hand. It pings in a feebly reprimanding sort of way. “You do realize that my instinctive reaction to surprises is usually to set them on fire.”
Impossibly, Hawks somehow manages to look even more pleased with himself. “But you didn’t. Because it was me.”
The infuriating thing is that he’s… right.
Isn’t he?
Even the most viciously protective parts of Enji’s brain know him too well to read him as a threat.
If Enji is very, very lucky—which he almost never is—Hawks is just drunk enough that he’ll have forgotten that by tomorrow.
At least one thing went right tonight: the next elevator over opens promptly.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Enji says as he starts over to it.
Hawks moves to follow and wobbles on his feet.
There’s an approximately seventy percent chance that that was either fake or exaggerated, but Enji offers him the arm again anyway.
Hawks, of course, could not possibly be content with just grasping Enji’s forearm for balance and leverage, and instead latches on higher up as Enji tows him into the elevator. He squeezes Enji’s bicep in a way that does not resemble a test of structural integrity as much as it implies an appreciation of form.
Then he squeezes again.
Eighty-five percent chance of pretense. Minimum.
But they’re already in the elevator, which at least is empty; and surely it’s safe to consider the case nearly closed now.
Damn it. Now that Enji has thought that, the universe will grind his face into it.
“Are you going to be able to walk from the front door to the car on your own?” he asks. “I don’t think concealing your identity is an option.”
Hawks smiles at the elevator buttons. He hasn’t released Enji’s arm. The bent wings still spread wide enough that one hovers just behind Enji’s back. “I’ll limp a little. Make it look like an injury acting up. Fuck knows I got the shit kicked outta me enough the past couple weeks to have an excuse.”
“You were off,” Enji says.
The smile contorts into a grimace. “Knew you’d notice.”
Enji doesn’t want to say it. It feels—strange. Too personal and too superficial at once. He shouldn’t have to ask—he should be able to figure out the answer without having to probe for specifics. He certainly shouldn’t have to ask with the same tired, pathetic platitude that people always use.
But it’s important.
Hawks is important.
That’s why he’s here.
He takes the breath and puts it behind the words to push them out into the world, knowing he can never retract them.
“Is there something wrong?” he asks.
A smile plays around Hawks’s mouth, although his eyes don’t leave the elevator buttons. His voice sounds very slightly strained.
“Ah, big guy,” he says. “It’s okay. Mostly I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole business I had going on tonight. So hopefully now that it’s over with, everything’ll be back to normal.” He pauses. “If not, I dunno what the fuck I’m gonna do, but let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, or maybe never.”
“If you have a problem,” Enji says, slowly, testing the limits of the words, “you could always try asking for help.”
Hawks shoots him a smirk.
Enji battens down the hot surge of annoyance. “That’s exactly the point. Look where it’s gotten me. You don’t want to repeat my mistakes. And you don’t have to.”
Hawks leans a little harder on his arm. “You’re so cute.”
“I am not,” Enji says.
“Are so,” Hawks says, “times a million, no takebacks.”
Enji looks at him.
Hawks smiles back.
The elevator door opens.
“Come on,” Enji mutters, eyeing the handful of civilians still milling around in the lobby and outside even though it’s practically the middle of the damn night. “If I got a ticket—”
“Then I will buy you a new car,” Hawks says, “so that you can yeet this shameful failure of a mode of transport into the sea, citation and all, and wipe it from the record of human existence once and for all.”
Enji looks at him again.
Hawks starts walking—and, as promised, does an extremely convincing impression of trying to hide an injury, modulating his stride to avoid putting weight on his right ankle, and manages to make leaning on Enji look subtly reluctant even to a trained eye. He folds the wings up tightly, lowering them, letting the tips of the primaries scrape the shining marble tiles of the lobby floor as he reduces his visual profile and radiates about as much rueful chagrin as humanly possible. His biggest fans wouldn’t be able to tell that he’s faking.
“You should go into theater,” Enji mutters.
Hawks maintains a smile that wavers with a strong hint of a wince. “You should go into accounting.”
“Too busy filling in as your chauffeur,” Enji says.
Hawks stops walking to laugh, which is highly counterproductive for several reasons.
Enji tugs him forward through the big glass lobby doors, glaring back at the group of kids—functionally kids—who stopped on the sidewalk to stare. They gaze at him open-mouthed for a second, then at Hawks, then start whispering.
Enji swallows down the steam, crushes down the pressure. He’s just tired. They’re almost through it. This is the life he signed up for—the life he lost himself making. This is the prize he’s had his eye on the whole time.
He doesn’t see any obnoxious bright blue slips of paper slipped under the windshield wipers or taped to the glass. It would be somewhat self-defeating to ticket a vehicle plastered with agency stickers and bracketed by clearly marked plates, but they’ve done it before.
He opens the passenger side door with his right hand—cautiously, since the rubber on the fingertips sometimes fails to find traction on metal—and eases Hawks down into the seat. The wings twist around like an optical illusion, resettling themselves. They’re mesmerizing if you’re not careful.
Enji has a lot of practice. He’s been careful for a long, long time.
Hawks makes a big show of wriggling around in the seat, which Enji ignores, because the only thing that matters is that all of his appendages are clear of the doorframe.
“Full service,” Hawks says, loud enough for him to hear. “I feel like a prince.”
“Shut up,” Enji says, for what must be the hundred-thousandth time in their acquaintance. He doesn’t expect the results to differ from the previous ninety-nine thousand attempts, but if his life has taught him anything…
He closes the door.
He gets into the front seat.
“Okay,” Hawks says, fumbling his phone out. “This is our chance. Driving directions to Norway, comin’ right up.”
“There are some geographical impediments to that plan,” Enji says, watching the road for several moments before he draws the car out onto it. The only thing worse than killing one hero in a reckless driving accident would be wiping out the top two in one fell swoop.
“What do you think ferries are for?” Hawks says. “Oh, this is the road trip to end all road trips. Amazing. Japan will have burned to the ground before we even get there.”
“That should solve most of our problems,” Enji says.
“Exactly!” Hawks says. “It’s even more foolproof than sake-lobbying major government officials. Which capital cities do you want to hit on our way over?”
Enji has committed just enough attention to driving that he’s lost his vise grip on language again. “All of them.”
“Me, too,” Hawks says calmly. “I’ve never been anywhere. Well. Not officially. I think they smuggled me out of the country for training a couple times to leverage the legal loopholes about licensing. But I didn’t get to see anything.”
There’s something particularly sad about the idea of eyes that sharp only ever being used for other people’s gain.
“I am not driving you to Norway in an agency car,” Enji says, cautiously, watching a truck ahead of them change lanes much faster than it should. “But if there’s something closer that you want to visit, I’ll make the time.”
The silence prickles with significance. He risks glancing over. Hawks has flattened his palms against each other and pressed his hands between his knees.
“You’re being nice,” Hawks says. “Like, so nice. I need to positively reinforce this. I can’t say ‘I want to visit your bedroom, and you should clear your whole night’.”
Enji only lets his left hand tighten around the steering wheel. “We’ve had this discussion.”
“When?” Hawks says. “I don’t remember that. You did once tell me to put my big mouth to better use, but you were talking about breakfast. Heartbreaking, really.”
“Not that,” Enji says. “We’ve had the discussion about how identifying what you’re supposedly not going to say is the same thing as just saying it. If anything, it’s more annoying.”
Hawks casts a contemplative look out at the road. “Rhetorical genius is never understood in its own time.”
Enji’s brain slams on the brakes. Fortunately, his foot does not automatically follow suit. “Wait—you—why would you—”
“Oops,” Hawks says, sounding more genuinely regretful than he has in recent memory. “Just—never mind. Forget I said that. Just drive. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Hawks,” Enji says, slowly. “It has not escaped my notice that you only ever express your real feelings slipped in between two jokes so that you can hide behind—”
“Nobody’s hiding,” Hawks says, voice clipped. “Just drive.” He swallows, breathes out through his teeth. “Enji. Please.”
If Enji could deny him anything, they wouldn’t be here at all.
It’s the fact that it was never a secret—isn’t it? It’s the fact that it never sounded shameful, which it should have been; and that made it seem insincere.
Hawks flirts with everyone. Hawks sometimes flirts with inanimate objects, and occasionally with thin air.
He doesn’t mean it. No one in their right mind would ever make Enji the object of—
“Drive,” Hawks says. “You think like three simultaneous avalanches trying to out-boulder each other. Or like a steel mill. Like a controlled burn.”
There’s nothing controlled about it.
This—doesn’t add up. Hawks is more honest when he’s uninhibited. There’s substantial evidence from tonight alone to indicate that much of what Enji interpreted as flippant provocations were veiled invitations, testing to see if he would respond. Revisiting previous experiences with that context—
Enji needs to drive.
His instinct, as always, is to ram right into it, head-on, and see where it splinters. His impulse is to say What do you want? and use the leverage of their relative isolation to force Hawks to answer—to back him into a corner and wring the truth out of him one drop at a time, after all these games that he didn’t fully realize that he was playing.
But Hawks’s mind works drastically differently from his.
And Hawks is twenty-four, for fuck’s sake.
If Hawks hasn’t announced what he wants, it’s just as likely that it’s because he doesn’t know. It’s possible that he has an inkling, but he can’t figure out how to articulate it in a way that encapsulates its complexity.
Enji knows very well that feeling unable—or unsafe—to express some part of yourself is another kind of cage in a world already teeming with steel bars and silver latches.
Hawks has been through enough. If he prefers to drop this, it costs Enji nothing to let him.
Enji watches the road. He twists his left hand around the wheel until he can feel his heartbeat against it, and then he makes his fingers relax.
“Why three avalanches?” he asks.
Hawks half-laughs. “I dunno. Two doesn’t seem like enough. Four sounds excessive. Would you rather be four avalanches?”
“Depends,” Enji says. “How many is All Might?”
That wrangles a real laugh out of Hawks again, which probably isn’t a meaningful accomplishment given how much sake is still circulating in his system, but Enji intends to take what he can get.
The car goes quiet, which is not an optimistic sign. Ordinarily Hawks would invent some clever response to the semi-rhetorical question—spin out a yarn, punctuate it with gestures and expressions, bring it all to life. Enji can’t hear his breath or the feathers rustling over the engine and the road noise. It’s unsettling to have so little indication that he’s even there.
“You can turn the radio on,” Enji says.
“You hate the radio,” Hawks says.
“You hate silence,” Enji says.
A glance confirms a flicker of a grin. “You’re the one driving.”
“I don’t think we should swap,” Enji says.
A tiny feather drifts faux-idly over to the panel, twirls once, and presses itself to the button to activate the stereo system. Enji doesn’t remember who used the car last, or why, but he’s not surprised that it turns on to the police scanner.
Hawks isn’t surprised either, by the faint shake of his head. “When are you gonna set one of those up in my agency?”
“As soon as you ask me to,” Enji says.
“Oh,” Hawks says. The feather dances over the FM radio presets, all of which produce horrific static followed by grating noise, and then taps the seeking arrows. “Cool.” He settles on something only moderately obnoxious. “How’s this?”
“I’ll live,” Enji says.
At least it puts a smile back in his voice. “Fuckin’ kids these days, with their hip-hop and their rap music and their ripped-up jeans where you can see their underwear.”
“Don’t get me started,” Enji says.
The feather twists the dial again, and the static spits, and Enji clenches his jaw so he won’t grind his teeth.
“Maybe there’s an oldies station,” Hawks says.
“It’s not about the type of music,” Enji says. It’s late. It’s dark. It’s Hawks. “There’s too much noise in my head as it is.”
“But that’s the whole point,” Hawks says. “You drown out the bad noise with good noise. That’s what music is.”
“Hm,” Enji says.
“That is the most dad response you could possibly give,” Hawks says, although it sounds more delighted than derisive. That’s… something. “I bet I can find music that you like.”
“I doubt it,” Enji says.
“Not now,” Hawks says. “The radio is woefully inadequate for the kind of customization you’re going to need. I’m gonna make you a mixtape.”
“I’m shocked you even know that term,” Enji says.
But he’s not—is he? Not quite. Hawks is older than he has any right to be, in a lot of ways. It feels like he’s lived a dozen lives. It feels like he’s been a thousand people, worn a million faces, told a billion lies.
But that didn’t sound like one of them.
“Just for that,” Hawks says, audibly grinning enough that the radio garbage disappears, “I’m gonna eBay my way into an actual cassette to put it on.”
“That is,” Enji says, “unconscionably extra.”
Hawks howls laughing.
Which isn’t entirely fair, given that Hawks is the one who taught him the word—albeit accidentally—but it’s preferable to most of the alternatives.
When Hawks catches his breath, he wastes a bit more of it on “Only the best for you, big guy.”
“If this is how you always pay people back for driving,” Enji says, “I’m never giving you a ride again.”
“Word choice not ideal,” Hawks says.
Enji eyes him, but not for long, because they’re on the damn highway, and he needs to dedicate his attention.
“If that was a ‘How many innocent expressions can you willfully misinterpret as innuendos’ look,” Hawks says, “the answer is that I can do this all night long.”
With that much sake in him, he’ll pass out as soon as his head hits the pillow.
“Ambitious,” Enji says.
“You know me,” Hawks says. “Rise and grind. Although it’s just as often in the opposite order.”
Enji hopes Hawks doesn’t remember this part very well tomorrow, either, because it’s strangely… fun.
“You probably shouldn’t attempt it in either order until you find out how bad the hangover is,” Enji says.
Hawks starts laughing again, and then gradually transitions the laughter into theatrical sobbing.
“Open the glove,” Enji says.
“I hope this is a jumpscare,” Hawks says.
He pops it.
There’s silence again as he sees the neat assortment of items inside—which include a bottle of water, a variety of painkillers, and an expansive first aid kit.
“Truly,” he says, extracting the bottle and shutting the hatch again, “you are my savior.”
“If all it takes to save you is bottled water,” Enji says, “wait until you hear about grocery stores.”
“You’re the feistiest cab driver I’ve ever had,” Hawks says, unscrewing the cap to sip it.
Enji snorts. “You need to get out more.”
The suddenness of the renewed laughter makes Hawks spray water all over the dashboard, and presumably dribble more still on himself, but Enji can’t afford to watch him. People are driving even more like idiots than usual, and he’s not especially familiar with Hawks’s city. He’s never needed to be.
He can navigate to the apartment complex, though. He’s been here twice before.
The first time was because Kurumada had insisted on picking Enji up from the hospital after the war, and Hawks and the ragged remains of his wings had hitched a ride. He hadn’t especially wanted to, by the sound of it, but Kurumada had generously bullied him into accepting the offer anyway. He’d looked small in the backseat by himself. Enji’s chest had felt so empty that it had registered as strange more than it had as painful. It had been different when it wasn’t Tsunagu’s car, when Hawks didn’t have the coat collar and the accessories and the bravado. He’d bantered back and forth with Kurumada, but he’d looked exhausted in a different way. He’d looked lost.
He’s found his feet, now.
And the sky, again.
And far, far too much sake, on this particular night.
It’s a dangerous thing—to wonder just how honest the alcohol would let him be. To wonder whether he would answer questions Enji normally would never dare to ask. To wonder if his guard even can come down, or if he’s programmed to protect himself the same way that they trained him to destroy.
It doesn’t matter.
Enji won’t press the advantage. It wouldn’t be fair. Or right. Or kind.
Fuck knows Hawks deserves a little kindness, even if it has to come from him.
“Watch out on this turn,” Hawks says, just loud enough to carry over the drivel emanating from the speakers. “Comes up on a merging lane real fast, and people are stupid. Pulled a lotta people out of cars over here.”
“Thank you,” Enji mutters.
He does what he’s told, monitors the mirrors, takes them through.
It’s the mundanity that makes it feel so surreal. They never do anything normal. They never get to be anything normal. Enji can’t figure out what to make of it. He modulates his behavior less with Hawks than nearly anyone else he knows, but this still feels like stepping into a role written for someone else. Ordinary friends drive each other home from the bar all the time, but he and Hawks are only friends in the first place because neither of them has ever had the luxury of being ordinary at all.
“Damn,” Hawks says. “You remember how to get to my house?”
“I wouldn’t call it a ‘house’,” Enji says, and reaps the ill-gotten laugh again. “I’ve been here before.”
“Yeah, like twice,” Hawks says, and Enji can hear the grin. Enji can, in fact, hear that it’s the specific one where he bats his eyelashes. “’Fess up. Are you secretly obsessed with me?”
“I’m obsessed with the idea of going home and going to bed,” Enji says. “Which requires clearing this objective by any means necessary.”
“‘Objective’ is so close to ‘objectify’,” Hawks says, “and yet so far.”
“What?” Enji says.
“You heard me,” Hawks says.
“Never mind,” Enji says.
“Wise choice,” Hawks says.
“Then why did you say it?” Enji asks.
“So that you’d keep paying attention to me,” Hawks says, perfectly calmly. “C’mon, Enji, how long have you known me?”
“Feels like forever,” Enji mutters.
The grin returns, near-deafeningly. “You’re on fire tonight, big guy. Every way but the usual one.”
“For the record,” Enji says, “I will not stop paying attention to you if you ever figure out how to shut up for five minutes at a stretch.”
“Five is a lot,” Hawks says. “Could we start with, like, thirty-second sprints and see how it goes?”
“You occasionally manage thirty seconds accidentally,” Enji says.
“Not that you’re counting,” Hawks says, sounding thrilled.
“The new goal needs to be at least a minute uninterrupted,” Enji says. “And it has to be intentional.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” Hawks says, “which is so many of my favorite things, but none of them in the right context.” He sighs heavily. “But we can’t practice right now. You’d have to time me, and you need to focus on keeping us alive in spite of the harrowing midnight streets.” He blows out another breath that must tousle his tangled bangs. “Ah, damn. I missed an opportunity here. I should’ve gone home on the subway, so I could take the midnight train going anywhere.”
“I think going to your own bed is a significant improvement,” Enji says. “But if you’d like me to turn around—”
“Fuck off,” Hawks says, adoringly. “We’re two minutes away, and you know it.”
“Then it’s the perfect time to practice shutting up,” Enji says.
“No way,” Hawks says. “If I’m gonna do it, I gotta shoot for that five-minute record. Go big, or go home. Like, actually.” He sings, off-key, over the music that he put on. “It’s the final countdown—”
“You are never doing this again,” Enji says.
Pouting-pleading energy beams in his direction. “You mean you wouldn’t pick me up?”
“I mean that if I couldn’t,” Enji says, “you would humiliate yourself so thoroughly that you’d undo years of your own work, and that isn’t worth the risk.”
Something very different beams in his direction for several seconds as he draws tantalizingly close to the apartment building. He parked around the back, the one other time he drove them here, when Hawks was still coming off of the morphine after a different hospital stay. Enji puts his blinker on, moves into the turn lane—
“Wait,” Hawks says. “Are you stopping? Are you going to walk me up?”
“I don’t trust you with keys right now,” Enji says. There are a few spots left empty.
“You should never trust me with keys,” Hawks says. “But it would take me… mm. Sixteen seconds.”
Enji parks. “To figure out how to use your own damn keys?”
“To break in,” Hawks says.
Enji doesn’t shake his head, because it doesn’t help. He gets out and strides around the front of the car as Hawks battles with the seatbelt buckle. He opens the door.
Hawks has apparently bested his latest foe just in time to smile up at Enji.
“Oh, my gosh,” he says. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“No,” Enji says, offering the right arm out to him for leverage this time.
Hawks grabs on and hauls himself upright. “When I was a kid, and I saw all these super-rich people on TV, and I’d watch all the big-name heroes getting out of limos at events and shit, I used to fantasize about having a hot chauffeur.”
Enji draws him two steps back to make room to shut the door. “If that’s your way of asking to borrow Kurumada,” he says, “the answer is ‘no’.”
Hawks laughs again, with sufficient fervor to make himself wobble on his feet in spite of his grip on Enji’s arm before he catches himself with the feathers.
It could be outright faked, and it’s almost certainly overstated.
But Enji doesn’t… care. It doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that he doesn’t want Hawks to get hurt. It’s not about his pride, or about being right, or about proving something trivial. If Hawks is faking, all that Enji has to lose is the strength that it takes to bear his weight on the way over to the door, and he hardly weighs a damn thing to start with.
Hawks lets go of him long enough to let them into the lobby of the complex—which requires a numerical code, a card key, and a hard key, in that order.
“Was the bulletproof glass here when you moved in?” Enji asks.
“Yeah,” Hawks says. “But this wasn’t my first place. They gussied this one up before they swapped me over.”
Enji doesn’t have to ask who They were.
“It’s nice, right?” Hawks asks, slightly too brightly. He slaps the elevator call button with the heel of his hand, then slips a tiny feather into the slot of one of the mailboxes. It rattles around, rapping ostentatiously against the sides of the metal bin, as if Enji can’t estimate how many tricks Hawks still has up his sleeve that none of them have even seen just yet.
“It’s fine,” Enji says.
Hawks snickers. The elevator chimes, and the door opens. “Guess everything looks like pleb shit next to your giant mansion-palace thing with your forty-five rooms and your whole-ass shrine garden and your home gym and your movie theater and whatever else you’ve got.”
Enji keeps a straight face. “Yes. ‘Pleb shit’ was exactly the phrase I was going to use.”
Hawks’s laughter lasts for five floors. Enji supposes he should probably consider himself lucky that Hawks didn’t insist that they fly up to his balcony, streaking very visibly past some twenty stories of ordinary people’s windows to reach it.
Hawks leans on Enji’s left arm again, then hooks his elbow through Enji’s. After a moment of strange silence, he rubs the tip of his index finger around the metal edge of the gauntlet.
“Heavy?” he asks.
“No,” Enji says. “Titanium.”
Hawks smiles—a small, faint, bemused expression that looks odd on him. There’s really nothing subtle about his face, and he’s usually trying to use it to divert attention away from his ruthless intelligence and incomparable skill. He traces his fingertip very slowly around the curve of the metal where it arcs over the back of Enji’s forearm. “You should do a jetpack.”
“I don’t need one,” Enji says.
“But it’d be cool,” Hawks says.
“If history is any guide,” Enji says, “it would be hot.”
That laugh ferries them up three more floors, which leaves only half a dozen more.
“C’mon,” Hawks says. “All Might didn’t have a jetpack.”
“He basically did,” Enji says. “During the war. With the suit.”
“Doesn’t count,” Hawks says.
“I hate gimmicks,” Enji says.
“What are you talking about?” Hawks says, sounding equal parts scandalized and elated. “I’m a walking gimmick.” He clutches Enji’s arm a little tighter and offers up a truly exemplary shit-eating grin. “And you love me.”
Enji’s brain stalls out.
He stares down into Hawks’s inescapable dawnbreak eyes and tries to think of something to say that doesn’t start with Setting that aside or Be that as it may or How the hell did you know when it took me two damn years to understand?
Hawks keeps smiling at him.
Idiot.
Enji’s not sure which of them that’s supposed to refer to anymore.
“Well,” Hawks says, apparently content with what Enji hopes looks like speechless fury instead of tongue-tied helplessness, “I guess I’m mostly a flying gimmick. Walking’s so slow.” The eyes somehow light up brighter. “Airborne gimmick. Guided gimmick projectile. Help me out, here.”
The elevator is the only thing in this building with a scrap of mercy for a miserable old man.
It dings.
The door recedes.
“No,” Enji says.
Hawks sticks his bottom lip out, but the cage has split: Enji drags him out into the hallway and looks to the right, then the left. There appear to be a few doors in each direction.
“Which—”
“Keep your voice down,” Hawks whispers, exceedingly loudly. “They already hate me ’cause I come in late and leave early and track blood all over the carpet.”
“Those are stupid reasons to hate someone,” Enji says. He does not keep his voice down. “Especially someone who gets the crap beaten out of them trying to protect you six and a half days a week.”
Hawks is smiling beatifically at him again.
Enji swallows the sigh. He lowers his voice approximately five decibels.
“Which one,” he says, “is yours?”
“It’s got feathers carved all over the door,” Hawks says, tugging him to the left, “to make sure the assassins can find it in the dark.”
“How thoughtful,” Enji says.
Hawks leads him to the door at the end of the hallway, releases his arm, and starts patting around for keys.
“Hey,” he says. “Could you check my back pocket?”
“No,” Enji says.
“Spoilsport,” Hawks says. He moves his hands differently than Enji’s used to—the casual grace that occasionally gives way to catastrophic clumsiness has gone the same place as his impulse control. He’s overly careful, pointedly deliberate, each movement painstakingly controlled by evident force of will as he takes out his wallet and a different ring of keys with a flame-shaped keychain.
It looks familiar.
The feverish grappling for control, that is.
Well. The keychain, too. Unfortunately.
Another swipe of the card key reveals another lock. Hawks frowns at his fingertips, fits the teeth of the key into place on his second try, and leans into it harder than he needs to as he twists.
Enji bites back a remark on the topic of how many seconds it took Hawks to open the door the old-fashioned way, let alone break into an apartment that Enji knows he’s reinforced in every way he could think of. You can’t sleep unless you do.
“Ta-dah,” Hawks says, pushing the door open and extending both arms out histrionically. “Presto change-o. For my next trick, I’ll make your clothes disappear.”
Enji has seen pictures of the place, but he’s never been inside. He doesn’t look. He doesn’t move.
Except for raising his arms to fold them meaningfully across his chest, that is.
Hawks shuffles in, pauses, turns, and blinks at him. Hawks looks him up and down.
“My next trick has failed,” he says, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. “Are you… d’you… wanna… come in?”
“No,” Enji says. “But I’m not leaving until I’ve watched you drink twelve ounces of water.”
The grin reappears. At least that trick seems foolproof. “Ooh, kinky.”
“I know how this works,” Enji says. “If you get a nasty hangover, you’ll be bothering me tomorrow with all your whining.”
“It’s okay if you have a hydration fetish,” Hawks says, struggling to kick his dress shoes off. He sways again. Enji doesn’t think—just reaches out and grabs his shoulder to steady him. He manages to pry one shoe off, and then the other, revealing that his black socks have orange and yellow flames curling up over the toes, of course. “I’m very open-minded. Do you want me to pour some over my head like a Pocari Sweat commercial?”
“I want you to shut up and do what I told you,” Enji says. He has to step inside—has to follow far enough to make sure that Hawks stays on his feet as he very carefully sidesteps his own abandoned shoes and saunters over into his kitchenette.
“Bad news, big guy,” Hawks says.
“Let me guess,” Enji says. “You’re terrible at doing what you’re told.”
Hawks pauses in reaching up towards the cabinets to grin broadly at him. “This is why you’re number one.”
Enji is number one as a result of several universal cruelties and a cosmic joke of statistics. “If you don’t drink now, I’ll call you at six tomorrow.”
Hawks grimaces. “Take it back. That’s why you’re number one.”
Enji steps the rest of the way in, closes the door, crosses to him, and opens the cabinet.
The fact that the first thing his eyes land on is a perfect paired set of the commemorative pint glasses from the twenty-year anniversary of the Endeavor Agency—which were not, as it happens, ever made available to the public—makes him pause.
“eBay,” Hawks says, helpfully.
Enji takes one down and brings it to the sink. “Are you procrastinating on purpose to make me stay longer?”
Silence, except the rush of the tap, and the faint splash of the water against the side of the glass.
“Okay,” Hawks says. “I take it back, round two. This is why—”
“You could just ask me to visit,” Enji says, watching the water level rise.
Silence again.
The glass holds sixteen ounces. Enji fills it.
Feathers whisper against the countertop, and the very stupid socks scuff against the floor. “You’d come?”
“I came when you called me at eleven at night,” Enji says, turning, holding himself steady as he holds out the glass, “didn’t I?”
Hawks ignores the glass in favor of grinning at him again. It’s different from the last few—it’s like all the sunlight that they kept him from. It’s like all the warmth he never had. The wings expand as the feathers fluff up, spreading out and softening at once.
Enji takes a half-step towards him, extending the glass. “Drink.”
Hawks looks up at him for the better part of three more seconds, eyes flicking over his face, and then looks down at his hand instead.
Hawks wraps both hands around Enji’s, fingers splayed against his skin, and then slowly slides them up to take the glass.
“What’s the magic word?” he says.
“Now,” Enji says.
“Close enough,” Hawks says, finally gripping it firmly enough that Enji can let go.
Enji does. And folds his arms again.
Hawks gazes at their intersection for a second, which seems strange until Enji remembers how many times he’s made a point of staring immovably at Enji’s chest during a shared interview until the reporter started to fumble the questions.
But that’s another thing that’s always been out there—always been in front of an audience, always been for show.
Hasn’t it?
Hawks shakes himself. The feathers flutter, rustle, and settle back into place. He grins. He winks. He takes the loudest sip of water in the history of humankind. He heaves an over-the-top contented sigh.
“Keep going,” Enji says.
“Always do,” Hawks says, a rueful tinge to the indestructible smile. “Don’t have much choice.”
Enji refolds his arms, putting the right on top this time.
“Okay, okay,” Hawks says.
He does a very poor job of sneaking additional glances at Enji’s torso while he gulps his way to the bottom of the glass. The attention is—discomfiting, but not quite uncomfortable. It makes Enji’s skin prickle in a way he doesn’t enjoy, but doesn’t quite dislike either.
“I’m just going to say the quiet part out loud,” Hawks says, which is not exactly shocking. “You’re a tall glass of water.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Enji says.
“Tough shit,” Hawks says. “How is it my fault that you’re so hot?”
Enji holds his hand out for the empty glass. “You’re going to bed.”
“If we add a word or two,” Hawks says, “and rearrange that sentence just a little bit—”
Enji takes another half-step forward, coming close enough now to peel his fingers away from the glass and pluck it out of his hand. “We’re not. You’re going to bed.”
Hawks attempts to pout, but the smile keeps breaking through. “C’mon. It’d be fun. And I don’t kiss and tell.”
Enji puts the glass in the sink basin, plants his hand firmly on Hawks’s shoulder, and pushes hard enough to start marching him over towards the stairs up to the loft. “Irrelevant.”
Hawks’s hands wrap around his wrist. “Trust me,” he purrs. “It is very rele—”
Enji steps around behind him, still gripping his shoulder, to position himself between the wings, where his significantly larger weight gives him even more leverage. “Go.”
Speaking of the wings, Hawks takes up flapping them halfheartedly, pretending to drag his feet and dig in his heels. “But Enjiiiiiiii—”
The fact that he’s well enough to whine is a positive sign overall, even if it’s less auspicious for Enji’s sanity. “No.”
For all of the posturing, Hawks’s hand grazes the wall to balance himself as he makes his way up the stairs, and Enji doesn’t have to clamp his hand down to steady their progress. They’re through the worst of it. Arguably. “You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Enji says. “The answer is the same.”
“You’re so mean to me,” Hawks says.
“And yet you keep trying,” Enji says.
“Learned from the best,” Hawks says.
As they top the stairs, he veers off towards the little bathroom over to the right, and Enji lets go.
Enji isn’t here to judge, but canvassing the scene is another matter entirely. It’s a tiny window into Hawks’s psyche, which is deliberately obscured most of the time as a matter of sheer self-preservation. Hawks blurts out all kinds of things that sound like nonsense to obfuscate how fast and how clearly he’s really thinking underneath.
There isn’t much to the bedroom area, although the mostly-empty takeout container on the nightstand makes Enji’s skin crawl. The bed is unremarkable except for the fact that it’s very wide, presumably to let Hawks stretch out the wings without hitting a wall. The sheets and the duvet are both a deep slate gray. There are half a dozen pillows, one of which looks like it picked a fight with him and sorely regretted its arrogance.
Enji sympathizes.
He supposes he should probably consider himself lucky that Hawks’s bedclothes are not blazoned with the emblems of the Endeavor Agency—or, given the shamelessness with which Hawks shells out for bootleg bullshit, with an utterly unlicensed repeating pattern of Enji’s face.
Hawks gargles loudly.
Enji considers how small the closet and the dresser are—how little space he needs for the fraction of his life that belongs to him.
Hawks spits. Also loudly.
“Did you hear that?” he asks. “I have, like, no gag reflex. Just in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t,” Enji says.
Hawks laughs. The water runs. “Baby, by the size of you, you oughta be.”
“Don’t call me that,” Enji says before he can bite it back. “I’m twenty years older than you.”
“Oh, shit,” Hawks says, delightedly. “Did they put an age limit on ‘baby’ while my back was turned? Rude AF.”
“What?” Enji says.
“What do you want instead?” Hawks asks. “World’s your oyster, Daddy.”
Enji says nothing, because there simply are no words.
Hawks opens the door enough to grin at him, mercilessly. “Throw up in your mouth a little?”
Enji lets his expression answer.
The grin widens. Evidently Hawks was washing his face, or at least attempting to—all the tiny curls of hair that frame his face are damp, dark honey-colored coils plastered to his temples. Somehow it only serves to emphasize his eyes. Most things do. “But in a way where you’re kinda into it and just hate yourself for it? Or, like, hard pass? It can’t be a hard pass. You were totally into calling me ‘boy’.”
“I was not,” Enji says, which is sixty-five percent true and therefore rounds up. “Stop stalling. Go to bed.”
Hawks’s smirk should have a specific warning label. He accompanies its scythe edges with an airy “Whatever you say, baby” and then shuts the door.
In the interests of not standing there listening to him piss, Enji goes over to the unremarkable bed and picks up the pillow that Hawks seems to have abused. A bit of adjustment mostly sorts it out. He straightens the sheets while he’s there, even though Hawks will obviously rumple them again.
He steps back.
He folds his arms again.
It hasn’t been much help so far, but it’s a better defense than none at all.
Barely, as he discovers moments later.
Hawks isn’t finished with him yet.
Hawks emerges from the bathroom in absolutely nothing but a pair of extremely snug boxer-briefs—deep royal blue with a red waistband, with orange and yellow flames licking up from the legs.
They were, of course, the product of a licensing deal far too lucrative to reject regardless of the fundamental indignity, but seeing them on a human being—seeing them on him—
“Don’t look at me like that,” Hawks says, sounding like he would love nothing more than for Enji to look at him ‘like that’ every day for the rest of his natural life. “They’re lucky.”
Enji can’t catch these words in time either. “Please don’t tell me that you faced off against All For One in Endeavor-themed underwear.”
This laugh makes his skeleton feel too small, and every centimeter of his skin feel too tight. “Okay. I won’t tell you. How’s that?”
“Abominable,” Enji says.
Hawks knows he’s won this round, of course. He positively sashays over to the bed.
Everything that he tosses onto his body looks like it was designed for him and him alone, but the way that these cling to his ass presents an entirely new conceptualization of purgatory. They look so damn good that Enji forgets, for a moment, about the scars.
Hawks doesn’t give him time to dwell on those, either—he flings both arms and both wings out like a sky-diver and faceplants onto the mattress.
“Come on in,” he says, slightly muffled by the duvet. “The water’s fine.”
Not nearly as fine as he is, in ways he hardly seems to know—the fine bones of his face, the fine fanning spread of his eyelashes, the fine precision of his hands, the impossibly fine mind behind them all.
And the strong heart beneath it. Undaunted. Indomitable.
“You’re feeling better,” Enji says. It’s not a question.
“Huh?” Hawks says, twisting, and the lithe movement of the powerful muscles in his battered back instantaneously shuts down several critical sections of Enji’s brain. The mischief in his eyes certainly doesn’t help. “No way. I’m in sad shape. You’d better stay the night to make sure I make it through.”
Enji watches him. “I’ll risk it.”
The smile sparks in his eyes.
But then he’s sitting up, and reaching up, and one wing curves before Enji can retreat—enveloping him.
And blocking the exit.
“Hey,” Hawks says.
Enji folds his arms.
Too late. Too slow.
Hawks surges like an ocean wave, unfurling up against him, deft hands dancing up his chest, over his useless arms, so that one can span each side of his jaw. The tip of each of Hawks’s longest fingers rests right at the hinge, the pads of his thumbs settling lightly under Enji’s cheekbones, and Enji is too stunned to identify an escape.
Hawks’s skin isn’t warm, compared to Enji’s. But the touch burns all the same.
“Thank you,” Hawks says, barely loud enough for it to wind its way into Enji’s ear and coil there like a cat in a stretch of sunlight. “You’re a good friend, even if you refuse to ever believe that you’re a good person.”
It’s not about belief.
Enji eyes him. “Whatever redemptive qualities you think I have don’t change—”
“It’s cute how you said that like I was still listening,” Hawks says, sweetly.
Hawks’s heartbeat pulses against Enji’s skin—so much more detectably on the right side, strangely faint through the scar tissue on the left.
Enji glowers down at him, which is a formality at this point. “You heard me.”
“I reject your premise,” Hawks says, all unholy cheer, “and reiterate my gratitude.”
Enji grits his teeth. “You—”
“Are impossible and incorrigible and unconscionable and all those other words you like,” Hawks says, warmly now. Enji makes a serious attempt to ignore the fact that he’s nearly naked, and he’s still cradling Enji’s face. “So there’s no point arguing.”
“You love arguing,” Enji says.
“I love a lot of things that maybe I shouldn’t,” Hawks says, and his eyes—
Something makes Enji look away—at the wall, at the floor, at the wings.
A self-preservation instinct, possibly.
Or self-sabotage.
A desperate attempt at deprivation.
But it isn’t—
Safe.
Hawks is drunk. He’s just talking. None of it is promised. It’s hardly even rational. He’s just playing the game they always play.
Hawks sighs, and Enji chances a glance. His eyes stay strangely gentle. His thumb sweeps slowly across one of the ridges of the scar.
“You think too much,” he says.
“I think exactly the right amount,” Enji says. “That’s why I’m still alive.”
“I never think at all,” Hawks says, which is bullshit, but pithier for it. “So why the hell am I still here?”
“Because you’re smarter than three-quarters of the inhabitants of Tartarus put together,” Enji says, “faster than the Billboard top five combined, and so relentlessly driven that you can never let that be enough.”
Hawks’s eyes gleam. This smile is small and slow. His right hand rises, and just his fingertips graze through Enji’s sideburn, nails trailing in an idle wave across his skin and then flirting with his ear. “Mixed messages, big guy.”
“I don’t do mixed messages,” Enji says. It’s late, and he’s tired, and Hawks’s hands on him are so distracting that the words just—flow. His speech filter is shot. His control is failing. “You know damn well that you’re extraordinary. It’s a statement of fact. You’re perfectly capable of being a once-in-a-generation pro and also being the kind of idiot who gets drunk to negotiate with government officials and then swans around in merchandise underwear.”
“Good word, ‘swans’,” Hawks murmurs. He’s—closer now. Somehow closer than far too close. “I always award extra points for bird puns. Although I gotta warn you that the dad jokes are really not helping you beat the Daddy allegations, babe.”
Enji’s lungs don’t seem to remember their respiratory responsibilities anymore. “I told you not to call me that.”
“Okay,” Hawks says, eyelids sinking low, mouth curving up.
It’s not Enji’s fault that he has a beautiful mouth. It’s not Enji’s fault that the flecks of amber in his eyes are mesmerizing; or that there’s a thin, pale scar just past the markings at the far corner of his right eye; or that the broad new swathe AFO cut downward on his forehead draws your gaze down the narrow bridge of his nose every time.
Hawks shifts up closer still.
Enji thinks—
He should have run.
But he would have had to start the day they stood together on the stage. As soon as he saw what Hawks was made of, it was already too late.
Hawks is made of syrup and steel and spite and unrivaled ingenuity.
Hawks is made of the same kinds of broken pieces, configured into a shape that should have been too sharp.
He’s made it soft.
He’s made it soft by force.
Enji has spent all the excuses.
Hawks rises to him, and he doesn’t move.
Hawks’s beautiful mouth meets Enji’s right cheek, and his silky hair whispers over Enji’s skin, and his fingertips slide down both sides of Enji’s neck at once.
“Enji,” Hawks says.
A hundred-thousand people have said it to him, over all these years.
It has never sounded like this.
It has never sounded like a prayer and a plea and a sin and a secret and a warning and a welcome and a relief.
Hawks’s breath ghosts over his cheek. He doesn’t move.
“Thank you,” Hawks says. “For bailing my dumb ass out.”
There is nothing dumb about him, and his ass shouldn’t be disparaged, but that’s another conversation that Enji is not adequately prepared to have.
Enji lifts his hands—concentrating, moving the metal as carefully as he can—and lays them over Hawks’s where they settled low on each side of his neck.
He clasps them.
He eases them down.
He drags his left hand up Hawks’s bare arm to his tightly-muscled shoulder, grasps it, and uses the leverage to guide him back down onto the bed.
“Sleep,” Enji says. “Idiot.”
Hawks’s grin could melt glass. “Sleep with me.”
Enji leans down. He takes a firm handful of the duvet. He lifts it.
Hawks’s breath catches.
Enji hurls it over his head.
“This is as close as I can get to putting a hood on you,” Enji says, “so that you’ll realize it’s night. Text me tomorrow if you’re still alive.”
“Oh, I will,” Hawks says, but the delight of it outweighs the danger, and Enji’s feet unfreeze.
Every road works the same way. Every climb is a matter of simple accumulation—one step at a time.
He turns. He walks to the stairs. He descends them. He turns again. Four more strides, and the door handle is in reach.
Hawks’s voice rolls down the stairs. “G’night, Enji. Drive safe.”
Enji looks back.
He’s got his arms crossed on the railing, chin rested on them, eyes so damn bright they might as well be a constellation on their own.
Enji opens the door and steps through.
He pitches his voice low.
He turns just far enough to meet those eyes over his shoulder.
“Goodnight,” he says, “boy.”
“Fuck,” Hawks says.
Enji does not indulge the urge to smirk a little as he starts to draw the door closed behind him.
“Game on,” Hawks says.
It’s somewhat unfair to leverage his positional advantage to get the last word, but perhaps he’s earned it.
“Good luck,” Enji says. “You’ll need it.”
He shuts the door.
Two can play, after all.
And Endeavor still loves to win.