Work Text:
It’s only because Shō is listening to the wind that he hears Hawks’ wings. They’re a steady beat in the score of the sky’s symphony. It’s dark, making it difficult for Shō to see the shape of him in the sky. They could let him pass by. The last time they had spoken to Hawks, it’d been on a rooftop with Shō agreeing to talk to him at all. He still isn’t sure what to think of him.
Hawks is moving fast, Shō decides that if he doesn’t hear them then it won’t be a big deal. They could carry on without another conversation until they happened to cross paths again or Shō was bold enough to use the number he had been given. He tilts his head up to the sky, whistling three notes; high, high, low, amplifying them to help the wind carry the sound of it up. That steady beat pauses and Shōwhistles again, he catches the whistle of the wind when Hawks changes course.
He lands so quickly that Shō has no time to think of what he’s actually going to say. He’s without his visor or his aviator jacket, his clothes plain; a leather jacket, black shirt, and jeans. There’s a bag of takeout hanging from one of his arms. His wings fan out behind him, fluffing before they close and tuck neatly behind his back.
“I thought I heard a little birdie singing a tune,” Hawks smiles at him, a wide, charming smile that Shō thinks he may have seen on the latest magazine cover he was featured on; a hint of surprise in how his brows raise. Hawks has a face that the cameras love, plastered on billboards and in fashion magazines. In the dark of the night, lit by the streetlights of the skatepark, his blond hair shines with white strands and his feathers are dark. The shadows of his eyes are deepened, the usual kiss of the sun gone from his skin.
“What are you doing here?” He scans Shō head to toe before he looks out to the empty skatepark, his head tilting to the side, “Practicing?”
“Yeah,” Shō answers, “What, decided to go for a late-night snack?”
Hawks lifts the bag on his arm as if remembering it was there, “Shoot finished up late but they at least gave me food,” he shrugs, his smile shrinking to a lazy one without any teeth, “Do you come here often?”
Shō hadn’t thought out how awkward they would feel, standing alone with Hawks. The sweat on their skin is beginning to cool, their shirt sticking to their back beneath their sweater, and a familiar dull ache spreads across the length of their shins and into their ankles.
“I do, mostly when other people aren’t around,” he grows tired of standing in his blades and sits, settling on the concrete ground. It holds the chill of the night, no longer clutching the sun's warmth. Spring is coming, but winter is still present and it makes Shō shiver. His legs dangle into the bowl, wheels clicking against the side of it. They weigh down on their legs, pulling them towards the earth. Hawks sits next to him without invitation. “I could hear you in the wind,” he explains without prompting.
“And you decided to call me down because there’s something important to talk about?” Hawks asks.
Shō isn’t sure how to answer. He doesn’t have any information to give to him, no updates, or any words on the street to share. They can’t discern if his question is out of genuine curiosity or tiredness, eager to remove himself from a spontaneous conversation. Hawks takes his silence as an answer, curiosity, and amusement blooming on her face.
“Aw, did you just want to talk to me?”
“Don’t be an asshole about it,” Shō snips back. Hawks raises his hands in mock surrender, the irritation that had sizzled up under Shō’s skin immediately dissipates into something akin to guilt. “Sorry, yes, I guess I did,” he looks at one of his skates instead of the hero, rolling the wheels against the concrete.
“Eh, I am kind of an asshole, not an unfair response,” Hawks laughs, drawing Shō’s eyes back to him. "What are you working on?"
"I'm trying to catch the wind," Shō explains, "With the way my quirk works, I can turn sound into energy, it's how I move so fast among other things."
"Ah, when you pushed my feathers back, was it because they broke the sound barrier?"
"For me they did. My hearing isn't a part of my quirk but it helps," they answer, "But if I can catch the wind, have it hold me up for a few seconds longer than my usual air time I might be able to float or something."
"Trying to fly," Hawks grins at him.
"Flying is a generous term," Shō admits, “I’m curious, from our last conversation,” Shō continues, changing topic before he has to admit that attempting to find a smooth rhythm with the wind is difficult, finding the reason he called Hawks down as he speaks, “You didn’t seem aware of me until the first time we met but you knew more about what I was doing the second time we bumped into each other.”
“Your whole performance art and community organization vigilantism?” There’s a teasing lilt to Hawks’ voice, it seems permanently ingrained in the way he speaks.
Shō snorts, the description isn’t inaccurate. “Yeah, that.”
“I looked you up,” Hawks tells him. His stomach becomes filled with knots.
“Oh?” He attempts to feign casualty, but his lack of a poker face seems to make Hawks smile. Or maybe he’s smiling to seem friendly, less likely to cut Shō’s belly open and examine his insides.
“The fact that I hadn’t heard about you before bothered me. You’ve been an active vigilante for what, a year? Two?”
“Almost two,” Shō had officially started when he was nineteen and found the ability to breathe again. He will be twenty-one this coming April.
Hawks nods at his confirmation, “That’s a while with no arrest record and the fact that no other heroes seem to know you. But you know them.”
“I know a couple of underground heroes. No one major,” Shō admits, finding no reason to lie.
“There is some overlap between undergrounds and vigilantes. That’s where I got the whole “community” thing from, didn’t shake any trees but dug around in the files long enough to learn more about what you do,” Hawks hums, “That isn’t what I’m referring to.” He lifts a hand, pointing a finger squarely at them, “You attended U.A. until you dropped out towards the end of your second year.”
There is no place to hide from Hawks, golden eyes tracking Shō as their chest grows tight and they simultaneously become cold and overheated at once. They look away from him, unable to withstand the intensity of his gaze, the sharpness to them as if he can see everything. It helps to hide his face but does nothing to disguise how his ears press back.
“I did,” he confirms—no reason to lie there, either.
“Why drop out if you’re just going to become a vigilante anyway?”
“I didn’t plan on it,” Shō doesn’t bother to specify; both dropping out and vigilantism just happened . It was what felt right, what they needed to do at the time. They can’t explain that to Hawks. “I had the skills. There’s a lot of areas that hero work doesn’t cover. People go slipping through the cracks when they’re not the perfect victim, part of a fringe social group or they have a quirk that isn’t compatible with the rest of our society. Sure, I can help people get arrested, but it isn’t that hard to have a conversation with someone and figure out other resources that could help them better. Vigilantism is a loose term, I just realized one day that there was work to be done that no one was doing and found other people with similar values,” they make a gesture with their hand, letting that fill in their absence of words, “Now I’m here.”
“Could’ve made a decent hero,” Hawks counters. Maybe he’s right. Shō wouldn’t know. The idea of being a professional hero stirs discomfort in them, a primal anxiety that they swallow down, reminding themself to behave more normally.
“I doubt I would’ve been able to do what I do now if I was a hero. It’s not an easy industry to make change in.”
“That’s true. Social work isn’t in our provenance like you said. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talk about anything other than charity,” Hawks hums, “Do you think what you’re doing now is effective?”
“It must be,” Shō replies, “You’re the one who asked for my help, didn’t you?”
“I just need more ears on the street. And I figured you might like a get out of jail free card or two,” Hawks shrugs, a casual smile on his face. Shō doesn’t believe those are his sole motivations.
“Using your power to pull some strings,” they ‘tsk’ softly without real scrutiny. The wind carries the chill with it, making a shiver run up their spine. Shō draws their arms in closer to themself to maintain their body heat, jacket discarded on the other side of the park. “If you looked me up, then you know we’re not too far apart in age.”
“You’re what, a year? Two younger than I am?” Hawks looks over at him, squinting. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Yeah, about two, which is my question. How’d you manage to climb the ranks so fast? It’s not like your alum from U.A. or Shiketsu,” they slip their hands into the sleeves of their sweater, “My body’s cooling down now, jackets on the other side. I’ll live.”
“It’s February ,” Hawks says pointedly. “Why’d you drop out of school?”
“If you’re not answering my question, I’m not answering yours,” Shō retorts.
“Touche,” Hawks looks away from him, freeing Shō of his pinning gaze. They can hear his feathers rustling, the sound they make is strange but not a bad one, unlike actual feathers. Before they process what he’s doing, their jacket is plopped into their lap, a couple of red feathers lying still on it.
“Oh,” they stare at it, “Thank you,” they pull it on after a moment, pulling the zipper up and curling into it. It’s chilled from the frost but the protection from the wind is an immediate relief.
“No problem.”
“So, if you won’t tell me how you became a hero, will you tell me why?” Shō looks at him this time. Hawks opens one of the takeout containers in the bag, the salty smell of fries wafting into Shō’s nose instantly. He shoves some into his mouth, contemplating Shō’s question as he chews. Wordlessly, he offers them some of the food. Shō does not take any despite the way it makes his mouth water.
Eventually, Hawks swallows, “Honestly, I just want to take it easy.” Shō stares at him, waiting for more. “A world where heroes have leisure time, y’know?” This late at night without the need for any pretenses, Shō can hear his dialect more clearly. It hangs on the edges of his words.
“What does that look like?” Shō asks him, Hawks tilts his head, that lazy smile on his face not betraying a thought. “You say you want to make it a world where heroes can take it easy, have free time, whichever way you want to put it. How do you plan on doing that? It’s not as if you can completely get rid of crime. Our society has lacks and people often fall through because of that, and I’m not naive enough to believe that if we solved every social issue out there there won’t be people who commit crime,” they continue, “So, what does a world where heroes rest look like?”
“Probably has more people like you,” Hawks says and Shō is so wildly caught off guard they have nothing to say in response. “That social work stuff, I mean. I’ve never really considered it before. You’re right that crime won’t stop existing either and between you and me, I think a lot of heroes have lost sight on what it is we’re supposed to be doing,” still, Shō says nothing, letting him talk, “There’s all this focus on our numbers, our rankings. It’s good to keep track on who’s helping who and how, but there’s also heroes like Best Jeanist who are popular because of the charitable things he does outside of his hero work. I think most heroes and non-heroes have become content with where we’re at now, especially with All Might on the top to keep everything under control.”
“So, you want heroes to become more well-rounded?” They ask for clarification.
Hawks stares at a french fry, “That’s part of it, sure. It’s like you said, there are the “lacks” that need to be filled in to actually create something stable.”
“You don’t think what we have now is stable?”
“Do you?” Hawks looks at him, gold eyes shining. “You wouldn’t be a vigilante if you trusted the system, would you?”
“True,” Shō can’t deny his point; he doesn’t have much faith in the way their world ran now, “I’m not sure how much this system can be fixed.”
“Would you suggest anarchy instead?”
“Well, no,” Shō twirls the ends of their hair between their fingers, shying away from Hawks’ eyes on him. He can still his gaze bearing into his skin. “I guess I still don’t see how it can be fixed the way things are now. You really think the Commission or even the public are willing to change the current set up?”
“That is the hard part, isn’t it,” Hawks sighs, a light and airy sound, unbothered as he turns to Shō with a wink, “I can be convincing.”
“I doubt it’ll just take convincing,” Shō tries not to squirm. He has to consider how closely Hawks might work with the Commission, considering his fast rise and his lack of accolades. No one knew anything about his past either.
“Eh, it’ll take a lot more, that’s true but it’s about time that we start to move into a new direction.”
Shō only hums in confirmation, wanting to pick at Hawks more and unable to find the words. It was growing even later now. They considered Hawks next to them, perhaps less obnoxious than they thought he originally was, with more tricks under his sleeve than Shō could account for. They wonder how often it was that he spoke these ideas out loud. Their skates click against the side of the bowl.
“Where did you get those?” Hawks interrupts their silent ruminating.
“Huh?” Shō lifts a leg up, they’ve long surpassed their resistance of the boots, “A friend made them for me back when I was in school.”
“No support gear hookup now?”
“What are you, a cop?” Shō shoots back, a little mirth in their voice, “No, I try not to bother him too much. I only ever reach out if there’s something wrong with them that I can’t fix,” not that Maki didn’t want to upgrade Shō’s boots without them asking him for it. They didn’t want to get him tangled up in things or to take advantage of his kindness. “There’s a little switch,” Shō presses it against the other skate, finding it so that the wheels disappear, “Keeps the weight but makes them a little more conspicuous.”
“Calling platforms conspicuous is a reach,” Hawks laughs, watching as Shō flicks them back on.
“Want to see me do a back flip?” Shō asks, pushing himself up with his hands until he’s standing. It may not be the best ida now that his body has cooled, but a few loops in the bowl and he could easily pull it off.
“Is that even a question?” Hawks grins.
Shō grins back as he lets himself tip backwards into the bowl, the rush of air filling his ears until he swings back up, fulfilling the promise of a backflip and striking a pose midair when Hawks claps.