Archive of Our Own ^beta

If you wanted to figure out where it all started to go south, logically, the first place you’d look would be the first time it happened.

The first time went a little bit like this:

They’d just finished a successful team-up in Osaka, and Hawks suggested they go out for a late dinner to celebrate. Hawks had this big grin on his face when he winked and said he knew a good izakaya not too far away, crimson wings fluttering behind him in excitement. Now Enji would’ve been happy with any old hotel room service, but before he could say no, Hawks curled his fingers around Enji’s wrist and dragged him along the street, reassuring Enji that the food and the drinks would be on him. He cheerily poured him one drink after another, and Enji returned the favor, sighing each time, warmth blooming in his chest with each cup of sake.

Somewhere along the line, he lost count. One thing happened after another, and—

Hawks has this dopey smile on his face, the corners of his mouth pulled up so high on his cheeks that Enji thinks it must hurt—it must hurt, but Hawks doesn’t look anything but euphoric right now, arms slung over Enji’s shoulders, fingernails grazing Enji’s scalp, trying and failing to tug on his hair, tug onto something as Enji dry humps him like a clumsy virgin—which Enji isn’t, but in all honesty, he doesn’t feel too far from one right now. Fuck, Enji is too drunk for this. Way too drunk for this. Hawks is pressed up against some dirty brick wall next to some trash-filled dumpster, yet his cheeks are colored this beautiful shade of red from the alcohol and from Enji’s heat, not unlike the red of his wings. This is wrong, so much about what they’re doing right now is wrong, but Enji’s alcohol-ridden brain can’t quite remember why.

“Gah,” Hawks whines loudly, head tilting back and slamming against the wall behind him. Enji pretends he doesn’t notice the soft gasp he lets out at the pain. “This is like a fucking wet dream. P-pinned to the wall, dry humping my ch-childhood hero, fuck.”

Enji’s mouth latches onto an exposed stripe of skin at Hawks’ neck; he groans a little at Hawks’ words, but he tries not to let it go to his head. But even if it did, it probably wouldn’t even matter; Enji isn’t doing much thinking, hasn’t been doing much thinking all night, too focused on the pretty little whimpers that the pretty little blond is letting out each time Enji grinds his crotch against his.

His hands are bruising the boy’s waist for sure—Hawks’ legs are curled loosely around Enji’s thighs, wings rubbing against rough brick—but Enji can’t bring himself to care. Hawks seems like the type to like it rough anyways, oh god.

“God, you feel so fucking big,” Hawks breathes out, hips stuttering against Enji’s, golden eyes rolling back. His smile finally falters, but it’s replaced with an O shape, pink lips shining with spit—a tiny, tiny cut on his swollen lower lip. “Fuck, oh god—why didn’t we do this sooner? Mnnh, please, fuck me—” 

The dim light of the alleyway and the moon do nothing to hide the triangular moles under his eyes, nor the blond scruff on his chin; all these little details make Enji hungry, but he doesn’t know for what. So he sucks harder on Hawks’ throat, adoring the moan that floats out of the blond’s mouth when his teeth scrape soft, smooth flesh.

“Shut the fuck up,” he hisses, pulling back and staring at the wine-dark hickey he’s left on Hawks’ neck. It’ll be there for days, he knows it will. He hopes it will. “I’m not fucking you tonight.”

“Tonight?” asks Hawks, looking more dazed and gone than he has all night, pink with something like hope.

Enji’s breath hitches. Fuck, he’s so drunk; when was the last time he got this drunk?

“I’m not fucking you ever,” he amends, teeth clenched, but it doesn’t sound convincing—not at all. He tries not to think about it.

Hawks just laughs, too busy with feeling it, feeling everything, to think of anything cheeky to respond with for once.

Enji can’t remember how this happened, who kissed who first, who had the idea of bumbling into a narrow alleyway and making out next to a dumpster. But not knowing how it started doesn’t take away from the fact that it did, doesn’t do anything to amend the fact that it’s happening right now. It’s disgusting, and Enji is much too old for dry humping and shitty alleyway fucks—but it’s good and it feels good in that drunken, nasty, deprived way.

“Ah, ahh,” Hawks hiccups, hands scrambling for purpose, eventually finding their way down to Enji’s chest, lingering for a couple seconds, then down to his ass.

“Boy,” Enji warns, voice broken and shaky as Hawks gropes at him through his hero uniform. Enji responds by slipping his hands under Hawks’ shirt, fingertips slipping under the waistband of his pants. His toned stomach and the Venus dimples above the swell of his ass—Enji’s large hands encircle nearly all of it, all of him, hot and calloused against the boy’s bare flesh.

“Mmmh,” Hawks sighs, that stupid smile returning to his cheeks as he gives Enji’s ass a squeeze. “C’mon, Endeavor-san. I want, I—fuck, I want it so bad, so just—do it already.”

Enji pauses, so close to crossing the line between sloppy dry humping to sloppy hand jobs—whatever line still remained. “Do what?” he near-growls, chest heaving, flames distorting the air around them.

Hawks grins wide, even wider than before, amber eyes dark, predatory, and says, “Whatever you want.”

The moment lingers—the moment where Enji is trying to figure out what exactly it is he wants from Hawks right now, what he wants from this right now. It lingers and it burns, and it isn’t until Enji stops thinking and stops trying to figure it out that the answer actually comes to him.

Enji surges forward and slams their lips together, pushes his tongue inside the boy’s mouth, and groans at the wet slide of their tongues, groans at how Hawks struggles to kiss back, struggles to keep up. It hurts, the physicality of it, but it also feels good—too good.

They’ve kissed already tonight, but not like this—not violent, sloppy, desperate. His mouth tastes like sake: tangy and heady. Unbridled—raw.

He shoves his hand past Hawks’ underwear, tiny little white briefs, and curls his fingers around the boy’s cock—a small thing, all chubbed up and impossibly hard. Enji only has to stroke him once, twice, for Hawks to fall apart, mouth going slack, so Enji fucks his pliant, warm mouth with his tongue. Hawks chokes on it, chokes at the lack of air, but Enji doesn’t give him any respite. Gentle and cruel all at once, he dips the nail of his thumb into the slit of Hawks’ dick—already so close, so fucking close—and the boy wails something horrible and animalistic and broken, sobbing, tipping his head back until their lips are just barely touching, as he comes undone, spills right into Enji’s hand.

“Plea—please, oh god, hngh, gah,” Hawks whimpers; it’s strange to hear him beg through an orgasm, while Enji is giving it to him, giving everything to him, but Enji can’t exactly say that it’s unwelcome. For someone as prideful and independent as Hawks to beg like this, lashes thick with tears, cheeks rose-pink and warm, wings jolting at every touch—

“You’re so fucking needy,” Enji groans, voice deep and husky, wiping his hand on the boy’s bare stomach. Hawks only whines, their kiss starting to taste like salt—wet and hotter than before.

Enji continues to grind forcefully against the blond’s hip, single-mindedly chasing his own orgasm without even a single care whether it’s too much for Hawks, using his body as an object for him to rut against. And Hawks just lets him, moaning and whining, but he never actually says that it’s too much—never asks for it to stop. Even just the thought of it, the power trip that comes from using someone who wants to be used, has Enji tumbling closer and closer until his orgasm crashes into him just as violently and forcefully as he was working toward it.

“O-oh, oh.” Hawks makes a strained, broken noise, thin and floating.

Enji gasps like he’s coming up for air, pulls back from the kiss, a thick line of spit still connecting their lips. He feels it all throughout his body, intense, white-hot—and he takes a couple seconds to recover from the fact that he just came in his hero uniform from some dry humping and kissing.

Panting, he drops Hawks to his feet and steadies himself against the wall with both his hands, not trusting his legs to keep him upright. His crotch is gross, sticky, and wet—but he doesn’t think he’s felt this good in years.

“Fuck,” Hawks whispers, and Enji finally looks at him: hair all mussed up and damp with sweat, tears at the corners of his eyes, mouth pink and lips parted, bruises and bites lining half of his neck. He’s a wreck, and Enji cannot believe he did that.

Oh. Well, fuck.

They just did that.

The first time was an accident, or at least something close to one. Enji was drunk, and Hawks was drunk, and they were both still riding the high of taking down a powerful villain group. Neither of them could be blamed, really, and that’s what Enji tells himself on the bullet train back to Tokyo the next morning.

He doesn’t get hangovers—it must be something genetic—but he almost wishes that he did. The post-nut, sober clarity he got the morning after, waking up alone in his hotel room without even a simple headache to distract himself from the memory of how Hawks’ body felt against his—not worth it. Not worth it at all.

Enji has always known that he isn’t straight—but he’s never felt particularly compelled to put a label on his sexuality. Sex in general was just never something he actively sought out. With Rei, the end result was all that mattered—feeling good was nothing more than a happy consequence. With anyone else after, man or woman, it was just—a way to let loose. It was something to do when he had a free weekend and happened to be in the mood.

Sex felt good—it’s always felt good. But it never felt like this. A total loss of control, a single-minded desire, like nothing else mattered but him and Hawks.

Never mind the fact that Hawks is a fellow pro-hero—there has to be some sort of unspoken rule against sleeping with a coworker—the kid is twenty-three. He could be Enji’s son.

Enji turned forty-seven last month—he isn’t getting any younger. And, oh god—

Oh god, Enji is still technically married. He and Rei are actually on good terms—she was discharged from the hospital last winter—and they’ve even discussed getting a divorce at some point in the future but still, still—

Enji buries his head in his hands.

There’s no use in obsessing over this. It was a stupid mistake; he’s not going to treat it like anything more than that.

He’s the Flame Hero: Endeavor. The number one hero, the pillar of Japan’s hero society. He has bigger and more important things to worry about than a sloppy one-night stand.

This morning, Hawks sent Enji a simple message saying he enjoyed last night and is flying over to Kyushu for another mission. No matter how much Hawks pretends to take it easy, he’s just as much a workaholic as the rest of them.

He didn’t say anything more than that.

The more Enji thinks about that text message, the more reassured he feels.

Hawks referenced what happened last night so casually that it fills Enji with hope that maybe, just maybe, they’re already on the same page:

They were drunk, they made a mistake, and most importantly, no matter how good it was—it’s not happening again.

“How has work been?”

Even though Fuyumi is now living in a different house with both Natsuo and Rei, she still insists on visiting the estate at least once a week and having dinner with her father. Sometimes she brings Shouto, and even rarer Natsuo, but it’s just them tonight.

It feels like how it used to be.

Enji takes a bite of the mapo tofu Fuyumi cooked. “I’m still number one,” he says matter-of-factly.

Fuyumi laughs breathily. “I know, I know,” she says, a fond smile on her face. “Other than that, how is it?”

Work is, well—work.

As long as there are heroes, there will be villains; as long as there are villains, there will be heroes. And as long as there are quirks, neither will be vanquished.

“It’s fine.” At the soft sigh Fuyumi lets out, Enji realizes he should probably say more than that.

I humped my twenty-three year old coworker next to a dumpster last night isn’t exactly a response he wants to give, so he takes a little bit of time to come up with something better to say.

“Shouto is doing well as always.”

“And Bakugou and Midoriya?”

To be honest, the three of them do seem a bit distracted lately, always staring at each other and sneaking off in between patrols to do something. Enji hasn’t figured it out just quite yet.

Something weird is going on between the three of them, but Enji doesn’t know exactly what. As Shouto’s father, Enji has the right to be told what that something is—

No, no he doesn’t. Enji lost the right to be a part of Shouto’s life a long time ago.

“They’re doing fine too, I guess,” he grumbles.

Fuyumi hums happily.

“And . . . how are you?”

Enji’s never been the best at conversation.

“I’ve been good!” Fuyumi replies warmly. “The kids in my class are amazing. A lot of them have impressive quirks, and there’s even this one girl who has a near-complete control over hers already. I think her parents are pushing her to be a hero.”

Enji looks to the side, a look of guilt sinking into his facial muscles, inescapable and heavy.

Fuyumi seems to notice, jolting and blushing slightly. She changes the topic quickly, “Natsuo is doing well too. He and his girlfriend are getting really serious. I think he might propose before the year ends.”

“Propose?” Enji blurts out, coughing in embarrassment at his blatant display of shock. “That’s—young.”

Fuyumi smiles. “Yeah, but, he’s pretty sure she’s The One. You should see him when he talks about her. It’s like no one else in the world matters except for her. Hearts in his eyes and everything. She’s good for him, and she makes him happy.”

“Good,” Enji murmurs. “That’s good.” He means it—he really does.

“You haven’t met her, right?” Fuyumi asks innnocently.

Enji has a feeling that Natsuo is doing everything he can to keep Enji from meeting her; it stings a little, but he probably deserves it. “No, I haven’t.”

“Her name is Kaiya, and she . . . ”

Fuyumi goes on to tell Enji all about Natsuo’s girlfriend: how she’s a medical student just like him, how she paints and draws and dances, how Natsuo pined after her for almost two months until he finally mustered up the courage to ask her out on a date. He’s head-over-heels in love—that much is clear.

The entire time, Enji can’t help but think about how he’s never wanted something like that, never wanted a partner in any sense of the word. To stand alone at the top of Japan’s hero society is all he’s ever wanted; he avoids team-ups as much as he can for that very reason.

Being with someone, having someone to stand on top of the world with, having someone to hold when the nights get rough—it just doesn’t seem right.

Being alone, however—now that’s how he operates best, and that’s how he’s lived all his life.

He’s forty-seven now, and he can’t see that changing any time soon.

Enji doesn’t see Hawks for the rest of the week.

In the meantime, Enji tries his hardest not to think about it: the pink on his cheeks when he came, his quiet whimpers throughout the night, the cut on his lower lip, the fat tears that pooled by the triangular moles at the corners of his eyes.

He fails miserably on that account.

The first time was an accident—nothing more than a drunken mistake.

The second time, however, goes a little bit like this:

When Enji hears that Hawks’ solo mission was a success—he took down a quirk-enhancing drug ring that was gaining some traction in Fukuoka—he congratulates him with a text.

Enji doesn’t get a response even though he sees that Hawks has read his message, which is strange since Hawks always responds excitedly within minutes of reading it, if not seconds, but Enji tells himself not to think too much of it. Hawks is probably tired or busy with paperwork. Maybe he’s still in Fukuoka.

At the lack of response, Enji clicks his tongue, pockets his phone, and looks at the clock. It’s almost noon, so he heads to the cafeteria to bring back lunch to eat in his office. He hears some rustling behind him as he turns the corner, but again, he doesn’t think too much of it.

It’s a weekend, so the interns should be having lunch in the cafeteria around now. When Enji sees that they aren’t, he isn’t exactly surprised. Shouto, Bakugou, and Midoriya always disappear at random points of the day to do god knows what. Spar, probably, if Bakugou’s temperament has anything to do with it.

“Hey, boss! What’s got you so down?”

Enji turns around to see Burnin’ standing in the to-go line behind him, her neon green hair as wild as ever. He glares at her in lieu of a response.

“Just kidding! You’re always scowling like that.”

Enji glares at her harder. She seems to be in a good mood today; seeing her so cheerful is eerie more than anything.

“Wanna hear something that I know will turn that frown upside down?” she sing songs, a dangerous air to her words.

This can’t be good. Cautious, Enji crosses his arms over his chest and sighs, “What is it?”

Burnin’ smirks, dark eyes twinkling. “You have a little bird waiting for you in your office!”

Enji’s eyes widen, at a loss for words. “Hawks is here? How do you—”

“On my way here, I passed by your office to drop off some paperwork. He even left the door wide open and everything. Must’ve snuck in after you left. Man, I can’t believe you didn’t notice—hey, where you going? I’m talkin’ to you—!”

Enji is already out of the cafeteria.

Burnin’ was right. Hawks did leave the door to his office wide open.

He’s sitting atop Enji’s desk, and he hadn’t even bothered to move any of the very important paperwork Enji left out, so he’s sitting on top of that too, legs dangling off the edge without a single care, whistling.

“Endeavor-san! Did I surprise you?” he asks, grinning unabashedly, eyes bright, full with a sort of mischief that only someone as young as him could have.

Young, Hawks is so young.

“What are you doing here?”

Undeterred by Enji’s horror-filled confusion, Hawks says, “You congratulated me on my mission’s success, didn’t you? I thought we could celebrate. Together.”

Hawks finishes with a wink. A wink.

Enji is once again at a complete loss for words—he always is when it comes to the boy sitting on his desk like he belongs there. And it isn’t until now that he realizes Hawks’ thighs are spread wide enough for his entire body, bulky as it is, to fit in between—

Oh no. Enji is thinking about something he should not be thinking about. 

“What are you talking about?” he manages to choke out.

Hawks looks at Enji through hooded eyes. “Oh, I think you know,” he responds, smirking and spreading his thighs even wider.

Enji is too shocked to say anything. He stares at Hawks, and Hawks stares back at him.

They keep at it until it finally starts to click in Hawks’ little bird brain that maybe, just maybe, they’re not on the same page here—god, they might not even be in the same book.

Hawks starts to laugh nervously, grin lopsided and awkward, but it’s still there, persistent. “Aren’t we—isn’t this a thing now?”

Enji inhales sharply, his fire wilder than usual. “No. It is not.”

Hawks just—blinks, wings slightly drooping behind him, thighs closing back up. “Oh.”

Enji wants to feel bad, he really does, but—“Hawks, I’m double your age.”

“And?”

Hawks tilts his head to the side, innocent. If Enji squints, he can see hickies peeking above his collar—god, Enji expected them to last, but not for this long. Enji tries not to stare, but well—

“Hawks.”

If anything, Enji’s warning tone only seems to revitalize Hawks; his wings bounce up, and his smirk returns at full force. “That didn’t seem to bother you last week,” he points out. “It doesn’t bother me either, if that’s what you’re worried about. Honestly, it kinda turns me on—”

Enji pretends that he doesn’t hear that last bit. 

“I was—we were drunk.”

“So? I don’t really remember who came onto who last week, but I know for sure we both enjoyed it.”

How can Hawks be so casual about this? A part of Enji wants to blame it on the generational divide, but a smarter part of him is aware that it’s most likely a Hawks thing.

“I’m still married—”  

Hawks snorts. “C’mon, Endeavor-san. The whole world knows that you and your wife have been separated for more than a decade now. I really don’t mind being a homewrecker, but it’s not like there’s even a home to wreck.”

“Hawks.”

“Oh, sorry,” he says, and it’s clear he isn’t sorry at all. “Did I strike a nerve?”

Enji’s eye twitches, but he tries not to let his anger show—that’s how Hawks wins, and Enji is nothing if not competitive. “What happened between us that night was a mistake, and it’s not happening again,” he says, face hardened. “Don’t make a big deal out of this.”

“You’re the one making a big deal out of this, old man. Are those the only things bothering you? Your age? Your family? If you didn’t come in your pants just from dry humping me, I’d wonder if the problem was my dick, but—” 

“I’m not looking for a relationship, Hawks.”

“Yeah? And who said I was looking for a relationship?”

With that, Hawks flashes another one of his natural, easygoing, light-hearted smiles—Enji almost believes it, almost believes him. But, you see—Hawks is a good actor. Good at lying, even better at pretending to be someone that he isn’t. So good you never really know for sure where you stand. It’s one of the first things he learned about him.

And now, Enji can’t tell if this is just another act, just another game.

“I was telling the truth when I texted you the morning after. I had a good time, and I’m pretty sure you did too. Don’t think too hard about this,” Hawks says after a moment, springing off Enji’s desk, landing on his feet with a soft swoosh. “You keep saying that what happened between us was a mistake—”

“Because it was,” Enji grits out.

Hawks walks up to him, gets right up in his space, and Enji has to try his hardest not to seem affected.

But he is. God, he’s way more than just affected. Hawks fits perfectly just under his chin, looking up at Enji with literal hearts in his eyes.

Enji doesn’t know what it is about Hawks that makes him lose all common sense. It isn’t even a new thing. Their first meeting ended up with Enji taking a midnight flight to Fukuoka just to team up with the winged hero. And ever since then, when it comes to Hawks, Enji’s only continued to break his own rules—he even broke his marriage vows, as outdated as they are.

It was one time, only one time. It doesn’t have to mean anything—it shouldn’t mean anything—

“Do you regret it?” Hawks asks, voice low, tongue darting out to wet his lips—pink and shiny and Enji can’t stop looking, can’t stop thinking about kissing him, pinning him to a wall like he had last week. Fuck. Fuck.

“We—can’t, Hawks,” Enji whispers shakily, ignoring the question.

He knows the answer to it; they both do, and that’s the problem.

Enji knows it was wrong; he reminds himself of that every single time he thinks about it—how Hawks’ lips felt against his, how good it felt to have someone so small but so strong pressed up against his body. But knowing that it was wrong is different from not wanting to do it again. All of his excuses—his age, his wife, the fact that they were drunk—they all fall flat when he looks down at the hero, lips so close to Enji’s jaw.

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

Hawks hums, lifting himself up onto his tip-toes, but god, god, he doesn’t even come close to Enji’s mouth. Too small, but just right. It’d be up to Enji—Enji would have to be the one to lean down, to smash their lips together—but it wouldn’t be hard. It wouldn’t be hard at all.

“Indulge me.”

Enji swallows. “I’m not—I’m not the kind of person who—” Does this, or even wants this. Usually. Normally.

Hawks laughs under his breath, and the bare musicality of it sends shivers down Enji’s spine. “No offense, Endeavor-san, but I couldn’t care less what type of person you are.”

There’s so much to unpack in what Hawks just said, but Enji finds himself slipping, slipping, slipping away from all rational thought.

They weren’t going to do this again, Enji never planned on it. There’s no reason for them to, other than that it felt good—feels good.

Enji wonders if it would feel even better now that they’re sober.

It’s at this point that Enji realizes he’s already lost—maybe he lost a long, long time ago.

“I’m not asking for much. I’m just asking you to be honest with me—and yourself, really.”

Honesty. Enji has never been good with that. He’s not a liar, but he’d rather avoid the truth than face it head on. But Hawks—Hawks is different.

“I want this. Just this,” he says, squashing whatever room for interpretation was left. “Don’t you?”

Enji’s never been good with self-control. Even when he was a child, whenever he wanted something, he did whatever it took to get it. That stubborn part of him hasn’t changed; it defines him, it’s always defined him, that single-minded drive to get what he wants. No matter the cost, no matter the toil.

And this—Hawks is right here.

Right here, offering himself up.

“Just—just this once, boy,” Enji whispers, more to himself than to Hawks.

Hawks smiles, his small, calloused hands now on Enji’s bulky, big waist, and—when did that even happen? “Whatever you say, old man,” he says with a victorious smirk.

Close, close, closer—their bodies are only a tiny breath away, the space between them taut, burning like no fire ever could. Flames tickle at Hawks’ skin, but the boy doesn’t seem to mind at all. Oh god, oh god, what are they about to do?

Last time, Enji didn’t have to think about what he was doing, what they were doing—it just—happened, and there was no room or time for Enji to panic.

Fuck—fuck. Enji has spent a lifetime planning ahead, thinking carefully, and acting wisely. There is nothing careful or wise about this—

Fuck it.

Enji smashes their mouths together, rough and forceful, fingers tangling in the blond’s unruly hair. Hawks gasps like he wasn’t expecting it—how annoying, Enji thinks. But his little, breathy gasp makes it easier for Enji to shove his tongue inside his mouth—Hawks can handle it. If Enji knows anything about the hero, it’s that he can take whatever Enji wants him to take.

It frightens Enji, a little bit. How compatible they are physically, both during battle and during—this.

Then somehow, they’re against the desk—Enji’s pushing Hawks into the desk, the sharp edge of it digging into Hawks’ lower back, wings pushing all of the paperwork out of the way, falling to the ground leisurely. But the kiss, oh their kiss is anything but leisurely: hot and urgent and painful, like they’re starved for this. And maybe Enji is, to some extent.

He can feel his cock swelling to fullness, pressing against Hawks’ thigh.

Before, Enji was never particularly attracted to Hawks—physically or emotionally. Now while the latter part hasn’t changed—and frankly, doesn’t have a chance of changing—god if he isn’t stupidly attracted to every little thing about the blond physically. His needy moans; the way his mouth goes pliant and slack when he’s overwhelmed; the pretty rose-pink blush on his cheeks; how easily his skin bruises, wine-dark hickies still lining the pale expanse of his neck. Enji wants to make sure they never fade, wants to scar Hawks up until there’s no question as to whom he belongs to.

“Lemme—” Hawks mumbles into the kiss, mouth slick and pink with spit. “Lemme, lemme suck you off.”

Enji hears himself hiss—a sharp, grating breath of air between his teeth. He doesn’t say anything, only lets go of Hawks’ hair, watches as the hero drops to his knees all on his own.

“ ‘s the least I can do,” Hawks says, lips puckered as they press a soft kiss to Enji’s crotch, kissing right on the tip of Enji’s bulge.

Fuck.

“You—go right ahead,”  Enji finds himself saying, heart thumping wildly in his chest.

It’s been—way too long since he’s last gotten a blow job—and god, that night they had in the alleyway was the first sexual contact Enji’s had with another person in a long time, Enji realizes. So long that he doesn’t notice the nervous way Hawks’ hands shake when he goes to unbuckle Enji’s pants.

“Y-yeah.” Hawks’ breath catches in his throat as he pulls the skin tight fabric down to Enji’s thighs, pulling down Enji’s jockstrap too. And if Enji was thinking straight—which he isn’t capable of at all right now—he would notice how nervous Hawks is, how uncharacteristically hesitant as he stares at Enji’s cock.

He’s too preoccupied with the way that Hawks looks like he just belongs there—on his knees, lips swollen and pouted into a kiss-shape.

“You’re—big,” Hawks rasps, eyes looking a little hazy, and Enji thinks about how he said something similar last week.

Enji breathes out shakily. “I’ve . . . heard that before,” he replies, and it sounds stupid, he knows that, but he can’t think of anything else to respond with. Hawks’ pink mouth takes up all of his attention. He’s getting a little impatient, though, so he places a hand on the nape of Hawks’ neck, just as a gentle reminder.

Hawks’ Adam’s apple bobs, lips parting in anticipation as he leans in, grabbing onto Enji’s thigh with both of his hands; he shivers when the head of Enji’s cock touches his lips, wet with precum. But he doesn’t go any farther than that.

Enji clicks his tongue in irritation. Hawks was the one who initiated it, so what’s he waiting for?

“Get on with it, boy,” he grits out, the hand that was on the nape of his neck now tangling itself in the baby hairs at the base of Hawks’ scalp, no longer gentle. “Don’t waste my time.”

“Just—just give me a fucking moment, okay?” Hawks blurts out, a little frantic, brows knitted. It’d be cute, having someone so confident, arrogant, and self-assured, all shy and flustered like this—but Enji’s dick is out, and he’s not up for any more games.

This, the shyness, this strange, sudden hesitation, is nothing more than an act anyways—it always is with Hawks—and Enji is all out of patience.

Enji sighs, eyes closing for a moment. “You know, I really expected more from you,” he says coldly, yanking on Hawks’ hair, forcing golden eyes to meet blue.

Enji brings his other hand down to his cock, pushing it past puckered lips, a deep, guttural noise escaping the back of his throat at the wet slide of Hawks’ tongue.

For someone who literally never stops talking, Hawks has a small mouth. Enji groans when his plump lips struggle to close around his cock, groans when he gags around him, warm tears already running down his cheeks, a horrible, strained noise coming muffled from the back of his throat.

Enji isn’t even halfway in.

For a second there, Enji has half a mind to think that Hawks doesn’t want it anymore, that Hawks is having second thoughts, so he tries to pull him off of his cock, give him a little time to breathe, but Hawks whines frantically—fingernails digging into Enji’s flesh, doing everything he can to stay put, to keep his mouth filled with cock.

“Fuck,” Enji mutters, pulling on Hawks’ hair. He decides that he won’t push Hawks that far, even though he wants to; he settles for only fucking the head of his cock inside Hawks’ mouth—that’s all he can fit without gagging again.

Hawks just takes it, kneeling there, looking little more than a thing to be used as Enji, indeed, uses him like a fleshlight, his head thrust back and forth. His eyes are squeezed shut, face a bright red, jaw slack, mouth open as wide as he can manage.

Enji was expecting a lot more from him, honestly, given how he was the one who offered to suck him off, but he supposes that having a warm, pliant sleeve for his cock isn’t so bad. He’s careful not to let his teeth graze Enji’s cock—Enji appreciates that at the very least.

“Can’t believe that this is all you can do—all you’re good for,” Enji sighs, disappointed. “You show up—in my fucking office unannounced and beg to be fucked like a goddamn slut—”  

Hawks’ suckles on the head, crying harder than before—fuck, he’s a pretty crier. Of course he is.

“Testing my patience all the fucking time—” Enji hisses, yanking on his blond hair even harder, just to hear him whine. “So eager to get on your knees and you can’t even do this properly.”

Enji pulls Hawks back until his lips are just barely kissing the tip, and—oh. Hawks is hard—really hard, cock straining against the fabric at his crotch, a small damp spot where the head of his cock must be. 

Fuck. Enji thinks he might blow his load just at the thought of Hawks getting this hard just from giving him a shitty blow job.

And, holy fuck, the fact that he’s not even doing anything about it, too focused on letting Enji use him as he pleases.

Dazed, Hawks sticks his tongue out, curling under the head of Enji’s cock, eyes wet, cheeks flushed pink. It’s clear that he has no idea what he’s doing, but fuck—fuck, why is does that turn Enji on?

Oh my god, Enji realizes, shoving Hawks back down onto his cock one more time, burying his cock as far in as he can go without triggering Hawks’ gag reflex. 

Oh my god. He has no idea what he’s doing, doesn’t he?

The hesitation was real—the shyness wasn’t an act.

Is Hawks a—

Enji nosedives heart-first into an orgasm, the air forced out of his lungs, and he comes into Hawks’ mouth without any warning; he’s just as surprised as Hawks. But Hawks takes it like he takes everything—pliantly, no objections as his mouth is flooded with cum.

“Get yourself off,” Enji orders, pulling out with a sharp hiss, adoring the way that Hawks jerks forward, like he misses the feeling of having Enji’s cock in his mouth. But what’s even hotter is how he keeps his mouth open, tongue stuck out, cum dripping down his bottom lip and onto the floor.

“O-okay.” And there’s no bratty comeback—just a quiet, obedient affirmation as he sits back on his heels.

Enji’s chest heaves as Hawks sloppily palms his crotch, not even bothering to get himself off properly. He sucks in a breath when Hawks finally wipes his mouth with the back of his free hand, swallowing the cum still on his tongue. There’s cum, spit, and tears all over his jaw, and it’s hard to tell which is which; the sight of the cocky number two hero so thoroughly fucked-out, on his knees and struggling to get himself off—it makes him feel powerful, more powerful than anything else in the world ever could.

“Ah, ahhh.” Hawks’ noisy little whimpers are almost covered by Enji’s heavy breaths, trying to keep himself from burning his office down.

It doesn’t take long for Hawks to tip completely over the edge, gasping softly, golden eyes rolling back. His thighs squeeze around nothing, his body collapses forward, his face smushes against Enji’s hip—twitching and riding out the aftershocks.

One second slips into ten, then thirty, then a whole minute passes like that before Enji has even realized it, careful and taut. Like any slight or sudden movements will break the spell.

Another minute passes before the spell is broken. Hawks repositions himself to sit properly, knees bent to his chest, back against the desk behind him. Enji’s hip tingles where Hawks had laid his cheek to rest, and he already misses the feeling in its entirety.

Hawks breathes in, holds his breath, and Enji thinks he’s going to say something, but he just breathes out.

“Sorry,” Enji awkwardly blurts out, hastily tucking his cock back in his hero suit, guilt starting to set in. Not because of what they did, but of how they did it.

“Don’t apologize,” Hawks pants. “That was hot as fuck. Shit, I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard.”

Enji feels a little bit better hearing that, but it still doesn’t squash his lingering worries. “Have you . . . ever done that before?”

Hawks flashes a nervous grin, so much like his regular smiles—but slightly off.

Enji is horrified, realizing he’s at the point where he can differentiate between Hawks’ different smiles.

“Are you asking me if that was my first ever orgasm? I know you’re a little bit thick in the head, but—”

“Hawks.”

A beat passes. Enji spends its entirety replaying the last ten minutes in his mind.

A part of him is still hoping he didn’t just do what he thinks he did.

(But another part of him, deep and buried somewhere dark—somewhere Enji doesn’t like to think about—is hoping that he’s right on the mark. It burns away at all the guilt and the regret and leaves something close to desire, something that tastes like hunger.)

Hawks looks to the ground, smile faltering, and asks, “Was it that obvious?”

Enji wants to die. “Are you a—”

“Don’t.”

“Last week, was that the first time you—you were with someone?”

Hawks is bright pink, wings pulling in on his body, and that’s all the confirmation Enji needs.

“You should’ve told me,” Enji grits out, voice firm and insistent. Really, he shouldn’t have just assumed that Hawks would be experienced, but the thing is, Hawks carries himself like he is. It’s like he himself believes in the lie until it becomes truth—until he makes it truth.

And that’s why it’s convincing. Most of the time, anyways. 

“Why?” he demands, frowning stubbornly. “Would it have changed anything? This time or last time—would it have changed anything if you’d known?”

“I would’ve—I wouldn’t have—”

What would’ve Enji done if he had known?

The truth is, a small, sick, sick part of Enji is happy, smug to hear that he could be Hawks’ first—

Enji stops himself from completing that thought.

“I already told you.” Hawks stands back up on his feet, wobbling slightly. “Stop thinking so hard about this. I want it—especially when you get all rough and mean with me.”

“Hawks, you were—are?—fuck, I don’t know, a virgin.”

Enji can’t believe this—he really can’t. He stands there, flames returning in full force to hide how naked and unprepared he feels. Everything about this is completely new territory.

Hawks, on the other hand, seems to have recovered completely, stretching his arms cheerily, like he hadn’t just had his mouth brutally fucked for the first time.

“First of all, virginity means whatever the fuck you want it to mean. So, sure yeah, I guess I am still a virgin. Second of all—I don’t have to be, if you’d just do something about it.”

“What does that—”

With a short laugh, he skips over to the glass window panes overlooking Tokyo (oh no, oh no, Enji realizes in horror, they just did that in full view of the entire fucking city) and kicks one open. His feathers catch the glass shards before they fall out onto the street, a flood of cold air rushing in.

Enji doesn’t even have time to get mad at what Hawks just did, because the blond is looking back over his shoulder and grinning that million-watt smile of his.

His damp cheeks, flushed rose-pink; his bright smile, confident and fearless; his blond hair, unruly like the rest of him. Everything. All of it.

Against the blue of the sky, he really is a beautiful sight.

Enji buries that dangerous thought deep in the ground.

Hawks laughs boisterously and hops out the window, crimson wings spread in full. He maneuvers himself around to face the flame hero, hovering just outside the building when he shouts, “Ball’s in your court now, Number One.”

“HAWKS, GET BACK HERE—”

The boy has already flown far, far away by the time Enji even gets the words out, bellowed out to no one.

That night, Enji receives a text.

hawks
have you thought about my offer at all ;)

Enji stares at his screen for approximately two and a half minutes then promptly turns his phone off.

I don’t have to be, if you’d just do something about it.

No, doing something about it—Hawks’ virginity—is exactly what Enji is not going to do.

The problem with Hawks is that he’s stone-cold brilliance and scorching-hot desire. Feathered wings and rough, golden stubble. His eyes are honey-bright; his lazy grin is more dangerous than he’ll lead anyone to believe. He’s a genius, he’s a prodigy, he’s vicious.

And most of all—worst of all—he gets what he wants. No matter the cost. Whatever it takes.

Two days later, Enji finds himself balls deep inside Hawks’ mouth, coming down his throat.

Hawks showed up unannounced at his office again, dropped down to his knees, and practically begged for another try at it—”I can take it this time, I promise.” And this time, Enji gave in a lot quicker.

Apparently, in the short period of time between now and Hawks’ first attempt, he practiced. He practiced a lot. Enji doesn’t want to know the details of how he learned how to deepthroat in two days.

He pulls out with a groan, the head of his cock dragging against Hawks’ tongue. Fuck—that was good. Not the best that Enji’s ever had, but good. Definitely better than yesterday’s attempt. Enji still can’t tell if it was good because it actually was good or because it was Hawks.

“I’m a fast learner.” Hawks’ voice is strained and fucked-out. Enji inhales a sharp breath—that’s all because of him. The young winged hero kneeling at his feet, dick hard and untouched in his pants, voice ruined and hoarse.

“Yeah, you are,” Enji sighs, a tender hand coming down to comb through Hawks’ blond hair before he even realizes it.

Fuck, what is he doing?

Hawks preens at the touch and at the praise. Enji does not stare at the way his lashes flutter shut, the way his pink lips curl into a sated smile. There’s a bit of cum at the corner of his mouth, and instead of finding it gross, Enji has to hold himself back from doing something stupid. Like kiss his own cum off of him. 

Christ, Enji thinks, caving a little and wiping away the bit of white with his thumb.

What the fuck are they doing?

They do it again the next day. It’s lunchtime, and they’re in Enji’s gigantic office again, except this time Enji is the one on his knees, swallowing down the entirety of Hawks’ cock without much difficulty.

Hawks blabbers his mouth the entire time—he makes stupid jokes and teasing remarks—but Enji can’t say that he minds. He likes the way that his voice becomes breathier the closer he gets, the way that he starts to lose track of what he was saying, the way his words will suddenly cut off with broken moans, whimpers, and gasps. Enji didn’t expect him to last long, and he doesn’t, but there’s something satisfying about how easily he comes undone, how his thighs quiver, his chest jutting out, just aching to be touched—anywhere, everywhere. His mouth is wide open and gasping when he comes: red, wet, and bitten-raw. Enji can’t help it when he quickly rises to his feet, cum pooled on his tongue, and forces their lips together with a bruising kiss. Hawks whines at the taste of his own seed, squirms when Enji licks all over his mouth and sucks on his tongue, but Enji just holds him against the wall, squeezes his waist, and doesn’t let him get away.

The next day, and the day after, and the day after that—they do it again and again.

It’s just—something they do now. Blowjobs, making out, and dry humping—but not much more than that.

Enji won’t let it go any farther than that.

The more that they do this, the more he feels like he’s skating on thin ice, but the thing is, Enji is a creature of habit, and he can’t quite bring himself to quit when he knows how good it feels to give in.

Hawks is just like him—he gets what he wants, and once he has it, he doesn’t let go.

He’s lost count of how many times Hawks has had him in his mouth, how many times he’s pressed Hawks against the sharp wooden edge of his desk, how many times they’ve made each other gasp, mouths slick and open.

They just don’t stop.

enji
Shouto
Where are you

enji
Shouto, patrol already started
Are Deku and Bakugou with you?
Where are you
School ended an hour ago

enji
I’ve been waiting outside the agency for half an hour
This is not becoming of the future number one hero

Enji grips his phone even harder when he sees that Shouto has read all of his messages, but still refuses to respond, exhaling steam from his nostrils.

It’s half past four, and his interns seem to be proving themselves more and more incompetent as the days pass. To think that they were the ones who fought against Shigaraki last winter with him—how shameful.

Hawks didn’t visit his office today—im getting lunch with rumi! no blowies for u today </3 xoxo, he’d texted in the morning. Enji had to resist the urge to block his number right there and then.

It’s become habit now, what he and Hawks do in the privacy of his office at least a couple times a week.

No one knows about it—god, he can’t even put a name to it—except for them. Enji hasn’t told anyone, and neither has Hawks, to everybody’s surprise.

They don’t talk much outside of it, whatever it is they’re doing. Hawks seems to respect those boundaries at least. The only regular contact they have is trying to arrange a good time for Hawks to show up at Enji’s office via text.

The fact that they only do it in Enji’s office makes him feel a little better. As long as that line isn’t crossed, the thin line between work and home—the shreds of it that Enji has left—it isn’t real.

It’s been almost a month since this started; September flew by and the leaves went with it, red and orange blazes taking their place. It’s been almost a month, and Enji is surprised that Hawks hasn’t even asked for more. Their first two times, he seemed pretty dead set on Enji fucking him, on Enji being the one to—

Enji clenches his teeth. He needs to stop thinking about that.

Hawks hasn’t even mentioned it since that time Enji asked.

It’s fine. It’s just—stress relief for both of them, busy heroes, hard at work. Something like that. (Something way more than that.)

What they’re doing is fine. One-hundred percent fine.

Enji jolts when his phone finally dings with a text message.

shouto
so rry
well b ther in a couple minutes

Enji squints. Shouto usually is better at texting than that.

Well, whatever Shouto and his friends do is none of his business—Enji just wishes they’d do it on their own time.

It’s another late night at the agency.

The Endeavor Hero Agency tends to take on more cases than they can theoretically handle—it’s how they became the most sought-after hero agency in the country for resolving incidents. They take on case after case, regardless of how busy they are. As a result, paperwork often piles up.

It doesn’t help that UA has a new policy where each agency has to send weekly reports documenting what he had the interns do throughout the week. If he starts complaining about Midoriya and Bakugou, he won’t be able to stop.

Enji sighs at the mountain of unfinished paperwork on his desk. He has a second pile right next to it of his finished work—it’s a hill in comparison. The clock reads 12:32 AM, but he’ll probably be here until the early morning. 

He’s considering brewing himself another pot of coffee when his phone buzzes. At first, he groans at the possibility of taking on another case so late into the night, but when he sees the message, he groans for a different reason.

hawks
hey

Enji’s eyes are strained from staring at tiny font on white A4 paper for the past three hours. Plus, he has a Mt. Fuji sized pile of paperwork to deal with. He doesn’t have any time for this, yet he finds himself texting back a response.

enji
What

They don’t—they don’t do this. They don’t talk, and they certainly don’t text.  

hawks
omg… ur actually up :o

enji
I’ve been doing paperwork

hawks
lol
just make your sidekicks do it
thats what i do :P
don’t you have like 30 of them?

He could, but Enji feels bad saddling his young sidekicks with piles upon piles of paperwork on weekends. Some of them have families or significant others; all of them have lives outside of being a hero. 

Enji—doesn’t. Not really. 

enji
We distribute the work

Unevenly, but they still distribute it.

hawks
hmmmm
ok

At that, their conversation seems to die out. Enji puts his phone down and gets up to brew more coffee. A couple minutes later, however, his phone dings again. 

hawks
what r u wearing

Oh my fucking god. Enji doesn’t know why he even bothers to respond to that, but he does. 

enji
I’m not falling for that

hawks
cmonnnnnnn
lunch with rumi was fun but i missed u ;)
take a break with me
paperwork is boring! sexting me is not :)

Enji considers saying no, he really does, but Hawks isn’t one to take no for an answer. He knows that from experience, so he decides to skip the prelude and just give him what he wants. Maybe he can just get this over with fast. The mountain of unfinished paperwork on his desk only looks more and more daunting the longer it stays untouched.

enji
I’m wearing my hero uniform

hawks
okay yea
fuck this

Confused and slightly offended, Enji doesn’t even get any time to respond, because Hawks is voice calling him. His thumb accepts the call before his brain has the sense to hang up.

“Hello?”

The sound of sheets rustling and a slow exhale come through the line.

“You’re—a slow texter, ‘n I hav’a feelin’ you’d be bad at sexting anyways,” Hawks sighs, sluggish and voice raspy.

Enji inhales sharply, trying to ignore the way that the timbre of Hawks’ voice goes straight to his dick. “Are you . . . drunk?” 

Hawks hums. “Just a bit tipsy. I got home just now. Went out drinking with Mt. Lady ‘nd Ryukyu. God, they can hold their drinks.”

Enji’s phone is pressed right to his ear—it’s embarrassing, how turned on he already is just from the sound of Hawks’ voice. “What do you expect from their quirks?” 

Hawks’ laughter is full of air, and Enji can only imagine the rose-pink flush on his cheeks, the dopey smile that must be on his face. “Mmh, you’re right,” he says, and he doesn’t say anything more than that.

Shouldn’t they be . . . Enji doesn’t really know what they should be doing right now. He just knows that this feels a little—a little bit like they’re crossing some line by just talking.

“I’m not—not really sure how this is supposed to work. I haven’t done this before,” Hawks confesses after a moment. “On the phone . . . ”

The more he does this with Hawks, the more he’s reminded of how young Hawks is. He climbed his way up to the top at such a young age, just like Enji had—Enji knows how scary it is, to feel in over your head, but Hawks never seemed scared at all.

Maybe that was all an act too.

“Me either,” Enji admits. He might as well return the honesty.

Hawks’ next words come spilling out like warm honey. “I just like the sound of your voice.”

“Y-yeah, me too.” Enji swallows, heart racing.

Is this okay? What they’re doing—is this okay? 

Hawks makes a little happy noise. “So I’m your first?”

Enji sighs, the corners of his lips twitching upward. “Yeah, you’re my first.”

“Mmh. I like that, being a first for you.”

It’s odd. Odd how they’re miles and miles away, yet right now feels way more intimate than any other time they’ve gotten off with each other’s mouths or hands in Enji’s office.

It’s scary.

Then there’s more rustling, feathers against satin, and the sound of something wet. Hawks gasps quietly, a soft, breathy noise that fills Enji’s phone speakers.

Oh, Enji realizes. He’s touching himself.

Fuck, fuck—why is that so hot?

Enji feels a little relieved too; he can write this off as just another sex thing that they do. Blowjobs, making out, dry humping, and dirty talk over the phone. 

It suddenly occurs to Enji that maybe he should do more than breathe heavily into the phone speaker. He looks down at his crotch and finally notices his tent, cock straining against skin-tight fabric. Oh god, is he really going to jerk himself off with Hawks on the line? At his desk? Even if Hawks is doing the same thing in his bed, it still floods Enji’s cheeks with a heat that his fire could never replicate. 

“Endeavor-san,” Hawks sing songs, voice tapering out into a sweet hum—soft slick sounds audible in the background. “Wanna guess what ’m doing right now?”

“I’m not stupid, boy.”

Hawks breathes out a laugh. “Care to join me, then?”

Enji starts to palm his cock over his uniform, but he grimaces when he realizes that he’ll probably have to rub out a cum stain with how wet his cock already is, jockstrap damp with precum. He peels the bottom part of his hero costume and his jockstrap down to his thighs, hissing sharply when his cock meets cool air, bouncing up to his stomach, fleshy-pink and fully hard.

“You just love wasting my time, don’t you?” Enji mutters, clearly no bite to his words as he jerks himself off with slow, careful pumps.

“ ‘s my favorite pastti—ahh—me.” Hawks whimpers, choking on a breath-filled moan. Enji wonders what he must look like. Maybe he’s on his back, his knees bent, feet planted on the bed. Or maybe he’s on his front, teary face smushed to the sheets, wings spread behind him, sensitive cockhead rubbing against fabric. 

But then the slick noises stop, and Enji scowls. That is, until he hears the sound of a bottle being opened.

Oh.

“Fuck, is that lube?” Enji moans, white-knuckling his cell phone with his dry hand, the other sliding up and down on his cock furiously. He considers putting Hawks on speakerphone, but he decides that he likes it like this, Hawks’ voice—his words, his moans, his little gasps—right in his ear.

Hawks hums in confirmation, and the wet noises are back, but different. “Gonna finger myself now.”

Enji sucks in a breath, suddenly lightheaded. His hand slows down on his cock, trying to recollect himself. “Good,” he hears himself say. He doesn’t feel himself say it at all.

Hawks gasps, a wet moan catching on his exhale. Oh, he likes that.

“Yeah?” Enji’s heart is pounding. “You like being my good boy?”

“Oh, fuck, what the fuck?” Hawks cries out, and it really does sound like he’s crying. “You didn’t—you’re not supposed to be good at this.”

“I’m not,” Enji says, proud of himself for keeping his voice level. Honestly, he’s just saying whatever comes to his head. It seems to be working.

“Yeah, well tell that to m’fucking dick.” 

Enji’s chest rumbles with a satisfied hum. “How many fingers do you have in you right now?”

The line is quiet for a moment, like Hawks’ fingers have stilled. “Jus’—just two right now.”

God, he sounds almost embarrassed.

Languidly, Enji thumbs at his head, amazed by how slick his hand is, precum dripping between his fingers. Fuck, is he that affected by Hawks?

“Take them to the knuckle, if you can,” he orders.

“Oh, are ya gonna tell me what to do now?” He sounds amused, but Enji is entirely serious.

Enji leans back in his chair. “If that’s okay with you.”

Hawks is silent, save for a stuttered breath or two, and then—“Yeah, yeah, fuck, that’s okay with me.” Then, after another quick, obedient moment—“I, ahh, they’re i-in to the knuckle now.”

Enji hums approvingly, then clicks his tongue. “Keep going.”

“Wh-what does that mean?”

Enji sighs, pretending to be frustrated. He really can’t help it. Hawks is cute when he gets like this, like he’ll do anything Enji tells him to do.

As expected, he lets out a quiet whimper at the thought of Enji being disappointed in him. Blood rushes to Enji’s head, having such a powerful hero reduced to this, putty in his hands from miles and miles away.

“It means—keep fingering yourself until you’re ready for three.” 

“Y-yeah, I can do that,” Hawks slurs. Enji wonders if the boy’s starting to sober up, or if this is making him feel drunker than before.

Enji hums, listening intently as Hawks slowly comes undone, stuffing himself to the brim with his fingers. He’s thankful that he’s likely the only one still in the building. He relaxes in his seat and lets the power go to his head—it’s the best sort of high.

“F-fuck, mmnh, th-three now, Endea—ahh—Enji-san.”

Enji-san. Oh fuck.

“ ‘s that all you can take?” Enji asks, words puncturing through the miles and miles between them. He likes this—being in total control—acting as if he were unaffected no matter how affected he really is.

The temperature of the room is steadily rising, newly repaired windows foggy from Enji’s heat. 

“Nnh, I feel full,” Hawks gasps, fingers slick inside him, a wet squelching noise accompanying his words.

Enji grunts, wondering how far he can take this. They’ve talked about this before, how Hawks likes it when Enji is mean and degrading. But still, a part of Enji is worried that he’s going to go too far one day, and—

Huh. When did he start caring about Hawks enough to not want to actually hurt him?

“Well that’s no good,” Enji eventually sighs, relishing in the way that Hawks whimpers. He pumps his cock harder, pace uneven and hurried, sweat running down his neck. Fuck, fuck, he’s so turned on—so turned on that he finds himself saying something very, very stupid.

“How’re you supposed to take me if you can’t even take three fingers?”

It sounds like a promise, sounds like he’s promising Hawks the very thing that he vowed he wouldn’t do to him—and it has Hawks gasping for air, sobbing and moaning right into Enji’s ear. He wishes that he could see it, wishes he could see the way Hawks cums all over himself, his stomach, or the sheets—the way his thighs quiver, abs clenching, his pink cock spilling white everywhere. God, he wishes he could see his hole, pink and puckered, winking around nothing, or maybe he keeps his fingers inside through his orgasm and through the aftershocks. Maybe Hawks likes the feeling of being full.

Enji wants to fill him up the way he was made to be filled.

Just the thought of it, filling Hawks up with his cock, fucking him until he can’t breathe, has Enji following Hawks into a numbing orgasm, cum spurting all over his hand and the wood of his desk. Some of it even gets on the paperwork he has to submit tomorrow morning. He lets out a long, throaty groan that Hawks has to have heard, but Hawks is apparently too fucked-out to comment on it, breathing in the afterglow.

For a minute or two, the line is mostly silent; the only things Enji can hear are their ragged breaths and the incessant beating of his heart, thunderous and deafening.

“Fuck, I just washed these sheets,” Hawks whispers tiredly. He sounds a little annoyed—but also very, very sated.

Shit. Then he was on his front, chest plush against the sheets, ass up in the air, wings spread out, knees to the bed, blotchy-red face turned to the side. Enji can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop wondering if Hawks was rubbing his cock against the sheets as he was at it.

Enji draws in a breath through clenched teeth and stares at the mess he’s made. Shit, shit.

“Mmh, that was good, Endeavor-san,” Hawks croons dazedly. “And don’t worry—I’ll practice until I can take your cock. I ordered some XXL dildos the other day—” 

“Goodnight,” Enji spits out, ending the call as quickly as he can.

Not five minutes later, Enji hears a soft ding.

hawks
<3
[Image attached]
[Image attached]
[Image attached]

Yeah, Enji isn’t getting any paperwork done tonight.

“Is this really necessary?”

Fuyumi grabs a bundle of organic bananas and adds it to the shopping cart. She looks at Enji and frowns. “Dad, I’ve seen your fridge. There’s only takeout leftovers. A lot of them.”

What can Enji say—he spends the entire day at work, he doesn’t know how to cook, and restaurants rarely let you order only one entrée to go. He eats proper food at the agency—gourmet lunches, protein bars, and fruit galore, but when he gets home . . . it’s not like he has anyone to eat with or anyone to cook him dinner anymore. 

But he doesn’t want Fuyumi to feel bad for him—if there’s anything Enji hates more than defeat, it’s pity.

When Enji isn’t able to come up with a response, Fuyumi just sighs and continues pushing the cart. “Just look up some easy stir-fry recipes. I’ll even send you some of mine later, okay?”

Enji grunts noncommittally, arms crossed over his chest as he follows Fuyumi around the grocery store. 

He’s never felt more like a stubborn old man, his daughter lecturing him about proper eating habits as they walk through each and every aisle. She had come home—she had come to the estate an hour ago for their usual weekly dinner, and when she opened the fridge to figure out what she could cook, she was horrified to see that there was nothing but styrofoam takeout containers, protein shakes, milk, and those ridiculous VOSS water bottles. Enji didn’t have the heart to resist when she dragged him to the closest grocery store; the only thing he’ll insist is that he’s the one to pay for it. Their shopping cart is filled with at least 20,000¥ worth of ingredients that Enji has no idea how to use.

When they’re about to get into the check-out line, Fuyumi realizes that they accidentally skipped the meats section, and they circle back to grab some boneless, skinless chicken thighs.

It’s ironic that this is where Enji happens to stumble upon Hawks, fully clad in his hero costume, visors on. He’s squinting at the pre-cut chicken packages, stubbly chin held between his thumb and his curled index finger. The winged hero stares at the chicken so intently that he doesn’t initially notice that he and Fuyumi are walking his way.

“Hawks-san!” Fuyumi greets, breaking Hawks out of his pseudo-cannibalism induced stupor.

Wings jolting, Hawks whips around to face them, eyes widening with a delighted sort of surprise. “Fuyumi! How are you?” He goes to embrace her warmly.

Enji is a little irritated that Hawks isn’t even acknowledging his presence. “You two . . . know each other?”

Hawks releases her from the hug, patting her back with a bright smile. “Fuyumi and Natsuo took me out to dinner a couple months back as a thank you after the whole Ending incident,” he says, eyes finally zeroing in on Enji, lips curled into a smirk. “So what’re you two doing here? Some cute, father-daughter bonding at the grocery store?”

“He doesn’t have any food to cook with back at hom—back at the estate,” Fuyumi says, blanching a little at her slip-up. Enji ignores it. Neither of them want to address it, that much is obvious.

“Now I have plenty,” Enji sighs, eyeing Fuyumi tiredly.

“Oh?” Hawks tilts his head slightly to the side, golden eyes curious, half-lidded. “You know how to cook?”

Enji averts his gaze, a light blush on his cheeks. “Not really,” he grits out.

And then—this is where the danger is, because Hawks grins and says in a low, flirty voice, “Maybe I should cook for you some time, Endeavor-san.”

Hawks is bold, fearless, and a genius by any definition—a prodigy who hadn’t even needed UA to catapult himself to the top of the hero rankings by eighteen—Enji just wishes the boy would grow some tact one of these days.

His daughter is right beside him, her eyes now wide like a little doe as Hawks very obviously flirts with her father in the middle of a grocery store.

Enji glares at Hawks like he would a villain, brows furrowed and tinged with fire, ruthless and merciless.

Hawks laughs and raises his hands defensively. “I was joking!” he says, but he still has that same, smarmy look in his eyes. “Besides, I’m kinda trash at cooking too.”

“What are you even doing here?” Technically, Hawks’ permanent residence is in Kyushu, and his agency is there too, but he spends most of his time in his Tokyo apartment—about thirty minutes west of Musutafu.

“Oh, this place is near UA. I was gonna grab some snacks before I take Tsukuyomi-kun on a quick flight. I was trying to decide whether I should buy some groceries too.”

If it was anyone else saying this, Enji would find it a shoddy excuse, but well—it’s Hawks, a self-proclaimed free bird who does whatever he wants. To doubt this would be to doubt any of the other illogical things he does on the norm—like suck Enji’s cock multiple times a week.

But then Enji suddenly remembers the line. The line that separates what he does with Hawks in the safety of his own office and what he does to preserve whatever home he has left. The line, he reminds himself, don’t let yourself or Hawks cross that line. The line is the only thing that makes this okay, and the fact that his daughter is right next to him while Hawks flirts with him in a grocery store—Enji needs to retreat back as far as he can before they do something stupid, before they do something dangerous.

He hastily grabs the closest package of pre-cut chicken on the shelves—he hopes that this is the one that Fuyumi was talking about—and drops it into the cart. “Let’s go, Fuyumi,” he declares, already walking back towards the registers.

Fuyumi jumps a little, surprised by the abruptness of their conversation. “Uh, sure?” She smiles sheepishly and maneuvers the cart back around. “Keep in touch, Hawks-san!”

Enji doesn’t bother to look back, but he can easily imagine the smirk on Hawks’ face when he says, “Yeah, I’ll keep in touch.”

Hawks’ version of keeping in touch is spamming Enji’s phone with dick pics. Enji can’t bring himself to tell him to stop. By now, he’s gotten used to Hawks and all of his irritating little idiosyncrasies. 

They’re pretty much a well-oiled machine; while they haven’t done a great variety of things, they’ve gotten really good at what they have done. They know each other’s weaknesses by heart, what makes the other tick. Enji knows that if he pinches his inner thigh right as he’s about to come, it’ll leave him sobbing, pretty tears running down his cheeks scorching-hot. If he calls him mean names when his mouth is filled, when he can’t do a thing but take it like he was born to do—his throat will spasm, he’ll choke and gag and literal hearts will appear in his eyes—like he’s thanking Enji for it, like Enji’s done something that deserves a thank you.

Likewise, Hawks bats his lashes when he kisses the tip of Enji’s cock, just to tease, just because he knows Enji will fuck his mouth harder as a result, knows that Enji will tangle his fingers in his golden hair and pull. Pull and push him down like he’s nothing more than a mouth to be used. Hawks knows when to be sloppy and when to be precise in his kisses—he might be a virgin, at least by his own definition—but fuck does he know how to kiss.

Enji wonders who was his first for that.

Maybe Enji was his first kiss too.

Maybe Hawks was such a fast learner in that regard that Enji just never noticed how inexperienced, sloppy kisses quickly became focused and filled with purpose.

But that might just be wishful thinking on Enji’s part.

The dick pics—back to the dick pics, a safer topic, a much safer topic—they’re annoying, breath-taking, and lovely all at the same time.

Enji often receives them on patrol with the interns, and he has to resist the urge to open up the photo until he can relieve himself in private.

On rare occasions, he sends a photo back with shitty bathroom lighting and cum drooling down his cock. And on those occasions, still rare as ever, Hawks always ends up calling him, and Enji gets to listen to his cute, whiny voice when he comes, sweet moans and stuttered hiccups, labored breaths and sated hums.

Hawks continues to visit him at the office. A couple times a week gradually turns into every single day, but Enji takes care that neither of them accidentally end up crossing the line.

They’re a well-oiled machine. Mechanical, no emotion to what they do.

Things couldn’t get better.

Or worse, depending on how you look at it.

“ ‘ssit cool if I call you Daddy while we’re doing it?”

Enji nearly chokes on his own spit.

“Like, I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I didn’t know if it’d be weird for you considering your whole hang-up with your family,” Hawks explains casually, swinging his legs, dangling over the edge of the desk, thighs spread wide. He hums for a second, as if to consider it, then adds, “And your age.”

Enji stands there like a dead fish out of water, mouth agape. Hawks had just gotten here, plopped himself atop Enji’s desk without a care in the world—without a care to even close the door behind him. With a loud, exasperated groan, Enji stood up and went to go lock the door, and the moment he turned back around to face the younger boy, he hit him with a question like that.

Hawks doesn’t even give him time to start unpacking the question, let alone think of a way to respond—

“And before you ask,” Hawks says, airy voice level and calm, as if they’re just talking about the weather, as if this is something normal to ask someone, even in the confines of their own office, “contrary to what you might assume, I actually don’t have daddy issues. I just think it’s hot, y’know?”

No, Enji does not know.

“I wouldn’t call you it today, though. That ruins the whole surprise of it. Maybe I’ll just slip it in the day you actually decide to man up and fuck me for real. Oh hey, this reminds me, didja know that you consistently place first in the Hero Chart DILF rankings? So, I’m not the only one who thinks you’re daddy material—”

“Hawks. Please, just stop talking.”

Hawks smiles, eyes dark, head tilted slightly to the side. Like this, Enji can see the marks he left on Hawks’ neck, a line of wine-colored bruises starting from his collarbone, blooming all the way up to the underside of his chin. “Only if you answer my question, Endeavor-san.”

Enji bares his teeth as a warning—something about Hawks makes him feel animalistic, primitive.

Hawks’ brows lift at this, and he makes a show of pressing his lips together, but the challenge in his eyes is steady, constant—it isn’t going anywhere. His fingernails tap at the surface of Enji’s desk, as if to remind Enji that he’s waiting for a response. 

All his life he’s never understood why people lose themselves to desire—crimes of passion or maybe even just foolhardy acts of love—he’s never understood the point of it, never understood what it meant to want something so badly you’d go against all common sense for it.

Hunger for power, for victory, was the closest thing to desire that Enji’s ever understood.

Now, he thinks, he’s starting to learn that maybe they’re not so different after all—hunger and desire. They ache, more than anything they ache.

They’re not so different, especially when the thing you’re hungry for and the thing you desire both seem to escape your grasp time after time because they’re more than someone like you deserves—

The truth is, the only time Enji ever has any real, tangible power over the younger man is when he’s got him on his knees or got him pressed into the sharp, wooden edge of his desk—Enji knows this, and he hates it, hates that he’s powerless to change anything about it. He hates that one day, Hawks will learn how to take that stolen, temporary power back: the only power that Enji has over him. One day, he’ll learn the rhythm of their push-and-pull, burn it into muscle memory—and Enji will play right into his hands.

Hawks is a fast learner, Hawks is a prodigy, Hawks is young.

And Enji—Enji is none of that, not anymore.

“Do what you like, boy,” he hears himself saying. His voice doesn’t quite sound like his—but then again, Enji isn’t quite sure what is his and what is Hawks’ anymore.

Do what you like. It sounds a yes, and Enji isn’t quite sure why that’s perfectly fine with him.

Maybe it has something to do with the happy smile that blooms on Hawks’ face, so full with something so close to affection, admiration, and adoration, when he gets the okay.

Maybe.

And maybe—just maybe—this entire time, Enji’s already been playing into his hands.

Small, calloused, and warm.

They team up again. Yokohama, this time. At night, the river is filled with dragon-fire, blood-red reflections of the city above, and the streets are filled with a sort of animosity you only get from villains lurking in the moon-lit crevices of the city below.

The mission isn’t hard at all, isn’t something that deserves a team-up between Japan’s top two heroes.

A part of Enji wants to ask Hawks why he even requested another team-up in the first place, but if he asks that question, inevitably, he’s going to have to come to terms with the fact that he was the one who hadn’t even questioned the difficulty of the task before saying yes, yes, of course I’ll team up with you.

He actually likes teaming up with Hawks, that’s the thing; they work well together, whether they’re dividing and conquering or fighting side-by-side, and Enji trusts Hawks’ skill just as much as he trusts his own.

After the mission is complete, Hawks drags him to an izakaya, a small hand around his wrist, and tries to get him drunk. Enji is hit with a staggering case of déjà vu.

One thing that is different about this time, however, is that it’s not just them.

Enji really should check Hero Network more often.

Due to some stroke of bad luck, Eraserhead is also here, celebrating what also seemed to be a successful mission. It isn’t until Enji’s a couple drinks in—loose-limbed, warm, but still mostly in control—that Hawks brings Aizawa’s presence to his and everyone’s attention by loudly yelling, “Oh—wow! It’s Eraserhead! Hey, Eraserhead, why don’t you join us!”

Aizawa tenses up, face deathly-white despite the alcohol, and tries to hide himself in his capture scarf, but it doesn’t work because Hawks has already sent a feather over to poke at his cheek until he gives in. He lasts about three minutes. With a tired sigh, he gets up from his seat at the bar and goes to join Enji and Hawks at their booth, a whiskey in hand as he sits opposite the top two heroes. There’s a reluctant, pained look on his face. Enji almost feels bad.

After that, the commotion quickly dies down, and everyone returns to whatever they were doing before the number two hero started shouting the name of a hero next to no one’s heard about. When Enji and Hawks entered the tiny izakaya together a little under two hours ago, the bar goers already made a ruckus at what would probably be the biggest celebrity encounter in their lifetimes. By now, the novelty has already worn off. Pro-heroes are normal people too. They get drunk like everyone else, and they make stupid mistakes like becoming friends with benefits with their fucking coworkers just like everyone else—

Aizawa looks at them with tired, half-open eyes. He clearly doesn’t like Enji or Hawks—Enji can tell at least that. “I was hoping you two wouldn’t notice I was here,” he breathes, exasperated and taking another sip of his drink. “What are you guys doing anyway?”

“Celebrating!” Hawks answers, bright as ever. His face is bright red, grin stretched wide, eyes pinched into crescents. Enji blames the sudden warmth in his chest on the alcohol.

(They’re sitting much closer than they need to be. Hell, they’re sitting next to each other when they could be sitting on opposite sides of the booth. Enji had a feeling that Hawks just wanted to feel him up as they ate and drank, which he has been. He still isn’t quite sure why he just let it happen.)

Aizawa’s expression is careful and deadly, but also slightly annoyed. When Enji was younger, he did a few underground missions, just to see what it was like to operate without sponsorship or the media’s eyes. It’s not better or worse than the sort of hero work that Enji and Hawks do—but the years in Tokyo’s underbelly without any time to worry about approval ratings, public outcry, or even the flimsy array of morals you set out with in your younger, more naive years—those years have taken their toll on Aizawa, and they’ve clearly worn down on his patience for top heroes like them who have the luxury to care about things like that.

Although, knowing what Hawks went through last year—in the League, in the war—Enji supposes that him and Aizawa can’t be that different.

“I didn’t mean what are you doing here,” Aizawa deadpans, rolling his eyes. His gaze eventually lands back on Enji, critical and wary. “I meant why are you two teamed up again?”

The question is clearly aimed at Enji, but Hawks is the one who ends up answering.

“C’mon, we’re like, a dynamic duo! The greatest team-up Japan has ever seen. The bestest of friends with b—”

Enji covers his mouth with his hand before Hawks can blurt out the word benefits. The benefits are great, but only so long as no one else knows about them.

“He’s—drunk,” Enji says, grimacing at the way that Hawks has taken the opportunity to slobber all over his palm right now. The feeling of Hawks’ tongue—hot, wet, slippery, oh fuck, fuck—sliding all over Enji’s hand makes him feel tingles all over, liquid fire thrumming through his veins, and he really cannot have that right now; consequently, Enji removes his hand from Hawks’ mouth and, for some insane reason, pats his head with it. Because he felt like it. Because he felt like patting Hawks’ head. Maybe Enji is drunk too.

“Sorry about this. Just ignore him.” Enji can’t quite remember what the conversation was about in the first place, can’t quite remember what Aizawa’s question was in the first place. All he’s sure of is that ignoring Hawks is always a good idea.

Aizawa looks distracted, eyes lingering on Enji’s hand, but Enji can’t quite tell why—

Oh, Enij’s hand is still on Hawks’ head. He quickly removes it.

Aizawa blinks, taking a moment to find his words. “I just—I thought you don’t do team-ups.”

Right. That’s what they were talking about.

Team-ups.

I thought you don’t do team-ups.

Enji doesn’t. He doesn’t do team-ups. He tries not to. He goes out of his way not to. He has a reputation of always turning down team-up requests. Had that reputation—until Hawks asked him to go to Kyushu with him last fall. Until Hawks asked him to go to Osaka with him last month. Until Hawks asked him yesterday if they could head over to Yokohama in the morning.

Until Hawks.

“I’m the exception, sensei,” Hawks sing songs as he presses up to Enji’s side, closing the already dubious space between their bodies. It’s clear he wants to do something like rest his head atop Enji’s shoulder, but due to their size difference, he literally can’t.

He seems happy enough, though, just to have Enji’s warm body against his.

Aizawa—at being called sensei by the number two pro-hero, however—looks more irritated than Enji’s ever seen, and Enji’s seen him teach a class at UA before.

Hawks seems to have that effect on people.

Enji half-expects to see Aizawa’s eyes glow bright red with his erasure quirk, even if it won’t work on the winged hero, but Hawks has jubilant tears in his eyes before Aizawa even gets a chance to express his annoyance.

“Sorry, sorry!” Hawks giggles, and the lovely, carefree nature of his laughter makes Enji’s chest feel warm, and buzzy again. He wonders how long he can keep blaming this warmth on the alcohol. “I never went to school, so I never got to call anyone sensei. Just wanted to try it out.” 

Enji angles his head so that he can look down at the boy. His eyes are closed, dark lashes and triangular moles beautiful like always, high cheekbones, a shiny Cupid’s bow, and a beautiful, beautiful grin pulling into his cheeks. Enji doesn’t know what he’s thinking, doesn’t know what’s going on in that little bird brain that always seems to know more than he lets on.

He hadn’t known that Hawks never went to school. He knew that Hawks never went to UA, but he’d always assumed that he at least got a traditional education.

He knows a lot of things about Hawks: how he has a voracious appetite, to say the least, how he operates best in open spaces, and how he’s looked up to Enji as a hero since he was a young child. He knows other things too: how he likes being marked up, likes it when Enji leaves careless little bruises and burns on his hips; how he likes it when Enji ruts against his thigh or between his ass, likes the reminder of how much bigger Enji is than him in almost every regard; and how he likes kissing the most out of everything they do, likes it when their mouths are just pressed together, exchanging hot breaths and wet sighs, likes it when Enji licks the seam of his mouth and pries him open, breaks him down until there is nothing left.

But there are so many things Enji doesn’t know about Hawks: what his favorite food is, what his family is like, what he does in his spare time, the little that he has. He doesn’t know what Hawks looks like naked, doesn’t know if his nipples are just as sensitive as the junction between his shoulder and his neck, doesn’t know if Hawks would fall apart on his fingers just as easily as he falls apart with a hand or mouth around his cock. He knows Hawks’ pretty whines and cute moans when Enji’s sucking him off or jerking him off,  or when he’s fingering himself over the phone, but Enji wants to hear him, wants to fucking see him when he’s filled to the fucking brim. God, does Enji want to see him fall apart, wants to see him as vulnerable as he can get.

There are so many things that Enji doesn’t know about the beautiful, beautiful boy right beside him, and in this moment, he finds himself wanting to learn them all.

Aizawa coughs loudly, exasperated, and Enji is reminded that Aizawa has been there this entire time, and despite that, he’s been staring at Hawks for what must’ve been at least a full minute. He’s scared to think about what his face must’ve looked like that entire time.

Oh god.

“I have to go,” Aizawa grunts out, quickly sliding out of the booth. He looks substantially more exhausted than he had when he first sat down at their booth four minutes ago, maybe three. “I have class to teach in the morning.”

Then he brings his glass up to his mouth and downs the rest of his whiskey in one go, licking his lower lip to make sure he didn’t waste even a single drop of it. Without even a second glance at the two pro-heroes, he makes his way out of the izakaya, his scarf flapping behind him.

He’s already outside by the time that Enji’s liquor-slow brain realizes—

It’s a Saturday. There is no class to teach tomorrow.

Fuck, that was—

Embarrassing. That was—this is—so embarrassing.

Enji is about to say something—he doesn’t know what, but he thinks that he should at least say something about that conversation—but then he gazes down at Hawks again, his little body pressed against Enji’s big body like he belongs no place else, like there is nothing that needs to be said.

Hawks’ eyes are open now, and he’s looking back up at Enji with big, honey-bright eyes filled with a sort of devotion you really only get from admiring someone all your life—all twenty-three years of it. 

Hawks is an especially needy kisser when he’s drunk—which is to say a lot, since he’s needy all the time.

“Oh, oh, are you finally going to fuck me tonight?” Hawks breathes out, lips smacking wetly against Enji’s, a dazed, dizzy, dopey look on his face as he falls back onto the bed. The bed. Oh god, this is their first time doing it on a bed, isn’t it?

They at least had the patience to hold off until they made it safely to the hotel room that Enji booked this morning—Hawks booked the room next door too, but just as a formality—and Enji is thankful for it. Hotel rooms don’t have the signature dumpster-cigarette smell that the alleyway in which they conducted their first makeout session had. Not that Enji remembers it that well anyway—really, all Enji remembers about that night is Hawks. His wet mouth, his cute cock, and his sweet moans.

Enji growls, chewing and sucking on Hawks’ bottom lip. “You’re drunk. ‘m not fucking you.”

“S-so boring,” Hawks complains, sprawled out on the sheets, blond hair haloed around his head. He looks anything but angelic, though. Pupils dark, cheeks pink, tongue slightly stuck out. It’s amusing.

“Be grateful.”

“Mmh, want me to show you how grateful I am?” Hawks offers, and it’s not a question, not really.

Enji hisses, breaking the kiss to ruck Hawks’ shirt up just enough to expose his bare stomach, abs already clenching nervously. He wonders how far he should take this today—wonders how far Hawks will convince him to take it today.

“Don’t get cocky, boy.” Enji pinches what little fat there is on Hawks’ stomach, delighted at the way Hawks positively squirms at the tinge of pain. “You’re not as good as you think you are.”

It’s a shitty bluff. Outright terrible and Hawks knows it. He grins real wide and laughs. “Oh, I think I’m even better than I think I am,” he says, a hand sliding down to grab at Enji’s cock through the dark blue spandex of his costume. Then his mouth chases Enji’s for another needy kiss, wet and tasting like beer.

He can’t get enough, and neither can Enji.

“Fuck,” Enji gasps quietly, because this is bad. This is a problem. Why is this a problem again? Oh god, Enji is so drunk. Way too drunk. Just as drunk as he was the night they first did this.

“C’mon, Enji-san,” Hawks sighs, kissing a line down to the base of Enji’s throat, a butterfly kiss tickling his Adam’s apple. He gives Enji’s cock another squeeze and—fuck, Enji can’t do this. “Let me show you a good time.”

“You sound like a cheap whore,” Enji groans, because he does. Hawks is slutty and eager and he truly will be the death of Enji. If not now, then some day. Someday soon, probably.

“You say that like it’s an insult.” Hawks laughs again, and Enji is starting to fall in love with the sound of it. 

Fuck. Fuck. This is bad.

“ ‘s supposed to be.”

“ ‘m havin’ the time of my life with my favorite hero, can you blame me for being easy?”

Enji gulps. He was never anyone’s favorite hero; it was always All Might this, All Might that. But then—then, there came Hawks. Blond, beautiful, and half his age. He once again tries not to think about it.

“You talk big for someone who’s never been fucked before.” He can’t have his mind wandering any further, so he distracts himself by removing Hawks’ jacket from his body; his wings make it a tad difficult, but Enji manages.

“I, ngh, told you. You can change that. ‘m asking ya to change that.”

Stay strong, Enji reminds himself, deciding to just continue stripping Hawks of all his clothes. Stay strong. You’re the number one hero. Stay strong—and don’t let him win.

That prerogative proves to be quite literally impossible to abide by when Enji slides his hand from Hawks’ abs up to his chest and his fingers meet something cold, something metal—

“You’re—” Enji thumbs around his nipple, his touch feather-light, trying to find the words lost on his tongue. His brain isn’t quite working the way he wants it to. Oh god, he doesn’t think it’ll ever be the same knowing that Hawks is, Hawks is—

“You’re pierced.”

Then Enji pinches his nipple, rubs at the swollen rosebud and the cold, straight barbell. Hawks’ eyes roll to the back of his head, and his whole body writhes in pain, in pleasure, in pure, utter sensation. He hurriedly grabs onto Enji’s shoulders and—

Fuck.

“Shit. I gott’em, ngh, would you stop that—it’s distracting, gah—gott’em as soon as I became legal. They’re fun.”

Enji can’t stop playing with his nipples. Plural, since both of his hands are now playing with Hawks’ chest. Pinching, squeezing, rubbing at them, rolling them between his fingertips,  He can’t stop. He doesn’t want to stop.

“H-hey, Endea—Enji, fuck, it’s—I’m sensitive there, fucking st—”

Enji’s fingers still, and Hawks lets out a broken sob, wriggling miserably at the sudden lack of sensation, hands coming down to fist at the bed sheets, as if to keep himself grounded.

“Do you really want me to stop? I will, if you really want me to.”

Hawks’ brows lift, bug-eyed, pink lips parted. His cheeks flush beautifully, and his face twists into a frown. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean it like that,” he snaps, turning his head to the side, averting his gaze. “Just—just get on with it.”

Hawks is bossy and a little bratty by nature—he’s a prideful, predatorial being after all, and this happens to be something that he’s embarrassed by.

But the thing is, Enji can’t have that.

He removes his hands from under Hawks’ shirt, and when the boy thrashes stubbornly underneath him, he curls a single hand around his hip, forces him into obedience with a bruising grip. With the other hand, Enji uses two gentle fingers to tap his cheek. Hawks jumps at this, the gentleness of his touch, wings jolting in surprise, but doesn’t move. He looks like a scared animal, prey caught in the wild, eyes big, cheeks flushed and sweaty.

“Hawks,” Enji mutters, tapping his cheek again, maybe just a bit rougher than before. Hawks squeezes his eyes shut, like he’s scared he’s about to be eaten alive—despite the alcohol buzzing through his veins, Enji has never felt more in control. “Do you really want me to keep going?”

A beat—big and boundless and full of ragged breathing that must belong to both of them—and then finally, finally, Hawks sighs, limbs relaxing like molten honey.

“Yes, yes please,” he mumbles into the bed, an adorable shade of pink.

Fuck. Fuck. Enji hadn’t even asked him to say please, but he did. Enji doesn’t need to demand obedience or submission or anything like that because Hawks will give it to him anyways.

No questions asked, no questions needed, because Hawks already knows.

And maybe that’s where Enji got it all wrong.

He—he wants this, and he isn’t looking to get anything out of it. He wants this, pure and simple. He wants Enji.

“Look at me,” Enji whispers, and Hawks obeys, head turning slowly to look back up at Enji, a glossy sort of amber in his eyes, big and dark.

“Hands up.” Hawks obeys that too, hands unfurling, arms lifting above his head. And, and—god. Hawks is just so—good. Good at everything, good at being good.

“Good boy,” Enji positively groans, and before he gives Hawks a chance to preen at the praise, he’s pulling Hawks’ tight black shirt up and over his head, shucking them off his wings with more force than probably is necessary.

No matter how you look at him, Hawks is a sight. Pink rosebuds pierced through with horizontal barbells, silver and shiny; chest jutted out, back arched into a pretty curve; white scars from battle and dark bruises from Enji all over his body.

“C’mon, Enji-san,” Hawks moans, tangling his fingers in Enij’s short hair, nails dragging against the base of Enji’s scalp. He lifts up off the bed, kissing Enji’s cheek with wet lips. “Don’t you want to fuck me?”

Enji—fuck, fuck. Hawks is half-naked, a halo of blond hair and a mess of crimson wings beneath him. He’s beautiful, and he wants him. Wants Enji to fuck him. He could have anyone he wanted, but he wants Enji. Enji is his favorite hero, not All Might or anyone else. He wants Enji, and Enji—

Enji wants this too.

“H-hey, I gotta say, mmh, that this is not what I ex-expect—ngh—ed—” Hawks’ back lifts completely off the bed, spine curved beautifully as his fingers dig into Enji’s ass, scrambling for purpose. 

Enji pinches a nipple, and Hawks gasps, jaw dropping. From their positioning—Hawks practically folded in half, wings pressed flat to the bed, Enji’s cock fucking his thighs, hands fondling his chest—Enji can’t suck on and bite the buds like he wants to, but he supposes that he’ll have to make do with this.

He isn’t sure how long they’ve been doing this, how long he’s been fucking Hawks’ thighs, but he thinks he could do this forever.

Enji’s only done this once or twice before—fucked someone’s thighs—but Hawks is a natural at this too—at taking this too.

With each thrust, his cock rubs against Hawks’ balls, and it makes the blond’s thighs clench together even tighter. The alcohol has mostly worn off by now, but they might be drunk off this instead; Enji sure doesn’t feel sober right now. 

Enji doesn’t think about it, doesn’t think about how his cockhead would snag on Hawks’ puffy hole, how, if he really wanted to, he could take the boy right here and now—how he would be the first person to do so.

I don’t have to be, if you’d just do something about it.

“Shut up,” he growls. “Fuckin’ told you—I’m not fucking you—ever.”

“Y’sure ‘bout that? C’mon, Enji-san, ‘n here I’ve been fucking myself open each night to prep—”

Enji thrusts hard, hips smacking against Hawks’ milky thighs, and Hawks lets out a little yelp—a light, bare sound, floating in the space between them. Enji gazes down at his face, and he looks so lost, looks young. Enji doesn’t think he could ever get enough of this.

“Oh, fuck, fuck, I think I’m gonna come,” Hawks gasps, and, oh—his hand is around his cock, fisting himself to completion. Enji doesn’t know when that happened, but he welcomes it. There’s no prettier version of Hawks than when he’s mid-orgasm, Enji thinks. The frantic euphoria on his face, the way every part of him squeezes up, turns pink with embarrassment; it’s beautiful, and Enji wants to see it, wants to see and hear it more than anything. So he lets it happen, doesn’t make fun of Hawks like he wants to because he’s too awestruck by the way his eyes fall shut, squeeze, then spring back open with a high-pitched wail. His pale thighs squeeze around Enji’s cock, and Enji finds himself taking advantage of it, fucking them harder and harder than every—god, he doesn’t think he’s ever fucked anyone’s anything this hard before.

And then, oh god, oh god, Hawks’ legs fall open, ankles locking behind Enji, and his little cock spurts white all over himself, all over his stomach and chest; some even gets on the silver barbells, painting his nipples white where there is rose-pink, rubbed raw. Enji can’t help it, can’t help the way he groans and shoves his tongue inside Hawks’ willing mouth, jaw slack and unable to kiss back. He kisses him until it hurts—until there is nothing left. Then he pulls back, pulls away to look at him: his lips are kiss-swollen, raw, and bitten all to hell. Fuck, fuck, his red little mouth and the rosy blush that spreads down to his chest—Enji wants it all, wants it all to himself. 

“Mmph,” Hawks sighs, closing his eyes, wiping his hand on the sheets. “That was good.” He smiles, happy and sated, and Enji finds himself smiling a little too. 

“Yeah,” he says, “that was good.”

Hawks laughs and somehow finds the strength to sit up, wincing at the soreness in his thighs. He glances down at Enji’s thick cock and his eyes go a little dark. “Want me to blow you?” he asks, licking his lips.

It takes Enji a second to register that question; all he can focus on is the white cum dripping down Hawks’ blushing body, beautiful and strong—but so, so vulnerable right now. He can’t get enough—doesn’t think he could ever get enough. And it’s a shame, really, because Hawks already looks so ruined, so wrecked.

Maybe one more wouldn’t break him too bad.

Enji is good at that—breaking things so bad that they can never be fixed.

“Later.”

Tonight is the first time he’s had Hawks fully naked in the flesh, the first time he’s had Hawks on an actual bed—he’s gonna make it count.

Hawks frowns in confusion, eyes only half-open. “What does that—”

He gasps when Enji curls his fingers around his flaccid cock, hands flying up to grab onto Enji’s shoulders, nails digging in. With one hand, Enji mechanically pumps Hawks’ cock, already starting to fill back up, and shoves a thigh up to meet his flushed chest with the other. Hawks’ eyes are open all the way now, and he’s looking at Enji with pleading, pathetic eyes—god, this pain must be numbing. Enji’s chest fills with delight and warmth to know that this is how much power he has over the younger—that this is how much power Hawks will give up to him with open hands and a willing heart. 

“Shit,” Hawks whimpers, full on sobbing now, cheeks blotchy and warm with tears. “Shit, I can’t, I can’t—”

Enji kisses his cheek, kisses a tear away as he slicks his fingers up with Hawks’ cum. “You can,” he insists, giving Hawks one last stroke before pulling his hand away. Hawks makes a little noise of relief, but those sobs soon turn frantic when Enji’s fingers find themselves at Hawks’ entrance, taut and puckered pink. He circles around the little bud, wondering how swollen it’ll be once he’s done fingering him open, stretching him out the way he was made to be stretched out.

“Can’t, can’t—”  

He pinches one of Hawks’ puffy nipples, slippery with the boy’s own cum, and slides a finger into his tight entrance, pushing it into the knuckle. Hawks cries out again, but Enji just licks away another tear.

“You can, of course you can.”

It ends with Enji coming all over Hawks’ swollen, twitching hole.

Enji only gets two fingers in by the time Hawks is coming again, cum dripping weakly from his spent cock, gasping about the fullness. Tight—tight—tight. No one’s ever been inside him like this before. No one’s ever had him like I’ve had him, and no one else will—

His fingers are substantially larger than Hawks’—longer and much thicker—and with a slick hand pumping his cock, it isn’t much of a surprise when Hawks clenches around Enji’s two fingers, cries, and comes even before he’s had the chance to properly fuck him with them. Enji isn’t bothered by this—he jerks himself off over Hawks’ tired body, dirtying the boy’s perineum with even more cum.

They lie there for a little while, and it’s gross because the cum is starting to dry and the sheets are soaked through with sweat, but neither of them make an effort to move. Just panting side by side and basking in the afterglow.

“Perverted old man,” Hawks breathes after a while, throwing his forearm over his eyes. “Making me come twice in a row, what the fuck?”

Enji laughs under his breath, pride swelling in his chest. “Was it too much?” he asks.

At that, Enji can see a grin pull at the corners of Hawks’ lips. In the blink of an eye, the boy is on top of him, thighs spread out over Enji’s stomach, knees pressing into the bed. His eyes are liquid-gold and bright as the sun, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and he’s leaning down to cup Enji’s face with both hands, and Enji is breathless—completely fucking breathless as Hawks kisses him chastely. It leaves Enji wanting. Wanting more, wanting everything.

“It was the best kind of too much a bird could ever dream of.”

And then, Enji honestly isn’t sure who initiates the next kiss. Maybe it was him, maybe it was Hawks, but it really doesn’t matter because— 

They just keep kissing. They keep kissing, and they really ought to stop. They should probably go shower, they should probably go their separate ways, and they should definitely stop kissing because Enji is sure, sure that if they don’t stop kissing now, the line, the precious line that is the only thing making this whole arrangement okay, will be crossed. But, the thing is—

Does the line between work and home really matter when you don’t have a home? When you’ve destroyed every meaningful relationship in your life? When you’ve driven away everyone important to you, everyone dear to you? When you’ve driven your children away out of anger and arrogance and self-absorption, when you’ve driven everyone to resent you, fear you, and hate you?

When you were the one who broke your family?

Does Enji even have the right to keep Hawks away from his personal life when this has already become so personal? Does someone like him deserve to keep kissing someone as good, as young, as beautiful as—

No offense, Endeavor-san, but I couldn’t care less what type of person you are.

They keep kissing. They need to stop. This needs to stop, but—but Hawks’ lips just feel right on his: plump and perfect and rose-pink. They’ve kissed before; they’ve kissed a lot, but this one is a little different. Each kiss makes Enji’s bones ache, little blooms of pain appearing all over his skin, but he likes it. He likes this, everything about this. The beginning, the middle, the end—all of it. All of him. Wants it all to himself.

They keep kissing, and Enji is dizzy and his heart is pounding—

—but he knows for sure that he doesn’t ever want to stop.

So they don’t.

Enji wakes up alone the next morning, limbs slow and heavy like lead. Relief shouldn’t feel this heavy, and a queen-sized bed should not feel this empty—at least for someone as big as Enji. 

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, and he doesn’t remember when or if they stopped kissing.

But this is good; the fact that he didn’t wake up with Hawks in his arms, wings folded, feathers pressed to his chest—it’s good. He has to remind himself of this, because it doesn’t feel very good, waking up alone. (Once again, though, he blames this feeling, this lingering emptiness, regret that clings to his muscles, on the alcohol. It’s easy to do that, to blame anything and anyone but yourself.)

It’s good. This is good. This is how it’s supposed to be.

Enji repeats it like a prayer, until he starts to believe it, until the bone-deep ache of Hawks’ kisses from last night start to fade from memory, fade from feeling.

This is the way things are.

Enji has spent the last forty-seven years alone: the last twenty-nine fighting alone, and the last twelve sleeping alone.

Nothing has changed, and nothing needs to change.

Despite Enji’s protests, they get breakfast together.

After Enji walked out of the shower, a towel slung loosely around his waist, he found Hawks sitting on the bed like he damn owned it. Enji squinted, groaned, and wondered when Hawks swiped his room card from him. Probably last night, when he was groping Enji on the elevator ride up to their floor. Once Enji emerged from the bathroom, Hawks pounced on him, kissed him sweetly, mouthed at the hickies on his collarbone he left last night, and then suggested they go for breakfast before they part ways: Enji back to his agency, Hawks off to his next mission in Kyoto.

Hawks is a workaholic who pretends he isn’t a workaholic. He’s dangerous, very, very dangerous. 

But the most dangerous part about all this is that it’s becoming harder and harder to say no to him these days. Worse than that, Enji doesn’t want to say no most of the time. He finds himself craving more, finds himself reluctant to let the boy out of his grasp.

The place Hawks picked out for breakfast is small and homey, and no one makes too big of a fuss seeing Japan’s top two heroes together. Enji hides the hickies well.

Hawks—doesn’t, but they still make out okay, somehow. Enji has his sidekicks keep tabs on any malicious rumors circulating about his personal life, and so far, by some miracle, he hasn’t heard anything out of the ordinary.

After all, Enji’s reputation is airtight; it always has been. He’s careful about that. He comes off to the public as stiff and impersonal and unlikeable, and all that is true—but more than anything, he’s respectable. None of the dirty rumors or scandals that so often plague those in the top hero rankings: Miruko’s stint with the female supermodel from America, Mt. Lady and Kamui Woods’ supposed sordid love affair—hell, even All Might had some rumors about him and his sidekicks back in the day.

Then there’s Hawks.

Oh, Hawks, who out of all of them probably has the worst myriad of rumors circulating around about him.

It’s all rather ironic, because Hawks is anything but dirty, and Enji is anything but clean.

The public doesn’t know the truth. There might be hints of it, lingering in Natsuo’s casual dismissal of his father’s achievements whenever he’s cornered by a reporter, in Shouto’s half-and-half brand of apathy and reluctant compassion only when it comes to his father—hell, in the fact that his wife was in a hospital for an entire fucking decade.

But no one sees those hints; all anyone sees in Enji is a man who has spent every waking moment of his adult life saving men and women and children from villains, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks—a man who is so busy saving the world that he sometimes neglects his family. The public doesn’t know the truth: that it was once much, much worse than neglect.

Enji is atoning, and he’s trying his hardest to change—but sometimes, atonement feels little more than rain drizzling down on scorched, salted earth.

The public doesn’t know the truth: Enji is a monster. Through and through.

Atonement doesn’t change something like that.

But—Hawks.

Hawks ordered chicken tenders for breakfast. When the waitress asked him what he wanted for a drink, he said pineapple juice, ran his foot up Enji’s calf, and winked. Teasingly. Seductively. Enji hates to admit that it kind of worked, because he thought about grabbing Hawks’ arm and pulling him to the bathroom and forcing him to his knees. But he didn’t. He didn’t, because Enji is forty-seven and he is much too old for something as filthy and stupid as that. He thought about it, though; he thought about it because—

No offense, Endeavor-san, but I couldn’t care less what type of person you are.

Hawks laughs when Enji glares at him. Hawks requests team-ups with Enji even though Enji never used to team up with anyone. Hawks uses his infiltration skills to sneak into Enji’s office without anyone noticing. Hawks snuck into Enji’s hotel room, kissed him, and asked him out to breakfast. Hawks let Enji finger him last night. Hawks got down on his knees and took Enji into his mouth when he hadn’t even done anything remotely of the sort before.

Sometimes, Hawks looks at him with hearts in his eyes.

Other times, he looks at Enji like he hung the moon and all the stars.

And, on rare occasions, rarer than sometimes and other times—Enji feels like he deserves it, deserves that affection, even if it’s driven by nothing other than undeniable physical attraction and a child-like reverence of a great hero.

Enji is a great hero, but he is not a good man.

That much is indisputable.

“You look like you’re either trying real hard to disprove the quirk singularity theory, or you’re trying to fight off a hangover.”

Enji blinks and comes back to himself, comes out of his head. He zeroes in on Hawks, the way his tongue needlessly pokes out when he goes to sip on his stupid pineapple drink, the way his brow is lifted and his eyes are glittering with what must be nonsensical musing about what Enji was thinking about.

“I don’t get hangovers,” Enji replies flatly.

“Oh, cool! Me too!” Hawks says with a lopsided grin. There’s something mischievous in the way his wings flap excitedly. “Pretty handy, isn’t it?”

Enji grunts out something that sounds like an agreement. 

“So, since neither of us happen to have a hangover,” Hawks starts, tone dropping, and Enji recognizes it as his I’m trying to seduce you voice. It’s painfully obvious, each and every time, but unfortunately for Enji, it is also very, very effective. It’s the marriage between the effortless confidence so integral to who the winged hero is and Enji’s awareness that in spite of that confidence, Hawks isn’t at all that experienced. 

Something about that combination really, really gets Enji going.

With a smirk, Hawks rests his elbows on the table, leans his weight forward, bats his lashes once, twice. “You wanna go again? There aren’t any cameras outside the emergency exit of this place. I checked.”

“I have to get to the agency by eleven. I already hadn’t planned on staying in Yokohama for the night.”

And then—oh no, Hawks does it again. Enji thanks god that this place has tablecloths that manage to hide how Hawks is running his foot up and down Enji’s calf in a way that is meant to be seductive and is made utterly unseductive by the fact that the boy is wearing chunky sneakers.

Enji still finds himself a little charmed.

“We can be quick,” Hawks says, licking over a cut on his lower lip, staring right into Enji’s eyes.

Enji swallows, trying not to stare at his mouth, shiny-wet and slightly parted.

“You talk real big for someone who’s never had sex before.”

A beat. Hawks just—blinks.  

After a moment, he bursts out into laughter, his head bangs into the edge of the table, and he almost spills his drink. Enji has no idea what was so funny about what he said, so he just—watches as Hawks clutches his stomach and continues to wheeze uncontrollably to himself.

“Oh my god,” Hawks sings, voice lifting into a gentle, airy giggle. “Oh man, I really should’ve expect that the great Endeavor-san’s definition of sex would be so . . . so . . . ” Then he waves his hand in a vague, circular motion that Enji has no idea how to decipher. “Traditional,” he finishes with a snort.

“Hawks,” Enji spits out, seething a little, but he does have to admit that Hawks has a point.

Enji is very much a traditional man, but—

They have done a lot of stuff, haven’t they?

“Sorry, sorry,” Hawks laughs in that terribly unapologetic, dismissive tone of his. He waves his hand again, flicking his wrist casually, and it’s just as baffling this time as it was just a moment ago. He grins and goes on to explain, “What I mean to say is—I would hardly call myself a virgin anymore, but, y’know, I guess it’s one of those things where everyone has a different definition so, really, the whole idea of it really doesn’t mean anything at all. But, I mean, you’re so hung up on this, so clearly this is something you care about, at least a little, so, hey, what the hell, if the thought of taking my virginity is something that gets you off, old man, please feel free to sully this innocent maiden.” He grins even wider, white canines sharp against red lips, and says, “I already told you this, but I’ll say it again: You have my full permission, no, enthusiasm, to deflower me. To shove your cock inside me like you always say you’re not going to do.”

Stunned speechless, Enji inhales deeply, not sure how to respond without accidentally admitting that he is incredibly into the thought of taking Hawks’—

Enji stops that train of thought and pretends like he never had it in the first place.

He gives up on coming up with a response entirely.

Then, as if nothing happened, Hawks’ tongue obscenely wraps around the plastic straw, his eyes not once leaving Enji’s as he does so.

Enji’s jaw clenches.

He’s hopeless. Absolutely fucking hopeless.

They leave the restaurant a little later. They mean to head out together, but right as they’re at the exit, Enji realizes he left his jacket at their table, so he goes back in while Hawks waits for him outside.

Now, jacket in hand, he walks out the entrance to meet up with Hawks so that they can officially part ways and maybe come up with a plan for when they’ll see each other next, but he stops dead in his tracks when he hears the noisy sound of a camera shutter followed by a dejected sigh. Footsteps quickly patter away.

“What was that?” Enji asks.

Hawks shrugs casually, leaning against the brick wall of the building. “Tabloids are all over me these days. They’re convinced that the young, sexy, desirable number two hero has a secret lover,” he explains with a bored sigh, like this is an everyday occurrence of his. Then his eyes sparkle a little, gazing up at Enji from his peripheral. “It’s ‘cause of all the hickies you’re always leaving on me, Endeavor-san.”

Enji draws a sharp breath through clenched teeth. He should feel bad, he really should, but all he feels is a lick of dragon fire curling in his gut.

People have noticed, but they don’t know.  

“I’ll try to refrain from it in the future,” Enji says, reluctant, only half-meaning it. He swears he’s not like this normally, it’s only with Hawks that he gets the insane urge to mark him up and make him feel owned.

“No, no—don’t,” Hawks blurts out, turning to face Enji directly. And, it’s—odd how determined he looks right now, eyes burning, brows furrowed, an insistent scowl on his face. Hawks is by no means an unambitious person, but always he hides his ambition well, hides the true extent of his goals behind a mask of feigned laziness and nonchalance. But right now, there is no mask—just Hawks laid bare. “I like them.”

Enji finds it a little hard to breathe for a second there, but then Hawks puts the mask back on.

“Besides,” he drawls, once again leaning against the wall, “it’s not like anyone would think they’re from you, even if we’re spotted in public together. See how that guy left as soon as you walked out?”

Enji clicks his tongue. “I did notice that.”

“We’re friends after all, aren’t we?”

Friends. Now when did that happen?

Somehow, Hawks has become something of a constant in his life. An annoying, clingy, blond constant he can’t quite get rid of—doesn’t quite want to get rid of. 

“Yeah,” Enji mutters, feeling something he can’t quite put a name to. Fondness, maybe. Affection, almost.

Something like that.

“Lots of couples go to this place, so—”

Enji coughs abruptly, violently, but Hawks is unfazed.

Oh my god.

“Hawks,” Enji says, closing his eyes with a tired sigh.

“Yeah?”

“You brought me to a couple’s hangout.”

Hawks grins from ear to ear. “You didn’t notice?”

Embarrassingly enough, Enji didn’t. For most of breakfast, he was either stuck in his thoughts or trying his hardest to keep himself from acting like a horny teenager.

“I . . . ”

Apparently, he takes too long to answer, because Hawks has already moved on. “Oh hey, speaking about shitty tabloids, why have I never heard stuff about you not being straight? I mean, I’ve known since I was eighteen, when I caught you staring at my ass during that Commission meeting—”

“I was not staring at your ass—”

“You totally were,” Hawks scoffs, rolling his eyes. He tilts his head to the side, wine-colored, mouth-shaped bruises peeking out above his collar. “I remember it clearly.”

For some reason, Enji believes him. He doesn’t know which is worse: the possibility that he repressed the memory out of shame, or the possibility he simply hadn’t noticed he was eye-fucking the freshly debuted eighteen year old in front of the Commission and other top heroes.

He decides to change the subject.

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve been married to a woman for the past twenty years—”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” Hawks says. “There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t remember it.” 

Then he winks. He fucking winks, and Enji is struck with a bad case of déjà vu.

“And I make sure to keep my private life private,” Enji continues, deciding to carry on for his own sanity, “so I doubt most people know. I don’t really care either way.”

It’s the truth. Things were different when Enji first debuted as a hero thirty years ago, but now—if it were to get out that he was into guys, he wouldn’t deny it.

“Oh?” Hawks makes an excited noise, golden eyes sparkling like little moons. He hooks his fingers in Enji’s belt, gets up on his tiptoes, and angles his head back. “So you wouldn’t care if I do—”

Enji’s palm instantly collides with Hawks’ face, and he gently shoves the boy away. When Enji removes his hand, Hawks’ lips are pouty and his cheeks are flushed pink. Enji’s throat tightens, but he ignores it.

“We’re in broad daylight, boy. I keep my private life quiet, and that includes you,” Enji sighs, starting to walk away. His car is parked a couple blocks over, and he probably would’ve already been on his way back to Tokyo if he hadn’t been mindlessly chattering with Hawks outside the restaurant. “I have to get back to the office.”

“Hey, c’mon, at least let me walk you to your car,” Hawks protests, and before Enji even hears the rustling of his wings or feels the sharp swirl of cold air against his face, he’s already hovering in front of Enji, only inches away from their faces touching. When Hawks is in the air, it’s one of the few times they’re face to face. The other time is, well—

“Please don’t tell me you’re worried that the number one hero can’t defend himself in broad daylight.” Enji narrows his eyes for good effect, but you see, Hawks is now laughing—brightly, beautifully. Enji belatedly realizes he just made a joke.

“Nah,” Hawks says, lowering himself back onto the ground, walking in front of Enji leisurely. “I just want to spend more time with you.”

Enji stops dead, heart stilling.

“Endeavor-san?” Hawks asks, turning around to check up on Enji. “You good?”

Enji sobers. Hawks—he just—said that. And by the look on his face—a genuine look of utter confusion—he wasn’t even joking.

No offense, Endeavor-san, but I couldn’t care less what type of person you are.

Enji blinks once, twice, then—

“Yeah,” he says, and he thinks he means it. “I’m good.”

A couple days have passed since their joint mission, since the night at the hotel they spent half-drunk and half-in-each-other’s-mouths, since the morning they spent at a couple’s breakfast nook.

Things are fine. Things are perfectly okay.

“Hey, boss.”

Enji turns around. A building has just collapsed in Minato—the work of villains, likely—so Enji and a couple sidekicks are on their way for the rescue. He and Burnin’ are still waiting for the rest of them to show up at their meeting spot. It’s so early that the sun is still rising, and most of Enji’s sidekicks tend to be late risers anyhow. “What is it?”

Burnin’s face is contemplative. She puts one finger on her chin before asking, “Did you meet someone, or somethin’?”

At this point, everyone around the agency is used to seeing Hawks at headquarters around lunchtime, but as far as Enji knows, they don’t suspect anything. Why would anyone expect anything? To everyone on the outside, he and Hawks are just friends—and it’s the truth too. 

They’re nothing more than friends. Friends who can’t seem to get their hands off each other while they’re drunk.  Friends who get off to each other’s voices over the phone when one of them can’t make it to their daily lunch meet-ups—where they also get each other off. Enji can hardly remember life before this whole thing with Hawks started, really.

It wasn’t like he had his eyes on Hawks before all this started, wasn’t like he ever saw Hawks as more than a coworker—a cheeky, bratty coworker who admittedly helped him out a lot. A kid who doesn’t mind being a sacrificial pawn for the good of the world.

Enji scowls and carefully asks, “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you’ve been in a good mood, lately. Kinda. Better than usual. Less—stressed out. Thought you met a girl or somethin’.”

Slightly relieved, Enji clicks his tongue and says, “No, I haven’t. Met anyone.”

“You make good with your wife and kids, then?”

Enji glares at her. Burnin’ is one of the few people who knows about Enji’s family—she doesn’t know all the dirty details, but she knows enough, simply from the seven years she’s spent at his agency.

“Jeez! Okay,” Burnin’ says, putting her hands up defensively, but her mischievous grin says otherwise, “not the wife and kids, and not a girlfriend. Got it.”

He should be home safe, now. But the thing about Burnin’ is that she’s more perceptive than she lets on at first; she lets her actions speak for her so loudly that you don’t realize she’s already read right through you. Her eyes have a little fire in them when she asks, “What about Hawks, then?”

Enji clenches his jaw and hopes that Burnin’ doesn’t notice. “What about him?”

“I just think it’s fantastic how close you guys have gotten, always teaming up and everything.” Her voice is casual, and her face is unreadable. It’s impossible to decipher what she means by that, if she really means friends or if she somehow knows.

Then Enji sees the rest of the sidekicks across the block. He sighs in relief, and lets her comment fade out of memory.

When Enji gets a call in the middle of the day, he assumes it’s from Hawks.

When he picks up his cell phone to look at the caller ID and sees it’s not Hawks, his slight disappointment is quickly dispelled by the fact that it’s Shouto calling.

Embarrassingly, Enji almost rejects the call in his excitement.

“Shouto!” Enji’s voice is surely booming throughout the entire floor, the glass windows fogging up with the intense swirl of heat that overcomes the room, but he can’t exactly bring himself to care.

There’s a bit of silence on the other line, then a quiet, reluctant-sounding sigh, “Old man, Fuyumi told me to call and tell you we’re coming over for dinner. The food will probably be ready by seven. Is that okay?”

Enji grins, elated. Dinner at seven with Shouto and Fuyumi is more than okay. Because of his mission with Hawks, he didn’t get to go on patrol with the interns like he usually does on Saturdays—he’s thrilled to see Shouto again.

“Yes, that’s fine,” he says, trying not to sound too excited about it. “I’ll see you and Fuyumi at—”

“Bakugou and Midoriya will also be there,” Shouto abruptly informs, like notifying him of that was his real purpose in calling. And before Enji gets a chance to even react, Shouto has already hung up the phone. 

Dinner with Fuyumi, Shouto, Midoriya, and Bakugou. As if the last time those kids showed up to a Todoroki dinner wasn’t enough of a disaster.

Tonight, however . . .

“Shouto,” Enji hisses through gritted teeth, steam emitting from his ears as he walks past the threshold of his own house. He just got home, and he hasn’t even had a chance to change out of his hero uniform, but he’s already dreading the next few hours. “You told me that Midoriya and Bakugou would be here.”

Shouto just turns to look at Enji with a blank expression on his face. “I did.”

Enji exhales through his nose, eyes narrowing at the kids on the sofa bed. Shouto and Midoriya are sitting on opposite ends while Bakugou is lying down in between them, his head rested on top of Shouto’s thighs, heels digging into Midoriya’s like it’s a natural position for them.

The sight is—it’s something, to say the least. 

“You seem to have left someone out.”

Laughter from the kitchen can be heard all the way in the living room. Enji swallows every time he hears it, hears Hawks talking cheerily and laughing casually with his daughter.

Boundaries. They need to have boundaries, but Enji just can’t seem to escape Hawks no matter where he goes anymore.

Shouto shrugs. “Fuyumi invited him. I forgot.”

Bakugou snorts, rolling his eyes. “Why does it even matter? Don’t you guys, like, team up every other week or something?”

Enji’s fire-brows knit together. He left work earlier than he needed to—if he had known Hawks was coming, he might’ve cancelled on dinner entirely—so Fuyumi and Hawks are still prepping dinner.

“I don’t do team-ups that often—”

“But you do them with Hawks-san!” Midoriya quickly inserts, his eyes shining with curiosity, wonder, and a strange, off-the-rails sort of excitement. “It’s been almost thirty years since your hero debut, and you’ve only done seven team-ups with other heroes! And three were with Hawks! The first one was right after the Hero Billboard Chart Ranking last fall, in Fukuoka, and it was how you got that scar on the left side of your face—hey, Kacchan, stop laughing! That’s not nice! And the second one was in Osaka two months ago, and the third one was last week in—OW, KACCHAN—”

Teary-eyed and lips pouted, Midoriya nurses his forehead, already starting to bruise purple where Bakugou just flicked him.

“I think he already fucking knows when he teamed up with Hawks. You don’t need to re-fucking-iterate it—”

“You didn’t have to flick me in the forehead—”

“Hah, nerd. Too bad—I like it when your face goes all red and your eyes start to water—”

“Okay, but I could say the same about you, except I don’t need to hurt you to get you to—”

Bakugou goes bright red, angrily tackling Midoriya so forcefully that the sofa bed jostles a bit. Shouto just sits there blankly, completely apathetic to the two boys wrestling and screaming at each other, not even a trace of annoyance on his face as they nearly topple over the couch.

Enji sighs—kids will be kids after all—and turns around, planning to go to his bedroom to change out of his hero costume and shower—only to catch sight of Hawks right as he’s walking into the living room.

“Oh! Endeavor-san,” Hawks says, walking up to Enji with a grin. “Didn’t think I’d see you here!”

Enji glares. “This is my house.”

“Right, right!” Hawks waves his hand around dismissively, eyes twinkling as he goes over to the sofa bed.

When the kids see him, Bakugou and Midoriya instantly stop fighting, and Shouto jolts, shoulders tensing, back going impossibly straight.

Enji glares even harder. Hawks is half his age, yet he somehow elicits more respect from those three than Enji ever will.

“Hey, kiddos! How’s life treatin’ ya?” Hawks asks, patting Midoriya’s head.

“F-fine!” Midoriya stutters, blushing so hard that Enji thinks his freckles might come off his face.

“UA is good,” Shouto blurts out, voice cracking in the middle of good.

Bakugou, on the other hand, just rolls his eyes petulantly, scowling at Hawks, then Midoriya, then Shouto. 

Enji is only able to watch as Hawks sits down on the extension of the sofa bed that juts out, perpendicular to where Midoriya is sitting.

“Ah, it’s always UA this, UA that—even from Tsukuyomi-kun,” he sighs whimsically, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his palm. And then his eyes darken, a playful smirk creeping up onto his mouth as he taps his fingers on his cheek. “What about your internship with Endeavor-san?”

“Tch,” scoffs Bakugou, side-eyeing Enji with an unbelievable amount of spunk. “It’d be better if Endeavor would actually let us take the lead one of these days.”

“You’re an intern,” Enji reminds, already feeling himself start to snap—Bakugou gets on his nerves in the worst ways possible, “not a sidekick.”

“Yeah, well I’m of more use than any of your sidekicks,” Bakugou says.

Enji isn’t going to get into this with Bakugou right now. After what happened in the war, he doesn’t want to endanger these kids any further. The thing is, however, these three do their best when the stakes are high, and now that Enji is keeping them away from anything even moderately risky, they’re mostly just messing around with each other on patrol and causing much more property damage for the agency to deal with than should even be possible for the quiet jobs they’ve been taking on. Bakugou blew up an abandoned building the other day in a town about thirty minutes away from where he was supposed to be. Finding a happy balance between life-and-or-quirk threatening and slowly-whittling-away-at-Enji’s-tattered-patience threatening is proving to be impossible.

But Hawks—as Hawks is wont to do—only fuels the flames.

“I see where you’re coming from,” he hums, palms splayed out on the cushions, leaning his weight back. “I visit his agency a lot, and it isn’t run nearly as effectively as mine—”

Enji is tipped over the edge. He walks over, gets right up into Hawks’ space, towering over him with a slow and heavy sigh. “So explain to me how you think my agency can do better,” he orders, delighting in the way that Hawks’ pupils expand and darken, cheeks flushing warm. Enji can’t imagine what the kids must think about this scene. “If you’re so experienced, you should at least be able to do that, boy.”

Hawks’ eyes widen, his lips part beautifully, and his Adam’s apple bobs just slightly. Enji is caught with the desire to put his mouth right on the center of his neck and bite. It occurs to Enji that maybe they’re both in over their heads. Way in over their heads.

“C’mon,” Enji spits out when Hawks doesn’t say anything, still staring dumbly up at Enji in shock. “We’re all waiting. Explain it to me. Don’t leave out any details.”

For a second there, Enji thinks he has Hawks beat, but then the blond blinks, eyes like dark amber, licks his lips, and accepts the challenge. “Ah, well,” he lilts, gazing deep into Enji’s eyes, back with full control, “have you ever thought about making any changes at the top?”

Despite the fact that Shouto and Bakugou spend the entire meal bickering and elbowing each other while Midoriya unsuccessfully attempts to mediate, dinner for the most part goes pretty well. Hawks is actually decent throughout dinner and didn’t try to flirt with Enji like he was expecting.

Hawks gets along with Fuyumi fantastically, and regardless of Bakugou’s stubborn coldness to Hawks, it’s clear that the kids respect Hawks a lot.

Dinner goes—too well.

Enji was expecting something to go wrong. Was expecting Hawks to let their secret slip, either on purpose or just for fun.

Because that’s who Hawks is—when he’s not working himself to death, he does whatever he wants, does whatever he thinks is fun. And what he has with Enji—it’s fun. That’s the only reason why they’re still doing it, the only reason why Hawks hasn’t pulled away or changed his mind at all. 

That’s what Enji has always thought, since the beginning, since that alleyway. He’d always kept in mind the possibility that Hawks will just grow bored of this, grow bored of him. And maybe that possibility isn’t just a possibility. Maybe it’s an inevitability—the way things will run their course. The way things were always going to run their couse. And if it is that way, if that ending is unavoidable—then maybe it’s better to cut it off early, cut it off before either of them get too attached.

But Enji can’t get rid of that tiny, nagging voice in his head that asks: Isn’t it far too late for that?

Maybe Enji just doesn’t want to let go.

“So, you ready?”

When Hawks went missing shortly after all the dishes were washed, Enji foolishly assumed that the blond had just gone back to his apartment without saying goodbye.

He was so, so wrong.

“What. Are you doing on my bed,” Enji hisses, and it doesn’t sound much like a question. “Naked.”

Hawks tilts his head to the side, poorly suppressing a smile. He’s resting on his elbows, shoulder blades pressed against the headboard, dick half-hard and pink against his stomach. He looks absolutely fucking obscene and not ashamed about it at all. “Waiting for you, obviously.”

“Hawks,” Enji says, voice taking on a warning tone as he, for some reason, walks toward Hawks. 

“That is in fact my name,” Hawks pokes, unable to hold down his smile any longer, bright and playful. Enji tries—and fails—to not stare at the boy’s dick, quickly filling up with blood.

“What are you doing?” Enji spits out uselessly, trying to prevent the inevitable, or at least find some way to delay it.

Bluntly, and without any hesitance, Hawks answers, “Hopefully seducing you enough that you change your mind and decide to fuck me for real.”

Enji swallows; he finds himself already at the foot of the bed, only a couple steps away from—

“You think sitting naked on my bed counts as seduction?”

Hawks splays his fingers across his stomach, looking at Enji through hooded eyes. “Is it working? C’mon, you’re old, but not that old.”

The room feels hot—Enji can’t tell if it’s him or if he’s just imagining it. “No, it is not,” Enji says, and he can’t even try to pretend that it isn’t a lie.

The problem is, it’s easy to fall into these things with Hawks. It’s habit now, and Enji is quickly beginning to realize that he’s set himself up to fail, set himself up with an impossible set of conditions he has to fulfill if he ever wants to be rid of Hawks, and—does he even want that? At first, he just went along with it all; there was no escaping it, so he thought he might as well just come along for the ride, just come along as far as Hawks wants to take it, but now—what does he even want from this?

What does Hawks want from this?

At the start, he made it clear that he just wanted the physicality of a relationship and nothing else.

It was just—it was just—

Childhood admiration turned sexual desire—nothing more to it.

That’s what Enji thought.

That’s what Enji thought.

He can’t help but think that something has changed. Whether it was Hawks, or him, or maybe he was just wrong about Hawks all along.

I just want to spend more time with you.

He doesn’t know. Enji is good at thinking on his feet—being a pro-hero demands it, after all—but he doesn’t know where to even start unpacking this.

“I don’t believe you,” Hawks hums happily, a hand on the back of Enji’s neck. Enji has no idea when or how that happened—when or how he got onto the bed, caged Hawks’ smaller body in between his elbows and knees. They’re rarely in this position, face to face, rarely so close that Enji can feel Hawks’ soft breaths on his skin. The last time must’ve been after their team-up, and before that—there was that time they ended up sprawled on one of the couches in Enji’s office, Enji playing with Hawks’ dick in the space between their bodies, Hawks leaving wet bruises all over his neck.

“Hawks.”

“You keep saying my name like a broken record, Enji-san. Come on, you gotta admit this timing is perfect. Popping my cherry at your house is way better than doing it in an alley or a hotel or your office.” 

Enji has a hand on Hawks’ hip; he squeezes, hoping it’ll hurt at least a little.

Hawks just smiles. “We’re almost there, anyways. It’s not like it’d change anything.”

In the back of his mind, Enji knows that; he knows that the reason behind his reluctance is his awareness that if he does this, if he takes what he wants to take—there’ll be no going back for him, probably. The line has already been trampled past to the point of no return.

“You really want this, don’t you?”

“I’ve been telling you that all along, Enji-san.”

Hawks smiles up at him with those honey-bright, wonder-filled eyes, and Enji’s heart drops to the floor. Is it okay? Is it okay for Enji to like this? To like what he does with Hawks this much? To like Hawks this much.

I just want to spend more time with you.

Hawks tilts his head back and licks the seam of Enji’s mouth.

“C’mon, I know you like it,” he says, mouthing wet kisses along Enji’s cheekbone, along his scar, then down to his neck. He grins, nosing up to his ear, then his teeth runs along soft cartilage before biting down hard enough to make Enji growl. “The idea of ruining me,” Hawks continues, scruff tickling Enji’s neck. “Of being my first.”

Right now, in all honesty, Enji can’t quite remember why he was so adamant to not fuck Hawks in the first place. His blond hair is haloed all around his head, hands pulling, pulling, pulling Enji down—warm against his neck.

“You think you’re going to break me by getting involved with me, don’t you? Have you ever considered that maybe I’m okay with that?”

Oh god, oh god.

Would giving in really be so bad? 

There are so many reasons, reasons, reasons as to why Enji shouldn’t let this go any further, why he never should’ve let it snowball to this point, never should’ve even given in the first time or the second time—back when he actually had control over the situation. By now, now it’s probably—definitely—too late, but still. 

Still Enji is grappling for the upper hand—and for what? What does he need the upper hand for?

By now, Hawks is too tangled in Enji’s private life, tangled with his family and tangled in his bed sheets.

There is no going back.

Hawks is warm all over, or maybe that’s just Enji. Hard lines of muscle and soft, feathered wings—splayed out, gorgeous. And it all could be Enji’s—if he would just take it—

“I’ve gone all this time saving myself for you, and you won’t even return the favor and fuck me.”

And that—maybe that’s it—maybe that’s the breaking point—because Enji sucks in a breath, starved for air and all the like. Then he dips down, down, as far down as down goes—pours everything into this kiss—it’s dirty, wet, too much tongue and too much teeth—it’s more than he thought he was even capable of.

He doesn’t come back up for a while.

Afterwards, once Hawks is in the shower, Enji realizes that he made two mistakes. Well, three, if you count how Enji even let him use his shower, forgetting that his feathers would inevitably clog up the drain. And, maybe the whole fucking ordeal of taking his twenty-three year old coworker’s virginity really should make four—but if you’re going to count that, you might as well crank the count up to at least forty-one, because Hawks has turned him into a sexual deviant who gets and receives blow jobs and hand jobs almost daily—

It’s a moot point anyway, because the gravitas of those two mistakes Enji just made blows all those other mistakes out of the water.

Mistake #1: He had Hawks on his back, knees bent and on either side of his chest. Which isn’t inherently a problem, but the thing is—it made it easy for them to kiss, which they did. A lot. Worse, it meant that in the moments they weren’t kissing or leaving hickies all over each other, Enji was looking into his eyes, bronze and gold and so, so full with something that Enji does not deserve and cannot accept; Enji was looking at his lips, wet and open and just begging to be ravaged, gasping at the fullness, gasping into Enji’s mouth.

Mistake #2: He doesn’t know how it happened or who was the one to make the first move, but they ended up holding hands, at some point, which hasn’t ever happened. Because—who the fuck does that? Who the fuck holds hands during sex? Apparently Enji. And Hawks. Oh god.

It’s bad, but the worst part about it is that it didn’t feel bad. Kissing, holding hands, fucking slow and more gentle—no, careful—than usual. It felt—

Right.

It felt right.

And it didn’t feel particularly different than before, different than what they’ve always been doing.

Just—another step further.

A heart-first leap across an ocean of uncertainty. 

It’s times like these, rare and far between, that make Enji wish he had friends. Or at the very least someone he could talk to about the dumpster fire that is his love life, if he can even call it a love life.

Hawks is his friend. There’s no denying that anymore.

But lately it’s like they’re more than that, lately they’ve—no, it’s not even lately.

Enji was wrong, before.

They weren’t ever just friends; Enji isn’t even sure if he was ever capable of being just friends with Hawks. They went from point A to point B, if point B entails making out next to dumpsters, without Enji even being aware that they were going somewhere in the first place.

Without Enji even realizing that he’s been—

Their first team-up in Fukuoka, Hawks took him on a stupid lunch date and trash talked Shouto, and still, still Enji found him charming enough to stay and walk into the stupid trap the League had set up for him. And then Hawks fought with him, and then Hawks visited him in the hospital after, brought a fruit basket and everything. And then Enji got to learn all of his smiles, his grins, his smirks, and he eventually started to be able to tell the difference between what was real and what was just an act. And then the war, and then Hawks told him the truth about Dabi and Twice and the Commission, and then Hawks requested a team-up in Osaka, and then—

Then they got here, somehow. Unruly blond hair and stiff crimson feathers clogging up Enji’s drain.

And then they got here.

“Oh man, I didn’t think having your cock inside me would make me this sore,” Hawks says as soon as he returns from his shower.

Hawks is wearing one of Enji’s bathrobes, crude holes torn out of the back for his wings. His hair is damp, and rivulets of shower water drip down his neck and to his chest. The bathrobe is too big for him, and Enji can see everything. He’s a sight: two glints of silver on his nipples and pink, blooming marks everywhere. Enji fights back a groan.

“How was the shower?”

“The water pressure is great.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Enji says dully, scrolling through Hero Network on his phone. But he isn’t really reading any of the information—he just—needs something to focus on, or at least pretend to focus on. Hawks, wet and freshly showered, is much too distracting. He’s just trying to make conversation until Hawks decides he’s ready to leave.

Enji stiffens when Hawks instead sits down next to him, wings contracted and pressed to the headboard. It’s almost like he’s going to stay the night.

“Whoa, look at what’s going on in Shinjuku.” Hawks is peering over Enji’s shoulder, eyes wide and excited.

Enji forces himself to focus on his phone screen instead of Hawks’ breath on his neck. The Grim Reaper, as he’s been nicknamed, is wreaking havoc in the entertainment district. He’s dangerous, and his quirk is nothing short of lethal; he’s able to conjure and manipulate razor-sharp playing cards as he wishes, often using them to slit the throats of his victims.

He’s been at it for years, and he hasn’t once been caught.

“Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of going after him,” Enji cautions, unable to shake off the black pit of dread growing in his stomach.

Hawks’ grin is all teeth. “What can I say? I love the cheap thrills.”

This isn’t—why does the thought of Hawks fighting him make Enji feel so—

Worried?

Hawks can take care of himself; he’s even better at this stuff than Enji is. So why—why does Enji—

“If you really want to capture him, I’ll go with you.”

Hawks’ lips part in surprise, wings tensing. Did Enji go too far? The three team-ups they’ve done—Hawks has always been the one to instigate it, even if Enji has always been willing. Just as Enji is about to take it back, Hawks presses his lips together in a poor attempt at hiding a smile—it isn’t one of his half-smiles or teasing smirks or anything, but a genuine flash of happiness. Huh.

“No, it’s fine,” he says, voice soft. “Look—Eraserhead’s in the area. He’ll take care of the clown.”

Enji hums, trying not to think about how his heart thrums in slow relief.

“Besides,  I think fighting’s gonna be a little hard for me for the next few days. Just saying.”

Enji dismisses him with a scoff, and Hawks just smiles in response. His head tips to the side a little, and it feels like he wants to press up against Enji’s side, feels like he’s holding himself back from doing so.

Why does Enji want him to?

He thinks about the izakaya that Hawks brought him to last week, the one in Yokohama where they came across Aizawa, where Hawks got him drunk and they were both buzzy and warm. He thinks about Hawks pressed up to his side, warm body against his like he belonged there. Something changed then, he thinks, something changed between them that night.

“It’s okay—” Enji blurts out against his will.

Hawks jerks upright, confusion showing on his face, and Enji can’t stop himself from thinking about how, although Hawks is beautiful at all times, he’s especially beautiful when he drops all the walls and lays his emotions out bare like this. Fuck. Fuck.

“What’s okay?”

Enji bites his tongue. “Nothing.”

Hawks studies Enji’s face for a couple seconds, determined to figure it out, but he eventually drops it with a sigh. “Whatever.”

They fall into silence, and Enji returns to half-heartedly scrolling through Hero Network, Hawks looking on. It’s comfortable, the silence. It’s comfortable, having Hawks by his side like this.

Enji only wishes he was closer.

“Hey,” Hawks says, maybe a minute, two, five, ten after they fell quiet, listening to each other’s breaths and pretending to care about what’s on Enji’s phone.

Enji feels powerful defeating villains and saving civilians, but it doesn’t—it will never—quite live up to the power he feels when he has Hawks at his mercy, Hawks by his side—

“Yeah?”

Hawks plays with his—Enji’s—bathrobe, boney fingers running through soft fabric.  “Thanks.”

He sounds almost shy.

“For . . . ?”

“You know.” Enji doesn’t. “For finally doing me.”

Enji lifts a brow; he doesn’t know how to feel about that. He pleats his lips together and replies, “Can’t say I’ve ever had anyone thank me for fucking them before.”

Hawks laughs breathily, beautifully. While Hawks was in the shower, Enji changed out the sheets; the dark grey against bright white and dark crimson might be something to behold.

“Well, when you’re so good at it—” 

Enji glares.

“I’m joking, I’m joking,” Hawks drawls, golden eyes flitting to Enji, then back to his hands. “Well, no, I’m not joking at all, really. Obviously I don’t have anyone to compare you to, but I’m pretty sure you’ve ruined me for anyone else.”

No one has ever had you the way I’ve had you, and no one else ever will—

“That’s a compliment, right?”

Hawks scoffs, side-eyeing Enji with an amused smirk. “God, you’re dense, old man. You act as if I haven’t been jerking off to you since I was a teen. Of course it’s a compliment.” 

Childhood admiration turned sexual desire.

So Enji wasn’t wrong about that at all.

It was just—it was just that, in the end.

“So you were serious, then. You were—saving yourself for me.”

At least—at least Enji can have that. 

“I get what I want, Number One, just like you.” And in a quick, fluid motion, Hawks flips himself over so that he’s on top of Enji, knees digging into the bed sheets, hands on Enji’s waist. He has this hungry look on his face, eyes dark and cheeks hot. “And I only want the best.”

Of course you do. You wouldn’t be you if that wasn’t the case.

Enji wonders when he got to know Hawks so well—got to know all the peculiarities that make him him, yet he still doesn’t know any of the basics. Doesn’t know what his family is like, doesn’t know where he went to school, doesn’t know what his favorite food is, doesn’t know what he does in his free time when he isn’t fucking around with Enji.

But he knows him—he does. It took him a while, but he knows him.

“Is that all I am now?” Enji asks, half-joking, half-serious. He makes sure to smile in a way that only shows the former.

“Isn’t that what you spent the first forty-five years of your life trying to be? The best?”

Huh. Enji wonders when Hawks got to know him this well too—maybe Hawks has known all along—maybe Enji is just that easy to read.

One step further: Hawks most likely knows Enji better than Enji knows himself. Because, the thing is, the person Enji is now is fundamentally different from the person he was two years ago—the person he was for forty-five fucking years. He has to be different now.

He couldn’t live with himself if he was the same person who drove his wife to insanity, forced Shouto into a life he wasn’t even sure he wanted, and caused his oldest son to—

Enji asks himself again: What does Hawks want from this? From him? From someone so utterly horrible, inhumane, undeserving down to his fucking bones. It doesn’t matter if he’s changed; change doesn’t erase what he did, what he’s done, what he still can’t fucking do, still can’t fucking fix—

All Enji ever wanted was to be the best—but he isn’t that person anymore, the person who sought power at the cost of his family.

So what does he want to be now?

“Enji-san?” Hawks is peering down at him with wide eyes, patient and curious.

“What are you getting out of this?” Enji asks, and it’s a non-sequitur to Hawks, but Enji asks it anyways. It’s easier to ask Hawks this question than to ask himself.

Hawks blinks, and for a moment, a quick, almost indiscernible moment, Enji senses that something is off with him, a mask hastily put on.

It’s a response, a reaction, a reflex.

A reflex that Enji wasn’t expecting.

“Sex, obviously,” Hawks says—it doesn’t sound like a lie, but—but it also doesn’t sound like the truth either.

It’s an easy question, so why does it feel like Hawks is hiding something?

“Obviously,” Enji repeats, gaze focused on Hawks’ stiffened expression.

He can’t quite figure it out.

A beat. Enji glances at the time on his phone—9:41 PM.

“How ‘bout you, Enji-san? Is it just sex for you too? I can’t imagine that you were getting much before me, considering how grumpy you were all the time,” Hawks deflects, unmistakably cold, but not aggressive or even passive aggressive. Just—cold. 

Enji ignores the implication that he’s changed since they got into this—this arrangement. It’s dangerous, if it’s true. Dangerous to think that Hawks changed him when he’s spent the past year struggling and failing to change himself.

“Yeah,” he answers, “it is.”

And that—that one’s definitely a lie.

It isn’t just sex, and they were never just friends. Enji doesn’t know what they are—what they were—he just knows that this is bad, he can’t—they can’t go any further than this. They’ve already gone too far with this, with each other.

And the problem is, Enji likes Hawks too much for things to go back to the way they were before—the only solution is stop this from going any further.

Self-preservation. Enji is much better at that than self-control.

Another beat, then Hawks hums quietly, almost contemplatively, and goes back to sitting next to Enji. And if Enji didn’t know Hawks as well as he does, he would think that nothing was out of the ordinary—but he’s sitting up straight, his face is hardened, and he doesn’t even seem capable of one of his confident smiles.

Enji goes back to Hero Network, except now he really isn’t paying attention, while Hawks is pretending to be reading through the villain descriptions and crisis alerts on Enji’s phone, but he isn’t really doing a good job of it either. 

“I’m gonna go now,” Hawks announces after a little while, facing the other way as he strips out of the fluffy bathrobe, picks up his clothes, and gets dressed.

Enji checks the time on his phone—9:47 PM.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll see you—sometime.”

A hand on the doorknob, Hawks turns back around and grins wide, but for once it seems forced, fleeting, sad. “Y’know, just ‘cause you finally popped my cherry doesn’t mean I’m suddenly done with you, Enji-san.”

For some reason, Enji is relieved to hear that, but his relief doesn’t last long, because once Hawks is gone, all Enji is left with is the distinct feeling that he’s done something severely wrong.

At least the last part Hawks said wasn’t a lie. The following night, Hawks somehow lets himself into Enji’s house, and one thing leads to another and—

“Have I—ngh—have I ever told you how hot it is that you wear a jockstrap?”

Enji’s hands are big enough that they cover nearly all of Hawks’ ass, fingertips close to where Enji’s cock is hammering into his hole, filling him up, fucking him deep. Hawks is on top and barely sitting upright on his cock, head thrown back, the column of his neck damp with sweat. The only thing keeping him from falling over is the fact that he’s holding onto Enji’s waistband.

“It’s literally,” a deep groan, “just my underwear.” He mouths at Hawks’ chest, nipping under his collarbones then laying his tongue flat against his nipples. Hawks gasps wetly, hips jerking forward on Enji’s cock. He doesn’t have it in him to bounce anymore; he’s frantically rocking back and forth, his puffy chest jutted out, a blissed out expression on his face as he rides Enji the only way that he’s capable of at the moment, the only way he knows how, really. And it’s glorious, the combination of Hawks’ quiet, breathy gasps and the loud squelching at the place where they’re so intimately connected. Enji feels lightheaded, he feels dizzy, he feels good. And by the way Hawks’ motions go from desperate, needy, but controlled to simply erratic, he must be close too, must be right there, almost there too—

“Still fucking hot, mmh—”

They’re kissing, now.  

Something about Hawks just leaves Enji wanting. Wanting more, wanting things he’s never wanted before.

Enji can’t help it, the way he brings both his hands up and tangles them deep  in Hawks’ hair, tangles them so that there’s not a chance he’ll ever have to let go. He tugs him down, down, down until there’s nowhere left for him to go but into Enji, mouth open and pliant and sweet, barely able to kiss back; Hawks is a good kisser, but he’s easily overwhelmed, easily distracted, and it’s so easy for Enji to just—take him apart, suck on his tongue, bite on his bottom lip until it bleeds, bleeds, bleeds.

“Oh, oh—”

“Shut up,” Enji growls, because even with his tongue in Hawks’ mouth, the boy still finds some way to talk. He sounds angry. Maybe he is. Anger is familiar to Enji. Whatever was blooming between him and Hawks, whatever he somehow ruined, somehow fucked up—wasn’t. Wasn’t familiar at all. Enji couldn’t even put a name to it if he tried—

Enji wonders when he started lying to himself so much. He’s never been much of a liar.

Maybe Hawks started to rub off on him.

He knows what it was; he’s never experienced it himself—not before this, not before Hawks—but he knows the name of it, knows that it’s what everyone calls—

“Oh, mmh, daddy—”

Fuck. Fuck. Enji—forgot about that, forgot all about how Hawks asked for permission, how Hawks laughed and said he’d surprise him with it one day.

Enji stops thinking when he hears it, stops thinking and lets the euphoria rush into his head. Hawks wants him, even if it’s just for this, the physicality, the sex. Hawks wants him, wants him.

He groans into Hawks’ mouth, drags his teeth along his jaw then down the ridges of his neck to his pulse point, and yanks on his hair. He keeps one hand by the base of Hawks’ skull and uses the other to smack Hawks’ ass, once, twice, then he digs his nails into bruised flesh on the third impact and squeezes.  

“Shit, shit, ” Hawks sobs, head falling forward till his brow rests on Enji’s shoulder.

Enji lets go of Hawks’ hair, and he jerks at the loss; but not for long, because Enji takes hold of Hawks’ jaw with that hand and forces their eyes to meet, breaths hot on each other’s mouths—eyes dark and hungry. Then Hawks is about to say something—he’s about to say something cheeky by the slight twitch and pull of his lips—but Enji simply shoves two fingers inside Hawks’ mouth to shut him up, presses down on the pink muscle and everything.

It’s horrible, it’s lovely, it’s dizzying how Hawks’ mouth closes around his digits. Like it’s natural, like that’s what just has to be done, like there’s no use for a mouth like his than to be fucked and filled. His mouth is warm and wet and Enji is drunk on this for sure, drunk on the way Hawks is tight around him, drunk on the way that he’s the only one to have Hawks like this, the only one who ever will.

It’s sick how much Enji thinks about that, how much it turns him on. The thought of just ruining Hawks for anyone else, the thought of owning and fucking and having him as his own—

Enji pushes his finger far enough to trigger Hawks’ gag reflex, and he makes a horrible, wet, choking noise, and Enji presses one more time at the back of his throat and finally pulls out. Hawks coughs, chokes on his own spit, and gasps for air, but Enji only gives him a couple more seconds of reprieve before capturing his lips for another one-sided, messy kiss. Enji wipes his spit-slick fingers all over Hawks’ nipples, and he responds gorgeously, whining miserably and squirming and failing to get away then giving in and kissing back as best he can.

“Touch me, touch me,” Hawks whimpers, pleads, barely coherent, kiss-swollen mouth smacking helplessly against Enji’s.

Enji considers it, he really does. He even glances down at Hawks’ dick—the poor thing, red and untouched between their bodies—but he decides against it—decides to see how far he can take the blond before he’s truly, truly out of it. He takes control of the pace, grabs his ass harder as he thrusts up into him, anger and lust and frustration laden in each of his thrusts. Hawks isn’t very good at this yet—he will be, Enji knows it,  Enji will make sure of it—so for now, Enji holds him down like a toy and uses him like a fleshlight, just he fucks his mouth sometimes—with the sole, express purpose of getting himself off. Hawks likes it that way anyhow, likes whatever they do because he doesn’t know any better, because he doesn’t want any better. And Hawks just—he doesn’t try to touch his cock and it makes Enji’s chest swell with pride—Hawks is his, every part of him is his, and the boy knows it, knows that Enji’s silence is a tacit dismissal. Enji won’t touch him—simply because he doesn’t want to, and for no other reason.

Enji can’t get enough—he really can’t, and he starts to wonder if there’s a reason for that. Starts to wonder if the reason behind his anger, his frustration that he’s taking out on Hawks right now, more forcefully and selfishly than ever before—if that reason happens to be the thing he’s lying to himself about, the thing he’s desperately avoiding having to think about.

No, it isn’t even a question, really.

Of course it is. 

It’s something he’s known, something he’s always known, maybe.

Ambition, greed, hunger, lust—whatever you want to call it—it’s dangerous, because even now, Enji wants more, more than this, more than sex and he’s been lying to himself and Hawks for a long time now, maybe even since the beginning, maybe even since they met—

He wants more, he wants something.

Something he doesn’t want to think about. Something he’s ashamed to want.

Something he can’t get. Something he doesn’t deserve.

Hawks comes with a soft cry, comes untouched, comes undone. Enji hears him rasp a quiet, “Daddy,” and he tumbles forward, following right behind him.

Gradually, Hawks stops showing up in Enji’s office during the day entirely and starts showing up at Enji’s house in the evenings. Oftentimes, Hawks is already at the estate by the time Enji arrives back from work.

It’s only once or twice a week, though; Hawks claims he can’t afford to be sore daily now that they’ve gone past casual blow jobs and jerking each other off. It makes sense, and Enji doesn’t question it.

They talk, they fuck, and then Hawks leaves.

They see each other a lot less than before, but the time they spend together is more intense now, more—

Desperate.

Instead of a well-oiled machine, it feels like the cogs are all jammed with half-lies and half-truths, feels like they’re barely chugging along.

He questions how he let everything get turned on its head without even realizing they were already upside down.

Hawks leaves for another week-long mission. Apparently, he’s undercover in South Korea investigating an organized crime gang with connections to Japan’s yakuza scene.

Then the week-long mission turns into two, then three, long and unending, and Enji is starved—whether it’s for sex, for physical contact, or for Hawks, he doesn’t know.

So he calls, and they have phone sex, but something still feels missing.

Something, something, something.

I’m just asking you to be honest with me—and yourself, really.

“It’s almost Mom’s birthday.”

Enji narrows his eyes. “December is weeks away.”

“You can never plan too early,” Fuyumi retorts, using her chopsticks to place another piece of kuzumochi on Enji’s plate.

“What are you planning, then?” Enji takes the mochi cake and eats the piece whole, waiting for Fuyumi to respond.

“Well, Mom’s still getting used to going outside, so I was thinking we’d have dinner at her house and then go out to the park or an art museum. With Natsu and Shouto of course.”

Enji nods, glad that Rei is slowly getting accustomed to the world outside the hospital again and proud of Fuyumi for helping her through it. But—there’s also something else there, underneath that happiness and that pride—something close to regret and shame and—

“Y’know, you could—”

“Fuyumi.” Enji knows what she was going to say—he knew it from the moment she even brought Rei up.

Fuyumi is strong-willed, compassionate, and resilient. She’s warm and friendly and her heart is too big for her body—all of it from Rei, none of it from Enji. They share only one thing in common: stubbornness. But she’s stubborn in all the right places while Enji is stubborn in all the wrong places. Despite the agreement they came to last winter, she still longs for Enji to be part of that picture perfect dream she has in her head of a whole, healthy family.

Enji puts his chopsticks down on the table and lets out a sigh. “I think—maintaining the distance between me and your mother is the best thing you can do for her right now.”

Right now is temporary. Right now gives hope that one day, some day, things will change. What Enji means to say is forever. For as long as he lives.

They can’t be whole if Enji is part of it; someone so fundamentally wrong, horrible, broken can’t be part of a functioning, happy family. That’s just the way things work. It’s miserable, and Enji hates it—hates himself for it—but that’s just the way things are.

So he’ll take what he can get. He’ll take these weekly dinners with Fuyumi, he’ll take the weekends he gets with Shouto and his friends, and he’ll take the occasional texts from Natsuo asking how he is.

What he and Rei had was not love, not even close. She hated him, and he could barely stand her.

He doesn’t know when he started leaving flowers at her bedside, doesn’t know when or how his hospital visits even started. Maybe it was out of boredom. Or maybe it was out of a sense of atonement. Maybe it was because it gave him peace of mind. It wasn’t for her, not at first. Enji has never been a good man, but he’s trying. And the trying is new.

And the best way he can atone, truly atone, truly make things better for Rei, is to give her distance. To take himself out of the picture.

There is no other, no better option. He can’t erase what he did, but he can let her heal on her own.

“Sorry,” Fuyumi says quietly, head hung low, staring at her hands under the table. “Yeah, I know that. I know that.” She’s frustrated, biting her lip, brows pinched together.

“It’s fine, Fuyumi.”

“I just—I don’t want you to be lonely.”

And that’s the thing about Fuyumi: she extends her compassion and her kindness even to those who don’t deserve it. It hurts just as much as it heals.

“Don’t worry about that,” Enji says. “I’ll be fine. I am fine on my own.”

He’s always been fine on his own.

But—but lately—lately it feels like he’s missing something.

Something, something, something—

“This place is a little big for one person.”

Enji stares at the kuzumochi on the table. “I think I can manage.”

I’m just asking you to be honest with me—and yourself, really.

Someone.

Hawks’ flight arrives tonight.

Enji hears about it from Miruko, strangely enough.

Gang Orca had asked Enji, Miruko, and some other top heroes for their cooperation regarding a large-scale hero initiative to make natural disaster rescues more efficient. Hawks out of all of them is the best suited for rescue efforts, so naturally he was invited, but when he doesn’t show up at the start of the conference, Miruko explains that his flight back to Tokyo was delayed this morning.

They take a ten minute recess in the middle of the meeting—it’s dragged on for two hours, and everyone’s getting antsy. Enji takes the opportunity to step into the hall and text Hawks.

enji
What time are you arriving

hawks
aww do u miss me that much? ;)
[Image attached]
[Image attached]
i missed you too

enji
I’m deleting those
I’m in the middle of a meeting
The rescue efficiency one

hawks
:(
and oh yeah
i was supposed to go to that ;-;

enji
It’s fine
I can brief you tonight

hawks
oh?
someone’s eager to see me

Enji neither affirms or denies it.

enji
What time will you be out of the airport

hawks
probably like 10pm
planes suck ass
if i flew on my own i’d be back at like 8

enji
Why didn’t you

hawks
too tired too tbh
kinda just wanna lie down and take it tonight
let you fuck me into the mattress

Hawks on his back, pliant and obedient and easy. Hawks on his front, face smushed into the pillow, hands desperately clutching at the sheets. Soft gasps and breathy whimpers. The feel of fucking someone who’d let you do anything to them, too tired and too fucked out to think for themselves.

enji
We can do that
Whatever you want

hawks
oh man
i knew u missed me but i didn’t know u missed me This much ;)

enji
Don’t push it

Hawks is typing… And then he isn’t. Enji inhales sharply when he realizes why.

enji
Oh
Are you jerking off right now

hawks
[Image attached]

Enji, for some stupid reason, clicks on the photo so that it fills up his screen. And then—

“Wow. That’s a dick I recognize.”

Oh god. Oh god. Enji squeezes his phone so hard it might break and turns his head slowly. He can hear his heart beating loud in his ears.

Miruko, hands on her hips, on her tiptoes as she peeks at Enji’s screen. She must have been coming back from the bathroom. Well, it could be worse, he supposes. It could’ve been Wash or Edgeshot—but then he finally registers what Miruko just said.

“Wait, how have you seen Hawks’ dick before?”

Miruko’s bunny ears perk up, and her brows fly up to her forehead. “Wait, it’s actually Hawks? I was joking.”

Enji wants to die, just a little. He zips his mouth shut and waits for Miruko to answer his question to avoid giving up any more information.

They have an impromptu staring contest, and it ends when Miruko finally closes her eyes with a sigh. “He sends me photos sometimes. Asks me about the lighting quality and the angle. From the looks of it, he’s really taken my advice to heart.”

Enji hastily turns his phone off, a little horrified that he hadn’t done that in the first place, and a lot horrified by the fact that Hawks goes to Miruko for dick pic critique.

“I would appreciate it if you don’t mention this to anyone.”

Miruko blinks rapidly. “Wait, so this is like—an actual thing between you two? Damn.”

“I’m serious.”

Miruko just waves her hand dismissively—Enji’s eye twitches at the vague and irritatingly familiar motion. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t. I’m just—surprised that he didn’t tell me. And that he finally bagged you.”

“What do you mean finally?”

“He’s been trying to sleep with you, like, since he met you,” Miruko says, like it’s obvious, like it’s the natural state of things, like Enji is dumb for even asking for clarification. “What, you didn’t know?”

Enji keeps his face as indifferent as possible—keeps the disappointment and irritation and happiness and pride and all those conflicting, nonsensical feelings out of it. “No, I knew.”

Miruko hums contemplatively, bunny ears twitching a little, then sighs, “Well, all I’ll say is: Don’t break his heart, big guy. Or else . . . ” She smiles, but there’s no teeth to it, and for someone who’s more than a foot shorter than Enji, she’s oddly frightening. “Never mind.”

But the first part of what she said has Enji reeling and confused. “Break his heart, what do you—”

The door to the conference opens, and Ryukyu emerges.

“Well, this is a strange sight!” she comments, placing a friendly hand on Miruko’s shoulder. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you two talking on your own.”

Miruko laughs, not even looking at Enji. “I try my hardest to avoid him.”

Enji glares, but he doesn’t even have it in him to feel insulted, really.

Ryukyu informs them that Gang Orca is cutting recess short, much to the dismay of the other heroes, and goes off to collect everyone else who had scattered throughout the floor. So, without much ado, Enji and Miruko go back inside the conference room, and that’s that.

Enji doesn’t get another chance to ask her what she meant when she told him not to break Hawks’ heart.

10 PM rolls around sooner than later.

Enji is reading through the meeting notes from the morning. He doesn’t remember much from it, honestly. The first half was spent wondering about how Hawks was doing, and the second half was spent trying to figure out how to tell Hawks that Miruko knows now. From the notes Gang Orca’s secretary took, however, it looks like they got a lot done; as soon as the proposal is approved by the Hero Commission, there’ll be a new standard protocol heroes must follow for rescue efforts, streamlined for efficiency.

He’s on the last page when a feather nudges the window open, Hawks following only a second later.

Enji puts the notes down on his bedside table, feeling hyper-aware of everything right now. The loose tank top he’s wearing, the slight chill to the air, Hawks, Hawks, Hawks.

It takes all the self-control he has not to fucking take Hawks right now, right as he is.

“I’m always amazed at how you never trigger the alarm when you sneak in,” he says.

“Please,” Hawks sighs, taking his chunky sneakers off and setting them down atop four of his feathers on the tatami floor. “I’ve bypassed worse than your outdated security system.”

Hawks is already stripping himself of his jacket; it slips off his shoulders and his wings easily. Eager, Enji thinks, wants to say—but, well, it’s not like he’s any different.

It’s been weeks since they’ve seen each other last. They’re both positively brimming with excitement.

“Also, you left me high and dry this morning,” Hawks complains, pulling off his shirt now. 

Enji had put his phone on silent once the meeting started again, and he’d forgotten to respond to Hawks. He hadn’t even gotten a good look at the photo Hawks sent before Miruko rounded up the corner.

“About that,” he says, grimacing at the thought.

“Yeah?” Hawks asks, sitting down on the foot of the bed.

“I opened up your text in the hallway during the meeting’s recess, and Miruko . . . saw.”

Hawks blinks, eyes wide and golden and boyish. Enji forgot how utterly gorgeous he is; just looking at him makes Enji’s heart drop to the floor. Beating so loud that he can’t breathe, that he can’t remember who he is, really.

“Oh,” Hawks says, Adam’s apple bobbing, hands in his lap.

“I’m—sorry. I shouldn’t have opened it up in public.”

“No,” Hawks says, a comforting smile on his face. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just Miruko. We’re close.”

Enji nods, glad to hear that, glad to hear he didn’t spectacularly fuck things up this morning. He thinks it’s apt to also mention, “She was surprised you didn’t tell her.”

Hawks’ eyes are hooded and the color of dark amber. Enji missed him, missed this more than anything.

Eyes filled with a golden fire, Hawks gets onto his hands and knees, crawls over to Enji, closing the already precarious distance between them. He shoves Enji’s thighs apart with his hands and lets his knees do the rest. Then, he curls his hand around the nape of Enji’s neck, a slow, seductive motion. 

“I know I’m your dirty little secret,” he says, kissing Enji’s cheek. “And you’re mine.”

Enji hums, ready to fall into another kiss: their first kiss in weeks.

But then—then Enji remembers the other thing Miruko had said. He had forgotten about it, mostly, pushed it to the back of his mind because if he let himself think about it—let himself be filled with hope and other nonsense—he wouldn’t have gotten anything done throughout the day.

Did she think that they were—a thing? A romantic thing?

Could that be right? Could Hawks actually—

Wishful thinking; it’s a wishful (read: stupid, naive, foolish) way of thinking, but Enji can’t help himself, can’t help himself from wondering. What if—

What if Hawks really does want something more from him?

No, no. Enji asked, and Hawks made his position clear.

But still, something was off with Hawks’ response. Or maybe Enji just wanted something to be off. Maybe Enji just couldn’t stand the thought of his feelings being one-sided.

Feelings, that’s what they are. 

Seeing Hawks for the first time in weeks, honey-bright eyes and sun-warmed skin; getting a lapful of him, strong and heavy and muscled but still small, so much smaller than him; having his lips on his cheek, his pliant and kissable mouth—it’s all clear now. It’s clear and it’s obvious and Enji is an idiot for avoiding this truth for so long.

Hawks is blond and beautiful and looking at him like he’s the only thing that matters. Enji wants to believe him, wants to believe that this is real, that he is real. Enji is terrified—terrified by these genuine feelings for this stupid, beautiful, strong, annoying hero. A boy half his age and a head and a half shorter than him, but easily able to turn Enji’s whole world on its head. 

He’s known for a while now, probably. Deep in his mind, somewhere, somehow, he’s always known.

He likes Hawks, he wants more from Hawks, he needs Hawks. He wants, wants, and wants.

It’s terrifying. It’s horrifying. It’s overwhelming. It’s incomprehensible.

He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t understand why he likes Hawks as much as he does, why he enjoys his team-ups with Hawks but hates teaming up with anyone else, why he likes having sex with Hawks but never cared for it much when it came to anyone else.

Why he missed Hawks so much these past three weeks he was gone.

He knows that feelings, romantic feelings, are the answer—the only answer—but he doesn’t get it.

It’s never happened to him before.

He hates it. He hates feeling so weak, so vulnerable, so at the mercy to someone else. But it’s Hawks, and the rules don’t apply to Hawks.

They never do.

He’s the exception; he always is.

He can’t do this. He has to do this. He has to ask.

It takes everything Enji has to ask.

“She also—she also said not to break your heart.” 

Hawks jerks back, and his eyes widen, face twisting with something that looks a lot like betrayal.

Enji pushes forward, “What did she mean by that?”

And then the mask returns. That same stone-cold mask from before when Enji had asked Hawks what he wanted out of this, out of him, out of them. Cold, careful, and frightened.

“I don’t know what she was talking about,” he says, mouth twitching, shoulders tensing, brows pinching.

It’s a lie. It’s a lie, and Enji knows it.

“Hawks—”

“Can you just—drop it?”

Enji can’t.

“When we started—this, you asked me to be honest with myself. With you.”

Hawks looks scared more than anything, wings closing in on his body.

It’s sudden; the anger is sudden and the fear is sudden. But it isn’t out of nowhere.

“Fuck this,” Hawks mumbles, hurt and scared and high-strung like violin strings, retreating off the bed. He frantically puts his shirt back on, facing the open window. The blood-red expanse of his wings, white and pink scars, hard lines of muscle, the curve of his body. Never before has Enji wanted to protect something or someone more than he wants to protect Hawks right now.

“Please.” Enji isn’t the type of man who begs, but he begs now because if he doesn’t, it feels like he’s going to lose Hawks, feels like he’s going to lose Hawks and lose what they have for good. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’ve had a long fucking day,” Hawks spits out, physically shaking and Enji wants nothing more than to tell him it’ll all be okay, but he doesn’t know that. Doesn’t know that he even has the right to promise that. “The past three weeks have been fucking hell for me. Everything kept going wrong, and even when it was over, even when I could finally come back home, my flight back to Tokyo was delayed, Enji. Just my luck. I don’t wanna fucking do this right now. I’m tired. I didn’t sleep last night, and sleeping on planes is shit.”

“Then why did you even come here if you were so tired?”

Hawks snorts, like it’s obvious. But it isn’t, to Enji. Nothing about this is obvious or even understandable.

“Because,” Hawks exhales forcefully, “I missed you.”

Oh.

Enji feels his face soften, lips parting. I missed you too, he wants to say, but it’s pride that smothers it, that keeps the words, keeps the truth stuck in the back of his throat, unsaid.

It’s a familiar feeling—it’s all Enji knew, once.

“I’m sorry that your flight was delayed,” is all that Enji can think to say.

And that only upsets Hawks further; his wings droop, and he lets out a tired, defeated sigh. “Is that all you have to say?”

“I . . . ”

Say it. Just say it.

But he doesn’t. What he says instead is, “I just want to know the truth.”

Hawks squeezes his eyes shut, golden strands of hair falling over his forehead. Gold, gold, gold. The mask is falling apart, but Enji only sees warm sunlight, bronze and gold.

“Fine,” Hawks breathes out. He drops to his haunches, balancing his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands and his heart on his goddamn sleeve. Enji sees it; for the first time, he sees it, sees him as he is. “I’m a liar,” he says quietly, so quiet that Enji has to hold his breath to hear him. “I lied, at the start, and I’ve been lying all this time, okay? I’m fucking sorry.”

“What do you—mean?” 

Hawks cracks a smile, disappointed, betrayed, miserable. “When I said that sex was all I wanted from you. From this. From us. I lied, but honestly, it’s your fault for not being smart enough to see through it. It’s your fucking fault for not realizing I’ve been in love with you ever since I grew old enough to know what the fuck that even meant.”

Enji’s heart is wide open, bleeding, blooming.

“What?”

Hawks groans, and he sounds disgusted. “You really need me to spell it out for you? Everyone knows. It’s a fucking running joke among all the heroes. All the heroes except you. That’s why Miruko said what she did. Christ, this is fucking humiliating. And I wasn’t going to push you, or anything. I just thought that, that maybe, somehow, along the way you’d—fuck—and even if you didn’t, I was just fine being with you in any way that I could, and—”

Then he stops to breathe, shaking like he’s about to fall apart.

“Come over here,” Enji says before Hawks spirals even further. He feels so lost and confused and slow. So utterly slow. Hawks is always two, three, twenty steps ahead of him. Too fast, too smart. Good with words, good with lies. Good at figuring people out—except for this, this one thing he happened to miss.

Reluctantly, painfully, Hawks lifts his head. The dark circles around his eyes are clear now. Everything is so clear now.

I’ve been in love with you ever since I grew old enough to know what the fuck that even meant.

“You don’t want me to leave, or anything?”

That’s the last thing Enji wants.

“I want you to sit back on the bed.”

Hawks frowns. He’s just a boy—the world always seems to forget that. “Just let me down easy, old man.”

“I’m not,” Enji blurts out, blurts out before his pride gets the best of him. “I’m not rejecting you.”

Hawks’ eyes open as wide as they can, blinking rapidly, comically large—like Enji is telling a bad joke.

“Huh?”

“Just—just come over here,” Enji says, still trying to wrap his head around the fact that Hawks—wants him, wants more from him, wants to be something with him—it’s new. It’s obvious. It’s surprising. It’s more than Enji ever expected. It makes sense, but it doesn’t, at the same time. 

Hawks walks over, slow and hesitant, and sits on the bed, knees bent, sitting on his heels, hands folded by his thighs. He’s at the very edge of the bed whereas Enji is by the headboard, so Enji has to physically yank him back into his lap, back where he belongs. Hawks gasps, holding his breath like he’s suddenly ten feet underwater.

Enji isn’t good with physicality, the intimate sort of physicality, but he’s learning.

Everything to do with Hawks is a learning curve.

“You said you were tired, right?” Enji asks after a quiet moment, one hand on the small of Hawks’ back, the other on the nape of his neck. He can feel the boy’s heart beating, thumping, hammering.

Hawks is silent for a moment, then he relaxes into the embrace, pressing his face against Enji’s chest. He mumbles shyly, “Said I wanted you to fuck me into the mattress.”

Enji laughs—softly, happily—and holds Hawks tighter. They’ll be alright. He can fix this.

It’s hard to believe that Hawks is—in love with him. Even just thinking about it is insane. That someone like Hawks, young, spunky, strong, and gorgeous; a golden hero, a genius, a prodigy by all means—wants him. Has wanted him all his life, apparently. 

Enji wants him too.

“I’ve never been in a relationship before,” he says, thinking that that’s a good place to start communicating it.

“You have a wife,” Hawks points out, confused.

“I have a wife,” Enji concedes, rubbing circles into the back of Hawks’ neck, “but I’ve never had a partner.”

Then Hawks pulls back; it’s a jerkish, sudden motion again, but he isn’t fighting Enji like before. He places a hand on Enji’s chest and asks, “Are you—is this your way of saying that you want to be in a relationship with me?”

Enji’s mouth purses. “Was that . . . not clear?”

Hawks sighs, exasperated, frustrated, but happy. He’s happy, and he’s beautiful. “You could’ve just fucking said that in the first place, Enji-san.”

“I’m not good with words.”

“No fucking kidding.”

Enji’s cheeks heat up.

Smiling, Hawks cups Enji’s face with warm and gentle hands, smoothes his thumb over Enji’s scar with a comforting, repeated motion. Then he switches gears, pouting and mumbling, “All this time, I thought you didn’t feel the same way. A part of me feels like I pushed you into this,” he admits, hands finding their way to Enji’s shoulders. “Even if the first time, we were both drunk—afterwards, it was kind of like I pushed you. Took advantage of your sexual frustration.” 

“I was not sexually frustrated.”

Hawks throws his head back with a condescending laugh. “I may not remember who made the first move that night, but I do remember you shoving me up against a wall as soon as we found an empty alleyway to go make out in.”

Enji shakes his head, but he’s also a little mortified at what Hawks said. “It’s not like that. I like sex, but it’s not something I need to live. It’s different, with you.”

Hawks’ eyes widen, and for once, he’s the one without any words.

“You didn’t take advantage of me,” Enji says. “I wanted it. All of it, if that wasn’t already clear. Just as much as you did, probably.”

“Probably?” Hawks is slowly coming back to his usual self, confident and self-assured.

Enji feels the heat spread to the tips of his ears. “Definitely.”

And then, Hawks kisses him. He throws himself forward and kisses Enji hungrily, then languidly, then their lips are just touching, just—touching. Warm and plush and gentle—so, so gentle. His eyes are closed when their lips separate, when he presses his forehead to Enji’s, hands still on his cheeks, hands still pulling him close. When he opens his eyes again, they’re bright with a golden sort of fire.

“So, Endeavor-san, are you mine, now?” he asks, and there’s still a slight edge of insecurity in his voice. Enji wants him to understand the depth of his feelings, but he doesn’t know how to make him understand with his words, doesn’t know what to say that will make Hawks understand.

But he tries. He tries and says with as much sincerity as he can manage, “If you’ll have me.”

Hawks seems to get it, grinning from ear to ear with a soft, fond sigh. “God, who even says shit like that?”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Maybe, Yes, I’m yours now, or something that normal people say?”

“I’m yours now,” Enji says, with just as much sincerity as before, and it occurs to him that he must look like an absolute, lovestruck fool because Hawks squirms a little, embarrassed.

“You really do like me, don’t you?" Hawks asks, disbelieving.

“I . . . do,” Enji says, and it’s like pulling teeth, but he manages. With how long he’s liked Enji, Hawks has probably established this belief in his head that there’s no way Enji would ever want him back. It’s Enji’s job to help him unlearn that.

“You’re so frustrating,” Hawks groans, burying his face in Enji’s chest again. Then, much quieter, he adds, “I like you a lot anyways, though.”

Then they’re kissing again—inexplicably kissing again—but it isn’t violent or hungry like their usual kisses; it’s slow, it’s careful, and for the first time, Enji thinks that might be enough.

Hawks falls asleep mid-kiss, which is understandable, because they just keep kissing, lazily, languidly, and soon enough the boy’s sleep deprivation kicks in. His lips go from pliant to unmoving, tired body slumping into Enji’s, mouth dragging along scarred skin. With a soft smile, Enji maneuvers them so that they’re lying down on their sides, face to face; he kisses Hawks’ forehead, then pulls him closer, as close as close gets, then shuts his eyes as well.

When Enji wakes up, their limbs are tangled, he has a feather in his mouth, and Hawks is snoring, drooling onto Enji’s shirt with a cute pout on his lips. His skin is gold, spilled honey and bare nude. It’s the first time he’s ever actually woken up in the same bed as Hawks.

Enji smiles, despite himself, and goes back to sleep.

“Hey, what’s your favorite food?”

Hawks is sitting up on the countertop between the two sinks in Enji’s master bathroom, swinging his legs as he brushes his teeth. This morning, he stole one of Enji’s sleep shirts and tore holes in the back—Enji has a feeling he’ll have to get used to that—and it keeps slipping off his shoulder.

“Chicken,” Hawks answers, mumbling over the toothbrush in his mouth.

Enji spits into the sink and rinses his mouth and his toothbrush. “Even though you’re . . . ?”

“A chicken?” Hawks asks, spinning around to also finish up brushing his teeth. “Yup.”

Huh, Enji thinks, splashing his face with cold water. Then, “Where did you go to school?”

“I didn’t. I went through this—this program. Had a handler and everything. Learned mostly infiltration skills. How to lie, endure torture, and all sorts of quirk training. Stuff like that. Kept me so busy that I didn’t really have time to do anything for myself. My academic education was more of a side thing.”

Enji startles. In the back of his mind, he’s always known that the Commission’s methods were extreme, but he never really knew.

“Torture?”

Hawks rolls his eyes, positions his hands behind him, palm to cool marble, and leans back. “Oi, don’t look at me like that. It’s not that big of a deal, really.”

Enji pleats his mouth into a thin line, and before he can say anything else about it, Hawks retaliates with a question of his own.

“Besides, why’re you asking all these questions?”

Wiping his face down with a towel, Enji replies, “I’ve been wondering about it for a while now. I don’t really know much about you. I mean, your past, specifically.”

“Please,” Hawks scoffs, “from what you did to me in the shower, I’d say you know a lot about me.”

Enji glares. “I’m serious.”

Hawks’ mouth twists into a frown, and he sighs, “There isn’t really anything interesting about my past, Enji. My dad’s a deadbeat and my mom’s a druggie. I haven’t talked to them since the Commission took me in. And after the Commission took me in, well, I already mentioned what the program was like. Unfortunately, it’s not very interesting. The most memorable thing about my childhood is how I stole an Endeavor plushie when I was five and carried it wherever I went until I accidentally dropped it while I was flying.”

“An Endeavor plushie?” Enji asks.

Hawks grins wide, curls his leg around Enji’s thigh, and tugs him closer. “I told you you’ve always been my number one hero.”

Enji chews on the inside of his cheek, hyper-aware of the proximity between their bodies, hyper-aware of the fact that Hawks isn’t wearing any underwear underneath his borrowed shirt. But he pushes that aside and finally attacks that nagging, persistant doubt in his head—

“I’m not really the man you think I am, Hawks.”

I’m not a good man, and I haven’t ever been a good man.

Hawks, as always, exceeds any and all expectations. “Don’t overthink this. Look, I’m not—we’re not exactly normal people. And I already told you: I couldn’t care less what type of man you were or you think you still are. As long as you like me back, that’s all that matters to me.”

He places his hands around Enji’s waist, eyes burning with determination.

“And—while we’re at it, because I have a feeling this is gonna come up next—don’t worry about your age, or the fact that you’re married, or the fact that I’ve never been with anyone else. I mean it,” he says, not giving Enji a chance to even breathe. “You’re not fucked up for wanting me. You’re fucked up for other reasons, and I’m fucked up for other reasons, but I doubt either of us want to talk about those fucking reasons right now. I mean, I’m always up to talk about your issues or my issues, if you really want, but I don’t really care about all your baggage, honestly. It’s part of you, and my baggage is part of me—but it doesn’t need to be part of us.”

The bathroom is silent for a little while; Enji stares at the mark he left on Hawks’ inner thigh in the shower, trying to think of what to say. He comes up with nothing.

“Phew,” Hawks eventually sighs, relieved and so utterly casual about this, like he didn’t just solve three of Enji’s life crises in one breath. He really is something else. “Okay, so now that we’re done with that, wanna make out?”

“We just—in the shower—”

Hawks licks his lips. “Imagine my complete and utter disappointment when I woke up and realized you did not in fact fuck me into the mattress like you said you would. Sue me for being needy this morning.”

Enji groans, but he relents, shoving his tongue inside Hawks’ mouth, minty cool and tasting of toothpaste.

He has a feeling he’s probably gonna have to get used to this too—not that he minds.

“I have you for real, now,” Hawks says, breath cold on Enji’s skin. “So there’s no need for me to hold back.”

Yeah. Enji doesn’t mind at all.

“Enji, you wanna go out for lunch?” Hawks asks once they’re done with their nth makeout session of the morning. “I’m really hungry, and there’s a good hot pot place nearby. Not as good as the one we went to in Fukuoka, if you remember that, but still pretty good.”

“Sure,” Enji replies, not really paying attention to anything that Hawks is saying, too focused on his marred neck and kiss-swollen lips. I did that. I did all of that, Enji thinks, positively buzzing with satisfaction.

“Cool. It’s about a ten minute drive, I think.”

“We’ll need to get dressed first.”

Hawks grins, and his smile is full of mischief. “Can I wear this shirt?”

Enji’s eyes narrow. The shirt hangs low on Hawks’ neckline, and while Hawks’ usual black sleeveless top has somewhat of a collar on it to at least partially hide the hickeys, this doesn’t. At all. But the thing is, a part of Enji wants people to see, wants people to know that Hawks is his, that Hawks is owned.

“Do whatever you like,” Enji decides, cheeks warm with embarrassment.

Back straightening, Hawks salutes playfully and says, “Got it, boss!”

Then he jumps off the counter, and Enji follows him into the bedroom.

“Oh, you mind if I get a glass of water from your kitchen?”

“Go ahead,” Enji replies, heading over to his dresser to find something casual to wear. Maybe for once he’ll forgo wearing his hero costume underneath his civilian clothes.

It might be time for a change, might be time for a new beginning.

Hawks’ wings rustle as he heads out of Enji’s bedroom.

Not a minute later does Enji hear the sound of glass breaking from the kitchen. 

Enji rolls his eyes. He’s shirtless, and his slacks are half-buttoned, but he wanders out of his bedroom to see what happened anyways. He never pegged Hawks as the clumsy type; he’s dexterous and strangely graceful, most of the time.

“What the fuck,” is the first thing he hears when he rounds the corner and steps into the kitchen.

The voice did not come from Hawks.

Natsuo, Fuyumi, and Shouto all stand by the doorway with different expressions of horror on their faces.

“Wow, Fuyumi,” Shouto deadpans, eyes wide, but not nearly as wide as Natsuo’s. His voice is filled with so much apathy that Enji vaguely wonders if this isn’t the first painfully awkward morning encounter he’s had of the sort. “So much for your ‘Let’s surprise Dad with lunch’ plan.”

Fuyumi’s face is bright red. “I—”

“Shit, sorry, the glass,” Hawks interjects, carefully picking up the pieces with his feathers and setting them down on the kitchen table. “You guys sure surprised me!”

Ironically, Natsuo looks like he’s about to burst into angry, angry flames. “You’re surprised?”

Hawks tilts his head, feigning ignorance. “Yeah, sorry, I didn’t notice you guys were already here. I was just getting a glass of water, you see.”

Enji finally finds it in him to inject himself into the conversation. “When did you—”

“We just—we just got here,” Fuyumi answers, still not able to take her eyes off Hawks, half-naked, bruises marking his neck and thighs, and clearly wearing one of Enji’s t-shirts. There is, unfortunately, no possible way for Enji to cover this up with a lie. “A couple minutes ago. We heard a noise in the kitchen and thought it was you . . . ”

Oh god, was Enji that absorbed, making out with Hawks, that he hadn’t even heard the front door opening?

“We made a reservation for four at the hot pot restaurant downtown,” Fuyumi adds, her voice growing more and more lifeless.

“Whoa, what a coincidence! Enji and I were just about to go there!” Hawks so unhelpfully contributes. “Do you think they’d mind if five people show up instead of four?”

Fuming, Natsuo redirects his attention over to Enji. He’s about to say something—maybe he’s about to yell or scream or shout—but he presses his lips together and miraculously stays silent. It must’ve taken all the force in the universe for him to achieve quite a feat.

Enji becomes quickly aware of the unfortunate fact that he is shirtless, his slacks are half-unbuttoned, and that Hawks left a rather nasty love-bite on his shoulder about five minutes ago.

Everything about this is quite unfortunate.

And, because Shouto—Enji’s flesh and blood, pride and joy, his youngest son—because he is the way that he is, he thinks that now is the best time to blurt out, “By the way, I’ve been secretly dating both Bakugou and Midoriya. It’s almost our one year anniversary, so we’ll be taking next Saturday off to celebrate. Just thought you all should know.”

Both Natsuo and Fuyumi turn to gawk at Shouto and his god-awful timing.

“Shouto,” Fuyumi scolds, so much judgement in just those two syllables.

Shouto just blinks, shrugging innocently. “I thought it would make this less awkward.”

Enji doesn’t know which is worse: the fact that Shouto genuinely thought that revealing he’s dating both Bakugou and Midoriya would suddenly make things less awkward, or the fact that Shouto is dating both Bakugou and Midoriya.

Probably the latter.

Meanwhile, Hawks—who’s clearly having the time of his life and isn’t even trying to hide it—flies over to pat the youngest Todoroki on the shoulder. 

“Congrats, Shouto! No wonder when we all had dinner together Bakugou kept glaring at me like he wanted to kill me!”

Shouto, the bitter winter child that he is, slaps the hand away.

“How long has this been going on?” Natsuo blurts out, horrified, disgusted, and confused all at once.

The corner of Hawks’ lips pull upwards, his wings flapping in excitement. “Technically since last night! But we’ve been fucking for—”

Enji quickly rushes over to put his hand over Hawks’ mouth and drag him back to where he was before by the countertop. “We can talk about it over lunch.”

Natsuo is already halfway out the door, the back of his neck beet-red. “No way. I’m not going to lunch with you two—”

“Hey, Natsuo—” Fuyumi grabs his wrist, pulling him back inside.

“Fuyumi, this is ridiculous.”

“Hawks is a friend!”

“Was a friend. Now he’s on the way to becoming our pseudo step-dad.”

Shouto shivers, nose scrunching in disgust. “Wait, you think they’re actually gonna last? I thought this was gonna be a fling at most.”

“Shouto, that’s rude!”

“It doesn’t matter what they are. I’m still not going out to lunch with them,” Natsuo spits out.

Natsuo and Fuyumi and Shouto start arguing about whether to cancel the reservation or not—Fuyumi says no, Natsuo says yes, and Shouto says he doesn’t care what they do as long as they eat somewhere.

Enji takes the opportunity to carefully remove his hand from Hawks’ mouth, but the moment he does, the boy flies up into the air and steals a kiss. It’s barely a peck, but it makes Enji’s face burn with fire.

Enji’s eyes widen when Hawks pulls back—soles touching the ground—but he’s relieved to find out that his kids were too busy fighting to even notice what went on before their eyes.

“Did you really have to do all that?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Hawks says, and Enji is well aware that he’s not sorry at all. He looks happy, warm gold eyes and rose-pink cheeks. He’s smiling so hard that it must hurt—it must hurt, but he doesn’t look anything but euphoric right now. “It’s just so much fun.”

“Messing with me and my kids is fun?” Enji teases, hand reaching over to tuck a strand of gold hair behind Hawks’ ear, fingertips lingering, knuckles brushing against his neck. Mine, mine, mine.

“At least now you don’t have to worry about the awkward telling your kids you’re dating me conversation.”

“That is true.”

Hawks’ fingers curl around Enji’s wrist. “C’mon, let’s go get dressed before they end up leaving.”

“They won’t,” Enji assures, following Hawks back to the bedroom. The house doesn’t seem nearly as big or empty when Hawks is here, Enji finds. It feels—warm, almost cozy.

“And why is that?”

“Natsuo can’t win against Fuyumi.”

It’s a simple truth of the world, like how the moon revolves around the earth and the earth revolves around the sun and how Enji’s entire world—in this tiny, insignificant, fleeting moment—one moment of many like it—seems to revolve around the boy right in front of him.

Hawks laughs beautifully and it occurs to Enji that this is what he’s wanted all along. This is what he never thought he needed, never thought he wanted.  

Someone to stand on top of the world with. A number two.

A partner.

Epilogue: Dec 28 (Hawks’ 24th Birthday)

ENDEAVOR & HAWKS SPOTTED ON A DATE?!
Herofeed ✅
10.8M views • 13 hours ago

34,582 Comments

oh wow hi 11 hours ago
oh my god is this why Endeavor and his wife got divorced last month

hanako-kun 5 hours ago
HELLO???? the way that hawks noticed they were being recorded at 0:47 and his response was to straight up kiss endeavor on the mouth?? while flipping off the person recording??

queen blue 8 hours ago
and then endeavor grabbed his hand and laced their fingers together… all while kissing him back… and the video just ends there??? like what the FUCK!

killua catboy 3 hours ago (edited)
um wait a sec… i recognize that hoodie hawks is wearing… that’s a motherfucking limited edition endeavor hoodie that sold out like 7 years ago

yo yo yo 3 hours ago
i guess the hawks fanboy jokes weren’t exaggerated at all LOL

Miruko ✅ 1 hour ago
No, they really aren’t…

やれやれ 2 hours ago
huh, dreams really do come true