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Hawks had always known how to keep his cool. It was a vital skill to an assassin and undercover operative. Hawks planned his moves carefully, meticulously, and then struck in a flash. There was no time for what burned beneath. No one touched him.
Now, though, Hawks had seemingly endless time. The worst thing about becoming quirkless was how slow the world suddenly seemed, as if a vibrant edge of jittery excitement that had always been at the edges of Hawks’ vision had suddenly vanished. He felt as though he were plodding through his days, empty and meaningless, the core of his identity burned out of him.
Some days, he thought that the only thing that kept him going, not for the first time, was Endeavor. Endeavor also had his family, true, but that was a can of worms at times more painful than encouraging. Hawks shouldn’t have felt warm at this, that he and Endeavor were aligning on something as traumatic as their broken families and their hero careers being over. But there was something about not being alone, about somebody else who understood.
Endeavor’s recovery was slow and painstaking. Small triumphs one day (wheeling himself down the hospital corridor with his one remaining arm) led to miserable defeats the next (too fatigued to even pull himself out of bed). Hawks had never thought of himself as a carer before – not in the environment where he’d grown up – but something about it being Endeavor, his source of hope and light in the darkest moments of his own childhood, made Hawks overeager to put in the effort, to be the hope and light for the one man who’d meant the most to him.
As the weeks turned to months turned round to a full year, Endeavor’s family pulled away: happy and at peace, but not with Endeavor in the picture, just as Endeavor had always envisioned. Endeavor accepted this as his burden to bear, fitting penance for his crimes. He could not make his family happy, except by his absence, and so his absence was what he would give them.
Hawks wondered at the man Endeavor might have been, had he not been possessed by his drive to surpass All Might. Endeavor’s marriage had been a contrivance, a convenience only for the sake of producing the ideal heir. Endeavor’s children had been the tools of his victory. And although Endeavor loved his family in his own way, it seemed clear that they were not his natural state. Endeavor’s true fire burned in the hero sphere – even in its loss – and Hawks didn’t think he imagined that Endeavor only showed his true self, little whispered confessions and regrets and hopes, to Hawks and not to the others. Perhaps, in a different world (a better world – hopefully the one they were creating), it would’ve been Hawks and Endeavor together from the start.
Hawks moved interminably slowly now, but move at last he did. His plan was careful and meticulous, and he struck in a flash.
And he was not proven wrong when Endeavor’s lips softened against his after the initial shock. How Endeavor’s hand – so large and powerful still that Hawks quaked from it – settled onto Hawks’ now-wingless shoulder-blade and pulled him in closer. They were broken men in so many ways – limbs and livelihoods severed – but in this moment their broken halves fit together into one complete whole.
Hawks settled himself, probably overeagerly, straddling one of Endeavor’s thighs. He ground down and felt Endeavor thrust up in response, where Hawks’ own thigh conveniently pressed against the growing bulge in Endeavor’s trousers: civilian clothing only for the both of them now. Nevertheless, Endeavor would always be Hawks’ hero. Hawks accepted Endeavor’s tentative tongue into his mouth, moaned at the smoky taste of Endeavor, and cupped both hands under Endeavor’s chin, mindless of scars, to pull the two of them closer together, grinding frantically like the young men they could never be again.
Yet still the coolness in Hawks’ heart lit up with a burning flame. At Endeavor’s touch, the slowness of this new world accelerated back to blinding speed. Something long buried inside Hawks was touched for the first time, and lit up beyond his control to tame or repress. Once again Hawks was soaring through the air, free and light.
The flashfire burned in his gut and lower – evoked by nothing more than lips and tongues and far too many years alone – and Hawks, simultaneously both too soon and at long last, came in a…
Well, you know.