## Preface

There's No Use In Crying Over Spilt Milk
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/24492898.

Rating:
  Not Rated
Archive Warning:
  Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category:
  M/M
Fandom:
  僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Relationships:
  Dabi/Takami Keigo | Hawks, League of Villains & Takami Keigo | Hawks, Takami Keigo | Hawks & Usagiyama Rumi | Miruko, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead & Takami Keigo | Hawks, Takami Keigo | Hawks & Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead/Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic
Characters:
  Takami Keigo | Hawks, Dabi (My Hero Academia), Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Iguchi Shuuichi | Spinner, Sako Atsuhiro | Mr. Compress, Kurogiri (My Hero Academia), Toga Himiko, Bubaigawara Jin | Twice, Usagiyama Rumi | Miruko, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Hero Public Safety Commission (My Hero Academia)
Additional Tags:
  Takami Keigo | Hawks-centric, Hurt Takami Keigo | Hawks, Takami Keigo | Hawks is Bad At Feelings, Takami Keigo | Hawks is a Mess, Protective Dabi (My Hero Academia), Protective League of Villains (My Hero Academia), Protective Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Protective Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Hurt/Comfort, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Attempted Sexual Assault, Toga uses her powers for good, Panic Attacks, Emotional Manipulation, I hate the commission, Hero Public Safety Commission Bashing (My Hero Academia), Hero Public Safety Commission's A+ Parenting, completed sexual assault, im sorry, Twitter, It's a little graphic guys
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 6 of Hawks Needs Help (And He Actually Gets It), Part 2 of Using Hawks to vent but adding plot so it's okay I hope???
Collections:
  under penalty of death
Stats:
  Published: 2020-06-04 Words: 9,876 Chapters: 1/1

# There's No Use In Crying Over Spilt Milk

by Numanum

Summary

> He wishes that he didn’t have to go back to the commission, to his Handlers, to being a symbol of freedom bound in chains. But, realistically, what else is he going to do? Admitting it, even quietly to himself, sends sharp pains through what’s left of his own sense of belonging, but he can’t stay here.

> As friendly as the league is, as much as they seem to almost care, as much as he wants them to, they’re too different from him. Hawks is a hero, and the others-

> They just aren’t.

> They’re not really villains anymore, not to him, but they aren’t good; they kill people.

> Hawks ignores the part of him that screams that he’s killed people. It’s not that it doesn’t matter when he kills someone, it’s not, really, but he has orders. The league has each other, and he has orders.

> So he needs to go back.

> Or: Hawks still doesn't think the league cares, so they burn down the commission to show him they do

Notes

> Special thanks to users Tim_Drake and TrueCoffeeCravingWolf for giving me more ideas on how to continue this!

> A note: Guys, the assault in this work is a lot worse than it was in the previous fic, and I've marked where it begins and ends in case you want to skip it. If you do, you won't miss any major plot points! I understand that it might be hard to read (it was really hard to write) and I just want you guys to be mindful of your mental health if it's going to trigger you! Please stay safe! <3

See the end of the work for more notes

## There's No Use In Crying Over Spilt Milk

Hawks wishes, gods, does he wish, that he could stay with the league for the rest of his life.

Laying there, sandwiched between Toga and Dabi, knowing that the others also joined the impromptu sleepover and are there with him, it almost feels like home.

The league is weird like that; they’re almost nice, when they’re not trying to kill people or causing massive property destruction or crippling heroes or making Hawks’ life harder by just existing. The way that they act is almost like a family that constantly plays Monopoly; they’re always at each others throats, and they’re crazy, but they care and it’s so obvious that it hurts. They pick each other up and dust each other off and laugh about it while hiding from Kurogiri’s wrath because someone stabbed the bar’s counter again and he’s out for blood. It’s a mess of weird sibling relationships, ripped apart and stitched back together so many times that it almost looks intentionally ugly, like a hipster’s hoodie. They don’t even have to try to bring people in, everyone just seems to fit perfectly together.

Almost everyone.

And as hard as they might try to change it, Hawks just doesn’t fit. He’s like a busted piece of their puzzle, like maybe, if things had been different, he would have fit with them. He would have been able to genuinely laugh and not worry and cook them eggs and maybe even fist bump Shigaraki and not die for it. But he just doesn’t fit, and nothing can change that. His piece of the patchwork is too small, too frayed, to be stitched successfully into their family; it’s covered in blood and glitter and it’s of little use to anyone. So nobody uses it, nobody had ever tried to, until the league. And a small part of him, cut off from the small scrap, wants to be stitched, glued, hell even melted to them as long as they’re willing to let him be there.

Really, Hawks should be learning their secrets, completing his mission and saving people. He should be hurting them, not wondering if maybe this could work if he just asked-

He can’t bring himself to do it, the rejection would break him, but in the end he can’t bring himself to stay without knowing either. Which leaves him with a one way street ahead of him that leads back to the only thing he knows anymore.

He wishes that he didn’t have to go back to the commission, to his Handlers, to being a symbol of freedom bound in chains. But, realistically, what else is he going to do? Admitting it, even quietly to himself, sends sharp pains through what’s left of his own sense of belonging, but he can’t stay here.

As friendly as the league is, as much as they seem to almost care, as much as he wants them to, they’re too different from him. Hawks is a hero, and the others-

They just aren’t.

They’re not really villains anymore, not to him, but they aren’t good; they kill people.

Hawks ignores the part of him that screams that he’s killed people. It’s not that it doesn’t matter when he kills someone, it’s not, really, but he has orders. The league has each other, and he has orders.

So he needs to go back.

A heavy sigh leaves him as he blinks his eyes open, never really having fallen asleep in the first place. Oddly enough, everything had been too comfortable, too temporary, for him to fully relax; the saying ‘all good things must come to an end’ rings through his head as he glances around. Carefully, he slips off of the couch, draping the blanket back over Toga and Dabi in place of his wings. The former, apparently a light sleeper, immediately blinks up at him and snags the sleeve of his jacket with a questioning look on her sleepy face. “What’s wrong?” she mumbles softly, wiggling in a useless attempt to sit up a bit. Hawks gently pushes her back down by her shoulders, tucking her into Dabi’s side. Toga continues to stare up at him, a sad sort of acceptance rolling over her face.

“You’re leaving us.”

“Ah, don’t be too sad, I’ll be right back,” he reassures, lying through his teeth with a soft smile. His wings twitch a bit at the lie, and he has to make an effort to keep them still. It works, the sadness is gone with plenty of confusion to take its place. “But where are you going? When are you coming back?” she whines, making grabby hands towards him. He hands her the other blanket instead, which she grudgingly accepts before lightly kicking her feet to spread it out over her and Dabi.

“You know I’ll see you again,” he laughs softly instead of saying ‘never’, helping her adjust it over her lap. Guilt tears through him when Toga smiles toothily back at him, obviously still too tired to think straight, and nods like she believes him. Unable to look her in the eyes any longer, he gives her a bright closed-eyed smile and turns his back on them. He creeps out the door like he has something to hide, like he’s stealing something from them, and despite it not being true, he feels dirty.

If anything, he’s leaving a little bit of himself with them, feathers included.

At some point, they had taken a piece of him for themselves, and Hawks is too weak to steal it back.

So he doesn’t. Hawks instead chooses to snap his wings open and launch into the air, resisting the urge to look down like someone would be waiting to catch him if he fell. They’re busy with world domination attempts, and more importantly, he’s supposed to be busy with stopping them.

When Hawks finally gets back to his apartment, he can’t sleep. Nothing is as soft, as warm, as the shitty couch he’d left behind. His bed, purposefully large and luxurious to fit his wings, feels like sleeping on loose gravel. It feels like cardboard, like gritty cement against his skin and ever worse against his feathers, so he just resolves himself to an early start and gets ready for the day. Except his room is still empty, his meager belongings still with Dabi and the others in a bag that Twice had been using as a pillow when he’d left. And it’s fine; he’s got money, he can just replace what he left behind, it’s just stuff. He can buy new shirts, hell, he can invite Rumi and Aizawa and Yamada and make a fucking day of getting himself new things.

Everything is just fine, peachy, even, and there’s nothing (literally nothing, everything is gone-) to cry pathetically over like a heartbroken movie star in an opening scene.

Still, staring into his empty closet, remembering Dabi’s reaction to it, makes his eyes burn pathetically. Hawks gives himself five minutes to grieve before he straightens up and moves on.

There’s no reason to cry, he reminds himself as he stares at the coat hangers still littering his floor, it’s fine. Who the fuck cries over coat hangers, anyway?

Everything is fine.

Hours after the great closet breakdown, he’s flying to the Hero Public Safety Commission for an unscheduled meeting with his Handler. With both, actually, since his old one is apparently back to haunt him in real life, like he didn’t feel her ghostly hands all over him even when he didn’t have to see her face. Maybe it’s because she’s american; things could be different in America, what she’s done- what she continues to do- could be perfectly legal there. Hawks isn’t really in-tune with American politics, but he knows enough that the president is a madman, so who’s to say what’s legal and what isn’t?

‘Cultural differences’ seems like the most transparent excuse ever, but Hawks is going to cling to it until it falls apart in his cold, dead hands.

He lands on the pavement awkwardly, a slight shock traveling up from his heels to his hips that makes him wince, folds his wings, and limps inside hurriedly. Hawks isn’t late, but he’s definitely not his preferred fifteen minutes early, and the nerves of it are slowly eating away at him as he almost runs through the halls. When he finally gets to his Handlers’ (are they sharing?) office, they’re both already inside and waiting for him. Despite the door hinges not shrieking, all attention snaps to him as he steps inside. His older Handler doesn’t even waste a second of time on pleasantries, but he prefers that to the salacious finger-wave that he gets from the younger one.

“Hawks,” his older handler addresses, frowning at him and handing him a loose pile of papers, “the people are wanting you to speak up.”

He blinks at her, waiting for what she wants him to say. Hawks isn’t even really sure what she’s talking about; as far as he knows, there hasn’t been another big scandal that would need his input. In response to his most likely stupidly confused look, she nods tensely down at the papers, which he immediately begins to flip through.

And holy shit can’t even begin to describe what he’s feeling right now.

The packet, made up of the controversial twitter tag #Sexual assault and #Hawks, is almost thirty seven pages long. A lot of them are absolutely scathing responses to the tweets that had called him easy only a day earlier, and the shutdowns are brutal. Others are just small comments that make a sense of unease crawl up his spine because how can they say it like that’s just what it is? Hawks himself can’t even admit that it’s wrong when it happens to him, but he knows that if he saw someone do this he would kick their teeth in.

-What’s easy is shoving my foot up your dumb ass

-If you think that’s consent you’re a subspecies of human and can be killed on sight

-Omg he looks so uncomfortable :(((((((((

-If I see this guy on the street i’ll kill him

Clearing her throat, his older Handler gives him a flat stare. She looks so disappointed, and he can’t help that his first reaction to that is shame. His second, sounding an awful lot like Dabi, is wanting to fight.

“A beacon of safety, even if it’s not the number one hero, can not look weak,” she pauses to glance between him and the packet pointedly, and he can’t look away from her as the guilt for even making her deal with this washes over him. Dabi’s influence is long gone, no trace of it left and Hawks is almost sad to see it go. As stupid as it would be to act on it, it had brought a weird kind of comfort.

“However, if you do spin it as an assault tale, we can endear you to the public!” his younger handler, who according to Dabi would be a part of that assault, looks excited at the idea. Hawks is immediately unnerved by someone like her being excited by something like that. It’s almost like an arsonist being a firefighter; all of the glory of putting out a fire without anyone knowing that they caused it.

His older Handler’s head snaps over to her rather than Hawks. And just like that, Hawks is shoved to the background as they argue over what to do about the clusterfuck that he’s caused.

“He would look weak-”

“He would look endearing. How often is it that society gets to protect it’s heroes?” she argues, waving a hand at him. It reminds Hawks, eerily, of when his parents argued over how much to sell him for. His older Handler doesn’t use her quirk, but he still can’t seem to find the words to interrupt them.

“How often should a hero,” she emphasizes the word, her wrinkles becoming more prominent in the face of her anger, “need protection? If he is seen as weak, even a little bit, it reflects badly on the commission.”

She pauses, still looking disinterested and a little annoyed. It’s an expression that Hawks knows well, having been on the other end of it a lot, especially recently.

“Besides, if a gross exaggeration, a mere rumor,” she stares him down before looking back to the other Handler, “starts that he’s been… attacked, you wouldn’t be able to continue your relationship with him.”

It should tell him something that the revelation that she knew about it didn’t feel like a punch to the gut. It’s more like an itch that has finally been scratched, a question finally answered. Of course she would know; she’s in charge of him, of everything that happens to him- of everything that she lets happen to him. A weird sort of empty feeling crawls through his body at her words.

Exaggeration.

Rumor.

Right, because what else would it be, what else would she call it? It’s like she lives to invalidate him (invalidate what? Is he really going to trust what a group of villains says is wrong?).

Not seeming to find anything wrong with what she just said, she turns to him, his other Handler smiling at him from over the older one’s shoulder, “here’s what we’re going to do, Hawks: you are going to say that you felt sick, had too much to drink, and that this mess that you’ve created was consensual in every way.”

It takes all of his energy to nod at her, his throat too dry to force words. He knows that he should be paying more attention, that this is important, but his mind is still trying to make sense of the whole trusting villains thing. If they think something is right, as a general rule it’s usually wrong, but if a villain thinks something is wrong, does that make it even worse or does it cancel out and make it right?

His older Handler gives the younger one a long look before leaving him alone with her, making his stomach sink through the floor because of course he would be the consolation prize for them coming to an agreement-

(Assault scene starts here, guys! Please be careful and stay mindful of your health!!! <3)

“I have to-”

“Don’t be so shy,” she purrs, sauntering closer to him. He immediately goes to backpedal and gets frozen two steps in. Having been caught mid step, his balance is absolute shit and he falls back and hits the floor hard, making his brain rattle in his skull. Honestly, his wings cushioned the blow a little bit, but he’s lucky that they didn’t break. Even if Hawks has hollow bones and weighs less than a twelve year old, his wings are pretty strong. Shoving his body weight onto them is pushing it, however. His Handler stares down at him, placing her feet on either side of his hips and giving him the perfect angle to look up her skirt.

“If I let you go,” she whispers, lowering herself to straddle his waist and running her hands up his chest, “will you be good for me, Hawks?”

She doesn’t expect an answer and, frozen as he is, Hawks can’t give her one anyway.

“I bet you could be,” her hand smooths over his collarbone, and if he could move he would be shaking.

“I’d even reward you for it,” she nips at his ear and grinds her hips down. Hawks wishes more than anything right now that he’d stayed with the league. Even if they hated him, even if they were planning to kill him after breakfast, he’s absolutely positive that they wouldn’t have done this. They wouldn’t have just sat back and let it happen like Hawks is doing either.

She keeps moving her hips, now mouthing against his neck and leaving lipstick stains across his throat as she slowly works herself out of her shirt. Every button that comes undone feels heightens the spike of panic that’s stabbing through him. His Handler doesn’t seem to care, slowly slipping it off and dropping it to the side. Her hips haven’t stopped moving, they’re stuttering in an uneven rhythm now, and Hawks feels sick with the need to be anywhere but here. She’s moaning softly, throwing her head back and planting her hands on his shoulders and he wants out, he can’t breathe past her thick perfume and the nails slowly sinking into his shoulders-

Hawks checks out.

He’s only vaguely aware of the soft sigh she gives, the way that she leans close and presses a lazy kiss to the corner of his mouth and calls him good. His fingers twitch and tremble, and he knows that he can move again, he should move away. But he doesn’t have the energy to do anything other than stare up at the ceiling and clench his hands. She gets off of him and picks up her shirt, smiling all the while as he tries his best to sink through the floor.

(It’s over! <3)

“Now, wasn’t that good?” she sounds content, sated, and she’s only halfway through with buttoning up her shirt. Hawks really wishes that she’d hurry up with it. Something too close to anger to be a comfort fills him with the energy to pick himself up off of the floor to stare her in the eyes. His wings are puffing up behind him, trying to make him look bigger, more threatening

“It was assault-”

“Oh, Hawks,” she sighs, like he knows better than to say this kind of stuff to her. Her hands don’t even pause their movements over her buttons, “is that what you’re going to call it?” He stays quiet and ducks his head, already feeling the regret of having said anything rush through him in waves. The emotion that feels a lot like indignance and rage and Dabi that had let him get off of the floor is long gone. A small attempt to unclench his hands tells him that he’s frozen again, but he can’t tell if it’s her quirk or his own reaction to what just happened. At least he’s sitting up this time; as small as the change is, he feels a lot less vulnerable. It almost, almost, makes him feel better.

“Let’s talk about this, since you can’t seem to get over yourself, “ her manicured nails leave the last button open and taps lightly on his nose, like he’s a pet. He still can’t move.

“Did you ever resist? How do you know, Hawks, that I was using my quirk at all? Maybe,” she leans in, her breath tickling against the side of his face, “you actually enjoy it. I know I certainly do.”

Hawks’ mouth drops open to protest, to say something, anything, and she immediately activates her quirk with a small tsk.

“Close your mouth, Hawks, you’re going to swallow a fly,” she laughs, knowing full well that he can’t move. She glides her hand along his jaw and closes it for him so hard that his teeth clack audibly. Smiling at him, she begins gently trailing her hand from his face to the back of his neck and back to his face. The soft pink of her nails had never seemed more deadly than right now, as they scratch under his jaw like one would pet a cat.

“Now, we have important things to discuss, but they can wait.”

She’s halfway down, kneeling over him as she presses him back to the floor, before they’re interrupted. The door creaks open again, and Hawks is torn between relief as his Handler slowly gets off of him and embarrassment that someone is seeing him like this. Heroes are supposed to be strong, and laying on the floor doesn’t really look all that powerful. “Excuse me,” a voice filled with authority says, and Hawks would melt back into the floor in relief if he wasn’t still frozen solid. The constant pressure is making his wings ache, but he can deal with that later. It’s just his older Handler, and as he learned a few minutes ago, this isn’t anything new to her.

“Hawks and I need to speak,” his younger Handler nods in understanding, straightening up and looking at her senior expectantly. To Hawks trained eye, she looks irritated, but he’s pretty sure that he’s the only one who can see it.

“Privately.”

“Well, I’m his handler too. If it’s official business-”

His older Handler snaps, her calm expression gone so fast that you’d miss it if you blinked.

“It’s officially none of yours. Leave us.”

His Handler rolls her eyes and quickly buttons the last few spaces on her shirt, tossing both of them dirty looks. She makes sure to slam the door on her way out. Hawks, out of her sight and no longer frozen, remains on the floor. His older Handler almost seems to melt the slightest bit as soon as they’re alone, and Hawks can’t help but wonder if there’s about to be a repeat performance of stripping and violating and too much pressure-

Something sour tries to crawl up his throat, but he swallows against it and remains staring up at the ceiling. Sickeningly similar to what happened earlier, his older Handler stands over him and just stares down, though she keeps her feet together. Hawks is ridiculously grateful for it.

His wings flap pathetically against the ground.

“Hawks,” she sighs, continuing to stare down at him. He closes his eyes against the sight of her looking, trying to breathe through the mixed emotions of disgust and fear and confusion and relief that she had gotten the other Handler away from him. It shouldn’t be a problem, he was fine with it for years and that shouldn’t have changed now, but it is and it has and there’s nothing that he can do about it.

His Handler is still staring down at him, her wrinkles more prominent than ever, like she’s forgotten how to make her face blank.

The amount of concern in her gaze unnerves him enough to have him moving away when she reaches for him. A slightly pained look flashes across her face, but it quickly vanishes. Wrinkled hands smooth out her professional skirt anxiously, and a sense of wrongness comes with the action. His Handler wouldn’t do that, not unless she was playing it up to get some sort of reaction. But this seems too genuine for that. It doesn’t actually feel wrong, not really, but it’s… off. His Handler is acting off, like she’s unsure for the first time in her life and she’s just waiting for him to do something about it. Hawks doesn’t move from the floor. She must see the mistrust is his eyes, because she wilts slightly and just whispers, “look, I’m like, super sorry about this, but Dabi bugged you and-”

Hawks’ eyes snap open, and he stops moving all together, not even breathing, because what? The same sense of not-wrongness comes back with a vengeance, and it would have knocked him on his ass if he wasn’t already on the floor.

“Toga,” he mutters eventually, closing his eyes and knocking his head back onto the hard floor. Hawks shifts so that he’s laying more on his side, his wings splayed out and his back to her. Of course they wouldn’t trust him if he just showed up in Dabi’s arms looking miserable and then flew away in the middle of the night. They probably wouldn’t even trust him with a plastic spoon. And it sucks, because at this point he trusts them a little more than he probably should. At any rate, he trusts Toga to get him out of here and back to the league. Assuming that she’s here to fetch him and not to kill him, that is.

Toga, undoubtedly armed but not threatening to stab him yet, pulls him from the ground. All it takes is her hands on his shoulders for him to jump back and nearly slam into the desk. It’s not that he thinks she’ll hurt him, not like that, but anything touching his shoulders feels like too much. When he finally glances up at her, unable to meet her eyes, she looks pained. It’s a weird expression on his Handler’s face, stretching it into something almost wrong-looking.

“Hawks we’ve gotta go, I don’t have any more blood,” she pleads, not reaching for him again, but looking slightly desperate. He doesn’t know what to say to that, really. On one hand, he can’t just up and leave, not when his other Handler had mentioned something about more information. But, on the other hand, Hawks is desperate to be gone by the time that she comes back for him. Toga slowly reaches out a hand, and, selfishly, he takes it. She holds him tightly, like he’ll collapse if she lets go, and its terrifying. He knows- he knows that this isn’t his Handler, it’s Toga and he’s (mostly) safe, but it’s his Handler's face and the only time she’s ever held him tightly was to drag him to painful appointments that left him shaky for hours afterwards.

When they reach the door, Hawks finally gives in to his fear and yanks his hand back. It hovers awkwardly in the air for a second as Toga turns back to stare at him.

“We don’t really hold hands here,” he excuses, tucking his hands into his pockets in a futile attempt to hide them just in case she tries again. She doesn’t, just nods and swings the door open. Hawks feels like he can breathe easier now that he’s out of the room. He almost feels high from relief, and he has to blink away the glare of the bright lights in the hallway. When he turns back, Toga isn’t there, but his Handler and her stern expression is waiting for him. If he thinks really hard, it’s Toga, but his brain is absolutely scrambled and trying to melt out of his ears. It takes effort to not shrink away, and he can’t stop the small ruffling of his feathers when he realizes just how close she is to him.

“Follow me,” his Handler commands, gripping his shoulder harshly. Hawks doesn’t dare move away. She marches him through the building, not slowing down in the slightest as she heads for the front doors. Nobody stops them, probably unwilling to get caught in her rage, and he can't blame them for it, especially since this is just an average Tuesday to them. Even after they’ve left the building, her hand doesn’t release the shoulder of his jacket; if anything, it tightens as she steers him confidently down a street, through an alleyway, half a block west, and then she shoves him through a swirling portal of darkness without even a ‘watch your step’ as a warning. He stumbles, still feeling dazed and terrified, and eats shit on a hard floor. His wings beat helplessly in the air, thrashing hard enough to hurt a little bit as he tries to work out where the hell he is.

His Handler steps in front of him, her hands hovering uncertainly and her face stricken with panic as he continues to roll around on the ground like a child. More movement, a shadow is all Hawks can see, but his Handler looks like she's about to witness a train crash and she can't look away.

“No-”

His Handlers shrill, cut-off warning is the only thing he gets before hands grab his shoulders and hold him down to the floor. Immediately, he goes limp, a high whine coming from his throat. His fingers are twitching, nails catching on the floor slightly and tugging at his fingertips painfully. It’s weak of him, but he can’t quite hold back the small sobs. They make him sound desperate, and he hates it, but there’s not much that he can do when he’s reduced to panting against the cold floor with his forehead pressed into it. Aside from his fingers, he’s frozen, he can’t move, and the worst part is that he knows he’s being ridiculous. She’s not even here. But, even though he was released seconds after he was grabbed and nobody’s touching him anymore, he can still feel hands and pressure and it hurts in all of the worst ways.

Hands, real this time, quickly dive under him and flip him onto his side before retreating just as fast. His body curls into itself before he can find the energy to stop it, his wings quivering where they are still splayed out, dead weight on his back that’s pinning him to the floor like a butterfly to a board. Sounds other than his own pathetic whining and gasping are slowly filtering in, and with them comes so much confusion that he would rather just be lost again.

“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry-”

His voice comes back to him in his surprise because what?

“What?” Hawks asks dazedly, not really understanding why she looks so upset, why she’s apologizing to him. Her wrinkled face is drooping, seeming to melt and shift like goo right before his eyes.

“You’re okay!” she almost yells, clearly wanting to get close but visibly choosing to keep her distance. He flinches at the loud noise, wanting to disappear into the floor. It’s just another sign that he’s not frozen by anyone but himself, and he grits his teeth against the realization that he’s weak. His Handler takes a tentative step closer to him and he instinctively goes limp again. As limp as his body is, his mind is running rampant; he doesn’t know where he is, just that he’s probably alone with someone who might break him and he knows that he wouldn’t be able to stop her.

“Hawks,” a male voice, he’s not alone with her and he can’t decide if that makes it better or worse. Hands trail over his body, one groping at his hip, and he can’t tell if they’re real or imaginary. His wings flap occasionally as the minutes tick by, like he’s in any condition to fly away, like he even could fly away from the commission.

“'should’ve stayed,” he whimpers softly, lips brushing the floor. He should’ve stayed with the league, he can’t handle this. Can’t handle being grabbed and frozen and used and hurt-

“I don’t know what the fuck he’s goin’ on about, but drop your old hag look.”

His Handler’s body, which Hawks had been keeping track of out of the corner of his eye, melts into a very naked teenage girl, and even the thought of someone not wearing clothes around him makes him curl into himself, just a little bit more. He’s practically a ball with wings now, like some sort of ugly Pokemon. Toga (it was Toga- it’s been Toga, he knew that), being unusually perceptive, must notice it because seconds later she’s pulling on clothes from a small bag that he hadn’t even noticed in her hands. The sight of her, fully clothed and here and not his Handler, lets him uncurl just a little bit. She cautiously smiles down at him, looking a little weary but that changes to relief when he does nothing but stare at her timidly from the floor.

Timidly, because he’s not sure what to do after having such a major freak-out in front of a (barely) organized group of villains after sneaking out before everyone else woke up like a one night stand. He struggles to his elbows, too tired and drawn out to even make an effort to look anyone in the eyes as he tries to shove himself up off of the floor. He’s wasting their time and he knows it, they know it, and time in a valuable thing when you’re anything but a normal citizen.

“Stay on the fuckin’ floor, we’ll come to you,” Dabi, who must have been there for the entire time, grumbles. The soft, comfortable looking blankets in his arms clash with the stormy expression on his face.

“A cuddle pile wasn’t scheduled for today, but it’s sweet that you want to,” his voice stutters embarrassingly, his throat still feeling too tight to actually release words. The attempt at humor is stilted at best, but Toga obligingly huffs a laugh, and it gives him the time he needs to pick himself up and throw on a mask. Just in time too, because seconds later, Dabi is dropping down next to him with a scowl firmly in place and all of his wonderful blankets. Toga, probably tempted by something so close to a sleepover, drops down next to the fire villain and settles in, stealing a blanket and clutching it to her chest like a stuffed animal.

“We’re not gonna ask about it,” Dabi tells them both, and Hawks tries his best to not be too obvious with his relieved sigh as Toga nods sullenly. If the look of ‘we’re talking later’ that he gets from Dabi says anything, he failed miserably. Dabi waves a lazy hand at Toga, “grill ‘im.”

Toga, not wasting any time at all, almost headbutts Hawks in her haste to lean closer in their already small triangle, “why’d you leave?”

“‘I don’t hate you’ isn’t an invitation to stay,” he replies, trying his best to word it in a way that she would understand without having to explain everything to her. Toga just cocks her head at him with an annoyed expression, like he’s being an idiot. Dabi is seemingly deciding to stay out of it for now.

“It is from Dabi!” she huffs, like that should be obvious. Hawks can’t even handle normal affection; if he’s expected to understand Dabi’s weird version of it then he’s pretty much fucked from the get-go. The fire villain looks just as confused as Hawks feels.

“I fuckin’ kissed you, birdie,” he says, not even sounding a little embarrassed with what he’s saying, like it should mean something to someone dirty like Hawks. Hawks, who’s been kissed more times than he can count, with not a single one meaning anything to him. He wishes that Dabi’s had been different, but he just couldn’t separate it from all of the others. They all blended together into a lipstick stained, shoulder grabbing mess that he can’t ever seem to untangle so he ignores it all together.

To Hawks, a kiss has never meant anything special, and he’s not sure how to tell these two that without sounding even more pathetic to them than he already does. Still, he does his best.

“Yeah, and how many people have you kissed that you wanted to stay?” he asks, voice getting quieter towards the end. Despite his mask being firmly in place, he can’t quite keep up with the loudness that people tend to attach to it. Dabi looks more blank than anything else, like he’s not sure what to feel about what Hawks is saying, like he doesn’t know how to explain himself because he’s never had to.

“I told you it would be fine,” he eventually settles on, like that should be enough. Toga’s eyes are flicking between the two of them like she’s watching a TV drama, though she looks a little unhappy about how things are going.

“And I was supposed to take your word for it?”

Dabi’s mouth opens, and then it closes and Hawks can hear him grinding his teeth in frustration. The answer, apparently, is a resounding ‘yes, you should’ve’. Like that has ever been an option for someone like him, someone who's wearing a thick collar around his neck that drags him to new lows everyday. Someone who's beaten but who's learned not to bite the hand that feeds them.

“Why did you let him leave?” Toga whines as Hawks walks away. He’s far enough away that he can’t hear Dabi’s reply, and a large part of him is stupidly grateful for it. If he had heard, he might have done something stupid, like stay.

Hawks takes a few minutes to pan out a funny story about feeling sick after too much to drink and meeting a cute guy at the party. He even adds in a request for the guy, who’d been taken out by Twice and Toga days ago, to call him, adding a flirty wink to it.

Unfortunately, it only fuels the fire.

Now there are tweets wondering who’s keeping him quiet.

Thankfully, his Handlers are too busy trying to look unassuming to demand a meeting with him.

Rumi, never one for phone calls, shows up unannounced a few days into his league-less misery. Hawks hadn’t even considered that he would miss them when he’d walked away for the second time, because the first time he hadn’t even had time to properly feel the loss before Toga was swooping in and taking him back. Still, Rumi is here and looking a mixture of sick and pissed off, like she’s been given a terrible situation that she can't just solve with an epic beat down like she usually does. Hawks doesn’t even get to fully open the door before she’s in his face.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

She bullies her way past the door frame before spinning to yell at him from inside the house. “I knew it, I should have listened to my dumb, fucking drunk head for once, I- I should have seen it, Gods- Hawks I fuckin’ congratulated you and you didn't say anything,” she rambles, looking more upset that he’s even seen her. He stays quiet, feeling really unsure and naked without having the time to prepare for this. Not knowing what to say is becoming a running theme in his life, apparently.

Her rant breaks into incoherent noises of pissed distress before she finally manages to string together a sentence that isn’t littered with curse words and clashing emotions

“Fuck- why didn’t you just tell me?”

Why didn’t he tell her? Hawks wasn’t scared (he was), or even hurt by her being proud of him getting some (Gods, it had hurt so bad). So instead of feeding into the charged atmosphere, he smiles and laughs lightly. “Didn’t think you’d be one to not get twitter updates, Thumper.”

She stares at him, seeing right through him like he’s made of slightly cloudy glass.

“The… assault thing was nothing but a nasty rumor stirred up by some busy-bodies, like most hero gossip. I tweeted about it yesterday.”

Hawks pauses, discouraged by her lack of response, “I- I fixed it,” he quickly throws some cheer back into his words, far too late to make it seem natural, “you got something against Twitter? Is it because it’s a bird app?”

She's staring at him- staring through him- with furrowed eyebrows and a ‘don’t try me or I'll bury your dumb ass twelve feet under’ expression to rival Aizawa’s. Hawks tries his best not to collapse under her judgmental gaze, and fails completely after only a few seconds. He can’t bring himself to lie to his best friend, not to her face.

“Look-”

“Do you even hear yourself?”

Hawks knows that he’s gaping like a fish, and it should mean something that Rumi isn’t even making a single joke about it.

“Do you even understand what you’re saying? Does it even reach you fucking brain? Tell me, I’m just so curious about what is even happening in that head of yours!”

“You don’t get it-”

“I don’t get it? I don’t fucking get it?” she pauses, heaving in a big breath to get even louder, “I’m a goddamned female hero, Hawks! I get this more than anyone!”

“You don’t!”

“I do-”

“It’s not the same thing! You’ve got no fucking clue what this is like!”

“Like hell I don’t! How do you even know-”

“Because you would have handled it already and you’d be in jail for murder, not here yelling at me!” Hawks shouts, defensive but unsure if the threat is his damning words or his friend who looks ready to dropkick him from the rooftop of his apartment building. He takes a deep breath and repeats, “you would have already handled it. So, no, you don’t get it!”

“Then tell me! Because it’s so fucking obvious that your tweet was a shitty cover that you typed out with a gun to your head,” she shouts, and her eyes widen slightly before she begins to visibly try to calm herself down. He realizes that he’s shaking, and he briefly wonders what he must look like to have someone with prey instincts trying to approach him when he’s an obviously distressed predator.

“Hawks,” she pleads, “what the hell happened to you?”

And Hawks breaks down just like he did in front of Dabi and Toga, except with less PTSD flashbacks (is he even allowed to have those, it’s not like- wait no, not saying no isn’t consent. According to google, sometimes saying yes isn’t even consent, which is really hard to wrap his head around because-) and a lot more tears.

“I just- I don’t even know where to start,” he whispers, ending in a pathetic whine that catches in his throat.

“From the beginning,” Rumi prompts, striding to his side and leading them, a massive uncoordinated lump, to his rarely used couch. She says it like she knows it won’t be easy, and the silent support of her dragging his head down to her shoulder is enough to get him talking stiltedly.

“I was seven-”

She inhales sharply and presses him closer, clearly unprepared for that can of worms, but ready to open it with him regardless. And Hawks loves her for it. So, after a few shaky breathes, he starts again.

“I was seven, and it was my mom,” his breathing shudders again, and Rumi just lets him pull his thoughts together, her usually rash personality subdued. He still feels pathetic, embarrassment spreading through him as something cold and heavy sits on his chest. His wings, which he hadn’t even noticed were quivering, stop shaking as Rumi gently runs her hands through them. She does it bravely, despite knowing that the soft feathers could turn against her in less than a second, and she doesn’t treat it like a chore. It encourages him enough to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

"I was eight, and I never saw him again," Hawks curls up tighter against her, his wings acting as a weird sort of blanket as they drape over every part of a body that they could reach. If she minds, Rumi doesn't say anything or move to shove them off.

“I was seventeen.”

Rumi kisses the top of his head, and she doesn’t even ask him who it was, trusting that he’ll tell her if she needs to know.

“It was five days ago.”

His wings shiver as her hands glide through them. “The party,” she says, voice filled with regret and guilt over it. He shakes his head against her shoulder, nosing up at her neck and breathing in, his own silent way of telling her it’s okay.

“It was three days ago.”

Her hands stutter to a halt, and, to her credit, she only sounds slightly murderous when she quietly asks him, “who?”

“Cathy Stewarts, my Handler,” Rumi freezes up slightly, but she keeps her hand moving.

“She’s number seventeen too, isn’t she.”

It’s not a question, but he nods anyway. It’s not like Rumi can do anything about it. Rather, he trusts that she won’t make a move without his permission, because she does know how to hold a grudge but she knows that this is important to him. It’s personal, and she knows that. Even better, she respects it-respects him- enough to not just charge in like he knows she wants to.

Somewhere, his phone is buzzing.

“I’ll totally kill her for you,” Rumi offers, and Hawks is only half sure that she’s kidding. Just in case she isn’t, he slowly shakes his head, which she sighs at but doesn’t try to fight him against it.

After he cries himself out on her shoulder, she still stays.

“Hey, Hawks, listen-”

Her hand is on his shoulder, which gives her the momentum needed to shove him away after he crashes his lips to hers. Still, she doesn’t leave him as his thoughts jumble themselves into a horrible mess because he’d thought that that was what she wanted but she’s shoved him away and pulled him closer and torn him apart and stitched him back together all in one go. Despite the mess in his head, she holds him as he shakes.

“What were you doing?” she asks softly, holding his head to her chest even as his fingers clamp around her wrist and in her hair.

“I don't- thanking you,” he whispers out shakily, scared that he’s ruined everything, that she’s going to shove him away. She should, he’s just as bad as his mother, as his Handler, as that guy from the party. Once again, she shatters his world with four short words.

“You don’t need to,” she whispers gently against his hair, holding him close as he cries into her chest like a little kid with a skinned knee. His grip in her hair has to be painful, and he tries his best to raise his shaky arms to stop pulling it, but he can’t really manage to lift it. When he lets out small distressed noises, like an injured animal, Rumi just smiles at him. It’s a lot less sharp and loud than it usually is, seeming less genuine, but it’s still a comfort. Neither of them can handle too much emotion, and this is really pushing boundaries.

“It’s fine, you big chicken. This is painless compared to that one time with the villain’s blender quirk,” she huffs a gentle laugh, aware that anything loud isn’t what Hawks needs right now. And as thrilled as he is to be compared to a guy with little knives in his palms that had been to blame for a horrible haircut on his friends part, he can’t help but laugh with her.

“I didn’t want to let you down,” he admits against the fuzzy pillow in his face hours later. Rather than a slap to the back of his head, she hugs him. It’s awkward, hugging isn’t a thing that they do, but it’s almost exactly what he needs and he melts into it.

“You wouldn’t have.”

“Okay, so,” Rumi rubs her hands together and glances around their coffee table set-up, “how’re we gonna play this?”

“Legally,” Aizawa proposes tiredly. His idea, as far as Hawks could gather with all of the legal jargon in it, is to root out the corruption and bring it all to trusted officers that he knows personally. Rumi, whose plan is simply labeled as ‘extreme and very illegal violence’, is so different that it involves a lot of destruction of property and maybe a little maiming. Surprisingly, Yamada seems to agree more with Rumi, to her delight and Aizawa’s mullish acceptance.

“Fuck no, next!”

A few days after the meeting with Aizawa and Yamada (who were almost scarier than the entire league put together, which was kind of expected from people who taught teenagers. Voluntarily.), Hawks wakes up from a dreamless sleep with sweat sticking to his skin because- what was it Toga had said? Dabi had bugged him?

Yeah, fuck that.

So, filled with warring emotions that just keep building, he flies and flies until he lands heavily in front of the league’s newest hideout, not even slowing enough to avoid a slight collision with the door. His shoulder aches, he’s limping slightly, and his wings are so puffed up that it makes walking through the doorway a little more difficult than it should be, but it doesn’t slow him down too much.

The best part? Nobody looks surprised to see him in the slightest. In fact, they all look like they just woke up to meet him at the door.

“You’re all waiting for me,” Hawks says, only a little bit surprised by it.

“No,” Sinner says with a soft sigh, “We’re down here because, yeah, we knew you’d be back eventually, but it’s movie night,” he explains, tiredly staring Hawks down as he slowly sifts through the weekly choices without even looking at them (It must be Twice’s turn to pick; the guy always picks out around five and he has someone else pick out of those. The problem? His taste sucks). At Hawks’ confused look, Kurogiri gracefully tacks on a quick, “your descent to the door was, quite frankly, loud and incredibly hard to miss.”

His wings slowly starting to settle behind him, Hawks sighs. There’s no way that he can stay mad at these guys; Mr. Compress is wearing a fucking onesie.

“But you life 360’d me, which is kinda a dick move,” Hawks mutters, being sure to broadcast his irritation so that they couldn’t see the mild panic that threatens to overtake him at the reminder. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but even the idea of them knowing his exact location for the past couple of days (a pathetic list of here, his apartment, and the commission building) feels like ants are nesting in his wings.

“As if we couldn’t have guessed that you went to their base,” Shigaraki says, giving him a look that screams ‘be less predictable if you don’t want to get caught’, “it was an audio bug,” he sniffs disdainfully.

The league, not making much of an impact with their own goals of destruction of society, sure are great at tearing Hawks’ life to pieces and dancing on the ashes.

Because he would rather they bug him and know his every location down to the inch than have them know what all happens when they aren’t there to loom over him.

Everyone else has stiffened slightly, like this topic is making them uncomfortable. Good, Hawks can’t help but think viciously. If they think this is bad for them, they should imagine how this feels for him.

But they heard, they know, and even if he hasn’t worn his hero outfit, the only one he’d had left after he’d abandoned his bag here, anywhere but the commission-

He’s still fucked.

They might not know about what Rumi, Aizawa, and Yamada are planning, but they sure as hell know what happened in that office. Which is so much worse; all they know is that he sat back and let it happen, again, and that he was dragged here afterwards, where he proceeded to have a breakdown on the floor. They don’t know about his talk with Rumi, about the plan, about anything else- just that he’s a pathetic excuse for a hero.

Never one for silences that didn’t follow news or speeches about Stain, Spinner speaks up again to fill it, and he makes things worse in the process.

“It was a rescue mission, fighting to get you from a corrupt society’s clutches-”

Hawks is quick to jump in, “I didn’t need your help-”

Dabi snorts at him without humor, “you absolutely did, Birdie.”

“Look guys, we don’t know! He crushed the bug pretty early on after he was left with that one lady! Probably sat on it, fuckin’ fatass!” Twice adds in, which calms Hawks down significantly, because these guys actually don’t know shit unless Toga’s told them.

“It’s more likely that he was thrown to the ground,” Compress chimes in tightly, like he doesn’t even want to be here, having this conversation. Hawks can relate to him now more than ever. Hawks can feel his wings give an aborted flap, which Dabi reads like an open book.

He almost seems hesitant to ask, “how far did she get?”

Nobody else will look him in the eye now, quiet as ghosts as they wait for his answer. And even though he knows that he doesn’t have to answer, he wants to. But it’s not something that he’s just going to tell them, not without knowing why they’d bugged him in the first place.

The nervous swallow that Hawks does feels like acid and glass in his throat.

“You bugged me.”

“We bugged you one time, and-” Dabi deflects, obviously trying to get back to the point. Despite the cold night and the holes in the metal walls around them, Hawks feels too hot. It feels suffocating, being this close to Dabi, and it’s not in a good way. He has to resist the urge to claw at his own throat because he can’t breathe-

“You bugged me-”

“Does it really matter, birdie? You didn’t tell us not to-”

Dabi cuts himself off, and Hawks isn’t sure if it’s because of whatever his face is doing right now or if the villain in front of him has finally gotten tired of the conversation. Or maybe, he’s realized how close he was to Hawks’ own words just a few days ago.

“It was a bad idea,” he suddenly says, staring Hawks in the eyes and throwing sincerity in his face. It’s supposed to be an apology, and it almost misses the mark entirely.

A bad idea. An invasion of what is left of his privacy, all boiled down to a bad idea. Drugging a hero at a hero party is a bad idea. Not telling Rumi what had happened immediately after it did had been a bad idea. Turning Mic and Eraser- Yamada and Aizawa- away when they were just worried about him had been a bad idea.

Trying to get something out of an electrical socket with a fork was a bad idea.

Somehow, this felt worse.

"Why?" Hawks demands, but his heart isn't in it. Dabi seems almost hesitant to respond, but his expression is open in a way that screams honesty.

"I knew that you wouldn't stay."

And as honest as it sounds, Hawks bristles like a cat, "really-"

“If we hadn’t bugged ya we wouldn’ have been able to help.”

“I was doing fine-”

“The audio implied that you required assistance,” Kurogiri interrupts him, his yellow eyes staring Hawks down and daring him to prove them wrong.

“It was a new mission, a side quest that led to a character arc that worried us enough to come and save you,” Shigaraki almost sounds earnest, like he needs Hawks to understand what he’s saying, like it’s important. Toga has been suspiciously quiet the entire time, and he knows that she didn’t tell them anything about what she found. It restores all of the lost trust and then some, because when it really comes down to it, they mean well. Hawks just isn't used to people openly caring about him. The last few weeks have been a roller coaster ride without a seat belt for him emotionally, and he's ready for it to just stop. So when she meets his eyes, he just nods to her, giving her the go-ahead of a lifetime to explain just what had been happening.

“When I got there, she was standing over him, and-” her breathing hitches a little bit, “and I was too late,” she sniffles, looking so much younger than she had minutes before. Hawks probably shouldn't have passed her the torch, in hindsight, because it probably pretty hard to talk about. But when he says it he either sounds too detached or breakdown, and now's not the time to worry people even more.

“She was flushed, and,” she turns to him, her face becoming even more miserable looking, “you looked so blank, like you weren’t even there.”

A shocked hush has fallen over everyone else as they stare at Toga while she fills them in. Everyone but Dabi, that is, who stares at him with such a soft expression that Hawks isn’t even sure where to begin with pulling its meaning apart. It's angry, but not at him, and even if Dabi says he doesn't hate him, even if he kissed him on that ratty old couch that Shigaraki is camped out on at the moment, Hawks has a hard time believing it.

“You were scared of me!” Toga wails, loud enough that his attention snaps back to her. “I thought that you were just pretending to be scared when we were leaving, like I was being mean, but when I pushed you through you just broke and I didn’t know what to do!”

She throws out a finger at Dabi, “you scared us! You wouldn’t respond, and we didn’t know why because I know you knew it was me,” Toga sounds absolutely miserable, lightly pulling at a strand of her hair, “you called me my name, in the office. I’m sorry for scaring you.”

Quickly realizing that Toga thought this was her fault, Hawks jumps in, “it’s okay, really-” but she cuts him off with a wail.

“It’s not!”

“I hope you know,” Dabi cuts in smoothly, “that we have a hit-list that extends past All Might thanks to you.”

He cuts through the tension like a knife, and Toga goes from being in tears to looking a little upset but she’s nodding enthusiastically. And she isn’t the only one who seems ready to fight for the scraps of his honor that are left. Even Kurogiri, who’s so composed that it’s scary sometimes, nods in agreement. When he catches Spinner nodding along, he stops him.

“The commission isn’t full of false heroes,” Hawks reminds him, raising an eyebrow.

Spinner shrugs at him, “it’s close enough for me.”

“This is going to be a wonderful show!” Compress cheers, his marbles glinting from in between his gloved fingers.

Hawks is careful not to let the hero group and the villain group meet face to face before he can explain the new situation, but he does make them aware of each other. To his surprise, both sides call a truce and respect it, going so far as to toss each other nods as they wreak havoc.

By the time that the sun is rising, every single file about the child soldiers and the grooming and the lies is released to the public by an unnamed hero (Eraserhead, who managed to stay undercover, even though anyone who knows him is going to see his fingerprints all over it), broadcaster across radio stations (Yamada, who does a horrible job of pretending like he has nothing to do with it), and a lot of the commission goons are beaten bloody with excessive force (Rumi, who grins like a feral cat the entire time).

The rising sun spills pinks and oranges across the sky, which clash with the black plumes of smoke coming from the commission building. Every picture taken by the journalists shows the blue fire still eating away at the structure, the crumbling stone that hadn’t even had a crack hours before, and the blood everywhere that could only be the work of a lot of blades. One decorative pillar is cut cleanly and inexplicably in half, which baffles everyone who sees it.

To a blind person, it would look like the league hadn’t been involved at all.

## Afterword

End Notes

> Please leave a comment if you really liked this and I'll respond as soon as I can! Also, if I need to update the tags because I missed something, PLEASE TELL ME and I'll fix it asap! <3

> Quote that inspired this chapter: "Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. This is what love is.”
> -Welcome to Nightvale

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