Trouble

It's a large lecture hall that Enji is given this semester, auditorium-style and able to seat around one hundred students. One hundred minds either hungry to learn or starving for something more exciting, because General Chemistry is a required class for most of them. They're his captive audience for a little under an hour, three times a week.

One hundred eyes that lock to Enji when he clears his throat.

He introduces himself and skims through the syllabus, taking note of those who begin writing dates in their planners, because he'll be pleased to see them at his office most of all. The competent ones are always a welcome sight. After his preface he waits a moment and then clears his throat again when no one asks any questions. He starts like he always does, the opening he always uses, "I'll assume most of you have had some exposure to the basics of-"

Enji is cut off prematurely, interrupted by the careless swinging of the auditorium double doors. Both of them. It's a grand entrance for the type of student he can stereotype from a single glance because god, he's dealt with them every semester. The too-good-for-this-class, the unbothered, the late since day one.

And this student's eyes among the hundred other pairs - Enji can tell that they'll be his least favorite.

"I'm glad you've decided to join us, only eight minutes late on the first day?" Enji has a routine for this too. He singles them out because young adults are so predictable, they hate unwanted spotlights more than anything else in the world.

It always works.

There are a few nervous chuckles. Enji is already moving past it, turning his notes to remember his train of thought when he hears something unexpected, a reply: "It won't happen again, cross my heart."

Enji lifts his head up in an instant. Watches the boy pad down the stairs instead of sitting at the top like he expected, like any other student would've done had they come in and gotten that blinding spotlight. Enji makes a point to wait until he's seated, now, following him with iced-over eyes and an unamused frown. The blond walks too confidently. The steps he takes are bigger than him and for the first time in a while, Enji has to admit that he's interested almost as much as he's unimpressed.

The student sits in the very front row. Of course he does.

And when he's finally settled, Enji sees the sight he should've expected by this point, a shit-eating grin from someone who thinks the world revolves around them. Enji has no patience for it already. He'd be quite content if he never saw it again, because if trouble wore a mask it'd look a lot like this: messy blond hair, a black leather jacket, a cascade of earrings, and- is that a touch of makeup on both points of each almond-shaped eye?

Trouble.

Enji starts his lecture over again without sounding the least bit bothered. Because he's not, he's not bothered at all. He's dealt with far worse than crooked smiles and comebacks. This boy hasn't done anything more than cause a minute's disruption - a minute bathing in the spotlight which seems to excite him rather than terrify him.

So from now on, Enji simply won't shine that light any more.

Fifty minutes pass fast now that he's ignoring the biggest distraction in the room, and it's soon time to wrap it up. He speaks to two students that walk down to greet him while all the rest funnel out. They're chemistry majors and just want to introduce themselves; he makes a mental note for them as well, Ashido and Yaoyorozo. But as they give their spiel, Enji can't help but notice the front row still isn't empty. Trouble is there, tapping his pencil and staring right through the back of Ashido's head - right at him.

When he sees Enji looking back, he smiles like the devil's invitation to sin.

"It was nice meeting you, Dr. Todoroki, see you on Wednesday!" One of the girls - she has black hair spiked into a ponytail, and kind eyes - says her farewell and shakes his hand. It's firm and confident, which is something he always takes note of. He nods and they both turn to make their way up the stairs, probably off to their next class. It's a shame Trouble doesn't follow their lead.

"Did you need something as well?" Enji tries not to sound passive aggressive, because he's a very straightforward man. He's not about to make a rival out of a student who is - without a doubt - the average slacker who happens to be a college pretty boy, too. It's the definition of a bad combination. They're the ones who knock on his office door for favors and curved grades instead of help, because they think they've earned everything out of life already.

"I am sorry for coming in late, I hope you can forgive me," the blond is chewing on the end of his pen and trying not to smile. He sounds genuine, but trouble is always good at acting like something it's not. Enji packs his briefcase while he replies, "It's not a matter of forgiveness. I don't appreciate interruptions." He's pointed and honest. There are no emotions to find.

"I'll just have to be eight minutes early from now on."

"That's not necessary-"

"Oh, it's completely necessary. I hate making bad impressions."

He twitches when the student rushes in during the split-second pause, interrupting just like Enji told him he couldn't stand. But Trouble can't be poking fun at Enji's pet peeves, he wouldn't dare, he doesn't have the gall-

"You do?" But it's not a question so much as pointing out the lie where it stands. This conversation is without a doubt worse than no impression at all. Trouble seems intent to keep making it worse, still; he gets up and slings his backpack strap around one shoulder as he replies, "Absolutely." He makes his way down the row, swinging around the corner like a bad joke to meet Enji at the front as he zips up his case.

"I'm Hawks," the blond says, holding out his hand. This must truly be a bad joke, because what kind of name is that? What kind of nickname, even? But Enji refuses to be shaken or caught off guard, especially since Hawks probably has a comeback planned for that exact scenario. So he joins their hands without any hesitation and looks Trouble straight in the eyes, "Hawks," Enji acknowledges.

The student squeezes his hand tight. For some reason, Enji is unsettled to find his palm so soft, so small, so greedy when shaking the one that dwarfs his. Hawks predictably refuses to be the one to let go first.

And Hawks says it anyway, even though Enji hadn't prompted him, "The name comes with a story if you're wondering."

"I'm not."

"Good, then, cause it's a long one, and I think I have some chapters to read about... valence shells?"

Trouble hadn't opened his book the entire class (not that Enji could know, not that he was watching out of the corner of his eye). So there's no earthly reason he should know exactly what the next chapter holds, but the fact that he does simply confirms Enji's suspicion: he's retaking General Chemistry. He failed his first time through. Enji should've seen it already in his age and demeanor because he certainly isn't a freshman.

Hawks may be retaking it, but he still acts like he knows everything under the sun.

"Valence shells and electronegativity," Enji clarifies, making it obvious in his stance that he wants to leave now. That the last place he wants to be is in a lecture hall five minutes past his time, caught alone with a student trying to fill the whole room with their own ego. Hawks just smiles at him and digs deep, shoots sparks with his golden eyes, tries to get any sort of reaction now that he knows Enji likes to play stoic. It's like a game to him. To pretty boys, it's all a game.

"Huh. sounds fascinating."

Enji blows air out of his nose, it's close to a scoff, "They're the fundamentals. Make sure you know them well."

He starts walking away, then, because Enji is suddenly very eager to get out of this room and far away from the boy who calls himself Hawks. But he should've known the last words wouldn't be his.

"Have a little faith in me, Todoroki."

Enji chokes to a stop halfway up the auditorium steps. The way Hawks used no title, no 'Dr.' after all the education Enji went through to get it - it makes him seethe. It's utterly unprofessional. They don't have that kind of relationship, they don't have any kind of relationship. Enji wants nothing to do with him.

"Sorry, doc. Dr. Todoroki," Hawks adds, but only after he's made sure his previous comment had sunken in. It's obvious that Trouble likes to win. Enji will just have to beat him out of the habit with false politeness and harsh rejections.

"I'm looking forward to having you," Enji turns his head slightly behind him and lies through his teeth, his tone too formal to make up for it. Professors, after all, have an image to maintain, and it won't be cracked by a lone wolf trying his best to be a bad boy. He has things to teach and other students to talk to. Ones who actually give a damn.

Enji tries his hardest to pretend that Hawks' quiet chuckle doesn't irk him, or grate at him, or that god forbid that it doesn't excite him when the boy says back, "I'll see you Wednesday."

It's an obvious statement, they have class three times a week and that's one of them. Any of Enji's hundred students could've said it to him the same way, with that same smile, looking so eagerly at their professor. It's a goodbye and a formality and Enji will think nothing more of it.

So why, why from this student, from Trouble himself, had it ended up sounding like some backroom promise?

It's two days later and Enji has been successful in pushing the encounter from his mind. He gets to the empty auditorium ten minutes early, like always, to load his Powerpoint and set out his notes.

It's two days later and Hawks is the first one to arrive. He gets to the auditorium eight minutes early, just like he'd promised, and he retakes his seat in the very front row. He's wearing that smile again, the same one that's been stitched to his face from the moment he'd walked in late on his first day.

But it's not like Enji is looking.

"Morning," Hawks says cheerfully. It feels all-too-intimate in this absurdly large room with only them as occupants.

Enji raises his eyes at Hawks as he carefully takes papers out of his briefcase. "I'm shocked that you followed through." He doesn't know why he's humoring the boy - it gains him nothing. Nothing worthwhile. When Trouble leans forward to answer Enji confirms that yes, yes, it's definitely eyeliner on the very edges of his eyes, thick rings lining the shell of his ear, a metal bead bit between his front teeth as he pokes his tongue forward and smiles- oh. Wait.

That last one is- it's interesting.

"I don't go back on my word, I'm a people-pleaser." Hawks pulls a book out of his pack and lets it fall an inch to the table. The loud smack is for dramatics, for him to brag about doing the bare-minimum assigned reading. Enji can see colored page markers sticking from the sides of the textbook, and he can see that cocky look on his face too - how could anyone miss it?

Enji is honest when he replies, "I'm not so easy to please," but it might be a little too forthcoming and a lot more ambiguous than he wants it to be. He backs it up a step and chugs along to add, "Punctuality and effort are good places to start."

Hawks' golden eyes flash like a dare, and the tone of his voice is too close to liquid when he says his little comeback, "I must be a good boy then, 'cause so far I've checked off both today."

Enji feels his chest rise with a deep and tortured breath. The phrase is meant to be provocative, he knows this without a question, without a doubt. It's scratching just under his skin, A good boy. Hawks believes that he is, after all he'd read his book and taken notes just like Enji'd asked him to.

What is he playing at? What is he hoping to get out of this obnoxious and forward persona he's putting on, because Hawks can't really be someone like this. No real, live person exists who's anything like him. Another student suddenly enters the auditorium and saves Enji from dignifying that with a direct response, and with it he makes a vow to himself: not one more thought will be dedicated to the likes of Hawks.

Enji's lecture is exactly fifty-five minutes long.

He sees an empty chair in his head whenever he looks at the front row, an empty face where that coy smile is plastered, and there's no such thing as black-painted fingernails on a raised hand when Trouble is the only one with the answer to a question. Hawks won't back down. He won't leave it alone. Enji has to call on him eventually, because there's no one left but him.

"A hydrogen bond, 'cause the atom the Hydrogen is bonded to is electronegative." Hawks' answer is correct, and Enji can't help but think about him, amend his impression of him. This boy is no slacker at all.

But god- the only thing Enji finds bubbling up to meet that right answer is a very undeserved: Good boy.

Enji should've known that Trouble would come to his office sooner or later. That it wasn't enough to arrive eight minutes early to class for the past week, he has to take up time and space in his professor's office, too. He's stubborn for attention. And although he's not a slacker, he puts on the persona of one because he must like how it feels to be underestimated.

"Come in," Enji sighs when he sees him against the doorway - he can't very well tell Hawks to get out of his sight. He's still a student. The burden is on Enji to bear, and Hawks gets exactly the kind of sole attention he's been seeking.

The boy plops down in the chair in front of Enji's desk. He's leaning closer than he should, so close that Enji can see the black, triangular lines in the corners of his eyes that make him look so exotic. No sooner has Hawks sat down before he's getting himself comfortable, digging right under Enji's skin and going so far as to shrug off his dark-wash jean jacket to reveal a mere tank top underneath.

Hawks wiggles in his seat. He twists his head around to take in Enji's office, because he's far too observant about everything.

"I had a question about these equations," Hawks supplies, finally.

Enji stares at him. He doesn't have to try to look intimidating - he's a large man with a scar, hellfire red in his hair and eyes that hold practiced indifference. But even Enji's composure is shaken when he finds himself looking somewhere dangerous, at the barbel outline under the boy's top. It's more interesting than the pierced tongue was - a lot more - but that's the last of his thoughts on it. It's the only one he'll allow.

His blood feels too close to boiling already.

"Equations - care to be a little more specific?"

Hawks digs a paper out of his backpack, "Maybe," he says, sliding it onto to desk. "Are you married?"

Enji blinks. The question is so abrupt, so personal, and he's been well prepared for unprofessionalism from his students but not anything like this. Certainly not this. He follows Hawks' eyes to his own criss-crossed hands, his golden wedding band, but by now it might as well be a ghost on his finger. He is married, technically, but instead of saying so he feeds into his own guilt about it. "No."

Enji isn't sure why he humors the question at all, let alone lies about it. He pulls his hand away and into his lap.

But that smirk on Hawks' face is proof that he sees right through Enji, anyway.

"I don't really get when to use this one, or this one." Hawks is back on track in an instant, pointing to two equations that he's already written out on the piece of paper. Enji has to shake out his nerves before replying.

"Did you read through the book's explanation?" It's always the first thing Enji asks and he sticks to it, even now. Tries not to dwell on Hawks' own question that he still isn't past; are you married? I want to know, tell me the truth, professor.

"Yeah, a couple of times. It didn't make any sense." Hawks leans an elbow on the desk, resting his head in his hand and staring with a sugary look. "I think I like you better than the book."

Enji frowns. Hawks is like a little firecracker hovering over a match. He's unpredictable, too confident, far too pretty for his own good. Nothing worthwhile ever comes from someone like him, not when it's already led to a moment like this: Hawks staring at Enji like he's some kind of god, playing with that metal bead in his tongue, trying to get a rise out of his professor to-

To what?

Enji doesn't know why and refuses to wonder. It doesn't seem to matter, it's working its magic anyway. Something hot is pooling in his abdomen seeing that tongue piercing, that damn barbel through Hawks' shirt that he can only guess sits through his nipple.

You're not a good boy.

"Some students just need it explained differently." Enji is good at hiding his thoughts, his tone stays absolutely level.

"Sure," Hawks smiles, they keep coming one after another like bullets to dodge. "I've always had trouble focusing on things that don't interest me."

At that, Enji stops hiding his reactions. He scoffs in disbelief, "You're telling your chemistry professor that chemistry doesn't interest you?"

Hawks gives him a look so strong that there's no ignoring it, now.

"I'm telling my chemistry professor that he interests me a lot more than a book."

Enji clears his throat. He'd been able to hold onto his doubts only because he didn't want the consequences of being right, but there's no such thing as pretending now. Enji doesn't want to deal with it, any of it. Hawks is coming on to him. This student, this cocky little attention whore, is making it a point to flirt with his professor. A man twice his age and half his patience.

The corner of Enji's mouth twitches violently, "Maybe another visit to this chapter will help if you keep an open mind," he offers a way out. He wants to push Trouble out of his office before this goes on any longer. He wants to drag him to student affairs by the collar and force him drop this class, make threats in his ears, make him take it again online or with another professor who isn't Enji.

And now, right this second, he wants to push Hawks against a wall and-

"Doc, my mind is open already. Wouldn't it be easier if you filled in the blanks yourself?"

Hawks is choosing his words so carefully, deliberately, teasingly. This isn't happening. Enji makes a tight fist with both hands and rushes through explanations of those two fucking equations he'd brought. He talks through it too quickly and ignores how Hawks is staring so dreamily, staring until Enji breaks it. "Do you understand, Hawks." Enji prays for a yes, he can't stand being in this room any longer.

"Perfectly."

Enji doesn't know why he asks, "Is there anything else?" It must be a habit after so long, but Hawks saves him and puts his folder away. He's turning around to swing his backpack over his back to leave and- and there are suddenly wings. The tips of deep red wings creeping onto his shoulder blades from underneath his tank top, the edges of a massive tattoo hidden under his clothes.

Enji hates what it does to him. That he's already wondering how big they are, how they wrap around the muscles of his back, how exactly that tattoo looks on him. Hawks turns his head the slightest bit and catches him looking, not that Enji was being subtle about it at all.

The boy looks utterly pleased with himself. He swipes his hand through golden locks of hair like he's bashful about the attention, but god, is that such a lie.

"They're hard not to notice, huh?" Trouble slaps the palm of his hand against one shoulder, right on the feathered tip of a wing. Enji swallows at the sound it makes. "And that story I mentioned before, they're part of it."

The story of why a twenty-something college student wearing his desires on his sleeve goes by the name 'Hawks?' and has wings to match? Enji can't pretend not to be curious now, but he can choose not to act on it. "It doesn't interest me where you got your nickname."

"Actually, it's my legal name," Hawks clarifies, eating up the confusion on Enji's face. There's nothing Trouble finds so fun as fucking with the one he's set his eyes on. It's like Hawks is swallowing up the whole room, now, he's a walking disaster, turning everything upside-down and taking pride in playing dirty.

Are you married?

Enji can feel his ears going red, he abhors being played with in every sense of the word. "Hawks." He spins in his chair to go back to working at his desktop again, refusing to even make eye contact because no one deserves it less. "I'll see you in class."

"I'm looking forward to it."

He doesn't come to class for two weeks.

Enji doesn't let it bother him, but after day three it's starting to and that's what's so confusing. Frustrating. Isn't this exactly what Enji wanted? The boy is out of his hair now, he's probably decided to drop the class of his own volition. It doesn't matter why.

It doesn't matter where he is instead.

It doesn't matter that Enji won't see Hawks in the front row with that needy smile, strolling into his office, wrapped in his thoughts when he finds himself slipping.

Not anymore.

The first exam is tomorrow, and Enji can tell that his students are stressed. There was a line to talk to him that formed the second class had ended. He can also tell from experience that they've been putting off studying because General Chemistry is low on the totem pole for most - and usually he'd just let them fend for themselves, but he's been feeling generous. For no particular reason at all.

He sends a mass email that outlines late office hours; 6pm-8pm is more than fair. Enji feels secure in his charity when he sees over twenty students - twenty students, and one insufferable boy that he'd written off his class roster and out of his head, although two words is all it takes for him to reclaim his spot at the center of Enji's attention:

"Miss me?"

Hawks doesn't say a proper hello or offer any explanation for his extended absence. He's simply here, out of thin air with a wolfish grin and another tank top that's too small on purpose. It rests an inch above the waist of his pants. Even with a jacket on its hard to miss that crescent of skin - gold, bare skin on his waist.

Enji glances at the clock to see it ticking past 8:10.

"I didn't. And I don't have any time for students who skip class." He's not dismissive as some sort of punishment, it's a mantra he's always practiced. Enji leaves it at that and starts packing up his things because his day is up. He's not Dr. Todoroki, he's Enji, and Enji wants to be ten miles from Trouble at all times.

Hawks waves his hands in front of his chest as if admitting defeat, "I know, I know," and then he's walking over to the desk instead of the chair, hoisting himself up to sit right on the side and lean back on his hands. Enji should've expected something like this from him, baiting him out of his comfort zone. Enji would never permit any student to be so casual with him.

But, like everything else, Hawks gets a pass and Enji lets him ride.

"I suppose you have an excuse, boy."

Enji doesn't even realize he'd slipped up until Hawks replies, "Only if you wanna hear it, old man."

His eyes narrow, his heart picks up, but after a moment he just sighs. It isn't worth it. "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt if you take the exam tomorrow."

"Oh, I was already planning on it," Hawks tilts his head, "I'd hate to disappoint you."

There's something about the way he looks right now, the way he talks, it shifts Enji's guts around on the inside. It happened so fast. Hawks is putting himself on display while the tension thickens around them, so heavy that Enji can't even see straight and all he can think is that he'd like to leave, now. He can't stand this boy. He can't stand how that smile tugs at something deep and buried. Enji puts his coat on and glowers at Hawks when he doesn't get the message; he's still leaning back, he's still showing off the skin of his midriff. He's still sitting on Enji's fucking desk.

"Doc, it looks like something's bothering you," Hawks wonders.

Enji wrinkles his nose, in either disgust or interest, curiosity or caution, he doesn't know. He doesn't know. "Don't concern yourself with me."

A pause.

"Am I  bothering you?"

The question hangs above his head like a brick. Enji thought the answer would be an obvious and instantaneous yes, but maybe it's a little more complicated than he thought, because it takes longer than a second, than a minute. He can't lie out loud. When he looks at Hawks again, things are hardly so simple.

"No," Enji replies. It feels like the right answer.

That feeling is short-lived as Hawks turns his head to the side and hides his smile in his collarbone. "Is it something else, then?"

If Enji was crazy, he might think that Hawks had just ever-so-slightly spread his legs. But the boy isn't that bold. He wouldn't dare. Enji rounds the corner of his desk and stops in front of Hawks to look him in the eyes, warn him and hope he doesn't take it as a challenge. "I'm leaving, and unless you'd like to sit in the dark alone, I suggest you do too."

"I don't mind the dark." Hawks pauses in consideration. "Are the late hours new?"

"This was a one-time ordeal." 

You'd know if you came to class, so where were you instead? A good boy doesn't skip, a good boy does his work.

"What if I can only make it here after 6?" He keeps prodding, as if Enji would make an exception for anyone, especially him. Enji's reply is him putting his metaphorical foot down. "Then you're out of luck."

Hawks seems amused rather than defeated. He sits up, lifting his chin to stare at Enji because he's so much taller like this, and Enji stares right back down at his student trying to figure out what to make of him. How to act when Hawks tries to close the space.

"I don't know, I'm feeling pretty lucky."

Enji is a stranger in his own skin when he hears it, when a step forward nearly puts him between Hawks' legs. There's no such thing as too close or too much anymore, not when his student is sitting here asking for it. 

"Are you, now?"

Enji looms above him as their knees brush together and he sees Hawks flinch at the proximity, proving that he isn't all put-together. There are things that make him squirm, too. It's one thing to cross fine lines and boundaries around a professor, but it seems like Hawks can't even take it when Enji fights back for once. The boy is looking straight ahead, trying not to meet Enji's eyes because he's probably nervous, caught in Enji's shadow, sweating and biting his lip and-

His face is the most awful shade of red.

The second Enji sees it he's gone. He's walking a fiery path right out of his office. The glare on his face might look like impatience but it's something that runs far deeper now, to his bones, to the heat pooling in his groin. At the door he waits for Hawks to leave so he can shut it, slam it, trap in whatever fucking toxic air is in that room, because Enji shouldn't be having thoughts like these, wants like these - he's a professor. He's 46 for fuck's sake. Hawks is nothing more than a distraction gone sour.

The last thing he should've wanted was to hold the boy's flushed cheeks between his fingers and ask what made him so red. He shouldn't have liked the view of Hawks below him, looking so small, so willing.

Enji needs a cigarette. He hasn't touched one in years, he hates relying on anything, and being driven to the point of wanting one again is enough to drive him mad. Absolutely furious. Hawks is still standing by his desk looking horrifically confused; but what did he think would happen? What did he think?

"Get out of my office." Enji's almost scares himself with how deep and guttural his anger sounds.

Hawks knows better than to disobey now.

"I'm- I'm sorry, am I missing something?" He asks once he's out, looking like he didn't expect such a sudden rejection. God, he sounds so rattled.

"You need to go home," Enji says as he locks his office door. He stares at the handle a little longer so he doesn't have to turn around and see that pair of begging, sunset eyes.

Hawks doesn't move.

"Boy, I said leave."

When Enji finally drags himself over to look, Hawks looks confused. Dejected. Maybe even a little hurt. And the fact that he's feeling any of those things means that Enji made the right call, because this can't go any further, it's gone on for far too long already. Humoring the advances of a college pretty boy should've been the last thing he ever did.

"Alright, alright, I'm going," Hawks spins around towards the stairwell, walking with a confidence he doesn't deserve after the look Enji had seen on his face. Even still, he calls out over his shoulder and pretends it didn't bother him. "Nice to see you again, doc."

Enji watches until he's gone. And then although that stairwell lets out near where Enji's car is parked, he has this awful, sinking feeling that Hawks is waiting to catch him outside, and they'll both make mistakes if he goes through with it.

So taking the elevator sounds like the right decision.

While it shutters down three floors, Enji is left in silence to think about him, wondering exactly what scene would play out if Hawks was locked in the elevator with him.

Hawks follows through with his promise and takes the exam, although Enji isn't surprised in the least to see him.

He's the first one done, too, which is a little surprising, but even from a cursory glance at it on the table, Enji can see there's no bullshit or guesswork. Hawks is a good boy, he's done the work to impress his professor. Nothing about him is disingenuous, it's just layered under someone who gets too caught up in messing around.

When Hawks goes back to his seat to collect his things and catches Enji staring, he winks. 

Enji's chest roars with something altogether primal.

Hawks comes to his office that afternoon. Enji hates that he was both expecting and counting on it, grading his students' tests while distracted, looking at his watch too often for it to be about time. When he feels Hawks' presence in the doorway, he makes an executive decision and doesn't look up from the exam he's marking when he says, "Tell me."

Enji can't pretend he isn't interested, now.

"Excuse me?" Hawks is standing just inside the room now, he's waiting for permission to enter like that had ever mattered to him before.

"You've been so eager to tell your story, so let's hear it, Hawks."

He finally understands. While Enji refuses to look up, even still, he can feel how wild the grin on Hawks' face is, how big his eyes grew for that split-second after getting the permission he's been itching for. Enji's rejection from the other day fades from both their minds. He doesn't know if he really cares about the backstory enough to ask for it personally, but he'll hear it out. He'll bite down, just a little, just enough to keep himself satiated.

"It's sort of personal," Hawks explains, and Enji doesn't know what the comment means until he hears the door shut. It's fine, really, it's fine. There's no danger sealing them in a room alone together. Enji has been at this for twenty years without any slips, and he's certainly not going to let Hawks be his very first mistake.

"You really wanna hear it?"

"That's what I said."

Enji finally puts down his pen when Hawks sits in the chair in front of his desk. He looks absolutely smitten at the prospect of telling his secret - or is it only because Enji asked to hear it?

"Okay. Ah, when I was younger I really loved Superman," Hawks begins. Enji gives his full attention, like he's ever given Hawks less than that. "Obviously, charming and strong and all that, but really I just loved watching him fly."

Enji furrows his brows. It's almost too obvious the connection between flying and his name, his red-tinted wings - but then again, Enji doesn't ever know what to expect from him.

"So a few years ago I went sky diving because why the hell not? Who doesn't want to fly?" Hawks bites his lip, and for the first time it isn't to get a reaction. "My chute malfunctioned or something, I couldn't get it open and I was falling so fast, it was wild. I remember how hard it was to breathe.

And I was thinking that wow, I'm really gonna die, huh?"

Enji isn't breathing either.

"But I stopped panicking almost as soon as I started, and instead I just kind of. Enjoyed the view," he smiles, lost in the memory, "Because that's what Superman sees, right, so it must be pretty damn good." Hawks' expression looks so fond, like it really must've left an impression. "It's like I could see the whole world at once, or I mean maybe that was just some loss of consciousness talking, but it stuck with me."

There's a pause. A long one.

"And?"

"And nothing. I'm actually a ghost, right now."

Enji grits his teeth to stop his mouth from betraying him- god, he was about to smile, to smile. That isn't right. That can't happen.

"I finally remembered the backup chute. Panicking makes everyone stupid," Hawks rubs his chin, "Anyway, that's it. That's all I got."

"Birds-eye view?" Enji finally throws his guess into the ring, where 'Hawks' fits into all this.

"Something like that," the boy's eyes soften and he looks almost embarrassed when he adds, "And really, I just liked the sound of it."

Of course it's that simple, that endearingly simple.

Enji's hand clenches tight as he struggles to swallow his heart. He needs to think of something else to say, something else to do, because otherwise what'll come out of his mouth right now threatens everything - Those wings, show them to me. Every inch of them.

He clears his throat instead. "You passed your exam." Enji stands up as he says it, grabbing a paper from his pile and walking all the way to the other side of the desk to hand it to him. Enji leans against the edge of the wood afterward, keeping his arms crossed as Hawks looks through the pages, except he really isn't looking. He's shifting around in his seat, breathing too hard.

So is Enji.

Hawks looks up, and his eyes are so open that Enji falls into them. "Do I just get a gold star, or can I trade that in for something else?" Something else- how can two little words imply so much? Enji makes a noise that even he can't interpret. When Hawks blinks then, even when he breaks the connection, Enji is right back to falling.

"How about this, I won't punish you for missing two weeks of class."

The comment only earns him a smirk, a play on innocence. "Punishment sounds interesting."

God-

The door is still closed; that's the one thought slicing into Enji's mind because he's hyper-aware of it, now. How could he not be with Hawks repeating the word 'punishment' like it's the best idea that Enji's ever had? He's smiling like a villain about it. Temptation never looked so sweet, especially while they're so close, so fucking close, nothing separating them but a breath of air and poison-dipped desires. Enji chastises him, "You like causing trouble, don't you?"

Hawks bites at his tongue piercing, trapping it between his teeth while Enji shifts his stance. The reply feels like a live grenade. "I thought I told you already, I'm a good boy."

There it is again, that phrase that coils right up in Enji's groin and makes him throb for it. He's so, so tired of aching. That's the moment he finally chooses to let go; he can't stand it any longer. He never could to begin with. "If you are, I have yet to see it," Enji replies. He knows exactly what he's asking for when he says it, that much is obvious as the blood in his body rushes south - as more than just his eyes fill with desire.

Enji knows what he's asking for, and Hawks doesn't disappoint him.

"Then let me prove it."

The offer sends lighting through every corner of Enji's head, sparking all at once, yes, yes, god yes. He doesn't know when he truly decided to give in - maybe it was when he realized what kind of game they were really playing, and who would be the one in control if it started for real. When he remembered how Hawks melted under him, looked up with wide eyes like all he wanted is for someone to overwhelm him.

Enji ignores this last chance to stop because he doesn't want to, he never did. "Why? Do you want to hear me say it, is that it?" He teases, not expecting a real answer.

"Maybe."

Enji goes from leaning on his desk to standing up straight, giving life to the difference between them, how Hawks is sitting pretty and Enji is bigger than he can take. "I never give out undeserved praise."

"Then what'll it take to deserve it?"

Enji feels his mouth twitch. "You're smart, I'm sure you don't need any hints."

Then Hawks' eyes say everything his tinted cheeks already don't; he's infatuated. He's lost. Enji knew it already, ever since that first visit to his office, the way he looked at him and asked a question to gauge both their interest at once, are you married?  Enji's answer sealed his fate all on his own. Hawks made it so obvious what his intentions were, and Enji gave him the opportunity to prove it again and again.

Hawks is breathing quickly now, in and out, looking eager to touch him - to melt against him the second Enji decides to supply that first bit of heat. So he does. He offers his rough, open hand, watching as Hawks leans forward to take it, rest his jaw in Enji's palm. Nuzzle against it like a good boy would. Enji hooks his fingers behind Hawks' ear, just barely swirling them through the golden locks of his hair.

Neither of them say a word; this is more than enough to keep it going. Enji strokes the corner of Hawks' mouth with his thumb, dragging it down his lip and catching it, taking all the time in the world. It's his turn to play. He enjoys it, he can't stop watching those big eyes and how Hawks promises to never look anywhere else but him. Enji has always commanded attention so it isn't a new feeling.

No, it isn't new, but it's never felt this divine.

He steps forward until the bulge in his pants is right in front of the boy's face. Hawks flushes redder, opening his mouth wide on instinct against Enji's grip, letting his tongue loll out like he can't help it. Desperate looks good on him. It gives Enji a perfect view of the metal ball in the center, and he has to wonder about it, about how good would it feel running over his fingers, his chest, the length of his cock- what would it fucking do to him?

He wants to know.

Enji plunges two fingers into his mouth, sliding right past his tongue that comes to life instantly, wetly, laving at his digits and running circles all around them. Hawks has been waiting for this, to do this. Enji can tell that his desperation isn't fake. The metal bead drags against the tips of his fingers and suddenly Enji has chills all through his neck, he wants more of this feeling already. He wants it all.

Hawks runs his hands up Enji's thighs, begging for more too, greedy boy. Enji removes his fingers slowly, tauntingly, watching how Hawks' gaze traces the outline of his cock straining against the cloth. "Look what you've done," Enji's voice is gravel and ash as he pushes his hips forward and accuses him.

Hawks' breath hitches, it's the smallest noise he's ever made. "I'm sorry, professor," Hawks plays along. He's getting off on this; it's the first time he's ever called Enji professor. But he can't pass judgement on it, not when the only thing that wants to roll off his tongue isn't Hawks, but boy. 

Hawks tries to earn forgiveness, leaning forward to mouth against the tent in Enji's pants, lapping through the cloth, pressing down the most enthusiastic of kisses. He's not embarrassed of how it makes him look. Needy and perfect.

The growl that leaves Enji's throat is tortured.

Enji grips the desk behind him and can practically feel the force of it singe the wood as Hawks starts to undo his pants. He's clumsy and making little noises of greed as he goes, but there's still something missing from this pretty sight:

"On your knees, now."

He's down on the floor in an instant, so eager to follow instructions. It's the moment Enji finally understands, he can suddenly see right through him; Hawks likes to put on a show but behind closed doors he's nothing, he's obeying without question. He's so easy. Enji waits until Hawks has his lips closed around his cock before praising him like he's earned, "Good boy." There's a hum in return, an achingly slow descent to the back of the boy's throat. He takes Enji so well, like he's trained for it. Enji can't help but grab a fistful of his hair - tugging and twisting - as that piercing runs along the sensitive underside of his cock.

It's maddening. "Fuck," He lets out as Hawks laps at his tip, fast strokes of his tongue as his hand squeezes around Enji's girth. He's moaning all over again when that metal bead dips ever-so-slightly against the hole of his dick- fuck, fuck.

Hearing the mess of curses makes Hawk back off for a moment, to wonder whether they were good or bad because he's just so stuck on being good. It looks like he enjoys the sight of precome trailing from his bottom lip as he pulls away, reaching out his tongue again to lick it free. Enji can't get enough of him. Hawks is displaying this sweet eagerness that he wants to chew up and eat raw now that he can, now that Enji is the one who makes the rules, here. Hawks looks content when he learns that his professor swears when he's being pleasured, and he looks obsessed with how Enji tastes - like he's staring at a whole meal in front of his eyes at Enji throbbing so big for him. All for him.

Enji tugs at his jacket collar to get that perfect mouth back again. Hawks follows his touch but looks up at him. "Don't tell me you're really this gentle."

Hawks is breathless when he speaks but the effect isn't lost. Maybe he likes it, being a bratty, bad boy, hoping for Enji to put him in his place.

So he does.

Enji tightens his fist in the boy's hair, pushing his massive cock against the lips so willing to swallow it all. He catches Hawks' smile right before taking it, plunging it deep into his mouth, down his throat. Hawks' eyes start to shine with tears the second he does it. Enji hears him choke and it sends his blood rushing, spilling through his chest. He wants to hear more it. Of Hawks breaking down, right in front of him on his fucking knees, so he holds him in place and makes him choke more. Fucks into that smart mouth of his, the one that was begging for this kind of roughness.

Hawks takes it all. His nails dig through Enji's pants into the back of his thighs. It only makes him thrust faster, filling every inch of Hawks' mouth, ripping those tears out from the corners of his eyes where they had welled. They streak down the black eyeliner that he always insists on wearing - just like Enji hoped it would.

"Look at you," He stares into Hawks' fucked-out eyes, rounded in desperation and shaking as badly as his knees, "You're perfect like this, a nice warm hole."

Hawks makes a strangled noise through both spit and precome. Enji wants to hear it again, again. This boy who's always so confident and put-together, it's a dream seeing him fall apart into this mess, this awful mess on the floor before him.

"Ah- Good boy, God, just like that." Enji can't help but praise him more, as he times the swirling of his tongue just right with his bobbing head, and the metal bead runs across Enji's cock like magic. It's all he needs. The feeling of being absolutely devoured brings Enji to the peak, as he pulls his hand out of Hawks' hair and groans so loudly that he's sure someone will come looking.

Enji knew he would swallow, but didn't expect him to put on a show of it: opening his mouth and begging with his tongue, black streaks from his eyes to make him look soiled already. He gets what he wants, he's so spoiled, Enji strokes himself through his climax and covers Hawks' ecstasy-parted lips with white streaks. He makes sure Enji takes in the sight of him all painted and glossy. Only then does Hawks stare right into Enji's eyes, pulling his cum-covered tongue right into his mouth to swallow dutifully.

"You're filthy," Enji says it through deep breaths and endorphin highs.

Hawks pays no mind to the insult and lets out an exhale of a laugh. He presses a dirty, last kiss to the tip of Enji's dick, smiling up at him afterward and still wearing his black streaks like a trophy.

"You like the piercing," Hawks says after a moment, after he's recovered, as if he's just learned some incriminating secret.

Enji sees no reason to lie at this point, "I do." He tucks himself back into his pants while the boy tries to stand, his hair disheveled and his cheeks an unholy shade of red that almost matches his wings. The thought reminds Enji of how badly he'd like to see them. He'd like to see a lot more.

"That's not the only one," Hawks is standing inches away, although he only comes up to the center of Enji's chest. The height difference is only endearing now, it makes him want to say his new favorite word again, so he does, "I saw the other ones, boy." To prove he isn't lying he grabs Hawks' side, fitting his palm along the edge of his chest and brushing his thumb across the soft nub and the bar pierced through it.

Hawks shivers at the contact when he admits, "You're still missing one more."

Enji stops the motion right on top of his nipple, pressing in with his thumb as he ponders that comment for moment longer. Hawks tenses and bites his lip. Wiggles his torso at the sensation of it, letting Enji know that everything is more sensitive when pierced- fuck, does he really have one more, and there of all places-

"Aren't you full of surprises."

Enji looks down and doesn't care how obvious it is that he's checking, staring at the bulge in Hawks' pants and wondering exactly where the piercing sits. How agonizing it must be to have it rubbing against those tight jeans he insists on wearing, or maybe that's the reason why he does.

"Just say the word," Hawks whispers the offer, almost begging at this point for Enji to look, for anything that leads to something more. He's still lost in fulfilled fantasies. Hawks is trying to feel out where the line ends and what the rules are; Enji doesn't know either but he does know that he's reached the limit today.

He holds his breath. "No, this isn't going to happen again." Enji says it out loud to see how it feels in his voice, how Hawks reacts to it. But he already doesn't like it. He doesn't like it because he liked this too much to lose, whatever it was.

"Sure." Hawks doesn't believe a word he says. Even if he's right, Enji doubles down because of it.

"I'm not lying, boy. Get your bag and go."

Hawks backs up a step and pulls his backpack off the floor, slinging it over his shoulder, but he's smiling through the rejection. He got everything he wanted and more.

"Careful doc, you keep calling me boy and I might just call you Daddy back."

No, no. Absolutely not.

"Do not," Enji nearly trips over his reply, warmth rushing right back to his cock, and it's all he can do to keep from moaning some deep-throated noise of interest. Hawks must notice the effect the word had when he teases further, "You sure?"

"I'm not playing this game."

"It sure seemed like you wanted to play, Daddy." Hawks puts a finger on his lip like he's curious, innocent, as if he wasn't just on his knees blowing his professor and swallowing it all down after. Enji gives him a look that must read like a challenge because Hawks smiles then, sucking a kiss off the tip of his finger like he'd just finished the best meal he's ever had.

Enji growls this time, he can't stop it. "Out."

As Hawks slips behind the door without a goodbye, he wonders exactly what game they're playing at, because Enji isn't sure anymore if he's the one in control.

Enji sits at his desk for nearly half an hour afterward, trying to pick apart his wants and needs and see how they all fit together. To figure out if he wants to stop this before it starts, because it's wrong on multiple levels, obviously. Obviously.

But then he thinks about Hawks kneeling on the floor, how it felt to call him a good boy once he'd deserved it, and Enji is convinced otherwise.

When he gets home, he checks his email one last time for the evening. It's nothing unusual. But when his inbox pops up on screen he nearly chokes seeing one from Hawks, the student he's trying not to bring home with him, because his office is enough of a crime scene. He doesn't need these thoughts where he lives, too. Enji doesn't need him.

There is no subject line. The content is just ten numbers.

Enji deletes the email and carries on with his night, furious at himself, furious that he's still so twisted from one little slip. He's supposed to be the experienced one. The professor, the authority figure, the one doing the using, not being used. He feels compromised. He feels like all he wants and ever will is more.

It's 10:05 when he's settled in for the night and full from dinner. Enji shuts off the light on his end table and curses out loud, wrinkling his nose while he betrays himself and doesn't stop to think of the reasons why he shouldn't. He slinks right back to his deleted emails and adds those numbers into his phone.

He won't use it, he tells himself. It's enough just to know that he could.

On Monday, Enji barely acknowledges him. He comes to his own class only a minute early on purpose because Hawks is still stubbornly showing up eight minutes before, and maybe he was here even sooner today, hoping to meet his professor alone again. But Enji won't be caught off guard. He makes these rules, he can put a stop to this in a single instant.

Hawks won't surprise him anymore, Enji won't stand for it, or anything that isn't on his terms.

While he nears the end of his lecture, Hawks is insistent on getting one look from him, one single moment of attention. He goes from wanton expressions to clearing his throat to something far more sinister. Out of the corner of his eye, Enji sees him lick an agonizingly slow stripe up his pen, and that deadly gaze of his is trained right below Enji's belt.

Enji clears his throat and ends class there, five minutes earlier than he meant to. And he's always on time. Always. It makes him twist around with anger to be toyed with, he won't let Hawks have this. He retaliates by following the last batch of students out of the auditorium, leaving Hawks alone in the front row, waiting for Enji. Wishing for Enji.

That's how it should be, not the other way around, not ever.

Enji stays in his office late on Tuesday, grading reports from his upper-level classes. It's tedious work and his mind can't stop drifting to more interesting things. Bad things. Absolutely filthy things. He pauses a moment to pick up his phone, furrowing his brow as he flicks through his contacts and finds the one named by a single, letter 'H.'

He tries not to sound needy or expectant in his text because he isn't, he isn't:

>I'm staying late

Enji watches delivered quickly turn to read and frowns, smacking his phone upside-down on his desk, saving the reply for a few deep breaths down the road. When his phone finally vibrates again he puts down his pencil and leans back in his chair to read a simple question:

<you lonely, Daddy?

Fuck, the boy really is taking that and running with it, isn't he? Enji feels his cock twitch but refuses to acknowledge that as the reason why, even when he reads it more than once to feel the way his stomach flips. It's too much. He simply can't.

Enji is wondering how to respond when the devil himself walks into his office, instantly dropping his bag onto the floor and shutting the door right behind him. It's like he owns the place, like they've done this a million times before and he just wants to get to the dirty part quicker. When he shoots Enji a look then and asks, "Can I sit?" Enji has to wonder where he really wants him: the chair, the desk, settled right in his lap?

He clears the papers in front of him and leans back, tilting his head curiously at Hawks. It's strange to see him fall apart so quickly. In contrast to Enji, he makes no such effort to keep himself from looking needy, acting needy, and he's practically drooling as he steps behind the desk and hoists himself up on it. Keeps his legs spread as an invitation although Enji doesn't need one. He'll take what he wants.

"I didn't expect you to actually text me," Hawks jests, and Enji wonders if that was all a game for him, too.

"Don't get used to it."

Hawks allows himself to look uncertain for the very first time. "Should I get used to this?"

Enji doesn't know how to answer him. So he doesn't, and instead he stands up and slots himself right between Hawks' legs like he's been wanting to do since he sat down. Hawks' face turns red in an instant as he looks up, leans back. Enji loves every position that emphasizes how small the boy is, how easy it would be to put him where he wants, manhandle him. Hawks stares at his mouth and waits for instruction, either wondering what damage it's capable of, or wanting it pressed messily against his own.

Kisses are absolutely forbidden - Enji decides it in an instant. And if he puts his foot down for anything in this fucking arrangement, it's that.

"If you want me to touch you, take this off," Enji tugs at his sleeve, growls, and not a second later both the shirt and trademark jacket lie in a heap on the floor.

Hawks hooks a finger through Enji's belt loop and scoots forward, rubbing friction against Enji's groin, slotting them together as close as they'll go. Enji should be distracted from the unbearable feeling their cocks pinned together - pressed tight - but he's busy. He's interested in something else. He's running a palm down Hawks' shoulder to off-center of his chest, holding his piercing between a forefinger and thumb.

"Fascinating."

Hawks begs him with his eyes and pulls the belt loops even harder. Lets out soft little noises when Enji tugs on the piercing, too hard, making a point of it.

"Tttch- Ah, hey, ah." Enji wants to swallow it right from his mouth, Hawks' loss of composure is like a drug to him. Hawks only stretches his chest forward and writhes more as it's pinched.

"You like it though, don't you," Enji coos, and Hawks doesn't have a chance to even nod before he's pushed back on the desk, Enji's hand spanning across his skin and holding him there. It's as easy as he thought it'd be, double as satisfying. Enji's hardened length fits snugly in-between them and he shifts once, twice, pushing it right against Hawks' little dick just to drink in his resultant honey-laced moans.

"All I can think of during class," Hawks gasps as Enji grinds against him, managing between breaths, "Is your big, fucking cock."

Enji groans in return and indulges himself, leaning forward to trace his thick tongue from Hawks' abdomen to the metal barbel through his nipple. Once he's there he never wants to stray from it, he nibbles at the soft skin of his pec and draws a circle around the center display. Sucks the whole thing into his mouth and flicks it in every direction with the tip of his tongue. He might be obsessed.

"Nnn," Hawks is bucking his hips, trembling under Enji's impossible weight and the way he's sucking, overstimulating, straight-up abusing his nipple. It's his own taste of torture. When Enji bites down once - then again, again, Hawks gasps, "Daddy, Daddy-"

Names don't matter anymore. Enji needs to keep going, he needs to see what fucking piercing is adorning his cock.

His hands drag down Hawks' body and loop under the waist of his jeans, tugging them down, and they're loose enough to not need much encouragement. When Enji stands up to unbuckle his own pants he takes him time, drinking the sweet sight below him. Hawks is glowing, flushed from his chest to his face, positively euphoric at the attention Enji's giving him. His hair lays spread on the desk like a halo - but he's no angel, even if he does have wings.

Hawks moans through his anticipation. "You going to fuck me, professor?"

Enji swallows. He hasn't decided yet, that's another line to cross no matter how badly he wants to jump.

"Depends how good you beg for it," He says back, not expecting anything to come of it. But how could he think it would end there, how, after everything he's seen? Hawks jumps on it instantly, he wants daddy's cock, "Holy fuck," the boy whines, groaning, lifting his hips so Enji can rip off that last layer that covers him. "Please, fuck me, fuck me hard, I'll do anything you want-" Hawks chokes out.

Enji knows he would.

The sight of his spread legs is hard to deny but somehow, Enji manages. "Not today." He's almost sorry to see how the rejection swirls around in Hawks' hopeful eyes. But if the boy listened carefully, if he read just a bit deeper, he'd hear that it wasn't so much a rejection as a promise for later. He'll figure it out. Enji is too preoccupied to care, now that he's pushing his thumb around this dreadful fucking ring through the head of Hawks' dick, trying not to imagine all the filthy things he could try with it.

Hawks flinches under him, biting his lip, glancing between the sight of Enji's cock and the sight of Enji toying with his. "D'you like it?" Hawks finds his voice again through his stutters. 

"Mm," Enji can barely stand the sight of him, laying shirtless on his office desk as both hands grip the edge for purchase, watching how his own cock looks when it's held and toyed with. Hawks looks like- like a pretty college boy that's all his take advantage of. A boy half his age. But Enji doesn't care, all he wants is the memory of Hawks' bare chest after he comes on it.

Enji's hand wraps around both of their cocks, squeezing and pumping them while he bends forward and breathes in Hawks' every exhale. Enji braces himself with his other hand, the trunk of his arm, and Hawks grips his skin like it's the only thing grounding him. Keeping him from being fucked into the desk.

"Be a good boy, don't come until I say so," Enji growls closer to the side of his neck than his ear. He hears a whimper in response.

He's working their cocks in tandem now, making sure to pay attention to that metal piercing whenever his fingers brush close, because his boy has it just for him.

His boy. he doesn't know what to make of that thought, or any thought that dares cross his mind now, because he's so far gone that this feels like heaven. He's in a world of arousal with his gaze trained on the one who did this to him, his pretty boy, all his, all trouble. Enji is pulsing under his own grip and he can feel Hawks throbbing too, aching for him, hard for him. Hawks' eyes are pleading and rolling back until they're almost completely white. 

Enji lets out a pure moan for the first time in years, straight from the center of his chest. It rips through any lingering doubts and throws them far, far away, light-years away from crossing his mind ever again. This feels too good to deny himself of.

Fuck, is this good.

Hawks flings a hand into Enji's short hair, the ends of his fingers digging into his scalp as they both thrust faster, as Enji squeezes tighter. And all of a sudden - that's it. He comes his fucking brains out, laying strands along the length of Hawks' torso, memorizing the high he sees reflected in his golden eyes. Enji pants and rides a wave of unparalleled heat and underneath him, his boy is still squirming, writhing, and Enji nearly lets out a drained laugh as he realizes, he's waiting for Daddy to let him cum.

"Let go, boy," Enji's voice is low velvet as he gives permission and strokes him through it, refusing to blink or dare miss the first show of his climax. Hawks opens his mouth wide into an 'o' for the ages, looking irresistible - looking absolutely fucked through to the core.

Hawks adds to the cum on his own torso with a sob, a moan. A quiet, "Fuck."

Enji's view gets a little sweeter.

They pant together for a moment. Enji ignores his instinct to turn roughness into something gentler, to caress the boy's cheek or whisper something reassuring, but those are things for lovers to indulge in. This has to stay cold, he can't add anything tender or it all falls apart. So Enji is the first to straighten himself up, running a hand through his hair, tugging his pants back up to his waist. He turns and rips a paper towel off his desk to hands it over to his loyal student.

Hawks looks destroyed, dazzled, absolutely infatuated when he takes it and puts himself together again. His breaths even out into a soothing song as he lays on his back, trembling and floating down from cloud nine. This- this isn't even the peak of what they can do. Enji still has a lot of ideas about that nice, pierced cock of his.

It's a dangerous thought. But Enji lets it exist all the same, because he's kidding himself trying to deprive himself of it. He's fucking mad if he pretends today is when he calls it off.

Hawks finally pushes himself up and slides his feet to the floor, flashing a smile that looks stunning, and worst of all, real. It catches Enji off guard - he doesn't want to see an expression as starry-eyed as that one. He rushes to break through it with the first thing that comes to mind. "Turn around," he orders.

Hawks looks surprised but more than willing. "Ah, I thought-"

Enji's mouth twitches. "Turn. Around," he repeats, pulling from that same octave he uses when he calls Hawks a good boy. It works like a charm, earns him a needy noise back. Everyone has a weakness, even Enji, and it's becoming clearer by the second what and who his is.

Hawks is facing the other way now, bent over his desk, and Enji doesn't expect to be so surprised when he sees it. His back is utterly captivating, littered with ink that really does span every inch of it. The blood-red wings travel from his scapulas, swirling around his shoulders to meet at feathered points at the small of his back. They're detailed. They're gorgeous. Enji runs a calloused hand from the nape of his neck downward, traveling along his spine and fanning his fingers over the tattoo's outlines. He thinks about what a nice view it would make for him with Hawks on all fours.

He'll see it soon.

"It hurt like hell," Hawks breaks the silence, shivering at the touches. Enji feels silly being startled by his voice because it's his body he's touching, after all.

"Didn’t think pain would scare you," Enji says back, digging short nails down into his shoulder as if to prove it. Hawks just laughs, "It's a little different."

Enji hates that their back-and-forths continue to be so natural, so easy to fall into rhythm with.

Hates it like nothing else.

When Hawks turns his head around, he's smiling like a fool would. "Isn't this around the time when you kick me out?"

Enji looks at him and the pink color that's dusting his cheeks, and it's all of a sudden so different from before. It isn't like when he's being easy or asking to be ravaged, or when his eyes grow wide and watery while he tries to breath again, fucked out, fucked good and hard by Enji. It's different now. It's interesting how open he chooses to be, like nothing Enji does could ever hurt him.

Despite everything, Enji finds himself amused at the comment.

"Get out." He gives it no weight or authority, and Hawks', "Sure thing," falls from his mouth just as softly. Enji watches him slip his shirt back on and collect his bag, sling his jacket over his arm, and Enji can't figure out why he's unhappy with it. Why he's disappointed  that this seems to end too soon every time. He got his release. That's all this is, that's all this should be.

Enji needs to remind himself of that more.

"Text me."

It's so innocent, so wistful. Enji frowns and curses back, "I will not," as Hawks walks to the door of his office and unlocks it.

"Then I'll see you in class, doc."

It takes a second for Enji to pull himself together again after, to sit down in his chair and go back to being Professor Todoroki, because that's who he is. He's not doc, or fuck- he's not indulging in dirty fantasies and even dirtier names like Daddy. His life is very quickly unraveling and he doesn't know how to stop it, or maybe he does and he's just unwilling to do it. To tell Hawks no.

The thought of it makes him uncomfortable.

He needs things simple again, he needs everything to be as it should.

So how - for someone who's tried to avoid it his entire life and career - how can Enji be so addicted to trouble, and so easily caught by the red of his fallen-angel’s wings?

Enji thought his upper-level class would be a safe haven from trouble and Trouble himself. No bedroom eyes to grit his teeth and ignore, no smiles that know too much, and no flashes of blush to make Enji wonder what Hawks is thinking to become so red. Yesterday was a different kind of torture, too, catching Hawks with his pierced tongue tracing along his top lip, telling daddy how hungry he was. That little display spelled out the word later like Enji wasn't already planning on it.

Like Enji's schedule doesn't already revolve around him in the worst kind of way.

But his Tuesdays and Thursdays are supposed to be clear, he thought he'd be far away from temptation. Although Hawks follows him wherever he goes anyway -playing the devil and angel on his shoulders - so why not now, too? Why not every day of the fucking week?

His phone buzzes. It's only minutes before class and Enji thinks nothing of it, but oh, what a lethal mistake to make. Hawks is still very much a firecracker and the message blows him to the sky in surprise. Enji slaps his phone back on the table trying to burn the image from his brain, but it's a lost cause. Everything seems to be when it comes to keeping him away.

Or keeping himself away from Hawks.

Enji doesn't think he's ever made it so quickly from his fourth-floor class to his second-floor office. He isn't sure if he hopes Hawks is still there, or hopes that he simply took his opportunity and left, aiming for nothing more than that tease. That filthy tease. A picture he snapped laying across Enji's desk, pulling at his bare-chested nipple, with the buttons of his jeans undone just enough to see a ghost of golden hair.

For the life of him Enji can't remember - had he locked his door?

He walks quickly to his office, but it's not because he thinks the boy would be rooting through his things. Hawks may be a lot of things but untrustworthy isn't one of them. No, his disgruntlement comes from Hawks getting comfy in Enji's chair, Enji's office, Enji's mind- it's the fucking principle of it all. He bursts into the room like a bat out of hell, not even able to enjoy the way Hawks startles and quickly puts his feet down from being kicked up right on his desk.

Hawks runs a smooth hand through the side of his hair. Lets out a guilty laugh, "A little warning, next time."

"There need to be rules," Enji ignores him and gets right to the point, the ultimatum he'd been toying around with for a while, because rules are something he (used to) be diligent in following. Rules are a necessary evil for whatever sinful hell Enji's living in with him. This will stop any problems before they even have chance to start, and Hawks clearly needs some restrictions before he sets Enji's whole life aflame.

Though Hawks doesn't seem keen on the idea, jeering, "Well that's no fun at all." But it's not about him, it's not, and it seems he needs reminding of that.

"Hawks,"  Enji shuts the door and holds up his phone, shooting him with frosted-blue daggers for sending that god-forsaken picture - for acting like a show-off to the one person who doesn't need proof he has something to show. "This doesn't happen again."

"Why, didn't you like it?"

Hawks asks for approval - something he does often - and spins side to side in the rotating chair with such visible innocence that Enji can almost touch it. It's how he knows Hawks is being genuine. That in his impossible head, sending a nice picture of himself was such a good boy thing to do.

Enji did like it, there aren't words to describe how much he liked it. He's reacting so strongly because he checked the notification right before class, not expecting a picture at all let alone one so provocative. Because it was the second time this week he's been caught off guard by a picture. Because he nearly had to teach with a hard-on.

"Listen to me carefully, boy,"  Enji uses it to drill his point home, "I will contact you, not the other way around." 

Like a drug deal, like something so wrong that they should quit before it destroys them.

Hawks blinks, shrugs, and agrees to this condition almost instantly, although that bothers Enji a lot more than a no ever could. Is he so confident that Enji will keep coming back? That there won't be a last message, a last meet-up, one last text that reads I'm here late? This arrangement will have to end eventually. It has to, it was temporary from the very start.

Hawks has a cheeky tone of voice when he asks, "Anything else?"

Enji frowns and gives it to him. "Don't speak to me in public, class being the obvious exception."

Hawks seems a little miffed about this one, which is more par for the course. But a gritty staredown quickly crumbles any objections Hawks has, and really, it's quite reasonable for Enji to be so cautious. He's the authority figure, he knows the policies against teacher-student intimacy and should be smarter than breaking them, but maybe it's not about being smart. Maybe he's sick of the mundane and Hawks is too interesting to let go of. It's the only explanation he has, because choosing to continue this little relationship is the most volatile thing he's ever done - and he works with chemicals for a living.

Surely there's no way for this to leave a scar, too.

Hawks notices the extended pause in the list and goes, "Well keep 'em coming, doc, you're on a roll."

Enji narrows his eyes. "You aren't nearly as charming as you think you are."

"Ouch, I'm devastated," Hawks says back, looking bright and unbothered. Enji simply grumbles at this whole conversation, staring at Hawks sitting so pretty, so bad at his desk, which reminds him-

"Do I want to know how you managed to get in here?"

"I picked the lock."

"You-,"  Enji's mouth parts in shock at that. He's completely still while it bubbles into anger, annoyance, the kind of dumbfounded confusion that comes from realizing how deep he is - how awfully far this has all gotten away from him. He's not in control. He can't even pretend to be in control when his student is breaking and entering as a game because then god, what comes next-

"I'm kidding. You forgot to lock it," Hawks pipes back in, looking a little worried about the beams of visceral rage shooting from Enji's eyes.

Enji closes his mouth. Then after a moment, he begins to walk with heavy-set footprints to where Hawks is sitting, waiting like a present, a bribe, a knot in Enji's chest. He stops right in front of the chair and calls his name expectantly, "Hawks," and the boy looks up at him quizzically. He must really be wondering if Enji is annoyed because he treads so carefully with his touches. Light as air. Hawks gauges where he stands with a tease, swirling his fingertips around the crotch of Enji's pants.

"I know you aren't this gentle," Enji goads, calling back to when Hawks had said something similar. The smirk in return tells Enji that he remembers - tells him, how could I ever forget?

"So," Hawks presses his palm flat along Enji's bulge that's inches from his face. "Just two little rules?" And then his fingers curl underneath the waistband, slowly peeling Enji's pants down as far as they'll go while still holding in his length

"I'm sure you're already deciding how to break them."

But Hawks knows just what to say when Enji is being difficult. "I promise I'm not, Daddy."  The word is hot and needy breath melting against his freed dick; it's going to be the fucking death of him, right along with that corrupted metal bead in the center of Hawks' tongue. Enji lets out a hum that sounds a lot more gentle and praising than he meant it to be. He's never been one for giving compliments but Hawks earns them one by one, eager to please.

Enji soon forgets what he was angry at. Whether he was supposed to be mad about that photo - that eager boy sitting at his own desk - or if he ever really was to begin with. Hawks makes him forget. With the enthusiastic and spit-covered devotion of his hand and mouth, Hawks makes him forget everything but their names.

And Enji only ever has two words to say back:

"Good boy."

Weekends are supposed to be another safe haven.

For once Hawks doesn't compromise it, doesn't contact him with a hopeful message or two like Enji is accustomed to. The boy has decided to ghost him, and that means his Saturday is peace and quiet all to himself, although he isn't sure if that's really what he wants anymore. Once upon a time he would've killed for this solitude, but he's almost come to count on the games they play. That unbearable way Hawks sinks his teeth into Enji's domain.

It takes Enji until Saturday evening to finally remember why there's radio silence; he's cursing when he does because he sabotaged himself with those fucking rules. Did he think Hawks wouldn't abide by them?

Did he ever want him to to begin with?

Yes, he convinces himself, and the more he says it the easier it is. Yes. Restricting their contact is the smart way to go about something as illogical and uncharacteristically stupid as fucking a student behind closed doors. Enji cares very much about his university job. His office is still the best option because it's detached, it's easy for meetings and exchanges - for that dirty hour between class. They have a system. And now, they have rules.

It works, although it's obviously far from perfect.

Pinpointing the why of this all isn't something Enji wants anymore. He refuses to find that answer. Hawks is just a nice warm hole to fuck, Enji said it himself - and it's not unwelcome, either, that Hawks has a thing for obedience, and Enji has a thing for making the boy work for his praise. It's why Enji let this all blow up to begin with. Their arrangement isn't complicated, it's pure sinner's relief, and right now he's itching to commit some awfully foul deeds.

Enji can only bear the silence until six in the evening before he's reaching for his phone.

>What are you doing?

The reply doesn't come for twenty minutes, not that he's counting. Not that he's trying to figure out the logistics of how well Hawks could fit in his lap in a car, because Hawks will never set foot or eyes anywhere near his house. That's a certainty. That's an absolute.

<out in town with a friend

For some reason the message irks him. It's strange even if it shouldn't be to think that Hawks has a life to live outside of Chemistry, outside of Enji's sphere; he blames himself for that one. He's too used to being a dominating force to revolve around. There's something else in the way Hawks isn't cocky, either, and Enji almost wonders if he's disinterested. But that feeling is buried in an instant. Instead, there's a very familiar fire in Enji's chest:

<does Daddy miss me?

He tenses his hands. No, Enji tries to convince himself, but this time saying it more doesn't make it any easier.

Yes.

>I'd enjoy another picture.

Enji doesn't have to wait long to receive it - Hawks is really such a good boy. When it delivers he leans back on his couch to stare at the image, to indulge in his own shamelessness. Enji wets his lips and rests a hand on his interested cock, trying to decide if indulging in this is a mistake or not because it's just a photo - it's just a fucking picture. But it's a picture of Hawks' black nails digging into the length of his dick, and God,  he could admire that piercing for hours. It must be a fetish. He's close to dragging his tongue up the screen.

This is a real problem.

And it's not a surprise anymore that he only makes it worse:

>Where in town?

Enji can't believe he sends it; what a fool he his. He watches Hawks type and stop typing for nearly a minute before finally, he delivers an address without even a why? to follow up with. He isn't questioning the day of the week or fighting for a break. Really, Hawks is the most reliable thing in Enji's life, and that thought is a bullet right through his skull.

He has the exact location of his next mistake, and now Enji just needs to swallow his pride and let his libido do the rest.

He realizes halfway there that he's truly the king of self-sabotage. Enji keeps falling into his own head, barbed-wire desire, getting caught so easily like he's not a distinguished professor but a man controlled entirely by lust. His knuckles are white as he wrings the steering wheel, because surely he'll take the next U-turn, the next exit, the next escape- all just to prove that he's capable of it in the first place. He knows when to quit.

Weak-willed is the last thing he'd describe himself as. Hawks is nothing to him, nothing-

>Black Sedan

But maybe his will isn't weak so much as it's easy to bend.

Now Enji is sitting in his car cursing himself, but it's far too late, it's been too late for weeks. The text he'd sent is mocking him while he waits. Regrets every moment that led to this. Enji looks around to distract himself, but it only makes the situation sit worse in his chest when he sees that he's parked behind a bar of all places. This is where Hawks is, where the address took him to, and it even tells Enji a piece of information he was almost scared to know: Hawks is twenty-one, at the very least.

He doesn't know how to feel about that number.

The back entrance to the bar opens and Hawks is here in the flesh, alone with his hands in his pockets, looking for the car Enji told him to find. That leather jacket he wears must be his signature - Enji's never seen him without it - but it almost feels too personal to be observing things like that. They aren't supposed to matter. Enji isn't supposed to learn what he wears, or the places he goes on weekends, they don't matter. 

But Hawks is is interesting enough, charming enough, pretty enough that somehow, they do.

Hawks looks too happy at the sight of Enji waiting for him.

Enji just wants Hawks to just get in, get this over with, quick and dirty like the throwaway fuck this should be. But when does Hawks ever make the journey easy? It's all a part of the game for him.

Bending forward, Hawks leans a palm against Enji's window, a patient smile stretching along his face until the glass rolls down.

"Hey, doc."

There's awful affection in his voice. Enji wants to burn it from memory so he rushes past it and goes, "You're intoxicated," because he has to be. There's no other explanation for those dizzied, adoring eyes-

"I don't drink."

-But he's not lying. Enji can't smell any alcohol on his breath, just residual smoke on his clothes and soaked into his wild blond hair. Enji purses his lips then, because maybe he was hoping Hawks would be drunk when he saw the bar. Maybe Enji wishes he had a reason to say no, because he's finding it far too easy to say yes.

"Get in," Enji grips the steering wheel tightly, narrowing his eyes in impatience.

Hawks doesn't obey right away. He leans his cheek into his shoulder and extends his other arm through the window, and before Enji knows what's happening the boy is lazily, softly  running his thumb along his course red facial hair - stopping right at his chin. Enji is frozen. He holds his breath in a cage. He squeezes the steering wheel tighter and refuses to stare anywhere except straight ahead, where he'll be safe from those sweet, golden eyes.

God-

"Well, since you asked so nicely," Hawks finally replies. He straightens up like nothing at all had just happened, and walks around the front of the car to ride shotgun. Enji has half a mind to just drive away and leave this mistake behind him, but he doesn't, he can't. He's weaker than he thought.

For once Hawks is relatively silent while they're together, although he does seem amused when Enji turns into a parking garage a few minutes later. He's sitting there toying with a strand of his messy blond hair, eyes trained right on Enji - or maybe just the bulge of his pants. Enji pointedly ignores him. The boy is waiting for attention and he's not going to get what he wants. It's an important precedent to keep up even if Enji has done a poor job of it so far.

He drives up a level and even then keeps going, there are still too many cars, too many chances to be caught. Enji breaks his own code of silence to make sure Hawks isn't scheming something nefarious, "You're quiet."

"Just a little surprised that weekends are part of the deal now."

They've never talked about the 'deal.' Hawks is smart enough that Enji didn't need to outline any more specifics than give me what I want and maybe I'll be generous back. But Enji feels a furious need to clarify now, because he needs Hawks to understand him very clearly. There is no such thing as loosening the rules or adding any more to this than there needs to be.

"Don't get used to it."

"So a one time thing?" Hawks shoots a sly grin like he doesn't believe a word of it, and Enji can tell exactly what he's thinking, that the last one time thing didn't last very long before Hawks was sprawled on his desk without clothes or an ounce of composure to his name.

But this is different, these rules are law.

"Precisely."

"The picture was that good, huh?" Hawks asks with a proud grin, and maybe it was - it truly was, but he doesn't need to know that.

Enji doesn't respond. Instead he's finally found a far corner of the parking garage to pull into, shadowed to cover his immorality. When he turns the key in the ignition, he barely has time to push his seat back before Hawks is on him - a moth to a flame - and Enji doesn't even have to say a single word. They fit together like twisted wire. An errant professor and the student who ruined him.

As it turns out, they can share the seat just fine.

Hawks holds both palms against Enji's chest while he sits in his lap, waiting to be given a present - tasty permission or demands from daddy's mouth. He's so eager, there isn't a thing he'd say no to. Enji stays silent in consideration at first, so Hawks tries to provoke the words right out of him. Touches him. Feels him. Enji curses when he can't help what his own body does in response, how his hips roll, because he didn't expect Hawks' fingertips to run down and brush past his nipples. He lurches in the seat and an open noise spills out of his throat.

Enji doesn't comment on it, but Hawks looks utterly fascinated.

"You holding out on me?"

Enji grunts, "Careful."

Hawks flashes him a dirty smile and presses his short thumbnail against Enji's shirt, drawing a circle around the visibly hardened nub, but Enji can't have the boy playing with power like that. He grabs the Hawks' wrist and yanks it down, places it on the thick bulge trying to escape his pants, "Here," and Hawks gets the message. It only takes a second before he's grinding right on top of Daddy's cock.

He looks right into Enji's eyes. "Fuck me."

Oh, Hawks says it like he's been thinking about it all day, all week, god, the boy really does want to ride him right here in this car. It sets bombs off in Enji's abdomen, all around them - it's the beginning of the end. Enji is unsure if he'll ever be able to stop after he's given in, he can only imagine the tight heat of Hawks' insides, dirty heat, squeezing around his cock as Hawks cries out his name - not Enji or professor but Daddy, please fuck me harder, Daddy-

But not now. Not here. And certainly not on Hawks' terms.

"You don't get to decide." He grips Hawks' cock roughly like punishment for asking - maybe too rough - and Hawks flinches backward and knocks into the horn of the car. But he's the one person who asks for Enji's rough touches, they're what Hawks begs for on his hands and knees. They're what he agreed to. So instead of visible pain or shock he's only arrogant in his eyes. it looks like Hawks is wondering why he can't have what he wants, because so far Enji has practically spoiled him.

"I can beg again."

He's definitely spoiled.

"It won't change my mind."

"What will?" Hawks asks with big, searching eyes, and Enji can see that right now, Hawks would do anything, absolutely anything to bounce right on his lap. What a rotten boy. It grants Enji too much power to hold over him, a lot of wishes in the palm of his hand to crush or lay bare.

Enji breathes deeply because he's drunk on him; he's holding Hawks' cock like it's his property and smelling the sweat on his neck, golden-sweet underneath the lingering smoke from the bar. Right now, both scents are welcome. Cigarettes or Hawks, they're both familiar poisons that he can't seem to escape so he might as well invite them in to stay.

Enji smoked for ten years; he knows addiction intimately.

And it feels a lot like this.

Hawks makes a move when Enji doesn't answer, leaning forward right by his ear to drip soft words into it, "I thought I was a good boy..."  Chills run through Enji's scalp at the proximity of his voice, his red-hot breath, and suddenly Hawks' tongue is dragging up the outer shell of Enji's ear to make him shiver.

A growls splits Enji's throat. He's not about to be toyed with like this, and he pushes Hawks back against the steering wheel, away from the sensitive skin of his neck because the two of them aren't here for gentle things. This is a violent release, not anything nice. Not anything real. The horn is blasting, blaring, but that's not important. It doesn't even register when he's seeing Hawks' fluttering eyes locked on him.

As if Hawks is silently begging: Make me submit if I'm so bad.

So that car horn might as well be mute - the world might as well be ending right outside the misty window. Enji wouldn't know, he can't hear anything over the vulnerable stutters Hawks makes as he forgets how to breathe, these awfully needy noises his spoiled boy is letting out. The sound swirls in his head. It's making him very impatient. Enji can't wait any longer, he wants to see how easily Hawks breaks apart sitting right here on Daddy's lap.

Supplying the fix they both need, Enji runs a rugged hand up Hawks' body from where he had him pinned. It's hard to ignore how the beats and breaths under Hawks' chest amplify at the contact, how his cock throbs in Enji's hand, so neglected. Enji's fingers come to a stop in a row on his throat, and it's almost sweet how Hawks gulps underneath it. The boy lets it all happen and pretends not to love these rough grips, the sensation of dread and pleasure all in one.

Enji smirks and with his other hand, presses a curious thumb against the ring in Hawks' cock, rubbing along the metal to test just how wicked he can be.

That one touch, and Hawks is writhing mad.

The constant car horn turns into sporadic beeps while Hawks is squirming, rippling, creating friction against Enji's own throbbing cock. It only causes him to squeeze Hawks' harder, press his thumb into the tip even more. Enji has played with the metal ring before but never so slow, so intensely, so hell-bent on creating his own form of torture. Hawks' reaction tells him a lot of things. The most important being that this pretty little piercing isn't only for show, even if it does look divine.

He puts more pressure against the ring, fishing for moans that fill the whole car. "You're sick,"  He degrades Hawks for loving this corruption. Loving every touch. Enji is a hypocrite, he knows, but that only makes this so much better. Daddy can be as sick as he wants.

"Please-" Hawks is twisting in his lap now, and Enji squeezes around his throat to hold him still. It earns him a gargle, a whimper. It earns him deliciously widened eyes.

Enji lets go of Hawks' dick and instead opens his palm in front of his face. "Be a good boy and spit." Hawks does after a moment; he doesn't question he simply obeys. It leaves a trail falling from his lip.

The sight sets Enji's teeth on edge. For the first time, he's interested enough in that filthy mouth to want to want to taste it with his own tongue. His own spit. To claim Hawks' mouth and bite that shiny bottom lip until it's tender with marks from his teeth. He almost convinces himself to do it because it wouldn't be a kiss, not really. Just another game to get caught up in - the beginning of the end, part two.

He compromises and slides a thumb into Hawks' mouth instead, resting it on his tongue to hear all the wet moans he could ever hope to elicit. Enji touches his cock again, no mercy or love just a hand coated in Hawks' own spit, because all he wants right now is to bring him to the edge of it all - to reduce him to nothing. He's nothing.

Hawks is in heaven or hell, digging his nails into the muscular forearm pinned against his chest, almost hugging it for balance. His eyes are fluttering at being touched so good by Daddy even if the fingers on his neck are far from gentle. Enji hasn't heard the cue to stop, the safeword that's the only thing he'll listen for through the haze. The words struggling out of Hawks' mouth right now are just feathery things, absolutely mindless, "Sto- Ah, fuck, daddy please, stop, you're- Nnnn."

Enji squeezes the sides of his neck, hard- if it bruises he'll kick himself later, but right now he doesn't care. He'll mark his boy all he wants. That final bit of force is all it takes, a choke and a tug on his sweet little cock piercing and Hawks is finished. He's staring right into Enji's eyes as he comes - gold twining with blue - and Hawks' release is a warm obscenity caught his palm.

It's only then that he realizes, panting: Enji's dick is still throbbing because he was only focused on Hawks.

It takes a moment before Enji removes his hand from the boy's throat, pulls the digit from his tongue. Hawks is languid from pleasure. He's a mess, leaning against Enji's palm like he still needs the support, like he needs daddy's touch alone to come down from orgasm. That touch is the one thing keeping Hawks from falling right into Enji's broad chest.

If that happens, Enji doesn't know what he'd do.

After his breaths slow, Hawks finally straightens up to run a hand through his damp hair. His eyeliner is smudged around his pleasure-blown eyes, and his smile is shaky and spent but he wears one all the same.

Enji thinks of all the terrible things he would do to see a sight like this every day.

Fuck.

"Fuck,"  Hawks echoes his thoughts and practically falls back into the passenger seat next to him, leaving a regretfully empty spot on Enji's lap. But Hawks isn't done, no, Enji didn't drive ten miles just to watch his student cum and have that be the selfless end of it.

"A good boy would make sure Daddy finishes too, don't you think?"

Enji realizes what he's referring to himself as. God, he knows. That isn't even as depraved as he can get, when he wipes his cum-covered hand on his own cock, painfully hard and leaking from the touch, throbbing with unbearable pressure. Enji is groaning against his bitten lip as the boy watches him do it.

Hawks can guess exactly what Daddy wants him to do.

"I'd hate to be bad." And with that Hawks is already leaning down, surging forward to lick a stripe up Enji's thick and dirtied dick, proving that he's not shy when it comes to something so filthy. He's right at home.

When Enji comes down the boy's throat he can't help but think that awful thought again - that he wants to sink his teeth right into Hawks' lip. He doesn't care that it would taste like his own come. In fact, that's almost what he's hoping for, to feel Hawks' tongue, wet and slick and pierced. 

Hawks is smiling at him again after swallowing, he's so good at being bad. He's so-

"You can just take me home," Hawks says pointedly, and the moment is over. No- there was never a moment to begin with, just Enji's dizzy, half-working mind from getting the life sucked out of him. It would make anyone's thoughts a little clouded.

Enji doesn't respond right away so Hawks nudges, "Doc?"

Enji turns the ignition on without responding, rolling down both front windows an inch, because the last thing he wants to smell getting in his car Monday morning is sex and smoke and sin. When Hawks tells him the name of an apartment complex that's fairly close to campus, Enji is glad he won't have to take directions. Instead he can simmer with all the dirty things they'd said and done to each other.

"So," Hawks begins after they've traveled only a few miles. Enji is practically groaning already, but Hawks continues, "Since weekends are not a thing," and then he pauses for feedback. Hawks eyes him for any sign of going back on his word, but it only makes Enji all the more determined to follow through.

"Correct," He agrees. There's a tilt of the Hawks' head like he's about to ask something disastrous, but to Enji's relief he's only looking for permission.

"I'll be out of town tomorrow."

Enji swallows.

"Fine."

"You sure about that?" Hawks instigates even still. He truly is a bad habit that Enji needs to break, although he wouldn't even know where to start.

Enji waits until he's stopped the car outside Hawks' apartment complex to reply, twisting in his seat to shoot the most authoritative look he can muster. "Go." 

It's both a demand to get out of his car, and the permission Hawks was looking for.

He thanks Daddy with a smile.

It's Sunday night. Enji falls into his bed, placing his wedding band on the end table next to it, a practiced routine at this point.

But sleep doesn't find him - it's been avoiding him like the plague. When his eyes close it doesn't bring relaxation but instead only burning thoughts, searing memories. He relives things like how Hawks' neck felt pulsing under his fingertips, and how pretty his whines were when Enji played with his cock, that fucking metal ring.

It's a shame that there are no more piercings to find.

On Monday morning, Enji wakes and rises out of bed feeling a little more than exhausted. When he leaves for class and shuts the door to his bedroom, he neglects to put his wedding band back on for the very first time. It doesn't mean anything, he simply forgot. There's a lot on his mind.

It doesn't mean a thing.

It's a week later when Enji stays late again. It's becoming somewhat of a common occurrence now, but it isn't like Enji has been staying after-hours just for Hawks - No, no, that's absolutely ridiculous. He already denied any adjustments to his office times because the boy isn't that special, even if he thinks he is. He doesn't get to warp Enji's schedule around him.

Enji just happens to have tests to grade, and a phone number for the one he wouldn't mind keeping him company.

It doesn't take long.

"Give me a minute," Enji tells him.

Hawks has a hand in his pocket, standing near Enji's desk and waiting for an invitation to stay - although he looks a little impatient. A little restless. Enji asked for him to come, after all, and Hawks isn't used to being set on the backburner when daddy calls his name. Enji regards him carefully; Hawks is checking his phone but it's mindless, his thoughts are so clearly elsewhere.

He's sneaking such unconscionable smiles.

But there's something new, too, something curious about the way he's regarding Enji's face. It's getting to him. He drops his pen and turns to Hawks directly but that expression is still untraceable.

Enji curses himself for wondering but wonders all the same: why hasn't Hawks mentioned it?  After all this time? The boy certainly doesn't hold back in anything else - he's the poster child of confidence - so isn't it burning him up to leave something so big untouched?

Finally giving Hawks his full attention, Enji comments, "I'm- surprised you haven't asked about it."

Hawks lowers his phone and quirks his head- and god, he's not allowed to have an expression like that, eyes like that, he knows exactly what he's doing. The boy is trying to play with him because of those ten terrible minutes he spent waiting. This is Enji's punishment, now. Getting a front row seat of Hawks biting his lip, staring at him with the same affection as when he looks up at Enji while his cock stuffs his throat full-

"Hm?"

It takes Enji a moment to remember what he's answering. By now he's regretting his calling attention to it, straying from the reason he called the boy here to begin with, but Hawks wouldn't let it go if he tried to back out now. All Enji can do is finally call out the elephant in the room:

"My scar."

Hawks sounds a little surprised, a little amused, "Did you want me to ask?"

At that, Enji presses his lips together and stays silent. He doesn't want anything. He couldn't care less about faked interest but Hawks is invested now; he'll take no answer as a resounding yes, which Enji should be used to him doing by now.

Hawks clears his throat for dramatics and finally asks, "So, what happened to your face?"

It nearly uncovers a smile. Enji should be used to that, too.

"A miscalculation. Fluorine is very reactive."

"And I'll take your word for it," Hawks accepts the explanation with ease and doesn't poke any further, which Enji appreciates. Though it's not actually a painful topic. He'd describe it like he would the weather or weekend plans. The incident happened years ago during his adjunct research and was exactly that: a miscalculation. There are few colleagues who still remember how he looked without the ugly, triangular patch distorting down the left side of his face, ripples and bumps in his off-color skin.

It looked worse before but Enji knows it's still unsightly - he knows that morbidly curious eyes drift to it while speaking to him or while watching him lecture, even if they'd never dare to ask. He was a hard man to miss even without the scar.

So it doesn't bother him now.

What does bother him is this: when he flips back through the month or so that he's known Hawks, Enji doesn't remember him ever looking at the left side of his face any differently. He remembers sinful looks - looks that held lot of begging, doting, wanting, but never flashes of disgust. Never any questions. Enji has to bite his tongue then, so he doesn't ask something that shouldn't matter.

Does the boy simply not care, or is there more to it than that?

Hawks bites his lip seeing Enji's intensity, and teases him out of it. "Glad we got that out of the way, it was getting hard to sleep at night."

Enji's gaze narrows, "I really do dislike you."

He's never told such a bold-faced lie in his life. But it doesn't mean the opposite is true, he doesn't like Hawks. He likes how the boy understands their arrangement, how he hasn't once asked for a change in his grade, how he makes daddy into something Enji wants to hear - so badly that he feels the ache of that word in his bones. 

Hawks leans against the wall and crosses his arms, "Do you? Cause you see, from my perspective that's a little hard to believe."

"Believe it."

"Then tell me why." Hawks lays down the bait and Enji is too frustrated to see it, he storms ahead and growls, "This is why, boy. You're cocky and you have absolutely no right to be." But it's another lie for the books. Hawks has plenty to back up this obnoxious confidence. Enji can't ignore his determination, his charisma, how irresistible he feels, god, how nice the view is when he opens his mouth wide-

"Is that why you haven't fucked me?"

Enji blinks, and for the very first time, it's him who turns red - loses his fucking mind. The comment makes him furious . He's seething, seeing stars and regretting every decision that led to this point, to Hawks asking something like that as if he's been owed it from the very beginning. A good fuck. A rough and filthy and primal fuck.

His temper steals him away from any rationality. Enji is out of his seat and standing over Hawks in an instant, lifting him up by the backs of his thighs and pressing him hard against the wall by his hips; he sees Hawks flinch at the pressure, the power, at the flames melting right through Enji's icy blue eyes. But he doesn't look scared. His hands fly to Enji's chest in an instant to brace against him, and he's tilting his head up to watch Enji's every move. Oh, how quickly this chaotic, impulsive dominance wiped both the smirk and confidence right off his pretty face.

He's never wanted Hawks more.

Enji hikes him up the wall an inch higher and Hawks lets out a surprised little whimper. That noise and the grinding proximity between them fills his cock with heat, with unbearable desire - how could he ever be satiated, fuck, he's aching. Hawks brings their bodies even closer still, sub-zero space, linking his legs together right across Enji's lower back. The boy wants him all. He really is greedy.

"What?" Enji remarks at his silence, pulling a hand up to hold his jaw in a commanding vice-grip, "Nothing to say now?"

Hawks eyes widen slowly until they're doll-like, desperate. So shaken from being manhandled because Enji is too large and too overpowering. One of his hands still supports the boy’s thigh, and his fingers are digging in there just as roughly as the corners of Hawk's smart little mouth. Enji wonders if he's going to tear up already. It looks like he might.

"I- Daddy-," Hawks manages to finally choke out. He really does crumble so easily, especially with the promise of Enji's dick pushing right against his crotch. The sound of that small voice, God, those anticipatory hitches of his breath. Enji hears them and knows that he's won.

"Don't Daddy me," Enji chastises back. He moves his palm down Hawks' neck, squeezing the base of his throat where his hand covers its entirety, "You want to be fucked so badly? Fine."

Hawks can't even reply to this with any more than a sob. He shifts against Enji and starts begging, deep-seated and silent with the way his fists clutch at Enji's shirt for purchase. He's pleading with these touches, these wild looks, like he wants nothing more than to please Enji - to show Daddy how well he can take his cock.

He tugs up Hawks’ shirt and dips his mouth down to press a wet kiss on the poor nub of his nipple. To pull at the piercing with his teeth before dragging his thick tongue upward and catching it, pulling it. Enji feels the imprint of the cold metal when he does, a promise ring against his tongue, tangy through the softness of his skin. The boy is absolutely delicious.

Hawks throws desperate hands behind Enji's neck and whines in overstimulated pleasure, pushing his nails into his back. The boy is trying to dig himself out of this torture, at the harsh suction of Enji's mouth, begging between breaths, "You aren't- tcch, fair." But Enji doesn't know why he's complaining - he can feel the effect it has on Hawks, he's so hard for his Daddy.

Enji’s tongue finally breaks away, "It isn't about you," he reminds him because of the audacity it took to call this unfair. It's about Enji, it's about what daddy wants. How he desires this pretty college boy with golden eyes and unholy piercings hidden under his clothes.

What Enji wants most in this moment is to fuck Hawks raw.

That's exactly what he growls in the boy's ear; the reaction he gets is so instantly vulnerable, visceral - It's nails in his neck, legs squeezing around his waist tighter, choked moans that were supposed to be breaths, saying, "Please, please." Hawks doesn't need to beg at this point but he probably can't help it, he's conditioned for Daddy, what a good boy. Enji lets him hear that too.

Enji has known for a while where he wants this to happen, exactly where he wants to make him scream. So while Hawks' arms are still wrapped around his neck, Enji places both of his hands back under the boy's thighs and carries him to the desk. Lowers him onto it with a look that tells him exactly how damned he is. 

Enji brushes the clutter aside with his hand, and there are pens and papers falling to the floor, a water bottle toppling to splash onto his nice shoes - God, he's making a mess but it doesn't matter, it doesn't fucking matter. He could break the desk in half without flinching. And he might.

Enji tears both of their pants down in an instant, he doesn't have patience for buttons, ripping his own collared shirt right off his body before the heat kills him. Enji makes a low, greedy noise when he looks between their legs and sees the boy's hard cock laying full and untouched on his hip, that ring in the head such a provocative sight.

Suddenly, Enji is offering two fingers in front of his mouth, "Lick."

The boy obeys. Gets them nice and wet and presses a kiss to them when he's done, like he can't help all the little ways he tries to please. Enji reaches for his bottom drawer next, that bottle he bought weeks ago because he needed to be prepared for the inevitable. This was always going to happen, he knew from that first visit to his office, from the first words Hawks ever said to him: cross my heart.

Enji stares at the one who he debauched all his morals for, and squeezes a generous amount of lube on top of his spit-covered fingers. Hawks is watching him right back. He's biting his lip and spreading his legs wide in offering, it almost makes Enji feel guilty knowing how pliant he is. How easily Hawks lets Enji push his leg up high in the air with a hand under his knee.

"Fuck, I need-,"   Hawks can't even finish a single thought, trailing off into limbo. He's a shell of himself, trembling.

"Mm? What was that, boy?" Enji slaps his oversized cock between the boy's cheeks, dragging it down the smooth hole in-between. He's never felt heat like this in his life, "If you need it so badly, all you have to do is ask," Enji promises, and the pressure of his wide tip pushes right against the opening. He wonders how far he could go, how willing the boy really is, because Hawks is whimpering like Enji's never heard - like he'd submit to the pain just to make daddy happy. Take his thick cock dry and unprepared to split him open at the seams.

But Enji isn't so mean.

He replaces the dangerous pressure with a finger, and the look of relief on Hawks' face is palpable. Only it contorts again as Enji pushes inside, shooting the boy a heavy look while his forefinger slips in to his knuckle with no issue at all. Hawks’ eyes shimmer back. His voice is so soft and unreadable that it might be the first time he's ever been embarrassed,

“I play with toys,” He explains the ease that Enji fucks him with his finger.

Enji just about loses it at that mental image.

"Of course you do." He pushes in the tip of his second finger and there's resistance now, a flinch, a downright begging look. Enji captures those starry eyes in his shackle of a gaze as he torments him further, "I'm sure you're right at home having your ass stuffed."

Hawks lets out a noise that makes Enji's blood run black with sin. He’s thinks all at once, no one is ever allowed to hear this but me. Hawks is his. He's everything he could ever ask for. Enji lays claim to him further, opening the tightness by thrusting and scissoring and curling into his boy with slick fingers. They're quite large on their own right, he doesn't need more than two to fuck him open. Daddy will do the rest with his cock.

But Enji doesn't want to stare into the boy's eyes while his dick drills into him. This isn't love, it's closer to fury. He wants his student bent right over his office desk, to fuck him against the wood while the ink of his tattood wings erupt into flames. 

So Enji puts him right where he wants him - yanking Hawks up by both arms and flipping him over without any care, slamming the boy's chest into the plane of the desk. He holds Hawks’ arms together behind him.

Enji squeezes his wrists for good measure, letting Hawks know exactly who owns him; he's Enji's property now. Every inch of him.

With that, Enji is gone. He sinks the tip of his cock in, "There we go," He praises. Already he's possessed by how good this feels, this ceaseless heat that no one has ever been able to supply before. No, not even his wife comes close. Enji's eyes land on Hawks' back while he pushes deeper, waiting for the violent gasps telling him to slow down, but Enji really should know better. Hawks is a giver and a taker and he's always been eager to do both; he's an angel, just look at those wings.

Hawks won't complain about the one thing he's been begging for. This fuck is an epiphany.

Enji groans and starts moving his cock, thrusting instead of allowing for any respite because the deeper he goes the more he’s squeezed tight. It's better than he ever imagined, fuck, Hawks is a dream. Enji feels everything: the warmth around him, the bruises he pushes into Hawks' wrists and hip, the way their curses bounce off each other and twist into a sea of vulgarity. It’s like they’ve been deprived of each other. Enji is finally fucking his pretty college boy. 

Enji is fucking them both right to hell.

His hand surges forward and knots into Hawks' hair, tugging his head back as he buries his cock in to the hilt. His boy is so good, he's taking him so well. Enji rewards him by towering over his back and fucking into him deeply. Again, again, again - and the word Daddy spills from Hawks' mouth like a thousand thank you 's. He's being ravaged and all he can do is ask for more and then beg for it.

"Louder."

Enji gives him a reason to scream. He pounds him into the desk, never taking his eyes off those perfect red wings. What a show the boy is putting on just for him. Enji yanks his head back by his hair and sees spit falling from his mouth, tears from his eyes, strangled moans from his throat. Enji reels from the sight. The next deliberate thrust sends Hawks in a frenzy, "Fuck, fuck, fuck ," his pupils roll back and his chokes tell daddy that he's found somewhere good. So he keeps hitting it. Every time he ruins them both.

Hawks cries out too loudly. Enji keeps his monstrous rhythm because it's taking them both to euphoria, to a high place up in the stars that he'd be afraid to fall from. He loosens his grip from the boy's wrists, because he needs his hands to be digging into that soft skin he's staring at. He needs to hook his fingers along the sides of Hawks' back - to press his thumbs in right where red ink lays. He needs.

"Ah, ah, faster, please..."

Enji fucks him faster.

"Harder-" Hawks is nearly sobbing.

Enji fucks him harder. He buries his cock in Hawks' ass and bores his fingers into his flesh, his chest pressed right on top of those fallen angel wings - and they fly. The orgasm it lets loose is like nothing he's never felt. It shoots up from his guts and circles through him in waves, causing a broken moan to spill from his mouth in tandem. Oh, Enji isn't even real, or if he is there's only one person who knows him.

"Ahh-Nnnn, Daddy.. ."

Enji's lips are crushed against the roots of his wings when he praises back, "Good boy."

Enji takes one look at Hawks once he's clothed and upright and tells him:

"I'm driving you home."

Hawks looks embarrassed at the offer, although his cheeks have been red for nearly half an hour straight so it's hard to tell exactly what's causing it now. "You don't have to do that."

But he does. If it was any more obvious what they'd just done in his office, Enji would be arrested on the streets for indecency. Enji isn't stupid, either, he knows he could've been gentler and that the boy could've asked, but careful isn't really a priority when you're as desperate and hungry as he was. Hawks is feeling sore in-between his legs. Enji sure of it even if Hawks is too proud to admit it.

Giving him no option to refuse, Enji pushes, "It's not a request." Hawks seems to give in, then. His eyes are downcast and it almost feels like a lingering cloud of submission. Enji is fine with it, as long as he doesn't make any trouble, as long as he does what Enji says.

He goes to his car first and refuses to think in the fleeting solitude it brings, not that his mind is even close to full capacity. It's blown wide open. It's laid bare for the ground to drink all the selfish desires that spill out of him. Enji doesn't know if he'll ever be able to fuck another person without wishing for that kind of intensity, for that filthy, gritty passion.

For Hawks.

Enji feels like he should say something once Hawks gets in the passenger seat. Once again he finds himself twisting his steering wheel in fury, hands against the leather when not long ago they instead held handfuls of the boys nice, soft flesh.

Enji might need this moment to compose himself, but Hawks can only take the silence for so long before wondering what they're waiting for. He's straight-faced when he asks, "Did you want me to sit in your lap again?"

A laugh escapes Enji then, throaty and deep, relief from all the tension. He doesn't meet Hawks' eyes, but Enji can tell that he's memorized the sound of it, taken it right from the air. This rare chuckle from the man who only knows harshness - the man who wears a battle scar and never lets anything slip.

But Hawks has torn him open one layer at a time.

"You're ridiculous," Enji is back to his no-nonsense tone. He starts his car and drives, painfully aware of how short the distance he needs to go is. How short their time together in general is, because Enji has been avoiding the looming deadline of their arrangement. Once, he thought that day couldn't come soon enough, but he's kicking himself for it now. There are a lot of things he's kicking himself over.

Hawks turns a radio station on like he can't stand the silence either, and Enji is thankful for background music instead of biting air. Empty air.

"You know, I'm graduating this semester," Hawks says after a moment. For once he's not looking at Enji, his eyes are out the window at the trees flying by, hand cupping around his own jaw. Enji can see there are fading grey bruises in his neck. What a fitting last gift they are.

"Congratulations."

Hawks turns then, like he expected more than that. His reaction is what causes it to finally sink in and drown Enji alive- Hawks is 21, at the very least, but now he's realizing that he was one year off. Hawks is a senior, he's finished. Enji doesn't know what this pressure in his chest suddenly is, only that despite an awful first impression and weeks of clashing, biting, fucking, Enji has become- he's become so fond  of him.

But Hawks still doesn't get any other reaction from Enji. All Hawks holds in his hand is a cold congratulations, aching insides, and a ride home. Even still, he's all smiles soon enough even if he's faking it, that irresistible charm in his eyes.

"Thanks." Hawks opens the car door to leave once they've stopped in front of his building, and follows up with, "I'll see you around, doc."

The door shuts between them.

Enji waits until Hawks is in his apartment complex, and then he's driving away, twenty miles over the speed limit, rushing just like the thoughts that rip through his own head. He takes the familiar road back to his own home, because where else is there? His empty bedroom. A phone devoid of messages. That cursed ring on his end table- god, it's pure gold just like his fucking eyes.

The silence is deafening when he turns his car off but he'll find comfort in it soon enough; he used to like this peace and quiet, remember?

And Enji has a final exam to make.

During the designated test day, Enji is right where he began, sitting at the front of the auditorium giving monotone instructions. Use your calculator- periodic tables will be provided- don't cheat- don't fall for trick questions- don't get attached to a student, even if he is the best fuck you've had in twenty years.

Enji has truly let this become the end of him.

It's hard to refuse the kind of eye contact Hawks is demanding while he takes his test, meant to poke at him. To drag up every desperate touch and every wrong  they've ever committed together, all with a single look. He's probably the first one to finish but he doesn't get up. He doesn't turn it in. This absolute fool, this smitten college boy, he stays the full two hours just trying to get Enji to look back. Eventually he does - he'll let Hawks play this one last game - but there is nothing familiar in that smile anymore. It isn't coy or challenging, it isn't a bad boy vying for attention.

Enji doesn't know what it is.

And he doesn't want to.

He thanks Hawks for one thing at least: when the time is up, the boy doesn't personally deliver his exam for an uncomfortable face-to-face, he simply leaves it on his bench top and exits with everyone else. There's no fleeting goodbye because Hawks spent the last two hours burning him with it.

It's a moment before Enji gathers all his things, nearly forgetting that lone test because it's his final, and it's final. When Enji picks up the stapled packet he half expects a note scribbled on the front, but no, there's no note. No farewell.

There's only a key.

Enji's mouth twitches as he swears, and raves, and tries to melt the cursed object in his palm with a glare. He's telling himself what he has every time, that he won't dig himself any deeper now that he can finally reach the top of the pit. He's determined. He's unrelenting. This invitation won't ever find its way into his pocket, or attached to his own ring of keys, because there's only one thing Enji can possibly see it unlocking.

And he won't set foot in that boy's home.

Enji won't do it because this is Hawks wanting and desiring things out of his reach, all over again. Right from the start it was him begging to come into his professor's office, not the other way around. This key is Hawks' fantasy. His dirty little dream. It isn't something Enji would humor, because his student is still so obviously, painfully infatuated with him, and if that ever dares to cross into a mutual feeling - if that boy fucking dares to pull Enji in any further-

The key fits. Not that Enji ever doubted it would.

"Hey, doc."

And the way he says it - that grin he says it with - Enji is sure that Hawks never doubted he'd use it.

Enji sits on a bar stool, throws his head backwards, and drinks.

He holds no expectations of bringing someone else home with him tonight. It's enough just to flirt with the possibility of it, come alone and claim a spot in the center of the bar where he's just quiet enough, just intimidating enough to keep the ones with no confidence away. He doesn't even have to try, it happens all on its own when he turns his head and watches them curl at the sight of his scar.

They aren’t the ones he’s after; they don't interest him. So he takes another sip and asks the bartender to close his tab for the night.

When is the last time someone did manage to pique his interest? A week before this, maybe, a stubborn boy with brown hair who wouldn't stop vying for Enji's attention until he got his wish, until Enji promised to drag him to a motel and fuck him into the mattress if that's what he wanted so badly.

Enji kept his promise and then some. He can't remember his name now; those have never been important.

But did it interest him?

Maybe. Not enough.

A loud group of college students stumble through the door and Enji ignores them, starts tapping his ring on the wood counter, waiting for his credit card to run. It's about time to catch his taxi and go home to review his lessons while the world isn't yet spinning.

But even still, he catches himself wishing someone would sit next to him and make him change his mind.

Someone young.

Someone young and blond and so sure that they could convince him to stay. He'd been hooked more times than he could count but it’s never enough, and maybe he'll never find the one who is - the one who makes him eat their words like it’s indulgence, the one who feels as good around his cock as Hawks did. He'll just keep trying, trapped in this self-fulfilling prophecy wishing someone was interesting enough to pull him out of the loop.

So right now, Enji wouldn't say no to a pretty face that tried to hook him again.

He never could.

It’s the end of his Friday and Enji has no classes left, so instead he spends his time clicking around his email and avoiding one that he’d received less than a week ago. It’s the very reason his night-outs at bars have gotten more frequent. The subject line is greyed out – he’d opened it already, more than once, more than a dozen fucking times because he just can’t help himself, can he?

It’s a formal letter of recommendation request.

Enji had denied it on principle, of course, but only in theory because he hadn’t actually replied.

He stares for too long before opening an empty document and trying his hand at one anyway, to see what bastardized thing comes of it. It isn’t like his principles mean anything now.

To whom it may concern: Hawks was an excellent student whenever it was in his best interest to be one. He shouldn’t have been able to leave such a lasting impression. The boy missed two weeks of class in a row but don’t let that fool you, he did whatever it took to make it up, spending hours upon hours in his professor’s office. On his knees. Bent over a desk. Fucked up against a wall because he wanted to be punished so badly, to take his Daddy’s cock, such a good boy, begging for it like an easy lay-

Enji closes out of the document without saving. He bites into the meat of his thumb until it throbs as much as his groin does, but after cooling down he only gets more stubborn about it. Another try writing the damned thing again, then, except this time his fingers never manage to get past "Hawks is-"

There’s no end to that sentence that’ll ever be enough to describe him.

So back to another bar, it is.

Enji drinks because it’s hard to come to terms with spending a year of his life wrapped up in his student’s sheets. They used each other good and dirty, they fucked each other only to get something out of it and now Hawks wants to extort him for more. That fucking letter . He must think it’s owed to him.

This time Enji chooses a bar that he doesn’t usually frequent, full of the younger crowd to where nearly half of them have sat in his own lecture halls. Before, Enji avoided this place like the world would smite him if he walked inside, but right now he’s drawn in to sit down. To stay a while. Try one more time to get hooked by someone who doesn’t exist to be a replacement.

Enji moves to the roof, sitting down on the farthest corner of a shared metal tabletop, one complete with a living fire pit that stretches along a dip in its architecture. He warms his hands with it. He orders three shots of whiskey, dry. Soon enough that fire is jumping right under his skin.

And then Enji finds it - the only thing that could ever taste real enough to him.

Hawks is here, across the rooftop dancing without a care, laughing, living life like he’s forgotten everything else but that circle he spins in. He’s surrounded by a crowd that looks like they’d follow him anywhere. They dance with him, touch him. Enji’s eyes cross so hard that Hawks splits into two. Why is he back? Why the fuck is he here?

His hair is shorter than it was a year ago.

Nothing else has changed, he looks good enough to eat. That little black top he’s wearing, hiking up his stomach whenever his arms wave above his head, showing off the tattoos on the curve of his shoulders – he must think the whole room is watching him. Or he just doesn’t care and never has.

There’s something else different, too, it’s like Enji is watching a ghost of him that’s careless about how it moves in the night. Hawks isn’t tied down to anyone. But he still can’t escape how Enji sees him: his pretty boy .

It looks like Hawks glances over to him, then, but it’s impossible to tell for sure. So Enji swallows another drink and keeps watching him.

He watches until Hawks pulls one of his friends aside and shouts something into their ear, taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket – and suddenly Enji’s vision goes blurry. He remembers Hawks’ leather jacket that smelled so deeply of smoke when he picked him up in the city. Back then he thought it was only secondhand from the bar, because why would the good boy, the I don’t drink boy, be a smoker just like Enji was?

But Enji gets up and follows him out anyway. It isn’t like he planned on letting him go.

The door isn’t even fully closed when he steps into the backstreet with him. Hawks is the only one near, bathing in the moon, lighting his cigarette and staring right past it. He doesn’t miss a beat before going, "I was wondering if you forgot about me."

Enji bites his tongue.

"'Specially since you never replied to my very professional email."

He’s being sly. It sounds like Hawks knew all along that he wasn’t getting that letter, even if he’d begged on his knees for it, so then maybe he’d only asked to fuck with Enji in the first place. Something Enji should’ve realized before. With Hawks, it’s always the easiest answer or the one that makes too much sense to be real.

"It isn't happening," Enji puts his foot down.

Hawks takes a drag, and he could’ve aimed the cloud at Enji if he was really trying to get a rise out of him. Instead, it swirls itself out in the night. "Then you can get your own smoke, old man."

He must’ve hid the cigarettes from Enji before – or he’s the fabled type that can have them on special occasions and never once let it spiral out of his control. Enji would believe it.

Hawks gives him a too-familiar smile, then.

It’s too much. And Enji notices something else – there’s lipstick on the corners of Hawks’ mouth, the color of cherries, the color of his wings. It could be his own but even then, it’s too messy. Smeared all around and painting his face a dirty red.

Someone kissed him tonight. It would’ve happened before he first noticed Hawks; maybe it was one of his friends and it didn’t mean anything, or maybe it was some older man who isn’t Enji that stole him away and didn’t take no for an answer.

Enji can only pin his anger on a stomach full of whiskey. It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t. "Why are you here?"  He doesn’t mean the club, now, but back this city, this god-forsaken space anywhere near Enji again.

"I'm celebrating." Hawks tilts his head. "Can't you tell? I thought I dressed up and everything."

Enji makes a noise that’s too open. He doesn't dare look at Hawks' outfit now, his hipbones, his throat, his mouth that’s all dark and used.

Who did you let kiss you, boy...

"I'm twenty-three." Hawks explains what Enji never asked, rocking on his feet and smiling again through his cigarette. It’d be immature if he wasn’t doing it on purpose, reaching for Enji’s arm and playing coy, asking, “Did you come here just to give me a present?”

Enji growls . The touch hits like a bullet, hearing the boy’s age shoots him dead, and everything else curdles in his chest like the casings were steeped in poison. Enji shouldn’t be here with him. This all makes sense now, too much sense, it’s just like that fucking letter. Hawks had come back to celebrate with college friends and it had nothing to do with Enji - but now Hawks is thinking, why not? Why wouldn’t he try for another night on top of his favorite professor?

Hawks has always been an opportunist at heart.

And Enji has always let him ride.

"Happy birthday." He spits it at him, and doesn't let the door close gently when he leaves.

He takes three more shots of whiskey so fast that he doesn’t even breathe in-between them.

He goes somewhere where the fire isn't so hot.

A boy – but not his boy - with a soft face and bright clothes comes up to him after a minute, or an hour, asking about his scar while Enji can't see straight, like that's the go-to topic of conversation when you want to be fucked by someone you shouldn’t be. Enji mumbles something about chemicals. The boy giggles like he understands what it means, and then leans in to tell Enji that his scar makes him look like trouble.

That's it, then.

Enji drags him home and fucks this nameless face in a drunken binge of self-hatred, bending him over and digging his hands into the notches of his back, driving his cock into him. Slapping his cheeks red. Redder. Even then, it still isn't the color Enji's looking for, it isn’t the shade of messy lips. The boy's back is unmarked and plain and like nothing he's ever wanted, God, he’s sick with it.

Enji tells him afterward, "Get out," even while his cum drips down the boy's shaky thighs.

"Right now?" He pants. Enji doesn't know what else his one-night-stand expected, but bringing this to his own bed was an even worse decision than fucking another stranger.

"Right now," Enji repeats.

He forces a fistful of cash into the boy’s hand for the cab home.

<I need that letter

It’s an unknown number that Enji never could block - a known temptation that’s never failed to creep under his skin, between his legs.

Maybe this time it won’t work. Enji doesn't care what Hawks needs.

<come and find me tonight

But an invitation is enough to knock him out cold. Enji can’t fool himself, staying home would mean wondering what would’ve happened if he went - it would mean thinking about some other man trying to cozy up to Hawks instead, calling him a pretty boy, tugging his piercings in some dirty bathroom stall. Kissing him. Fucking him like it should be so easy.

Enji is too stubborn to reply, so he goes out on a limb and finds the same bar he was thinking about last night. Where he picked Hawks up a year ago and change, smelled the smoke on his jacket and didn’t know any better. The time when Enji wanted so badly that he couldn’t wait one more second to pull Hawks onto his lap, make him come.

It’s Déjà vu at its worst.

At first he doesn't find Hawks in the bathroom or anywhere near the main bar. Enji is cursing to himself, he has to suppress the voice in his head that’s telling him to call Hawks and ask for a fucking hint . If he isn’t here, Enji doesn’t want to think about how many other bars he’d try, how long he’d look. He’s a beggar. The fact that he isn't drunk right makes it worse.

But then Enji’s eyes catch the backdoor, and all his nerves bundle up tight in his guts as he tries this one last time.

Of course, he’s there waiting. Hawks is smoking outside again in the night, and he takes a guilty peek at Enji like he’d been looking forward to this.

“Hey.” He says it just like that. There is no world where Hawks didn’t expect Enji to seek him out, eager and panting, twisted around his finger. Enji looks at him and wants to kill him softly.

“You’re really testing my patience. “

Hawks steps away from the wall of the building, removing his hand from his cigarette and instead smoothing it along the plane of Enji’s abdomen, curling his fingers between the buttons of his nice shirt. The touch is cold on his stomach, warm everywhere else. “Did you bring my letter?” Hawks asks.

Enji knits his eyebrows together. The question means that maybe he had it all wrong before, maybe Hawks really is using him for his own personal gain. Dirty boy and all his tricks.

Hawks starts to feel around his pockets looking for it when Enji doesn’t answer - front and back – exploring and slipping his fingers inside while Enji hitches his breath away. Hawks comes up empty and pouts until he finds something else to fill his palm with.

The first squeeze around Enji’s cock is anything but gentle, the fourth is enough to get him good and hard.

Enji’s nose fills with cold air and smoke.

“You know, usually when you blackmail someone it starts with a demand.” Hawks touches him more, like he can’t get enough, like he loves to. “Or do you just want me to keep going until I hit it?”

“Hawks.”

“I can beg too, I know how much you like it - see?” Another squeeze and Enji is beside himself. “How many ways do you think I could say please?”

Hawks doesn’t wait for an answer this time, he starts to undo Enji’s pants with the kind of hunger that can’t be bought or blackmailed, it’s bone deep. It’s a hunger pain that puts the boy right where he belongs, pawing at Enji’s crotch, eager to get underneath his clothes. Enji lets him have his way, just this once, and pulls the cigarette right from Hawks’ mouth as the buttons pop. As the zipper comes down.

Enji feels a wave move through his chest when he stares at Hawks’ mouth, and it only crashes when he doesn’t find any lipstick.

“I’m not blackmailing you,” Enji mutters. But it isn’t his responsibility to say no. They’re both adults here; Hawks is twenty-three, twenty-three , it was his birthday yesterday when he was dancing on the roof like a starlet. When he was wearing someone else’s kiss.

Enji crushes the cigarette between his fingers like it’s his first time holding one.

“Then we’ll call it a favor,” Hawks amends, tugging his waistband down until it meets wiry, black hair, and then he plays the waiting game until they come to an agreement – the fucking torture of it. But if it’s a favor he wants that means Enji will owe him, it’ll put him into Hawks’ debt as if he isn’t rotting there already. Right now, as they speak.

“No favors.” It’s hard to keep his voice level. His eyes land on Hawks’ bare shoulders and stay on his tattoo while Enji finds some sense, thinking about his back, how he would always stare at it and go cross-eyed as Hawks moaned underneath him, until all he could see were those flightless, red wings.

What Enji feels now isn’t so different. Another wave builds up and breaks against his rib cage until he’s all but liquid inside, and he’s suddenly glad he’s sober now. Drunk Enji wouldn’t savor this.

Drunk Enji would’ve gone to another bar tonight and fucked someone else, bent them over like it was a chore because they couldn’t hope to be real enough for him, they wouldn’t dare look at his scar. They wouldn’t touch it. They’d call him by his name instead of a word that makes his mind break.

Hawks lets out an impatient whine. “Fuck, if you knew how badly I-“

Enji grabs his chin and crushes their lips together, taking him so fiercely that the whole world seems to ripple. He’s never wanted Hawks this badly, god, he’s starving . It’s the first time, it breaks every rule Enji’d written before and stomps them into the fucking dirt; no attachment, no kissing. No taste of smoke on his tongue like there is now, as Hawks melts and gasps into his mouth and there’s so much of him that Enji drowns in it.

Those lipstick stains hadn’t made him jealous. They aren’t the reason why he does it, he doesn’t care , and Enji won’t ask about them long as Hawks doesn’t ask about the ring on his finger, and keeps on pretending he can’t see it, like a good boy.

Hawks isn’t caught off guard for long before he turns greedy, twisting a hand behind Enji’s neck, rubbing a thigh between his legs as they rock.

Enji feels dizzy when that little metal ball starts clanking against his teeth, writing desire on his tongue. He wants to bite down on it like Hawks would whenever he smiled for attention. He wants Hawks to bite him back.

Enji has to grab him for balance then, like he’s tripping while standing up, like he can’t possibly be sober while he’s blackout drunk on Hawks. It’s too fucking real. It’s too much. Enji has to push him away, and before Hawks can say anything, anything at all, Enji looks at the boy who ruined his life and tells him, “Kneel.”

Hawks makes an indecent noise and does what he’s told, obedient as always once Enji asks him to be. He’s sinking to the cold, hard ground, kneeling before him. Hawks leans in to rub his cheek against Enji’s crotch and then looks up to make sure he’s watching. He is, of course he is. There isn’t a sight he’d rather see than how Hawks takes his place at Enji’s feet, curling his fingers in his waistband and pulling it down as Enji throbs.

Hawks takes his cock into his mouth like he’s devoted to it, dragging his tongue along every inch he can reach, sneaking glances at how Enji curls against the wall every time that piercing rolls over the tip. Enji groans, “Mmm, perfect,” because it is. Perfect boy, his perfect mouth. Enji fucks into it just like that, out in the open, like a parking garage wasn’t the lowest place he’d go to see Hawks unravel against him.

Some stranger could open the backdoor and discover them at any moment - but it won’t happen. The night leaves them in darkness together, all alone.

Enji should’ve stayed yesterday, he should’ve fucked Hawks like he wanted to.

He’ll make up for all his mistakes, now.

Enji is still holding the cigarette while his other hand finds a place on Hawks’ head, gripping his hair, tugging, controlling. There’s something about it that makes this all so distinctly raw . Enji thinks about what it'd feel like to push the cigarette into the delicate flesh of Hawks’ neck, or make him stick out his tongue and burn him there, instead, right under his piercing. Close enough that the ball would rub against it and make him taste Enji’s name as it aches.

He doesn’t go through with it. Instead Enji flings the cigarette to the ground, where it lays and smokes as he buries his cock down Hawks’ throat completely. Wet and tight like it was made for him.

Soon, too soon, Enji is knocking his head against the wall as Hawks swallows around him to get every drop of come. At the peak of Enji’s high, he calls out Hawks’ name and in return the boy hums around him and sucks , so softly that Enji nearly loses himself with it.

This is all that Enji missed. The feeling of Hawks doing his bidding, being a good boy, and not the torture that comes along with it. Not his smile. Just the warmth of his tongue, the taboo of his piercings, the hand snaking up Enji’s abdomen – and the way Hawks looks at him now to make eleven months apart swirl down the drain like they’d never occurred in the first place.

Hawks wipes his mouth, shaking as he stands up again. Enji fumbles with the buttons of his pants.

"I have a hotel room for the weekend."

It’s an open invitation to sin. The same as before, here’s a copy of the key, now use it and don’t pretend you won’t. Enji bites down on his tongue so he doesn't do something careless like offer his own home instead, but he wants to. He wants to.

Hawks grabs his shirt and tugs it, leaning in with that toy voice right by Enji’s ear. "Come on, Daddy, don’t be selfish. You aren't the only one who missed this." It's a rare and vulnerable thing coming from Hawks.

So he doesn’t say no.

The walk isn’t far, and it isn’t like Enji feels time passing right now, anyway. The city blurs in and out around him as Hawks clutches his arm like they’re both finally drunk on each other, struggling to walk straight, following the sidewalk back to the first bed they can find.

“Seventh floor,” Hawks tells him when they’re inside the lobby.

And then, in the empty elevator, closer to a whisper, “You kissed me.”

Enji doesn’t need reminded of it. He doesn’t need to think about it any more than he already did on the way here.

“Stop talking.”

Hawks tugs at his arm. “Is that an order, or are you just being difficult?”

“Both.”

As the elevator opens to let them out, Hawks presses his lips against Enji’s neck with a little teeth to it, now that he can. Now that the floodgates are open. It’s all the evidence Enji needs to know he was right to forbid it, even long past their expiration date at the end of the semester. If Hawks had done this before he left-

It’s dangerous, that’s all. He can’t stand the feeling of it already. A sweet little bubble against his skin because they’ve never been sweet together, and Enji is still too hungry not to eat him alive at the first chance he gets.

The hotel room is pitiful and small but all they need is that double bed. Hawks tugs him by the wrist like he wasn’t already bee-lining for it. Enji doesn’t give him a chance to breathe first.

Enji’s clothes stay on while he tears into Hawks’, pulling off his little top, his pants, surging forward to lick up the center of his chest until he strays to one side. Hawks is just as sensitive as he was before. He writhes underneath him as Enji bites his nipple, then licks it better so he can bite it some more. God, the fucking piercings.

It’s not enough, it never is.

Enji grabs him by the hips and bends him in half while he’s still laying back, until Hawks’ knees are spread above his chest and he’s on display, just how he likes to be. Hawks hugs his thighs while he whines at the position with his ass in the air. His cock fills out and drapes against his stomach, already dripping from that metal ring, needy just from how exposed it makes him.

How Enji looks at him like a feast.

He exhales hot air right over Hawks’ pretty pink hole, and his mouth is on it before it even stops twitching.

Hawks makes a noise that shoots through Enji like an involuntary shiver, and it’s what makes him surge forward even more greedily as he spreads Hawks’ cheeks with his hands. Bends him further in half. “Hnnn- Ah,” it’s a song Enji wants stuck in his head. He doesn’t let up for a second, dragging his tongue up to his taint over and over until Hawks is melting into the sheets and calling him Daddy, telling him how good it is.

Is it the first time Enji’s done this, too? He can’t remember, they spent too many nights sweating on top of his bed, drunk, not drunk, fucking the night away. It doesn’t matter now. Enji swirls his tongue against the pinched skin of his hole and feels so filthy about it that his breath hitches. It doesn’t stop him from shoving his tongue in and fucking him this way too, his perfect boy.

Hawks is whining at a fever pitch that Enji’s never heard before. It must mean he’s doing something right, here worshipping the sight of Hawks spread out for him, working him open and wet with his own spit and tongue.

“Mm,” Enji bites into the meat of his ass, and slaps it before keeping his hand there in a tight grip. “Now beg like you were so eager to do.”

“Fuck, fuck .” Hawks groans and his toes curl and crack. “I missed your fucking cock so badly, I need it inside me. Please Daddy, please fuck me, I can’t stand it-“

Enji can’t stand it either, and he’s growling and tearing off his own pants, his shirt, letting Hawks fall back down on the bed all messy and flushed. Enji has to stop him from trying to flip over and get on all fours like he’s trained to, how Enji always likes him. Not tonight. He doesn’t know what would happen if he stares at that tattoo again, trying not to get lost in it. It’s begging for disaster.

So Enji sinks his cock in with a hand on Hawks’ chest, face-to-face, looking at his pretty boy and his short hair and the lips he knows the taste of. Blushing so red, ready to be ruined again. Enji’s hand never finds his throat, it stays right there and holds him through the stutters of all his moans and breathy noises. They’re what Enji needs to hear more than the ones Hawks makes while choking.

Hawks holds onto Enji’s forearm while his other hand is buried somewhere clutching the sheets. The headboard scrapes against the wall with every thrust, Enji can’t possibly go any deeper inside him. He rearranges Hawks’ guts as he pleases, fills him to bursting. It’s all he wants, all he craves, this boy moaning in deep-seated pleasure despite everything he’s done to Enji – and everything Enji has done to him.

Enji fucks him like it’s the last time.

Hawks looks at him through half-lidded eyes like it’s the first.

When Enji comes he’s grunting right into the hollow of Hawks’ neck, and they wholly collapse on each other afterward. They’re panting, there’s a year’s worth of pent-up release between them even though Enji had slept with other men, and surely Hawks had done the same. They’ve never once been exclusive. Enji doesn’t want to be, he doesn’t want-

After a few minutes laying there, Hawks reaches for the end table where his pack of cigarettes sits.

“Want one?” He sounds like he’s walking on clouds.

Enji presses his mouth tight and stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t smoke.”

“You’ve never had one after sex,” Hawks guesses right. Then he pulls out more than one and drops the extras in Enji’s hand, closing his fist around them so he can’t refuse. “Trust me.” But he doesn’t wait for Enji to answer. Hawks gets up and goes to the window to smoke on his own, knowing that he’ll watch him from the bed because Enji has always been so obvious about staring at him. At his wings.

God-

Enji pulls his clothes back on and shoves the cigarettes in his pocket to throw away later. Right now he just wants to leave, needs to leave this fucking hotel before he does something awful. He’d rather be anywhere else. The regret has never felt this bad, it’s squeezing his lungs and making every breath feel like a mistake because he was so close before. Enji was almost free of him. Now he doesn’t know what he is.

He waits until Hawks has his clothes on to pull out the letter, folded up in the inner pocket of his jacket. Handing it over feels like a transaction. It negates anything that came before it, like this wasn’t blackmail but they’re still ending it on even ground - only after having fucked each other over for it.

Hawks holds it like he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Enji feels his stomach churn, because he knows what’s coming. He knew all along.

"You aren't going to look at it?"

Hawks looks at him instead, for a long time. "An aerospace engineer needs a letter of recommendation from his Chemistry 101 professor?" He smiles about it too, guilty as charged.

Enji’s forehead burns with the kind of anger he didn’t know existed inside him. It’s all just another fantasy, the fucking fantasy of them, that’s all this ever was. It’s like the times Hawks would call him professor because he only did it behind locked doors, teasing him, or when he wanted Enji to react like a rabid dog.

It was never real. This letter was to make sure that Enji was still here, hanging on his every word and willing to fall back into the fire with him, as if Enji could ever stop himself before. And maybe this is how it’ll always be. It’ll never end, they'll go a year and then a month and the next time only a week before they can't stand it anymore - either of them - because Enji may be a fool but Hawks is right here with him. Holding on. Getting his fix. Making sure it'll still be there when he really starts to ache for it.

Hawks pats his pocket after sliding the letter inside. "I'll keep it for a rainy day, when I miss you again.” It’s impossible to tell if he’s sincere. “I bet you really talked me up, too. I'm blushing already."

Enji doesn’t want to fight anymore. He’s done with it all. “I’m going home.”

The boy follows him all the way to the elevator, and Enji is too frustrated to speak or push him away, even when he gets in too. Even when Hawks lets the doors close behind him and takes a spot in front of Enji.

“Oops,” Hawks says it so innocently.

“You don’t have to pretend,” Enji mutters back.

Hawks has nothing to say back, then. The elevator stops on the sixth floor and lets a few more guests in with them, forcing Enji against the wall with Hawks pressing into his chest. He leans back and rubs against Enji every chance that he gets. Maybe he feels bad about the letter, or maybe he doesn’t know how to let go on Enji’s terms.

It’s a wonder that Enji hasn’t exploded.

But somehow he manages to keep himself whole. Enji channels his emotions – the guilt, the desire, the fucking hate - into something else entirely that even he doesn’t have control over. There, in the back of an elevator with a row of strangers in front of them, Enji pushes his hands under Hawks’ shirt and touches him.

Hawks flinches and lets out a shuttered breath, but it isn’t like he can say a damn thing about it.

Enji traces the outline of Hawks’ tattoo with his blunt nails and fingertips, drawing messy and imperfect lines on his skin. He doesn’t know why. Just that he wants to. It might be the most intimate way Enji’s ever touched him, and he doesn’t stop even when Hawks starts to shiver and break apart before they hit the first floor.

His skin is irresistibly warm.

But they're at the bottom now, the strangers all get out and Enji lets his hands fall away.

He makes sure to step out of that elevator before he turns around to look, see the face Hawks is making, because Enji is sure that otherwise he’d let the doors close them in again. That Enji would be the one to push the button for floor seven.

He can’t, God, he can’t-

The way Hawks looks at him now is so indecent, so wrong,  like he’d just been fucked right there in the elevator car body and mind alike. Enji can barely look at him. He doesn’t want to know what comes next, why those golden eyes are so big and disheveled, like it’d taken two years but Enji finally learned how to make the boy truly beg.

Hawks puts his hands in his jacket pockets, staring at how Enji is staring back at him.

"My name was Keigo."

Enji feels like he doesn't exist, not in this moment or the ones that come next. He can’t move when he hears it. His shoe stays halfway-out, halfway-in the elevator and he takes so long to answer that he prevents it from closing again. The doors lurch backward, inorganically, the same way it feels like his own chest does.

"Why are you telling me this?" Right here, right now, at all.

"Because I wanted you to know."

It's the most selfish thing Hawks could’ve ever done.

There is no goodbye after, just the mechanical sound of the door locking and taking Hawks back up to his room. Enji’s mind spills onto the ground as he walks out of the hotel, until it’s fucking empty, until Hawks is the only thing left. He stops into a gas station to buy a lighter that goes against everything he stands for, and then leans against the building to smoke two of the cigarettes Hawks had given him. One right after another.

It’s worse than he remembered, but maybe he deserves to feel bad.

Then there’s Hawks.

He refuses to call him anything else just yet.

Enji thinks about the last time they spoke before Hawks moved away, when they laid in Hawks’ bed after working each other over like addicts. It wasn't a rare thing, but Enji still refused to let Hawks into his own bed, and never once into his own home. That’s how this was supposed to go from the start: no attachment, no kissing. No lying. No heart.

Enji relives it for the hundredth time. When Hawks waited for his shell to fall away to tell him, while Enji put on his shirt and rubbed the bite marks on his shoulder.

Hawks had said, nonchalantly, “I lied to you.”

Enji looked at him and waited for the punchline.

“Did you, now.”

And Hawks thought it’d be funny to tell him after all this time, that the story about his wings and his name were a lie he made up on the spot. It wasn't personal. He liked spinning a new one every time, because the reality of things is always so simple, and Hawks prefers to be flashy. He likes the spotlight. He likes entertainment and stories and pulling people in that he has no right to be with, but he’s so good at being desirable that it works.

Hawks had gone on to say that his favorite story was about an injured bird he’d raised, and his most believable was that he'd always liked the mythos of Icarus. The story Enji had gotten was somewhere in-between, right on the edge of an easy truth that made too much sense when he'd finally learned it, and had Enji questioning everything under the sun.

So Enji had faltered, swallowed his sense, and asked Hawks what his real name was.

Hawks had smirked and asked Enji what he looked like before the scar.

They both came out the other side of it empty handed, wanting all the things they didn’t deserve from each other. Taking too much. Enji had left soon afterward, setting his key down on a table for Hawks to discover later in the interest of universal poetry.

But he knows now; he knows it was Keigo.

He drinks it down faster than any whiskey, letting it burn his throat raw, letting it capture his empty head and make time spin counter-clockwise until nothing exists but the moment he’d learned it: a flushed goodbye in-between an elevator door. Their hearts still drumming from all the things they’d done to each other.

Enji wonders what’ll happen when he finally says it himself, commands it, moans it like nothing could ever hope to sound so sweet, oh, his pretty college boy.

Keigo.

Enji pulls out a third cigarette and lights it between his lips, inhaling through it, deeply, brutally, as he chokes on the taste of his first and final relapse.