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Todoroki Natsuo is not a good person.
Sitting here, listening to Fuyumi’s attempts to ease the stifling silence that has settled over the table while he stares down at the food in front of him and half-heartedly pushes it around his plate, Natsuo tries to ignore the way his skin crawls and desperately wishes he had turned down her invitation for a family dinner. He could be back home with Emiko right now, lounging on the couch with takeout and making fun of some trashy American reality show. It’s been almost three months since he’s seen Shouto after he was released from the hospital though, and he’d figured that with everything going on right now following the fallout from Jaku it’d be safe to assume that Endeavor would hold to his usual pattern of remaining at his agency until the crisis passed rather than returning to the estate.
Natsuo had, unfortunately, assumed wrong.
At the head of the table his father clumsily asks Fuyumi how her students are doing. Natsuo doesn’t understand how she can smile at him like that as she happily talks about how the transition to remote teaching has been for them while they wait for the okay for school to be reopened. How she can just sweep everything under the rug and pretend that this family isn’t broken beyond repair.
Hey Natsu, why do you think we exist?
Natsuo swallows back the hate and self-loathing that always bubbles up when he comes here despite the way it burns like acid in the back of his throat. He barely notices the conversation around him switching tracks as Fuyumi questions Shouto about school. She gets a two syllable answer back, which is more than the monosyllable responses his younger brother has been giving Endeavor all evening. The sound of Endeavor’s voice has ants crawling under his skin as Natsuo sits and stares dully at his barely touched food, his thoughts twisting and turning on themselves until he feels like he’s going to lose it. He sets his chopsticks down and does his best to ignore the way Fuyumi cuts herself off awkwardly as everyone turns their heads towards him.
“Thanks for the meal,” he mumbles as he stands.
“Wha—wait Natsu, you barely ate anything,” Fuyumi protests. His eyes skitter away from the worried look on her face, mouth twisting into a grimace.
“Sorry, guess I’m not that hungry,” Natsuo offers, like he hadn’t felt his appetite shrivel up the moment he walked through the door and saw Endeavor already sitting at the table. “It’s fine, really. I mostly just came to make sure Shouto was doing okay anyways.”
“My injuries have healed satisfactorily,” Shouto says. He tilts his head, the only indication of confusion on an otherwise blank face when Natsuo glances over at him. “Honestly, they were minor compared to my other classmates. There’s no need to be concerned.”
He knows Shouto isn’t trying to brush him off—that he’s trying to comfort him in his own socially stunted way—but even if Shouto’s injuries hadn’t been as severe as other heroes it hadn’t stopped Natsuo’s stomach from falling somewhere around his feet when he’d gotten Fuyumi’s frantic call and raced to the hospital to find his little brother wrapped in bandages.
He’d never wanted to see his family hurt like that again.
Natsuo’s expression pinches as he tries to offer his brother a smile that’s already starting to crumble at the edges. “Even so, it’s a big brother’s job to worry about their little siblings.”
Touya had always been covered in bandages. Natsuo doesn’t actually know if he has any childhood memories of him without them. If he did, he was too young for them to stick. Back then Touya used to dismiss his worries too, always claiming Natsuo couldn’t understand because they belonged to two different worlds, and yet he’d fuss over Natsuo whenever he so much as stubbed a toe. Always grumbling about it being his job as his big brother to take care of him.
Touya isn’t here anymore, so now that responsibility falls to Natsuo. He hasn’t been the best big brother to Shouto in the past, but he’s trying to make up for lost time.
He knows Shouto still doesn’t get it as his eyebrows draw together. Natsuo’s nails dig into the meat of his palm as his hands curl into tight fists, jaw clenching as he bites back the bitterness perched just below his chin. Natsuo isn’t angry at Shouto. How can he be angry at a person he still feels like he barely knows for something that isn’t their fault in the first place? Shouto didn’t ask to be born into a broken family, didn’t ask for his quirk or the crushing weight of their father’s ambitions.
Touya had, a long time ago.
Look at what that got him.
Endeavor hasn’t said anything during their exchange, but Natsuo can feel the heavy weight of his gaze all the same. It’s for the best really, one wrong word from his father will set him off and he doesn’t want to upset Fuyumi further than he already has tonight.
Natsuo excuses himself from dinner despite his sister’s protests and doesn’t look back as he flees.
The moment the warm evening air hits his face he takes a deep breath and exhales harshly as he rakes his hand through his hair. Guilt twists his mouth into a frown, regret already beginning to creep in knowing that Fuyumi will be upset with him for ruining yet another attempt at piecing their family back together.
Natsuo tries for them, he really does, but he can’t let go of this ugly seething mass that’s made itself at home in his chest. He doesn’t want to. He’s not like his sister or his mother. He’s not like Shouto. He can’t pretend like their father didn’t drive Touya to his death, he can’t move past the fact that he abused his family to the point that his wife ended up in a psych ward.
Fuyumi might be ready to forgive and move on but she never saw their brother on his hands and knees, sobbing and begging Natsuo to tell him why they were born in the first place. To give him a reason to validate their existence in that godforsaken house. She never had to learn how to rewrap the bandages covering Touya’s weeping burns that came loose during nightmares that left shared sheets singed using only the moonlight filtering through the window, or gently pull his hands from his hair before Touya could start tearing out the roots when he got too lost in his head.
Natsuo did.
Endeavor can talk about atonement all he wants, but nothing he does will ever give him his brother back. No matter what he says, what he does, Natsuo will never get those years back. Not with Touya, not with his mother, not with Shouto, and he will always resent his father for that.
Natsuo sighs and shoves his hands into his jacket pockets as he starts for the entrance. The prison breaks and waves of retiring heroes in the wake of the destruction the PLF created in Jaku has caused crime rates to skyrocket all across Japan. In response the hero schools have locked down their campuses and everyone else has temporarily shut down and moved their curriculum online. Natsuo can only assume one of Shouto’s teachers is somewhere chaperoning his visit, and even then he’d probably only been allowed to come back to the estate because Endeavor was his father.
As for Natsuo, his school already sent their international students back to their home countries and ordered the domestic ones to stay away until the Ministry of Education gave the green light for everyone to come back. In the meantime, much like Fuyumi, his professors are migrating to online teaching to try and maintain both a sense of normalcy and keep their students on track to graduate on time. Natsuo has his own apartment just outside the university that he’s been sharing with Emiko since her dorm shut down. Her family lives in Hokkaido and hadn’t wanted to risk her getting caught up in an attack trying to get back to them. There’s not just villains to worry about anymore; roving gangs of vigilante civilians have sprouted up all over thanks to the lack of reliable heroes to protect their homes. Discrimination against heteromorphs is at an all-time high, and with Emiko’s mouse mutation it wasn’t worth the danger.
The remaining heroes are starting to get things under control again but Natsuo had still allowed Fuyumi to arrange for the family driver to pick him up and bring him over to the house when she asked. Right now though he doesn’t have the patience to wait for the driver to come around and get him. He just wants to get home as fast as possible and forget tonight as he listens to Emiko rant about her genetics paper.
Natsuo is reaching into his pocket for his phone to text his girlfriend that he’s on his way back when he realizes there’s someone standing just outside the gate. He freezes, and for a moment there’s nothing but white static in his head and his pulse roaring in his ears. For a wild second he thinks it’s Ending, back to try and coerce Endeavor into killing him by threatening Natsuo again. The figure shifts slightly out of the shadow of the gate, and illuminated in the dying evening light he realizes they’re not the villain that still creeps into some of Natsuo’s nightmares. He releases a shaky breath, the relief washing through him makes his knees quake. Still it takes Natsuo a minute to identify them, but when he does he feels his eyebrows rise in surprise.
“Hawks?”
Hawks obviously isn’t expecting anyone to see him from the way he flinches at the sound of Natsuo’s voice. It’s just as off-putting seeing him standing there without red wings mantling his shoulders as it had been when Natsuo had watched him publicly announce his retirement on the television back in March. Moreso now maybe that he’s wearing jeans and a baggy sweatshirt rather than his hero uniform.
A beat too late Hawks turns to face him with a smile that doesn’t fit quite right. Natsuo is all too familiar with the expression, knows more than a little about dragging guilt and regret back inside where people can’t see it and letting them hollow out your chest with a smile on your face that never touches your eyes.
He learned it from Touya.
“Hey-a little Todoroki, wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
That makes two of them. Natsuo can only assume Hawks is here for Endeavor, though the why is escaping him. It’s been months since Hawks retired so he’s likely here for something personal and not on hero business, but even if he was that doesn’t explain him loitering outside Endeavor’s private residence as if he’s unsure of his invitation.
“Do you want me to get Endeavor?” The stilted offer is given completely out of politeness. Natsuo can’t think of anything he’d rather do less, especially considering the manner of how he’d just left.
Hawks seems to consider it for a moment, eyes cast over Natsuo’s shoulder with a distant look in them before his gaze refocuses and he shakes his head. “No you don’t have to. I just thought… well it doesn’t matter I guess. It’s not important.”
Natsuo thinks that if Hawks has come all the way to Musutafu from Fukuoka that whatever he’d wanted to talk to Endeavor about actually was probably important, but Natsuo isn’t kind enough to give the retired hero a push when he’s suddenly getting cold feet.
“Okay well, if that’s the case then…” Natsuo shuffles his feet, awkwardly trying to figure out how to get himself out of this conversation. He’s not as bad as Shouto, but he certainly doesn’t have Fuyumi or his mother’s social grace either.
Hawks, thankfully, seems to pull himself out of his head. He leans back and starts to lift his arm, possibly to rub the back of his neck, only to abandon the action halfway. Natsuo, who’s survival in the house behind him depended on him learning the intricacies of body language from the time he was five, can’t help but notice the way his jaw clenches in muted pain just before he lowers his arm back down. He couldn’t see it very well back during the press conference thanks to the suit Hawks had worn and the bandages still wrapped around his throat, but now in his oversized hoodie Natsuo notes how the scar on his cheek extends past his jaw and winds down the side of his neck towards the back, disappearing beneath the fabric.
A part of him thinks to ask Hawks if his burns are bothering him. God knows they’ve amassed enough gauze and burn cream in their cabinets to supply an entire hospital unit at this point. No one would notice a bottle or two missing. But, again, that would require him to go back into the house. Besides, asking about Hawks’ scars feels a little too personal for a guy Natsuo doesn’t know outside of magazine spreads he finds his friends sometimes leafing through and snippets of interviews and commercials he catches on the television as he’s flipping channels.
He’s saved from his indecision when Hawks says, “Ah, sorry about this. Didn’t mean to keep you here.” The hero’s sheepish smile is strained and incredibly fake. “I’ll let you get back to your family.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Natsuo dismisses with a wave of his hand. “I was just leaving anyway.”
Hawks’ eyebrows rise. “By yourself?”
Natsuo frowns at the implication behind Hawks’ words. Sure compared to the rest of his family he might as well be quirkless for how weak his ice is, but if there’s one thing inheriting that flaming asshole’s build is good for it’s making people think twice about approaching him.
Hawks appears to realize that he’s overstepped, his eyes widening and palms immediately rising. “Sorry, sorry habit you know?”
“It’s fine,” Natsuo says, mollified. He glances over Hawks’ shoulder at the rapidly setting sun behind him. It’s a little dicey, but as long as he sticks to the main roads and makes it onto a train before it gets dark he should be okay. “The trains are still running, they’re just on a modified schedule because of curfew. I should be able to make one of the last ones out of the station if I leave now.”
“If that’s the case I won’t keep you waiting,” Hawks says. He slings his hands into the pouch of his hoodie and steps to the side. “I should probably start heading back myself.”
Natsuo wonders if Hawks means all the way back to Fukuoka, or if he has somewhere in Musutafu he can stay. Either way it’s not Natsuo’s problem.
With a nod and an awkward goodbye, Natsuo skirts around Hawks and starts off down the street in the direction of the train station. That was quite possibly the weirdest conversation Natsuo has ever had the misfortune of being a part of. Guess the guy isn’t that great at talking without the teleprompter and cue cards to help him out. Or maybe that got burnt out of him along with his wings in Jaku. Either way Natsuo is going to do his best to forget it ever happened.
It’s hard to do when Hawks starts following him.
Natsuo can’t even hear him walking behind him, which is unsettling regardless of his prior profession. He only realizes he’s being tailed when he catches the retired hero’s reflection in a traffic mirror as he’s passing by. Natsuo nearly jumps out of his skin before the anger kicks in a half-second after. Before he can think he spins on his heels and glares at Hawks.
“Seriously?”
Hawks immediately raises his hands up in surrender, the picture of innocence. “I’m not following you, I swear. I’m heading this way myself.”
Natsuo glowers at him. There’s no way his luck is this bad. “You wouldn’t be heading to Tatooin station, would you?”
“Yep!” Hawks chirps. If Natsuo frowns any harder his face is going to get stuck like that. “I can’t, uh, exactly get around like I used to, and the shinkansen is really the only reliable way to get from Fukuoka to Musutafu these days.”
“That’s like a seven hour ride,” Natsuo points out, gracefully ignoring the little stutter over the state of the other man’s quirk. Now he’s really curious about what could have drawn Hawks all the way out here to try and talk with Endeavor.
“Eh, it wasn’t that bad,” he replies, waving it off. “I’ve done longer flights in the past. At least I’m able to nap on the trains.”
Sometime during their exchange the two of them start walking again toward the station. The further they get away from the estate the more Natsuo relaxes, and whatever knots Hawks had twisted himself up into begin to loosen as well. It’s still a little stop and start, but by the time they make it to the station and board their train—they’re both jumping on the shinkansen though Natsuo will be getting off well before the other man—Natsuo finds, a little against his will, that Hawks makes a pretty decent conversation partner.
He asks all the standard questions: are you in school right now, oh where do you go, what are you studying and how’d you get into it. Natsuo keeps that last answer vague, because unlike Shouto he’s learned better than to immediately trauma-dump on a stranger. At least until he’s had a couple shots of tequila that is, but usually at that point Emiko, being the saint she is, will have already pushed a cup of water into Natsuo’s hand and started ushering him out the door.
“You’re planning to do your internship in the villain wing of Central Hospital?”
Natsuo narrows his eyes, mouth twisting into a frown. “Yeah, got a problem with that?”
“Oh, no definitely not,” Hawks is quick to reassure. Just a little too quick to be completely genuine. “I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”
“Everyone deserves to be heard and advocated for,” he grits out, trying to keep the defensiveness out of his tone though he’s sure it leaks through anyways. Everyone always reacts the same though whenever it gets brought up and he’s just sick of all the prejudice.
He swallows and tries to ignore the lump in his throat. “It’s the ones society has already written off that usually need it the most.”
Natsuo used to be like Shouto when he was younger. He’d tell anyone who he thought would listen, anyone who he falsely believed would take his claims seriously. He refused to listen to Fuyumi’s desperate pleas to keep their family problems private. Mom was gone. Touya was gone, and no one left in that house seemed to care. Fuyumi was too caught up in appearances, Shouto too young to understand what had happened, let alone do anything about it.
No one cared. He got either brushed off or laughed at. Sometimes he got cussed out, even wound up in a fight or two with an Endeavor fan who didn’t like him badmouthing their favorite. Endeavor was a hero who saved people. What did it matter what happened when he took the suit off and closed the doors?
Crazy, right? Is that what modern heroes are all about?
So Natsuo shut up. He put his head down, focused on getting out as fast as he could, and never looked back.
No one would listen or advocate for him, but Natsuo will be damned if he ever does the same.
“No, you’re right,” Hawks says softly. Natsuo glances down to see him looking out the window, his expression unexpectedly unguarded. “I’m sorry.”
Natsuo lets out a noisy sigh and leans back in his seat. “I’m sorry too, I shouldn’t have gotten so defensive about it.”
They silently and unanimously decide to change the topic. Hawks clearly catches the careful way Natsuo dodges around questions regarding his family and homelife, but unlike most people instead of pressing the subject he segues smoothly into easier topics that Natsuo doesn’t have to think so hard about answering.
Natsuo, grateful for this and aware this man has probably been asked every question under the sun about his personal life, returns the favor by asking if he’s seen the video compilations his fans have made of him face-planting into windows. Hawks hems and haws but eventually admits that he hasn’t so they sit together and waste time as the train speeds across the countryside watching them. Hawks hides his bright red face in the sleeves of his hoodie at some of the more embarrassing ones, and adds little bits of commentary on others that have tears beading in the corners of Natsuo’s eyes from laughing too hard. Thank god that with everything going on the trains are practically empty so there’s no one to give him the stink eye for being too rowdy.
Natsuo straightens up as the announcement comes on for Osaka. Hawks pauses the video they were watching of Miruko suplexing a very unfortunate paparazzi who got a little too close shoving their camera in her face and looks up as well.
“This your stop?” he asks.
“Yeah,” he answers, glancing out the window to take in the familiar view. So far Osaka has been relatively spared from the violence sweeping the country, but Natsuo will still be looking over his shoulder all the way back to his apartment. He looks back to Hawks. “You’re not bad, for a former hero and all.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?” Hawks asks, bemused.
The train pulls up to the station and Natsuo stands.
“Trust me,” he throws over his shoulder as he heads for the door. “It’s a compliment.”
He gets off the train and starts for the exit, only to find himself pausing for a moment to look back and watch the train depart. Natsuo thinks about the dark circles he’d only noticed once they were sitting close enough that he could pick them out from the markings around his eyes and wonders, briefly, if Hawks will nap the rest of the way to Fukuoka, then shakes his head and continues walking out of the station. He doubts he’ll ever see the retired hero again.
Natsuo calls Emiko as he makes his way out onto the streets and starts angling towards their apartment.
“Hey, are you at the station yet?”
“Yeah, on my way home now,” he says. “You’re not going to believe the night I’ve had.”
.
.
.
Natsuo doesn’t expect to see Hawks ever again.
He really doesn’t expect to find himself face to face with the former hero just a few weeks later right before he and Emiko are about to get jumped by four guys a block away from their apartment.
It’s stupid really. Emiko had aced the genetics test that she’d spent forever studying her ass off for and they’d wanted to go celebrate. Maybe they’d ignored the gathering storm clouds and stayed out a little later than they should have, but they’d both been a little desperate for just a hint of normalcy and everything has just been so quiet lately that Natsuo hadn’t thought anything of it.
That had been their first mistake.
It was raining hard when they stumbled out of the bar, a little buzzed as they held onto each other and laughed as they both quickly got soaked to the bone. They decided to take a shortcut through an alley they’d used a million times before and neither of them had thought anything of the group of men loitering against the wall.
That was the second.
Emiko is hidden between Natsuo’s back and the wall of the alley, her nails digging through the material of his jacket hard enough that he’s half-convinced if he took it off he’d find five little crescent moon holes punched through. He concentrates his quirk into his fists, coating his knuckles in a thick layer of frost as he holds them up in front of their assailants. The men don’t have any physical mutations, but between the downpour and dark it makes it hard to see what type of quirks they do have. In the back of his mind, Natsuo quietly acknowledges the odds and plans to at least give Emiko a chance to run. He doubts any help will come, the heroes left in Osaka are scattered and the police force is spread thin trying to maintain the peace.
Emiko’s fingers tighten in his jacket. As long as she gets away, everything will be fine.
One of the men lurches forward, his hand glowing a sickly green. Natsuo plants his feet just like Touya taught him when he was a kid and squints through the rain.
The attack never lands.
Natsuo watches as the glowing hand is suddenly yanked back into the darkness and extinguished a moment later. There’s a startled yell that turns into a gurgle and the muted thud of a body hitting the wet asphalt. The other men start shouting. He presses Emiko more firmly against the wall, eyes desperately trying to track the mysterious fifth person who showed up out of nowhere.
Even without the rain Natsuo thinks he’d have a hard time, they’re so fast it’s crazy. He feels like he barely blinks only to find the four men that had been about to attack them now lying on the ground. Despite the situation Natsuo crouches down and reaches for the nearest man to check their pulse. He sighs with relief when he feels a steady beat under his fingertip. Just unconscious then.
A soft laugh snags his attention, drawing his gaze up to the shadow of the person who’d just saved them.
“You really are something else,” a voice says. It’s familiar but Natsuo can’t quite place it, not until the figure leans back against the opposite wall, falling back just enough for the streetlight to cut across his face and highlight those distinctive eye markings crinkled in bemusement. “You know that little Todoroki?”
Jesus. “Hawks?” Behind him Emiko echoes the former hero’s name.
Hawks’ lips twitch into a barely-there smile. “Not my name anymore.” He closes his eyes and tips his head up. “Sorry for the scare, just knocked them unconscious, promise. Probably shouldn’t need a hospital.”
“Do you need a hospital?” Natsuo asks, eyes cutting to the way Hawks is holding his arm against his side as he stands from his crouch. With the rain it’s impossible to see how bad it is, but from the grimace he can see the former hero fighting to keep off his face Natsuo can make an educated guess.
“I’ll be fine,” Hawks says, waving him off with the hand not pressed against his wound. “One of them had a knife quirk is all.”
Natsuo raises an eyebrow. Heroes, honestly. “Oh, is that all?”
“Our apartment is just around the corner,” Emiko says. “Please let us help patch you up.”
“It’s nothing really—” Hawks starts to deflect, only to cut off with a startled squawk as Natsuo grabs his wrist and starts tugging him down the alley in the direction of their apartment.
“Don’t be stupid,” he says. He reaches back with his free hand without looking and feels Emiko slip her hand into his grasp as she comes up alongside him. He doesn’t look at the men still on the ground as he steps over them. He trusts Hawks when he says they don’t need any immediate medical attention.
“We insist,” Emiko says, kindly but firmly.
Despite Hawks’ protests he gives up trying to escape Natsuo’s grip by the time they enter the apartment building and start walking up the stairs. Thankfully between the late hour and the storm outside they don’t run into anyone. Natsuo is uncomfortably wet, but at least with his cold resistance the water feels more luke-warm than freezing. In contrast he can feel Emiko beginning to shiver and squeezes her hand as she fumbles with the key to get into their unit.
“Go dry off,” he tells her as they stumble inside. He glances over at Hawks. The poor man looks like a drowned rat. “Grab some of my clothes too, will you? Might not fit well but anything’s better than what he’s in now.”
“Got it,” Emiko says. She tips up just enough to press a quick kiss to his cheek before rocking back on her feet. “Med kit is in the bathroom,” she reminds him before disappearing into the bedroom.
Natsuo herds Hawks into the aforementioned bathroom and has him sit on the lid of the toilet while he ducks under the sink to drag out their medical supplies. There’s a wet plop as Hawks pulls both his soaked hoodie and shirt over his head and drops them in the tub right next to him. Natsuo follows his example and dumps his jacket in as well but elects to keep his shirt on for the moment.
“Alright,” Natsuo says as he pops the kit open. “Show me where it is.”
“Really, I can take care of it myself—”
“Hawks.”
“Still not my name,” he mutters but does as Natsuo asks and pulls his hand away from his side.
Just like he’d suspected it looks like a stab wound on Hawks’ right side, but he’s relieved to see that it’s just a glancing blow rather than a direct injury to his abdomen. If the wound had penetrated any of his organs Natsuo would have dragged him kicking and screaming to the hospital regardless of his wishes.
Emiko pokes her head in just long enough to hand over a few spare towels from the linen closet, declaring that she’s going to make tea before retreating. He gives Hawks one of the towels to dry himself off with while he uses the other. Hawks wipes away the blood-tinged rainwater still clinging to the skin around the sluggishly bleeding wound, careful not to aggravate the injury further, before Natsuo has him replace it with an alcohol-soaked gauze pad to disinfect it.
While he does that Natsuo washes his hands and then pulls out what he’ll need for stitches. The cut might not have hit anything vital but it’s still deep enough to require some level of intervention.
Hawks hisses at the burning sensation but keeps wiping. “I thought you were in school for medical welfare,” he says, eyeing the needle and thread that Natsuo is currently sterilizing.
“I am,” he replies. “But I also worked for a few years at a clinic in a low-income neighborhood. Picked up a few things. Is that the only one?”
Hawks, thankfully, understands without Natsuo having to explain further and doesn’t hesitate to pull the gauze away and swivel on the toilet seat to better present the injury when he shuffles over and sits on the lip of the tub. It’s a bit of a tight fit with two grown men inside Natsuo’s cramped apartment bathroom, but they make it work.
“Yeah,” he says. “Got the jump on me but only managed to get in the one hit before I took him down. Rest is all just scrapes and bruises.”
Natsuo nods and gets to work, making sure to be careful and methodical with the stitches as he goes. Hawks doesn’t make so much as a peep as his skin is tugged back together despite the lack of anesthetics. He slaps a fresh pad of gauze over them and neatly tapes it in place before finally standing.
“Make sure you keep that dry and clean for at least the next twenty-four hours,” Natsuo tells him as he cleans off the needle before putting everything away. He pulls some painkillers out from under the sink and hands them to Hawks. “Baths should be fine as long as you avoid the stitches, but definitely no showers. They’re dissolvable so there’s no need to cut them out. It’ll take a few weeks, maybe a bit longer, but they’ll disappear on their own.”
Hawks, carefully testing his range of motion on his injured side, pauses to take the bottle from Natsuo and shoots him a grateful smile. “Thanks man, I don’t know what to say.”
Natsuo fights back the embarrassed flush he can feel creeping up the back of his neck. He always hates when people thank him for this kind of thing. He rubs the back of his damp head, not quite looking at the former hero. “Well, you did save us back there, so let’s just call us even.”
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Hawks’ smile stretch a little wider. “Sounds good to me.”
The rest of the evening passes like a strange fever dream. Natsuo doesn’t think any of his friends would ever believe him if he told them that Japan’s former number two hero was in his living room, sitting on his couch and fighting to keep his borrowed clothes from slipping off despite them being the smallest ones Natsuo had available, all the while regaling to his girlfriend the passionate argument he’d presented to his PR team during the year he debuted on the hero circuit about contracting with KFC to become their Japanese spokesperson.
Natsuo notices the gleam in Emiko’s eye right before she says, oh so innocently, “Wouldn’t that have kind of been like cannibalism though?”
Hawks, or whatever he’s going by these days, squawks in outrage.
“That’s what they said too when they shot me down!” he moans. “But it’s totally not! I’m a hawk, a hawk! Raptors eat chickens all the time!”
Natsuo has no idea what the former hero is doing here in Osaka. While it’s closer to Fukuoka than Musutafu it’s still a hike to get over here, and the vague answer Hawks had given when asked if there was anyone waiting on him that he needed to call gives Natsuo the impression that he isn’t here to catch up with a friend. Maybe he’s here to sightsee and just so happened to run into them when they were in trouble, maybe not, but considering the man got himself stabbed for them Natsuo decides that it isn’t any of his business.
Emiko insists that Hawks stay the night and cheerfully bulldozes over any objections. Natsuo, intimately familiar with this particular song and dance, has already gotten the blanket they keep for overnight guests out and brought it over by the time he caves to her wishes.
Just before Natsuo settles into bed with Emiko he decides to grab a glass of water from the kitchen. Leaving the bedroom he’s surprised to find Hawks not on the couch, where he’d waved goodnight to the two of them, but instead standing before the small shrine Natsuo made for Touya. It’s nothing like the butsudan his father has erected in Touya’s childhood bedroom, consisting of only a framed photo, an incense burner, and a vase of freshly cut rindous, but it’s all Natsuo has left to cling to.
“I didn’t realize you had another brother,” Hawks says softly as Natsuo approaches.
“Not many do,” Natsuo replies bitterly, resentment thick in his chest. “You can thank my father for that.”
Oh, Endeavor can say whatever he wants about protecting Touya’s memory and keeping the press from harassing their family and continuously picking at a freshly-scabbed wound, but as far as Natsuo is concerned all he did was protect his own image.
“His name was Touya,” Natsuo says, matching the hushed murmur of Hawks’ voice. He brushes his thumb over the photoframe. He doesn’t even have to look at it to picture the scene in his head: him and Touya with their arms slung over each other's shoulders, noses and cheeks ruddy red from the winter cold, a half-finished igloo behind them. Natsuo is grinning wide enough to show off the gap in his bottom teeth as their mother forced them to hold still long enough for her to capture the moment. If someone looks hard enough, they’d see gauze bandages peeking just above the neckline of Touya’s jacket. “He was the oldest, and my best friend. He died when he was thirteen. I was told later that it was a quirk accident.”
The look on Hawks face is complicated. Natsuo can’t quite get a read on it before he tells him, “I’m sorry.”
Natsuo sighs and lets his arm drop to his side. He has always hated it when people say that. Afterall, it isn’t their fault Touya is gone, they never even knew him, but he still tries to appreciate the sentiment. “It was a long time ago, but thank you.”
Hawks is gone by the time Natsuo wakes up the next morning, a ray of sunlight shining on the neatly folded blanket sitting on the couch. A small coil of smoke rises from a stick of fresh lit incense carefully placed in the holder next to Touya’s picture.
This time Natsuo is sure he won’t be seeing Hawks again.
.
.
.
Someone is banging on Natsuo’s door.
Someone is banging on Natsuo’s door at three in the fucking morning.
It’s probably nothing. A robber trying to break in wouldn’t announce themselves by knocking on the door. Most likely it’s just someone coming back from the clubs hammered and unable to tell that they’re at the wrong apartment unit. Or well, maybe not the club considering the fact that there’s a curfew that shuts everything down by nine o'clock, but it wouldn’t shock him if people were sneaking out to have illicit midnight parties. Regardless, if he gives it a few minutes he’s sure they’ll figure it out and go wander off somewhere else.
Any minute now.
Natsuo’s groan is muffled by the pillow as he buries his face into it with the vague hope of suffocating himself. The banging does not stop.
“Natsu…”
He sighs and starts the arduous process of untangling himself from the bedsheets. “I’m going, I’m going.”
Natsuo, still blinking sleep from his eyes and believing that all he’ll need to do is point some drunk man or woman to the correct apartment unit, doesn’t bother grabbing the baseball bat he keeps tucked just under his side of the bed as he sleepily shuffles over to the door. He doesn’t bother checking through the peephole before unlocking the door and opening it either.
He really, really should have looked, but then again Natsuo doesn’t think anything would have prepared him for the sight of Japan’s former number two hero hunched over, carrying someone who is literally smoking his back, with Toga Himiko hovering just over his shoulder. His eyes fly back to the mop of black hair brushing limply against Hawks’ chest and the tattered coat trailing behind and holy fucking shit that’s Dabi.
Natsuo should slam the door shut. He should slam the door shut and call the police, or the heroes, or someone because he is not equipped to deal with whatever the fuck is happening right now. Emiko is sleeping just a room away. His girlfriend is sleeping just a room away from a suspected serial killer and he needs to close the door right the fuck now.
“Please,” Hawks pleads, that same unguarded, vulnerable look in his eyes Natsuo remembers from a train ride that feels like a lifetime ago right now. It’s echoed in the villain beside him as her gaze darts nervously between the person on Hawks’ back and Natsuo. “Please. ”
Todoroki Natsuo is not a good person.
The thing is, he always tries.
“What happened?” he asks, already resigning himself as he hustles them inside.
“Fear quirk,” Hawks answers hastily. “Makes you relive your worst memory. His quirk reacted to whatever it made him see and tried to burn him alive. It stopped once he passed out.”
Natsuo can’t help but remember Sekoto Peak, lit up against the night sky. The fragment of bone held in his father’s ash-streaked hands presented to him and Fuyumi. The hollow ringing in his ears that he couldn’t make go away as he was told Touya wouldn’t be coming home.
Standing in front of his brother’s shrine Natsuo would wonder how it might’ve felt to feel smoke curling in his lungs. To have his blood boiling in his veins as he burned to death. He’d stare and stare at one of the only pictures left of his big brother and hope it was quick.
“Get him on the table.” Natsuo is proud of how steady his voice is. “I need to grab my supplies and tell Emiko what’s going on.”
The instant her name slips from his lips Toga has a knife pressed against his throat. “Who’s that?” she demands, and Natsuo doesn’t miss how she has positioned herself so that she can keep an eye on both Natsuo and Hawks at the same time.
“My girlfriend,” Natsuo answers honestly. “She’s asleep in the other room. If you don’t let me go in there and explain what’s happening, she might try to call the cops.”
Toga’s expression darkens at the mention of the police. The grip on the handle of her knife goes white-knuckled and she shoots a seething look at Hawks.
“If this was all just a set up—”
“It’s not,” Hawks interrupts sharply. He doesn’t pause as he carefully tugs at Dabi’s clothes, trying to take off what isn’t melted into his skin. “Toga I swear it’s not.”
“If you kill her, I won’t help him,” Natsuo warns.
Toga glances between the two of them and a bead of sweat runs down the back of Natsuo’s neck.
Finally, she comes to a decision. “Call her in here,” she orders. “Either she helps or I’ll kill everyone here and take Dabi somewhere else.”
Emiko is, understandably, freaked out when she comes out of their bedroom and finds two villains in their apartment. Natsuo falls just a little more in love with her though as he watches her take a deep breath and visibly steel herself. She marches over, pulling her long hair up into a high ponytail as she does, and stares up at Natsuo.
“What do you need me to do?”
After that things get a little hazy as Natsuo focuses all his attention on making sure Dabi doesn’t kick the bucket on his kitchen table. Toga and Hawks are helpful in cutting away what clothing hasn’t melted onto the villain’s skin and Emiko works on packing every ice pack and bag of frozen vegetables and fruit they have against his skin to try and help bring his temperature down and stop the burns from spreading any further. They’ll move him into the bathtub later and continue to try cooling him down there, but for now, ice packs.
Trying to take care of a man who is literally stapled together is something that is definitely going to give Natsuo nightmares. It’s hard to tell what damage is recent and what’s not, but seeing it all up close, it’s nothing less than a medical miracle he’s still alive. He fights not to gag as he carefully removes the patches of melted clothing, and some of the skin underneath it, and is just thankful for the mostly unused tube of extra strength quirked burn cream he’d run out and bought after Emiko burned her hand on the stove—after she had calmed Natsuo down from a panic attack at the sight of the angry red skin.
After Touya, Natsuo couldn’t handle people being burned, no matter how it happened. He’d shut down just at the sight of the injury, big or small, and it was only after years of therapy once he’d gotten out of the house that he was able to process and redirect the debilitating panic that would grip him. His time at the clinic had desensitized him a little more, allowed him to develop a clinical disassociation when he was taking care of a patient, and it’s that disassociation that’s keeping him from hyperventilating in a corner right now.
Thankfully, while Dabi has definitely burned himself, his newest burns aren’t so severe to the point Natsuo is completely out of his depth in dealing with them. After cleaning them he instructs Emiko to slather everything in antibiotic and burn cream and for Hawks to dress all the wounds. Although reluctant to leave Dabi alone, Toga follows Natsuo to the bathroom, standing right outside the door so she can keep one eye on the kitchen and the other on Natsuo.
“He’s going to be okay,” Natsuo says over his shoulder as he fills the tub with cold water.
“Of course he is,” Toga dismisses hastily. “He’s Dabi.”
Natsuo kindly doesn’t point out the obvious waver in her voice over Dabi’s name. When the water has filled the tub halfway he turns off the tap before plunging his hands into the water and activating his quirk. Within minutes the water freezes solid. Natsuo pulls his hands out, shaking the lingering ice shards off the tips of his fingers. While he can create his own ice it’s easier to simply cool the water past its freezing point rather than generating ice solely from his quirk.
The four of them carefully carry Dabi from the kitchen into the bathroom. Emiko throws towels over the ice so his skin isn’t in direct contact and they gently lay him down on top of it.
“Shouldn’t we turn on the cold water?” Toga asks, shifting her weight from side to side.
“We’d get the bandages wet if we did that,” Natsuo answers, sitting on the lip of the tub as he re-freezes the ice packs Hawks and Emiko fetch from the kitchen. He wraps them in hand towels and places them back around Dabi. “Plus, there’s a lot of broken skin and open wounds. It’s not good to get water in those. As long as we change out the towels before they get too wet, this is the best way to keep Dabi cool.”
Toga bites her lip but doesn’t argue. Dabi is still unconscious, but at least he’s stable now. Natsuo brushes a few sweat-stuck bangs from the villain’s forehead and presses the back of his hand against the skin to make sure he’s not running a fever. He’s warmer than Natsuo would like, but not too far out of range of what most fire-quirked people run at, so he’s satisfied that there’s no danger at the moment. When he pulls his hand back he’s surprised to find smudges of black on his finger. He rubs them together and then glances down at Dabi’s hair. Must be a dye job then, and either a fresh one or a shitty one if it’s coming off onto Natsuo’s fingers so easily.
Natsuo wipes his hand off on his sleep pants and, with the door open so there’s a clear view of the villain lying on the slab of ice, herds everyone into the living room. He sits down heavily on the coffee table, taking a moment to run a hand through his hair before glaring at Hawks and Toga.
“Sit,” he orders, snapping his fingers and pointing at the couch. Hawks follows the command wordlessly, sitting in the middle of the couch. Toga chooses to perch on the arm closest to the bathroom. Emiko settles against him, the warm press of her body against Natsuo soothing some of the panic simmering just below the surface.
“Explain.”
Despite the way they clearly don’t trust each other, Natsuo watches as the two of them look at each other, Hawks’ eyes pleading. Toga lifts her chin and Hawks sighs, heavy and defeated, as he turns back towards Natsuo. The explanation comes haltingly at first, Hawks taking charge while Toga pipes in here and there, but as it unfurls Natsuo can’t quite believe what he’s hearing.
He doesn’t know what’s worse: the fact that this whole mess came about because Hawks infiltrated the League of Villains on the Hero Commission’s orders and it was his tip off that caused his baby brother to be dragged into a war, the fact that after losing his wings and his career Hawks felt so useless that he turned to vigilantism in an attempt to glue his broken pieces together and make up for his mistakes, that a few months ago the former hero had gotten back into contact with Dabi after the villain tracked him down and now sometimes—like tonight—Dabi helped assist Hawks in his vigilantism efforts with Toga tagging along because she didn’t trust Hawks not to stab another one of her friends in the back, the fact that Hawks had actually stabbed anyone in the back at all, or the fact that Natsuo is clearly not supposed to know any of this.
Never fucking mind the fact that with the laws being what they are he was already going to prison for the rest of his natural life for aiding and abetting the two villains in his apartment. Even if he was so inclined to call the cops or heroes and implicate himself as an accomplice, with the amount of history Hawks is dredging up he’s going to end up imprisoned in some black site never to be heard from again if any authorities discover what he now knows.
And now he’d dragged Emiko into it too.
Natsuo takes a deep breath and presses his hands against his face until he sees stars behind his eyes. “I hate you.”
“I know.”
“I wish I’d never met you.”
“I know.”
“You’re a fucking horrible person. You dragged both of us into this, knowing the position you'd put us in.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No you’re fucking not.”
“I am, but not enough that I wouldn’t do it again,” Hawks concedes.
Natsuo doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to punch someone so bad in his life. Rather than doing that, or screaming until his throat bleeds, Natsuo elects to check on Dabi. Alone.
Dabi is just about the same as they’d left him, but Natsuo notices that the towels are soaked through and need to be replaced. As the only person he can stand to be around right now without either verging towards murder or wanting to beg for forgiveness for dragging them into the ever-evolving shitshow that is his life, Natsuo calls Toga in and enlists her help in holding Dabi up long enough for the wet towel underneath him to be replaced by a dry one.
As Natsuo settles the villain back down he nearly jumps out of his skin as Dabi grumbles and tips his head to the side. For a second Natsuo stays frozen, convinced he’s a moment away from being reduced to ash, but Dabi quiets back down almost immediately after.
“Is he awake?” Toga asks anxiously, hovering just over his shoulder and wringing a towel between her hands.
“I don’t think so,” Natsuo says, still cautiously taking stock of the villain, “but maybe he’ll wake up soon.”
It’s as Toga sighs and sits down on the toilet seat that Natsuo notices the patch of gray-white hair on the back of Dabi’s head. The hair dye there must have gotten wet from the towel and then been wiped away when they were removing it from underneath. Natsuo freezes, unable to look away, a cold vice squeezing his chest until it feels like he can’t breathe, even as Dabi turns his head back so that he’s facing Natsuo now. Without thinking he takes a hand towel, wet from one of the melting ice packs they’d stuffed around him, and wipes at his bangs. Each swipe draws more and more hair dye away, until he’s left with hair that looks more soot-stained than white.
But.
Swaddled in bandages as he is, barely any of the purple scars are showing. White bandages, pale skin, white hair. It’s hauntingly familiar.
His quirk reacted to whatever it made him see and tried to burn him alive.
When Touya died, the night sky burned blue.
“Natsuo?” Toga asks, sitting up straighter. “Is Dabi okay?”
“Toga, does—” Natsuo swallows back bile and tries again. “Does Dabi have white hair?”
“He has such pretty white hair,” Toga sighs appreciatively. “I only saw it once, but he looks really cute with the white hair and blue eyes.” She giggles and whispers, “Don’t tell him that I told you, okay? He doesn’t want anyone to know about it.”
“I won’t,” Natsuo promises, barely able to force the words out. “I won’t.”
.
.
.
The sun has risen just enough to start to stream through the window when Dabi opens his eyes. Natsuo watches as they flutter open slowly, Todoroki-blue eyes—fuck it’s so obvious now how could he have missed it all this time—hazy with lingering pain. He stays seated on the coffee table, watching as the villain takes stock of himself and his surroundings.
They took him out of the bathroom around five in the morning after Natsuo decided there was more danger in getting his bandages wet than him getting a fever or spontaneously combusting. They dressed him in a spare set of Natsuo’s clothes and laid him on the couch to rest. Emiko went back to their bedroom shortly after, Hawks passed out at the kitchen table, and Toga fell asleep on the floor leaning against the couch with Dabi’s tattered jacket draped over her.
Natsuo sat down on the coffee table, his head in his hands, and just tried to breathe.
There’s so much he wants to say. Even now, following his brother’s fingers as they twitch against the soft blanket they’d laid over him, Natsuo can feel them all crowding his throat.
How are you alive?
You grew up to look just like Mom, did you know?
Why didn’t you come home? Was I not enough?
If Yumi ever finds out you’re a villain she’s going to kill you.
How could you leave me alone all these years?
You almost got our baby brother killed, what the fuck—
You owe me so many missed birthdays you dick.
I miss you. I miss you I miss you I miss—
What comes out instead is:
“Morning, Tou.”
Natsuo doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry as he watches Dabi nearly fall off the couch in his attempt to whip his head towards Natsuo. Somehow, miraculously, it doesn’t wake Toga up. For a moment time falls still, hanging precariously between the two as they stare each other down. Dabi’s eyes slide away and time stutters forward again as he falls back against the couch. Natsuo keeps watching as he slowly blinks up at the ceiling, clearly evaluating all the life choices that have led him to this exact moment, and exhales.
“Fuck me."