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Keigo’s mother doesn’t like him.
It’s a fact he’s been aware of since he could first think. She asks him why he was born, why he has his wings if he can’t do anything good with them, why he’s constantly a burden; a myriad of things Keigo doesn’t know the answer to, because he’s five years old. But even though she knows he doesn’t know the answer, she asks the questions anyway because she doesn’t like him.
If he could, he’d get rid of his wings. They itch on his back because he doesn’t know how to take care of them and his mama says they’re useless and more than anything, he wants her to love him, and he doesn’t understand why she doesn’t.
He’s five. Five and tiny and supposedly useless, as his mama calls him.
He’s known hurt since he was born and he sometimes wonders if that’s all he was made for; if he just wasn’t destined for love, if his body wasn’t made for being wanted. Because he’s sure he hasn’t done anything for mama to hate him, but he’s not exactly done anything to make her love him, either-
But Keigo’s five. And there’s only so much he can do.
So he does the only things he’s able to do while his mother sits in front of the TV with hollow and vacant eyes, not paying attention to him. He shuffles through the house on his bare feet, trying to avoid the splinters and empty bottles and crushed cans, and uses his feathers as best he can to fetch a glass out of their messy cupboards that he can’t reach, even on his tiptoes.
He can reach their sink using an old box to stand on. He has to run the tap for a short while so the water doesn’t come out dirty in the glass, and he sneaks a glance at mama while he does - she’s still not looking even though he’s balanced precariously on the edge of the box while he tries to fill the glass up with water for her, already halfway to falling - a light wind could knock him over and there’s a fair chance that it might, given the number of holes in the house’s wooden panelled walls.
But his mama still doesn’t look. Keigo’s not sure she would care if he did fall, if she would even turn her head to look at the sound.
The glass fills. Keigo uses a feather to turn the tap off and tries to imagine mama telling him he was good for using his quirk well. (He struggles to envision it, because she’s never said anything even remotely close. The woman in his mind is wrong because mama wouldn’t say that, and Keigo knows it all too well).
He holds the glass tightly in his two hands and dodges the various messes on the floor on his way back to her where she’s sitting by the TV, next to the low table.
“Mama,” he chirps quietly, though it’s lost in the emptiness of her head.
She doesn’t look at him.
(She never looks at him).
“Mama,” he says again, careful to keep his voice quiet. His fingers tap lightly on the glass where some of the water has dripped out onto his fingers. It’s cold enough to be uncomfortable, but not cold enough that he needs to let it go. He holds it out to her. “For you.”
She doesn’t look at him and Keigo’s stomach twists with the horrible feeling of being lonely, ignored. She doesn’t turn her head and tears bleed behind his eyes because it’s not fair, he wants to be loved and he can’t seem to do anything that will make him loved - he hides his wings behind his back so she can’t see them and he tries to offer her something, anything-
“Mama,” he whispers, quiet and broken.
Why was he born?
His mama has been asking him that more and more often and now he’s beginning to ask himself that, too. Why is he here if nobody looks at him, if nobody likes him? Why was he alive if just to hurt, to starve?
He wants to feel her love, her hold, her touch, if only once. He doesn’t remember it happening before, too small and too young, and he yearns for it like there’s something missing in him. Keigo is five years old and all he knows how to do is starve because he’s been deprived of love his whole life and he doesn’t know what more he could possibly do to earn it.
He’s five. What does he even have to give?
With quivering fingers, he puts the glass on the table beside her, hoping she’ll accept the offering if he doesn’t come along with it.
The wooden floor digs its rough grooves into his bare feet and he wants to beg her to look at him as a harsh gust of wind blows its way in through one of the gaps in the wall. It sends a shiver up his spine and through his legs because his clothes are old and wearing but he doesn’t care, he wants to be held.
“Do you need anything?” Keigo asks her, trembling, desperately hoping that she’ll love him if he makes himself useful. “Can I get anything?”
“Be quiet,” is all she mutters in response, disinterested and apathetic but most of all unloving.
He fights the growing urge to cry and instead curls up on the floor by her legs, not caring that it’s dirty or that he has to position his body so it doesn’t touch any of the empty cans his father has left lying around. She didn’t look at him when she spoke to him and she’s not looking at him now and Keigo feels so… invisible. Unwanted.
He knows that he is unwanted but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
Folding his wings up behind him, he presses his forehead into her leg, just for the contact. She’s warm. He wishes hysterically that she would hold him, that he would feel encompassed in her warmth, that he would feel something akin to love. Not love, because he knows she doesn’t love him- but maybe he could pretend.
Her hand reaches for the TV remote again and Keigo wants her to use that same hand to stroke his hair. It wouldn’t be hard, or taxing, she wouldn’t even have to look at him and he craves anything that she’d give him, even if it only lasted for a few seconds-
His mama doesn’t accept his offering left on the table and she doesn’t acknowledge him, either.
The craving for affection doesn't end with his mother.
It doesn’t end with his mother because even though she sells him off there’s still a horrible yearning for love inside of him, a desperation for something he never had and yet still wants so badly, so constantly. It doesn’t end with Tomie because he’s so starved of love that he’ll take it from anyone.
After she sold him to the Commission, he stopped referring to her as mama. Because his handlers tell him he acts too young (of course he acts young, he wants to tell them, he's a child) - so now she's Tomie, or mother. She'd still be mama if she had acted like one but she never paid him enough attention a day in his life, and so he didn’t hold on too adamantly to the title.
(Tomie isn't mama, no matter how much he cries himself to sleep holding his plushie and wishing things were different).
Keigo- now just Hawks- does what he can. He trains until he can’t anymore, even when he’s exhausted or sick or injured, he makes sure to be well-behaved and quiet, he does the little things outside of hero work because he needs somebody- anybody to like him.
He helps Lady Nagant with her paperwork when he isn’t busy training and she’s in the Commission building; asks if she wants him to file them away, asks if she needs anything doing while she’s busy, keeps guard by her door while she sneaks in a nap that she’s not supposed to be having.
And when she’s gone- Hawks isn’t allowed to know the details, only that she’s in Tartarus- Hawks takes all of the hurt and loneliness inside of himself and he’s not sure what to do about it all.
The longing doesn’t end with Nagant, either, just leaves him itching to be good for somebody else.
If he thinks about it, he’s sure his father would ridicule him for playing up to his superiors, seeking praise from government officials. But he realises quickly that he doesn't care because his father is in prison, and his father isn’t the one who gives him a pat on the shoulder if he’s done exceptionally well in training that day.
So Hawks is well-behaved. It’s one of the things they didn’t have to train him to do, because he came to them already a people-pleaser and desperate for approval, ready to do anything they asked of him.
He sometimes sees bits of his mother in the blonde hair of the HPSC President and in the disinterest that clouds her eyes when she looks at him. She tells him once to be quiet and he spends the rest of the day fighting back tears, desperate to prove that he can be good, he can-
He does things for her without asking and he hopes, hopes to anyone or anything listening that she won’t ignore him like his mother did. But she does anyway, and Hawks just lets her.
Once, after a day of intensive training, she has Hawks sit in her office. He’s not sure why and she doesn’t tell him why, but he doesn’t complain - even when he’s sat there for so long that his legs have gone numb and all he wants is to go back to his room and lie down.
She leaves to take a call. Hawks doesn’t dare move.
She doesn’t look at him, even when she shuts the door; it sends a familiar pang of hurt through his chest, the feeling that he’s not good enough. That she doesn’t like him.
And, granted, she probably doesn’t (because Hawks is just a random kid that the Commission bought and legally owns) - but he wants her to like him.
And it’s how he finds himself running through the same acts he would do for his mother. Doing what he could when he was still so young, desperate to please - he stands up, silent on his feet, and quietly yet efficiently cleans up her desk where she had been working.
It’s not so different from when he lived with his parents - he used to prop up spare wooden panels against their broken walls, sort his father’s empty bottles into one corner instead of leaving them strewn messily over the entire floor. His mother never noticed, but he wished that she did.
And so he doesn’t just tidy her desk, either: she’s still on the phone when he finishes, so he commands his feathers about the room to organise the entire place much quicker than anyone else could, much more precise than anyone else could. He can feel the dust on top of the furniture and uses his feathers to sweep away that, too, even if it makes his wings a bit dirty.
Maybe his mother would be disappointed in him. When she’d asked what his wings were even good for, she probably hadn’t been expecting him to use them for cleaning-
But when the President finishes her call and comes back from her office and finds Hawks standing politely in waiting with the room looking considerably nicer, she raises her eyebrows and gives him a curt nod. It’s not a thank you, not by any means, but it’s more than his mother ever gave him.
Hawks has to stay up late into the night to preen the dust out of his feathers, but he feels happy. In some strange and almost delusional kind of way, he feels happy.
And it doesn’t end with her, either - because Hawks grows up and gets taller, older, stronger, but he never gets any more loved.
Hawks grows up and debuts as a hero and starts his own agency and still nobody loves him. Especially not his mother.
As he grows older, Hawks begins to cope.
Not well. And he can’t even really call it coping, because he just pushes all that craving for tenderness down until he can’t really feel it anymore. He doesn’t dote on the HPSC President like he used to (though he’s still there at her beck and call), he doesn’t cry over missing Nagant on the really lonely days (he takes on extra shifts around the anniversary of her arrest so he doesn’t have to think about it), and he’s not constantly bitter over his mother’s treatment of him (he gets a sick sort of jealousy in his stomach whenever he reunites a child and their mother after a villain attack).
Hawks is coping. He’s fine. The feelings stay down and if he ever does let them out, it can be when he’s alone in his apartment, and he can pretend the next morning like he doesn’t need a mother’s love, because he’s an adult now. He’s a hero.
But then the Commission sends him to infiltrate the League and Hawks becomes sadder and lonelier than ever.
They’re like a family. Dabi’s adamant that they’re nothing like that but Hawks sees it, sees it in the way Twice braids Toga’s hair and the way Spinner plays video games with Shigaraki to help take his mind off of the scratching and the way Dabi sometimes lets Compress rub the circulation back into his wrists and fingers on the days his scars just won’t cooperate with him.
He sees it in the way Magne lets Toga paint her nails. In the way Magne will comfortingly pat Shigaraki on the shoulder when she walks past him. In the way Magne makes sure Dabi’s using his burn ointment after he overuses his quirk. In the way Magne acts like a mother to them.
Hawks isn’t coping.
It’s why his stomach sports a dull ache every time he visits, because he watches her and her little mannerisms that go mostly unnoticed by the rest of them. And he tries with all of his strength to pretend that he doesn’t care - but one night he’s there she hugs Dabi, properly holds him close and strokes his head-
It was private, wasn’t for Hawks to see, and he knows it. But he saw it anyway and spent the rest of the night sobbing into his pillow after he got home.
And so he starts doing things for Magne, too. Dabi notices and of course, teases him about it, but Hawks can’t find it in himself to care. Because every time he does something she smiles at him and it’s comforting and warm and it’s, it’s- parental, even. It’s motherly.
He holds the door open for her and gives up his seat on the couch for her and asks constantly if she needs anything and brings her food and he compliments her outfit and always asks if she's okay and Dabi pokes fun at him for being desperate- but Hawks can’t even deny it.
It’s by chance one day that it’s just them alone in the League’s hideout. And Hawks acts as he normally does, greets her politely and asks if he can do anything for her, already noticing the empty cups left lying around on the floor by other members of the League and silently sending some feathers to tidy them away.
As he always does, Hawks plasters on his best smile, pretends like he’s not screaming for attention inside. When he takes his boots off he places them neatly and tries to take up as little room in there as he possibly can, even though everyone else has left, because he doesn’t want her to think he’s rude or annoying or a burden and he doesn’t want her to hate him. He can’t stand the thought of her hating him.
“Do you want me to go out and get you anything?” He asks her - he says it nonchalantly, like the idea has barely just crossed his mind, but in reality he knows that he’s aching to do something for her and that he has been since he last visited the hideout. He just smiles at her again like he’s normal. “I know the weather’s been awful lately, if I can do anything for you- or, you guys…”
There’s a knot tying itself around his insides while he trails off and waits for her response. She’s reading a book and so she doesn’t look up at him at first, and Hawks tries to prepare himself for the dizzying, nauseating outcome that might happen if she doesn’t look at him. If she ignores him the same way his mother did.
His legs want to tap and his head feels too light and his fingers almost quiver. He won’t make a scene if she does ignore him, he’ll just let that horrible feeling take root inside of him, he’ll hold all the pain and the suffering inside of himself so she doesn’t have to see how ugly it is.
But she doesn’t ignore him. It takes her barely a couple of seconds before she dog-ears the page of her book and sets it down on the table and properly looks at him, fixes all of her attention on him.
“We don’t really need anything at the moment,” she says with a fond smile, one that makes Hawks’ heart shriek in his chest from the weight of it. “But thank you for asking, hon.”
He didn’t even do anything and she still thanked him and Hawks doesn’t- he just doesn’t feel like he was deserving of a thank you. Of her kind smile, directed at him.
Let me do something for you, he wants to say. Let me show you how good I can be, how worthy I am of love.
“It’s really no trouble,” he says, pushing down his nervous stutter. “I was planning on going out anyway and I know it’s easier for me than you guys, so I-”
Magne smiles at him again, so earnest and warm that Hawks forgets what he’s saying.
“You’re a very sweet boy, you know?” She says, completely genuine. “You don’t have to help out so much. I notice it, love, I should say thank you more often- but you’re so good, so nice to me.”
She goes to reopen her book, tucking a strand of deep red hair behind her ear like what she just said was nothing. Like it was normal. Like it was true.
And Hawks-
Hawks-
He can’t breathe.
Her voice is soothing and warm and bordering on maternal and it immediately sends him careening into the bathroom down the hall, thinking that he’s going to throw up.
He doesn’t mean to. But she sounds so kind and so genuine in a way that’s never been directed at him, not from a woman’s voice, and it makes him physically dizzy. It’s a compliment and he should like it- he does like it- but he doesn’t know how to take it.
He’s good. She likes him. She’s proud of him. She-
Hawks’ knees crash into the floor and he heaves into the toilet, barely managing to hold his hair back from his face.
With ragged breaths, he coughs, and the awful feeling of sickness is familiar. He’s hunched over the toilet bowl and gasping and it sucks, sure, but it’s familiar. He knows how to deal with it because it’s happened before.
But then Magne is following after him, her too-gentle voice laced with concern, and the nausea in his stomach ties a noose around his insides. He doesn’t know how to deal with it. He can’t deal with it.
And suddenly there’s a protective, soothing hand touching his feverish skin, gently rubbing between his shoulder blades and patting his back to help him cough again-
His next breaths are shaky and jagged and he tries to stave off the panic because it’s Magne touching him. He knows. Realistically, he should have been scared of anyone else touching him - if his mother or the Commission President were to touch him, it would have probably come with violence, but he still craved their contact anyway-
But with Magne, who has been nothing but sweet and gentle and even motherly towards him- Hawks can’t handle it.
He jerks away like the touch has burned him.
“I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to-”
Her voice is soothing and woven with genuine empathy and it makes it all worse, because when has anyone ever apologised for hurting him? Memories of pain flash through his head while he nearly chokes on his own breath and Magne didn’t even hurt him but she said sorry to him anyway. Magne didn’t hurt him but she was scared of hurting him, she didn’t want to hurt him.
Hawks shudders bodily and she can’t, she can’t be nice to him, he hasn’t earned it he doesn't deserve it and even if he felt like he did he wouldn’t even know how to take it-
“Stop,” Hawks screeches, flinching further in on himself even though he knows that she’s stepped back to give him space. He feels her shocked inhale through his feathers. “Stop being nice to me.”
He’s changed his mind. He feels small and terrified and sure, when he would curl up on the floor of his broken home at five years old he felt small then too- but this is a different kind of small. An unfamiliar and hideous kind of small. Hawks has changed his mind about wanting Magne’s care because he can’t handle her being nice to him, not after he was starved of it his entire life.
He heaves again and the toilet seat is cold on his hands where he clutches it and he’s so- tired. His wings shake even though he’s trying his hardest to keep them still but he feels small and exhausted and scared, scared for no reason at all because Magne’s probably been more kind to him than anyone else has, ever.
She’s been more parental to him in these past five minutes than both of his parents combined have ever been in his entire life.
You’re a very sweet boy, you know?
Hawks’ nausea is calming down a bit and the panic doesn’t seem so overwhelming anymore; the floor is rough, his hands are clammy, his stomach hurts. Hawks knows pain like the back of his hand and it doesn’t make him feel sick to deal with.
You’re so good, so nice to me.
Hawks’ nausea is calming down but then he starts to cry.
To his dismay and complete and utter embarrassment, Hawks starts to cry, hunching over the toilet bowl while he clutches at the seat and hopes that the ground will spontaneously open and swallow him up. He knows perfectly well that Magne can tell because it’s not even a whimper, it’s a full-on sob, wracking through his ribcage and bursting out of his mouth, loud and unfiltered.
He’s a mess. He’s the Number Two Hero, he gets complimented on the daily, so surely he should’ve been able to handle this; the last thing he was meant to do on this mission was show any sign of weakness to the League of Villains and now- now he’s on his knees and sobbing because someone was nice to him. Because a villain was nice to him.
And through the vibrations in his feathers, he can sense Magne behind him, awkwardly moving her hands like she wants to comfort him but she doesn’t want to upset him any more.
He wanted his mother to touch him so badly, wanted anything she would give him even if it was just a pat on the shoulder - just acknowledgement that he existed, that his body was more than an unwanted quirk and a vessel for his father’s violence.
He remembers he’d used to hug himself as he fell asleep when he was young, wrapping his bony arms around himself like it could even attempt to mimic what his mother’s hold might have felt like. It would take ages to get to sleep when the weather would seep through the holes in the house and sometimes he’d stroke his own hair, as filthy and matted as it was, just for some pathetic semblance of comfort.
He just wanted touch. Wanted to be held. And as much as he cherished the gift, having an Endeavor plushie wasn’t the same as having a mother.
With an ugly and shuddering cry, he wraps his wings around himself.
“It- it’s gonna be alright,” Magne’s voice breaks through the fuzziness in his mind. She says it gingerly, like it might send him spiralling into another breakdown - and to be fair, it probably could - but he appreciates it. His chest feels warm.
“Mom,” he whispers before he even realises what he’s saying- “Mama, I can’t.”
And it’s with his head hung over the toilet that he realises what he’s said. Any nausea or sadness is overridden by sheer, blind panic - he called her mom, he threw up in front of her and cried and called her mom and the embarrassment pools hot and shameful in his stomach, he called her mama, she’s a criminal and a villain and he just-
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that she’s a villain and that she could use this to her advantage, he just cares that she might hate him. His only thoughts are along the lines of shitshitshitshit and horror is stabbing quick and dirty through his heart while he waits for her reaction because why did he say that?
“Oh,” Magne says quickly, a sharp intake of breath. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s alright. It’s alright.”
Hawks’ choked breath catches in his throat.
What does she mean, ‘it’s alright’, of course it’s not alright-
“Hey, shh, you’re gonna make yourself sick again,” is all she says. No ridicule, no punishment. She just kneels beside him and Hawks wants to scream because why is she so nice to him, even now? Why is she gentle with him when he didn’t suffer for it, when he didn’t do enough to earn it?
Five-year-old Keigo used to grieve for the love and care that he’d lost, used to hold his plushie tightly in his fists and wonder what he could’ve possibly done for mama to hate him so much. He used to grieve for his mother’s hold, for her love, for everything he wanted so desperately it would keep him awake at night, silently begging to be wanted.
And it felt almost… selfish. Because he’d never had those things, so why should he have the right to mourn them?
“I’m sorry,” Hawks gasps out, the only words he can seem to think. Because he is, truly and wholeheartedly - he’s sorry that she has to take care of him, sorry that he got so upset over nothing, sorry for imposing on her day, he’s sorry, sorry, sorry I’m sorry I’m so-
“Just sit up, sit up for me,” she coaxes, a steadying hard splayed out across his back. “You’ll feel better, hon.”
Hawks doesn’t believe her but he wants to please so badly.
And he feels a bit silly for it, because when he takes her advice and she helps him sit back with his head upright, he does feel a little better. Some of the pressure between his temples is relieved and his throat stops feeling so blocked up and as she kindly but firmly pats him on the back, he starts breathing easier.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, a prayer. I’m sorry you had to do that. I’m sorry you have to be here. I’m sorry you have to look at me, I’m sorry. The words leave his mouth without him even thinking about them - it’s like an ingrained response, to beg her not to leave him, to look at him, to love him, mom, mama, please-
“I’m sorry,” he hiccups, though it’s much quieter this time, and suddenly he’s falling backwards where he sits-
Into her hold, where her hands begin to find his hair, cradle his head like he wanted his mother to so desperately for so, so long.
Hawks just shakes and shivers and apologises again and tries to cherish the moment as best he can.
The hug is warm. It’s warm and all-consuming and he’s so upset he went so long without it- because he’s sure he would’ve been a much happier child, had he been allowed this. If his mother was as kind as Magne is being to him right now.
The hug is kind and gentle and loving and it soothes his chest where it aches from hyperventilating and now his stomach doesn’t hurt as much and one of his wings involuntarily flutters in contentment and-
And he realises that actually, he doesn’t want his mom.
Of course he doesn’t- if she were to see him right now she’d probably be disgusted with him, upset and trembling on the bathroom floor, not even his own bathroom floor. She’d be disappointed in how weak and useless he’s being, that his wings are two useless things attached to his back while he rocks back and forth over the edge of panic again. And she’d be so, so disappointed that he’s being comforted by a villain.
Tomie hated that his father was a criminal. Maybe even more than he did. Hawks wouldn’t want to see that dead, empty look in her eyes again knowing that her son willingly let a villain comfort him.
If he were to see his mom right now, she might just ask him for money. Hawks can’t envision her doing anything else besides either that or just flat-out insulting him.
So no, he doesn’t want his mom. Doesn’t want to see her stare again, where she would look at him with only apathy and resentment, with the shame she had to bear from having a son like him. It would just serve to upset him more, probably send him right back into his panic attack.
He doesn’t want his mom. He just wanted his mom to love him.
Magne’s hands, softhearted and kind, keep him tethered to the bathroom floor where they’re sitting. She rubs warmth back into his cold fingers and brushes through his sweaty hair, taps out the counts on his shoulder when he’s having trouble breathing again and needs to pace himself.
Magne is kind to him. She doesn’t have to be - he’s a hero and she’s a villain, she has no obligation towards him and no real reason to even give him the time of day - but she’s kind to him in spite of all that.
And it kind of makes it hurt all the more, because Hawks was always capable of being loved. His mom just didn’t want to love him.
A silent tear falls down his cheek and he finds himself apologising again.
“Nothing to say sorry for,” she reassures him instantly. “You know it’s alright.”
“Well-" Hawks swallows, tries to speak calmly over the cracks in his voice- "I’m still sorry."
He leans his head into her shoulder. He doesn’t know why he does it. It feels nice. Why didn’t his mother do this? What was so wrong with him when he was young that he couldn't have the simple allowance of being held?
Magne must feel him shudder, because she tries to comfort him again. “I don’t mind staying with you,” she says. “Hey, even Dabi wants this sometimes. You’re not so different from us, you know? You’re one of us. And we take care of our own."
Hawks is positively exhausted and he doesn’t think he can handle any more emotionally taxing conversations, anything else that might upset him. So he fixates on the only other part of what she just said.
“Dabi lets you do this?” he mumbles, voice tired.
“...Under strict confidentiality. So don’t tell him I told you,” she whispers back.
Hawks breathes a laugh and then a sigh of relief when she brushes through his hair again.
"I won't," he says, and it's the truth - because what would he even say to Dabi? He wouldn't be able to say anything to him without having to tell him about this night. Hey, I know you secretly let Magne comfort you sometimes and don't want anyone to know. Oh, how do I know that? I got upset because she was nice to me and she had to pat my back when I threw up and then I accidentally called her mom twice.
…Yeah, he doesn't exactly have any leverage over Dabi with that secret. Not since he was half sat in Magne's lap when he found it out.
“Okay, honey,” she says quietly after a short while, when his breathing has calmed down all the way and he’s completely lax leaning against her. “The others are gonna get back soon. Do you want to move?”
She doesn’t say you’re going to move. She doesn’t just say move, like his mother probably would have done. Instead she gives him a choice and time to decide and gently holds his hand while he does.
His answer of okay is no louder than a whisper. But Magne softly coos at him and helps him up, walks with an arm round his shoulder so he doesn’t stumble, takes him to her room to sit down somewhere comfortable. She carries on comforting him even when they both hear the rest of the League come back and start hanging about in the living room, the pleasant hum of conversation starting to filter through the door.
It’s calming, but not as calming as Magne’s fingers threading through his hair. Hawks just shuts his eyes and tries to just live the moment because he doesn’t know when he’ll be allowed to have this again; he doesn’t know how long he’ll have to go without this and now that he’s had it, he doesn’t know how long he can.
Magne’s bedroom door clicks open and Hawks is too tired to react, to even care that somebody else is seeing him like this. His head is buried in her chest anyway so he can’t see if whoever it is is judging him.
“Dabi, love,” Magne says quietly, like she’s trying not to disturb Hawks. “Are you okay?”
…Hawks isn’t sure how to feel about the fact that it’s Dabi. But then he remembers that Dabi liked this too, Dabi let her do this too, and he just feels- well, he feels… fine. He doesn’t think Dabi’s going to judge him.
“I’m fine,” Dabi says. “Is he, though?” Hawks can hear the eyebrow raise in his voice, the playfully teasing tone all too familiar.
“He’s alright,” Magne says, and Hawks suppresses a shudder as she rubs his back, tries not to think about how Dabi is watching this all unfold from the doorway. He’s been there long enough that self-consciousness begins to prickle at the back of his neck, knowing Dabi’s looking at him, looking at him being held.
He folds his wings around himself, wraps them around him so he’s hidden from everyone’s view except Magne’s (because he wants her to look at him, he needs it) - but it makes him feel better, more protected, especially when she keeps on holding him.
“You can’t hide yourself with your quirk, birdbrain,” Dabi calls out. “I only know one dumbass with red wings, and it’s you.”
Hawks just detaches a feather to poke Dabi in the forehead. Magne, letting out a fond laugh, doesn’t let go.