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“Yeah, it’s me. Sorry I had to bail on our plans today.” Natsuo sighed into his phone, exhausted from the events of the night. He loved Fuyumi, but god damn, that woman could have the worst ideas sometimes. Well, bad in practice, good in theory, he supposed.
Although he had had to miss his planned weekly date, hearing his boyfriend’s voice was a nice grounding element to help him wind down.
“Yeah, I’m free all day tomorrow. We can see a movie, or-“ Natsuo’s sentence was violently cut off as something akin to concrete tentacles shot towards him and wrapped around his body and face, pinning and trapping his arms, his legs, his mouth, and he couldn’t breath, oh god, he couldn’t breath-
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Hawks was instantly on alert when the sound of his wonderful, talented, endearing boyfriend went from talking to him on the phone to muffled screaming before a distinctive crunch of phone on something hard ended the call, leaving him sitting in a silence that was somehow louder than before.
He was a hero, he should have been up immediately, goddammit. Despite this, for a few seconds, the bird hero couldn’t do anything but sit in a stunned silence (with the rough fabric of the couch Natsuo had saved from the side of the road underneath him), his boyfriend’s panicked shouts echoing in his ears.
Then he was up and moving faster than he had all day. Thankfully, he was still in his hero uniform, meaning that he didn’t have to waste time changing, but he would still have to make it to his boyfriend’s location.
…Before it hit him that he had no idea where Natsuo was.
‘Okay, you’re a pro hero, you do this sort of thing every day,’ the bird mutant thought to himself as he attempted to shove his panic deep down, leaving only cool reasoning behind. It worked to a degree, which was enough for the moment. It had to be.
Ignoring his lack of a plan, Hawks quickly opened a window, flew out, and zoomed into the cool night air, only taking a second to close the window behind him, as his boyfriend often chastised him to do. Hawks understood, of course. The black market for dump-worthy furniture and med-student notes was bustling at the moment.
Now what to do. It was night, meaning that the chances of someone, preferably a hero, finding Natsuo within the next few minutes were slim. He could send out feathers to try and locate his partner, but it was a big city, and that could take long, too long…
Suddenly, Hawks felt something like a sharp break in his wing. Not as extreme as a broken bone, but more like a sharp snap that faded just as quickly.
The pro recognized that sensation- having felt it on many, MANY occasions before- as that of a feather snapping in half. But that was insane. He was just flying, and no one was attacking him, so why did one of his feathers break?
All of a sudden, he remembered an evening, four months ago…
Hawks and Natsuo were, as they often were, on the couch in Natsuo’s small apartment. It wasn’t that the Todoroki didn’t have the money to afford something bigger; quite the opposite in fact. His father had offered money on quite a few separate occasions, but his son had refused to accept it on every one of them.
Hawks, having lived almost his entire life under control of the hero commission, could respect the want, no, the need, for autonomy. But that wasn’t the topic of that evening’s conversation.
In fact, the bird hero had something very important that he wanted to discuss with his partner, and the anxiety was KILLING him.
While he considered how to breach the conversation, he was laying with his head on his boyfriend’s lap, the aforementioned currently reading a book; something about a dragon, and a magician, and blah, blah, blah, aren’t Natsuo’s eyes beautiful?
Looking down at him from over his book, the white-haired man smiled fondly. “Don’t you have anything better to do than stare at me?”
“Nah,” the pro responded. “I can’t think of anything better than this.” And he really couldn’t. What was better than looking at the most beautiful thing in his life?
Natsuo let out one of those soft, deep chuckles that Hawks loved, the ones that reverberated within his lover’s chest, which the hero could feel if he was close enough.
Hawk’s smile faded, though, as he thought of the question he was going to ask his partner, and the anxiety of the possible response brought on. This time, though, Natsuo wasn’t engrossed in his book and noticed the shift in the blond’s demeanor.
“Babe? Is something wrong?” He asked, worry swirling in his grey eyes.
‘Well,’ Hawks thought, ‘no better time than the present, amiright?’ Sighing softly, he gently removed himself from his lover’s lap and maneuvered himself into a sitting position next to him.
“Kei, you’re worrying me. What’s wrong?”
Suddenly, Hawks realized how this must look to his boyfriend, and his eyes widened in alarm. “Oh, nothing, seriously! I have something important to ask you, but it’s nothing bad, I promise.”
Still sceptical, Natsuo nodded, mulling over his words.
Hawks took a deep breath and started. “Todoroki Natsuo, my beloved boyfriend with whom I have been together for a wonderful four months now, you know that I love you and worry about you constantly.”
This made the Todoroki chuckle again. “Ha, trust me, I know,” he replied, most definitely thinking about the time that he came home with a scratched knee (and obviously deadly, according to the pro), and Hawks had practically had an aneurysm.
“Well,” the blond continued, “I have something I would like you to have. You don’t have to accept it, of course, but I-“
“I’m sure I’ll love it,” Natsuo interrupted what was shaping up to be an awkward ramble with a lopsided grin.
If asked about the moment in the future, he would insist that his heart grew two sizes at the sight. Of course, he would say that about a lot of moments.
Hawks realized with a jolt back into reality that he was spacing out while staring at his partner and cleared his throat quickly. “So, uh, if you want it, I’d like to give you this.” He held out his hand in front of him, in it, a small red feather, barely bigger than his pinky, with a delicate silver chain wrapped around the stem.
“It’s one of mine,” he started, despite the obviousness of the statement.
“I’d hope,” Natsuo said with a small smirk.
Hawks continued. “So I’ll be able to sense where you are if I try to, and if you’re in trouble, you can break it, and I’ll know.”
A sudden look of worry came over the med-student’s face. “Break it. Won’t that hurt?”
The pro hero waved him off and said, “Honey, you know how many pairs of wings I go through all the time. Don’t worry about it!” But his boyfriend remained stubborn.
Unimpressed, he responded, “I know that, but will. It. Hurt?”
“Yes,” Hawks sighed. “But only for a second! And not very much. And you don’t have to take it if you don’t want to…”
With a fond smile, Natsuo took his lover’s hand in his. “I love it. Thank you.” Then he took the necklace from the other’s hand and laid it gently around his neck. In a quick movement, he surged forward to kiss the bird hero, which the latter was all too happy to reciprocate.
Before it got too deep, though, the white-haired man pulled away. Hawks pouted. “Tease.”
Natsuo winked. “You know I am.” He never took it off from that moment on.
Of course! The feather! In his panic, he had forgotten all about it. Quickly, he honed in on it and thanked his lucky stars that it wasn’t too far away. It was about a minute away as the hawk flies (at high speed, of course), and the pro felt it move around a lot in one area.
That was…odd. Probably not a kidnapping then, which was a slight relief. A fight, maybe? He hoped beyond hope that a pro was involved.
Letting his hope and fear fuel him, Hawks zoomed off through the night sky.
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‘This guy is insane. Completely batshit insane, and he’s gonna kill me,’ is what Todoroki Natsuo thought as he hung, suspended, four feet above the ground, being swung around by the fucking sociopath with a… white… line… quirk?
Odd quirks aside, the guy was clearly not weak. His quirk had Natsuo, at least, in a complete chokehold, although not literally, thank god. Breathing was not easy, but he’d take manageable over the alternative any day.
The man laughed maniacally, tears in his eyes. “Endeavour’s gonna kill me! He has to!” Moving away from ranting for a second, he screamed into the night, “Endeavour! Where are you? Kill me! Please!” Inject more maniacal laughter…
Now, the Todoroki was no stranger to kidnappings. Hazards of being the kid of the number two hero, he guessed. After the first few times, realising that there was not much he could do (curse his weak ice quirk), he had learned to cope with humour. You know, funny enough, that applied to most things in his life, actually.
Talk shit about Endeavour online, make fun of the idiots who went after him and their sloppy excuses for kidnappings, the likes. This, though, was harder to laugh at.
As the villain continued to scream into the night, he also resumed flinging Natsuo around, who felt his heart leap into his throat every time his head came dangerously close to the ground, a pole, or a different, similarly hard and blunt trauma-inducing object.
That also included cars, just like the one that was currently coming straight for them, and he was being flung towards it. Thoughts of crashing flashed through his mind.
Thankfully, the car swerved just in time to NOT hit him, and for a second, he caught a glimpse of who was inside. In complete honesty, Natsuo had never been happier to see his father’s grouchy driver, but that hope was short-lived as he was sent shooting a good 50 feet in the air.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the familiar glow of his father’s hellfire, before the Todoroki was yanked back to the ground to be used as a human shield. ‘Not that his father had ever had any qualms about hurting his children,’ his mind oh-so-helpfully supplied.
An even less helpful part of his mind couldn’t get past the thought of, ‘Dad, dad is here, he’s here to help, help me, dad.‘ He hated that part of his brain.
“D- do you remember me, Endeavour?“ the villain said, his voice trembling as it would if he were talking to a long-lost lover. Natsuo found it repulsive.
His face contorted in a mask of fury, his father answered. “Seven years ago, I stopped you from going on a rampage.”
Much to the younger Todoroki’s disgust, the white line-villain had started sobbing hysterically. „Wow, you remember! I’m so happy!“
At this, Endeavour’s flames seemed to burn even brighter. „I’ll say it again,“ Natsuo wasn’t sure when he had said it the first time, “let. Him. Go!“
With a shing like the sound of a knife, the maniac put a concrete arrow, like the ones painted on streets, up to the side of Natsuo’s head, who was now being held in the air behind the villain. Instinctively, the med-student’s eyes were drawn to the weapon which, despite its make, had a tip like a sword and was less than an inch away from his temple.
While he couldn’t draw his eyes away from the arrow’s borderline jagged edges and sharp end, he could still hear the maniac’s voice over the blood pounding in his ears. „I’m willing to kill this guy!“ Well, if Natsuo’s heart hadn’t stopped before, it definitely did at that. „Please, Endeavour! Don’t mess it up this time! I want you… to kill me!“
At this point, the man’s voice was barely more than a whimper as he held himself, arching his head towards the sky. If the younger Todoroki had been in a better headspace at the time, he would have puked at the sexuality of it. „Burn me to ashes with those dazzling flames!“
For a bit after that, Natsuo didn’t register much. As the guy’s broken mind went to more and more extremes, panic continued to rise within him, choking him and fading the world around him.
At some point, Shoto and his friends rushed into the fight, but his captor managed to jump back and evade them. As he did so, Natsuo’s eyes locked with his father’s, just for a moment, and his terrified mind was filled with screams of, ‘Help me! Please, someone! I don’t want to die. Please, I don’t want to die!’
As the villain continued to pull away and dodge attacks, he watched as Shoto attempted an attack yelling, „Let Natsuo go!“ and his heart filled with pride for his baby brother.
As a distraction amidst the chaos, the guy, with a manic expression, used his quirk to throw the civilian cars on the street over into the air and screamed, „More people are gonna end up dead!“ Natsuo’s brain barely had time to register panic for the innocent civilians drawn into the fight before his eyes opened in abject terror as two blinding spots of light hurtled towards him down the train track he suddenly found himself above.
They say that right before death, your life flashes before your eyes. Well, maybe Natsuo was special, because his life did no such thing. As death came hurtling towards him at full speed, his mind went blank, and he braced for impact.
That impact never came. Not a fatal one, at least. Instead of feeling, well, nothing, because he’d be dead, he felt something (or someone) barrel into him, pulling him away from the tracks (or where he had been hovering above them).
When he realized that he wasn’t dead and probably wasn’t going to die within the next few seconds, Natsuo cracked his eyes open, just enough to recognize the red wings and yellow suit that he had become intimately familiar with over the past few months.
Biting back a sob, he dug his face into his boyfriend’s chest with the knowledge that he was safe. „You’re safe,“ Hawks whispered into his ear. „You’re safe. I’ve got you.“
Although Natsuo kept his eyes closed, he could feel the wind shift as his boyfriend swooped back around, heading back towards the street where it seemed the fight was still going on. Suddenly very conscious of the villain‘s concrete lines still around him, he felt his panic rise once more.
After all, it wouldn’t take much for the guy to pull hard and take him right back to hanging above the ground, narrowly avoiding bashing his brains out as he flung him around with seemingly no consideration for, you know, not killing him.
The Todoroki must have subconsciously done something to alert his partner and savior to his mounting fear, though, because he recognized Hawks pulling him closer protectively as they neared the ground. Just as they were about to touch down, the lines around his body loosened and disappeared entirely, lifting a stone from his heart as they went away.
When they were both kneeling on the ground, the villain apparently taken out, Hawks gently pushed Natsuo back, a soft smile on his lips. ‘I love this man so much,’ thought the white-haired man as he attempted a watery smile back, and it wasn’t until his boyfriend pulled him into a tight hug that Natsuo broke down, clutching the back of his boyfriend’s uniform like a lifeline and letting himself sob on the pro’s shoulder as the latter rubbed circled on his back and whispered into his ear.
“You’re okay. I’ve got you. I won’t let anything hurt you, I promise. I’ve got you.”