Stray Dogs Will Crawl Home.
includes— hawks x reader. minors dni. angst (with a happy ending).
warnings— gn!reader. breakups. keigo's trauma because i can't give this man a break and he needs to heal.
For better or for worse, Keigo has always been thrust into the role of decision maker.
Sure, on the inside, his emotions pick and chew at his open wounds; but the man has driven the proverbial and literal knife into far too many backs to hesitate when he leaves you.
He can do what needs to be done. It's for your own good. You deserve more than half a man, more than the scraps of whatever is left crawling to your door after another day of putting his goals of building a peaceful society before you.
The night before he left you, stone-faced to contrast your tears and begs of 'why' on the cold of your doorstep, he lay on his side and watched you sleep. Tracing the bridge of your nose with the tip of a finger, he wondered, throat tight, what you'd think of him if you knew the truth of what he's done.
He can't bear to offer you a man who's already sold himself. You shouldn't have to shoulder the weight of his sins. He tells himself it's for the greater good, but under the cobwebs of his bed, he knows a smaller, childlike voice is telling him you deserve someone who isn't dirtied by a life counting shades of moral grey.
It aches like he's dying, sure, but that's what hero work is for, right? He can throw himself into the trenches, hour after hour, until the sun looms over the horizon and the lovebirds' chirps announce the arrival of another morning without you.
For what everyone in the media says about him being a 'golden boy', he just doesn't feel the sun without you.
His subordinates ask more than a few questions about the bags under his eyes, why his glowing smile has fizzled to a mere plastic performance. It's even easier to brush them off than it was to brush off you, to smile wider and turn the question on them— an unspoken order to fucking drop it.
But Keigo's kryptonite, the deep burn that itches under the layers of his skin, is that he's well aware of what happens after someone like you becomes single. The thought crawls under the remains of his bones, and as he perches on the highest point of the city, he makes the mistake of allowing himself to entertain it. If he wasn't weighed down under the drags of sleep deprivation, he'd curse himself for being so weak.
Deep down, he knows what happens after the weeks of digging through tubs of comfort food on the couch are over. You'll stop sobbing over the phone with your best friend. You'll probably start scheduling little dates with people who remind you less and less of him with each passing one.
You're going to move on.
Someone else's fingers will press against your skin. Someone else's quips will cause you to laugh into your sleeve, someone else will hear your shaky breaths under the cover of the night, someone else will whisper promises they can't keep.
Someone else is going to make a spouse of you.
He winces. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he takes a single stride off the ledge and surges upwards with the beat of his wings.
He makes a note to add another shift to his schedule. Maybe two.
Are you thinking of him? If you were here, he knows you'd tell him to be open with you, to stop 'being so goddamn stubborn'. You'd tell him he deserves a break from pushing his emotions down, that you knew damn well what you signed up for when you decided to be his, and to just trust your judgement for once.
To make matters worse, you'd frame it sweet, hook the words around his heart like a taffy lasso, make it so he can't resist. You do know how much he likes it sweet.
It picks at the anger thrumming in his veins. You expect him to lay himself bare? To expose the rawest parts of him, despite the commission's repeated orders not to? You expect him to be selfish?
Why does he want so badly to be selfish?
He should definitely add two more shifts to his schedule.
His phone begins to ring, startling him from his musings. He knows exactly who it is from the first note. Your favorite song plays on his speaker; the one you confessed reminds you of him, with your thumb swiping over the raised hairs on his skin. His heart hammers in the cavity of his chest, pleading to be let out.
He can't be fucking rid of you. Keigo's heart, his mind, his very bones crackle with the fire he frantically tries to put out. God, he wants to burn, wants to drag himself by his fingertips to the door of your chapel and beg you to just finish him off. He wouldn't mind serving as the ash of your incense. He'd do anything for a chance to fill your lungs.
Shit. He scrambles to dig his phone from his pocket, nearly dropping it like hot coals when he attempts to pick it up.
"H-Hey, sweetheart!" He cringes at the puppy-like excitement in his voice at the mere sound of yours. "I'm s-sor— I," he stutters for far too long before he finally gives up. Sighing into the speaker, resigned, he squeezes his eyes shut and says exactly what his mind is screaming he shouldn't.
"Can we talk?"
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