#and look at ran. telephone pole with bird shit on his head

[nkogneatho]

ran haitani is one ugly mf

[transhawks]

dialogue prompt but non-angsty bcs im allergic: "You're back late."

Call takeout place, leave feather near door with some cash. Draw a bath. Epsom salts. Dry off. Put a heating pad. Eat takeout, remember to use feather to pay delivery person and get food. Brush teeth. Bed.

This list ran through Hawks’s head like a mantra for the past hour - the only way he got himself home, really. After an eleven-hour shift where a villain decides to kick him in the stomach AND into a telephone pole (he hated speed quirks), this was basically all he could manage at this point. Thankfully, nothing was broken, he was just going to be bruised all week.

One of the perils of the job. At least he had a routine down for days like this, days that were happening with increasing frequency. Between this and double-agenting with the League, the few moments where Hawks could relax came, well, with…

As he opened the door to his penthouse, immediately he was hit with the smell of pork broth, the instant kind; he could recognize the familiar smell of Umakacchan instant ramen. Memories of it being his dinner for years, either because they had nothing else to eat or he had little energy to cook when he’d lived alone, rose to the surface of his mind.

“You’re back late.” A low, rasped voice rose up from his couch as he shut the door and got his shoes off. He wasn’t surprised at who it was - who else would sneak into his apartment and cook him instant ramen?

No one but Dabi, and a year ago, when they’d first gotten into contact, that would have been unthinkable. Even now, standing there beaten up like he is, the knowledge that Dabi broke in/found the spare key to his apartment should have been absolutely terrifying. A villain in his space, in his things, freely making him dinner of all things.

The worst part of it all is that all Hawks felt was relief.

“Ah, you know, shit happened at work.” Hawks said, gesturing at his body. 

Dabi frowned and lifted his cellphone to show the app that live-streamed hero patrols and news. 

“I know, I watched.” And a year ago that would have been mocking - it had been! Dabi would ask how he felt after patrol, heck, once they started sleeping together he might have cruelly pressed down on a bruise and asked him how it felt to be so heroic.

Dabi sounds so tired now.

Hawks swallowed loudly. He knew this feeling, the feeling he got these days when anything with the League showed up on the news. Refreshing the screen, trying to not show his panic at the possibility of anything to do with Dabi. 

The dark-haired man stood up and walked towards him, having to reach down a bit even with the slouching that made him look shorter. Dabi’s hand rested on his cheek and Hawks looked up into the eyes that haunted his first and last thought every day.

“You’d think someone known for being so fast wouldn’t get caught like that,” He said, thumb tracing Hawks’s jaw and stubble. Hawks wants to melt into his arms.

“He managed it one time.” 

“Don’t let it happen again.” Dabi said, sternly, and Hawks knows this is how he says ‘I’m glad you’re not too hurt’. It’s taken him this long to learn how to translate what Dabi says to him because Dabi isn’t the type to admit he was worried - that was vulnerable. If Hawks laughed and lightened his pain away, Dabi just created a wall, or worse, burned whatever the source. No, his sweetness came in actions.

Sweetness. 

It still caught him for a loop sometimes, that Dabi could be sweet when he chose to be. And he chose to be to Hawks, when Hawks really needed it. Like now.

Hawks cocks his head at the pot on the stove. “That for us? I think you even got my favorite, babe.” 

Dabi rolled his eyes and let go of him. 

“It’s just that stupid instant ramen you keep saying is the only type you’ll accept.”

“That’s because I was raised on good, Fukuoka-style ramen, and you’re uncultured.” Hawks lifts his nose into the air, emphasizing his natural dialect as he spoke and finally started getting out of his work clothes while trying not to wince too much.

“It’s fucking instant ramen from the conbini, birdy.”

“Wow, you really went fancy, didn’t ya? You even put in boiled eggs and spring onions.” He peeks into the pot. “And you didn’t burn anything this time, too, I’m so proud! See? This is progress, babe. I told you I’m good for ya.”

“Oh, just shut the fuck up and get ready to eat, little bird.” Hawks almost preened at the sound of slight embarrassment in that dismissal.

The best part of the entire meal?

The unburnt part of his boyfriend’s face is a nice pink color the whole time. It’s so cute that Hawks doesn’t even tell him that the eggs were still overcooked. 

[julybrown]

Thump

Most of my writing comes from a caffeine-heightened anxiety and this story is no different.

Thump

A cool, wet air dews on her skin. She clutches the windowsill tightly, tight enough to hurt. Her eyes scan the street below, searching for something she knows won’t be there. All she can see is brick and pavement, and the sickly yellow light of her kitchen reflected back off of the building next door.

Street lights illuminate a foggy highway.

A young woman, naked, with long, black matted hair crouches in the corner of a dark and musty room. There are no windows, and a single light bulb hangs from the ceiling. She cowers, but prepares to fight. She is not alone.

Lieutenant Mark Maxwell stands on the lip of a forest, staring into it, thinking.

A teenage boy pulls open a drawer in his parents’ living room. Even in the moonlit dark, he finds what he was looking for. He holds it in his left hand, his good hand, and lets his arm hang loose, feeling the weight of the iron revolver.

There’s a strange sound from the far, dark side of the room, and she tightens her grip on the piece of rebar she found. Her throat hurts. She touches it, but feels nothing unusual. She doesn’t know where she is or how she got there.

Maggie sighs, closes the window, and gets out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

He never thought the gun would be so dark, barely a glint of moonlight reflected in the polished steel, as if it eats the light.

“Exercise in futility.” It was a favorite phrase of one of his teachers back in training. It came to him now. This whole damn investigation was an “exercise in futility.” Maybe our missing shooter came back here, Mark thought, seven hours after escaping police custody, to leave her ID and directions to her safehouse. Maybe she was just sitting there, waiting for us to take her in again. That’d be nice wouldn’t it, Mark?

A car pulls over to the side of the highway. Its headlights cast an eerie halo through the fog.

It isn’t cold. He had expected it to feel cold, but it is… comfortable. If not for the weight, he could almost forget he was holding it.

Her lighter flickers but fails to catch. She swears, and tosses it into the sink. The sounds of her neighbor’s tv set seeps through the walls, calling attention to the emptiness and quietude of her apartment. She grabs her keys and the stack of flyers and leaves.

A woman fatally shot another woman in a busy grocery store in the middle of the day, evaded police, and ran into a forest, one consisting of no more than four hundred acres, the smallest in the district. State and local authorities cooperated, a miracle unto itself, but couldn’t even find a trace of her, a worse sort of miracle. Three times they searched these woods, not to mention the better part of western Oklahoma, with dogs, helicopters, you name it. Still nothing. Lieutenant Maxwell checks his watch. In less than twelve hours, the FBI will officially take control of the case. They have the money, the resources, the time to get this done. So why the hell am I still standing here?

The engine shuts off, and the matte black car is almost invisible by the side of the road. After a couple minutes, someone steps out of the car.

She straightens out. She’s tall, almost six feet. She taps the metal bar against her leg, lightly, just to get a sense of it.

He’s about to leave when he sees something through the trees. A flashlight, or maybe a car on the other side of the woods. He pulls his radio out to call for backup, but stops himself. Good chance this was nothing. A passing car, maybe even local kids camping out. He doesn’t need a reputation as a ghost-chaser, one of those cops that didn’t know when to give up, spent their careers doing things like looking for bloodstains in a room long since repainted. He shuts the volume off and enters the woods, gun in hand.

It had been less than a week but Maggie already had a method for this. First, she picked a direction to drive in. As she wove through OKC, she stopped at every other lamppost, or twice per block. Through the suburbs, only once per block.

She pulls over to a telephone pole and gets the stapler and a flyer from the stack. She is back on the road in under a minute. There is a lot of ground to cover: ten more blocks of suburbs, then almost thirty miles of highway (pulling over every fifth lamppost and every overpass) until the rest stop. There she will get a cup of coffee, turn around, and do the whole thing in reverse.

Behind her, on lampposts, telephone poles, and mailboxes, her daughter’s smiling face looks out on Oklahoma City from under big red capitals: “MISSING.”

The figure leans back against the car, and pulls on an e-cigarette. The little red light almost brightens their face. Almost.

When it finally emerges from the shadows, she is ready. All teeth, scales, and slime, it leaps at her. She doesn’t think, she acts. Her biological programming takes over, epinephrine and norepinephrine flood her bloodstream, and she isn’t a scared woman in a basement, she is a cavewoman beating back a sabertooth tiger. She swings the iron spike and smashes the thing across its head, knocking it to the floor.

The cylinder is empty. Each chamber was scored, by design or by wear he doesn’t know. The cartridges jingle pleasingly in his other hand.

They pull out their phone and check the time. There isn’t much left. Dawn isn’t for another few hours, sure, but the sun has a way of sneaking up, of hitting you quick and hard at the exact wrong moment. They know that all too well. With their hands cupped to their mouth, they whistle five quick notes. They’ll be damned if they could remember what bird it was supposed to be.

It’s only down for a few moments before it jumps at her again. She swings, but is too late. She catches it in the ribs as its teeth sink into her shoulder. She tries to scream but finds that no sound comes out.

The lieutenant curses himself for not taking a greater interest in hunting. He had never wanted to go out with his dad when he offered. A shame, his dad knew nature, knew the woods. Animal noises were a second language to him. There had been two calls, one to the east, the other to the north, deeper in the wood. He hurries his pace. His dad would know whether that was a real bird or not.

The cylinder makes a satisfying sound when he spins it, matched only by the pop of it being put back in place.

She is actually getting tired. She hadn’t been tired since Janie… since Tuesday. She doesn’t get back in the car, not yet, not right away at least. Instead, she gets out a cigarette and sits on the traffic barrier, trying to avoid her daughter’s gaze from the flyer.

She whales on the thing’s back with the rebar and her fist until it releases her. It swings its tail and knocks her over onto her back. She falls hard, scraping her skin on the rough cement floor. She rolls and dodges its pounce, then rolls back on top of it. Straddling it, she beats it again, but it slithers out of her hold, and clamps its teeth down on her arm. She tries to scream again, but only a hoarse wheeze comes out. Still able to move her hand a little, she shoves the bar into one of its eyes. Using her free hand, she bangs on the end of it, driving it deeper into its skull, until it stops moving and they both collapse.

Headlights. Those were definitely headlights, just beyond the trees. And someone sitting. An accomplice, waiting for the fugitive? Maxwell steps out of the woods, gun drawn on the person.

“Hands in the air, right now!” He says. She drops her cigarette and complies. He approaches with caution. A middle-aged woman, likely mid-forties, thin, and smells like nicotine. He pats her down and finds nothing but her lighter.

“ID?” He asks.

“In the car,” she says. He pulls her purse out and rifles through it until he finds her license. Margaret Stapleton, age forty-seven, Oklahoma resident.

“What the hell are you doing on the side of the highway at four in the morning?” He says.

“Flyering.” She motions to the car. He looks in and sees the stack of MISSING posters.

“Oh.” He clears his throat and hands her back her license. “You’re free to go, ma’am. Stay safe out there.”

“You too,” she mumbles, and gets in the car. He watches her drive off, her car glowing as the sun crests the horizon.

“Shit.” He spits and radios for a pickup.

A second figure emerges from the woods, panting and snapping twigs and leaves underfoot. “Took you long enough,” the driver says. The other ignores it, and gets into the passenger seat. The driver takes a last puff, pockets the e-cig, and gets in. Within a minute, they’re out of sight, safe from the sun.

Those few ounces of lead and copper made all the difference. The added weight gives the pistol a totemic aura. He wonders if it drew strength from him or he from it. He holds it up, two handed, centered, none of that showy action movie nonsense. This is a special object, one that deserves respect. It has intention, it means something. Trying to understand this meaning, he sits and holds the gun in his open palms, letting it speak to him in images of smoke and the smell of iron and the sound of screams, but he’s snapped out of his reverie. Beneath him, in the basement, there is a thump, like something heavy falling over.