Cold Embraces - DabiHawks

Icarus

"Say you've always felt the heat but never burned."

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Dabi turned to Hawks with an unreadable expression.

It made Hawks sick.

And for a brief moment, he remembered that day- the last day he saw Touya. When he talked about being heroes, and when Hawks caught a glimpse of his stoic expression but ignored it, thinking Touya had a bad day.

And instead of barfing all over himself which he'd wager might have been better, he just stared at Touya with the same face as tears fell silently down his face, making him shiver as the cold air hit the warm, salty trail of tears.

The silence only lasted for a few seconds, before Hawks @burst like a cracked dam. Sobs racked his chest, painfully making his body jolt as he turned away, hiding himself in his wings as a pitiful attempt to get Touya not to look at him. His loud sobbing almost sounded like a gunshot through the otherwise dead quiet of the desolate streets, and if Hawks had lost any more of his composure he was fairly sure he'd start screaming in agony, or something like that.

Dabi froze, and hesitantly reached a hand over, placing it onto Hawks' shoulder comfortingly. It didn't do much, but Hawks ever so slightly leaned into the touch, like a singular candle while he was freezing in the snow.

Then, like a cruel coincidence, thunder rumbled and small water droplets fell, slowly growing in numbers. As if the sky was crying, too.

"Dammit.. I knew those gray clouds were a bad sign." Dabi mumbled under his breath, patting Hawks' shoulder before gently picking him up and ushering him along to find cover from the rain before they actually froze to death.

/

Hawks felt his eyes sting uncomfortably, and was pretty sure they were redder than a stoners'. Even though it had already been a while, he felt so unstable that he might burst out into another round of tears if he so much as moved wrong. His mind was still in a haze, all he remembered was the soft sensation of cold rain, and then the familiar feel of his bed and the sound of quiet shuffling from the next room.

After a while, Dabi calmly walked into his room, tapping a hot, but not burning, mug of what smelled like tea against Hawks' cheek. Hawks let out a quiet mumble, slowly reaching up and grabbing the mug, then reluctantly sitting up to be able to actually drink it.

The silence wasn't a good, comfortable silence. It was the kind of silence that hung over you, and made the air heavy. The kind of silence that felt haunting, like an unwelcome, overly tight squeeze of a hug. But Hawks felt too terrible to even gather his thoughts, let alone have a conversation.

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