Bury Me in a Field of Flowers (and Don't Tell Them That I Love You)

Chapter Five

It's all very perplexing, Hawks thinks to himself. His fingers tap lightly against the keyboard, lost in thought. He's never seen what had happened the other day, well, happen before. Watching his favorite stoic villain hurl up flowers was certainly a first in his book. Hawks tried to tell himself that he saw incorrectly but his vision is razor sharp and he knows what he saw.

'Hawks, what did your elf eyes see?' A sleepy voice in his head asks, earning himself a chuckle.

After he patched up Dabi's wound and the man was sleeping, he spent the better part of his night googling 'is puking flowers normal?' and 'what to do when a person coughs flowers?'. It led him down a rabbit hole of endless links. He skimmed over most of them until one word caught his attention.

Hanahaki.

After that, he decided to call it a night. His eyes were dry after staring at the bright screen of his phone and was exhausted from carrying a fully grown adult from that dingy alleyway all the way back to his apartment.

Now, however, he's bright eyed and bushy tailed. Work has been slow so far today which is a godsend because that single word keeps nagging at the back of Hawks' mind. He snaps out of his stupor and finally types it into Google and clicks the first link.

The Hanahaki Disease is an illness born from one-sided love, where the patient throws up and coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. The infection can be removed through surgery, but the feelings disappear along with the petals.

Hawks pushes back in his chair and arches an eyebrow, letting out a low whistle. Absently, he picks at the sleeve of his jacket and rereads over the paragraph. He just can't quite seem to wrap his head around the fact that Dabi of all people is in love. After all the rants he's spouted about how it's all just fake love and people who fall in love are weak. Ironic that Dabi ended up with a disease for, well, for love.

Leaning forward again, Hawks steeples his fingers together and hums gently to himself. He supposes that anyone can fall in love, even assholes. His question is exactly who Dabi has fallen in love with.

Outside of reading the first link about Hanahaki, Hawks really has no idea how it even works. After all, he grew up in a government facility and that wasn't exactly the hot spot for falling in love. Quite the opposite now that he thinks about it. It was a cold, unloving and all too professional atmosphere. He was nothing but a governmental side project and they were just guardians that hovered over him to make sure he never put a toe or feather out of line.

Does he, himself, even know the feeling of love? Another unanswered question to add to his list. Does he have the capacity to love? Hawks draws his eyebrows together and fiddles with a pen, that will be added to the list as well.

"C'mon, get your head in the game." Hawks mutters to himself as he takes out a legal pad. He begins to write down the names from the League and studies them intently. He only knows the names of the League's little elite group but figures that Dabi wouldn't waste his time on anyone that's below him so he's pretty content that he's safe with the small list of names scrawled on the paper. He's never met anyone besides Dabi but Hawks knows enough from their files to be confident in figuring this out.

"Okay, well, let's see here." He stares at the first name that he jotted down and frowns, shaking his head, he moves on to the next name- he'll go back to the first name later.

Toga Himiko. Hawks immediately crosses her name off, from the snippets of what Dabi has mentioned of her- he sees her more of a little sister and nothing more. Besides, he seems the type to like someone a little more... subtle? Hawks isn't sure if that's the word he would use, perhaps more grounded is a better word. With that thought in mind, he also crosses out Twice.