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He was only fifteen minutes early so he didn’t think it was necessary to give Hawks or Touya a heads-up. This morning, he was having breakfast at their place before he went to his classes. Him and his siblings had essentially been drip feeding interactions with Touya; breakfast was a permissible activity between them with a set time limit before Natsuo had to inevitably dash to class. If there were any awkward silences or inadvertent fights that arose, they could both occupy themselves by stuffing their mouths with food.
He knocked on the door to their shared apartment — a concept he was still getting used to — and heard vague sounds of someone bustling around inside. A few seconds later, Hawks was there swinging the door wide open.
In the back of his mind, he thought about how strange it was that he was visiting his brother and it was instead Hawks who was pulling the door open to greet him. If he was hard-pressed to give a deeper meaning to it, he’d almost say they were becoming synonymous with each other. After all, it was true that Hawks knew Touya — Dabi — better than anyone else in the world, even more than his own family did.
“Natsuo! You’re a little early — Touya’s still in the shower.” Hawks turned, making his way back into the apartment. Natsuo followed after him, looking curiously around the place. The living room was surprisingly sparse: a couch, a TV, some fake plants. The kitchen, on the other hand, was decked out. There were multiple pots and pans on the stovetop. Fancy looking porcelain canisters and glass jars with multi-colored powders crowded the counter. A rack held an array of tongs, spatulas, a microplane, and a thermometer. There was even a line of dispensers, each with oil in them, though all were differing shades of yellow; he didn’t even know there were multiple kinds of cooking oil.
“You a chef in your spare time?” Natsuo joked, seeing such an elaborate set-up.
For some reason, that made Hawks blush deeply all the way from his ears down to his neck. “No, uh, uh, I’m actually pretty useless at cooking.”
“So—” He gestured at the spread of the kitchen.
“Ah, well. The mess is Touya’s fault.” His voice lowered to a whisper despite the clear sounds of water running that indicated Dabi was still in the shower. “You wouldn’t expect it out of him but he’s quite the cook.”
Natsuo’s eyes bugged out in incredulity. Hawks chuckled. “I know, I know. I think it helps him de-stress. I at least prefer it to him burning people alive.”
“So, what, you bought all of this for him?” He viewed the kitchen with new eyes. There must have been hundreds of thousands of yen worth of kitchen supplies there. He wasn’t a stranger to displays of wealth, but it was something else entirely for it to be in kitchenware — it reminded him of traditional engagement gifts.
“Well, I—” Hawks cleared his throat. “I mean, I used to solely rely on fast-food. I can count on one hand the times I cooked something for myself that wasn’t cereal or ramen. Touya’s way better at it than me so thankfully he takes care of all of our meals now. I mean he’s cooped up in the house, it gives him something to do.”
“Firstly, you can’t cook cereal. Secondly, heating up ramen doesn’t count as cooking.” Then his brain snagged on the important part, “Touya cooks all of your meals? Like he sends you to work with homemade food?”
“Yeah, he makes me a bento box everyday.”
Natsuo’s morning was shaping up to be incredibly productive — he now had blackmail material on Touya for years to come. He couldn’t reveal his glee yet in case Hawks clammed up; he subtly continued his interrogation asking if Touya included notes in his lunch box too.
Hawks rolled his eyes. “Yeah, with threats on them.”
“Threats?”
Hawks winced. “Ah— I don’t know if you want to hear about that.” Seeing that Natsuo continued to look at him both confused and expectantly, he answered. “He threatens to withhold sex if I skip lunch to work.”
Natsuo didn’t think it was possible to be any more shocked, even if a pink unicorn suddenly appeared right beside them. He blinked rapidly again and again trying to clear the fog of disbelief that had descended upon him.
“So he—he, he makes you loving wife bento boxes everyday.”
Hawks paused for a moment before exclaiming, “No! They’re just bento boxes!” His voice trailed off as he came to the realization. “No,” he repeated as if he could just speak it into truth. “No.” The look of despair continued to grow stronger on his face.
“Look, it’s none of my business, but I thought you two weren’t actually dating?”
“We’re not! It’s just se—” Hawks cut himself off, suddenly remembering who he was talking to.
Natsuo scowled, knowing what Hawks was about to say. He directed a disappointed look at him. “You’re right. You two aren’t dating. You’ve skipped right over to marriage. Touya is basically your housewife at this point.”
Noticing that Hawks’ brain was suddenly imploding with all the recalculations it was doing, he interrupted with a joke. Rather than coming out with a tone of jest though, his voice was quietly concerned when he asked, “does he wear an apron?”
That broke Hawks out of his spiral as he smirked, “I did buy one for him as a joke, but he never wears it.” Hawks looked dreamy for a second. “It was pink. And lacy.”
Natsuo crinkled his nose in disgust. “Please keep your kinks to yourself. I do not want to know about your sex life with my brother.”
“Don’t worry, I have no plans to tell you,” Hawks retorted.
At that exact moment however, the bathroom door opened to reveal Touya. Except he wasn’t wearing anything aside from the towel wrapped around his waist.
Natsuo was a guy. He shared the same anatomy as his brother. He had been in various locker rooms before. So seeing Touya in a towel shouldn’t have been a big deal.
Only, Touya was covered in lovebites. They were on every available space of unscarred skin. They formed a line underneath his staples, creeping up onto his left shoulder. There were several scattered across his pecs. They were even there on his lower abdomen, creeping down into his—.
Natsuo shut his eyes, completely horrified. This was now shaping up to be the worst morning of his life. “I’m going. I’m going. I can’t take it anymore.”
With his eyes still shut, he turned back towards Hawks. When he was sure that Touya had left his field of vision, he opened them again. Hawks was a deep shade of red, a complete 180 from his previous lack of shame.
When Dabi had been captured, Natsuo had thought his biggest problem was going to be dealing with the fact that his brother was somehow a villain. Now he realized it was Touya's relationship with Hawks. Against his will, Natsuo now possessed two entire details about his brother’s sex life. He’d go so far as to live with his father again if, in return, he could be zapped and have that information erased.
While Natsuo had been having his little freakout, Touya had gotten dressed and returned to the living room. His sarcastic voice rang out from behind them, “chill out little brother, I’m sure you’ve seen hickies before. Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
Natsuo instinctively shut his eyes once again. “Are you dressed?”
“Yes dumbass, I’m dressed. You can open your eyes now,” Touya said as he went over to the kitchen and started washing a pan.
Natsuo hesitantly did so. Touya was wearing clothes, but it was not much better than before; he had opted to wear a hoodie that was very clearly Hawks merch since it had bright red wings stitched on the back.
Hawks noticed this too. “Stealing my clothes?”
The situation apparently could get worse. A litany of I can’t take it anymores ran through his mind in desperation. Though on further thought, he did have to concede that his brother borrowing Hawks’ hoodie was the preferable option over his brother actually going out to buy Hawks merch with the goal of owning Hawks merch in order to wear Hawks merch.
“Shut up, chicken. I was in a bit of a rush since someone decided to come early.”
“And I’m starting to regret it…”
Touya just rolled his eyes at Natsuo and started barking out orders to Hawks. Without a word, Hawks obediently got the vegetables and eggs from the fridge.
“Can I help?”
“No, there’ll be too many people in my kitchen then,” Touya bit back.
Natsuo settled himself into a seat at the breakfast island, content to observe the two of them instead. He hadn’t missed the fact that Touya had used the possessive, had said “my kitchen.” Of course, Touya was living here but he hadn’t thought that Touya considered it his own home, instead of some in-between place he was spending time in. He wondered if Touya considered it his home because he had to live twenty-four hours a day in it or if it was simply due to his proximity to Hawks.
Looking at them, he could see their easy familiarity with each other, the way they moved simply and effortlessly around each other. They both started dicing the vegetables with Touya constantly monitoring Hawks’ progress, frequently reminding him to “slice it evenly” or muttering “uniform pieces” again and again like a parrot.
Touya could pretend he didn’t care at all to Natsuo’s face but he knew that Touya’s careful observation was because he wanted to make sure Hawks didn’t accidentally cut himself with his warped knife technique (that Touya tried to correct several times, to no avail). It was ironic considering Hawks had endured much worse injuries and surely a tiny cut from a knife would be nothing to him. Dabi himself had given Hawks much worse injuries after all. Maybe this was how he atoned, thought Natsuo.
He saw how Touya began making Hawks’ omelet without asking him how he liked it, yet he automatically skipped the onions and added a frankly unhealthy amount of cheddar cheese. Or how Touya made Hawks’ eggs first before anyone else’s.
“Shouldn’t you be serving the guest first?” Natsuo remarked sardonically.
Touya huffed; he always seemed like he was one second away from losing his patience around his siblings. “Little brothers eat last.”
“I’m a starving college student. This’ll be the first homemade food I’ve had in months.”
“Starving? Yumi told me you stole one of Enji’s credit cards.”
Natsuo smirks. “Well, that’s the least of what he deserves.”
“I agree. Which is why you should try to rack up as high a bill as possible. Buy something super expensive for your girlfriend.”
“I know Shoto smuggled you a card too. Is that what you use it for? Gifts for Hawks?” He directed an amused look at the pro-hero.
Touya didn’t react predictably in embarrassed anger and instead just haphazardly shrugged. “It paid for the sofa,” he said, pointing his spatula at it.
“How…romantic.”
“Hey, sofas are way more expensive than you think. Dabi dropped 1.5 million on it,” Hawks butted in, in defence.
“So you’re saying your apartment didn’t even have a sofa before?”
Touya laughed. “Dumbass’s place looked like a serial killer lived here. Nothing on the walls. No furniture except a little table. The kitchen had like one singular pot and pan.”
“I didn’t have time,” Hawks weakly tried to argue.
“Well I didn’t have money, Mr. Millionaire and my place still had more shit than yours. I mean really, would it have killed you to at least put up a couple posters?”
Dabi gave Hawks and Natsuo their omelets and told them to fuck etiquette and just start eating. Since Natsuo didn’t care about disrespecting Touya, he immediately shovelled the food into his mouth.
Hawks, on the other hand, protested eating before Touya could sit down with them. One of those ridiculous couple-y arguments ensued — those ones that reminded him an awful lot of that one time he overheard a guy on the phone saying “no, I love you more” about twenty times, each in different cooing intonations and emphasis. Natsuo was proud to know that he and his girlfriend would never sink to such lengths.
This exchange lasted all the way until Touya finished making his own omelet so Hawks won and got to eat cold eggs as his prize.
“That’s how as soon as you brought me back to your place that first night, I knew you weren’t the sleeping around type,” started Dabi, continuing the conversation from earlier as he sat down.
“Hm?” Hawks knocked an eyebrow up, confused.
“If you had brought someone else back to your oddly empty and incredibly creepy place, they’d have run off crying and screaming, thinking they were about to get murdered.”
Hawks rolled his eyes from what felt like the thousandth time that morning. “Wasn’t that bad.”
Natsuo finished his food and leaned back on his chair, satisfied. “Ironic that the public thinks you have any game.”
He and Fuyumi had spent a lot of time after that hospital visit, discussing what they thought was going on between their brother and the number two hero.
Fuyumi initially was convinced that it was mostly physical. Natsuo had agreed since everything he knew about Hawks was purely heard second hand from his girlfriend since he otherwise made it a policy to avoid all news or conversations about pro-heros. She told him that he had a lot of fan girls, that he was known to be charming and a flirt. He had naturally assumed that a guy like that would be incapable of taking anything seriously — maybe Touya was a shiny toy, a funny story about that one time he had dated a villain.
He was afraid that Hawks was taking advantage of his brother and that if Hawks broke Touya’s heart, Touya would go back to being Dabi, switching his homicidal tendencies from his father to his ex-lover. After all, Dabi had the propensity to take emotional hits really hard.
But if Touya knew from the beginning that Hawks wasn’t the player everyone thought he was, then he obviously wasn’t as oblivious to the seriousness of their relationship as Hawks was.
Hawks' gross, smirking voice interrupted his barrage of thoughts. “Well, I scored your brother, didn’t I?”
Natsuo made a face of abject disgust. “That’s not something to be proud of.”
“Wow…and after I fed you?” Touya said dangerously.
That reminded Natsuo of the earlier conversation he had with Hawks. “Yeah, the omelet you made for me was really good—”
He couldn’t hold back his smile — “all your practice cooking for Hawks paid off.”
Dabi squeezed his eyelids shut for a moment before opening them to reveal a low-lidded glare. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Hawks tried to hijack the conversation. “Nothing hotstuff,” he nervously laughed. When Touya wasn’t looking, he directed a pleading look to Natsuo.
A shit-eating grin had begun to overtake Natsuo’s face. “Oh…just that apparently you like to make lunch for Hawks every day? Bento boxes? Love letter notes? Does that ring a bell?”
Dabi blushed and gave an accusatory glance at Hawks. “Well I’m not paying rent and the baby bird can’t cook. Quid pro quo. That’s all. Don’t make it something it’s not.”
“I wonder what Fuyumi and Shoto would think about it.”
“Do not tell them. They’ll never shut up about it.”
“Ah quid pro quo right? I’ll keep quiet if you agree to a double date with my girlfriend. She really wants to meet you!”
Touya groaned loudly, sounding like he was in pain. “What. The. Fuck. Natsuo. The villain Dabi doesn’t do double dates, let alone dates.” He sounded incredibly disgusted.
“The villain Dabi should stop talking about himself in the third person. And that sounds fun!”
“Shut up Hawks, no one wants your opinion.”
“Well, I guess I’m left with no choice.” Natsuo shook his head morosely. “Shoto will never fear his big brother again.”
Touya crossed his hands and gave Natsuo a deadpan glare. Natsuo didn’t flinch, returning the stare. Touya threw his hands up in absolvement, looking upwards as if to pray to some deity to strike him down on the spot. “Fine. Fine. Whatever. I’m not staying for longer than 30 minutes.”
“An hour—”
“Absolutely not, thirty minutes or nothing.”
“Fifty-five minutes.”
“Thirty-five, that’s all I’m willing to give you.”
“Fifty?”
Hawks looked between the two of them as if they were a particularly interesting ping pong match.
“Forty. I’m not going any higher than that.”
“Forty-five, final offer.”
Touya looked balefully at Natsuo. “Deal. Not a second more.”
“That was impressive,” interrupted Hawks.
In sync, the brothers looked at him and answered. “Thanks,” was Natsuo’s smug response. “Shut up, dumb bird,” was Dabi’s.
Natsuo began to rise. “I’d better go to class now. Thanks for breakfast, big brother.”
A scoff was his only response. Hawks began to take the plates to the kitchen while Touya started to walk Natsuo out. He stopped suddenly, watching Hawks. “Not the sink, remember, put them in the dishwasher.”
“Yes, sweetheart,” replied Hawks in a weary voice.
Natsuo’s eyebrows flew up, staring at his brother in bewilderment. Touya merely rolled his eyes. “It’s his dumb joke. Everytime I remind him to do something” — his voice became pointed — “like not leave his sweaty hero jacket on the couch, he replies with some idiotic nickname.” Touya’s voice took on an aggrieved tone. “He’d lose all his fans if they knew how irresponsible he really was.”
Behind Touya’s back, Hawks shot him a wide smile, showing he was only pretending to be bothered in order to rile Touya up. Natsuo gave a tiny smirk back and turned away.
He was happy for his brother — Touya had met someone who was his match, someone who would irritate his brother as much as his brother was irritating.