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♢
He had turned tail from the Commission headquarters after meeting with the chairwoman and his superiors, just about ready to take off to the skies again for the flight back over to his apartment. That’s when he’d seen it.
His old handler, lighting up and smoking a cigarette right by the side of their workplace building. Not within a designated smoking area or anything, just out there in the open.
Hawks couldn’t help but scoff. Not in judgment, but almost in shock. Mera was usually so responsible- he’d never struck Hawks as someone to do so. He certainly hadn’t when Hawks first met him. In fact, he was one of the few people in his youth that Hawks had known who didn’t have the scent clinging onto his clothes.
Granted, it was a matter of health, and there had been a couple times more recently when Hawks had popped by Mera’s office to say hello, only to find the man collapsed on the floor of it, succumbed to his exhaustion. And when it came to appearing clean-cut and seeming put together? Well, that was all clearly of severely decreased importance to him nowadays. But it was the principle of the matter.
“What happened to ‘smoking kills?’” he asked with forced cheer as he strode on over, exaggeratedly pinching his nose and flapping a wing- not enough to put it out, but enough to momentarily dissipate the wafting plume of smoke, much to Mera’s chagrin.
“Oh, come on. Is that really necessary?” Mera complained. “Don’t answer that,” he said just as Hawks opened his mouth to.
Hawks made a show of shutting his mouth, teeth clicking together. Mera huffed, but didn’t reprimand further, just slipped the lighter back into his suit jacket and sagged further down the wall he was leaning/propping himself up on and took an inhale.
He didn’t seem all too surprised by Hawks’ presence, probably having sensed it with that vision-quirk of his already, and definitely having known about (yet wormed his way out of) that aforementioned meeting. Though neither acknowledged it aloud, both of them were well aware that having Mera at Hawks’ briefings was an attempted appeal to his sentimentality. So they’d get a little less flack back from him.
He kicked his boots and dust up as he walked to stand beside Mera, stuffing his hands into jacket pockets and pulling it forward with mock nonchalance. Hawks similarly faced forward, with a wing ever so slightly stretched, ready to shoot out and block Mera from sight should a police officer who actually cared enough to be a stickler about what he was doing approached.
An unlikely event, considering the Commission had lobby security, the fact Mera was a high ranking member in his own right, and he seemed to have a common enough habit of doing so (just when exactly had that developed, Hawks wondered?). But at least one of them had to play it safe.
“Weren’t you the one who gave me that whole anti-drug lecture?” he mused as Mera continued to smoke away.
Mera sighed, all weary like. “Was I?”
Hawks’ eye did not twitch, because he had precise control over his facial muscles and he knew full well Mera held a close eye on him even currently, but it was a near thing. “You were. You were pretty intense about it, actually. I was only thirteen, I think? So it had to have been pretty early on.”
“I don’t really remember,” Mera admitted freely.
Mera’s shoulders bunched up a bit as he spoke, his ill-fitting suit wrinkling with it, all of which Hawks felt, since Mera accidentally brushed up against his wings with the movement.
“Well, I guess it was a long time ago now,” Hawks relented.
He looked over to Mera momentarily. The dark smudges under his sunken eyes were stark against wan skin, and were surely permanent by now. He’d let his downy hair grow out enough that it stuck out at the sides, nearly reaching his shoulders.
It reminded Hawks much of- well. That was even longer ago.
“I don’t blame you,” Hawks ended simply.
He shook his wings out a little, and a couple of old, loose feathers fluttered to the ground. With the start of fall came a molt as well, something he and his apparently hair covered fellow bird and intern Tokoyami were unable to commiserate on.
In current times, Hawks' talks with his old handler were usually that. Commiserating. Or, well, complaining about their respective jobs and work and such. Though it was still mostly one-sided, with Mera doing all the talking on that front. It was definitely odd, although a welcome sort, to merely be stewing in comfortable silence.
Hawks gave a glance back to Mera again. He had fully slid down to the floor by that point, and swept those senseless feathers away with a wave, sending them drifting off with the soft breeze of the dusk that made Hawks fight off a sideways blink. Mera didn’t watch the scrap plumage go, though. Simply stubbed his cigarette out on the floor, not even half-finished. It blackened the concrete.
Wow, what a waste, Hawks thought.
Then when the reason why he would do so hit as they made direct eye contact, and Mera sent him a rather pointed look.
Hawks balked, feathers fluffing up despite himself. “Hey, I was just messing with you earlier! Take full advantage of your break. Don't stop just ’cause I’m here.”
“Well, second hand smoke and all,” Mera said, waving the crumpled limp thing around, a pointer finger stuck out to him, almost accusatory. “You still shouldn’t smoke. It’s important to maintain your healthy set of lungs for maximum efficiency and aerobic capacity.”
“Okay, okay, I won’t. Since you insist so much,” Hawks promised, although he’d had to go against those very ideas Mera hammered into him and accept a-many-a offered cigarettes on undercover missions before.
He was strictly a social smoker, at the very least, and there was no need for him to inform Mera of the shadier (and often nastier) details of his work and stress him out even more. Seemingly satisfied, Mera brought his knees to his chest, resting his chin atop them, what little energy that short spiel brought out of him drained immediately after the fact.
Regardless, he asked, “How was the intern?”
“Good, good,” Hawks said. “He still has a lot to learn, obviously.”
Mera really approved of his choice of Tokoyami. Like, really approved. A well-behaved hero student with a powerful, high-potential quirk who placed third in the UA sports festival, and passed their provisional licensing exam with a decent score to boot? That was like catnip (or in Mera’s case, evidently, nicotine) to the Commission higher ups.
Mera must have picked up on his reservations, because he hummed. “Don’t worry about the Commission getting their hands on him. They already looked into it, and he has a family who would notice.”
Mera then chuckled, in that hollow way that made Hawks unsure if it was because he was making a dark joke or because he’d actually found whatever messed up thing he just dropped on his lap funny. Hawks laughed along anyway, albeit tentatively.
“...He’s only a fledgling, you know,” Hawks said once the laughter tapered off. “I just taught him how to fly.”
Mera’s smile dropped.