Flea

Chapter Sixty Eight

Maeve had tears poring down her face.

"Please no," she wheezed, doubling over with pain from her abdomen.

"Nope, my answer's final. Bowl cancer is important to check out at that age. Colonoscopy," Hawks announced, brandishing both his eyebrows and a chicken skewer with medically-inaccurate movements. Maeve let out an embarrassing snort trying to contain her laughter, covering her mouth with her hands.

"You're guessing... Just to confirm... The entry test for Hell's Aniles is a colonoscopy?"

"Oh. I thought you said Hell's... Something else," the man said, and if they had drinks in their mouths both would've spat them out. Hawks needed to adjust his position to allow miniature wings to flutter in glee.

"What- Seriously, what the fuck are you doing with that chicken skewer? Some kind of demonstration? I can't go anywhere with you," Maeve complained good-naturedly, twirling her chopsticks through half finished ramen.

"The thing about me," Hawks poked the skewer in her direction like he was giving a keynote presentation, "is, I'm a visual learner."

They both broke down at that statement, and Maeve was genuinely unsure whether it was crazed exhaustion, or just... Them. He needed to take a moment to collect himself, and Maeve was quickly discovering that he let out high pitched squeaks when trying to hold back laughter.

"See-" his face lit up "-see! I started thinking how a colonoscopy would work and this seems to be the perfect teacher's aid. It is also perfect for showing how to extract a rod from up an arse, which in your case may be more relevant."

"Excellent. I might need to bring you in for UA sex ed classes because a lot of students could use that lesson. They're coming up, actually."

Hawks' face brightened even further at the mention of sex education, then turned the dial to about 5000 watts at her last sentence. Maeve realised her mistake immediately and tried to backtrack, however, he beat her to it.

"It would be my absolute pleasure, Dr Aizawa, to assist UA in any cumming they requi-"

"You have the laugh of a 15-year-old girl and the humour of a 12-year-old boy," Maeve wheezed, her composure well and truly shattered at this point in the evening.

"And you're blushing. Oh my God, you are. Look at that, I made the great Recovery Girl, scourge of villains, the commission, and fashion critics everywhere turn red. Is it always this easy? Fucking hell," He cackled, but his teasing was undermined by a consistent warmth in amber eyes. She found he was like that for everyone. The owner of the food stand they were currently sitting in seemed to see him as a prodigal son who was criminally skinny; Hawks had made fun of both him and the two elderly gentlemen sitting across from them mercilessly, but his sparkling eyes all the while said 'you know I love you, really.' Every time he made a particularly tasteless joke, the man would hold eye contact with everyone in vicinity to make sure no one had actually been offended, all the while giggling uncontrollably. It was such a bizarre mixture of social ineptitude and grace that it was utterly disarming.

"I have been teaching sex ed to teenagers since I was eight, thank you very much. Blushing is a thing of the past."

"There are many things to unpack there. First of all your cheeks are still like little cherry tomatoes. Second of all, what? Eight? Who thought that was a good idea?"

"When they assigned me as school nurse, I don't think they realised that meant I also took over health class. Sex and drugs, baby. I had no fucking clue what I was talking about - we hadn't even gone over reproduction in medical school yet - so I did a quick google search 10 minutes before class started."