In spite of still not feeling much better by the morning Raye still went to work as usual. "Hey you aren't looking for hot Ayanami, do you need a break?" Her supervising nurse asked and Raye shook her head. "Nah I got this, besides there's a lot of people who need our help." At that moment Raye was in the process of helping to fix a young child who'd broken his arm falling off a swing set. "Yeah but it's not like this is life threatening, if you overwork yourself it will be life threatening for you." The older woman argued and Raye let out an exasperated sigh as she stood from her place next to her patient. "Well yeah but this little guy wants to be able to play more right?" The kid looked up at her with a smile and a nod. "See I'm needed, you know me I like being needed." She said with a tired smile and the nurse awkwardly patted her back. "Go home Raye, you did enough for today." Apparently there was no arguing with her and Raye made her way out of the building. It wasn't until she was on her way home she realized how bad she actually felt. On the long bus ride home she kept zoning in and out, restraining coughs that tried to break their way out of her. Once she was close to home she trudged her way towards her apartment building, her vision was beginning to tunnel and she bumped into more than a few people. 'this feels like the longest walk ever, just gotta get home and sleep this off and everything will be fine.' making her way into the apartment building the lights felt extra bright and her head hurt. It wasn't until she reached her floor that she could no longer restrain her coughs and flew into a storm of them. She kneeled on the floor just feet from her apartment door and she could feel the blood pouring through her fingers as she held her hand in front of her mouth. 'This is bad. This is really bad.' she thought and she felt unconsciousness take her.
It had been a long day for Hawks, it felt as though crimes had been on the rise lately and there was a lot of general unrest with the public. He was beyond exhausted when he arrived home but noted there was trash he needed to take out, due to all his work lately he'd been neglecting cleaning his apartment. 'It was a lot easier when Raye was here to manage the house stuff and paperwork.' he shook the thought from his mind, eventually she might come back but for now he needed to not think about her. Grabbing the bag he tied it off and made his way out into the hall to throw it away. The sight that greeted him stopped him cold. A familiar mess of blonde hair surrounded by a small pool of blood. The bag of trash was entirely forgotten as he made his way over to her. "Hey kid, are you alright." Kneeling down with no regard for the blood seeping into his pants. Her face was pale and she felt cold to the touch, her breathing was shallow but there. 'She must have overdone it at work. Shit.' quickly grabbing her up Hawks carried her into his apartment, it was only once he picked her up that he realized how much of a mess she really was. Her face and the cheek that had been pressed into the floor was covered in blood and he felt a bit of panic rising. Setting her down on the bed he made his way to the closet haphazardly throwing things around. 'where the fuck is that damn kit, I know I still have one somewhere.' The HPSC had given him an emergency transfusion kit for if this exact thing happened. With Raye being AB she could get blood from anyone, which was lucky considering how often this used to happen when they were kids. More than once someone had to give her an emergency transfusion whether it was a member of the HPSC or him. When they grew up and started working together he'd been given a kit for if it was ever necessary, after she'd started working at home more he had stored it away and almost entirely forgotten he'd had it. Finally he saw the small yellow case and grabbed it. Pulling out the mess of tubing he made his way back over to her. Taking a breath he unwrapped one of the small butterflies and stuck it in her arm, quickly taping it off so it would stay secure in her arm. Shucking off his jacket he stuck himself quickly attaching the tubing to the end of the small needle and attaching the tube to the one in her arm. He was hopeful that since there hadn't been a lot of blood in the hallway he wouldn't need to bring her to the hospital. 'She's always hated going to the hospital.' sitting on the small coffee table across from her he realized they were going to be here for a while and for the first time in what felt like forever he really had the opportunity to look at her. She'd gotten a lot thinner over the last month clearly she'd been forgetting to eat again. He didn't know how she just forgot to eat for days at a time but she'd always been that way. That had been part of the reason he'd started leaving her food when they'd been talking, he'd been worried about her subsisting only on canned coffee. The dark circles under her eyes almost looked like bruises against her extremely pale complexion. He felt guilty for not noticing how badly she had been doing. He'd seen her only a day ago and she hadn't looked great but it wasn't nearly this bad. She'd still had enough energy to argue with him and be a quippy brat at least. Hawks felt bad, he'd been a lot harsher with her lately and had to wonder if that was why she hadn't come to him for help or if it was her own stubborn pride that prevented her from seeking help. 'Probably both she could have gotten help from someone other than me. But knowing her she figured she could just sleep it off.' she was still entirely unconscious but her complexion already looked slightly less pale. He wondered how mad she'd been when she woke up here with him. She'd been avoiding him lately and she hadn't seemed happy with him yesterday. Fuck off you fucking sky rat 'now that was new and creative of her.' she'd always been snappy and irritable when she was tired and overdoing it, sometimes it could be hard to tell her normal snappiness from her tired snappiness. 'For someone who's an absolute pillow princess she's rather mean.' if he ever actually said that to her she'd probably hit him but it was true, for her prickly exterior she was a soft and fragile thing. It was a side of her he only saw rarely and he wondered briefly if it was any different for Dabi. He didn't like thinking of her with someone else, especially the stitched up villain she'd grown so close with. It got under his skin in a way most things couldn't, she had always had the innate ability to get under his skin. Yeah enjoy that, considering I just had some guys dick in my mouth. He'd wondered if she was serious when she'd said that, he wouldn't let her know exactly how much that bothered him. He'd thought about it long after her door had closed and wondered if she was serious or just fucking with him. If it was true then there was no doubt she'd seen Dabi, but how? She'd been under house arrest and the only time he'd seen her out of the house she'd been doing her laundry. Half the reason he'd sent her back to sit and wait for her laundry was the worry she'd been trying to see him. But when he'd asked why he hadn't come for her yet she had suspiciously not answered his question, not even with a fuck off which if he really hadn't come to see her would have been her go to answer.
Her eyelids started to flutter and she opened them, feeling confused and disoriented. Where the hell was she, had she managed to make it inside? Sitting up she was pushed back down quickly and she looked at Keigo with absolute confusion. "The fuck happened?" Her voice was raspy and her throat felt dry. "You tell me I found you bleeding in the hallway. You've been overdoing it at work?" It was less of a question and more of a statement and she closed her eyes taking a deep breath. "Yeah they sent me home early today. There's been a lot of people needing to be fixed up lately." Keigo didn't know if it was just her exhaustion or the fact that she needed his help but she was being a lot softer than she normally had been as of late. She rolled her head to look at him and felt a pang of guilt. "I messed up your pants, sorry about that." Looking down he saw the knees of both his pants were saturated with her blood and he shook his head. "Not worried about it kid, I have more. Why are you pushing yourself so hard, you usually avoid working too hard." It was true she'd never been the hard working type, she always tried to avoid work when at all possible. She let out a little laugh which sent her into a storm of coughs which luckily came with no more blood. Once the coughs had stopped she looked at him with a crooked smile. "That's funny, I feel like I'm on the opposite side of this argument, so I guess I'll give your usual response. I am overworking myself because I like helping people, I'm good at it and they need me." It wasn't until she said it that he realized she'd often asked him the same thing hundreds of times and that had always been his response, it was just never something he expected her to ever say. "The difference between you and I is if I work too hard I just need a bit for my feathers to grow back. You end up on death's doorstep." It was true that while she was pretty much immortal and even cut off limbs and a slit throat didn't bother her when she was losing blood from overusing her quirk she was at a serious risk of dying. "Would that really be so bad? You'd have one less job to do, and looking at ya you could use a break." She was so nonchalant about it and Keigo felt a prick of anger. "What, so you're just gonna die to make my life easier? What the fuck are you thinking kid!? I've already been a fucking mess with you ignoring me and running off for a year and a half you think that you dying would help me?!" Raye was taken off guard entirely, Keigo had gotten angry with her before but he never yelled at her. "You're just as stubborn and hardheaded as you were when we were kids! Just let me fucking help you, you're such a damn brat! You refuse to get help from anyone, trying to do everything by yourself all the time, just let me fucking help you! Stop shutting me out! Stop pretending like you don't care, like I don't mean anything to you and that you don't mean anything to me! You can try and delude yourself into thinking you're fine and you don't need anyone but right now you need me and here I am!" He felt his anger subside a bit seeing her face, she was absolutely silent staring at him in surprise. "Like an idiot here I am. And for what? So you can just keep pushing me away? So you can just pretend like you don't love me just as much as I love you?" The anger was suppressed by an overwhelming heartache, he loved her, why couldn't she just accept that? Raye didn't know what to say, so as she always did she ran away. "I didn't ask for your help. I didn't ask for any of this." She pulled the needle out of her arm and pulled a small wad of cotton from her pocket and put it over the small wound. "So you're just going to run away? Typical." The words stung, he was right, she was just running away again. She couldn't stop herself if she didn't run away…she didn't even want to think about it. "You need to stop. Stop being in love with me. Stop helping me, stop setting yourself on fire to keep me warm because I don't want you to keep hurting yourself over and over again for my sake, I'm not worth it." He'd removed the needle from his own arm and bandaged it, he stood grabbing her by the shoulders and giving her a firm shake. "I can't just stop being in love with you! If I could, do you think I would still be here!? I've loved you since I was ten fucking years old Raye! That shit doesn't just go away! You mean everything to me, no matter how much of a stubborn fucking pain in my ass you are I love you. Why the fuck do you think I have this?" He grabbed the necklace with her ring on it from under his shirt, she was surprised he'd kept it. "Because you can deny it and run away from me as much as you want but I love you and that isn't going to change." The statement hurt, she couldn't run away forever but she was damn well going to try. She loved Dabi. Was he good for her? Probably not, he fueled her more wild side. But he was sweet, a bit of a brat, but someone who was just as desperate to love and be loved as she herself was. She could see a future with him, she could see them both being happy together. A future where she wasn't a bound dog to the HPSC, a future where everything wasn't so fucked up, a future where she was free. "Just let me go." It was barely said above a whisper, she wanted to cry. This hurt, this hurt so damn bad. Why couldn't he just let go, why couldn't he just let her move on? He let go of her shoulders, his throat burned from yelling at her, he wanted to take her into his arms and hold her. To tell her how much he loved her and that he was sorry but he didn't. "I'm having you out of work for the week. I'll explain it to the HPSC and get the time. You can run away from me but you can't make me stop taking care of you." She moved away from him without another word and left his apartment. It was only once she was gone he sat on the couch and cried, he never cried. Not through his shitty childhood, not through all the training the HPSC put him through but she could always manage to elicit emotions from him; he usually hid behind a mask of nonchalance and general childishness. She'd always been adept at slipping that mask off of him and finding exactly what was underneath and he both loved and hated her for it.
Raye collapsed on the other side of her door, sinking to the ground she felt herself start to cry and she angrily swiped away the tears. Why couldn't he just stop? Why did he have to help her? She held her sides tightly as silent sobs ripped through her, his love hurt. It hurt both of them. She hated it, she hated that his blood was in her veins right now. Hated that even if she was free from the HPSC she would never rid herself of her feelings for him. I've loved you since I was ten fucking years old the words ripped through her. She'd always admired him when they were kids, he wasn't angry, or sad about his circumstances. He just took things as they came and rolled with it. If she was being honest she'd envied his ability to just not let things bother him. She'd found that she could bother him though, even when she wasn't trying to, and she'd used that to her advantage time and time again. He gave as good as she could give and then some, they'd bickered wickedly as children. She'd only realized how close they'd gotten when the HPSC sent him to start working for them. It was always so quiet without him around, she missed the teasing and bickering. She missed him, she missed him terribly. 'None of that matters. Just stop thinking about it.' she slammed her head against the back of the door and forced herself to stand up. She was still a mess, she needed to clean herself up. The week ahead would be long if he intended to have her out of work. She had no doubts she'd be seeing him again, that he would try and force more help upon her. 'I hate that I love you, I hate that I care that I'm hurting you.' she made her way into the shower, her mind a storm of thoughts and emotions.