Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Keigo didn’t even notice the first time his phone vibrated.

It took the second message for him to notice, but even then, he didn’t think much of it. Chances were that it was probably Rumi, freaking out about some cute girl she’d met and begging Keigo to wingman for her. If so, she could wait just a few more seconds while he finished up his conversation with some hotshot politician about the law the Commission was pushing to be passed. Something about privacy, but Keigo didn’t know quite what.

By now, he knew better than to ask about what agenda the Commission was pushing, though it was only lately that he had begun to realize the cage of secrecy the Commission locked him up in was considerably less than ethical. The third and fourth times his phone vibrated, that’s still what he assumed the messages were.

It wasn’t until the fifth rumble, until the politician he was chatting to politely motioned to the pocket of Keigo’s suit, that he gave in, apologized profusely, and wandered over to an ill-lit, abandoned hallway off the main room of Endeavor’s mansion.

He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and unlocked it, his mind already whirring with potential witty responses to Rumi’s bout of gay panic, when his stomach sunk.

That, more than anything, made a weight drop in Keigo’s stomach.

It was unusual, extremely so, for Dabi to request Keigo’s help when a member of the PLF was injured. Still, it wasn’t unheard of, if Dabi knew he was around. But even then, he’d never shied from the sassy retorts that Keigo had come to anticipate from the fire user. For him to be this serious… it had to be bad.

Keigo glanced around the room desperately. The party was stocked with reporters at every corner, so any attempt to leave early would certainly be noticed and documented. That would surely result in plenty of questions that he wouldn’t be able to answer. He was certain that responding to a question about why he'd left his childhood idol's important party early by explaining that he had to go help a villain wouldn't go over well in the eyes of the public. He'd rather not spend the rest of his life in jail, thank you very much, not when he still had the chance to help others.

Keigo glanced around the room desperately. The party was stocked with reporters at every corner, so any attempt to leave early would certainly be noticed and documented. That would surely result in plenty of questions that he wouldn’t be able to answer.

That only really left him with one option.

The coatroom was near the front of the house, but if he could manage to find it, grab his coat with the excuse that he was cold, maybe he could sneak back into the hallway, hide his feathers in the pockets, and cover up his face with the hood? At that point, maybe he could try sneaking into the dining room early to find the back door he’d seen several months before, at a very similar party.

He silently thanked past-Keigo for his decision to bring one of his “stealth coats”, as dubbed by Jin. This one in particular was thick, black, and longer than his usual aviator jacket by far. The most important features, however, were the deep pockets and the hood. It looked better with a suit than his costume jacket did, and was far less conspicuous. Hopefully, if he played his cards right, he’d be able to sneak out wearing it.

It was a big if, but Keigo was willing to give it a shot.

He probably should have been concerned about the fact that he didn’t even consider calling the authorities to arrest Dabi and Jin, but honestly, at this point, he was way past being concerned when his moral compass decided to go on vacation at the most inopportune times. The fact of the matter was that Keigo was friends with Jin, and he would do what he could to get the man some help.

The plan went without a hitch, at least initially, until it came time for Keigo to actually sneak into the dining room. He managed to sneak into the hallway that led to it suspiciously easily; it was in a more secluded part of the house, at least at the moment, and Keigo figured all of the chefs were still busy in the kitchen. There was still a good hour and a half until dinner was served, after all.

The door was locked, but that wasn’t an issue, not really. It was easy enough for Keigo to send a few feathers over to pick the lock.

No, the real issue came with the approach of footsteps.

Keigo immediately let his feathers drift to the ground and started walking the other way with a gait that was clearly anything but casual, but it was too late. He winced as the footsteps came to a stop directly behind him.

Maybe he could say that he just got lost, right? Thought the dining room was… the bathroom? Or maybe he could say he needed some air?

An unfamiliar voice burst through the air. “What, exactly, do you think you’re doing?”

Keigo fought the urge to swear under his breath as he turned around slowly, feeling for all the world like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

A man that Keigo immediately recognized as Todoroki Natsuo shifted to lean against the wall, an eyebrow raised and his mouth set into a thin, impatient line.

Had it been a few months ago, Keigo would have made up some excuse, batted his eyes, and reluctantly slipped back into the party for another ten minutes or so before making another run for it. He would have assumed that all of Endeavor’s children shared their father’s famously rigid moral compass, and would have been adamantly against any plot to sneak out of a work situation that involved Keigo chatting up all kinds of diplomats and politicians for the purpose of supporting some Commission-backed legislation.

However, it wasn’t, and Keigo had learned enough from Dabi to know that even if Endeavor’s moral compass had been passed on to his children, it was little more than a damn roulette wheel.

It had taken months for Dabi to talk to Keigo about his motivations for becoming a villain, and even then, he had been as vague as possible. It was only when Keigo questioned his obvious vendetta against Endeavor that Dabi started to open up.

According to Dabi, when he was a child, his best friend had been a young boy named Todoroki Touya. The child had a flame quirk, almost as powerful as his, but even still, it didn’t explain the bruises and burns the coated the boy’s body whenever he played with Dabi. Eventually, Dabi discovered Endeavor had raised the child to surpass All Might and forced him to train and train and train until finally, one day, when Touya and Dabi were teenagers, Endeavor pushed the boy too hard, and accidentally burned him alive.

When Dabi found out about Touya’s death, that was the moment that he knew society needed to burn.

The revelation had caused Keigo’s world to come crumbling down. His gut response had been to assume that Dabi was lying, but from the way his eyes flickered with pure rage and the way his face contorted at the mere mention of his best friend’s father, Keigo knew that the villain was telling the truth. Since then, he had looked into the circumstances surrounding Todoroki Touya’s death. What little Keigo could find, even with his advanced security clearance, was just as Dabi described.

The suspicion around the situation was only heightened when the president of the Hero Commission herself told Keigo to stop poking around in matters he didn’t understand if he didn’t want consequences to arise. From just that conversation, the implications were clear—the Commission had plenty of blackmail material on him from their little undercover mission, and while he had never much cared about his rank, he did care about staying out of jail when he knew he could be helping more people by staying free.

The Commission knew that, and Keigo knew they wouldn’t hesitate to use that fact against him.

Dabi hadn’t mentioned Todoroki Touya since, but the memory of the conversation flickered constantly in the back of Keigo’s mind. He couldn’t be openly aggressive towards Endeavor if he wanted to avoid the president’s “consequences,” so he did the next best thing. Once Endeavor’s most vocal supporter, Keigo had gone suspiciously silent on the subject. The Commission had forced them to team up in an attempt to help their little “all the pros get along” charade, but that just backfired further, as Keigo took the opportunity to be as passive-aggressive as possible. Funnily, his popularity had only risen from the incident.

Really, that was the only time that his ranking really made him grin.

Keigo was thrust back into the present moment as Todoroki Natsuo arched his snow-white eyebrow even higher, so it almost disappeared into his hair. The exhaustion in Todoroki's eyes was plain to see, and the desperate tendrils of a plan in Keigo's mind solidified.

Keigo sighed heavily as he reconnected his feathers to his back with a familiar, reassuring tingling sensation.

Now or never, right?

He dug his hands into the pockets of his suit and tilted his head, somewhat reluctantly. “You wanna get outta here?”

A mortified flush crept across Todoroki’s neck. “Excuse me?” he sputtered.

“Okay, woah, not like that,” Keigo rolled his eyes, “like… sneak out. You wanna sneak out with me?”

Todoroki’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Keigo glanced down at his phone, adrenaline racing through his veins. “Well, uh… friend of mine needs a little help. Need to get out as quick as I can.”

“Why’d you ask me?”

Keigo shrugged and shifted on his feet, his wings shifting in anticipation of a flight. “Guessed that maybe you don’t wanna be here either. Plus, it’s your dad’s house. You probably know a better way out.”

Todoroki glanced over at the door, then back towards Keigo as the hint of a smile flickered across his face. “You were really gonna try to sneak out through that door? You do know that there are people in the dining room?”

Keigo raised an eyebrow good-naturedly. “You got a better way out, Todoroki?”

Todoroki only grinned in response, and wow, okay, since when had the guy been cute? Keigo’s breath caught and everything!

Todoroki grabbed Keigo’s arm. “Come on.”

They weaved through the crowd, and somewhere along the way, thanks to a sudden burst of bravery, Keigo threaded his fingers with Natsuo’s. Natsuo shot him an odd look over his shoulder, at first, but finally, he rolled his eyes and squeezed Keigo’s hand.

Todoroki led him into a dark, secluded hallway, then gingerly opened the door to a room about the size of Keigo’s closet. Admittedly, Keigo did have a pretty big closet for his wings, but for such a large house, a room this small was almost laughable. Somehow, the owner had managed to cram a bed, some shelves, and assorted sports posters along the walls.

Keigo blinked in the low light. “Whose room is this?”

“My old one. Before I moved out,” Todoroki said, his voice sharp. “Doesn’t matter. Out the window.”

Keigo glanced over at the thin window above the bed, his brow furrowed. “You’re serious? My wings can’t fit through that.”

“Can’t you—you know—” Natsuo motioned to his back. “Shed them again?”

Keigo sighed heavily. “I can, but I don’t like to.”

“Does your friend need help or not?”

Keigo sighed heavily, shedded his feathers, climbed up onto Todoroki’s bed, unlatched the window, and tumbled out of the house.

As soon as he managed to reattach his feathers, Todoroki’s pale face popped up in the window.

“You need any he—”

Todoroki squeezed through the window and dropped himself to the ground with a dexterity that could honestly rival that of some pros that Keigo knew.

“Nope.” Todoroki brushed his hands off on his pants with a self-satisfied smirk.

Keigo glanced around the yard. It was exactly what one would expect from Endeavor's rigid, harsh personality. The garden was meticulously cared for, but in a way that felt almost impersonal, and the yard was lined with a tall fence, more than twice Keigo's height. A large, ugly-looking, thorn-coated shrub leered out from along the fence.

“See, we’re out of the house now, but how do we—” he started, before Todoroki shushed him and made a beeline for a large, thorn-covered bush.

“I’ve been sneaking out of my father’s parties since I was ten, and my older brother did it even before that,” he called over his shoulder with an exhausted smirk. “Have some faith, Hawks-san.”

Keigo wrinkled his nose. “Just Hawks is fine, dude. We’re like, the same age.”

Todoroki suddenly dropped to his knees and shifted a large, thorned branch to reveal what appeared to be a small tunnel chopped out of the bush.

As soon as Keigo finished studying what had to be the most elaborate way he'd ever heard of anyone sneaking out of a house party, he glanced over at Todoroki, who studied the ground, his face twisted. “My brother made it.”

Keigo glanced downward. “Ah.”

“Well,” Todoroki cleared his throat loudly, pink creeping up the sides of his neck, “I’ll go first, shift the loose part of the fence, you come in after, okay?”

Keigo nodded.

Todoroki disappeared into the bush, and after a strange creaking noise that Keigo assumed was probably the loose board in question, he called out again, his voice muffled. “Come on.”

Keigo lowered himself into the tunnel with a wince and silently thanked his mother for his short stature. Honestly, it had to be the first time he ever thanked her for anything.

Despite the fact that he was considerably smaller than Todoroki, his suit, hair, and remaining feathers still caught on the thorns of the bush. How Todoroki managed to do it, Keigo had no clue. Finally, he pulled himself out of the tunnel and squeezed through the gap in the fence with a grunt. The knees on his suit were probably ruined, but that was the least of his concerns.

“All good?” Todoroki asked.

“Thanks.” he said as he stood and brushed as much dirt off of his pants as he could.

Todoroki shifted the board back into place and shrugged. “No problem. You don’t show anyone else that, though, hear me? My sister would kill me.”

Keigo winked in Natsuo’s direction. “Our little secret.”

Natsuo cleared his throat loudly. “Uh-huh. Well, uh… nice meeting you, Hawks.”

“You too,” Hawks grinned. He glanced down at his phone and winced when he noticed ten new message notifications, all from Dabi. “I’ve gotta go. But it was a pleasure, Todoroki.”

Todoroki rolled his eyes in a way that Keigo optimistically construed as fond before he walked down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of his father's house. “Mhm.”

Keigo waited for him to vanish from his line of sight before he took to the sky and sped to the location that Dabi had indicated in one of his first messages—the warehouse where he had first met the villain.

Keigo awoke with a groan to the incessant hum of his phone. He’d gotten back to his apartment late, around 4 AM, but thankfully, it was one of his rare days off, so he could sleep in as much as he pleased.

That also meant that unless there was some sort of emergency, whatever he was being called about probably wasn’t anything important. He considered rolling back over and falling asleep again, but he finally convinced himself to at least turn over his phone to see who was calling.

The first thing he noticed was that it was nearly twelve o’clock.

The second was that he had twelve missed calls from Rumi. Shit.

Keigo picked up the phone immediately and shot out of bed. “Bunny, what’s up? What’s wrong?”

“You got a boyfriend and didn’t tell me?” Rumi screeched incredulously.

Keigo sighed and plopped back down. “Rumi, come on. You’re the first person I’d tell about any of that shit. You know that. It’s just some dumb tabloid scandal, like that whole thing with me and you a while back, before you came out.”

Rumi’s disapproving hum crackled through the receiver. “I dunno, these pictures sure tell a different story.

Keigo shot back up. “Pictures? I don’t—okay, I don’t know what’s going on—”

Rumi’s frown bled through her voice, even over the phone. “There’s a bunch of pictures from Endeavor’s party last night of you and Todoroki Natsuo holding hands and grinning and one that kind of looks like you kissing—maybe you were just standing close—”

Keigo almost dropped his phone. “What?”

“So…”

“Look,” Keigo pinched the bridge of his nose. “I talked with Todoroki last night at the party, maybe flirted a little, didn’t work, pretty sure he’s straight, he helped me sneak out of the party because we were both bored as fuck and wanted to go home.”

Rumi was silent, until finally, “So, you might want to clear that up with the public.”

Keigo sighed heavily. “How big is it?”

“Really big,” Rumi said apologetically, “everyone’s hypothesizing about your sexuality and how you got together…”

Keigo groaned. “Great.”

“It’ll probably blow over in just a little bit, chicken nugget,” Rumi said, and somehow, despite the dumb nickname, she still managed to assuage Keigo’s annoyance, just a little.

Keigo’s phone vibrated twice, and he pulled it away from his ear to reveal a message from both an unknown number, and a contact affectionately titled “baby bird.”

“Hey, Rumi, can I call you back?” Keigo yawned. “Got a message from Tsukuyomi.”

“Holding you to that,” Rumi said, “still on for lunch?”

Keigo had completely forgotten about their lunch plans, but he knew that if he told her that, she’d have his head.

“Hell yeah.” he chirped nervously before hung up and he pressed the notification for Fumikage’s message.

Keigo fought the urge to scream into his pillow, but instead, he just sighed heavily and texted Fumikage back. It wasn't like this was the first "relationship" the tabloids had declared that he was part of, but it was certainly the biggest one in at least a year and a half. Not to mention that the night the pictures were from had actually ended with him helping two villains and collapsing into his bed as soon as he got back home, his clothes still covered in dust and grime.

Before Keigo could type out his response—something along the lines that their relationship was more of a cool uncle thing, his phone buzzed again.

Keigo blinked.

His sexuality wasn’t a surprise to his intern—he’d come out to the kid a couple of months before, after a patrol gone wrong. Some petty criminal had taken offense at Keigo’s habit of wearing the occasional coat of nail polish. Usually, he stuck with the more neutral stuff, but he wanted to wear red that day and damn it, he was twenty-two and he would wear it if he wanted to, no matter what the Commission said.

The criminal had called him some names that Keigo would rather not repeat, and Fumikage had been rattled for the rest of the patrol. Finally, when Keigo asked the kid about what was bothering them, they had blurted out that they were genderqueer and bisexual, and to please, please not fire them. Keigo had been furious, righteously so, and had declared that not only was he trans and bi, but that if anyone had an issue with his intern’s gender or sexuality, Fumikage could send them right to Keigo.

He’d tried to be more open about his sexuality after that—he’d been careful to always use gender-neutral pronouns in interviews ever since, but between that and the whole Endeavor debacle, he knew he had to be careful about what exactly he said. He’d been toeing the line of what the Commission would and wouldn’t allow, lately, and he knew it. That said, he’d gladly cross it for his intern’s sake.

Finally, Keigo opened the message from the unknown number—Todoroki Shouto, he assumed, but instead of a paragraph about taking care of the kid's brother, he was greeted with a screenshot of a text conversation.

Keigo’s jaw dropped. He had to reread the message three times to even understand what he was reading, until finally he managed:

Generally, Keigo would have come up with some witty response to Todoroki’s message, or explained that Fumikage had already told him, the sweet kid they were, but he was still attempting to wrap his head around the message that Endeavor had sent. It wasn’t necessarily a mystery that Endeavor was more conservative, but he was also open about the fact that he didn’t care about the details of any of his coworkers’ personal lives—sexuality included. Keigo had assumed that sentiment was also true for his children.

The Commission wouldn't take kindly to it, but at this point, Keigo had a hard time caring. The fact that Endeavor said that to his own son was nothing short of sickening.

Todoroki started to type, then stopped, and continued the process for long enough that Keigo became convinced the guy was writing a whole novel.

He stumbled over to his bathroom, brushed his teeth, ran a comb through his resident bird’s nest, and struggled into a clean t-shirt and jeans. By the time he got back to his phone, it was vibrating with a new message.

Keigo sighed heavily and stretched. Rumi would probably have his head, but it was just two weeks. He could help the poor guy out for two weeks, right? It was going to be fine.

Keigo took another glance at the time and swore loudly.

It was going to be fine, as long as he got to Tokyo in time to meet Rumi for lunch at one.

Before he grabbed his aviator jacket from the couch, he sent out a quick tweet and silently apologized to the P.R. person that the Commission had hired. They certainly already had their hands full, and after this, they might need to grow some extra arms.