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THERE’S NEVER ANY canned coffee left in the vending machine.
It’s something that Touya notices with annoyance the first day, frustration on the second, and on the third day, he excuses himself from cram school and goes twenty minutes earlier than usual, only to be met with bright red wings and an absolutely devastating grin.
And no damn coffee.
“Guess I was just a little faster,” teases the winged high schooler in front of him, smile not shrinking in the slightest.
Touya scowls.
The guy in front of him looks younger than him—a first-year, if Touya had to guess, and that puts him solidly in the position of his junior by two years. Meaning that Touya needs the coffee a lot more than him. (Staying up late to do assignments is really starting to take a toll on him.)
Still, he can’t exactly ask a stranger to give up his coffee for him, junior or not.
Those scarlet wings waver in the air, and with a devilish smile, the coffee thief disappears, too fast for Touya’s caffeine-deprived eyes to follow.
If this is a competition, he’s not losing.
So ensues a week of Touya leaving cram school early to the point where his teacher pulls him aside and asks if anything’s wrong, but he doesn’t know how to explain that there’s this first-year who keeps only just beating him to the last drink and why don’t the vending machines stock more canned coffee, anyway?
He settles for telling her that it’s a personal matter, and she lets it go.
The day after his midyear exams, cram school is cancelled, and with far too much satisfaction, after nearly two weeks of caffeine-deprivation, Touya finally gets his hands on the cold metal of that beautiful, beautiful, canned coffee.
The taste of victory is sweet, after all.
So is the look of disbelief in his competitor’s eyes.
“Guess I was just a little faster,” Touya can’t help himself from saying, and the winged guy’s face goes from indignant to amused all in the span of two seconds.
“Just once,” he agrees, and Touya catches a glimpse of the tag on his bag that announces his name as Hawks.
He catches himself wondering what kind of name that is, before he shakes himself out of it and instead savours both the taste of that almost overly sweet coffee and the oddly forlorn look on his junior’s face. And then something inside him is reminded of that look on Natsuo’s face when he couldn’t buy that cool new pencil case he’d been promised, and he curses himself, because why can’t he just feel good about himself for finally winning?
With an exasperated sigh, Touya digs some pocket change out of his wallet and shoves it at Hawks.
The latter’s wings flare in surprise, and the guy steps quickly backwards, but Touya presses the coins into his hands and closes his fingers around it.
“Get your damn coffee tomorrow,” he mutters, then turns on his heel and starts walking home.
Except the next day, Hawks is there waiting for him, unopened can of coffee in hand and grin back on his face. He passes the coffee to Touya, then he’s off with a flurry of bright red feathers.
Touya drinks the coffee.
The next few days send Touya’s mind into a state of confusion.
The details he notices about Hawks are these—
He always seems to have a pair of red headphones around his neck, the colour a bit more muted than that of his wings, and Touya wonders if his favourite colour is red. He apparently doesn’t know how to do his tie properly, because it’s always looser around his neck than it should be, and the top button of his uniform shirt is always undone, leading him to wonder whether the teachers let him get away with it purely because he looks so good.
Also, his eyes are the same colour as sunsets.
It’s something that Touya realises after cram school one day. They’re all let out late, the teacher insisting on checking all of their individual work before they leave, so by the time he makes it to the vending machine, the sun is dipping below the horizon in a lazy golden puddle.
Hawks is waiting.
“Took you long enough,” he says, holding out the coffee to him.
Touya wraps his fingers around it. The metal isn’t as freshly cold anymore, but when he opens the can, the bittersweet scent of caffeine hits him like a drug, and when he drinks it, it feels like his whole body is alive again.
Hawks regards him, head tilted.
“Something on my face?” Touya asks, and Hawks shakes his head.
“You’re a senior, right?” he says, but his tone makes it sound like more of a statement than a question.
Touya raises an eyebrow. “What’s it to you?”
Hawks puts his hands up in mock surrender. “I just wanted some help with English. I’ve got a test next week, plus I’ve been buying you all this coffee…”
“I didn’t ask for all the coffee,” he points out.
Touya takes a long sip of said coffee, then meets eyes that are the exact colour of the last rays of the sun and the golden-tinged clouds. He sighs.
“Fine,” he agrees, and tosses the empty can into the bin. “I hope you’re not terrible at it.”
Hawks grins. “No guarantees.”
Touya sticks out a hand, motioning for Hawks to pass him his phone, and puts his number in, saving it under the name Touya.
Those red wings open slightly. “First name basis already?” he asks, eyes wide.
Touya shrugs. “Most people call me by my first name. Makes it easier not to get confused with my siblings.”
“You can call me Keigo, then.”
The smile on his—Keigo’s—face is different from the devilish grin he’d been wearing before, but it’s no less destructive, and he seems to be completely unaware.
(Touya had definitely needed the coffee, because he stays up far too late trying to unearth all his English worksheets and tests from two years ago.)
* * *
Touya very quickly discovers that Keigo is, in fact, unreasonably good at English, and Touya barely needs to help him, aside from a few minor corrections.
“You need to add ‘the’ before nouns,” he says, pointing out the only mistake he’d found on a new worksheet.
Keigo corrects it, and it goes straight to perfect.
“Touya,” Keigo says, and a small jolt runs through his body at the sound of his name from Keigo’s lips. “What’s with the bandages around your arms?”
Touya leans backwards in his seat.
Around them, business in the cafe continues as per usual. Two cups of coffee sit on the table, both with ridiculous amounts of sugar added (blame Keigo for deciding to make it a competition), and there’s an empty plate from which Keigo had demolished a chicken sandwich, claiming that “bird metabolism” burned too many calories.
Touya takes a sip of said coffee—why had he been stupid enough to put eight spoonfuls of sugar in it?—and exhales.
“They’re because of my quirk,” he says. “It doesn’t suit my body.”
Keigo tilts his head. “What do you mean?”
Touya pushes up his sleeves and unravels a bandage with practised movements, the fabric falling away from his arms as Keigo leans forwards.
He inhales sharply.
Underneath the bandages, hidden away from the light of day, the pale skin of Touya’s arms is mottled with dark purple burns.
Touya’s body is a patchwork of scars.
The support department in school helps—they’d tried all the temperature-regulating equipment they could, but Touya’s fire burns at the hottest temperature possible, always at complete combustion level, and there are limits to how well the equipment works. Currently, the costume he’s using can support his heat for around ten minutes—better than nothing, but still, not much use in a fight unless he finishes it quickly.
“Your quirk did this to you?” Keigo asks. His voice is quiet.
Touya laughs dryly. “Kind of a shit quirk, isn’t it?” He smiles, and not even the sweet aftertaste of the coffee can quell the bitterness in his expression. “I guess that’s why the old man always said I was a disappointment.”
“But—you’re not!”
Touya blinks.
He’s never seen Keigo get angry before, but this is the closest he’s come. Keigo’s wings are flared indignantly, and his eyes glint with something— determination? Stubbornness? Touya isn’t sure, but he can’t remember the last time someone else had made that expression for his sake, because It’s always been him looking like that for his siblings.
It’s nice to feel like someone has his back.
“You’re not a disappointment,” Keigo repeats fiercely.
Touya raises an apathetic eyebrow. “I can’t fight for longer than ten minutes,” he points out. “Not much use for me there.”
At that, Keigo goes silent, and Touya feels a sort of warped satisfaction wash over him.
“You’ve still got the rest of your worksheets to go over,” he says, and he makes his tone a little gentler. “Stop worrying about me.”
They spend the rest of the study session being mostly productive, only broken when Touya chokes on his coffee and Keigo doesn’t shut up laughing about it.
Another detail he notices about Keigo—
He has a nice laugh.
* * *
He gets a call from Keigo’s number during class the next day. The teacher glares at him pointedly, and he excuses himself to the hallways before he picks up the call, only to be met with a voice that is decidedly not Keigo’s.
“Hello? Is this Touya?” asks a voice that he vaguely recognises as the school nurse’s.
“Yeah,” he answers. “Why?”
“Takami has you listed as his emergency contact. Could you make your way to the nurse’s office?”
“I’ll be right there.”
So when he slams open the door, only to be met by Keigo’s smiling face and bandaged wrist—
“I’m your emergency contact? Seriously?”
“You came!”
—Touya can’t even find the energy to be exasperated. Instead, he sits down in the seat next to Keigo and raises an eyebrow. “Well? Why are you here?”
Keigo shifts. “Okay, so first of all, I wasn’t being stupid.”
Which means that he was doing something very stupid, Touya reasons. He takes in the bandages on Keigo’s wrist, then looks at his wings—and sucks in a breath.
They’re singed.
“Why are you here?” he repeats, and his tone is more forceful this time. Keigo winces.
“Playing with fire, I guess,” he says. He doesn’t meet Touya’s eyes.
Touya exhales. “‘Wasn’t being stupid’ my ass,” he mutters.
Keigo brightens slightly. “But fire’s your quirk, isn’t it? So I was thinking—if I could somehow make my wings fireproof—”
“No,” Touya says, probably firmer than he needs to. “The hell are you thinking?”
Keigo’s wings waver slightly, but he presses forward. “Yesterday you were saying how you can only fight for short periods of time because of your quirk, and how it harms your body, so I was thinking—if I could fireproof my wings—we could do team-ups and it would work out better—”
“Keigo,” Touya says, and he hates that his voice comes out so rough.
Keigo stops talking. The look in his eyes is surprised and hurt, all at once, but Touya barrels on, because he is not going to watch as another kid gets burned because of how incompetent he is.
“Stop,” he says, and this time, instead of his voice coming out rough, it just sounds tired, even to his own ears. “Just stop. Don’t go burning yourself like that.”
Keigo opens his mouth, closes it, then he draws his eyebrows down. “You don’t want to do team-ups?”
“That’s not it. I just—”
The door slides open, and the nurse walks back in. “Takami is excused from class for the rest of the day,” she says, nodding towards the burned tips of his wings and the bandage around his wrist. “Todoroki, if you wouldn’t mind—”
“I’ll take him home,” Touya says, even before the nurse finishes her sentence. “Just tell my teacher where I am.”
He turns to Keigo—whose expression has gone stiff.
“Hey,” he says, waving a hand in front of his eyes. “Hey. Anybody in there?”
Keigo blinks, frowning slightly, then puts on what looks like a very forced smile. “I’m coming,” he says.
They make it down two flights of stairs and out of the school gates before Touya realises that he has no idea where the hell Keigo’s home actually is.
“Keigo,” he says, and the winged high schooler doesn’t answer. Touya nudges him. “ Keigo .”
“Yeah?” he responds, but his face still looks like it’s half-frowning despite the smile on his lips. “Thanks for volunteering to take me home.”
Touya sighs. “What’s going through that head of yours now?”
“Nothing!” Keigo holds his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender, smile disarmingly cheerful. “I’m just glad to be spending time with my favourite third-year. Hey, do you wanna go to that park nearby? It should be just about empty at this time.”
Touya narrows his eyes. “You’re injured.”
“It’s not that bad.” Keigo waves a hand, extending his wings as if proving that they still work. He examines the feathers, then detaches them with a grin. “They’ll grow back really quickly. Come to the park with me?”
And goddammit, Touya knows he’s being manipulated, but when Keigo looks at him like that, all sunset eyes and hopeful expression, he can’t say no.
He really needs to work on that.
The park is, as Keigo had speculated, empty. Keigo lies down on the grass, wings splayed, spearing the falling leaves with tiny, sharp feathers, and Touya shrugs off his jacket and leans against a tree trunk.
It’s pleasant, passing time like this.
The angle of the sun is just right, not too harsh and sending tiny rays lancing through the leaves. They turn strands of Keigo’s hair to gold.
“Your last name is Todoroki,” Keigo says, and Touya has a hard time figuring out whether it’s a question or a statement.
He chooses to answer, anyway. “Yeah,” he says, watching as a withered leaf is snatched up by one of Keigo’s feathers, pinning it to a branch above his head. “And yours is Takami.”
Keigo glances at him, the dark lines around his eyes making the colour of his irises even more startling. “You’re Endeavour’s son?”
And just for a moment, he considers lying.
Because around Keigo, he’s just Touya; not Touya who can’t do anything or Touya the oldest son of the Todoroki family with siblings to protect—he’s Touya who keeps missing the last coffee at the vending machine and who gives Keigo tuition that he doesn’t need.
Still, he thinks of Keigo wanting to do a team-up with him—and singeing the tips of his feathers off while trying to make them fireproof—and he sighs.
“Yeah,” he says, watching as another leaf gets pinned to the tree with a satisfying thunk. “Congrats, you figured it out.”
“The sarcasm wasn’t necessary,” Keigo says, wrinkling his nose, but he sits up, hair all tousled from lying down, and folds his wings more tightly against his back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Touya scoffs. “What, I was supposed to sneak it into our everyday conversation? ‘Oh, by the way, my old man’s the number two hero’ —”
Keigo glances back down again. “Yeah, okay. But still… I would’ve liked to have known. I was a fan.” A pause, then he looks back up. “ Endeavour’s the one who called you a disappointment?”
“Yeah,” he says, and he realises that he’s not so much in the mood to talk about this anymore. Especially if Keigo’s a fan—he doesn’t need his vision of Endeavour shattered, because no matter how much Touya dislikes his father, there’s no reason to ruin Keigo’s image of him. “Whatever. He can believe whatever the hell he wants.”
He stands up and tosses his jacket over a shoulder. “I’m getting coffee. You want any?”
Keigo blinks at him, looking like he’s scanning his face. A small smile. “Who do you think I am?”
The walk to the vending machine is mostly silent, with Keigo looking deep in thought the entire time and Touya checking to make sure he has enough coins. (He does.) The familiar white paint on the vending machine comes into view, and—
“No way,” says Keigo, eyes shining and wings flaring in excitement. “It’s fully stocked? ”
Touya laughs and punches in a number, feeding his coins into the machine until a mechanical arm pushes out two cans of coffee.
“I guess at this time, no one’s bought any yet,” he says. He grabs the cans from the dispenser and passes one to Keigo, who fumbles around for money until Touya presses the can into his hands.
“Just get me one next time,” he says, and Keigo hesitates, then takes it.
He opens his can, the pressurised air letting out a soft hiss. “I still don’t think you’re a disappointment,” he says, voice quieter than usual. Touya pauses, coffee halfway to his lips.
“Huh?”
“You’re not a disappointment. And if Endeavour says so—I think—that he should get his eyes checked.”
Keigo looks up at him, wings singed, wrist bandaged, stupid tie still not done up properly—and a jolt runs through Touya’s body. Keigo looks like he’s almost daring him to disagree.
He remembers to breathe again, then takes a sip of his coffee. “I never cared what he thought anyway,” he says, and at that, Keigo settles his wings securely against his back. There’s a little look of satisfaction on his face that is kind of adorable.
“But—if you don’t think I’m a disappointment,” Touya says, a smile tugging at his lips, “I can’t let you down, can I?”
One more detail he notices about Keigo, and maybe he’d known this since he first saw him, but the fact now solidifies in his brain—
His smile, which is pure, unadulterated happiness, is bright enough to blind him.