Work Text:
Keigo lands on the lid of a dumpster towards the end of his shift, intent on answering a few of the more important texts he'd gotten while up in the air, and absently stretches his wings out so they don't cramp. He's already pushed his goggles up, grabbing a piece of candy from his jacket pocket for a little bit of sugar. And, sure, maybe they're not work-related important, but it's still good to keep in contact with everyone.
Or, y'know, cause problems on twitter.
Keigo prides himself on being very good at that. Especially because it makes the commission scold and sigh but ultimately do nothing about it because he's built up a reputation and they can't change it now without pushback from his fans. So there.
“Fuck off.” The dumpster says.
There's no cameras down here to catch him and he's never going to admit that he jumps a good foot in the air with an undignified squawk, feathers puffed out in an attempt to make himself larger. He nearly drops his phone, too, nearly fumbles it right over the edge onto the concrete which would be absolutely tragic and the third time this month.
Not that he's counting.
“Uh.” Keigo says intelligently, staring down at the dumpster. It's one of those tall ones, with the sliding doors on the sides, and the tops have been locked down with chains heavy enough that he's not confident he could get through them. “You good?”
“I said fuck off!” The dumpster says again, this time accompanied by a rather vigorous clang.
The voice is muffled, though, and sort of echoey. Keigo has the brief and brilliant thought that maybe the dumpster itself isn't swearing at him, but someone inside it. It's a startling thing, really. More so when he realizes one of the sliding doors is cracked open and what looks like dried blood crusted around the handle. He shoves his phone back into his jacket pocket and kneels down to peer into the thing.
And immediately has to jerk his head back up to avoid something large and pointy being lobbed at his eyes.
It clatters against the alley's far wall and, if he squints, it looks like there's dried blood on that too. Which is, uh, not what he expected to deal with today. Keigo shoves aside the nervousness to deal with whatever's inside the dumpster – hopefully a person and not just a particularly vengeful tanuki or something.
“Can we not throw things at me?” He asks, keeping his tone light as he peeks over the rim of the door again.
Something snarls at him in response. Great. Cool. Cool.
Nothing gets thrown this time though, which is a marked improvement over the last. It takes his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness, and his nose even longer to adjust to the smell, but the inside is relatively bare outside of scattered pieces of trash and the huddled form of someone in the very far corner.
Not a tanuki. Probably.
Keigo can't really tell anything about them as far as features go – they're dressed in dark colors and seem to be wearing a mask over the lower half of their face. And they're, like, criminally small. Maybe less than half his wingspan.
He raises a brow at them and gets another curse for his trouble. “You okay in there?”
“I'm fine.” They bite out, shifting further away. And, no, that's not good. Because they don't move right, awkwardly cradling their left arm that probably lends to a broken bone. Keigo can verify, after coming back to his little apartment with too many breaks like that, and it's not fun.
“Yeah, well, you don't look fine.” He says. They tense up with another hiss, pressing back into the very back corner so he can't reach them. “Look, I can either call you an ambulance or something while you're trapped in here, or you can lemme look at it. 'Kay?”
A particularly creative curse has him filing it away for later, but they don't seem to be in a hurry to scramble out the other side of the sliding door. Keigo can wait them out. He's got the rest of his patrol to do followed by a dressing down and being raked over the coals for his latest twitter stunt, but that can wait.
“Heroes.” They sneer – not that he can tell, but the tone is definitely a sneer – and slowly limp over to him like they're going to their death.
Which, rude.
Keigo eyes them once they get close enough to the light. Small, yeah, small and whip-thin, with enough blood drying on what he can see of their face to make him slightly queasy.
“You gonna try to stab me again if I help you out?” He asks, because he'd prefer not to get stabbed today if he can avoid it. They snort, shifting so their injured side is facing away from him. And Keigo gets it, he really does, but it doesn't let him help them.
“I'll try not to.” They say. It's good enough for him.
He offers a hand out to them, fighting back a wince when they take it. Because, damn, their grip is tight. Still, he gives them a very polite countdown to brace themselves, before pulling them half out of the dumpster. They use their feet to get the rest of the way out and nearly tug him off the lid in the process.
Out in the daylight, he doesn't really want to call them a teenager but they definitely look like one, moody and lanky for all that he barely comes up to Keigo's chin. He doesn't think about the blood that's probably on his hand now or the unnaturally dark shade of their side.
“See, was that so hard?” He jokes. They don't appreciate it but it's fine, it's cool. It wasn't for them, anyway. “So, what happened to you?”
They raise a brow at him and don't go immediately for the knife down the alley, which is strangely comforting. “Are you sure you want to know that?”
Their voice is kind of a wreck, not that it was noticeable earlier when they were basically growling at him like an animal, and Keigo can hear them audibly swallow a few times after. He shrugs.
“It's either you tell me or the paramedics, so.”
He's pretty sure they make a face underneath the mask – plain and dark green, fitted to their face without a visible seam – and shake their head.
“Broke my arm.” They say, in a way that tell him that it was very much not them that did it. Keigo expected that, at least, and pulls out his phone to send a quick text to his manager that he'd be late.
“Kinda obvious.” He says. They shrug with their good shoulder, shifting their weight slightly onto their other foot. “You gonna let me set it before you scuttle off?”
The teen makes a noise that sounds like disgust, but he's willfully interpreting it as gratitude because that's the correct response to someone offering to help you. “You don't even know who I am.”
“Fair point. Still don't care.” Keigo says, unstrapping his medical kit from underneath his jacket and making grabby hands at their arm. They roll their eyes – green, which is a useless indicator of anything because it's more common than it was several centuries ago.
They also take the initiative to strip out of the jacket, baring their arm and side. It's not a clean break, judging from the mottled bruises spanning the entire length of it, but it also hasn't broken skin so it's relatively safer. There's no words exchanged while he splints it and starts on the bandages.
“You're kinda weird, for a hero.” They say after a few moments more. Keigo grins, pinning the wrappings in place and resettling his wings into a more comfortable position.
“That's the brand, baby.” He says, shoving as much cheek as he can into the phrase and a wink. It doesn't get nearly the reaction it deserves. Instead of flustering, they just look sort of confused at the whole thing. Which is a shame.
“Anyway, try not to run into too much trouble before you get yourself to a hospital or something, yeah? 'Cause I'm probably not gonna be there to patch you up again.” Keigo continues. They narrow their eyes at him.
He'd like to think they're smiling.
Slowly, they remove their arm from his grasp in the same overly cautious way they gave it to him, and shove it back into the sleeve. They struggle with the front zipper for a bit, almost enough to make him offer to help, before apparently just deciding to leave the jacket open and standing up.
“No promises.” They say.
“Seriously, get that looked at, though.” Keigo says, dropping into a splash of seriousness so they'd actually listen to him. Not that he doesn't think that's a lost cause, but it's nice to believe. They wave their free arm at him, wandering further into the alleyway to collect their knife and disappearing past the corner of a house.
He shakes himself, fights the urge to scrub his hand clean enough to regrow his fingernails, and takes back to the sky. Keigo has less than three minutes to be at the agency across town, and they really don't like it when he's late.
Still. Weird kid.