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Izuku wrings his fingers, the crooked bones crackling and snapping as he pulls them taut. His scars run criss-cross over the joints like grossly abstract sketches—and he hopes that maybe, if he tugs hard enough, the tension there will crumble into a million little pieces, and he can finally crawl himself to sleep.
“Why the long face, baby?”
Izuku, in spite of the week heavy on his shoulders, rolls his eyes at the silky tone—tinged in concern and jesting and something that neither of them are ready to admit out loud—and lathered in that signature playful lilt that he’s come to associate with home.
Home is here: the haggard firehouse-turned-apartment dotted with leftover powdered sugar and bloodstains. It’s in the perpetually broken coffee machine and the abysmal water pressure and the rusted brick walls. Home is cookie dough at post-nightmare midnight and snuggling up together on the couch when the heater inevitably tuckers out—home is—
“C’mon, how can I turn that frown upside down?”
—Keigo, really. Just. Keigo.
Izuku leans into the hand cupping face, slim and unblemished in contrast to his gnarled fingers. He wants to tell Keigo why—how the looming face of work and insecurities and I’m not good enough are whirling together in his fucked brain and festering, but—
He’s always been praised, chided, scorned for his daredevil tendencies. With Keigo, his well-worn bravery fades to nervous ashes.
“Not a frown,” he cranks his winningest smile into place, gears squealing like nails on a chalkboard, “I’m fine.”
Keigo laughs a sharpened laugh—all teasing and tender in one grating syllable. He mocks “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. Sounds like a heaping load of bullshit to me.”
“Most things do,” Izuku sinks into the couch, trying to fuse the ratted fabric to his skin, “I’m really okay, though. Just tired.”
Honed eyes take in his stature, as calculated as a demon—yet a caricature of their distinct brand of comfort.
Keigo blinks slowly, pointedly, “Izuku.”
And his resolve shatters just like that—because, yeah—life sucks sometimes—
There are casualties and losses, and the world doesn’t slow down—villains don’t slow down so he can take a break after realizing that this life he’s worked for sucks sometimes—
But in between the cracks of all that suckiness, Keigo greets him every time, feathers wrapping around both of them as they lie together, bruised and scraped and not alone, never alone—
And he can’t deny home when it looks like that—all slivered eyes, serious and somber like Keigo never should need to be, and Izuku will do whatever it takes to bring the bubbly teasing back.
He relents, plastic seeping out and pooling at his weary, weary feet.
“What’s wrong?” Izuku echoes the bare bones of Keigo’s question, as if posing it to himself. As if he hasn’t heard those words in a million different iterations in the grey of these last few months.
“Everything, I guess.”
The words feel strange—cynical, uncharacteristic—sticky as they slide off his tongue. It’s all he can do to shoo away the voices chiding in his mind—where’s that sunflower smile of yours, De-ku? Show us those dimples, hero; there’s no time for self-loathing here—
Knuckles trail over his cheekbones, skating over his jawline, carving his flesh apart with a gentle touch—
“Want a light?” Keigo rummages for a cigarette with his other hand. Izuku doesn’t answer—whether it’s because he’s lost in haphazard makeup layered over tawny skin, or if he’s just too nerve-tired to make his brain focus—whether he’s caught in the buzzing negativity of his psyche, or if he knows he’s said “you know I don’t do that” and ended up with smoke curling in his mouth so many times that refutations amount to nothing?
He couldn’t say.
No matter, really—because lips ghost over his own like tradition, feeding tendrils of relief to his lungs in lazy puffs, and any thoughts drift away as green pours into gold.
“Hey,” their noses touch. Keigo presses the words on the miles between their tongues, and they taste like sour honey when they reach him, “Wanna relax a little?”
Izuku stifles his laugh at the on-brand-ness of the question, moving to peel his shirt off—because, yeah, if anything will make him feel better, this certainly will—
As he reaches for his pants, a wing cuffs his shoulder and laugh graces his ears.
“No, no. Not like that, filthy freak,” Keigo leans back on his elbows.
Izuku cocks his head, tracking that perpetual glint in his eyes—something between dangerous and taunting and loving, if you look close enough and squint the right way. He’s searching for what Keigo could possibly be getting at if he doesn’t want sex. It’s always been such a prominent part for their relationship—from post-graduate fumbling to post-mission blowjobs to post-confession lovemaking oh-so-recently—and he can’t help but wonder what else Keigo would suggest for stress relief, or if he’s just coming up with some kinky roundabout way of asking, or—
“Preen me.”
—or, or—Izuku’s brain splutters. He shakes his head quickly, double checking that he hasn’t misheard, “What?”
In lieu of an answer, Keigo shifts so that his wings fan out and his body is nearly hidden behind the curtain they form. The feathers shake, almost seeming to point towards Izuku, drawn in like magnets.
“Wait, you want me to—?” Izuku gestures open-mouthed at Keigo, who smirks under the attention, wings fluttering in a way that makes Izuku’s heart heat up and his mind kick into overdrive, because—
Because—well.
See, this isn’t a thing for the two of them.
The only times Izuku’s gnarled, hurting fingers go anywhere near Keigo’s back are in the throes of passion, when both of them are too lost in sensation to remember too much.
Too much is an unspoken guideline in their rulebook, founded in the way Keigo wraps his wings around himself at night, almost like a shield. It’s in the flinching and the cowering and the fear that Keigo thinks Izuku doesn’t see, but he does—God, he does, and not a day goes by where he doesn’t think the words Hero Commission accompanied with a bitter tang and murderous rage, all wrapped in the black-and-swirling thing that is Keigo’s past.
The point, really, is that too much starts the second green-scarred skin reaches red feathers—and, if Izuku were to wager a guess, he’d say it’s because those wings have never known hands that aren’t looking to hurt.
But, in spite of all that rulebooked fear, Keigo beckons Izuku like they’ve done this a thousand times—because he always, always jumps face-first into new territory, pretending there was no leap made in the first place as he runs with their new dynamic.
“Yeah, baby,” the words resound like a gavel, “Put those pretty hands to work.”
And, well—that’s all there is to it.
Izuku falls forward as if tugged on a rope, hands moving of their own accord, five-fingered slaves for an angel who walks the earth.
“Like this?” he slots his fingers between tufts of glorious red, somewhere between a sunset and pooling blood in hue—sliced with tiny brown streaks that only a few ever bother to see. Izuku sees; he always has—from his second year of UA to his debut as a hero he’d had his eyes on Number Two’s facade, the persona so cocksure and suave that there had to be something else going on there. There just had to be more to it, and Izuku’s curiosity always gets the best of him.
There was a day some years ago: two heroes, ragged and jagged and lathered in dust and guts, alone together. Alone and exhausted and more riled up than ever. Izuku’s younger self would be in irreparable shock over what came after—but honestly, at the time, their heaving bodies tangled together and wound tight seemed inevitable.
And that night, as he traced the barren skin of Hawks, Izuku realized that yes, this man is, in a sense, the confident catch of a playboy he’s portrayed as.
But then there’s Keigo.
Keigo, who pours the milk before his cereal solely to piss off Katsuki on the mornings they spend before a mission—Keigo, who smirks like molasses for the public and smiles like sugar for Izuku—who collects keychains and baubles and necklaces that he never wears, all stashed away with cascades of hero merchandise—who can’t cook for the life of him, but still whips up pancakes on mornings Izuku sleeps in, topped with unripe strawberries since someone doesn’t know how to check their fruit at the supermarket—
Keigo, who lets out pleased, private, soft chirps as Izuku strokes his feathers—as he lets Izuku stroke his feathers for the first time ever—
“Put some more oomph into it now, De-ku,” Keigo drawls as he pushes them closer, those chittering warbles buzzing at the edge of each word.
Izuku has a sudden urge to ruffle Keigo’s hair and pet him ‘till he’s purring so hard he can’t talk, but instead just scrunches his nose at the whiplash of that goddamn nickname, “Don’t call me that. It makes you sound like Kacchan.”
Kaito throws back a laugh; his feathers jitter, “Hah, don’t want me sounding like your other bombshell blond, baby?”
Izuku suppresses horror at the insinuation—the mere thought of Keigo’s lithe arms and candied phrases replaced with every iteration of fuck you and then some; he mumbles, eyelids closed and voice strangely fierce, “Don’t want you sounding like anyone else.”
A beat.
Keigo exhales, a little shaky, “You really know how to flatter a guy, baby.”
Izuku feels just as unsteady with it, limbs reduced to jelly because of baby, baby, baby. He switches angles and digs his knuckles down.
Keigo jolts, a rapid series of somewhat suggestive twitters leaving his throat, “Ah, ah—yeah—there you go.”
Izuku snorts, and from there, it’s easy.
They fall into a comfortable quiet, disturbed only by sugary moans and calm instruction. Izuku plucks where he’s told and fiddles like he’s asked and rubs and rubs and rubs , marveling in how sensitive this part of Keigo is. It goes on forever, and not in a bad way at all.
When the feathers are perfectly smoothed and Keigo is sufficiently sated, they slump against each other, their exhaustion mingling as they lie down, side-by-side.
Keigo curls up, assuming his position as the little spoon despite the frankly complicated logistics of it, “Feelin’ any better, baby?”
Izuku pauses—because, to be completely truthful, he’s nearly forgotten the reason he was weighed down in the first place. Now, it seems futile to bask in self-hatred when he can instead bask in body heat and bury his nose in golden hair.
So, he answers how it is, grateful and dripping with near-sleep, “Yeah, actually. Thanks.”
Keigo hums, shuffles just right under the covers, and moves one of Izuku’s arms around his waist, “Anytime.”
And just like that, wrapped in lethargy and something like love, their relationship adopts a new routine—a new thing for off-days and drooping patrols and feeling better when either of them are down.
Izuku drifts with a subdued smile, thoughts lingering on the rhythmic motion of plucking feathers and the tingles of his skin against Keigo’s stomach.