Work Text:
“You know the drill: up in the saddle.”
Keigo settles into the chair as he watches Dabi spin both the stool and the arm rest around, getting them perfectly aligned on the side of the chair where Keigo is having yet another tattoo done.
Dabi skates around his parlor so elegantly that it’s hard not to get lost in the motions. He pushes off of the counter, the other chairs, the floor itself and he always ends up exactly where he plans, landing square in front of Keigo’s chair again without knocking into it.
“So! For this piece, I was thinking something a little different. I know you liked the flash art, buuuut here.” Dabi reaches over Keigo to pull up a sketchbook. He flips through the pages until he comes to the one he wants, turning it towards Keigo.
“I know you said you don’t want a lot of color and we can totally go with the flash art–I love the flash art, it’s my flash art–but I thought you might want to try something a little… different.”
Everything on Keigo’s arm and back so far has been birds and feathers, enough that Dabi has started to call him “little bird” in a way that absolutely does not make the man melt whatsoever. When Dabi shows him a single feather, almost crimson in color devoured by a single blue flame, he tries not to let his heart get the better of him: just because Dabi’s art has flames doesn’t make this a piece for them . It just means that Dabi knows what he’s good at.
“I like it!”
“But?”
“No, no! I like it. I like it a lot.”
Dabi turns it around before pulling Keigo’s arm forward by his wrist, sizing it up against the inside of his forearm.
“You want it?”
“More than anything.” He’d agree to a dunce cap if he could see that elated smile on Dabi’s face every single time.
“Great!” And he pushes backwards from the chair towards the opposite side of the shop. “Let me get the stencil and we’ll get started.”
Keigo has been in here every six weeks like clockwork for almost six months now. It’d started off as coming with Rumi to get her tattoo covered up–getting matching tattoos with a ex-girlfriend she’d been together with for three months wasn’t the smartest decision–when he’d met Dabi. Dabi, who smiled so carelessly as he drew his hand back through his hair, in that stupid tanktop that practically showcased every inch of body covered in artwork, who looked at Keigo and… well, Keigo doesn’t remember what he said, but the way he said it made Keigo’s heart shoot straight into his throat until all he could do was smile like a loon and wave.
He tells Dabi that he’s here because the artwork is too good not to put on his body.
He’s actually here because everytime he tries to veer the conversation towards asking him out, Keigo turns too chickenshit to do anything and ends up talking about how great Dabi’s artwork looks and how much he’d love to have it on his body.
It’s an obsession that has put far too much of a dent in his savings to be healthy, but he supposes that there are worse things to be spending a teacher’s salary on.
Probably.
“Alright. I made it smaller so that it’ll fit in with the rest of your pieces, but not small enough to jeopardize the integrity of the work.” Dabi pulls Keigo’s arm onto the arm rest with freshly gloved hands. Dabi is always so gentle with the way he touches him and it never fails to make Keigo shiver. If Dabi notices, he’s kind enough to never say a word, just spreading the salve on his arm before following it up with the razor, ridding the skin of the fine hairs that grow there before placing the stencil onto his skin. He presses it firmly down before gingerly peeling it up until a bright purple outline is left behind.
“What do you think?”
And it does look good, even just the simplistic outline. Keigo knows for a fact that Dabi will take this little piece and make it flourish, but the fine, curling line work never fails to amaze Keigo. His hands are always so steady and they really are made to create.
“Beautiful.” He glances up to see that same excited smile before Dabi turns and grabs the ink and the thing Dabi has referred to as a tattoo rotary machine. Once everything is meticulously set up, Dabi scoots closer to Keigo and glances up.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.” Keigo hopes it doesn’t sound as breathless to Dabi as it does to him as he then leans down and applies the needle to Keigo’s skin. That initial burst of pain always makes Keigo seize up and Dabi laughs next to him.
“Easy there, pretty bird.” Keigo’s body runs hot. That is the worst thing Dabi does, throwing out casual nicknames like it doesn’t make Keigo just burn inside.
The buzzing noise eventually becomes a soothing background sound, Keigo able to just watch Dabi without having to make excuses to be staring at him.
Dabi looks so intense, his eyes practically glow under the lights, blue like the hottest flames and focused in concentration. His hands, oh his hands, are so steady and strong. If Keigo has imagined them in a number of scenarios, he’s only human. Every stroke of the machine makes his arm flex and relax, the tattoos moving fluidly with every stroke and Keigo finds himself staring, wondering what it would be like to feel that flex and release beneath his lips…
He’s been so far gone for this man for months now and it’s truly pathetic that Keigo can’t work up the courage to say something to him, but everytime he tries, the words just refuse to come out.
He doesn’t know how long it takes for Dabi to complete the linework but, before Keigo knows it, Dabi is wiping his arm down again and nodding for Keigo to take a look.
“You’re really something else,” Keigo gushes, turning his arm this way and that as he looks the piece over.
“I’ve had a bit of practice. Quite a bit just on you alone.” Dabi winks at him and Keigo tries to play it off.
“What can I say? You’re a man who knows his craft.”
The door jingles at the front and Dabi glances up when he hears voices. He’s quick to dismiss it, but when the curtains part, his face lights up.
“Hey, there’s the little shit.”
“Hey, there’s the big shit,” the voice taunts back. A voice that Keigo knows all too well. He spins around in his seat and both the newcomer and Keigo reel at the sight of each other as Dabi takes Shouto’s face in his hands, blowing a raspberry across his cheek.
“Shouto?”
“Takami-sensei?” Shouto is violently slapping Dabi away from him.
“Sensei?” Dabi interjects, looking from Shouto to Keigo and back again. “This is your teacher?”
“How do you know Dabi?”
“Touya’s my older brother.”
“You’re Touya?”
“Legally speaking.”
Shouto glances down at Keigo and does a double take. “You have tattoos?!”
“Well, yes, I don’t– I don’t show them off at work since it’s not exactly looked upon well by some of the faculty–”
“You don’t show off my work?” Dabi threatens to pout, but Shouto rolls his eyes.
“I keep them covered up with my jacket or long sleeves,” Keigo explains.
“That’s a lot of tattoos.” Shouto looks it over, studying each of the pieces in kind from where Keigo’s arm is still laid out on the arm rest. “Are they all Touya?”
“Every single one,” Dabi says, proud.
Shouto looks from Keigo’s arm to Keigo with a raised eyebrow. “You must certainly like his art.”
“W-Well, can you blame me?” Keigo lets out a nervous laugh. There’s a moment where Dabi and Shouto stare at Keigo in kind, the latter opening his mouth to say something as a voice cuts across the silence.
“Dabi, you’ve got a client who’s here to see you, wants to run something by you for his appointment tomorrow.”
Dabi lets out a groan, looking down at the ink and machine before looking back at Keigo.
“You mind if I…?”
“No, no, please. Go right ahead, I can wait.”
“Sounds good. You , don’t be rude.” He points at Shouto as he gets up, jogging across the room before dipping into the lobby.
“I’ve never seen you this flustered,” Shouto says offhandedly, resting his chin on his arms on the back of the chair that Dabi’s been using as he sits down in it. “You must really like my brother.”
“Yeah… I mean– I mean, he’s a really cool artist and a really cool person who–”
Shouto snorts and raises both eyebrows at Keigo.
“Oh, so you have it bad for him.”
“I don’t think that this is something you should be talking to your teacher about.”
Shouto shrugs his shoulders, gripping the back of the chair as he leans back.
“You’re in my home, more or less, so you’re really the odd one out.”
Keigo goes quiet, listening as he hears Dabi animatedly talking to someone out in the lobby.
“I didn’t realize that that was Touya. I know you talk about him quite a bit, I just assumed Touya was your–”
“Father?” Shouto shakes his head. “Touya left our father’s house when he turned eighteen and fought for custody of me and my siblings. Since my other siblings were old enough to make their own decisions in the eyes of the court, he was granted custody for them, but it took awhile to get mine. He was stubborn about it, though, and I was eight when I went to go live with him. He’s raised me pretty much ever since.”
He glances at the curtains where Dabi is on the other side. Dabi tries hard to present himself as aloof and uncaring, but from the way that he interacts with the other members of the staff, to even the way he treats Keigo and other clients, and now Shouto’s story, it’s obvious that there’s more to him. Dabi cares, probably more than most. It makes that fluttery thing that’s taken up residence inside of his chest flap even harder.
“So have you asked him out?”
“Excuse me?”
“Have you asked Touya out?”
“I– I don’t think that that’s any of your business, Shouto.”
“So you haven’t.” Shouto smirks from where he’s seated and Keigo realizes how much like Dabi that Shouto is, similarities he’s only picking up now knowing the relationship. “Are you going to?”
“I don’t think that it’s appropriate for a client to ask out their artist.”
Shouto rolls his eyes in a motion that almost looks like it hurts and Keigo thinks that maybe he’s been spending too much time around Katsuki. Keigo wrinkles his nose and opens to say something before Shouto waves him off.
“You’re too scared to.”
“I did not say that!”
“But you are,” he presses. “He’d probably say yes.”
“Oh? Has he talked to you about me?”
“He has,” he dismisses and Keigo’s left reeling as the boy stands up and makes room for Dabi to come back to his seat.
“Hey, sorry about that, pigeon.” He turns to Shouto, fishing keys out of his pocket. “Dinner’s in the fridge, all you have to do is heat it up.” Dabi sits back down on the stool, starting to pick up his supplies, again.
Keigo looks to Shouto who is positively staring at Keigo and he knows that telltale twitch of his lips, the same look before he gives some kind of smart aleck comment in class.
“See you at home.” He shoulders his bag up higher as he twists the keys around his fingers. “Oh, and Takami-sensei has something to say to you!”
Keigo sits bolt upright, glaring after his student’s retreating back until he vanishes behind the curtain and it’s just him and Dabi alone once again.
“...the hell did you two talk about?”
“N-Nothing. Just– He’s–” Come on, Takami. “He’s just a really good student and I think you should be proud of him.” Reasonable.
“Oh.” Dabi dips the needle in the electric blue ink and then starts to fill in the flames. Keigo lets out a sigh as he sinks back into the chair, letting his eyes fall closed.
“Here I figured it’d be about to crush you have on me.” Keigo is so thankful that Dabi immediately moved the needle off of his skin for the way that he seizes up.
“The– What? Ha, crush? What crush? There’s no crush!” But Dabi doesn’t appear to be ridiculing him or, worse, disgusted by him. He’s just staring, working his lower lip between his teeth.
“No? So you haven’t been coming in here every couple of months because you think I’m pretty?”
“I– I just–” Keigo winces as his voice cracks. He stares down at the floor for a moment before chancing a look at Dabi.
“How long have you known?”
Dabi leans back in, nudging Keigo to lay his arm flat with his pinky before starting back on the piece.
“Since the second tattoo you came in here for. You’re not really subtle. You get this look on your face, it’s kind of dopey. Kind of cute, too.”
“Cute?”
“Yeah. And most people at least have some kind of idea what they want when they come in here, they’re not just the artist’s personal sketchbook. I really tried to get you to talk to me, to at least think it through before you got the ink, but you’re always so adamant.”
“That’s not– I am not! You never try to talk me out of it!”
“I don’t try and talk you out of it, no, but I at least offer a consultation where we can, you know, sit and talk about it. But nooo , you’re so gungho and convinced that this is exactly what you want and you want this piece from the book. Fuck, I was surprised you even let me talk you into a custom piece today. Again, not that I’m complaining, you sit still, you tip well, you bathe, and you’re kind of nice on the eyes.”
The last statement earns a furious flush, but Keigo tries to push past it anyway.
“You’re kind of okay.”
“You spend that much money on a guy who’s ‘kind of okay’? Jesus, pigeon, I’d hate to see what you spend on a guy you actually like.”
Keigo wants to kick out at him, but there’s a needle in his arm.
“Why didn’t you say anything? Tell me off for being creepy?”
“I don’t think it’s creepy.” Dabi pauses to wipe a paper towel along the tattoo, cleaning off some of the ink before starting again. “It’d be creepy if you asked me out, I turned you down, and then you still kept coming back every six weeks to get a tattoo.”
“I just skipped that first step.”
“You haven’t tried that first step.”
“Will it lead to the second step?”
“Guess you’ll have to ask and find out, huh?”
It’s the glitter of his eyes, the crookedness of his grin, and the way that Dabi smooths his thumb across the side of his arm that gives Keigo the first bit of hope he’s felt when it comes to Dabi, fleeting as it might be.
“Do you like coffee?”
“I’m more of a tea person.”
“Would you like to get tea?”
“Doesn’t roll off the tongue quite the same way, you know?”
“Oh my god.” Keigo bursts out laughing. “Okay, hotshot, you think you’re so fucking smooth, you do it.”
Dabi pauses for a second, looking away before glancing back at Keigo.
“There’s a pho place next door to here that’s pretty damn fantastic. You got plans Thursday evening?”
“I could have said that.”
“Yeah, pretty bird, but you didn’t. So, c’mon, you coming or not?”
“It’s cheating to use that nickname.”
“Never told you I played fair.” Dabi winks and Keigo has to look away.
“Yeah, yeah. Alright, sure, Thursday night.”
Dabi treats him to that bright smile again before tucking his head down and going back to filling in the flames on Keigo’s arm. The horrible, fluttery thing in Keigo’s chest has settled down, almost purring in contentment.
Maybe he owes Shouto a word of thanks come the school day Monday.