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“Well, Hawks, any more bright ideas?” Dabi’s raspy voice asks while he casually lights up a cigarette, as if entirely unconcerned with their situation.
Keigo, still tightening his shiny leather belt around Dabi’s thigh so the assassin doesn’t bleed out, wonders once again if his ex-enemy isn’t just a little bit unhinged.
“Let’s see,” he muses, his comms filling with chatter from the police surrounding the warehouse they’re currently holed up in. “We could always surrender?”
Dabi snorts, blowing smoke out through his nose, and Keigo watches as the assassin loosens his silk tie with blood-streaked fingers. “You and I both know our companies would have us offed in some kind of ‘prison brawl’ in less than a week.”
Once upon a time, Keigo might have contested that. But his fingers are slippery with blood that’s not all Dabi’s, and his shoulder throbs from the armor-piercing round that’d taken a chunk out of his deltoid. He still doesn’t know what exactly happened, but somewhere between receiving a tip-off, investigating his own mercenary firm under the guise of attending a gala, getting kidnapped by said firm, and then getting broken out by his greatest rival/best one night stand, Keigo had simply stopped questioning shit.
“Then I’m all outta ideas,” Keigo admits, stripping off his ruined dress jacket and wincing at the pain in his shoulder.
Dabi’s blue eyes watch him intently beneath bangs heavy with sweat. It’s the only testament to his own suffering, which includes knife wounds to the rib and cheek and a bullet hole through his left thigh. All of which he received while breaking Keigo out of his interrogation room, still dressed to the nines from the gala they’d attended.
Felt like getting rescued by John Wick, and he’s definitely beat up enough for the part, Keigo thinks wryly.
“Help me up,” Dabi demands, dragging one combat boot up under him while his bum leg remains stretched out in front of him. He puts out a hand for Keigo to take and arches a dark brow when Keigo just looks at him dumbly.
“We’re outnumbered, Dabi.” His voice is strained, the distant banging on the warehouse doors echoing his sentiment.
“And?” Dabi drawls, studying him. He sucks in another lungful of smoke before letting it trail out between his teeth. Like a blue-eyed dragon, contemplating his golden prize.
Keigo stares at him. At the lazy confidence and the calloused hand offered to him so casually. As if they hadn’t been enemies out to kill each other not twenty-four hours ago. He still doesn’t know why Dabi came to save him. Might never know, if they don’t find a way out soon.
“You have a plan?” he asks, taking Dabi’s proffered hand and hauling him to his feet. Dabi grunts with the movement, unsteady on his injured leg.
“Nah,” Dabi replies. “But I ain’t dying sittin’ on my ass.”
Keigo laughs. “Gonna go out in a blaze of glor—” He breaks off, staring at the bright orange cigarette butt, the cogs of his overtaxed brain finally beginning to turn. He whips around, re-examining their surroundings. “Oh.”
The police had chased them to the docks of Tokyo Bay into one of the big shipping container warehouses. The car they’d been driving had gone into the bay itself, taking with it most of their guns and ammo. Between the two of them, they have Keigo’s dual handguns and Dabi’s rifle. Not enough to take on a full task force by any means.
But as Keigo nods to the labels on the containers nearest to them and Dabi’s face breaks out into a Glasgow grin, the assassins share a look of understanding.
Time to get to work.
-------
They’re ready in less than three minutes, which is a record, probably, if such things exist.
Keigo had recognized the logos on the containers around him. A special events company that worked with the city of Tokyo on festivals. Fireworks, in particular.
“If this works, I owe you a beer,” Dabi says, watching Keigo unfurl the last of the streamers.
“Is that your way of asking me on a date?” Keigo asks lightly, gesturing for Dabi to hand him his cigarette. The assassin passes it over with a snort.
“We survive this? I’ll even pay for dinner.”
Smiling cockily, Keigo steps into Dabi’s space, taking in the warmth he puts off. Adrenaline from the proverbial clock over their heads and the heated look in Dabi’s eyes makes his blood pound.
“Can I get a taste of what’s on the menu?” he asks, remembering the one night they’d clashed without guns involved. The one night that’d been burned into his memory and had nearly tripped him up when he’d seen Dabi again at the gala, winking at him over a glass of champagne. If Keigo hadn’t been so preoccupied with trying to take down his own agency, maybe he and Dabi would’ve ended up meeting again anyway. Maybe the whole getting kidnapped then rescued thing was just a couple of extra steps in their long-standing dance.
(Maybe the inevitability of them was why Dabi had saved him, though Keigo hadn’t taken him for the sentimental type.)
Definitely my type though.
Dabi’s blue eyes are striking in the flashing lights, and when they dip to Keigo’s lips, the mercenary feels a rush that no job has ever given him.
“Your timing is shit,” Dabi breathes, leaning in so close his scarred lips brush feather-light against Keigo’s own.
“My timing is perf—” Keigo’s retort is cut off by Dabi’s kiss, hot, fierce, and tasting of smoke.
Over the cacophony of pleasure clamoring at Keigo’s senses, he hears the police’s battering ram finally break through the doors and he drops the lit cigarette onto the makeshift fuse.
Perfect timing indeed.
----
The kiss breaks, and Touya drops to a knee to cover Hawks with his rifle as the fuse burns toward their fireworks bomb. Already, he can hear the police bellowing to take cover as he lights them up one by one with incendiary rounds until his rifle clicks empty.
“Out!” he snaps, barely looking as Hawks tosses a handgun to him. From the corner of his eye, he can see Hawks hauling at the drainage grate in the center of the room, fingers white and neck corded with strain. A bullet whizzes by Touya’s temple, super-heating the air with its passing, and he turns his attention back toward the police.
In the back of his head, he’s counting down the remaining seconds until everyone in the warehouse dies a fiery death.
Would be a helluva way to go, at least, he thinks. Full of irony, that the assassin called Cremation goes up in flames.
He risks another glance at Hawks and sees that there’s nearly a foot gap in the drain that he’s dragging out of the way with all his strength. His biceps bulge against his white dress shirt as he practically snarls at the thing.
Then again, it’d be a shame to die without seeing where this goes.
“Got it!” Hawks calls, gesturing into the drain, which has a two-foot gap now. Still tight, but—
Agonizing pain rips itself through Touya’s ribcage, low on the left and bone-shattering in strength. He gasps and staggers onto his bad leg, which immediately buckles underneath him.
“Dabi!” He hears Hawks yell, followed by the distinct rapid-fire coming from his handgun. It takes Touya a moment to register that the firing is coming from right next to his ear and that he never hit the ground.
“Come on, stay with me,” Hawks growls into his temple, dragging Touya backward with him. Touya fists his hand into Hawks’ shirt and forces himself to move even with his vision swimming and his blood splattering the rough concrete floor.
They fall into the drain opening, landing in a tangle of limbs and mind-numbing pain just as the world lights up in an earth-shattering explosion.
------
Keigo pants for breath as he once again fights to keep Dabi from bleeding out, concrete dust and smoke making it almost impossible to see the extent of the injury.
“If you seriously die after all this, I’m going to kill you myself,” he hisses, shoving his stripped-off vest into the nasty wound on Dabi’s side. “Seriously, you haven’t even told me why you came to save me today! I was gonna ask you over our dinner. That you’ve apparently decided you can skip out on. How rude is that?”
Dabi’s breath stutters in his chest, and Keigo’s heart trips right alongside it as the reality sinks in that Dabi might just die on him without either of them ever getting to explore this big ‘maybe’ that they’ve created.
“I—” Keigo chokes, before trying again. “I don’t even know your name.”
“... Touya,” a thin voice croaks. Keigo’s head snaps up and he stares into hazy blue eyes.
No way… not Todoroki Touya. It can’t be.
“You’re the one who sent me the information on the Commission,” Keigo realizes, stunned. All that dirty laundry he’d found—all that incriminating information that led to this whole shitstorm. How had Da— Touya known?
“S-sure am,” Touya laughs breathlessly. “Sorry it got you into so much shit.”
Keigo’s fingers tighten into blood-stained fabric, his mind racing with possibilities. Then he dips his head down to whisper in Touya’s ear.
“Make it up to me then. You survive, we get our dinner, and then we finish what you started. Deal?”
Blue eyes burn into his as Touya gives him a bloody grin.
“Deal.”