Work Text:
1)
A building complex is in flames after a villain attack. Heroes are called in from all over the city to help in the rescue mission and evacuate the civilians that are stuck in the fire. Unsurprisingly for a hero specialised in speed, despite the building not being in his usual territory, Hawks is one of the first to arrive on the scene. And despite his age, with his position in the pro hero charts, it’s likewise not surprising that other heroes and emergency workers quickly start looking at him for the coordination of the rescue effort.
With his feathers, which are quick as a flash, can work independently of each other and the main body, and surprisingly strong, Hawks has already evacuated several of the lower floors in less than a minute on his own.
Then, however, his speed dies down. Amid the deafening roaring of the fire and drenched in sweat from the flames despite keeping a distance to them, he, along with several other heroes in the evacuation effort, looks up at the building and the most affected floors unmoving, calculating.
There’s a deep frown in Hawks’ brow. “I can still enter the building, my feathers are quick enough to evade the fire for a while longer. But if I carry the evacuees all the way to the ground, that’ll promptly change. Isn’t there anyone who…?”
There isn’t. Most of the rescue heroes present are able to transport a high number of people at once, but that makes them slow. None are able to keep up with Hawks’ speed.
“Whatever. No time to waste!” With that, Hawks raises higher into the air.
He sends his feathers into a floor with severe production of smoke. Hawks pensively watches the building; other heroes, who have started building a rescue net on the ground, watch him for clues on how to proceed.
Then his head suddenly turns around sharply, and a large batch of his feathers detaches and fans out.
It’s followed by a call of “I’m going in!” and Hawks diving through the closest window into the floor that’s packed full of smoke. His fellow heroes can’t spare the energy to worry over him, despite the brashness of his actions, and ready themselves for receiving more rescued civilians.
Before they can do so, however, a layer of clouds develops above their heads, stretching further and further along the side of the building.
Several of Hawks’ feathers return from the inside, carrying victims. Once outside, however, they simply drop them before disappearing again to fetch more people. The cloud cover catches everyone, cushioning their fall.
“Sorry I’m late!” A voice calls from somewhere beyond the clouds.
Carrying an elder, fragile woman out of the building in his arms and lowering her carefully onto the clouds instead of dropping her, Hawks responds, “You do have a problem with timing sometimes, but your clouds are always there when it matters.”
“Heh, I feel like that’s an extreme compliment when coming from a hero who is known for his great speed!”
With this new support on the scene, the rest of the evacuation proceeds swiftly and smoothly. Hawks’ feathers swoop in and out of the building under his watchful eye, unless he himself joins them on occasion, probably when there are large obstructions in the way he has to take care of. The other hero, who a number of his fellow pros have identified as the hero Loud Cloud, meanwhile, catches all the victims the feathers drop once out of the building with ease, reassures them that they are safe, and periodically lowers parts of his cloud cover to the ground where other heroes and paramedics can take over checking them for injuries.
It takes perhaps one or two minutes at most until Hawks re-emerges from the last remaining floor and gives the all-clear that everyone has been evacuated.
In the aftermath of the rescue mission though, instead of speeding off towards the next operation, he can be seen hanging around in the vicinity of Loud Cloud.
“How did you end up getting this injury? You didn’t even make contact with the building at all!”
“Haha, uh, well, you know… When the call for aid in this rescue effort came in, I might have, in my haste to get to the scene, taken the shortcut of jumping out of a window… and whacked my head against the window frame?”
“Why am I not even surprised anymore… Luckily there are enough paramedics here to get the cut on your forehead treated, too.”
“Uh, perhaps we could rather not do this? Because in my experience paramedics are quick to insist you get checked out at the hospital, even though you totally feel fine! And Shouta and Hizashi are always a bit overprotective when it comes to me having head injuries…”
“Geez, I wonder why that might be.”
Mercilessly, Hawks waves one of the paramedics over and steers Loud Cloud into their care.
2)
Being assigned as the link between the Hero Public Safety Commission and the pro hero Hawks is both a blessing and a curse.
Of course maintaining relations to a renowned pro hero such as Hawks, who has risen to be among the Top Ten at lightning speed, is a great honour. He is an essential part in brining harmony and feelings of secureness to society. And he is handsome to boot. Relaying new information from the HPSC to him, as one of the Top Ten, is decidedly more fun than confronting the umpteenth hero who has ceased to qualify for keeping his licence or has been negligent with submitting their paperwork in order.
However, jokes about Hawks being “flighty”, initially brought on due to his quirk, have some kernel of truth beyond that. While he is never disregarding information by the HPSC or not taking a job assigned to him seriously, he is always on the go. Thus, it can be quite frustrating to attempt to get a hold of him – and even if one has successfully tracked him down, it is often not for long.
Like in the current moment. Akari is not even halfway finished going through the packet of paperwork she is supposed to hand over to Hawks when she catches his feathers ruffling in her periphery. From experience, she knows that this means that he isn’t going to stay around for much longer.
“Wait!” she launches into protests. “We still have to go through the new jurisdiction implications and—“
“Sorry, sorry,” Hawks smoothly interrupts her, not really sounding sorry at all, while rustling in the pockets of his pants, “but could you just put the documents on my desk for now? I’ll review it ASAP, promise.” He pulls out a pair of in-ear headphones. “But I’m going to be busy for a bit now.”
“But—“
“Nope, sorry, no can do.” He shakes his head. “A new episode of Present Mic’s late-night podcast is going to air in a minute and I wouldn’t want to miss it.” The headphones are inserted in his ears, then his gaze actually focuses on Akari once more – something it hasn’t been doing for the last five minutes if not longer – and he beams at her. “You should give it a try, too. Mic talks about aspects of the hero world that are normally not talked about in the media. His episodes are always backed by thorough research, take different perspectives into account, are presented in such a way that civilian laymen as well as we, intimately familiar with the world of hero work, can follow along without getting bored… I really can’t recommend it enough!”
With that, he turns around, throwing just a quick wave over his shoulder, and walks off, likely to the next window.
Akari can only sigh at yet another display of Hawks’ eccentricity. Which hero that isn’t even anywhere near the top of the hero charts – and her work demands she’s at least aware of the Top Thousand, so she knows what she’s talking about – would ever waste time with producing a podcast? It clearly means they don’t focus enough on doing their work and keeping the streets safe. And then Hawks even supports them by listening to their prattle.
She sighs once again, because if she reports this incident, talking to Hawks about how he spends his valuable free time – or apparently even work hours – will be next on her to-do list, and she is not looking forward to that at all.
3)
In spite of Hawks’ status as a “free spirit” among the heroes and most of his arrests stemming from impromptu arrests of villains encountered during his patrols, his help is also requested for a number of pre-planned operations instigated by the police force or other hero agencies.
Most of the officers on the force are quite a couple of years older than he is and it shouldn’t sit well with them to leave the planning of an operation in the hands of a hero fledgling. However, Hawks knows how to play the “I’m one of the top heroes”-card very well when he wants to and never makes the mistake of making any claims or promises if there’s a chance he cannot deliver on them.
So in the current case, a batch of officers stand around a table in the police station’s conference room, watching raptly and in silence as the young hero, after skimming the case files in a flash, makes comments regarding the villain group’s habits, draws connections, and proposes plans for bursting their operation once and for all.
Eventually, Hawks concludes his argumentations and looks around at the people gathered in the room. “Any further questions?” he asks, jovially but still emitting an aura of authority.
For a few seconds, everybody remains silent. Then one of the officers raises his hand and speaks up, “Yes, please excuse me, Hawks…”
“Of course, out with it! Nothing asked, nothing gained.”
“Thank you. Um…” The officer raises the list of pro heroes Hawks requests being added to the mission’s team. “On this list here, you named a hero called…” He squints. “’Eraserhead.’ If I read that correctly…” He looks back up at Hawks expectantly.
“Yes?” Hawks tilts his head to the side in question.
“Oh, uh,” the officer flounders, “I was just wondering whether I read that name correctly, because I have never before heard of a hero with that name – and the data base update with this year’s newly licensed heroes is still quite a while away. But, I guess, if I did read it correctly… um…”
“Yep, yep, you did. I want to appoint Eraserhead as a central part to this mission. His quirk and his combat experience will surely be a huge factor in the success of the operation and everything going smoothly,” Hawks accentuates without batting an eyelash.
Silence remains at the conference table, although several attendees are looking left or right as if trying to mutely ask their neighbours the question that is also still on their minds, Hawks’ response notwithstanding.
“Actually, make submitting the request for assistance to him a top priority. Eraser’s quite busy after all, and if he declines because he’s already otherwise occupied, we’ll have to come up with a back-up plan.”
“Of course, Hawks, sir, of course,” the officer is quick to say.
After all other questions have been answered and people start packing their things to move on, he turns to his neighbour and asks in a whisper, “Have you heard about this hero before?”
“No, never,” is the reply. “I hope Hawks isn’t just trying to recruit some old school intern or sidekick who came to nothing but he still has some sentimental—“
“I assure you,” Hawks says, loudly, on his way past them towards the door, “that you will find him – and his impressive track record – quite easily if you enter his Hero ID or name into the database.”
The officers startle and stammer that they will naturally get to the task right away, but Hawks is already out of the door.
(Two days later, they are convinced anew that there has to be some mistake. Waiting in front of the door to the conference room is a man who does possess a pro hero license that’s linked to the entry of the pro hero Eraserhead. But the man in question does not look like a hero at all. Rather like some homeless person that randomly wandered inside off of the streets.
Still, before the officers can decide whether to remove him from the premise, a cheerful, “Yo, Eraser! I see you could make it after all, despite your earlier protests!” coming from none other than the number three hero himself breaks the staredown they have involuntarily found themselves in.
Eraserhead lifts his piercing gaze and stares at Hawks instead, who, however, does not react at all. “Hawks,” he greets. “I hope this’ll be worth the time wasted coming all the way to the station and waiting for the briefing to start.”
“I’m sure it’ll be, Eraser,” Hawks replies, still with a cheerful grin on the face, before grabbing the other hero by the shoulders and expertly steering him towards the door and inside.
The officers watch as some of his feathers pick up the yellow sleeping bag in which the hero has slept in front of the conference room for who knows how long and carry it along. They can’t help but admire Hawks in his brashness.)
+1)
The pro hero Hawks has requested a day off.
No patrols, not being on-call for regular-sized villain attacks. Nothing short of a city-wide catastrophe would make him take on a hero mission that day.
It’s something he has never done before.
Whoever leaked that information would surely be in for it, because reporters and paparazzi alike try to catch him in front of his agency before he starts his free day as a result. Despite his speed, reporters can be just as fast when smelling a scoop that might bring them a pretty penny. Before Hawks can simply fly off, his path is thoroughly blocked in every possible direction by microphones upon microphones. Reporters yell all over each other to get him to answer their questions, even though the content of the questions everyone asks is basically identical
What is it that’s so important in his life that Hawks would request the first known day off ever in his career?
(Some reporters already supply their conjectures within their questions, only amplifying the chaos that way.)
“Alright, everyone, alright.” Hawks, hovering a metre or two above the ground in the air, although that still doesn’t deter most of the microphones from attempting to reach him, eventually raises his voice enough that he can make himself heard. Once he has succeeded in that, he proposes, “If you’re all so eager to know what I’m up to on my day off, why don’t you all come along with me?”
A stunned silence follows this suggestion.
One brave reporter dares to ask, “So your pastime is not a secret?”
“Weeeeell,” Hawks tilts his head and strokes his chin contemplatively, “technically it is, I guess? But I don’t mind sharing it with all of you. So,” he makes an expansive, inviting gesture as he rises further into the air, “whoever wants to come along, feel free to do so! We’re headed for Naruhata, for your information. Once there, I’ll leave clues for you to follow so you can reach the exact place I’m headed for. See you later then!”
And with that, he takes off, leaving the reporters to scramble after him, packing their equipment and conversing with their managements about how to reach Naruhata as quickly as possible.
The ’clues’ Hawks has been talking about turn out to be detached feathers, strewn throughout the labyrinth of streets but reliably pointing the reporter groups in the right directions. Eventually, the first ones reach the destination.
Not that the building is particularly hard to miss. It’s not fancy, but it stands out through its peculiarly bright and mismatched colour scheme. As one of the feathers is left on the doorhandle, it doesn’t take long until a couple of brave souls take the first step and try to push themselves and their filming equipment through the small entrance door.
The high-pitched sound of a doorbell ringing is triggered through these motions, and it doesn’t stop over the course of the next few minutes as more and more people attempt to squeeze inside, regardless of the fact that there’s not enough space for everyone, as the interior of the building is rather on the small side and it is already occupied by quite a number of residents.
Mostly, the arriving reporters are greeted by several pairs of cat eyes staring at them from several places – the floor, the tables, windowsills, cat towers, ceiling beams, …
Then, however, several pairs of human eyes – coming from kids and teens gathered around a billiard table in the middle of the room, sitting in beanbag chairs next to book shelves, crouching on the floor weaving feathered toys back and forth for the cats, … – join in on the confused and surprised staring, too.
The reporters are so blindsided by the unexpected attention on them that it takes a few moments until the first one manages to locate Hawks’ figure among all of the occupants.
He is leaning against the bar in the back of the room next to the only two adults who have already been inside the whole time as well.
“Ah, the first ones have arrived!” one of them declares. Then he looks over his shoulder and all the way through the building’s door that is constantly thrusted back and forth between the masses that still want to stream inside and does a double take. “Woah! As the top three hero, you sure have pull.”
“Something good has to come out of it, doesn’t it?” Hawks replies gleefully. He turns towards the other man. “I know you want nothing more than to greet and charm them, but maybe it’d be better to leave the explanation to me?”
“Fiiiiine,” comes the – clearly reluctant – agreement.
“Though,” Hawks, too, looks over at the crowd now, which has started clamouring again, “you’re so good at crowd control, I’ll leave calling them to attention to you.”
“You just want to use me as your private megaphone.”
“You got it.”
Despite that exchange of words, the excited grin on the man’s face doesn’t waver. “Alright. Then let’s get this party started, huh?” With that, he takes a deep breath of air, before shouting a loud “HEEEEEEELLOOOOOOO!” that immediately shuts the frantic reporters up and attracts everyone’s attention. “Thank you all for coming to us on this very special day, dear listeners – and watchers!” He waves into the nearest camera that is trained on him now.
“Is that supposed to be Present Mic, the Voice Hero?” someone whispers within the crowd. “Far from a household name, he’s mostly called in for crowd control in big disaster relief scenarios…”
“The one next to him is Loud Cloud!” someone else points out. “He’s a rescue hero, I recognise him from a recent incident.”
“Right, right.” Hawks’s raised voice and the way he claps his hands snappily shuts everybody up once more. “Thank you all for coming here, into KiKi!”
“’Kids and Kittens’!” Loud Cloud helpfully supplies at the confused expressions. “The place to go for strays no matter whether they have two or four legs. Though we also accept those with three or five ones!”
“Yeah,” Hawks takes the helm again. “It is basically a youth center and rescue center for cats in one! Founded on the initiative of the pro heroes Loud Cloud, Present Mic and Eraserhead. And despite not being that old yet, recent statistics by the police already reveal a measurable difference in crime rates and the age of the offenders using their quirks to commit crime in this neighbourhood between now and before. They do truly commendable work.”
The audience hums and awes appropriately. Some microphones and cameras are actually steered away from Hawks in order to show the place.
“Today is even their wedding anniversary, and you can still find them here, taking care of the kids and teens and cats,” Hawks continues his gushing. “They really pour their whole hearts and souls into this. I couldn’t just not come and celebrate with them at least a little bit. And bring a gift along, however small – because as you can guess, all the cat and human food and toys to keep the little minds occupied can’t just appear out of thin air.”
“You really went all out for us, huh?” Oboro whispers once it has become clear that Keigo has finished his little speech and the reporters have resumed negotiating with their bosses how to best incorporate the footage they took into their stations’ programs. “Even beating Hizashi at his own game.”
“Hey! I vehemently protest that claim!” Hizashi interjects, facing Oboro with an exaggerated pout on his face and quickly ducking when Oboro moves to kiss it away.
“As I said earlier,” Keigo says, amusement from the display still in his voice, “all that popularity and being constantly haunted by cameras and microphones has to be good for something. Besides, the job’s not done yet. Now’s your chance to put your charisma to test.” He points at the crowd of reporters with a predatory smirk. “Let’s find out how many fundraisers we can talk them into creating, shall we?”
Oboro and Hizashi laugh. “If you had told me how cunning the small and shy boy who didn’t even know what a cat purring sounds like would turn out, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Oboro comments and claps Keigo on the back. “Let’s stop wasting daylight and the good mood of the reporters eager for a heartwrenching story then.”
With that, the two of them join the fray, leaving Keigo to his task of finishing the soft drink he’s gotten from the bar earlier.
“You really couldn’t have attracted any more of these media vultures, could you?” a grumpy voice asks from behind him.
“Hmmm,” Keigo tilts his head and takes a pointedly long and loud slurp from his drink. “I probably could have if I had posted about my little excursion on social media. Sorry, shall I make good for that now?” He pulls out his phone and throws a winning smile paired with a raised eyebrow over his shoulder at the person who has approached him.
“Save your breath for jokes that are actually funny,” Shouta grunts. In one of his arms, he carries a kitten that tries to bat at strands of his hair. His other arm holds on to the hand of a little kid that, judging by its red-rimmed eyes, seems close to a panic attack, likely from the number of people who have suddenly filled the room. “Or help with the evacuation effort. Of those who are not that happy having heaps upon heaps of media people suddenly throwing themselves at them.”
“Aww, I would do that,” Keigo says, suddenly serious, “but I think that would only attract unwanted attention to those evacuees, right?” He gives the kid an encouraging smile that it returns shakily. “I think I should rather join your husbands and the other kids on the front and make myself useful there. Or accept that I owe a great debt to this establishment now and fly over the second I hear of a villain attack against it.” He looks up and Shouta directly into the eyes. “You would tell me, right? If there happened to be sightings of a villain nearby. Or he even dared visiting this fine place.”
Now it’s Shouta who raises an eyebrow at him. “Don’t you think three pro heroes should be able to deal with a single villain?”
“Well,” Keigo smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, “perhaps I’m not entirely convinced that they have legit qualifications. Who knows, maybe they just thought it’d be totally cool to dress up as heroes to excite small, impressionable children?”
“In that case, they wouldn’t deserve any better,” Shouta responds dryly. Then he transfers the kitten from his arm into his scarf and uses the freed hand to give Keigo a pat on the shoulder. “Relax. I’m not one for platitudes, but I do believe things’ll be fine. You’ll have him back before you know it.”
+1
Touya sits at the bar. Though hunched over on a barstool, his face buried in his arms that rest on the counter is a more fitting description. He needs to raise his head and square his shoulders. Dabi is a fierce villain, and certainly always needs to watch his back—
No.
No, he isn’t Dabi, not anymore, not now.
He is Touya right now.
And he is safe.
He doesn’t need to worry about someone attacking him from behind. He’s alone in the bar, aside from one other person on the far end of the counter and the bartender, both of which he can easily keep track of out of his periphery.
And they pose no threat. Touya knows that.
Nevertheless, he startles when a glass is suddenly positioned in front of him. Dabi nearly forms a fireball in his palm and sets the whole counter in flames. But Touya isn’t Dabi right now. Plus he would receive a stern talking-to if he did that. And he isn’t particularly eager for his first transaction after receiving the paycheck for his mission to be paying damages for a bar counter.
Because he is Touya, a pro hero, just returned from an undercover mission that has lasted over a year. Not Dabi. Not a villain.
Hopefully repeating that over and over would get it to stick, just as his identity as Dabi has before with enough repetition and affirmation.
“You good, buddy?” The voice of the bartender draws him back to reality. The glass in front of him is insistently pushed closer to him.
Touya glances at it and grimaces when he sees that it’s just water. “The hell?” he asks, gesturing to it.
The bartender shrugs. “Could’ve made you something stronger, but honestly, with the way you look like you’ll fall apart any moment, I didn’t want to risk it.”
“Whatever, give me something proper to drink,” Touya demands. “Like—“ His mind races, trying to come up with something. Dabi would’ve had the hardest of liquors straight from the bottle, but he isn’t Dabi, so he yearns for a stark contrast. The first option that comes to mind is—“Some sweet cocktail you have or whatever.”
The bartender smiles and nods at his request. Before he can say anything else though, the door opens, another possible patron entering. His heavy, staggering steps and slurred speech immediately draw attention to him.
“Yo, pal!” he hails the bartender before the door could even snap shut behind him. “Y-Your strongest—“ He hiccups. “B-Booze. N’ make it quick!”
Touya can’t help but snort. “That has to be the worst acting I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Why are you even acting, the bar is empty.” He gestured around. And under his breath, he can’t help adding a teasing, “Unsurprisingly.”
“Hey!” The bartender complains over his shoulder while mixing a drink.
The whole demeanor of the person who entered changes in an instant. His pose rightens, his gaze is sharp when he turns towards Touya, and he starts to tame the long, blonde strands of hair that were wildly tousled, gathering them together and putting them into an easy bum at the back of his head.
“Considering that my quirk is my voice, not X-ray vision, I can’t very well look through a wall and confirm beforehand, can? We’re a dingy hole in the wall, attracting many people with rather untoward motives. Burnt-out managers, vigilantes, villains… It never hurts to be cautious and prepared before entering.” He ambles over to the bar, glancing at the other patron sat at the far end of it. “Hey, Shouta, why’re you hiding away in the corner like that? Come here, sit, sit!” He pats the stool next the one he chose.
With a grunt, Shouta gets up and stumbles over at Hizashi’s call, only to slump down again in the indicated seat. His behaviour, Touya knows, is in no way play-pretend. He hasn’t sat in this bar long enough to follow it himself, but it appears that Shouta has a large lead on them all in terms of drunkenness.
The cocktail he had ordered being placed in front of him on the counter draws his attention away from his company. He takes a cautious sip through the straw and almost spits it back out, only swallowing the drink with great effort.
“That you’re not out of business with such bartender skills is truly a miracle.” He doesn’t bother hiding his disgust.
“Excuse me, I learned only from the best!” Oboro protests. “Learning how to mix drinks from Kayama involved blood, sweat and tears – all of them literally, I’ll have you know – but I ended up getting top marks!”
Hizashi cackles, Oboro defends himself against him as a result, and Shouta eventually lifts his head out of the glass that he has still been nursing and grouses in a foul mood, “Be quiet and let him,” he gestures towards Touya, “sit here in peace! He was deep undercover, it takes some time to properly come back from that, mentally. And your silly squabbles are surely not helping there!”
Contritely, the others calm down and apologize, and for several moments, the four of them end up just sitting together in amiable silence.
Touya appreciates the sentiment behind Shouta’s intervention. It has been unnecessary, however, although he doesn’t have the heart to tell him so. This bar is not just a good place for him to physically revert back from Dabi to Touya because, as Hizashi has said, even villains come here for a drink on occasion, which makes it easy to excuse Dabi entering the building. But the familiar presence of the others also helps him recalibrating mentally and recalling the life he is going to get back to after this mission.
Not that he’d ever admit so out loud.
Surprisingly – though not that surprisingly, if he has been drinking – Shouta seems to have more to say, and thus it is him who ends up interrupting the silence. He empties the rest of his glass in one go, then leans over and examines Touya sternly.
Then he proclaims, “Listen, kid. It’s very hard work that you’re doing. So if there’s anything we can do—“ He glances around quickly, then seems to conjure up a pen from one of the pockets of his utility belt, which he uses to scribble something on his drip mat. “Here.”
He slides the drip mat over the counter in Touya’s direction. With raised eyebrows, Touya receives it and looks at the phone number written there.
“Thanks a bunch, but I’m not interested in older men—“ He starts to joke coyly, only to be interrupted.
“If there’s anything,” Shouta repeats, “call here. We’ll fly over to wherever you’re at – even quicker than Hawks’ll be able to do.”
“Okaaaay.” Hizashi tries to hide his snickering, unsuccessfully, as he pushes Shouta’s glass in Oboro’s direction. “Seems like no refills for Shou anymore, he’s definitely had enough to drink if he’s reached the ‘getting sentimental and sappy’ level already.”
Oboro, meanwhile, ignores the glass, instead looking at Shouta with a pout on his face. “You’re throwing your number around here, and yet I never got it from you but had to sponge it out of Hizashi. Not fair, Shouta!”
Shouta looks up from where he wrangles Hizashi who does not want him to reach for his glass again and glares. “’m not throwing any numbers around. And especially not at flirts like you. I’ll have you know that I’m happily married to my husbands, and nothing’s going to change that.”
“Hey!”
“Def-Definitely enough to drink!”
Touya pockets the drip mat, even as he doesn’t know whether to be endeared or weirded out by the whole scene taking place in front of him.
Before he can contemplate whether to dare taking another sip from his drink or not, Hizashi waves at him to get his attention. “Here, I have a number that you’re probably more interested in.”
Touya’s heart skips a beat in his chest. “Is this--?”
“A little bird told me to get this to you at the earliest possible convenience,” Hizashi says with a wink.
He pulls a paper out of his pocket, and despite it being just a little snippet, he somehow attempts to form it into an airplane. Before Touya can lean over to take it from him, Oboro snatches it out of Hizashi’s grasp and lets it fly through the air. Likely more due to the force behind the throw than due to the actual – absent – aerodynamic properties of the snippet, it sails all the way to the end of the counter, almost reaching the door.
Touya looks on very, very unimpressed.
He jumps from the barstool to collect the paper, and because he is nearly at the door anyway, he goes the last few steps and leaves the bar, his private phone, which he has received together with his actual ID, clothes of his and hair dye remover from Oboro earlier, already in his hand before he is even out of the exit. The others are still too occupied in their weird flirting to notice, but they will be able to piece together where he went.
The phone number he’s been given is new, which isn’t surprising considering how often even reinforced phones can end up being crushed on accident in the line of hero work. Touya easily types it into his contacts and saves it, then pulls up the still empty message history.
Now, what do you write your significant other when coming back from a year-long deep, no-contact undercover mission?
After a way too long time of loitering in front of the bar and letting the cold wind that’s blowing tug on his clothes – if he were Dabi now, that would suck, Dabi always wears billowing clothes – no, whatever Dabi does or doesn’t do is not relevant in that moment – He settles on sending a simple, “Hi, Kei.” A second later, he also sends a flame-emoji so there’s a lesser chance of Keigo thinking that a creepy stalker has somehow acquired his phone number.
By the enthusiastic reply of “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! where u at rn babe????!??”, he shouldn’t have worried.
“At the 3 idiots’ bar,” he responds. Then he pockets his phone again and waits. He knows already that questions about one’s location from Keigo mean that he’ll show up sooner or later, and usually sooner.
Indeed, after what can only be a few minutes, he manages to catch the slightest swish of feathers over the wind, likely a deliberate signal sent by Keigo, and it’s the only warning he gets before he’s swept up into the air and twirled around enthusiastically.
Fortunately, Keigo sets him down before there’s a chance of him getting sick from the motions, but he isn’t given much time to recover, because as soon as his feet hit the ground, he’s shoved against the wall behind him and kissed silly.
It takes quite some time for both of them to regain their breaths after separating from each other.
Still, Keigo is the first one who ends up speaking. “I can’t believe your mission ended and you haven’t given me even a hint about it in advance.” He pouts.
“It was a no-contact-until-the-day-it’s-over one, when and how should I have given you a hint?” Touya argues. “Besides, if you kept more up to date with inter-villain-gang-feuds and the like, you might have heard from me sooner. I can’t believe I’ve literally set myself on fire to intimidate goons who made my—Dabi’s boss unhappy, and yet you never even attempted to put a stop to it!”
“I can’t believe I was never sent out to confront Dabi either,” Keigo insists, still pouting. “Only after the villain groups you had already taken apart, doing the dirty cleanup. So boring.”
The wind continues blowing through the streets and Keigo tugs the lapels of Touya’s jacket closer together. His wings also move so they’re encircling the two of them on both sides and shield them from the wind.
“We should get somewhere inside so you don’t freeze to death,” he says softly.
Even though Touya’s one of the last people who need to worry about protection from the cold. He can’t find it in himself to be anything but charmed at Keigo’s action though, no matter how nonsensical they are.
Ugh, apparently absence really makes the heart grow fonder.
Keigo’s eyes drift away from his face to something over his shoulder, and Touya suspects that he’s looking at the bar they’re huddled against. Even though it is in a rundown part of town and supposed to be a meeting point for sleazy people, the light shining through the windows makes it look surprisingly homely. He’d already noticed as much while waiting for Keigo’s arrival.
“We could join those three again. I’m sure they won’t mind.”
Touya hums vaguely. Exhaustion suddenly hits him like a brick wall. He was still too keyed up from his mission and everything before, but now that he’s safe in Keigo’s arms, his body seems to think that it’s allowed to process the tiredness. “They’d be delighted. ‘nd it’d be nice,” he mumbles. “Though I also miss our home and our bed.”
“Yeah, going home would be nice as well,” Keigo agrees. “Alright,” his gaze returns to Touya, full to the brim with fondness, and it takes every bit of restraint Touya can muster to not kiss him again immediately but wait for him to finish what he wants to say first,
“You decide.”