Work Text:
When Keigo meets Endeavor for the first time, he’s six years old, he hasn’t seen his mom in over a week, and his father has just killed twelve civilians.
“Move, you brat,” his father snaps, aiming a swift slap of his thick black wing to Keigo’s back.
Keigo stumbles and his father just sneers, turning back to the nondescript backpack in front of him to shove more wrapped stacks of cash into the loose interior.
He knows this process by now. Pack up, fly away, and start over. It means that his father has either turned on the villains that he’d been working with or it means that the heroes sniffed out his trail. It’s never happened this early before and never when it’s been only the two of them.
“What about mom?”
The glare his father throws at him is filled with venom. “You think I fucking care about that right now? Now move or I’m leaving without you.”
Keigo moves quickly at that, heart throbbing wetly in his ears.
He doesn’t have toys, but that’s fine because he doesn’t have anyone to play with and he doesn’t have extra clothes because that would take too much time to pack up every time.
All he has is—
“Time’s up, kid,” his father says, grabbing onto his arm as he frantically rustles through the messy sheets on his bed. He lifts Keigo easily, despite the desperate flutter of his tiny wings as he tries to regain balance.
“No,” Keigo cries, tears dripping in fat chunks down his cheeks no matter how hard he tries to hold them in. He didn’t find it, he needs to find it; it’s all he has.
“You pathetic mistake,” his father snarls, shaking him like a rattle. “We don’t have time for your—”
The wall explodes.
Pain erupts behind his eyelids as his back hits the wall, left wing bending excruciatingly. His vision swims, but he’s intimately familiar with the feeling of being thrown, so the vertigo passes quickly.
When Keigo lifts his head, he has to squint at the pillar of light facing off against his father. It takes another second for his gaze to finally clear, and then he gasps.
“Takami, turn yourself in,” Flame Hero Endeavor says, absolutely dwarfing Keigo’s father as they face off in the ruined remains of his bedroom.
Keigo’s father sneers. “Like hell I will.”
Then, he lunges.
Keigo yelps as the gust of air from his father’s wings knocks him against the wall again. It draws Endeavor’s attention, and his face turns steelier as he realizes that they’re not alone.
Keigo shuffles as far away from them as he can, taking refuge behind an overturned bookcase in the corner of the room. His cheeks are still wet, but the shock stopped his tears the moment that he laid eyes on Endeavor’s face.
His hair is the same color of red as Keigo’s wings.
The bookcase shifts from another blast of air, stubbing Keigo’s little toes and making him cry out and stumble.
His hand brushes something soft as he uses it to brace himself and he doesn’t even have to look to know what it is.
His Endeavor plushie.
He falls to his knees in relief, clutching the doll to his chest as he buries his face in its fiery fabric hair.
The smell of ash is thick in the air and it should worry him, he’s been told enough times that fire manipulates the updrafts and makes it hard to fly, but that just means that his father can’t escape. This is it. There’s nowhere for them to go.
The sense of comfort makes him brave enough to peek around the side of the bookcase, just in time to see his father spin tightly to dissipate arcing threads of flame.
“What’s wrong Endeavor?” Keigo’s father mocks. “Too scared to let loose?”
Endeavor’s scowl deepens and he glances towards Keigo for one thrilling second until Keigo realizes that his father is right. Endeavor can’t use his full strength, can’t release any wide plumes of flame to trap or burn. Not without hurting Keigo in the process.
Endeavor doesn’t need his help. He’s a hero and heroes always win. But… what if he gets hurt trying to hold back? What if Keigo’s father tries to hurt someone else passing by outside or—or gets away and then he’ll come back to find Keigo. He always does.
Keigo hasn’t done it often, sometimes his feathers fly wide and he stopped practicing when he accidentally sliced across the arm of his Endeavor plushie and cried about it until his mom had thrown him a needle and thread that he’d stabbed his fingers bloody with trying to fix it. But, that’s Endeavor and Keigo has to help him or he’ll never forgive himself.
He grits his teeth, clutching his plushie to his chest, and pushes.
His father laughs, dodging a plume of flame, so focused on Endeavor that he doesn’t see the feathers shooting out to pin his trousers to the ground until it’s too late.
His father whips around with a manic glare, finding Keigo’s hiding spot with the precision of a predator. “You,” he hisses, teeth bared. He raises a gloved fist and Keigo drops down on instinct even though he’s too far away, wings curling around his hunched form as his body braces for a familiar pain.
He closes his eyes, breath catching in his throat when light flashes behind his closed lids. It’s warm. His wings retract on instinct to the heat and he gasps, looking up in surprise.
The sight that greets him is one that he’s had daydreams about since his fourth birthday when his father hit him for the first time. Endeavor has Keigo’s father’s hands behind his back in a burning fist, a knee to his back subduing him to the ground, and an expression of fierce satisfaction on his face.
He’s everything that Keigo has ever dreamed of.
Endeavor doesn’t move until the police get there, even as Keigo’s father spits with rage and flaps his wings. It had happened so fast that Keigo has a hard time understanding it. This man who he’d feared for so long, taken down in less than ten minutes.
Once he’s handcuffed and escorted to a cop car, another officer spots Keigo huddled in the corner and wraps him in a blanket that cops always seem to have on hand.
The officer kneels in front of him and is asking about where his mother is (“I don’t know.”) and when she’ll come back (“I don’t know.”) when a warm light falls over them.
“You,” Endeavor—the hero Endeavor—says, looking directly at Keigo. “What’s your name?”
Keigo can barely speak, he's so overwhelmed, but this is Endeavor so he has to try. He grips his plushie harder, feeling it squish in his palms. He wants to grab Endeavor, just his leg, maybe, to prove that he’s real, but the flames are too hot and Keigo can’t get any closer. “T-Takami Keigo.”
Endeavor nods. “You did well, Takami Keigo.”
—
So, yeah, obviously a lifelong obsession was born.
Blah blah daddy issues, yadda yadda depressing childhood, we’ve heard it all before folks.
Hawks isn’t going to judge himself about it and he’s too busy for introspection even if he wanted to.
Or, well, maybe his schedule has freed up a bit, he thinks, trying not to itch the bandages lining his temples. The skin on his back pulls tight, reminding him that not only are his spy days over, his hero days are on hiatus too.
Too much time on his hands is quite literally his own personal hell, so he plants himself in Endeavor’s hospital room more often than not. Excluding the initial family reunion, Endeavor’s room is always empty, and Endeavor never tells him to actually get lost, so he stays. His brain can’t wander too much when Endeavor is right in front of him, huge and surly and covered only by a thin scrap of paper.
Mmm.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Hawks reluctantly rips his gaze from Endeavor’s biceps.
“Obviously not,” he quips and then immediately regrets it when Endeavor’s eyes track guiltily over the flat fall of the back of Hawks’ jacket. “I’m with my favorite hero. This is my childhood dream come true. Did you know I got an Endeavor plushie when I was four? I cut it practicing my quirk once and cried until my mom sewed it up for me.”
And god, depressingly, Endeavor just looks more guilty even though he’s generally about as expressive as cement.
“Oh come on, don’t get all soft on me. It’s not like this is your fault. I was a spy, Endeavor,” he says, rolling his eyes at the way Endeavor grimaces. “I would’ve gotten worse than just my wings fried if you hadn’t gathered an army just like I wanted you to.”
And oh, how sexy that was. Endeavor—big, strong, and smart. Figured out Hawks’ code in less than a week and hadn’t let a single word of it slip to the wrong people. Hawks’ taste in men: impeccable.
“Besides,” Hawks continues. “Dabi had a grudge against me anyway. I was too cute, too fun, too charming. He even knew my name.” The words sneak out before his brain can catch up, but at least he had sounded nonchalant even though thinking about it still makes his palms sweat in something way too close to fear.
No, this is exactly what he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about—
“I had mentioned it. Back when Touya was a child.”
Hawks blinks.
It takes him half a second too long to remember who Touya is. He still can’t connect the name to that same snarling stapled face. And here Endeavor is, saying his name like Dabi never existed. As if he can really look at that monster and only see his son.
“Before his quirk manifested, he often asked about my rescues,” Endeavor explains, looking uncomfortable. “Your quirk is… very memorable. And Touya was always very intelligent. I’m not surprised that he remembered it.”
Hawks can’t help the delighted shiver that flutters the sad little stubs of his featherless wings, but if Endeavor notices, he doesn’t comment. Then again, he’s having a hard time meeting Hawks’ eyes.
He remembers.
He remembers.
He wonders how long it took. Did Endeavor recognize him right away? On stage, surrounded by other heroes and broadcast on live tv? Or was it later? Did it take him weeks of shared acquaintance until the memory rose from the back of his mind?
Hawks’ heart beats so hard against his chest that he wouldn’t be surprised if Endeavor could hear it.
“You knew this whole time?”
His voice, no matter how hard he tries to stop it, sounds awed.
If anything, Endeavor looks even more uncomfortable. He shifts on the bed, wincing as the motion pulls at his bandages. “I was under the impression that you don’t prefer it.” He clears his throat and finally meets his eyes. “If I was wrong, I apologize.”
“I don’t,” Hawks admits, hating the idea of Endeavor feeling guilty more than he hates the idea of being honest.
He hasn’t thought of himself with that name in over a decade and even still, it leaves a sour taste in the back of his throat.
Takami Keigo was a quiet, cowardly little kid who sobbed for other people to save him until he finally did one goddamn thing for someone else. And don’t even get him started on the joke that is having a wing quirk with the family name Takami.
At least with a hero name, people expect him to be a cliché.
And maybe, just maybe, the things that he has done in the name of justice lately have felt too much like the things that he’s spent his life running from.
Would Takami Keigo have killed Twice? Did Takami Keigo kill Twice?
Is the murderer in him nature or nurture?
“Maybe I should,” he muses.
Ugh, gross.
This is why he doesn’t like having too much time on his hands. Freud would have a fucking field day with Hawks’ head.
“Hawks.”
He startles.
Right. Endeavor’s hospital room. Where Endeavor has been patiently waiting, hands clasped in his lap.
“You’re aware that I… have much to atone for with my family,” Endeavor says. “I am still the man I was. I will never want less than the best, and now I am selfishly wanting more than what I deserve, but your belief in me makes me understand which parts of me I should give notice to.”
Hawks can barely breathe.
“I have respect as the hero Endeavor. I will strive to earn respect as the man, Todoroki Enji.”
Oh, Hawks could fall to his knees for this man. He nearly does, as Endeavor rests a hand on Hawks’ shoulder and raises his crystal eyes.
“You are good, Hawks. And you have my respect as both a hero and a man.”
Hawks is proud of the growth. Self-flagellation may be Endeavor’s favorite pastime, but even he knows not to say for what my judgment is worth to someone who so openly worships the ground that he walks on.
The amount of heat those words cause is wildly inappropriate, but wildly inappropriate is Hawks’ modus operandi.
His shoulders ache in phantom pain as he tries to shake his nonexistent wings. He plasters on a smile. He straightens from the puddle of goo that he’d been turning into and Endeavor can’t see the grin through the oxygen mask on Hawks’ face, but his hand retracts at the same time that Hawks does.
“Does that mean I can call you Enji?”
He expects Endeavor to scowl, but he just maintains steady, steely eye contact that makes Hawks’ toes curl.
“When that is how you think of me, yes.” His jaw is set, shoulders straight, and gaze filled with everything left unsaid. “And when you decide which name you prefer, I will use that.”
For the first time in his life, Hawks is speechless.