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Keigo knew what it was like to be a failure. Knew it intimately, despite his astronomical rise to the top charts and his record-breaking snagging of the number three hero spot. He had failed many times, over the years. Failed to fly fast enough, failed to hit his targets, failed to save that civilian, failed to stop that villain. Failed to keep his fingers from stress gripping, failed to stop small, instinctive chirps from escaping his traitorous mouth, failed to keep all his instincts, both quirk-related and not, from clawing their way out of their carefully sealed boxes and out into the open.
He knew, just as intimately, the price of being a failure. The bitter disappointment, the determination to do better, the overwhelming guilt and the righteous anger.
The bleeding remains of talons cut too short in a macabre caricature of human fingernails, the purple and green bruises on fingers nearly broken from being forcibly opened. The chafed rawness of tender skin from being muzzled for days. The burning pinpoints down his wings, where feathers had been over-plucked methodically, but without care.
The price of failure, the price of being a failure, Keigo knew it well.
His back stung and itched as the rough fabric of his hero uniform tugged and scraped against the welts. The punishment for the Stain debacle had been a whipping, one of the most severe punishments that his handler would authorize while Keigo was on active duty. Keigo had born it without pause, as he had been long trained to do, and he bore it stoically now as the wind whipped against him and his wings beat a brutal pace through the sky.
He had deserved it. He had deserved worse, even. He had failed to find Stain – it did not matter, to him or the Commission, that Hosu had been pure chaos, not when three children had succeeded where he had not. He had failed to be the one to apprehend Stain – had come too late to do more than secure the half-dead husk that had once been the Hero Killer. He had failed to keep his temper in check at the hospital, drawing the attention of the police chief. He had failed to neutralize Eraserhead and his suspicions, bringing the wrathful eye of UA upon the Commission.
He had failed, even, to curb his instincts – those fucking blankets, Keigo couldn’t even say what he had been thinking, to act so foolishly.
And, most shamefully for him, he had failed to protect Midoriya.
Sweet, eager, nervous Midoriya, who had deserved far more than Keigo and that sham of an internship.
The Commission had wanted to assess the boy and Keigo could see why – the boy was nothing except a walking contradiction of every single conception of herowork the Commission had been expounding for literal decades, long before Midoriya or even Keigo had been born. He was a threat to the status quo, unless the Commission could bring him into the fold.
Keigo had been supposed to test if he could be folded in.
That, in the Commission’s eyes, had been his biggest failure. He had brought them back nothing of worth.
The price of that type of failure could only be one thing.
Pain.
Keigo was glad to pay that price, as a reminder of what not to do in the future.
Better he bore it than someone else.
The Commission had long drilled that mentality into his head, and while Keigo might – silently, in the darkest recesses of his mind where it was safe to house doubts – question or find some of their teachings unsavory, that one he had never wavered on. Nor did he hesitate to go back out once the punishment was done, to do his duty.
Even the most unpleasant of them.
It was the dead of night, far later than Keigo ever patrolled, except for emergencies or planned stakeouts and takedowns, but the cover of darkness was necessary. It was best that no one see what he was about to do.
Musutafu was a relatively safe city, as safe as any could be with overpowered quirks being ever present, but even the most secure cities had their dark sides. The buildings Keigo flew high above were dilapidated, mostly abandoned and left for the undesirables of the city to fight each other for. Keigo had been born in one of those buildings, his mother might still have lived in one of them, if she even lived at all. The Commission had never told him what had become of her, after she had taken their money, and Keigo had never asked.
It wasn’t necessary to think about that – all that business with Midoriya had turned up so many unwanted emotions. It had been stupidly dangerous for him to look after a kid, no matter what the Commission had wanted. Children always had the tendency of reminding Keigo of his own childhood. It was more than unimportant, those thoughts; they were reckless when he could be thinking of anything else. This was not the part of town even a top hero could afford to be lost in reminiscing thoughts.
The building Keigo had been aiming for came into sight and he dipped low, refusing to so much as blink twice as the sudden trajectory change dug into his back. This shouldn’t take long, an hour or two at the most, then he could go back to the apartment and treat the welts with the cream he knew would have already been delivered.
The Commission had punished him harshly but they were never overly cruel – once Keigo had finished his work for the day, he would be able to take care of his back with the finest medicine that the commission could afford. By morning, even, the welts would be little more than reddened lines, half-healed already.
He just had to get through this.
Keigo landed softly, careful as always to balance on his toes and bring the heels of his feet down silently once he’d found purchase. He had been trained well in that, in learning how to use the extra weight in the toes of his boots to make up for the lack of grip when he perched. Long ago, when he had haunted these streets as little more than an urchin, he’d done it barefoot, finding purchase within the grip of his slightly elongated toes.
He hated that he remembered that. Hated that these stupid streets brought all the memories to the surface that he’d rather stay dead and buried. Hated that these buildings, a decrepit maelstrom of the worst of the city’s vices, still stood to haunt them. Hated the –
Hated the sound of those steps, slow, unhurried as they came for him, familiar as his own heartbeat.
Keigo put on his brightest smile as the door across the roof slammed open. He knew the man before him hated that smile; knew it dug under his skin. It was the best armor he could afford for the man before him.
“Birdie.” Keigo hated that stupid voice too, raspy and deep in a way his never would be. Hated that stupid nickname, demeaning in its sardonic tone. Hated the way it looked on the man’s lips, how naturally the syllables led those lips into a smirk.
Once upon a time, when Keigo had been younger and stupider, he would have slapped the smirk right off the man’s face, cruel enough to aim for the tender scarred flesh that ran along the man’s jaw. It would have led to a fight, a no-holds back all out brawl that would have ended with fists of Keigo’s feathers torn out or burned and ripped staples in Keigo’s hands.
Now, though, Keigo was smarter. Or at least smart enough to know that, with his back smarting and his body aching from a twelve hour shift done in pain, he would not win that fight. Keigo did not have energy to waste on starting fights he could not win.
“Yo, Hot Stuff,” he pushed as much energy into his voice as he could, knowing the exact tone that would most irritate the other man. He was smart enough not to start fights he couldn’t win physically, but if Dabi swung at him first, he would be well within his rights to leave and come back another day.
The Commission knew Dabi was volatile, after all, had always known that, had found out ways to manipulate and use that; they would not question Keigo leaving before he got severely burned because the other man was in a bad mood.
Unfortunately, Dabi was in rare form today and his smirk just grew as he theatrically held the door open for Keigo. “After you, princess.”
Maybe Keigo wasn’t smarter after all. His wings fluttered slightly at the nickname, a nonaction to those that didn’t know him, a threat to those who did. Judging by the self-satisfied in Dabi’s eyes, the man knew.
Fuck, Keigo hated him.
“You’re too kind, Dabs.” Carefully careless, that tone. Another blinding bright smile, and Keigo let himself step forward, walking past Dabi without a single care. He kept his footsteps quiet, but not silent, as he entered the dark, rusted staircase that led from the roof to the inner parts of the warehouse. Technically, Dabi no longer lived here, Keigo knew. He lived on top of the bar that they both pretended Keigo didn’t know about, with the rest of the League, but they never met there.
It was too early, for Keigo to make an appearance there. Shigaraki may have been reckless, as shown by his stunt in Hosu and the attack on UA, but he was suspicious as an alley cat. It would be death for Keigo to show up without warning before a crumb of trust had been established.
Stain could have been his way into that, had Dabi not gotten to the bastard first. Delivering Stain’s beaten body to the bar as a present after Shigaraki had given the order for his downfall would have gotten him some grudging credit. But Dabi had beaten him to the man, terrifying three young boys and revealing himself to the entirety of the Hosu police force and UA and robbing Keigo of his easy in.
It still rankled him, the fact that Dabi went after Stain after Keigo had told him no. It shouldn’t have – Dabi never did what he told, unless it served him first, Keigo knew that. But he was still mad about it.
Part of him was mad that Dabi had willingly put himself in danger by virtually fighting alone – Midoriya, the youngest Todoroki, Tensei’s little brother and Native had all been there as well, but they had been either unconscious or running on fumes so they didn’t count - too, but he shoved that far down, past his doubts about the Commission, and strangled it in the darkness. It was not a helpful thought.
Dabi must have known he was on thin ice because the man, for once, said nothing as he followed Keigo down the rusted stairs. Their steps were quiet, echoing in the deep silence that surrounded them. Too loud for how Keigo liked to operate in these part of town, but he knew better than to mask his steps entirely. Likely, the entire building was empty save for him and Dabi, but one could never be sure if anything hadn’t slithered into the cracks of the warehouse. Better to let such things know he was approaching than be considered a threat.
Considering it was well known who owned this building – or at least who had laid the claim to it and was vicious enough to defend it – it was unlikely no one else was in it, even if Dabi had mostly abandoned it, save for these meetings.
Or so Keigo thought, until he reached the bottom of the steps and heard a hurrying scuffle of feet away from the door.
A feather was in his hands without a thought, sharpening between his fingers.
“Peace, birdie.” Dabi’s voice drawled, seemingly uncaring, but there was an undercurrent to it, an edge. Keigo did not calm down and his eyes were narrowed in suspicion as Dabi – suddenly so close to him, close enough that he could feel the other man’s body heat as he reached around Keigo and flew the door open. Keigo had just enough time to catch a glimpse of their interloper – dirty blonde hair looped into messy buns and a ripped school skirt – as they rounded the corner.
It couldn’t be –
Fucking Dabi.
“She’s harmless.” Dabi insisted in his lazy drawl as he casually passed Keigo, his elbow close enough to brush against Keigo’s hip. Bold of him, Keigo thought with a vicious twist, to expose his back to him.
One of these days, he was going to bury a feather into it.
“She’s a killer! She literally killed some kid!” Because Keigo had recognized the hair; Himiko Toga, an apparently mild-mannered, popular omega girl who had snapped and slit her classmate’s throat her first week of high school. The media had a field day about her, of course it had, especially once her blood quirk had gotten out. The Commission had a folder about her.
“So have we.” Dabi pointed out carelessly, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his well-worn pants as he walked. “Besides, from what I heard, the little bastard had it coming.”
Keigo nearly, nearly threw his hands up in disgust, but he knew it would just amuse the other man. They had killed, of course they had; but Keigo had hated it every time the Commission had given him a folder with a name marked for death, still said words for each of them, still had his dreams haunted. He knew Dabi was different, that Dabi took to killing like a fish to water, but even then, it was different. For all his faults, Keigo had never seen Dabi truly relish a murder.
Himiko Toga, according to her file, had smiled and skipped away when she had been discovered by the body, her classmates’ blood staining her pale face and ruining her carefully pressed blouse.
“No one deserves that!” Keigo insisted. Dabi merely snorted.
“Ah birdie, we both know plenty of people deserve it. Don’t play the righteous card with me now, when we both know what stains your hands.” Forget the one day, Keigo was going to stab him today.
“Dabi, you cannot harbor a child murderer just because you want to! She’s going to stab you in your sleep!” Only if she beat Keigo to it, but still.
Dabi’s face split into an amused smirk. “Aw, you really do care, Feathers.” Keigo bristled and Dabi’s smirk just grew as they stared each other down. “Seriously though, she’s not about to hurt me.” There was a considering note to Dabi’s voice, despite the smirk; a certainty that, despite all of Keigo’s irritation, he knew better than to doubt.
“Don’t come crying to me when you get your throat slit.” Keigo finally relented. He wouldn’t even go to the bastard’s funeral.
“You mean you wouldn’t nurse me back to health in a pretty little nursing outfit?” Dabi had begun walking again, apparently convinced Keigo wouldn’t take off after Toga if Dabi trailed away.
“Wouldn’t even waste the energy it would take to spit on your grave,” Keigo responded, forcing the exact amount of cheer in his voice that he knew most grated the other man.
He just got a snort in response. Dabi had always been better at brushing things off than Keigo had. They fell into silence as they walked deeper into the cesspit of a building; despite his decision to trust Dabi’s opinion on Toga stabbing them, he definitely wasn’t going to start talking about what they both knew he had come for out in the open. And besides insulting and threatening each other, there was nothing else Dabi and he spoke about.
Nothing he would let himself say in a place like this, anyway.
Dabi led him to a dented door nearly at the end of the hall, making a show of holding the door open in some caricature of a gentleman that had Keigo rolling his eyes even as he stepped in. The room was as abysmal as he had expected, all dark, dirty walls and the sickly sweet smell of mildew. It was bare, save for a beaten-up futon set directly in the center of the room, far enough away from the suspicious stains growing on the walls.
Keigo’s eyes narrowed at the sight. “I thought –“ Dabi didn’t live here, anymore, he was certain. There was no reason for there to be furniture of any sort in this room anymore; before he could finish asking the question, Dabi was flapping his hand, lazily, in a bid to shut him up.
Keigo would have bitten his head off, if it weren’t for the heat rising off Dabi’s other hand, thin blue flames flickering across his fingers. Understanding the meaning behind it, Keigo dutifully kept silent as Dabi placed his fiery hand against the metal door. With how hot his flames could be, Keigo wasn’t surprised to hear a pained yelp on the other side mere seconds after he’d began heating the metal.
“Meanie!” A voice, girlish and high, came from the other side.
“Go away you crazy ass brat, before I light you on fire instead of the door!” Dabi yelled back. Toga responded back with a rude sound but seemed to give up rather easily, judging by the sound of her footsteps – and dear god, she really was a child, stomping away like that - tapping away against the metal floor. “She’s got a tendency to listen it. Suppose you’ve got any tricks on dealing with that?” Dabi’s grin was back; it took Keigo a second to get at the meaning of his words and he glared fiercely once he realized.
“Where’d you hear about that?” Keigo had refused to tell Dabi pretty much anything about Midoriya, let alone the boy’s supposedly accidental eavesdropping.
“Around.” Dabi shrugged, unconcerned. “Now, let’s get this over with. Strip.”
Keigo bristled instinctively, the shock of the non sequitur morphing immediately into indignant anger. “Excuse me?” If Dabi was making light of what Keigo thought he was, Commission mission and Keigo’s distaste for homicide be damned, he would actually kill him. Slowly. Carefully. He’d start by clawing out all the shiny staples that always bothered him and then he’d skin him.
His feathers were sharp enough, he could keep him alive for quite a while.
Dabi, sensing Keigo’s mood shift suddenly from annoyed-might-stab to homicidal-do-not-engage, managed not to smirk or leer as he reached into one of the pockets of his worn jacket and held up a jar. Keigo would have recognized the cream anywhere; he’d spent too many sore nights struggling to soothe it into skin beaten raw not to.
“You’re holding those wings too high.” He said, his tone carefully careless as though his words weren’t damning, crossing the unspoken line well-hidden underneath the years of finely honed antagonism.
It was devastating and dangerous, the simple ways Dabi showed he knew Keigo.
Keigo hated that he knew him so well that it was a weakness.
Keigo hated him.
“This debriefing is already going to be shit, birdie.” Dabi continued as Keigo hesitated. “It’s so much fucking worse when you’re bitching ‘cause you’re in pain. Take off your damn clothes and get on the bed so we can get this over with.” Dabi’s voice dropped into his well-honed street accent, so natural after all the years he’d spent learning to speak as though he’d been born in the slums that it was easy to forget it wasn’t the man’s native tongue.
It was Keigo’s, of course, and his training had involved years of learning how to speak the opposite way, but now the worn sounds stung at him with a false familiarity, as though Dabi had always spoken to him like that, and like Keigo had never been beaten for speaking like that. It felt a little too close like coming home, poking at the same throbbing spot in Keigo that seeing the top of the slums hit.
Keigo pointedly turned so Dabi could not read the ticks on his face and made a show of huffily stripping off his jacket. The release of the weight of the armored fabric was a sudden boon to Keigo’s aching back and while he didn’t let his wings drop like he usually would – Dabi was right, Keigo had been holding them up high in an unconscious effort to keep them from pressing even more weight against his fiery back, a trick he had learned years and years ago – he did allow them to droop just slightly, relief shooting through the overworked muscles that stretched underneath his wings.
“Shirt too. Don’t make me rip it off.” Keigo huffed in irritation again before obediently – disgustingly obediently, he would think later – reaching his hands under the skin tight material of his shirt and pulling it off.
The stiff protective fabric had clung to the reddened skin of his back as usual, unforgiving in its defense of even the most abused of Keigo’s skin, and years of experience had taught Keigo that it was easier to pull it fast, ripping it off like a band-aid and letting all the pain subsume him at once rather than prolonging it with gentle motions.
He bit back the hiss of pain – he was already revealing too much weakness, he wouldn’t let Dabi hear it too, he’d rather die – but judging from the low whistle of a sharp breathe behind him, there was no hiding how bad it was.
His handlers hadn’t been too cruel – there had been precision in each of the lashes and the whip had been kept away from the tender muscles of his upper back that did the bulk of his flying work, biting instead into the direct center of his back and spreading lower, following the curve of his narrow hips and into the small dip nestled above his belt. It was fortunate that his pants had always hung a little low on his hips, just enough to be broadly appealing to masses of eager-eyed fans without crossing any non-family friendly lines, or Dabi would have goaded him out of those as well.
As it was, Keigo felt terribly vulnerable, standing in the icy room with the shame of his failure etched into his very body and open for prying eyes to see.
Dabi’s gaze was a heavy weight on his back – it burned as it traced every welt rising above Keigo’s pale flesh – and Keigo was seconds away from damning the entire mission to hell and fleeing the room in as dignified of a manner as he possibly could manage when the gaze was suddenly replaced by hands.
Dabi’s touch was light, almost hesitant as he carefully pressed against the unblemished flesh underneath one of the worst of the welts – Keigo hadn’t been able to stay still when the lashes had begun tracing over other ones and the last of them had been a vicious punishment for his lack of restraint. It was always odd, how delicate Dabi’s hands could be, when Keigo had seen them wield devastation so naturally. He forced back a shiver as the finger’s lightly traced a path up to the center of his back, careful not to actually touch any of the flesh rubbed raw.
“-really fucked up, birdie.” Dabi’s words were so quiet, Keigo thought he might have missed some of them. He knew he had messed up, he didn’t need Dabi telling him that, but he said nothing. They weren’t here to rehash Keigo’s past mistakes, they were meant to prevent any further ones.
Dabi’s gentle fingers became an insistent press as he moved them back away from the center of Keigo’s back, and rested them on his hip. Keigo knew what the push was for and, clutching onto as much reluctance as he could, let himself move towards the decrepit futon in the center of the room.
It was a nasty, half-mildewed thing, and Keigo had to force himself not to breathe the smell of rot in too deeply as he laid on his stomach, but even its paltry comfort was a relief as Keigo got off his feet.
He kept his wings raised high and tried not to flinch as Dabi’s weight settled behind him. The other man was kneeling on the mattress to the side of him, enough distance away that Keigo could still see him, if he turned and craned his head behind him, but close enough that he could reach his back with ease.
There was silence for a moment as Dabi opened the jar. Keigo couldn’t help but close his eyes as his fingers once again pressed softly against the flesh of his back, this time fully meeting the welts. Pain and relief, in equal measure, exploded across his senses as Dabi began the methodological process of rubbing the medicated lotion into his back. He started off easy, leaving the worst of the welts for when Keigo was best ready for them, but Keigo’s wings still fluttered in instinctual warning.
They had done this before, loathe though Keigo was to admit it, and for a moment, the two lost themselves in the familiar feeling of soothing each other’s hurts.
It was so much better, a traitorous part of Keigo’s mind managed to whisper before he could strangle it, to let Dabi treat his back than having to do it alone at home.
If it hadn’t been for Dabi’s stupid mission, almost in its third year now, they might have been able to do this in the comfort of Keigo’s apartment rather than some abandoned warehouse.
Keigo strangled that thought too, because Dabi’s mission was crucial – it had to be, for the Commission to willingly give up what could have been their second best hero operative to long term undercover work – and there was no point in dwelling in what-ifs. Dabi had given up his right to Keigo’s apartment when he had whole-heartedly agreed to give up becoming a daylight hero with him and latched onto the elusive work of a deeply buried underground hero, Keigo was stupid for even momentarily wishing it could have been any different.
Keigo hated Dabi for that, too.
As Dabi’s hands began their slow, careful work, he began to speak. “Toga’s a little unstable, but she generally doesn’t maim unless someone deserves it.” It was an odd place to begin the debrief. Keigo had already accepted that Dabi had somehow adopted a psycho serial killer. “As long as the people around her aren’t trying to slip their hands down someone’s unwilling pants or up a skirt, they are likely to keep them. She’s vicious, but she’s got some morals.” It took Keigo a minute to realize Dabi was debriefing, and not just wasting time speaking nonsense. It was hard sometimes, to know the difference – Dabi often spoke nonsense in these meetings just to annoy Keigo. But there was something different in Dabi’s tone, something Keigo had recognized immediately.
Dabi’s official job was to infiltrate dangerous villain organizations, ingratiate himself to the leaders and make himself invaluable – never trusted, the dangerous ones were the smart ones, and the smart ones would never do anything as stupid as trust - and then destroy it root and stem from the inside out, leaving nothing behind but bloody, charred remains. His secondary, unofficial job, was to find people like himself, or people like Keigo. Broken, dirty things with powerful quirks and just enough mental instability to want to make a difference in the world. Things that the Commission could use.
In the nearly three years since Dabi had sold his soul to serve in the dark underbelly of Japan’s worst streets, he’d had an unfailing string of successes in his first mission and utter failure in his second.
Never, never had Keigo heard him offer up a name for anything but death.
Keigo’s mental image of Himiko Toga shifted slightly, despite all he knew of the girl.
“Morals won’t serve her in our line of work.” Was all he could say. Dabi snorted a little.
“Her kind would. She wanted to be like Stain, except she doesn’t want to just cull bad heroes, she wants to cull bad people. That’s why I stumbled across her, crazy ass tried to stab me day after I fried the bastard. How she found me, I still don’t know. Stalking’s a talent of hers, I think.”
“She stabbed you,” Keigo’s voice was drier than a desert, “and you think she’s harmless.”
“Tried, Birdie. Keep up.” If Keigo angled his right wing just so, he could slap Dabi in the face with it. But then the other man would probably reward that with a stinging slap to Keigo’s back, and all his work at soothing the furious skin would have been lost. “I caught her hand before it did any damage. And she calmed down once I explained Stain had been hunting kids. She may be little more than a brat herself, but she doesn’t care for the idea of hurting anything younger than her. Thought I’d be done with her after that, but the brat got fucking attached somehow and followed me back here.”
Dabi’s voice feigned annoyance but Keigo could hear the faint fondness undercutting it. He must have actually, in some fashion, liked the girl.
He’d been like that with some of the younger children, back when they had been living in the Commission dorms. Protective, in a brusque, vicious way that always ended up with people crying and burned. It was different than Keigo’s own type of protectiveness, which Keigo suspected might have something to do with them having separate orientations, but he didn’t actually know if that was true.
Commission-raised children were all designated alphas on their paperwork, regardless of their true secondary sex, and Keigo had no idea whether there was any truth to Dabi’s supposed secondary sex. Their scents had always been carefully hidden – either outright suppressed or expertly fabricated – so it wasn’t like he’d ever been able to find out, even without feeling the need to follow any sort of decorum around the other man that dictated how rude it was to sniff out other people. And even Dabi, for all his willful flouting of the Commission’s rules, general sensibility, and most laws, had never betrayed a word of his true secondary sex. Keigo hadn’t either, so that alone he couldn’t fault Dabi for.
It didn’t matter, really, nothing more than being a passing interest that sometimes, for reasons Keigo dutifully drowned in the deepest recesses of his mind, kept him awake at night. It wasn’t like their secondary sexes had ever mattered.
What did matter was that Dabi felt protective of Himiko Toga. Protective enough that he wanted something better for her than a spare room in a rotting, abandoned warehouse.
The fact that he thought better meant the Commission spoke volumes for the killer.
Dabi must have read his thoughts in the rustle of his wings. “I try to keep her here but she’s restless. Sometimes I send her to hunt down some intel for me, her quirk’s weird as hell but I’ve never seen one better for infiltration, but it’s not enough. She nearly followed me to them.“ here in the depths of hell, there was only one them that mattered. The fact that Dabi wouldn’t speak their name aloud spoke volumes of his suspicions – the fire on the knob trick likely wouldn’t keep Toga away for long. “Barely lost her, and I know she’s a stubborn enough shit that she’d try again. She’s either going to get sucked in with them or –“
Or the Commission.
Himiko Toga was seventeen years old, and her hands were already stained bloody. That would never wash out; she would always be tainted. But if Dabi vouched for her, that taint could be used, honed into a weapon on the side of good.
She could never be Commission-raised, not the way Keigo was, but she could be trained enough to be of use. Or she could be left behind, either to rust away like all everything else abandoned in the slums, or –
Or she would follow Dabi successfully one day and find herself honed into a weapon of the League.
The League that Dabi, within the year, was set to destroy root and stem. He would eradicate it completely, and salt the scorched husk that had once been their foundations before disappearing back into the darkest recesses of their society to await his next victim. If Toga got picked up by the League, she would be dead within the year and her blood would stain Dabi’s hands.
Keigo knew, even as Dabi acted as he didn’t care, his hands never wavering in their actions as he waited for his response, that for the first time that Dabi had started his work, he actively didn’t want to kill someone. He would do it, if he had to, and likely would not dwell on it long enough to let regret fester, but he would not like it. Admitting that to Keigo, even in the vaguest terms, gave Keigo power over Dabi, and he knew it must have galled the other man like nothing else.
Keigo might have relished in it, had it been just moments ago, but the pain was fading into a distant, dull roar and his irritation was fading with it. It helped Dabi’s case, too, that Keigo could be a bleeding heart, at certain times, and his own sense of protectiveness was dialed up to a twelve so soon after his complete failure with Midoriya.
Keigo didn’t want to see a kid dead either, not even one as violently unstable as Toga.
“I’ll present her name.” It was all he could do – whisper a name, plant the seed, wait to see if it would grow. It wasn’t much but it was miles more than anything Dabi could do. One had to be in direct communication with the Commission, to present a name, and ever since Dabi had sunk into the depths of hell, his only contact had been Keigo. He would have no way of pleading the girl’s case except through Keigo.
Silence reigned over them, for a moment, as Dabi’s hands continued their careful work and Keigo’s agreement sank into them. Part of Keigo wondered if Dabi had been prepared for a fight. Everything they did was a fight, usually, but Keigo trusted Dabi in this. If Toga was like Dabi, if she could be useful and was worth saving, Keigo would present her name. It was simple enough.
The silence stretched; Dabi’s hands crept lower, closer to Keigo’s hips and the lighter lashes that were etched across them. Then, possibly because Dabi was feeling the same as Keigo, as though they were skimming dangerously across a path they would not – could not – walk, probably because Dabi was allergic to silence unless he could use it as a weapon, Dabi began speaking.
“The crusty bastard was pleased about Stain’s arrest, but pissed that it overshadowed his show in Hosu.” Dabi’s voice was bored, methodical, the usual tone that he usually took on these debriefs. It brought normalcy to them – Keigo and Dabi had two safe defaults, vitriolic abuse and disinterested professionalism. It was the only defaults they could afford, with the choices that Dabi had made.
“Hosu was a pretty big deal, as far as showing his strength went.” Keigo’s tone was neutral now. Dabi’s hands were less gentle now as he raised them up from the last of the lashes and began firmly pressing into the upper muscles of Keigo’s back, smoothing away the knots and tension that had formed from keeping his wings so far away from his back. It was less necessary than treating the lashes had been – Keigo certainly wouldn’t have bothered taking care of them back at his apartment – but it still fell into the pretext of caring for an injured comrade. Still skirted the lines of acceptability.
“Yeah.” Dabi admitted easily enough. “Got him a few interested people, looking around to see if Crusty’s the real deal.”
“Oh?” An invitation. If there were little threat, Dabi would skirt over them – leaving them to be mopped up at the end, when the worst was over. If they were problems, he would name them.
“Lot of cannon fodder really. Couple of nasty bastards too though. A freak in a mask who goes by Mr. Compress, a nasty shit named Moonfish, Muscular.” Dabi had been listing off names, mechanical, precise. Keigo nearly missed the significance of the last name and he couldn’t actually stop the flinch that came with the realization.
The first two names Keigo would have to look into, but any hero would have recognized the last. Muscular – civilian name Goto Imasuji – had been little more than a brute thug and part-time killer-for-hire until he’d butchered Water Hose in broad daylight, in full view of a news team and hundreds of gawking eyes.
Muscular had lost his eye in the vicious fight but Water Hose – a married team of decent beta heroes – had left behind a tiny son who’d lost his entire world in one fell swoop. The brutality and callousness had sent Muscular’s notoriety sky-high and earned him a black mark in his Commission folder. If the League was attracting monsters like Muscular, they had to be planning something big to follow up the Hosu attack and they were planning to strike soon. Men like Muscular weren’t meant to sit and wait; their type of bloodlust required almost immediate attention.
“Any news on other members?” Keigo made himself ask, tucking away the information about Muscular as Dabi’s hands began a careful assault of the worst of the knots.
It was an innocuous enough question, but Dabi knew what lay underneath. Shigaraki, from everything they knew about the USJ and Hosu attacks, played at being the frontrunner but Dabi, Keigo, and anyone else with half a working brain cell knew he wasn’t the mastermind. Someone or something was holding tight to Shigaraki’s leash in the shadows; Dabi had to ferret them out if he wanted any chance of eradicating the League entirely.
“Just some useless fucks.” A solid no, then, Keigo might have mentioned that Dabi was losing his touch, but the man’s hands were dangerously close to his wings for such comments.
A slight digging in of Dabi’s calloused fingers suggested the man had sensed the jab anyway.
“Anything else?” Keigo probably should have coached his question in more layers, woven subterfuge on top of subterfuge, but he was too damned tired.
“Yeah.” Dabi’s body shifted slightly, the only indication of his sudden nerves. Keigo’s eyes narrowed into a glare that was only mostly lost with his face half buried into the rotting futon. “Crusty’s taken an interest in the kids.”
Keigo’s entire body tensed. There were lots of kids that Shigaraki could be interested in – he’d already orchestrated an attack on some of them, although all reports indicated the focus had been on All Might and the kids just a secondhand casualty – but Dabi would have only hesitated for a certain set of children. One, really.
Wide, green eyes, still bright and welcoming, a little world weary but not yet jaded enough to belong to a true hero, set in a round, pink-cheeked face flashed across Keigo’s mind.
A half snarl ripped low through his throat before he could fully stop it. Dabi’s hands pressed him more firmly, more warning than reprimand. Keigo didn’t heed it.
“Is he planning something?”
Silence for a moment and Keigo half turned, ready to lash out and force the answers from Dabi, if he needed to. He was stopped only by suddenly rough hands pushing him back onto the bed.
“Peace, birdie. Yes, of course he is, I don’t know what exactly or when yet, but it’s definitely targeted. Your kid caught everyone’s attention and for some insane reason, he’s holding it. Crusty wants him.”
“He won’t have him.” Keigo would tear him apart with his own two hands – or rather what remained of him, once Eraserhead had finished with him.
Eraserhead had come out the worse, in their first altercation, but that had been with dozens of villains, the still unknown Nomu, and relative anonymity on Shigaraki’s side – if Eraserhead knew he was coming, knew he was specifically coming after one of his kids, there would be little chance of it ending with anything but Shigaraki’s blood spilled all over the floor and his broken body sprawled at Eraserhead’s feet.
It would be a beautiful sight.
“No. He won’t.” Dabi’s voice wasn’t quite soothing, but there was a comfort in the dark promise laced in it.
Dabi hated daylight heroes– he’d thrown that in Keigo’s face years ago – but he had a soft spot for hero hopefuls. Not enough of a soft spot that Keigo would have willingly let him within a hundred yards of Midoriya and he would be forever angry that Dabi had not only exposed himself to the boy and his friends but had also terrified them, but enough that Keigo could trust the promise of violence that would come if Dabi became all that stood between Shigaraki and any of the UA kids.
“The moment you know more, report it to me.” The Commission wanted Dabi lying low down – Midoriya and his friends’ reports of a blue-fire wielding villain were being kept tightly under wraps amongst the Hosu police force but there had been no stopping Eraserhead sharing the news with Nezu and no one wanted the principal anywhere near Dabi’s work – but that didn’t matter in the face of the threat. Keigo would take a hundred more punishments, gladly, as long as he didn’t fail at protecting Midoriya again. If that meant risking another meeting with Dabi a little too soon after this one, so be it.
“With pleasure.” Dabi probably meant it to. It was a promise of violence, and Dabi could always find enjoyment in that. “Now.” One more squeeze against Keigo’s back and Dabi’s hands were falling away. Keigo hated the part of him that ached a little from the lack of touch. “You’re going to lay here and be a good little bird while I wrap this shit up.”
Keigo’s immediate instinct was to protest. The treatment with the cream could be justified because Dabi had given his debrief during it but bandaging them was not allowed – Keigo was supposed to let himself feel the burn of the welts through his clothing a reminder of his failure. Bandages would dull the pain, soften the reminder. If the Commission knew –
“Argue with me, and I’ll just knock your ass out and do it anyway, birdie.” Dabi’s voice was nearly cheerful again at the prospect. The bastard meant it too. He’d done it before. “If you want to get home tonight, sit still. It’s only going to be a few minutes and then you can hightail your ass back to your fancy little home.” The condescending nature of the other man’s words was almost enough to make Keigo fight him out of spite but –
But Dabi’s hands were gentle again, already beginning the careful process of securing bandages around Keigo’s back in a way that didn’t hinder his wings with quick, sure motions. There was no point in stopping the damage already begun; he’d be able to take them off before meeting with the Commission tomorrow to report. They were unlikely to know.
And it felt nice, for once, to feel someone’s touch against his own body in a way that was not actively trying to harm.
It was only a few more minutes, Keigo could deal with it.
He just had to remember to hold onto his annoyance, remember that he was being forced to endure it, remember that he had to hate it.
Even if, the traitorous part of his mind that Keigo systematically ripped limb from limb even as it whispered to him, what he was feeling was likely quite the opposite.