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The date had arrived, the weather was perfect, and everything was in place. This was happening.
…God. This was really happening.
It took Enji far longer than he’d like to admit to slot the shells into the letter racks, especially with his prosthetic getting in the way. His sons, on the other hand, set up the fuses and distributed the racks across the empty field expeditiously. If not for their help, he might not have been able to get this off the ground in time.
He never expected Touya to leap at the chance to assist him, let alone for Natsuo to be dragged along. It would have been disingenuous to call it a miracle that they wanted to have anything to do with him anymore, because it wasn’t a matter of fortune—just their own strength of character. He was beyond grateful, if regretful that he lacked the courage to admit to them what all this was even for…
As he looked up at the night sky, he started a group call and brought his phone up to his ear.
“Is there a problem?” Shoto’s voice buzzed.
Enji cleared his throat. Say something. He cleared his throat again.
“Dad’s dying,” Natsuo remarked over the line.
“Finally,” Touya said.
“Thank you,” Enji managed to get out, before clamping his mouth shut again.
Natsuo grunted stiffly.
“Yeah, whatever,” Touya drawled, hanging up.
“Uh. You’re welcome, I guess,” Shoto said.
The three remaining Todorokis stayed on the line for a few seconds in silence, before Enji ended the call in a slight panic.
The alarm chimed on Enji’s phone at 21:59. He switched it off and dialed Keigo’s number.
Keigo was a tinge out-of-breath when he answered, wind buffeting against his speaker. “Heyyy, what’s up, you mysterious mystery man?”
“Are you passing by the coordinates?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“What is your current altitude?”
“About 300 meters, just like you cryptically demanded, big guy. Literally where else would I be?” He sounded both amused and a little puzzled. Was he already starting to suspect what was going on? Of course he would, he was far too sharp, what was Enji even thinking—
“I’d be remiss not to check with you. Since when do you respect what I have to say?” Hell had frozen over, and Enji was the one running his mouth. He wasn’t normally in the habit of speaking hastily, but he also wasn’t normally this goddamned clammy.
“I mean, sure, but when I receive instructions this alarming, I figure following them to the letter might end up saving me a limb or two, or six.” What did he mean by that? Oh, Keigo knew, he definitely knew— "Unless you came to your senses and you're about to hit me with some anti-aircraft artillery to shut me up for good. In which case, I'm definitely not where I just said I was."
Fuck it. Enji was going to do this now, or never. (Or he'd do this a thousand more times if he had to, because he was too damn stubborn and because it's Keigo, but that's irrelevant, completely irrelevant.)
He set off a small flame from his fingertip, then extended it far out in a single strand, not unlike the many large cords he would normally emit during a Hellspider attack. It licked across the five branching fuses that led to the letter racks. Five fuses, five words.
“Stay where you are,” Enji said as he jogged away, only to fumble and fling the phone from his sweaty hand mid-stride. He muttered a string of curses, scrambling to his knees to search for it in the tall grass, when the shrill sound of the fireworks shooting off filled his ears. Flashes of light illuminated the area, and his eyes landed on the accursed device. He snatched it and slammed it back to his ear, trying to keep the sound of his breathing down.
“Oh…wow,” Keigo was saying.
Enji swallowed. Everything else was forgotten as he knelt in the returning darkness like he was in the world's largest confessional.
No answer immediately came. Waiting for a second longer would be unbearable.
“...Well?” Enji asked.
“So, I just saw a bunch of fireworks spell out, ‘are you ill? Meow,’ then, uh, ‘gikmurree’? Or something?”
What? What in the everloving fuck?
“Um. Something came up,” Enji said, voice dull from shock as the realization dawned on him. He was doing his best not to crush his phone in his hand. “I’ll call you back.”
Plumes of smoke sifted down from the spent fireworks display, and Enji’s barely subdued quirk was making its own diligent contribution.
His sons stood at faux attention when he confronted them in the middle of the field. Natsuo and Touya were trying to keep a straight face. The joys of parenthood.
If this whole thing didn’t involve Keigo as well, Enji would have said he deserved this.
Steady breathing, count to ten…
Enji gestured forward with a metal hand, the words delaying for a moment. He repeated the hand motion, as if it would help. “I want you all to know that I’m not angry with you, I’m merely…” He frowned, then shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Actually, that’s not true. I am… quite furious.”
“It looked like your weird message worked, though,” Shoto pointed out.
“You,” Enji glared at Touya and Natsuo, “arranged the racks in the wrong order, despite being very clearly instructed to go by the numbers written on the back."
Touya began to slow-clap, his own prosthetic hand thudding against his flesh-and-blood one. "Yeah, well, we know how to fucking read. Surprise, surprise."
"It was pretty easy to figure out what the letters were beforehand and do some rearranging," Natsuo added dryly.
"Ah. I see what happened, now. I should have guessed," Shoto said, piecing together the context clues. "You could have let us know."
Enji crossed his arms as he mulled over what to say. What was just? What was right? He took a long, deep breath. “My nerves got the better of me. I apologize for not telling you properly.” He nodded his head in the direction of the racks. “And you’re all going to help with the cleanup. Go.”
His sons marched off, Touya and Natsuo exchanging a quick fist bump. At least they weren't pulling out their phones to tell their friends about this debacle…yet.
Enji sighed, knuckling over his closed eyes. There would be other opportunities, though of course he couldn’t do anything quite like this ever again. He’d been hoping…well. He’d been hoping.
As he reached into his pocket to give Keigo a return call, he heard rapid wingbeats coming in from above. He looked up in time to catch Keigo by the waist as the man crashed into him, wrapping his arms around Enji’s neck.
Enji was about to scold him for nearly bowling him over, when Keigo took Enji’s face firmly in his hands, looking him right in the eyes.
“Yes.”
“You…” Enji uttered, only starting to process what was said as Keigo pressed their foreheads together. “What, you—really?”
“Yes,” Keigo breathed, nodding, before breaking out into precious little laughs. Damn it all, Keigo was so…everything. Just everything.
Enji wished he were better with words.
He felt his heels lift up from the ground, felt the insane urge to jump or kick or spin or yell or something, then planted his heels back down before he could make an entire fool out of himself. He opted to kiss Keigo fiercely instead, though he still couldn’t help the smile that he pressed to Keigo’s lips.
He was vaguely aware of booing and gagging sounds being made from across the field, but he paid no mind.
“Is that really necessary?” Enji grumbled as his fiancé (fiancé, unbelievable) leaned back against him on the sofa. Keigo, willfully ignoring him, continued to watch the news clip on his phone. A blurred, poorly angled photo of the bungled message from last night displayed on the screen, while the reporter was in the middle of speaking over it.
“—indeed some teenage prank, or a hidden message between rival villain gangs? Stay tuned as we uncover the—”
“I think this should be our new thing,” Keigo remarked, tucking his wings as he snuggled in closer against Enji’s chest. “Like, ‘Are you ill babe?’ And ‘Aw, I totally meow gikmurree you too!’”
Good lord. Yes, Enji was the luckiest bastard on the planet, but it apparently came at the cost of losing whatever grasp of language he originally had.
“You,” Enji said, snatching the phone away and clicking it off, “are going to drive me crazy.”
Keigo grinned, looking up at Enji to shoot him a wink.
“You should just be glad that I’m so good at anagrams.”