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Keigo gets off the train and steps out into silver noise.
The city looks unusually subdued in the rain, pale and blurred under ever-shifting single-hatching, the pavement shining like it’s being cleansed anew.
That’s a nice thought.
It isn’t much—indistinct, melty—as the drumming sensation hits his shoulders, soaks down his suit jacket, but it’s not nothing. (Like speakers pressed to his back with the bass cranked up, held there by someone who cares about him.) (Or, alternatively, the bone-vibrating impact of a boot from someone trying to kill him.) There aren’t many things that he can listen to with his whole body these days. He’ll accept this.
(His…wings tingle, the way they do when they sense trouble. Two ghosts sitting on his back. He lets them whisper to him, holds himself still through their memory, until they lull back to sleep.)
He takes the long route home.
Makes a stop at a flower shop to improvise a bit of purpose into his detour.
Does a cursory web search of flower meanings on his phone, glances at the cliché and unequivocal bundle of red roses, and grabs the peach-colored ones instead.
Starts out (poorly) covering the bouquet with a (very non-ample) hand—hey, isn’t rain supposed to be good for plants or something?—lowers his hand, carries the flowers like a torch.
(He should let the burst of bright colors lead the way. He should.) He takes a left at the corner, a left at the next, a left at the next. His shoes take on water and his socks become sodden after a couple more turns.
Maybe trying to make sense of it is futile. Maybe not everything can be converted into a learning experience.
But if Tokoyami’s buddies were to ask Hawks to speak at another event of theirs, he should have his mind made up about whether or not he’ll agree next time around, right?
(It was kinda funny, making an appearance as the PSC Prez at the behest of some kids, if not for the fact those “mere kids” had saved the entire damn country. Besides, it was time to acknowledge the Spinner-sized, Spinner-shaped, Spinner-looking elephant in the room. The whole class helped, but it was headed by Tentacole and Anima ((Shoji and Koda, Keigo can recall, if he pauses to rifle through the mental files. It’s not enough. He really should have all their names known by heart by now)). Really, the shindig was solid practice for them, and Keigo has a feeling those kids are going to change the entire fucking world.)
Class 2-A had reserved the newly fortified U.A. auditorium, with guest speakers, some inspirational messaging, a PSA on what to do if you see bullying and another on anti-discrimination laws, contact info of local law firms, pamphlets and snacks at a comically singular kiosk right outside, which was initially not well-stocked enough until Creati [check: Yaoyorozu] came in to literally produce more food. (Visitors to the school really didn’t wanna eat anything that was…secreted (?) from a teenager’s body, no matter how chemically identical it was to the stuff on the grocery shelves, but her classmates chowed down in a way that suggested they’ve relied on this rather inefficient tactic for munchies before. Absolutely cursed behavior, but they’re the ones forging the brighter future, so, uh, they get a pass or something.) Awkwardly arranged and earnestly executed. And, at the end of the day? Keigo was proud of them.
(The morning had been a sort of dogfight with his own reflection. If he didn’t go just because he didn’t wanna deal with a couple of adverse reactions, then he would’ve lost.)
The thing was, he’d never been comfortable being a spokesperson for this kinda thing. He always passed way too much to be placed in the same category as someone who didn’t—had been trained to suppress and to hide, because unlike Tokoyami and his buddies and countless others, he had the option to do that much in the first place. Hawks could never be the voice for guys like them. (Maybe there’s nothing for him to say.) ((Maybe the emptiness on his back speaks for itself. Right?))
It was just their luck (read: human nature) that the aftermath of the war’s got bigots hoping for another quirk stealer to emerge, and it’s got heteromorphs on edge. (That’s not even taking into account the ones who’ve been tormented so far into hating themselves that they’ve joined in with the hateful chants, hoping to be “liberated” from their own bodies. Like, fuck, right? It is what it is.) ((It is what it is, everywhere, all the time, whether you wanna deal with it or not.)) ‘Cause apparently it can just be taken away. And everyone’s left wondering what the hell that means.
(Keigo isn’t the only person who had something stolen. That’s why he said yes.)
Hawks isn’t an especially meaningful symbol to look at. A little worrying, a little ambiguous, a little hollow. Bloodstained. But he showed. Smiled. Talked about quirk-related phantom limb syndrome and how the research for heteromorph limb therapies and rehabilitation is lacking across the board and how that’s, um, bad actually, and people should really get on that. Bared a bit of what his life’s been like, what tomorrow could look like. Told the whole auditorium point-blank that everyone’s history, everyone’s experiences, are valuable, and that there are just some things that a villain can’t destroy. Kept it qualified, committed to no blacks or whites, shook a buncha hands. Crouched down and let a few younger kids put their palms between his shoulder blades to feel how smooth it was, save for the scar tissue.
And, really, he’d been asking for this. It’s his dropped ball, his bad for not figuring out a decent answer yet. It’s how he entered this world. It’s the thing he couldn’t outfly before, and certainly can’t outrun now. It’s the belly-emptying stuff that parades around calling itself his bread and butter.
His spine still prickles when he senses hostility.
His grin still works overtime when it comes to appeasement.
He can still read it plain as day when the heads turn, the eyes constrict, the mouths tense.
(“Why the hell are you here?”)
The brief crackle of a flame sounds in Keigo’s pocket, barely audible in the rain. He pauses near the flashing red of a crosswalk signal.
(Customizing his text tone settings has been one of those tentative commitments developments commitments ((no point being shy about it now)). It’s a gift to himself. ((He’s starting to wrap his head around that concept—that you can just give yourself gifts. Growing up, he’d only been taught to think of it as taking.)) Text tones, ring tones, matching house slippers, posters tacked to his walls, red flame earrings on his wardrobe—he’s approaching the event horizon. Pretty soon there’ll be enough of him worn on the outside, enough snippets and pieces of what he loves, for him to be unable to hide any of it anymore, to keep any of it safely tucked away.)
Because details are everything, because even pixels and plain words can become special depending on who they’re attached to, he digs out the phone and breezes past the recently changed lock screen of himself with an arm thrown around Tokoyami’s shoulders. (Dark Shadow is squished in the bottom of the frame, glowy eyes curved from a big smile. Every time, Keigo’s grateful. Glad that Tokoyami’s best friend hadn’t been what got taken.)
The home screen is Enji in a black turtleneck and his sexy-librarian reading glasses—(“They are purely functional. Your ability to inject sex into everything is excessive.” “Ex-sex-ive, you could say.” “…I’m going to finish this chapter. Don’t disturb me until then.”)— shooting Keigo a skeptical expression right through the camera, as though disgruntled to now be buried under the tiles of his phone apps.
Water sticks to the screen. The white background of the texting app bubbles with pixely, rainbowy spots as light refracts through the droplets.
There’s the new message, right underneath the one he hadn’t opened so it wouldn’t be marked as Read:
[How did it go] ₁₆։₃₃
[Come home.] ₁₇։₀₄
(If Enji’s using that line that somberly, then his uncanny, ever-developing sense for when Keigo’s feeling like shit like a million bucks must be all a-buzz. It’s like how the nerves in what remains of Enji’s right arm twinge before it’s about to rain. Extra minutes of silence on Keigo’s end, an unannounced delay—it all seeps into the big guy’s body, just like a change in barometric pressure.)
Keigo taps three times before flicking his phone off:
₁₇։₀₅ [ok]
“I’m home,” he announces as he opens the door.
No response yet, which means Enji’s likely in the bathroom. Keigo plunks his butt onto the floor within the threshold, pulls off his shoes, peels off his socks, holds them outside as he squeezes the water from them (mm, wow, delicious), and leaves it all to air out by the welcome mat as he stands and closes the door behind him. The sound of rain shuts off, replaced by the muffled hum of the bathroom fan and the buzz of appliances.
He goes to the kitchen to wash his hands and rummage for some kinda pitcher or teapot to put the roses in, when the display on the table stops him in his tracks.
Opaque plastic cups, all different colors like pieces of candy, stand in a single-file row.
Water drips from his hair. He sets the bouquet on the counter.
One of the chairs has already been pulled out for him—the wood has been treated, so he won’t ruin it by sitting in his wet clothes. (Can't forget about the traces he leaves. The things he ruins.) He walks up, sinks into it, drums his fingers along the surface of the table as he tries to figure out what to do.
(The vibrant colors are appealing to the eye. The line is too straight. They’re just sitting ducks.)
He runs his tongue past his lips.
He tries that thing his therapist is so annoyingly correct about and forces himself to slow down—expands all the tabs in his brain, spreads them out, lays them flat like tarot cards so he can read through each one before concocting the “what next”:
[Did the big guy, like, go out of his way just to purchase these? When? Just now because he inferred that Keigo wasn’t well? Or did he have them stored in the back pocket, waiting to whip ‘em out on a rainy day? Keigo honestly isn’t sure which is worse.]
[Ha, does this count as a microaggression?]
[Who does Enji think Keigo is? No, really. Maybe the big guy could help him out, here. Kind of at a loss.]
[He'll really stop at no lengths to invent bizarre gestures that end up tugging on Keigo’s heartstrings all the same, huh?]
[This was never a part of himself that Keigo was supposed to indulge.]
[Not that he has to listen to the past anymore. Not that he ever even tries to.]
[There’s no point to it.]
[It’s a disruption. It’s messy.]
[They're plastic. What's the harm?]
[This isn’t a part of him anymore.]
[It just isn’t.]
[He’s overthinking this, which feels kinda dumb.]
[Nevermind if this is weird or not, it’s embarrassing just not his style.]
[Enji set this up for him. Like a dork. His dork.]
Keigo’s arm lifts, stretches out. He prods the center cup with his index finger, poke poke poke, and each precisely spaced-apart scooch of it scrubs against a part of his brain that hasn’t been scratched before, until it slips over the edge—
—it plops to the parquet floor and lands straight on its flat bottom, without a bounce or an echo. Thunk.
(((heh)))
It's like popping a bubble. The back of Keigo’s mind ruffles, like how his wings used to the rare times he got to eat meat when he was little. (They stay silent, gone. No tricking him into feeling unfurling feathers, twisting bones, whispers telling him what is or isn’t.)
His eyes fix on the remaining cups.
The rest of the platoon hold the line without a shiver. They don’t know what they’re up against.
His arm reaches forward again, stops, plants down by the elbow as he leans on the table and looks off to the side.
Psh. Yeah, right. Like a buncha cups are just gonna override his impulse control like th—
Dive-shove-sweep and his arm sends them all colliding against each other as they plummet to their confetti-colored demise, clunk thunk bonk plop pop—
(((hehehehe)))
[The dopamine fizzes to the surface with a rush of fresh air, like his brain's a soda can that was just cracked open.]
—plop clunk thunk.
Silence.
((...Aw man, he got all of them.))
He squints over the table ledge at their scattered remains, contemplating if he’s really gonna indulge this so far as to set them up again.
“Welcome back.”
Keigo glances up.
Swallows.
(Oh damn) ((oh damn)) (((ohhhhhh damnnnnn—)))
Towering shoulders contoured by the lamplight, calmly rising and falling chest that could still support a billboard, mechanical arm clicked into place and holding up the towel that’s currently struggling to encircle that ridiculous waist, scars with jagged outlines that Keigo’s traced and mourned and kissed and memorized, cutely damp hair, eyes always bluer than a perfect sky—
It’s not like Endeavor’s suit left much to the imagination—and Keigo could be very imaginative, in the rare moments when he allowed himself to be (and he makes a lot more allowances now). But seeing the texture and color of Enji’s skin, being so close to the literal embodiment of the person who knows him, who responds to him, who flushes when heated, who’s left bared willingly in his presence, is some kind of religious experience every time.
Enji’s wheelchair, folded into a shin-high box and set on “follow” in case he suddenly needs it, coasts behind him along the floor as it navigates the area with its built-in sensor. (It’s because of how it looks in space-saver mode that Keigo’s nicknamed it Dr. Roomba, to Enji’s very familiar, very accustomed chagrin.)
Taking in the scene, Enji notes while carefully neutral, “You made a mess.”
“That's what she said,” Keigo shoots back. It’s low-hanging fruit, but he’s supposed to give himself nice, easy things, right?
Enji is so unaware of the reference that it comes full circle and doesn’t even give him pause. “If memory serves, that's what you said. Two nights ago.”
Holy shit. Keigo bites his lip, staples his heart together so he doesn't tear in two from smiling.
With a gesture of Enji’s prosthetic, Dr. Roomba lines up and unfolds. Enji settles in the seat of the wheelchair, and with a click and a whir, his prosthetic arm telescopically extends at the joints so he can busy himself collecting the cups. When Keigo moves to stand, Enji raises his other hand and just shakes his head.
(“No need.”)
(Something about picking up after each other.)
Keigo crosses his arms over the table, crosses his ankles under the chair while he watches.
Now that he has a second to think about himself (crazy, right?), he comes up half-empty. Aside from the obvious, his metabolism has slowed. His eyesight is worse.
But the marks around his eyes stayed. And there’s possibly some kinda prey drive…? (It can be taken away, but not entirely. Anything can be taken away, but in reality, All For One only prioritized the parts that he thought were useful. Or there’s bits of Keigo’s body that clung to him hard enough to stay, somehow. Whoo-hoo, he’s a medical marvel.) ((Let all the bigots and quirk-essentialists dig into that one and spin it into a sloppy weapon of blunt-force outrage.)) (((Not that every part of his existence has to be a story that he gives away. Not that the tiny miracles they get in this little home have to necessarily leave it.)))
Half-empty doesn’t do this self-examination justice. Keigo comes up half-full, too. Half is its own sort of good—like there’s one hand occupied, and one hand available for the next thing. Carrying scars and the weight of a sword means that you’ve at least survived, if not learned something. Feeling the pressure of writer’s block means that you’ve at least been given the opportunity to hold onto the pen. (It’s not the same as a clean slate—not after he’d ripped one-too-many futures out of two-too-many hands. The rest of what his life looks like is something he has to earn.) ((But maybe, just maybe, he gets to squeeze whatever the fuck he wants in the margins, along the way.))
Enji finishes slotting one cup into the other. The thing that goes without saying occurs to Keigo now, anyway: that any objects that fit together actually fail to do so in the majority of configurations. That it takes coordination, being turned in the right direction, care. That’s part of the entire process. What it means to fit at all. (Ha. He needs someone to pass him the bong, stat.) ((Truly spoken like a man who’s scarcely touched a mind-altering substance in his life.)) (((Unless Enji’s dick counts. Which it absolutely does.)))
Enji places the tall stack of cups on the table with a firm tap, signaling that they're ultimately Keigo’s to decide what to do with—and also signaling his own suspicion and anticipatory disapproval regarding whatever gutter Keigo’s brain has just plunked into.
Keigo raises his eyebrows super innocently in return.
“So,” he broaches, “did one of your kids send you cute parrot videos, or have you stumbled into the vapid joys of social media algorithms all on your own?”
“An account was required to be part of the family group chat.” Enji says it as if he hadn’t buckled the moment Fuyumi explained how and where to sign up on Instagram. The sections of his arm whir back into place. “Fuyumi and Shoto are partial to sharing videos of animals. I’m almost exclusively recommended videos of pets as a result.”
“You might not be aware of this, but believe it or not, you can’t trust everything you see on the internet. You’re gonna get weird ideas.” Keigo lifts his index finger accusingly, waves it a couple times while he gives his very important lecture. “Just so you know, I don’t eat seeds or millet or whatever, I won’t think it’s nighttime if you throw a blanket over me, and I’m not gonna shit on the floor.”
Enji wrinkles his nose in distaste at that last one, but knows better than to encourage Keigo by attempting to discourage him. “Sometimes you repeat parts of what other people say,” he replies in a subtle change of subject, failing to be casual about it as surely as the sun rises in the morning. He couldn’t stop noticing everything if he tried. It’s fucking cute.
“That might just be the ADHD, big guy.” Might be. For all of Keigo’s adeptness at packing things up and boxing them in, he can’t fully pick himself apart. (Maybe he should be able to. Or maybe he shouldn’t, even if he could.)
Ever one to put himself on the right track (no matter how diligently Keigo derails him), Enji turns his head to the kitchen, no doubt contemplating feeding them both and, y’know, keeping them alive.
That’s when he pauses. Keigo doesn’t need to follow his gaze to tell he’s processing what’s on the counter.
From what Keigo’s extrapolated, mainly from crashing the Todoroki reunion in the hospital, the big guy has a complicated history with flowers. He’s probably never been gifted any before, and Keigo’s never given any. (When it comes to inventing strange gestures out of nowhere, Keigo really isn’t one to talk. It’s a language built out of the wreckages of first relationships, the strangled corpses of who they used to be—out of missed connections, empty rooms, and other lost things.)
“Oh. Yeah.” Keigo nods backward at the roses. He can’t feign being casual either, anymore, which he solely blames his present company for. Nowadays, he’d make for a pretty shit spy. (Good.) “They’re for you.”
The undercurrent thrums in his blood, his bones. It’s one that he knows Enji hears readily:
(“I love you.”)
Enji forgoes any wary remarks, approaches the counter first thing like it can’t wait, and scarcely crinkles the plastic as he takes their stems into his left hand very delicately.
“Thank you,” he says.
(“I love you, too.”)
Keigo bites his lip again through a small smile, before he leans forward to prop his cheek in his hand. “By the way.” While Enji is very sweetly pressing a button on the wall to lower the cupboard to arm-height, Keigo is doing his part by running his eyes along Enji’s body, dragging especially on the edges of the towel that are starting to unravel where he sits. Modesty isn’t exactly a sticking point with this man, if all the times they’ve stuck things in each other’s bodies haven’t all just been an extended, glorious hallucination. “What's it gonna take for you to finally be okay with wandering naked through your own home?”
Enji draws a vase out of the back of the cupboard—a glossy, rounded body covered in dark blues and painted flowers. (Wait, wait, wait, they had a vase this whole time? Among all the other shit he packed into boxes when he moved in, why in the hell did Enji feel the need to bring a vase? ((Keigo imagines asking and his brain inserts a gruff statement about how a pro should always be prepared.)) Pff. Weirdo. He’s so cool.)
Enji adjusts his chair and runs the vase under the faucet. “With those roaming hands of yours? If I’m to have any peace, I can’t give you an inch.”
Keigo leans back in the chair, lets his grin slant as he arches his eyebrows. “Oh honey-baby-buddy-boy, you have given me many inches.”
Enji removes the roses from the plastic and places them in the water, making a show of reading the instructions on the packet of liquid fertilizer they came with (purely making a show, mind, because he isn’t doing the lean-back-squint thing he does without his glasses, and the font is puny). “And if you want any ‘inches’ again tonight, you'll not question my customs.”
This guy.
Keigo shrugs before dipping his voice into the lazily lascivious. “Big loss, but not a major setback. I'll just give you some of my own inches. Pay back the debt I've been accruing.”
“This euphemism of yours is getting out of hand.”
“You could be putting it in my hand—”
“Enough.”
Keigo laughs. Enji hides a smile, and hides it poorly.
The table is cleared. The roses are settled in the center, to the side, so they won’t block anyone’s eyeline.
Enji manages to pull clothes on despite Keigo following him to his closet and sneaking in a few squeezes, along with a slowly inhaled kiss nuzzled into the side of his neck. (They've both lost some weight, had their edges softened a little. The illusion of punching or slashing away the problems is evaporating a day at a time. What matters when they’re here, in this one particular place, is how their bodies fit together—and they always fit.)
Enji pries him off before Keigo can climb into his lap, then reverses his wheels at max speed in a calculated retreat, remarking that they’ll never get around to making dinner at this rate. Drama queen.
As a sous-chef, Keigo isn’t great has room for improvement, but they make out pretty damn well today. Rice, egg, fish, salad.
He lets himself take it all in quietly. His wings can’t listen, so he listens for them.
The clatter of dishes being placed down, the scuff as they slide slightly on the table, the occasional whir and sibilance of Enji’s right arm and chair.
Keigo’s towel-dried hair, his fresh pair of boxers, the one sweatshirt Enji owns settled softly against his skin and scars, perfectly oversized, well-lived in. The scent of clean laundry and home as Keigo presses the end of the sleeve to his nose.
The color of sunrise held between them.
Keigo lets his current mouthful sit on his tongue, warm and savory, as he glances at the roses.
It’s a good hue, honestly. Goes with the blue of the vase. Goes with a lot of stuff.
Plus, he’s got next time.
He’ll get red, then.
They finish putting the dishes away. Keigo hands Enji the stack of plastic cups.
“You’d prefer if I set them up,” Enji observes, and Keigo nods.
“I think it works better if it’s a bit of a surprise. Can’t explain why.”
“Hm.”
“‘Hm’?” Keigo echoes back.
Enji slides out an orange cup and puts it on the counter. Keigo narrows his eyes at him incredulously. That hardly counts as a surpr—
Keigo darts out a hand.
Thok—tok—d-d-d-k. The cup rebounds a few times on the kitchen floor before rolling.
(((heh)))
(Oh.)
“Okay but like—” Keigo starts, unprecedented heat rising to his face while Enji pretends to clear his throat, “that’s not gonna keep working. Especially if I know you’re watching me!”
A beat.
Enji raises an eyebrow. Pulls out a purple cup this time.
“Nope.” Keigo crosses his arms. Turns his head. Doesn’t even look at it.
The stand-off lasts nearly ten whole seconds.
“Fine,” Enji says, in that laughably serious, incredibly hot “challenge accepted” tone of voice. When he slips the orange and purple cups back among their siblings, then hides the stack in one of the cupboards, it’s tactical instead of defeated. Keigo can practically hear the consideration of locations, intervals, arrangements, not-too-predictable patterns with Keigo folded into them, plans that extend into the future. (He’s still not a hundred-percent sure what he’s done to deserve this, but he’s coming around to the reality that this belongs to them, nonetheless.)
“I think I’ll try going again,” he says aloud. It’s unprompted, but it’s not unwelcomed; the space had always been left silently open. Enji straightens in his chair, fixes him with his attention. “If the students ask. …As in, I want to.” He glances at Enji out of the corner of his eyes. “Might need some more cheering up afterwards.” (The “more” is put there on purpose, and it does a lot. Enji possesses an empirically-earned, hard-fought confidence in all areas, except for this one—the notion that this is something he can do for Keigo at all, has already been doing for so long.)
Enji’s left hand lifts, and Keigo leans down so it can find the side of his face. His eyes drift closed as he presses into the touch. (Calloused, smooth, large, warm.)
When he opens them, Enji’s watching him closely, those brilliant blue eyes a subtly different shape, one that only Keigo can readily recognize. They’ve let go of any hardness around the edges.
“…What?” Keigo whispers.
The thumb on his cheek strokes back and forth in a way that strives to be thoughtful rather than sheepish.
“It’s very kind of you,” Enji settles on, and Keigo huffs a small laugh.
“Y’know, you’re awfully convincing, in that persistent way of yours.” He slides half his smile behind the heel of Enji’s palm, anchoring, keeping himself in one place, one piece.
Enji’s thumb stops, rests. His right hand, too, makes its meticulous way to the other side of Keigo’s face, intentional, metal meeting the burn scar on his jaw. Keigo lifts his own hand to cradle the knuckles even though they can’t feel him do it, to hold close to himself that absence and the unknown that fills its place.
A day will probably come when his wings stop talking to him altogether. But he can still let his heart flutter—can still listen to what’s here. He watches Enji back. He tries to see just a bit of what it is the big guy’s seeing.
He swallows.
“Speaking of which,” he says a little hoarsely, “I’m also starting to think I have a damn good life.”
(“I’m going to be alright.”)
“I’ll ensure it as much as you will,” Enji murmurs, holding Keigo accountable to it, meaning every single word, as he pulls him into a kiss.
(“I know.”)