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Keigo has to remind himself he is doing this as a favor to his biggest artistic inspiration, and close colleague. But that doesn't mean he wants to be at said man's son's gallery on opening night. For some reason—undisclosed to Keigo—he is not able to make it, so it's up to him to report back to Enji how it goes.
He's rather surprised by what kind of art is on display here, Enji himself is a traditional Nihonga artist like Keigo. Instead of following in the tradition of his father, Shouto decided he wanted to focus more on pop art; lots of bright colors, bold lines, a lot of reference to shows Keigo should probably know (but has never had time to watch). Some of it even looks closer to graffiti.
When he goes to take a closer look at some of the pieces, he can tell the technical application is wonderful, it's just not exactly Keigo's taste. Which must show on his face when the guy next to him speaks up.
"What the colors to bright for Mr. Traditional?" the stranger next to him asks. Keigo turns to get a good look at the guy and freezes—another unusual thing to find in an art gallery. The guy is slighter taller than him, black hair, but what throws him off is the piercings—both ears full of them, one in his lower lip, three in his nose, and one in each cheek—and tattoos that can be seen spilling out of the expensive looking suit he's wearing. Black flames crawling out of the collar of his shirt, but he can't tell exactly what is depicted on his hands, but must be a part of a larger piece. "You might want to pick your jaw up off the floor." The man barely spares him a glance, eye forward on the painting. It's a reference to some anime Keigo couldn't tell you the name of.
"How would you know I'm "Mr. Traditional"?" Keigo shoots back.
"Keigo Takami, age 30, one of the newest members in the Japan art committee, and a true savant in the world of Nihonga art if the rumors are to be believed. I get anything wrong?" The man quickly lists off.
"No." Keigo is definitely not pouting.
"So why are you here at the opening night of a Pop art gallery?" The stranger finally turns to face him head on, and Keigo is even more stunned by his eyes than the rest of him. He's sure he has some ground lazurite powder that matches the color perfectly, such a beautiful shade to paint with (might be even better to stare into).
"A coworker of mine was unable to attend, so he asked me to come instead," he states plainly, trying to hide his growing interest in the man.
The stranger scoffs at him, "Yeah that sounds about right. So you want to try to learn something about non-traditional art?" he offers Keigo.
"What do you know about art?" he challenges, offended he's not sure what this random (admittedly hot) man could teach him about art.
"A lot more than you'd expect. Even if I did deviate from the standard artist pathway, still had to learn the basics." He turns a wicked smirk on him. "And I'm almost positive I could even give you a run for your money on a Nihonga piece. Though I doubt you'd do very good trying your hand at my kind of art."
Keigo lets the challenge sit in the air for a beat longer than socially advisable, but can't stop himself from laughing loudly at the implications. That this random man thinks he can do Keigo's job better than him.
"Are you laughing at me, jackass?" The man closes in on him, but Keigo can't make himself stop laughing long enough to answer. "Okay dickhead, 50,000 yen that I can impress you with my Nihonga skills, but you can't do what I do."
That however piques his interest. "Deal!" He sticks his hand out to shake on it, the other man's grip squeezes his hand tightly—almost exactly how Enji shakes hands.
"Touya!" A woman's voice calls, approaching them. Keigo takes a moment to look around them for the first time since they started talking. Only then does notices all the eyes on them, shit neither of them were particularly quiet.
"Shit," the stranger hisses under his breath. Keigo is only able to hear it being so close to him.
"Hey, Fuyu-chan what's up?" The man is quick to block his view of 'Fuyu-chan' is, but it doesn't stop Keigo from recognizing her voice.
"I told you, you were not to be rude to anyone tonight." She's standing directly in front of the other man, but quickly peeks her head around him giving Keigo a little wave. "I'm sorry for any trouble my older brother has caused you, Takami."
He stares back at Fuyumi Todoroki—trying not to let the surprise of his next realization show on his face. Which means the man he's been talking to for the last 15 minutes is Touya Todoroki, Enji's oldest son. The one Enji never talks about and Keigo only knows about because he's been such a big fan of Enji's art. He's only ever heard the name, never what he does for a living.
"Ah ah, no trouble at all, Fuyumi. We were just keeping ourselves entertained, that's all. Right Touya?" He's going to be kind and put it into his hands. It's not his sister in front of them, or his little brother's gallery he's making a scene at. (Not like Keigo has either of those things himself.)
"Yeah," Touya says, sounding a little confused. Like he thought Keigo would snitch on him for causing trouble. "Can I borrow a pen?" He reaches out to his sister, she gives him a questioning look but hands over a pen without comment. Touya is quick to pull a cocktail napkin out of his suit pocket and scribbles something on it. "Here," he says, pressing the napkin into Keigo's hands, "if you wanna make good on that bet hit me up."
"Touya—"
"Nothing you need to worry about. Where's Shouto? I should probably talk to him before I need to get out of here."
Fuyumi sighs but starts to lead Touya away from him, but not before shooting him another apologetic glance over her shoulder.
Keigo stands there stunned, looking at a phone number and the name Dabi. He's put an @ symbol before it so Keigo presumes it's the other man's social media handle.
He shoves it in his pocket before he does something stupid. Like add the number to his contacts or search him up on Instagram. Keigo should really just forget about the bet and Touya Todoroki.
Keigo finishes his lap around the gallery, doing his diligence so he can report to Enji about what he sees. Talks to a few art critics he knows, makes up some lies about wanting to see what the younger generation of artists is up to. Finally sees that Shouto is alone and makes his way across the room to him. Figures he should at least say hello before dipping out.
"Hello Takami, Fuyumi had mentioned to me you'd come to see the gallery. Thank you very much." Shouto says, beating him to the punch, bowing just enough to be respectful.
"Ah," Keigo gestures for Shouto to straighten up, "no need for such formality Shouto. Also I've told your sister this too, please call me Keigo. It was a pleasure seeing your gallery, very different from the art I'm used to being around."
"Yes, father is not very happy with me choosing to follow Touya-nii's lead when it comes to art." And ain't that something.
"I just happened to be talking to your brother earlier, but I didn't get the chance to learn about what kind of art he makes. He was trying to make a bet with me that he could impress me with his ability with Nihonga," Keigo chuckles at the thought.
Shouto laughs along with him. "Oh, it's definitely not his specialty, but I'm sure you can imagine father did make us all practice it as children. Some of us had more talent for it than others." Keigo feels like he's leaving something off. "But Nii-san's focus is tattoos,and will sometimes do graffiti if he gets a client wanting something done." Shouto pulls out his phone while talking and forcefully shoves it into Keigo's hands.
Keigo takes the hint and scrolls through the feed. Seeing some traditional Japanese tattoo work, but just as much of it is not traditional Japanese style. Ranging from black and white to vibrant bursts of colors. Interspersed in the tattoo work are pictures of Touya standing in front of large murals of graffiti. His clothes are clean, so it's hard to tell if this is his work or just one he's taken a photo with. He's wearing short sleeves in some of the pictures so he can see both arms are also covered in tattoos but the details are hard to see at a distance.
But the more he scrolls the more he loses his confidence in winning the bet. He obviously knows Shouto is an artist, Fuyumi teaches art at a local elementary school, he doesn't know much about the other two Todoroki brothers. Neither run in similar circles as Keigo. Enji talked up Shouto to be his heir, following in his footsteps, so he (wrongfully) assumed none of his other children were big into the art world.
He scrolls back to the top of his Instagram, and sees the over 50k followers.
Fuck. He got played, didn't he?
"Touya doesn't happen to be one of your siblings that had a talent for the Nihonga style, is he?" Keigo asks hopefully, handing the phone back to Shouto.
"Oh yes, he graduated from Geidai, he was supposed to be majoring in Nihonga but ended up secretly switching to inter-media arts after his first year. Completely against our father's wishes, but he didn't find out till after Nii-san had graduated." Shouto's smile can only be described as proud.
"So, I'm going to owe him 50,000 yen then?"
"Most likely."
Keigo waits a week before choosing to text Touya. Not out of any fear he's going to lose the bet—he's almost certain he will. Keigo's just uneasy not knowing if Touya will make him try to tattoo someone or hopefully just do graffiti—he equally wasn't even sure what to say to the son of one of his colleagues (who may or may not be kinda hot, even if he's not usual who'd Keigo would go for).
So he went simple.
|Keigo: hey touya it's keigo
|Keigo: from the art gallery the other night?
Yeah, he's totally not going to embarrass himself.
After staring at his phone waiting far too long for an answer, Keigo puts his phone away and starts to actually do his job—which is likely what Touya is doing. Yeah, that's definitely what he's doing, not ignoring Keigo.
It's another hour of answering emails, responding to commission inquiries and finalizing some plans for an art exhibition for a group of high school students he's been tasked to work with. Before his phone text alert goes off.
He does not almost drop it in his haste to open the message.
|Touya: Yeah, I don't exactly go around giving my number out to a lot of people.
|Touya: You ready to make good on our bet?
|Keigo: yeah when are you free coming up?
|Touya: I should be back in town by this weekend. You busy on Saturday?
|Touya: I'm sure I can round up some impartial judges by then.
|Keigo: saturday works
|Keigo: how do i know theyll be impartial?
|Touya: You're welcome to bring one of your own. You know as long as it's not my father.
|Touya: But if it makes you feel any better, my friends like dragging my ass for fun.
Keigo snorts at the addition. He kinda figured the two might not get along after meeting Touya.
|Keigo: okay ill take your word
|Touya: Dropped pin
|Touya: Met here around 9am. Wear clothes you don't mind getting messy.
So graffiti art it is.
|Keigo:😎👍
|Touya: Ew don't send that to me or I'm blocking you.
Keigo laughs so hard he nearly falls out of his chair. He may end up out 50,000 by the end of the weekend, but at least he'll be entertained.
The location ends up being some abandoned warehouse on the edge of the city. Keigo feels very out of place here. He parks his car next to the very clunky looking black van with graffiti details on it. The van is the only way he's certain he's in the right spot. He may have spent most of his free time this week scrolling through Touya's Instagram, and this van makes an appearance often.
He gets out of his car, and approaches the van. Just to see no one in it. He starts to turn around to take a better look around the lot.
"Over here birdbrain!" Keigo quickly whips around towards the person yelling, to see Touya peeking out from the building's large service door.
"You know that's not the insult you think it is. Birds are actually quite intelligent," Keigo starts, as he walks towards the building.
"You can take it how you want, but I know you know how I meant it," Touya teases, quickly dragging him into the building once Keigo's close enough.
Keigo barely keeps himself from tripping. "Shit! You don't have to drag me, Touya."
The man looks back at him with a look of disgust. "Okay, real quick clarification. Pretty much only my siblings and mother call me Touya. Everywhere else I go by Dabi. So that includes you."
"Cremation? Really?" The question pulls a (beautiful) laugh out of the other man.
"Picked the name at 18 as my graffiti tag and everyone knows me by it so it'd be too big of a hassle to try to change it now," he explains.
"That your van I parked by?"
"No, my work on the side though. Left my bike back at the shop," Of course this man rode a motorcycle, "so I could ride with the rest of the idiots, had to make sure they didn't touch any of the supplies I brought." Dabi opens another set of doors, and Keigo is almost blinded by how bright the large room is.
"Dabi's back!" A young blonde girl yells running at them.
"Slow it down, Himiko," Dabi says, practically grabbing her out of the air as she jumps at him. He slowly starts to walk her away from the door. "You coming in." Dabi turned to look back at him, not stopping in his movements.
"Yeah." He quickly jogs to the middle of the room where everyone else is congregated at a bunch of large metal tables.
"Everyone, this is Keigo Takami. Keigo we have; Himiko Toga, who will be our graffiti judge; Atsuhiro Sako, who will judge the Nihonga; Iguchi Shuichi, our chauffeur; and Tomura Shigaraki, Shuichi's boyfriend and the biggest pain in my ass." Dabi gestures to everyone and they all wave as they're called on—except Shigaraki who just flips Dabi off. Making it somewhat easy for Keigo to know who is who.
"Since it would be very hard to do all the steps here, I've already prepared a small canvas and all my paints." He nods to a large table with a decent amount of art supplies on it. "And as I am a fair and giving man." Everyone else in the room laughs at the statement, Dabi rolls his eyes but otherwise ignores them. "I'm going to let Himiko give you a crash course in graffiti art before you start your big piece on the wall." He gestures to the wall behind Keigo.
Turning around reveals a large white traditional Japanese style dragon, so high up that he must have used at least a ladder, if not some kind of lift to get it up there. The dragon itself must be at least 6 meters, not to mention the fire and so many other details added onto it.
"I'm not getting my work compared to this, am I?" Keigo jokes, pointing up to the dragon.
Dabi walks over to him and slings his arm around Keigo's shoulder before saying, "Nah, Himiko and Atsuhiro will give each of us a rating and if we get the same rating then we'll make Shigaraki pick. He's the only one who's not some kind of artist, plus as mentioned he's the friend that has no problem dragging my ass."
"Sounds good to me." As soon as the words leave his mouth Toga is grabbing him, dragging him to another table, this one covered in different spray paints.
"So first, safety," she shoves a respirator mask into his hands and quickly puts her own on, Keigo follows suit, "second, caps; they are what give you different line weights like a brush would, Dabi's smart and keeps his sorted by size. So the ones on this side are the smallest and then they get bigger going to the right. Then there's the needle cap, it's one of my favorites, it's super messy, great for blood splatters, but does smaller lines. You're not going to be doing a huge piece so you don't really need to worry about these ones." She gestures at the farthest right caps.
"Okay, seems clear enough."
"Wonderful!" Toga squeals, before grabbing a cap from each of the sections and pushing them into Keigo's hands. "Let's do red!" She grabs a bottle of paint before gesturing to him to follow her to a different section of the wall.
"Okay so you can switch out the caps, but try not to use the same cap for different colors; they can get a little funky without cleaning them." She shoves the paint into his hands and waves at the wall expectantly.
"This is just practice right?" he asks, weirdly nervous (it definitely doesn't have anything to do with the small crush he's developing on Dabi).
"Of course! You're actually piece is going to go up by Dabi's!" She says cheerfully.
"Yeah, of course." He hands all but one of the caps to Toga, fiddles around with the one left in his hand till it snaps into place. Turns out to be one of the medium lines, he quickly goes through them all getting a feel for them. With Toga's encouragement he makes a very basic flower, she runs back to the table to get him a few more colors and caps.
He's spent the last week looking into different graffiti for inspiration, so he already has a kind of sketch of what to do. So he takes his time soaking up any knowledge Toga is willing to give him. He decided even before he saw Dabi's dragon that he was going to go with a middle ground between graffiti and his usual work, stuff he already knows how to draw and paint just needs to figure out how to translate that to graffiti.
He shows Toga the sketch he brought with him, and she almost blows his eardrums out with how loud she yells. He quickly puts his hand over her mouth to shush her, ignoring all the looks the others are sending their way.
"If you actually pull it off it's going to match with Dabi's so well," she says, muffled through his hand. She starts to give him more tips than she probably should.
His suspicion is quickly confirmed by Dabi yelling at them, "Himiko, it shouldn't take that long to show him the basics!" Turning around, Keigo sees that Dabi isn't even looking up at them, to focus on his own canvas.
"Party pooper," Toga mumbles under her breath, before stomping her way back to the table. "Last tip before he yells again, break your sketch up into sections and mark some small lines on the wall that way it stays on track." She quickly runs off to go bug Dabi, which unsurprisingly result in her getting shooed away from the man's work.
He quickly gets to work gathering what he needs. He's keeping the color palate simple, complementary to the art that is already there. He's decided on a landscape, something the dragon can be flying over, large waves with a mountain in the distance. Something he's drawn hundreds of times—now to translate it to a completely different medium.
It's no use delaying it further, he grabs his base color and starts to lay down his foundation like he would any other time.
Art has always come naturally to him, his middle school art teacher was the first one to notice his talents. His art was an escape from reality at that point, something he could do to ignore his parent's shouting or the bullying at school (he was a weird kid and they could barely afford a used uniform let alone anything new). But Tsutsumi saw something in him, and gave him a chance to actually escape from poverty. Which has turned into 16 years of working on his craft with very little breaks. But he has a roof over his head, gets to eat good food, travel, and hasn't had to worry about money once. He has not wanted for anything.
Except—
"Himiko go call your girlfriend or something else besides bothering me!" Dabi yells, throwing something at the girl. The commotion breaks him out of thought.
He looks up at the wall, surprised at how much he's managed to get done—not sure how much time has even passed. Even though he's had to focus on this more than anything he has in the last 10 years, he's been able to get into a good flow. While the subject matter is the same—how he achieves it is completely different. It's a painting that would have taken him days, at minimum, between layers drying and even just mixing his pigment.
It's not coming out exactly like he wants it to, but the general vibe is there. A little messy if you look closely at it. It's only about a 1.5×3 meter space much smaller than Dabi's dragon, and his keeps his usual composition technique of allowing the negative space to tell as much of a story as the paint does. It doesn't compare to the white dragon above it, but that's not what the bet is about. He's quite proud of the slowly coming together ocean of waves, happy that it looks like the dragon is flying over top of. He knew he needed to keep it simple and bold if he wanted any chance of winning this.
"Keigo!" Dabi calls out to him. "We're taking a lunch break, come join."
He quickly wipes his hands off on one of the rags to at least get most of the paint off his hands, before walking over to the table with food.
"We sent Shuichi and Tomura to just get a variety of things from the 7/11 around the block, so if you can't find something you like, blame them," Toga informs him.
"I'm not a super picky eater so I'm sure I'll be just fine." Keigo doesn't actually remember the last time he ate food from a konbini, usually just easier to order delivery from a restaurant and have it brought to him, but he lived off the stuff while he was younger.
He grabs a sandwich and manages to grab a small box of fried chicken, and takes a seat next to Dabi. He's got some kind of noodle dish.
"Your stuff isn't looking half bad from a distance," Dabi half compliments him.
"If you get a look at my mine does that mean I can look at yours?" He turns to look at Dabi and sees the man already looking at him, so close.
"Only if you ask nicely," he purrs.
Keigo blushes realizing the unintended innuendo of his words. He hears someone else choke on their food, but can't make himself look away too transfixed on the other man. They are closer than they were at the gallery, knees bumping up against each other, and Keigo, god, he's so tempted to close the short distance between their mouths. Keigo never thought he had a thing for piercings or tattoos, but Dabi is quickly proving him wrong.
"What? Cat got your tongue, angel?"
"Do you think they forgot we're here?" Keigo hears Toga whisper to the others at the table.
Dabi doesn't shift his gaze, blue eyes boring down on him till he has to stop himself from squirming at the intensity of it all. He quickly feels blood flowing to a place he would really rather they not in public, so Keigo is the one to break eye contact.
Dabi huffs out a laugh before turning his attention back to his own food.
Keigo's been the center of attention plenty of times, and has certainly had a lot of people ogling him, vying for his attention. It's become one of his favorite feelings, being the center of attention after being a poor kid that has nothing to one of the more respected artists of his trade was never something he could have hoped for. But the way he feels when Dabi looks at him is nothing like he's felt before, he feels like his going to catch fire. Like he's willing—needs to burn down all the class and polish Keigo has spent years learning and refining. And Keigo just might let him if he'll keep looking at him like that.
He didn't think today was actually going to be fun—be entertained maybe but to not have actually genuine fun, but the more he sits and chats with everyone at the table the more he realizes he really hasn't been living a life. He finds out little pieces of their lives, so much richer and fully than his own; Sako grew up in the Cirrus with his family traveling across Japan, till he started an art co-op with his friend Magne; Iguchi is actually from a really small village but left at 18 to pursue his dream of being a manga artist; Shigaraki was actually apart of a now disbanded cult that his great uncle started with Tomura being touted as a deity, he's does E-sports and streams—that's also how him and Iguchi met; Toga is a teenage runaway that now works as a piercer at the same shop Dabi works at.
Keigo's never had the chance to be in a room with people from so many different walks of life. He didn't really have friends and even once he was up and coming in the art world it wasn't friendship that people sought from him. He doesn't know if he really has friends now or just colleagues.
"Okay breaks over." Dabi claps him on the back—again breaking Keigo from his thoughts before he spirals—before standing to return to his side of the large room to his painting.
He follows Dabi's lead and quickly gets back to work. He's still got some work to do on it, but Dabi hasn't set any sort of time limit so he feels free to not rush his work. Confident Dabi is also wanting as much time as he can get. He quickly gets back into the swing of things. After working on the piece all morning he's starting to get more confident in his work. His new lines aren't as shaky as before so he's quick to go over them again.
He's, again, not sure how much time passes between lunch and when he finally feels finished. Toga quickly skips over to him as she sees him take his mask off for the first time.
"Oooooooooo, you done Keigo?" She's taking a moment to look his art up and down, before turning her attention to him with a toothy grin.
"As done as I'll get." He picks up one of the many rags on the table and is doing his best to clean the paint from his arms and hands.
The waves are intense and so large, looking akin to tsunami season. He used a range of different shades of blue, he lets the color of the wall work for him and manged to avoid using any white. He has a smaller mountain in the background the waves look to be crashing against.
"Dabi you almost done?" Toga shouts across the room.
"Yeah, go ahead and start judging birdbrain while I finish up." Toga grabs a clipboard out of the bag of supplies and quickly starts jotting things down. When Keigo tries to get a peek at the paper she holds it close to her chest and shoos him away.
"Keigo, my boy, why don't you join me in looking over Dabi's work." Sako gestures for Keigo to follow him across the room.
"Hey, I didn't say he could come look before I was done." Dabi stands bodily blocks both Sako and Keigo's view of his work.
"Come on Dabi, you've been staring at Keigo here's work all day. Only fair he gets to finally see yours," Sako lightly scolds the other man.
Dabi lets out a loud exacerbated sigh, like doing what Sako says is causing him great harm, but does stand up fully letting them get a look at his painting.
If Keigo wasn't sure he was losing the bet before he certainly is now. The piece itself is simple. A Japanese long tailed rosefinch sitting on a snow covered berry branch, in its mouth is a berry off the branch. The finished piece is breathtaking in its simplicity, especially with the time restraints Dabi was working with. He was smart to keep it a simple design, focusing on his brush strokes and the quality of his materials.
"Must be impressed if I've managed to shut you up."
Keigo reaches out to smack Dabi on the shoulder, but the other man easily grabs his arm. "Gotta be quicker than that, oldest of four, been dodging hits for years." He keeps his hold on Keigo's arm and leads him away from the table towards the center of the room, leaving Sako to start his scoring.
"So, before they're done judging, how about we make this bet a little more interesting?" Dabi asks, eyes dancing with mirth and a playful grin tugging at his lips.
He still hasn't let go of Keigo's arm, grip just lowering to his wrist. "What did you have in mind, hot stuff?" Keigo leans into the other man's space.
"How about whoever loses has to plan a date for the other?"
"That's an awfully weird way of asking me on a date." Keigo slowly pulls his arm from Dabi's grasp, the other man quickly tries to step back, but this time Keigo is quick enough and laces their fingers together. "That wasn't a no. But you better let me know what you like to eat because as much as I hate to admit it you've got me beat."
"Okay let's get this over with before they make me gag," Shigaraki grimaces interrupting them, even as he's holding Iguchi's hand.
Toga and Sako both approach holding their clipboards to their chest.
"You ready, my dear?" Sako asks.
"On three?"
"One."
"Two."
"Three!" they both yell at the same time flipping over their boards.
Toga's read 6.5/10 in bright red ink, while Sako's read 8/10 in a simple black.
"What are you doing next Friday?" Keigo asks.
"Nothing I can't cancel." Dabi starts to walk them back to the table to pack up his art supplies.
"Wait! It's game night!" Toga yells after them.