Chapter Text
Maybe the exhaustion that comes from attending one patrol after the next without any breaks is what made Keigo all the more likely to lose his focus.
Maybe it’s the weather; the skies full of heavy and dark clouds that threaten to let rain fall onto the world below, the air humid and sticky in the way it usually is when summer is about to change into fall and makes sure to go out with one, nauseating bang.
Maybe it’s the harsh curses that echo through the air, the bright blue fire that lights up buildings close enough that Keigo can almost feel the heat traveling through the air and smack him in the face.
It could’ve been a number of things, really, that caused Keigo to lose focus for only a split second that turns out to be his momentary downfall. A loss of focus means he’s not fully there, he’s not using every trick up his sleeve beat into his person in the name of training. It means he’s blinking a second too long and doesn’t realize the lightning he’s been expertly dodging for twenty annoyingly agonizing minutes is now heading straight for him until it’s too late.
He doesn’t attempt moving to the side, and instead makes sure that no bystanders are close enough to get hit with him. It wouldn’t have done much, anyway. Keigo is fast, everyone knows that, but he’s not fast enough to outrun lightning.
It’s only a matter of seconds until the blue glare manages to strike Keigo; it hits him straight in the chest, which, in any other situation, would’ve been a little poetic. The force of it knocks Keigo back two meters but, strangely enough, it doesn’t hurt the way he’d expect lightning to hurt.
But no, it doesn’t hurt at all, not even a little bit. Instead, the blue light slips under the sleeves of his jacket and kind of… tickles. Keigo has absolutely no time to think about how strange that is before his wings decide to go offline and he does the one thing he’s never done consciously and without any and all grace.
He falls.
Wind rushing past him, loud in his ears, eyes wide, Keigo wastes a precious second thinking, this should not happen to me.
Technically, Keigo shouldn’t even have been the one to respond to the call—Osaka is more than a little out of his actual jurisdiction patrol wise, and he has no business interfering in other Heroes business unless it’s absolutely necessary. Unfortunately for him, though, he’d been attending some photoshoot for a protein bar that, in his honest opinion, tastes like rocks and had been close enough to the distress signal to be the first Hero on scene. After Madam President very kindly asked him to shut the Villain on the run down, of course.
Sending him after a Villain capable of shooting lightning-lasers out of their actual eyes seemed a little cruel. What the hell was Keigo supposed to do about that? Pluck out their eyes in the same manner the HPSC would’ve most likely ordered him to if he’d been facing Medusa? No, thanks.
The possibly worst part of it all is that the Villain would be a normal looking guy, no Villain’s attire or anything, if it weren’t for his strange shirt: colorful, filled with images of cats and, ironically enough, lightning that shoots out of the cats mouths.
As be begins his descent towards the ground, Keigo has a very brief moment to think, I should’ve stayed home today.
He tries to twist around, the fluttery feeling in his limbs spreading to his belly where it grows hot, so that he can take flight and try to salvage some of his reputation, only to notice one very crucial thing—they’re not moving.
His wings refuse to cooperate, and the mental link Keigo has to every single one of his feathers is quiet and completely unresponsive. No—it has gone dark in a way it never has before, not even after his handlers deemed it necessary to… Hawks winces, stopping his train of thought abruptly. ...that is entirely unimportant now, he reminds himself, wind rushing loudly as he continues to drop at high speeds and the asphalt comes closer and closer.
Shit, Keigo has a moment to think. I’m going to splatter on the ground like a literal vegetable. Are you fucking joking.
And then, as if all of that isn’t bad and humiliating enough, Keigo feels his body starting to… grow uncomfortable. It begins with a tingle in the tips of his fingers that travels up his arms and spreads through his entire body where it becomes stronger. When Keigo risks a glance down, his arms are… shrinking? Getting shorter? No, that’s not right: his entire body is rapidly getting smaller.
Which is just.. so great. Fantastic. Not like Keigo’s ever been particularly tall, but taking that little height away from him just seems like the cruelest cherry on top.
His shirt, usually a snug fit that keeps him warm with his jacket, becomes way too big to cover his rapidly changing body, sliding off his shoulders. His pants have long stopped holding on, pooling around his smaller legs in a puddle that threatens to swallow him as he continues to fall.
Somehow though, despite being less than half the size he’s supposed to be, Keigo manages to twist around and land on his feet, half covered by the remains of his outfit. It’s a quiet thing, something he barely feels despite how high up he’d been just minutes prior. The only noise in the alley he finds himself in is the metallic clack of his belt buckle cracking onto the ground.
It could be worse, Keigo reasons as he tries to get his bearings back and shoves himself out of the tangle of his own uniform. He could be naked, or dead.
He just hopes that the other Hero on scene didn’t catch what happened. Falling out of the sky like that is one thing, but your ex witnessing it? The hit should’ve killed him in that case, that would’ve been less humiliating.
Once he’s free, Keigo takes a look around; he’s in some back alley that’s miraculously empty of any and all bystanders, filled with two shops close by that appear to be closed, the windows huge and dark. Everything around him is a lot bigger than Keigo’s used to—he’s already one of the shortest Heroes in the top ten, taller than only Wash, but this is just absurd. Where normal street lamps used to be just tall, now they appear comically large for reasons still unknown to Keigo until he shakes off the last remains of his uniform—his shirt is not meant to stick to him like that, is it?—and approaches one of the store windows to take a look at himself.
Or… not at himself at all.
Instead of coming face to face with himself, the reflection of the Number Two Hero he’s become used to over the years, he comes face to face with a cat. It’s such an odd thing to happen that the first, and only logical, conclusion Keigo comes to is that he’s definitely hallucinating—has to be, really. He probably hit his way on the way down, knocked a couple of screws loose, tilted his world view just enough to make him see himself as a cat instead of a human. Maybe that’s what the Quirk he got hit with does to people.
Keigo tilts his head to the side trying to see past the cat and perhaps catch a glimpse of himself, and the creature mirrors his movements. He twists to the right, watches himself be mirrored again.
Realization strikes him a lot harder than the lightning-laser did, and sets off more alarm bells, too.
Oh, no, he thinks with the appropriate amount of horror, I’m a cat.
That would explain why Keigo isn’t able to feel his feathers, why sounds aren’t as clear, but still extremely sharp. Cats don’t have wings, everyone knows that. There’s still something that feels odd, completely removed from having four legs, no arms, or opposable thumbs now. A little extra… thing that sits in the back of his mind, the sensation close enough to the connection to his wings that poking it isn’t very difficult.
A second after he does it, something orange and covered in fur smacks him straight in the face before it falls onto the ground, covering his paws. Because he has those now. What the fuck?
When Keigo glances down, one of his recently attacked eyes twitches.
That’s… that’s a tail. A very fluffy and orange one. He… has a tail, and no wings, because he’s a cat. What the hell?
He pokes that sense again and the tail twitches once. The cat’s fluffy tail in the reflection does the exact same, orange fur bright in the otherwise dimly lit alley.
Of course I’d be an orange cat, he thinks hysterically. He steps closer to the window to give himself a more thorough once over; his fur is fluffier than those of your average tabby, a warm orange interrupted only by the white covering his paws and a deeper orange on both sides of his spine, the shape almost hilariously close to the silhouette of wings. His eyes appear to be a rich golden, the same as when he’s in his human form, and his ears are fucking huge.
I’m adorable, Keigo thinks with a small sigh. He’s never been much of a cat person because cats always try to eat his wings, but he has to admit he makes a great cat. Maybe once he figures out how to turn back into himself, he’ll visit one of the numerous cat cafe’s stationed close to his apartment.
A tingle in his back makes Keigo tense and crouch down into his clothes; he watches one of his ears flick, and it’s only a second later when he catches snippets of a one-sided conversation.
“… was just around here. Yeah, I’m sure. No, shut up, I don’t—I don’t need my eyes checked. Fuck off.” A sigh, then the unmistakable sound of someone walking closer; the footfalls are quiet, would be barely audible to the average person, but Keigo hears them loud and clear—he memorized them, the rhythm in which thick soled boots strike the asphalt, a long time ago. Keigo keeps his eyes down when the person walks closer. “Fell somewhere around… here. Where the fuck—those are definitely his clothes. But no Haw—did he take them off and fly home naked? A real shame people missed that.” The last bit is muttered, but Keigo still catches it.
Why in the world would Keigo undress and fly home naked as the day he was born? How would that even make sense?
Keigo grumbles to himself as two heavy boots plant themselves in his field of vision. When he reluctantly glances up, he meets two shockingly blue eyes and their owner arches a brow.
“Hey there, kitty.”
Todoroki Touya is as gorgeous as he’s been the last time Keigo was allowed to be this close to the other man; sharp blue eyes, messy white hair, fair skin, defined jawline, cheekbones to die for, the cutest nose Keigo’s ever seen in his life. His black-blue Hero costume holds onto his lean body like another layer of skin, and his thick soled boots could definitely break through bone.
Looking at him, really looking at him, when Keigo’s been denying himself of doing just that for months now, fleeing a room via window whenever the possibility of them ending up in the same space landed on the table, makes something in his chest twinge painfully.
Looking at Touya is like looking at a memory, though the last time he’s seen Touya from this close up, he hadn’t seemed this relaxed—this free.
“Nice nest you made for yourself there,” Touya says with a nod to Keigo’s clothes. “I’m kinda looking for their owner, maybe you can help me out here. The guy’s around this tall,” Touya holds up a hand near his chest and Keigo’s eye twitches—he’s not that short, “and blond. Was most definitely wearing those clothes you’re sitting on when he went down. Oh,” Touya adds, “he also has huge fucking wings attached to his back. They’re red. Kinda hard to miss.”
Keigo’s wings are his most defining feature by far, and yet Touya mentioned them last. He used to tell Keigo that he’s more than his wings, and it seems as if he might still believe that. Keigo’s tail twitches again, and he shakes off that thought, lets it run down his back like water.
“You wouldn’t have happened to see him around?” Touya waits for one, two seconds, then he pushes out a sigh. “Hm, yeah, thought so. Well, you have a good one.” He turns with a wave of his hand, calls over his shoulder, “You go and keep the clothes; their owner has hundreds of those.”
No, I don’t, Keigo thinks.
Touya doesn’t move further than a handful of meters; he freezes mid-step, does a one-eighty, comes right back to where he’d just been and crouches down in front of Keigo, eyes wide as they run over Keigo’s newly acquired body. “Wait a second.”
Keigo waits.
“You’re kidding.”
Keigo’s tail thumps on the fabric of his pants. He lets out a small huff, and Touya’s eyes get bigger as they run over his cat body again, getting caught on the darker marks on his sides. His Adam’s apple bops with his loud swallow, and he leans back, almost far enough to fall right on his ass in the middle of the alley.
Touya stares at Keigo, glances at the sky, puts his face in his hands. “Holy shit,” he breathes a moment later. “You’re a cat.”
Stupid Todoroki's and their equally stupid intelligence.
“No shit,” Keigo wants to say. What comes out of his mouth instead is a hilariously grumpy sounding, “Meow.”
“Holy shit,” Touya says again, sounding amazed. Then he snorts. “Shit, you’re orange. That makes so much sense, of course you’d be an orange cat.”
Keigo knows he just thought the same exact thing, but somehow hearing that Touya’s thoughts seems to run on the same frequency after all this time has passed, makes him want to purse his lips. Which, he has to find out, is definitely not something cats can do. Instead he watches one of his long whiskers twitch.
“That’d explain the clothes, wouldn’t it?” Touya muses to himself, eyes still wide as he glances around the alley. “Awful lot of luck you got to land here, too. Shit, man, this is a mess.” He looks back at Keigo, brows arched. “Don’t make that face—actually, maybe do. Cat-you is an awfully cute little fucker.”
Alright, Keigo thinks as his traitorous little heart gives a skip at those words, and that’s definitely his cue to get the fuck out of here.
Getting hit with lightning might’ve not killed him, and being turned into a cat sure as fuck didn’t succeed either, but hearing his ex boyfriend call him cute? That might just be the thing that does him in.
He doesn’t get further than a small step away from Touya before his feet leave the ground as he’s carefully scooped up by cool hands. Now that he’s without his wings and human body, being in the air is suddenly a lot less fun, even when he’s turned around to face Touya, who keeps hold of his mid section and supports his legs.
“And just where,” Touya says, bright eyes starting into Keigo’s soul, “do you think you’re headed?”
Keigo does the cat equivalent of shrugging; he flicks one of his ears. He thinks he does, anyway, because his left one kinda tickles for a moment.
Not like he could say more; he truly has no idea where he’s supposed to go. He can’t show up to his own apartment since he doesn’t really carry his key around anymore—doesn’t need to, with his wings and a huge balcony with a door he doesn’t lock. Rumi is out of the question since her and cats get along as well as Keigo and cats do: not at all.
The last option on his very narrow list is so far removed from reality or logic that Keigo doesn’t even want to think about it. Doesn’t have to, really, because Touya does.
“Don’t tell me you’re seriously planning on going back to the Commission?” Touya pauses, then squints. “Wait, can you even understand me like this?”
Duh, Keigo thinks and says, “Meow.”
Touya squints a little harder, and Keigo’s tail smacks into his wrist softly.
He aims for a growl, something he very much can do when he throws all of the behavioral training the HPSC wasted money on out of the window, and instead manages to do something completely different. He hisses right in Touya’s face.
He almost goes cross eyed trying to keep eye contact when Touya leans closer, lowers his voice, and says, “That ain’t very nice, kitty.”
Dangerous, dangerous voice to be using when talking to Keigo.
Keigo, at first, tries to swat at him but then thinks better of it and instead lays his paw flat on the cool skin of Touya’s wrist. He taps the bottom of his paw against Touya’s wrist, watches the movement when an idea creeps into his head—he can communicate with Touya; he’s not able to use words, but he won’t have to when he taps out his replies in the shorthand he’s been taught during his training.
Shorthand, something invented for active Heroes to communicate silently with each other if they are ever caught in a situation that requires absolute silence, is something Keigo doesn’t have to use often, but he still knows it perfectly. It’s convenient, a little similar to morse code, but far less widely known and spread.
Get out of my face, Touya, he taps out, tail flicking high enough to bump into Touya’s cheekbone. Your breath smells.
“No, it doesn’t, you little liar.” Touya does move back, but he doesn’t let Keigo back down. Keigo supposes he appreciates not having Touya look down at him from a distance that big now that he’s tiny. “Good to know it’s you in there, though. Imagine if I had to watch you eat some gross shit like tuna flavored cat food, or something.”
Keigo grumbles. I’m NOT eating cat food.
“Not with that attitude, you aren’t.” Touya gives him a once over, then sighs. “Alright, let’s get outta here, shall we?”
And go where?
“My apartment,” Touya says in the same tone of voice someone else would use to say duh. “Unless you wanna camp out on the street until you’re back to human. And,” he tips his head into the direction of Keigo’s uniform, “very naked. Wouldn’t really recommend that.”
Wha—Does this mean Touya has been stranded on the street, butt ass naked, at some point in time during the last months since their break up? How did that even—Keigo shakes his head to rid himself of the mental image, because that’s entirely unimportant right now. He does shelf it away for a later point in time, though; he’s not as strong as he likes to pretend he is.
The mention of Touya’s apartment, a cute and cozy thing tucked into the outskirts of Umeda with a balcony to die for that overlooks the city below, makes Keigo tense up. It used to be his save haven, the place Keigo went to more than his own penthouse. The place that carries all of his positive—and most of his negative—memories with Touya. Keigo didn’t think he’d be seeing it again in this lifetime, and now that he’s about to, he’s not sure how to feel about it.
When Keigo’s in his human form, him tensing up isn’t something people notice unless they know him. His self control is too good to make a reaction quite this human into something obvious. It’s not as easy to hide when he’s a cat, he has to find out when Touya throws him a look that screams, “What?” as his face remains completely neutral, as if taking Keigo back there isn’t odd at all.
Your apartment?
“Well, yeah. Where else would I take you?”
The nearest shelter to make sure Keigo isn’t one of his problems, maybe? Keigo would hate to intrude in a space he’s no longer welcome in.
Before Keigo can think of something to say that isn’t weirdly self conscious or borderline depressing in answer, there’s a bright white-blue flash from nearby, followed by a dull thump that roughly sounds like someone being thrown against a building.
Touya blinks at Keigo. Keigo’s whiskers twitch. “Weird fucking Quirk,” he mutters, then throws a glance over his shoulder. “Hope Eraser’s kicking the shit outta that clown.”
You’re telling me Eraser is there, too?
“Yeah, you didn’t notice? He showed up two seconds after I did.”
No, Keigo sure as fuck did not notice; he was too occupied with trying not to get hit and being distracted by Touya’s presence.
But that’s, honestly, just great. Totally awesome, really.
Not only did the general public and his ex boyfriend witness him fail today, but Aizawa Shouta did, too? Keigo can never show his face near any UA festivals ever again. In fact, he should probably stick his head in the ground or try to hold his breath and die or something.
How humiliating.
Ugh.
In the short second Keigo wastes by imagining, in great detail, how he’ll show up to Yuuei the next time some event rolls around and get sent a look so dry he’ll shrivel up from dehydration just like that, Touya crouches down, one hand still on Keigo’s belly, and reaches out.
Keigo shakes his head and watches as Touya sticks his hand in just about every single pocket that exists in Keigo’s Hero uniform—even the hidden ones, because of course Touya would remember where those are when Keigo can’t defend himself from his nosy fingers. Keigo lets out a huff. Are you mugging me in broad daylight?
“Sure am.” Touya uses his free hand to show off what he pulled out of Keigo’s now ruined pants. It’s Keigo’s Hero license. “Now that I got this thing, I can go commit all kinds of crimes and blame them on your ass.” He snorts. “If I were mugging you, and didn’t know you had zero valuable shit on you minus that piece of plastic, I’d be less obvious about it. Cut me some slack here.”
Fuck you, Keigo taps out against Touya’s wrist.
“Yeah, yeah,” Touya says as he tucks Keigo under his arm as if he’s a small sack of potatoes and not—and not Keigo. “Missed you, too.”
Being in Touya’s apartment is every bit as disorienting as Keigo feared it to be.
Touya, after unlocking the door, stepping inside, and putting Keigo back down, doesn’t have to point out where what is. Keigo would know his way around here blind; he knows this place like the back of his hand.
A couple months ago, this apartment used to be Keigo’s home. Now, it doesn’t really feel like it anymore.
It also doesn’t—Keigo’s nose is better than your average person’s nose, always has been, but now that he’s a cat, it’s… a lot better. Good enough to quickly realize the place smells… not bad, because Touya smells absurdly good, but—very different. It takes two more deep breaths for Keigo to figure out just why that is, and once he understands, he wishes he hadn’t noticed in the first place.
Any and all traces of Keigo, of his scent, are completely gone.
On top of that being a hard thing to process is the emotional mess inside of Keigo when he notices the empty spaces on the walls and shelves—the places that were once filled with pictures and trinkets of them and their friends. Anything that had a hint of Keigo in it seems to have vanished as if it never existed in the first place.
Keigo supposes it’s a small mercy that Touya hasn’t replaced the stuff. He doesn’t think he could’ve handled it. And he’s not sure if cats have the equipment to cry, but he knows he would’ve found out very quickly if that had been the case.
After slipping out of his boots in the entrance, lining them up neatly the way he’s always done, Touya steps into the kitchen to the right, and Keigo is quick to follow. Before Touya is able to do more than open the fridge, his phone begins to ring and he pulls it out with a frown.
Blue eyes glance at Keigo when Keigo, after eyeing the counter, tries his luck and actually manages to land on the bright marble without smacking against it first. Touya narrows his eyes at the move, but he just shakes his phone from side to side. “It’s Eraser.”
Tension immediately manages to creep back into Keigo’s small frame.
Put him on speaker, Keigo taps out.
“Way ahead of you,” Touya mutters and answers the call with a low, “Eraser.”
“I have bad news, and good news. Either throw a coin on which one you want to hear first, or I’m choosing for you.” Aizawa sounds tired and done, which, for the man, means he’s completely unharmed and perfectly fine. “You have two seconds.”
Keigo exchanges a glance with Touya.
“Good first,” Touya says, leaning against the counter at this back.
“That was fast. Good,” Aizawa says. “We’ve been successful in apprehending the Villain and bringing him in. A background check tells us that Shock—the alias he chose for himself—is called Yamamoto Ren, and that he was acting alone and without clear motive. From what I’ve heard, he seems to be very cooperative. A little apologetic, too, though I’d trust that as much as I—as much as one of my students can throw him.”
There’s some mumbling in the background, and some clacking that can only come from a pen when a person presses their finger on the end repeatedly. It almost sounds like… hold on, is Aizawa seriously debriefing them in front of his students? How the hell did the man get back to work this quickly?
Touya snorts. “Made one hell of a mess only to be good and obedient now,” he says. “If that’s the good part, what’s the bad one?”
“I’ll get to that in a second. First, though, how is H—how is he?”
Keigo doesn’t know how smart it is not to mention him by his Hero name when there was definitely some kind of live footage of the fight being streamed. Keigo didn’t see any TV helicopters, or a bunch of phones, but he knows better than anyone else that that doesn’t have to mean shit. People, especially civilians with a love for all things Heroes, are a lot sneakier than one might assume.
“As fine as he can be, considering.” Touya gives Keigo a once over, slow enough that Keigo reaches out in an attempt to smack Touya with his little paw. He, of course, misses terribly. “Very… feline.”
“So I’ve heard,” Aizawa replies. “This brings me to the bad news, actually. It’s kinda connected to it. At first we assumed Shock was lying straight to our faces, but Tsukauchi got to questioning, and the statement remained the same. We… have no confirmed time-frame as to how long this will last.”
Keigo blinks. One, two, three times. Stares at the coffee maker on the other side of the kitchen, tilts his head to the side, ears twitching. Thinks, that can’t be right, and surely I’ve misheard that, before he shakes his head. To make sure he isn’t stuck in some horrible dream, he pokes himself with a claw. It’s painful, brief, but still does nothing to change his location or state.
You’re actually joking, Keigo taps out against the table.
Touya, without even having glanced at Keigo, says, “You’re fucking joking.”
“Yes, Todoroki,” comes Aizawa’s dry voice through the speaker, “I’m using a matter this sensitive to crack jo—No, I’m not talking to you. Sit back down, Todoroki.”
“Shou’s there?”
Silence. Then, “How many Todoroki’s do you know—”
“More than you do,” Touya says, and Aizawa lets out a sigh.
“—that are in my class. Yes, your brother is here.” The man says it even drier, somehow forgoing a “duh” entirely, but it’s still heard. “And now I can see where he gets it from. No, this wasn’t an invitation to talk. Sit back down. And no, Dabi,” he continues, “I was not joking. There are no records of this Quirk, which is a different problem all together, and Shock doesn’t have knowledge about how long it is supposed to last since this is the first time he’s successfully hit someone with it.”
Well, that’s just unnecessarily embarrassing. The man too fast for his own good, being the first successful victim of some run of the mill Villain. That’ll go great for his public image; his PR team is going to skin him alive.
“What the fuck,” Touya says. He slumps more against the counter, heaves a sigh. Says, again, “What the actual fuck.”
Understatement of the literal century, Keigo thinks. But he agrees because, genuinely, what the fuck?
“Piece of advice? Wait it out. The Quirk will have to wear off eventually, and until then keep your eyes and ears peeled, and I’ll do the same on my side. Following the normal procedures.” Which is a very roundabout way of saying that Aizawa is going through extra lengths to keep this off record, and urges them to do the same. “And,” the man adds, “for the love of God, don’t do anything stupid.”
“Please,” Touya says with a heavy dose of amusement, “who the fuck do you take us for?”
“People who do stupid things unprompted,” Aizawa wastes no time replying. He sighs. “We’ll be in contact.” And with that, he hangs up.
Touya stares at his phone for a moment longer before pocketing it and glancing up, a weird expression on his face that is gone again by the time he blinks. “Well,” he says, “looks like we’ve just been ordered to do fuck all until this is over. Paid vacation with extra steps, or whatever.”
Paid vacation, my ass, Keigo thinks, eye twitching.
Madam President is going to have me decapitated, Keigo cheerfully taps out against the counter. His tail, swishing back and forth over the marble, exposes his agitation. Or maybe it’ll be Mera, and he’ll go bald from shock. Hey, do you think they’ll declare me as missing or just out of commission while I’m like this?
“Let her fucking try,” Touya mutters, then shakes his head. “Nope, they won’t. Officially, you’re feeling under the weather after taking that lightning to the chest, and need to take a break.”
And you know that how?
“Because I texted Angel.”
I wasn’t aware you had his number.
Or, he adds mentally, that Angel and Touya are on speaking terms.
Angel, Keigo’s assistant and off the record sidekick, has never really gotten along with Touya, not even when him and Keigo had still been dating. Back then, Touya had found it funny and blamed jealousy for it since there never really had been a good reason for Angel’s dislike; the wry twist of his mouth tells Keigo that he still finds it amusing.
Even now, after months of being broken up, Keigo has no explanation for it and he assumes it’s one of the many things Angel will take to the grave. All he does know is that it had never been jealousy—not like that, at least. Angel once informed Keigo, a serene smile on his face that didn’t match his words, that he’d rather stick his hands into lava than look at Keigo like that.
Keigo, who’s always seen Angel as something of a brother he’s never been allowed to have, kind of got it, but the lava was still a little much.
Still, informing Angel—out of all the limited options they have—was definitely the right choice. The man isn’t afraid to tell Mera, or Madam President for that matter, to shove it. How he’s still alive is a genuine mystery to Keigo, but he’s not exactly complaining about it.
“Oh, I sure as fuck don’t.” Touya rummages around in the unethically big pocket of his coat, then pulls out Keigo’s phone and waves it around. “But you do. Oh, and you should change your password—“chickenwings123” isn’t really secure.”
His tail thumps against the counter. Yes, it is. No one’s going to figure that out. Or get close enough to Keigo to steal his phone from his person—Touya, of course, is special. Always has been.
Touya snorts. “No offense, bird—Hawks,” Keigo tries not to wince at Touya’s slip up, at the almost-usage of the nickname Touya had given him years ago, “but my mother could’ve guessed that one.”
Maybe so. Keigo turns his face away for a moment. But Rei’s different.
In more ways than one, Rei is completely different from the other members of the Todoroki family. Back then, she'd accepted Keigo into her home with open arms, treated him as if he were one of her own even when Keigo and Touya hadn’t been dating yet, and still dancing around each other with the word “friendship” used as a barrier to hide behind. She, apparently, had been one of the few to see right through them, known the two of them could’ve never been just friends.
After Keigo and Touya separated, the Todoroki siblings had cut off any and all contact with Keigo, pushed him out of the little family they had welcomed in similarly to how Touya’s and Keigo’s friends turned into Touya’s friends, not even sparing him a single look on the streets, not texting him, nothing. Just radio silence and the ever present feeling of failure that weighs down on Keigo, familiar and cruel.
The only one who reached out, asked how he’s doing, if he’s eating enough, not shying away from conversations had been Rei.
She still does this, actually, in the rare instances Keigo and her bump into each other in the city.
“I mean, obviously,” Touya says. “Doesn’t change the fact that any of your fans could hack this shit and leak your fucking nudes or texts or some shit.”
Ah, yes. The nudes he doesn’t take or the conversations he has with Rumi that mostly consist of her telling him to come over for movie night or going into great detail about how very gay she is. Exciting stuff, really. Shit that would really shock the world.
Keigo hopes his eyes alone are able to convey just how stupid what Touya just said is, and maybe he’s successful since, instead of saying more about what Keigo could possibly hide away on his phone, he mutters, “Now get your ass off my counter unless you’re trying to cook something.”
No. Keigo sits down, gives Touya’s glass a small push with his paw, tail thumping on the cool marble. I am hungry, though. Could really go for some wings right about now.
Touya turns to give Keigo a look as if he just spontaneously grew another three heads. “Absolutely fucking not, I’m not giving a cat chicken wings.”
Good thing I’m not a cat, then.
“Really?” Touya fishes out Keigo’s phone again, opens the camera and then flips it around so Keigo gets a good look at himself. He’s devastatingly cute. “The hell are you, then? Don’t care if you’re human deep down; someone without opposable thumbs doesn’t get to eat chicken wings. You wouldn’t even be able to fucking hold them.”
Keigo puts up one of his paws, pushes out his claws, and waves it around to the best of his abilities, a growl vibrating through his chest when Touya shakes his head after staring at it for a couple of seconds.
“Oh, absolutely fucking not. You’re not gonna walk all over the apartment with greasy little paws, Hawks.”
Fuck you.
Touya huffs before he turns away and to his cabinets with a mutter of, “Oh, you fucking wish.” He rummages around in a manner that is a lot nosier than it has to be, pots and other metal utensils banging together until Keigo’s ears hurt. “I’m making soup,” he says as he places a pot on the stove, “and you’re either eating some of it or going to bed hungry.”
Soup? Fucking soup. After going on endless monologues about how fucked up Keigo’s “diet” is and going through lengths to make sure he ate actual healthy food and not just junk, Touya wants to end a day he’s had a patrol—and fight—on with some soup.
As soon as Keigo’s back in his human form, he’ll stop running away at the first sight of Touya to throw a dictionary at him, opened on the page with irony on it. Maybe he’ll even put a picture of Touya in it, to make sure his intensions are crystal clear.
Irony or not, though, Keigo is really hungry. He hadn’t been lying about that.
Keigo belatedly does as he’s told and jumps off the counter, but only so he can hop onto the one Touya’s standing at and sit down next to the stove, making sure Touya actually sees what he’s tapping out. Soup sounds good. Make it chicken noodle?
Touya stares at his paw for longer than is necessary before he heaves a sigh and nods. “Sure,” he says, “chicken noodle soup it is, I guess.”
Dinner is a quiet, but strange affair; the two of them sit on opposite sides of Touya’s dinner table, with Touya on a chair and Keigo on the actual wooden surface. Touya is holding a spoon that he dips into the soup in his plate. Keigo is sticking his tongue in the little bowl Touya placed in front of him.
The entire thing is a lot less embarrassing than Keigo imagined it to be; he doesn’t want to think about why that is.
After, once Touya has cleared the table and put the plates and bowls away, the man stretches, arms reaching up high enough that a sliver of his stomach gets exposed. Keigo’s gaze is drawn to the pale skin, the flash of a belly button piercing, before it’s covered again He looks away before Touya catches him staring, feeling weirdly guilty about it.
“Shit, I’m fucking beat. You go busy yourself, I need to take a hot shower; getting hit in the shoulder fucking hurts.” Keigo’s eyes drop to Touya’s shoulders; he didn’t know Touya’d been hit in the fight. “Once I’m out, you’re free to—” Touya stops. Squints. Snorts. “Never fucking mind. Was gonna offer you the shower, but I highly doubt cats do that.”
I don’t know all that much about cats, Keigo says, but I agree. Probably not something I’d wanna try doing. The thought alone actually sends a shiver down Keigo’s spine in the same way imagining eating cat food had done. It’s only a little weird, because Keigo loves showers.
One more thing he’ll have to adjust to until he’s back to normal, he supposes. Just like being back in Touya’s apartment, which is still… more than a little weird. He kind of feels like he shouldn’t be here, like he doesn’t belong anymore.
He shoves that thought to the back of his mind as Touya shrugs and waves before vanishing into the bathroom. Keigo definitely notices he doesn’t have a change of clothes with him, and he shoves that one out of his mind completely.
After walking around the kitchen and the living room, and sitting first on the sofa and then the small coffee table after having the weirdest urge to do just that, Keigo listens to the running water in the bathroom and then ventures deeper into the apartment. There’s only so many rooms to explore, so he eventually circles back around and pokes his head into Touya’s bedroom. He feels weirdly guilty about it until he remembers that Touya never said he shouldn’t, and then steps fully in.
It’s not too different from any other bedroom Keigo has ever seen—a huge bed, a TV mounted to the wall, another door leading into a walk-in closet, nightstands on both sides of the bed—but the emotions the room holds still hit Keigo with enough force to be compared to a physical hit to the chest. It robs his breath, makes breathing just a little more difficult, when Keigo realizes that this is the only room in the entire apartment that hasn’t changed since Keigo’s last seen it.
There’s still the same wallpaper, the bed hasn’t changed from where it’s pushed headboard first against the right wall, the window still overlooks the same strip of the city. Touya has never had any pictures up in here, the walls are as barren as they’d always been. The little, round carpet Touya had gotten from Rei still lays next to the right side of the bed—on what used to be Touya’s side of it. Now, Keigo imagines, either side is Touya’s.
Unless, a small voice he tries to ignore speaks up in the back of his mind, he’s sharing his bed with someone else who favors the left just like Keigo used to—still does, actually.
There’s more space on the left, the perfect amount of room for his wings to hang off the edge while Keigo slept, same as in his own apartment. Sleeping on the left also meant that Keigo was between the door and Touya, putting himself in the way of anyone who might’ve dared to be stupid enough to break in.
“Such a Hero,” Touya used to say, amused to no end when he put one and one together.
“Your Hero,” used to be Keigo’s automatic reply.
Keigo hops on the bed before he can think about the time that used to be, sitting down on the foot of it, on top of the neatly folded blankets. They’re soft below the pads of his paws—below his toe beans, he supposes—and Keigo has the weirdest urge to push his paws deeper into it, to let them be surrounded by that achingly familiar softness that his own blanket at home never quite manages to replicate. Neither does it smell like Touya, but that is just a given.
Nothing in Keigo’s apartment ever smelled like Touya, apart from the one sweater he has stuffed into the back of his closet, so far out of sight that Keigo definitely doesn’t think about it. Not at all.
After a moment, Keigo pushes his other paw into the blanket, too. His tail flicks. His ears twitch once. Somehow the process—push one paw in, pull the other one back, rinse and repeat—is oddly… calming. And pleasant. So Keigo does it again and again, kind of feeling himself getting lost in it, his attention narrowing down only on this, on pushing the blanket down, reshaping the small space around himself.
His chest starts to rumble the more he gets into it, quiet purring growing louder the harder he digs his paws into the blanket. The fact that he is able to do that now is a lot less shocking than it should probably be.
He’s so focused on what he’s doing with his paws that he completely misses the water cutting off, the bathroom door opening, footsteps coming closer until it’s too late to hide what he’s doing. Or where he’s doing it.
“Hell are you doing?”
Keigo freezes, eyes going wide. He lifts his head slowly, stomach sinking at the half lidded look Touya sends him as he steps into his bedroom with fresh clothes, hair wet, eyebrow arched. The rumble in his chest cuts off abruptly, and reality crashed over Keigo in the same way a bucket of frozen water would.
Oh, right, he has a moment to think as he pulls his paws—and claws, now that he really pays attention to what he’s doing—back. I’m probably—definitely not welcome in this bed, or this room, anymore.
He quickly stands up and makes to flee the room, tail tucked between his legs and chest aching, but a hand catches him around the middle as he’s mid-air and stops his escape just like that.
“Don’t make yourself comfortable at the foot of the bed, you weirdo,” Touya says, and then deposits him higher up, closer to the pillows, on what used to be Keigo’s side of the bed. He rounds it, then, switching off the light and letting the darkness take over the room, before pulling the blankets back on his side and sliding below them. He blinks at Keigo’s gobsmacked expression. “What’s that look for? You telling me you’d rather sleep down there?” He points to his covered legs. “Or on the sofa? Maybe the floor? If that’s the case, be my fucking guest.”
No, Keigo taps out, his limbs feeling frozen. I do prefer beds, actually.
“Then what’s the issue?” Touya asks, as if telling your ex-boyfriend to sleep in your bed is completely normal.
And, hey, maybe it is. Maybe Keigo’s the one who’s weird for making it a little weird and awkward, for assuming this is strange. Not like he’d know what the proper etiquette for ex-boyfriends is supposed to be—his first, and only, boyfriend had been Touya.
He doesn’t do Touya the disservice of asking if he actually means it—Touya rarely says something he doesn’t mean, honest to a fault unless he’s lying for fun. Keigo knows this better than anyone else.
Nothing, he taps out instead and then curls up, makes himself as small as possible, head pillowed on his paws, tail curling around him, misses the comfort the weight of his wings usually gives him. Don’t worry about it, man.
It’s just… odd to lay next to Touya again, to glance over and see his sharp features from up close, to look into his face as he’s being pulled into sleep, to see what Keigo was so sure he’d never be allowed to see again in this lifetime.
“Hawks.” Touya’s voice is quiet and rough, streaked through with exhaustion not unlike the one Keigo feels himself weighted down by. “We’re gonna figure this shit out, yeah? No way around it. We will, alright, but not now. Go the fuck to sleep.”
And, after moments that stretch into long minutes spent curled up on a mattress and surrounded by familiar scents, he does. In his cat body, next to his ex-boyfriend, without any knowledge of how long he’ll remain this way.
Keigo really should’ve skipped work today.