It was beyond cold outside. Keigo hated the cold. He couldn't wait for his patrol to be over so he could head back to his apartment, eat chicken and watch TV for the rest of the night. But apparently the world hated him after all. As soon as he was finished with his patrol, his phone vibrated in his back pocket.
Groaning, he pulled it out only to stop at seeing the caller ID. Unknown, it said, but he had a feeling he knew who it was. Dabi, from the League of Villains. It was always him who contacted him for some reason. Not that he minded all that much; he liked Dabi well enough, but the League, or as they were now going by, the Paranormal Liberation Front, as a whole made him uncomfortable, even if he was only doing the whole "double agent" thing for a job.
He made sure he was well hidden and no one was around him before answering the phone "What's up?" He asked with his usual carefree tone.
"Where are you?" As he'd guessed, it was Dabi's voice that came through the speaker. He sounded slightly annoyed, which wasn't all that big of a surprise. It had only been a few days since the new members of the Liberation Army joined up, and already Keigo could tell not all of them were getting along.
"Just got off of patrol. Why? You miss me?" Keigo smirked even though he knew Dabi couldn't see him.
Dabi snorted. "As if. Shigaraki said he has something to tell you, along with that asshole with the long nose."
"Roger. I'll fly as fast as my wings can carry me to your humble abode."
"Shut the fuck up and just get here already. I don't need Shigaraki's creepy ass face staring me down all night."
"Noted." There was a short beep as Dabi hung up and Keigo sighed, returning the phone to his pocket before spreading his wings and taking to the sky. The villains' new hideout wasn't all that far away, so it only took him about five minutes to fly the rest of the way there.
It was a lot bigger now that the Liberation Army joined, and no one would ever have guessed it was the headquarters for a huge villain operation. Keigo walked up to the front door and let himself in, grinning and waving to the secretary. She rolled her eyes. "Go ahead." She said in a bored voice. "I'll let them know you're coming."
"Why thank you, madame." Keigo bowed politely before making his way to the elevator. The main headquarters of the Paranormal Liberation Front was on the sixth floor, so that was the button he pressed. When the doors slid shut, he leaned up against the wall and turned his face to the ceiling while he waited.
Shigaraki probably wanted him to do another job for him. What a pain. Keigo didn't really like any of the villains--except for Dabi, of course. He could tell that there was a horrible story in his past, something he wouldn't share with anyone unless they were close to him; the reason he'd turned to villainy in the first place. Keigo wanted to know that story, wanted to help him. But first, he had to be trusted by him.
The doors slid open with a soft ding and Keigo stepped out of the elevator, putting his usual grin back on his face when the first person he saw was none other than Dabi. He looked ticked off, as per usual. He was wearing black jeans and a maroon T-shirt with black boots. "Took you long enough." He grumbled.
"Whatever do you mean?" Keigo pretended to gasp. "I came as quickly as I could, I swear!" He smirked. "Did you actually want to see me that badly, Dabi?"
Dabi scoffed and turned to walk away. Keigo pouted and followed him to Re-Destro's office, where he assumed Shigaraki was waiting for them. Inside, it was dim. It was dark outside, but for some reason, the only light on in the room was the lamp on Re-Destro's desk, where said man was sitting and flipping through a copy of Special Abilities Liberation Front. Villains were weird.
"Yo!" Keigo greeted, seating himself on the couch across from Shigaraki, who had had his back turned to the door. Dabi sat next to him and snatched a random magazine off the coffee table in front of them, boredly flipping through the pages. "You wanted to talk to me, Shiggy?"
"I've told you a million times to stop calling me that, Hawks." Somehow his voice sounded even scratchier than usual. Maybe it was the time. It was rather late, after all.
"My bad." Keigo shrugged. "So, whadja need from lil old me anyway?"
Shigaraki nodded to a stack of the same book Re-Destro was reading that were piled on top of the desk. "Go out and deliver those. As many as possible. And if a hero sees you--"
"Get rid of em. Hey, I know the drill." Keigo shrugged. "You got it. I can do it tomorrow."
"Hmph. Whatever. Go away now. You're bothering me."
"Alrighty!" Keigo hopped to his feet, grabbed the books up in his arms and walked out of the office. He turned around to shut the door before realizing that his arms were full of books, and he ended up dropping about half of them in his attempt to close the door back.
"Damn," Keigo chewed on his lip. He crouched down to start picking them up when a hand on his chest stopped him. He looked up to find Dabi standing there, holding out one of the books.
"Ask for help next time," he said, putting the book in his arms when Keigo made no move to take it. "Dumbass."
"Sorry," Keigo chuckled. Dabi rolled his eyes but closed the door and crouched down to help him pick up the books. They each ended up carrying about half of them and made their way to the elevator together.
"Where do you want to take these?" Dabi asked.
"My place, I guess?" Keigo tilted his head as he leaned against the elevator wall, thinking. "Hmm...no, probably not a good idea. I live all the way across the city."
"You can stay here then." Dabi pressed one of the buttons and came to stand beside him. "Just take em with you when you leave tomorrow."
"Roger." Keigo tried to lift his hand to give him a salute but managed to once again forget about the books. Four of them spilled over onto the floor.
Dabi burst out laughing. "You're so fucking stupid, you know that?"
"Oh, shut up." Keigo tried to hide the fact that he was blushing as he bent over to pick up the fallen books. The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. Dabi left first and Keigo followed behind him, struggling to hold onto the now awkwardly positioned books in his arms.
Dabi led him down a long hallway and stopped in front of one of the many doors. None of them were labeled, but Keigo had a vague idea of who the rooms belonged to. He could hear muffled voices coming from some of the other rooms, and he was fairly sure he could hear the repeated sound of something sharp lodging itself into a wall.
"Right here," Dabi said, pushing the door open with the toe of his boot. He set the books he was carrying on the dresser before sitting down on the futon. Keigo followed his lead, taking the opportunity while Dabi was taking off his jacket to look around the room.
It clearly belonged to Dabi. It was dark, the single window boarded over and painted black. Tacked up on the walls were hundreds and hundreds of newspaper articles and clippings. It was a little hard to read them in the darkness, but Keigo would've recognized that flaming face featured on the majority of them from miles away. Nearly all of the newspaper clippings tacked up on Dabi's wall were about Endeavor.
"What the hell are you looking at?" Dabi demanded, shaking him out of the daze he'd been at staring at them all.
"I--uh, nothing. It's nothing." Keigo cleared his throat and forced himself to look away from the walls. "You, uh...got a thing for Endeavor or something?"
He immediately knew he'd crossed a line. He wondered whether Dabi would simply kick him out of the room or attempt to kill him for asking a question like that. He tensed his muscles, preparing himself to strike back if he attacked.
To his surprise, however, Dabi did neither of those things. He scowled before laying back on the bed and rolling over so that his back was facing him. "No," he mumbled simply. "It's complicated."
"Ah," Keigo nodded even though that explained nothing. He was even more curious now than he had been before. He clearly knew Endeavor, and there was obviously some sort of history between them. Had he maybe been caught by him at one point and now held a grudge? Or was it something else? Curiosity burned its way through Keigo's mind.
"He's my dad." The soft rumble of Dabi's voice beside him once again broke Keigo out of his head.
"Um, what?" He asked stupidly. Dabi's shoulders hunched slightly forwards.
"I said, he's my dad." He repeated. "Endeavor is my father."
"What? Seriously?" He spluttered. "B-But...Endeavor is...how?"
He turned over so that he was facing the ceiling now and nodded, exhaling deeply before continuing. "I'm his oldest kid. But I ran away a long time ago. He's a wife-beating, child-abusing bastard. I want him dead." His voice was so cold and full of years of rage and hate that it sent chills down Keigo's spine.
"Eh...I dunno, Dabi, maybe he's chan--"
"Changed? Is that what you're gonna say? Enji Todoroki, changed?" Dabi scoffed. "No way, not in a million years. He would never change."
Keigo chewed on his lip and laid back on the bed beside him, resting his arms behind his head and draping his wings over the other side. "You might be surprised, actually. I work with him, you know. He's not--"
"You don't know anything." Dabi snapped. "You don't know what that bastard did to me, to my siblings, to Sh...you don't know, okay? So don't act like you do. Or I'll kill you."
He sighed. "Fine, whatever. You're right, I don't know exactly what he's done in the past, but I really do think he's starting to change." He paused, scratching his neck before grinning. "Old man's still a stick in the mud, though."
Another dry laugh came from Dabi. He sat up, and when Dabi lifted his head to look at him, he was running a hand through his hair with a heavy sigh. Keigo stifled his instinct to make a sarcastic comment about just how sexy he thought he looked when he did that.
"Hey," he muttered. "You wanna know something funny? When I was a kid...I wanted to be a hero."
"Yeah?" Keigo sat up and crossed his legs on top of the bed, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his palm as he listened to Dabi talk. "Lemme guess, Dear Old Dad changed that, huh?"
"That's one way to put it, I guess." He shook his head. "He forced our mom to marry him, you know. He only wanted her Quirk. He thought that if he couldn't beat All Might out of the top spot, one of his kids could. So he found a woman with a Quirk he thought was strong and forced her to marry him. Then he started having kids, waiting to get the perfect child. A kid who could surpass him and beat All Might. I was the oldest, and when K was born, for a while he thought that was going to be me. But after a couple of years, he realized he was wrong. I'd inherited his Quirk, and my mom's weakness to fire. Talk about irony, am I right?"
Something about that rang a bell in Keigo's mind. "Is that where your scars came from?"
He nodded again. "Yep. My scars are all burn marks caused when that bastard forced me to use my Quirk constantly in training. At one point it got so bad that I had to be hospitalized for weeks. They did a few skin drafts to try and repair the damage, but I ran away before they could completely heal. That was when I left that family behind. Honestly...I still kind of regret it."
"You do?"
"Yeah. I was around twelve years old when I ran away, and I was the oldest out of all my siblings. After that bastard deemed Fuyumi, Natsuo, and I as failures, he had Shoto. Shoto was the perfect child he'd been waiting for. He was only two or three years old when I ran away. I couldn't protect him from that monster."
"That's not your fault. You're not responsible for the things he did."
"But I am!" Dabi exclaimed. "Don't you get it? I was the oldest! A big brother is supposed to protect his little siblings, not run away like a damn coward!"
The next thing Keigo did probably should have been better thought out, but at the time he didn't care at all. He scooted closer to Dabi and forcibly pulled him down into a hug, tucking one wing around him as well. Dabi was stiff, but to Keigo's surprise he didn't immediately start fighting to get away.
"What the hell are you doing?" He grumbled after a couple minutes.
"I'm comforting you." Keigo replied. "I mean, this is what you're supposed to do when someone's hurting, right?"
Dabi snorted, but he still didn't pull away, and Keigo even felt him begin to relax into the embrace. "We're supposed to be villains, dumbass. Villains don't really do the whole comforting thing."
"Bullshit," Keigo grinned and propped his chin atop Dabi's hair. "Everybody needs comfort. Even cold-hearted villains like us."
Dabi didn't respond for a long time. Keigo was about to ask if he'd fallen asleep when he felt a hand gently pushing against his stomach. Taking the hint, he released him from the embrace and returned to his previous spot on the bed, only a tad bit closer to him this time.
"Thanks," Dabi mumbled. "But if you even think about telling anyone about any of this, I'll--"
"Kill me, I got it, I got it." Keigo chuckled. "You're a very violent person, aren't you, Dabi?"
"...it's Touya."
Keigo tilted his head to the side. "Huh?"
"My real name. It's Touya." Seconds after he'd finished talking, he groaned and dropped his face into his hands. "Why the hell did I just tell you that."
Keigo couldn't help but grin. "Oh, I see. You like me!" He sang. "Admit it, you like having me around! Admit it!"
"Fine!" His voice was muffled by his hands. "You're not too terrible, I guess. You're a lot more fun to be around than Shigaraki, that's for damn sure."
Keigo laughed. "I'm not sure if that was a compliment or not, but I'll go ahead and take it as one anyway!" Still grinning, he tossed an arm over Dabi's hunched shoulders. "I like being with you too...Touya."
They sat there for a long time, just enjoying each other's company in silence. But Keigo's mind was racing. He couldn't let this man keep going like this. He just couldn't. When the time came for him to be revealed to the villains who he was truly working for, then he would give him the option of leaving it all behind. Starting a new life, reuniting with his family, and righting his wrongs.
I swear, Touya Todoroki. Keigo rested his cheek against the back of his neck and closed his eyes. One of these days I will save you. And that's a promise.