Archive of Our Own ^beta

Okay, so, understatement of the century: Keigo didn’t want to be here.

He flipped his hood up and dug his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. 

Not for the first time, he wished that they had done this whole “test of courage” thing back at Shiketsu. Admittedly, he hated the uniforms—even with the holes in the back, they stifled his wings far more than the loose t-shirts that he and Rumi had taken a pair of scissors to earlier in the semester. That said, maybe since they were supposed to be using their quirks, they would have been allowed to wear their hero costumes. 

Keigo got cold easily, so his costume was made of the warmest and most comfortable materials he could think of—perfect for soaring hundreds of feet in the air a few kilometers per hour short of the speed of sound. 

He sighed heavily.

What he wouldn’t give right now for his thick, fur-lined coat. It wasn’t the most aerodynamic thing in the world, and the support students would probably make him change it eventually, but he was going to hold on to it as long as he possibly could. His hoodie was fluffy, sure, but with every bone-chilling gust of the wind, he remembered how great it would be to be curled up in the nest of blankets and pillows he had in his bedroom. 

Ikoma, the class vice-president, elbowed him in the side gently. “Takami?” she whispered.

Keigo glanced over at her with a frown while Mizushima-san cleared his throat loudly. “Are you listening, Takami?”

Keigo’s eyes shot forward as he grinned at his homeroom teacher brightly. “Yes, sir!

He sighed. “As I was saying, the way this works is simple. You kids go out into the woods in pairs, and the kids from 1B will try to scare you. The objective is to get through the woods as quickly as possible and try to avoid being scared as much as possible. When you’re a hero…”

That was all it took for Keigo to tune Mizushima-san out again. He’d gotten plenty of lectures about what being a hero meant, from his handlers to his teachers and everyone in between. At this point, he was pretty sure he got it all down. To be a hero, you had to be selfless, quick on your feet, compassionate, brave, and always act for the greater good. 

Keigo could do that. He had been doing that since he was a kid, after all, since his mother had been paid off by the Commission so that they could take her only son to be a hero. His handlers would never admit it, but Keigo knew that she didn’t really have a choice, what with her husband finally in prison, and all. He was a perceptive kid. Always had been.

She didn’t have a choice, Keigo knew that. So he wasn’t angry about it. He didn’t hold grudges, because heroes didn’t hold grudges. He just wondered, sometimes, like right now, what his mom would think of him now.

“I’m going to read out the names of the pairs,” Mizushima-san declared, like he was the announcer for one of those pre-quirk battles, the ones in the books Keigo had read in the library one day. The ones with the stadium things. Somewhere in Europe, right? 

Keigo considered tuning out, again, but decided not to. He wasn’t exactly the most popular with his classmates—in fact, he had met his best friend, Usagiyama Rumi, because she’d stood up for him against some of the upperclassmen who had started teasing him about his quirk after a training gone wrong. He was pretty used to just grinning and bearing the teasing that he was faced with, but for the first time, someone had actually put a stop to it. 

From then on, he and Rumi had been fast friends, despite their age difference. He was glad he had Rumi as a friend, he really was, he just wished that he had some friends in Class 1A, too.

“Ueno Rina and Arima Kaito.” Mizushima-san monotoned, nearing the end of his clipboard.

From the sound of things so far, the names hadn’t seemed to be in any order. At least, Keigo hoped they weren’t. It would really suck if he had accidentally tuned out his partner despite his best efforts not to.

“Takami Keigo—”

Keigo internally sighed in relief, then used his next breath to pray that his partner wouldn’t be anyone who’d take the opportunity to tease him—at least he probably wouldn’t have to deal with any of his worst fears, the ones that he likely inherited thanks to his bird-like biology.

Having wings was cool, sure, but the rest of it really sucked, sometimes. Like being afraid of…

Ugh. He shuddered at the very thought.

“...and Todoroki Touya.”

Oh no.

“I’m sorry,” Keigo said feebly, “but what was that?”

Mizushima-san sighed heavily. “Takami Keigo and Todoroki Touya. Next is—”

Todoroki Touya.

Todoroki Touya.

Oh no.

Keigo wanted to dissolve. Todoroki was the coolest, most handsome guy in Class 1A, notoriously aloof and mysterious, despite his immediately recognizable bubblegum-pink hair. He was the oldest son of Endeavor, Keigo’s childhood hero, but the only thing he truly shared with his father was his distant personality.

He was distant, sharp, and clear about his intentions to avoid friendships entirely—on the fourth day of class, when Ueno Rina, the future class gossip, tried to introduce herself to him, Todoroki snapped that he didn’t go to Shiketsu to make friends. Rumi, upon hearing that story, became convinced that Todoroki was a total asshole, and yeah, she was probably right. It was unsurprising that the oldest son of a famous hero would be snobby and entitled, so Keigo wasn’t especially surprised by Todoroki’s behavior.

Based on his own terrible track record when it came to developing crushes on cute boys who’d never notice him, he was also unsurprised by the fact that he had immediately developed a crush on his classmate.

A week after they started at Shiketsu, they had been forced to participate in a training exercise that involved all of them being forced to spar against members of Class 1B. Touya had been paired up with his older sister, and that was the first time anyone in Class 1A had seen his flames. 

They were, to say the least, gorgeous.

Keigo was kind of obsessed with Endeavor as a kid, so he’d seen plenty of broadcasts of the hero demonstrating his control over the flames that flickered eternally along his face and arms. They were beautiful, in a way, but nothing, not even the beauty of his father’s flames, compared to the ethereal elegance of Touya’s.

They were more blue than anything Keigo had ever seen, as blue as melted sapphires, flowing between Touya’s fingers like some sort of ghost that tinged everything it touched with the telltale tar-black of ash. If Keigo didn’t know better, he would have been tempted to touch them, to lose himself in the never-ending, hypnotic twist of smoke and blue.

“Go on,” Mizushima-san sighed. “Go find your partner. I’ll call out your names in the same order I called them off, and you’ll go out onto one of three paths Class 1B has created.”

Keigo puffed out a sigh and scanned for Touya’s trademark, candy-pink hair. He was well-known for his dark clothing, so any search there would certainly come up dry in the middle of a forest near midnight.

Before he managed to find him, he was interrupted by a familiar, though seldom heard, voice.

“Takami Keigo?” Todoroki called out, clearly unimpressed.

A red-hot flush burned across the back of Keigo’s neck. He whirled around with a grin that felt far too wide, his already sweaty hand raised in greeting. “Todoroki! Hi!”

… this was going to be a long, long night.

Todoroki’s pink hair was wind-blown, half strewn over his eyes.  He wore a plain black t-shirt and jeans, with black shoes to top the whole outfit off. How exactly he could deal with walking around in the middle of the woods in early— emphasis on early— spring with just a t-shirt on was beyond Keigo, but he was pretty sure it was a fire quirk thing.

A slight frown cut through Touya’s usual mask of neutrality. “Touya.”

A startled laugh bubbled its way out of Keigo’s throat. “Uh, what?” he managed, his blush now hotter than his companion’s flames.

“Fucking hate my old man’s name,” Touya said coolly as he adjusted the sleeves on his uniform. “Call me Touya.”

Keigo giggled, anxiety bleeding through his laughter. “That seems… pretty close. Todoroki. Touya.”

The name felt like gold on his tongue, but using it felt almost like an invasion of Todoroki’s privacy, especially given that Keigo had… less than platonic feelings for him. Not that he’d ever admit that, obviously. But still, he couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.

Todoroki shrugged. “Guess so.”

Keigo took a deep breath and stuck out a hand for Todoroki—Touya—to shake. “Well,” he started, “I guess I’d feel bad calling you Touya if you don’t call me my given name, too. So. Uh. I’m Keigo.”

“Keigo.” Touya nodded firmly and took the hand Keigo offered.

Keigo fought the urge to spontaneously combust because, wow, a cute guy shaking his hand and saying his given name didn’t have any right to be that attractive, but he held it together enough not to blurt anything embarrassing, not until—

“Your eyeliner’s pretty badass.” Touya said casually.

Well. It looked like this was it. At least he’d have an interesting gravestone. Takami Keigo. Dead at fourteen. Spontaneously combusted after a cute boy shook his hand, used his given name, and complimented his eyeliner skills.

Realistically, Rumi probably would be the only one who’d really care, aside from his handlers at the Commission, and she’d probably spend the whole funeral cackling her head off.

“Your hands are really cold.” Keigo blurted out, and immediately cursed his inability to think things through before he said them.

Really, Keigo? Cold hands?

“It’s my quirk.” Touya said, thinly-veiled fury bleeding through his voice. “My body was made for ice.”

Suddenly, it all made sense. Why Touya refused to use his quirk whenever he could get away with avoiding it. Why he went to go visit support so much. Why his old costume had been so bulky. Most of all, it explained the faint burn scars that lined his arms, crawled up his throat, and clawed at his jaw.

Keigo’s eyes widened. “Oh—”

Touya yanked his hand away from Keigo’s. “I don’t want your pity.”

Keigo shoved his hands into his pockets. “I was just gonna say that quirks suck. I get it. ‘Cuz of my quirk, I grab things when I’m stressed out. And I can’t let go. Like how a hawk would grab… you know. It sucks. My handlers try to make me stop, but, you know.”

Touya was silent for a minute, until finally, “so, what I’m hearing is, I’m going to have to get used to you grabbing onto my arm or whatever during this thing?”

Keigo tensed until he noticed the ghost of a smile that had inched across Touya’s face. “Woah, woah. You made a joke? I didn’t think you could do that.” he teased.

To Keigo’s relief, Touya's slight smile widened into something that made his heart skip a beat. “Oh, I’m plenty funny, bird brain. You just haven’t seen it yet.”

“Ay, Takami, Todoroki!” Kobayashi Hotaru, their class president, hollered out. “Stop flirting and get over here. You’re next.”

Keigo flushed, but Touya merely flipped Kobayashi off and stalked towards the entrance to the woods. 

“Careful, Todoroki.” Abe Yuuto called out from behind Keigo, his smirk audible. “He might try to feel you up.”

Abe’s gang chuckled, and Keigo flushed for a different reason entirely, now.

He wrapped his arms around his chest self-consciously. That wasn’t what he was trying to do when he stress-gripped people, and really, he was trying to stop. He’d been trying for years, to avoid teasing like this, but it was just… hard. His father had never been able to stop, but Keigo was going to be better than him. He was . That’s what the commission was for, right? To make sure that he never became his father?

They walked in silence for a few minutes, until finally, after a particularly hair-rising gust of early spring wind, Keigo sprinted to catch up the rest of the way with his classmate.

“So, Touya,” he said loftily, “tell me about yourself.”

Touya rolled his eyes. “What is there to know? I’m sure you already know everything about me. Todoroki Touya, son of Endeavor .” 

Keigo blinked, his eyes wide. Touya spat his father’s name like it was a curse that sullied his mouth just to speak. Keigo was no fool; he could recognize when to avoid something.

“Well, I might know about you,” Keigo said carefully. “But I don’t know you.”

Touya did have a point—the tabloids did love to speculate about the lives of Endeavor’s wife and children, given how little they were seen in public. Keigo didn’t think he’d ever seen a picture of Touya’s mother. But Keigo knew better than anyone else how much the tabloids were bound to lie, given that his childhood was spent among the people who controlled the Japanese media, whether they ever told him that or not. He might be fourteen, but he wasn’t an idiot, no matter how much they pretended he was.

Touya’s eyes widened, but as soon as Keigo caught his eye, he glared down at the leaves underneath their feet. “What do you want to know?” he muttered.

Keigo grinned in triumph. “Tell me about yourself! What do you like to do?”

His first instinct was to ask about his siblings, but that probably wasn’t the best course of action, given Touya’s reluctance to talk about his father. Keigo assumed that he probably didn’t get along with the rest of his family, either. He seemed like one of those kids who went through a “teenage rebellion” phase. According to his handlers, that’s what Keigo was going through, himself, though he didn’t really see it.

Touya sighed. “Uh… read. I guess.”

“Really? Would have expected you to say something like, uh, I dunno. Listen to metal all day?” Keigo shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie.

Touya rolled his eyes. “Stereotypical, much?”

Keigo grinned and held up his palms. “Hey, hey, I’m just saying… between the piercings and the black clothes—you’ve kinda got this goth aesthetic, dude. Not that it's a bad thing, it’s—” Keigo choked back the urge to say it’s pretty cute, actually —that certainly wouldn’t help anything. “Nice. I like it.” 

And that wasn’t a lie, technically! Heroes didn’t lie, and Keigo was a hero. Or, well, he was going to be. Soon.

Touya frowned, but he glanced up at Keigo, his brow furrowed. “Uh, thanks.”

Keigo grinned tensely. “No problem. So, uh. Reading. You got a favorite book?”

Touya shrugged absentmindedly. “That one we read in class the other week was pretty good.”

Keigo nodded with a grin. Finally, some common ground. “Yeah, it was pretty good. I thought the protagonist was kind of annoying, though. Always going off about vengeance and stuff. Like, to a point, can’t bygones be bygones, you know? Like, I get it, but still.”

Touya huffed out a tense laugh. “You’d get along with my sister.”

Keigo really didn’t know much about Touya’s family, but he did know that he had a twin sister, older by just a few minutes. All he knew about her was that she was the vice president of 1B, and from her silver glasses to her long white hair, tinged with streaks of flame red, she looked nothing like her younger brother.

“You’ve only got the one sister, right? The vice president?” Keigo asked.

“Yeah. Fuyumi.” The corners of Touya’s mouth quirked up. 

From the way Touya grinned—or, well, looked as close to grinning as Keigo had ever seen him—Keigo guessed that his siblings weren’t a taboo topic, unlike his parents. “Do you have any other siblings?”

Touya nodded. “Well, Yumi’s my younger sister, and then there’s Natsu. They’re the second-youngest. And then Shouto. He’s the baby.”

His face twisted slightly, but before one of his rare smiles could be overtaken by a grimace, Keigo interrupted. “I thought you and Fuyumi were twins. And Rumi—er, I mean—my friend said she’s older.”

Touya rolled his eyes. “I’m the oldest, no matter what Yumi says. Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes.”

Keigo nodded and jumped onto a log so he could walk across the top as he spoke, his wings spread behind him for balance. “I don’t have any siblings, but I always wanted ‘em when I was little. Rumi’s got six, she says that I should be glad I’m an only child.”

Touya chuckled under his breath, tension still heavy in his voice. “Probably. Bet being around a toddler with wings would suck.”

Keigo shrugged. “I have ‘em too, though. And I couldn’t even use them when I was little, they were too flimsy.”

Touya hummed under his breath.

Silence swept back through the woods, punctuated only by the occasional creak of the trees that loomed up around them.  

“So, the oldest of three siblings, listens to metal, likes to read,” Keigo said with a grin. “What else? Hey, hey, what do you want your hero name to be?”

Touya frowned. “Do you hear something?”

Keigo sighed and lept off of the log. “Aw, come on, Touya. If you don’t have any ideas, you can just say that. Me, personally, I’ve got plenty. Ever since I was a kid, I—”

Touya grabbed Keigo’s arm. “No, seriously. Shut up.”

Keigo obliged.

Suddenly, the ground began to shift around them. 

Touya swore loudly.

Keigo yanked his arm away and spread out his wings to steady himself as the rocks around them began to bounce up and down. 

“Is this an earthquake?” he hollered above the deafening rumble of the trees and earth scraping up against each other.

“Kid in my sister’s class can make earthquakes in a radius of ten feet around them.” Touya yelled back. “If you can run out of range—”

“Say no more.” Keigo scooped his classmate up into a princess carry and took off. It was not his cleanest take-off, for sure, and for a moment, he was scared he was going to crash into a tree, but luckily, it shifted out of the way just in time.

Touya attempted to shove away from Keigo’s chest, but Keigo just tightened his grip. “We’re not on the ground, so it’s easier to get around.”

“Can you put me down?” Touya said queasily, the faint green tinge to his cheeks accentuated by his hair. 

Keigo sighed and touched back down on the ground. They hadn’t gone up far—no more than ten feet or so above the ground, but Keigo had, admittedly, gone a bit faster than he probably should have. In his defense, though, wasn’t the point of this whole thing getting out fast? 

And sure, there was the whole “acting like a hero” thing, but did real heroes actually have to race through mazes that their classmates made? Judging from the fact that his handlers never made him go through something similar while blindfolded, probably not, no.

“You know,” he yawned, stretching his arms high above his head, “I could just fly you the rest of the way out. We’d get there the fastest for sure.”

“No way in hell,” Touya muttered as he wobbled forward. “I get carsick.”

Keigo blinked. “Dude, I dunno if you noticed, but I’m not exactly a car.”

Touya huffed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Carsick, motion-sick, whatever, smart-ass.”

“Fine, fine. No flying. Not unless you ask.” Keigo said cheerfully.

“And I won’t.” Touya rolled his eyes.

Keigo hummed as a burst of frigid air tore through the trees. “You know, this really isn’t that scary so far. Just a tiny earthquake that I could fly straight out of. Like, in what world is that in a horror movie? These Class B kids are gonna have to take it up a notch if they wanna scare me, Bird Hero Hawks.”

Touya shattered the silence of the forest with a crazed guffaw. “Hawks? Really? That sounds like a name Shou would make up for his stuffed animals.”

Keigo stuck out his tongue in Touya’s direction. “Well, I like it.” he said haughtily. “Besides, most hero names are kinda obvious. And I made it up when I was a kid, so—”

“Obviously.” Touya rolled his eyes dramatically.

Keigo crossed his arms. “Well, then, Mr. High And Mighty, what’s your hero name gonna be? Goth Boy?”

“Ha, ha, ha.” Touya monotoned. “You know, maybe you could go with Cockatoo? You sure talk enough for it.”

Keigo stuck out his tongue again and flapped his wings just enough for him to glide a few inches off of the ground. “Cockatoos are slow, though. I’m gonna be the fastest of them all!”

“You know, switch a few words, you sound like you’re talking about Pokemon,” Touya called out from behind him, a good-natured smirk audible through his voice.

Keigo plopped back on the ground and grinned over his shoulder at his classmate. “Maybe I am. If I was a Pokemon trainer, trust me, I would have caught ‘em all a long time ago,” he said proudly.

“That’s a lot of confidence from someone who’s not even a Pokemon trainer.” Touya teased.

Keigo turned to walk backward, his hands raised. “Hey, you don’t know me. Maybe I am.”

Touya rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “You wouldn’t be at Shiketsu, now, would you?”

Keigo crossed his arms over his chest with a grin. “Maybe I would, you don’t kno—”

Suddenly, his foot caught on a tree branch and he hurtled over backward before he used his wings to help him catch his balance.

Touya’s laugh echoed against the trees, and despite Keigo’s complete mortification—he had literally just fallen on his face in front of his crush, was there no justice —he couldn’t help his own grin. 

Touya’s laugh was as sugar-sweet as the wind-strewn cotton-candy of his hair, layered with wisps of summer days long gone and warm bursts of the starlight that winked beyond the trees. Even though it was at his expense, Keigo couldn’t help but relax, just a little, as he studied the scrapes on his palms.

Damn. He’d scuffed his nail polish. He’d have to smuggle some extra bottles from Rumi when they got back to Shiketsu. Not undoable, but certainly annoying. 

Touya’s laughter finally slowed enough for him to force out a coherent sentence.  “I dunno, Keigo, but maybe you should—”

At the very moment Keigo glanced up, he felt his blood run cold. Just behind his classmate, ruby-red blood dripped from the leaves of one of the trees.

Touya’s brow furrowed. “Uh, Keigo?”

That was all it took to get Keigo scurrying to his feet. 

“What—” Touya glanced behind himself, his brow furrowed, before he noticed the blood. His eyes widened in recognition.

Keigo all but sprinted along the path. In hindsight, it, uh, probably wasn’t a good idea to mock the people that currently had him at their mercy.

Touya was quick to follow along behind him. “Come on, Keigo. It’s just a little blood.”

“Have you never seen a horror movie? It’s never just a little blood for long.” Keigo snapped.

Keigo could hear Touya’s eye roll through his voice. “They can’t touch us, you know.”

“Not technically.” Keigo muttered under his breath. 

Touya was well-known for not using his quirk whenever he could avoid it, and Keigo wasn’t exactly liked by some of the members of his own class. Teenagers were mean, even in a heroics school.

“Slow down, at least,” Touya grumbled.

Keigo stopped short. “The point is getting out of here as quickly as we can, ya know.” 

Touya sighed and caught up to him. “They’re probably just gonna follow us for a while and get you more upset. This is how you win these things, you know. Just be cool about it. It’s not even scary.”

“Oh, ha, ha.” Keigo rolled his eyes. “Very helpfu—”

He stopped short as he noticed a flash of ghost-white in his peripheral vision, among the trees.

“Uh,” he breathed as he turned around slowly.

A clown tilted its head and grinned, blood dripping from its open mouth, where two scraggly teeth leered. Its costume was coated in a thick layer of dirt and blood, and wrapped around its arms was a… 

“Oh, fuck no!” Keigo blurted out as he gripped Touya’s hand like a lifeline.

Look, he wasn’t proud of it, but the fact was that his first instinct was to jump into Touya’s arms. 

His head bonked against Touya’s, given that his classmate apparently had the same reaction, and he would have gone tumbling to the ground, had they not been holding hands so tightly. Even still, they ended up in a tense hug, until Touya jerked back.

Touya sighed heavily, glanced backwards, and dragged them both along.

Keigo shuddered and forced his eyes shut as the clown followed behind them, fake blood oozing from the gashes on its face down to the forest floor. 

Touya huffed out a sigh and yanked Keigo along that much faster. “Hurry up, birdbrain. If you freeze up, you’re still gonna have to see it when you open your eyes.”

“Creative insult.” Keigo forced out, his eyes still cemented closed, “Never heard it before.”

“Chicken?” Touya offered, his smirk creeping into his voice. 

“Add nugget and you’ll get what Rumi calls me on a daily basis.” Keigo tried to smother the waver in his voice, but he was pretty sure that the tremors in his voice rivaled those of an earthquake, at this point.

Keigo forced himself to imagine his best friend, in the hopes that his memories would make him relax enough not to crush all of the bones in Touya’s hand. It was to no avail, though, because doubtlessly, she’d double over cackling or remind him of all the horror movies they had binged at her insistence. 

She had thought it was hilarious when the only scary part of It was that terrible, horrifying thing .

Yeah, this really wasn’t helping.

Touya squeezed Keigo’s hand. “Stick with me here, Keigo.” he monotoned.

Keigo took a deep breath and nodded as the evening wind dragged a cool hand through his hair, mussing it further. “I’m right here.”

“You gonna open your eyes? ‘Cuz pretty soon I’m just gonna let you trip.”

Keigo’s eyes shot open as he elbowed his classmate in the ribs. 

Touya sputtered something incomprehensible and elbowed Keigo back.

Touya glanced over his shoulder. “The clown’s gone.” he observed. “Pretty sure we got outta the illusion kid’s range. Plus, with your quirk, aren’t you supposed to know when things are gonna jump out at us?”

Keigo sighed heavily and sent a few feathers to bounce around the perimeter of the path, where the thick, wizened tree trunks loomed over the path, their tar-black leaves slicing the night sky into thin slits.

“I’m not scared of the clown,” he muttered.

“You were sure scared of something.” Touya raised an eyebrow. “Blood?”

Keigo sighed heavily and pressed his eyes shut again. “No.”

“Things jumping out at you?”

“No.”

At this point, it was safe to say that he regretted each and every one of his life choices that had led to this moment.

“So you’re afraid of…” Touya prompted.

“Balloons.” Keigo muttered under his breath.

Touya’s nose wrinkled. Cute. Adorable, actually, but that really wasn’t the important thing right now. “You… what?”

Keigo glared up at the leaves above his head that seemed to cackle at him with every gust of the wind. “I said I’m afraid of balloons,” he repeated, far louder. “And you tried to jump in my arms, too, so…”

At this point, he might as well own it, right?

Touya swallowed his guffaw. “Okay, I did… not that. And wait, you’re afraid of… balloons? ”

Keigo swallowed hard. “Yes, I’m afraid of balloons. They’re—they make weird noises, and they fly weird, and I just—I don’t like them, okay?” he tried to sound confident, but he was pretty sure that his voice just came across as feeble. “It’s a bird thing.”

“Hey, it’s cool.” Touya rolled his eyes. “I don’t care. Just saying, it’s kind of a weird fear, so you probably won’t have to deal with it much more.”

Keigo sighed shakily. “I guess.”

Unless 1B was listening now. And knew that he was afraid of balloons.

And then it would get to his class and Abe and the rest of his gang and then no one would let him live it down, just like no one had let the fact that he stress-gripped Kobayashi during a training session and everyone would laugh at him—

 “Come on, bird brain. We gotta get out of here fast, remember? Aren’t you supposed to be the fastest guy at Shiketsu, and all that?” Touya sighed and pulled Keigo forward again.

Forward. Oh, shit, they were still holding— 

Touya had seemed okay with it at first, when Keigo had told him that this might happen, but being okay with it in theory and in reality were different. And Keigo had said he might grab Touya’s arm, not his hand. Did Touya even know what was happening? Did he think Keigo had just grabbed his hand just to grab it? Was Touya going to tease him?

Keigo tried to let go, even though he knew it wouldn’t work, as his breathing accelerated. Would Touya think he was weird? Fuck, he probably already did, because who could be around Keigo without thinking that, honestly? 

“Keigo?” Touya frowned.

Keigo’s breathing was erratic, now, and he couldn’t move his hands. “I…”

He couldn’t have a panic attack, not here. That would be bad. Really, really bad. Knowing that, of course, didn’t help him calm down any more. If anything, his breathing just became quicker.

He had to talk about something else. Anything else.

Touya glanced back at him with an eyebrow raised, the striking blue of his eyes brighter than the stars. They were lined in coal-black eyeliner.

Eyeliner.

“Eyeliner.” Keigo blurted out, his voice almost frantic. “I do my eyeliner because of my quirk.”

Touya slowed, just slightly, just enough so he and Keigo could walk side by side.

Keigo nodded frantically, his grin one odd noise away from being completely manic. “Yeah. I have—I have these mark things, near my eyes, and my handlers never liked ‘em. When I was… when I was a kid, they used to make me cover ‘em up. But they… they reminded me of my mom when I was lonely so—so I always liked ‘em anyway. And they said boys don’t wear makeup even though I liked to before and my mom let me so… when I went to Shiketsu, I decided I was gonna wear what I wanted. No matter–no matter what they said. So I wear eyeliner and make the marks bigger.”

Keigo felt like he had vomited, and when he finally glanced back up at Touya, his breathing ragged, something in Touya’s eyes shifted.

“It looks nice,” Touya said simply, his brow furrowed.

Keigo’s breathing steadied, if just for a few seconds, until his hands started shaking again. “I—thanks.”

They continued in silence, until—

“You wanna stop?”

Despite himself, Keigo nodded jerkily.

“You want me to be quiet?”

Keigo shook his head.

“You want to sit down?”

Keigo paused, and then nodded, his heart beating loudly enough that it was all he could hear.

Touya shrugged and sat down on the leaves gingerly. “Alright, uh… a couple years ago, when my father was…” his voice twisted oddly, “gone on a trip. My mother took Yumi and Natsu and me to this festival.” He swallowed hard and his voice returned to its normal cadence. 

“There was this drawing, and you had to name all of the members of this girl group. If you won, you got to pick out a t-shirt and a hoodie from the band. And my older sister won it. So she gave me the t-shirt, because it was bright pink, just like my hair. I still have it.”

Keigo swallowed hard and took a slow, deep breath. “I didn’t—I didn’t know you could wear anything but black.”

Touya’s grin bled through his voice. “I don’t. I just have it.”

Keigo fought the urge to press his face into his classmate’s shoulder. “...Oh.”

“You ready?”

Keigo paused before he shook his head. “In a minute, sorry, it’s—”

“Fine.” Touya said sharply. “It’s fine. Let me know when you’re ready.”

Keigo glanced down at his hands. “Okay.”

The faint chirping of crickets and croaking of frogs filled the silence that otherwise would have swept between them as Keigo counted his breathing and waited for his hands to stop shaking.

“I’m good,” Keigo said suddenly. He pulled himself to his feet, yanking Touya up with him.

Touya yawned. “Cool.”

They walked in awkward silence for a few minutes.

“Look, I’m sorry about that—” Keigo scratched the back of his neck.

“It’s fine.” Touya rolled his eyes. “I’d tell you if it wasn’t.”

Keigo nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Touya wanted to ignore it. That was fine. That was normal, actually. He was good.

Touya sighed heavily, his voice almost clinical. “When my sister and sibling get… upset, I tell them stories. Sometimes they’re memories, sometimes they’re not. And when I get like that, my sister tells me about things we did with our mother before Shou was born.”

Suddenly, it clicked. The most logical reason their mother was never mentioned in any tabloids, and why she didn’t do anything with her children anymore.

She was dead.

“I’m sorry,” Keigo said feebly.

“It’s fine,” Touya muttered under his breath.

“I haven’t seen my mom in years.” Keigo huffed out a sigh. “I remember that I loved her, and I remember I barely ever saw her, but that’s kinda… it.”

Or his father, for that matter, since he’d been locked up when Keigo was a kid, but that wasn’t a can of worms that he was willing to open around Touya, their newfound friendship aside. 

Friendship? Is that what this was?

Touya looked like he wanted to say something else, but before he could, the unmistakable crackle of ice echoed around them.

Keigo couldn’t see anything, but he sent the feathers that surrounded them out farther, praying that his limited stealth training paid off.

“There’s someone in the woods about twenty feet in front of us, to your left.” Keigo hissed under his breath.

“My sister.” Touya stiffened. “She probably doesn’t have her supports, so she won’t do much unless she wants frostbite, so there’s probably not anything to be afraid of.”

“You’re scared of ice ?”

Touya rolled his eyes. “No. I live in a house with two ice users.”

“Any other fears I should know about?” Keigo grinned, scanning the forest around them nervously.

Touya scoffed loudly. “Well, seeing as you’re the one who could crush my hand any time you get scared, I think that your fears are just a little more important than mine.”

Keigo huffed, something in his stomach twisting painfully. “Fine. I—”

Before he could so much as finish his statement, a large fish burst from between the trees.

“Holy fuck!” Touya screeched.

Keigo frowned and glanced at the giant, floating fish in front of them, and then back at Touya. Sure, it was grotesquely detailed, from the wide, bloodshot eyes, and the opening and closing of the gills were almost nauseating. That said, it… definitely wasn’t scream-worthy.

Touya buried his face in Keigo’s hair and let him lead them both forward. 

“It’s just a fish, Touya,” Keigo said carefully as he dragged his classmate along with him by the arm.

“Shut the fuck up, Keigo.” Touya muttered. “Just a fish. Psh.”

Keigo wrapped his arm around Touya’s shoulders in order to keep them going as quickly as possible. “Scared of… fish?”

“Okay, fuck you, Takami.” Touya snapped. His voice would have sounded much more venomous if his face wasn’t buried in Keigo’s hair; as it was, he sounded like a particularly angry toddler.

“Aw, back to a surname basis? Really? I thought we really had something, Touya.” Keigo pouted.

Touya tensed. 

Keigo froze immediately. Had he gone too far? Did Touya realize that Keigo had a crush? Would he move? Say something? He didn’t like boys, Keigo knew that, but if Touya had to actually spell that out for Keigo, he thought he’d just die, here and now.

Touya sighed heavily, his voice begrudging. “We’ve got something , that’s for sure, pretty bird.”

Keigo choked on his spit, but before Touya could question it, he glanced over their shoulder. They weren’t going quickly, so he really didn’t expect it to be far behind, but what he most certainly did not expect was for the fish to be flying towards them at full speed.

“Uh, hey, Touya? Keep your eyes closed.” Keigo said quickly, his words almost imperceptible before the fish rammed into his back.

Keigo scowled. It wasn’t like it really hurt , but it was cold, and he really didn’t appreciate some ice fish slamming into his feathers and messing them up. 

“I thought you said this stuff couldn’t touch us.” he sighed.

“It can’t. Not if it’s a real illusion. And not if they’re following the rules.” Touya muttered, his face still buried in Keigo’s hair. He’d almost certainly felt the impact, so Keigo respected the fact that he didn’t look up. Or at least, if he did, he didn’t make any indication that he had.

“Safe to say they aren’t following the rules.” Keigo hummed.

He peered behind them, sharpened a few feathers, and sent them hurtling towards the fish. It was only afterward that he realized that they could now have hundreds of ice fish shards hurtling towards them, if Todoroki Fuyumi—or rather, whatever other person with a telekinesis quirk that was probably working with her—didn’t realize what Keigo had done.

So… yeah, maybe it was time to run.

So he said as much.

“Hey, Touya?”

“Mmph?”

“Run.”

That was all it took for them to tear through the woods at the speed of light. 

When Keigo glanced over his shoulder, his legs throbbing, he noticed the ice shards zooming behind them. He stifled a squawk and sprinted ahead, just barely faster than Touya.

“What did you do?” Touya yelled above the ice’s roar.

Keigo was intelligent. A hero-in-training, in fact, so when his crush asked what he had done that warranted them sprinting through the woods, he was able to offer a coherent, logical response, that in this case happened to be “uh—fish—um—go.”

After what felt like an eternity, Keigo finally slowed to a stop, his lungs throbbing with every breath. “That was… a… mistake.”

“No shit, feathers.” Touya panted.

Keigo peered behind them again. “I think… I think they’re gone.”

He fought the urge to collapse on the ground and loudly declare that if Fuyumi was going to turn him into an ice sculpture and/or impale him, she could just go ahead and do it. But that would mean Touya would have to keep going and face the fish alone, and that wouldn’t be very heroic. 

(Or very conducive to getting a boyfriend, but he didn’t have any chance there anyway. That was fine.)

“Dabi.” Touya forced out, his hand ice in Keigo’s grip.

Keigo swallowed hard. “What?”

“My… hero name. You asked. Earlier.”

“Cremation? Edgy, much?” Keigo forced his tone into something that he hoped sounded teasing and light, but in reality probably just echoed the fear that ached deep in his bones.

The wind whistled ominously through the trees, and Keigo fought the urge to bury his face in his hoodie. He was a hero-in-training, for goodness sake, he could handle a quick walk through the woods. A walk in the woods. That was all this was. No fish, no balloons… just a nice walk.

He forced himself to take deep breaths like his handler always told him to—the nice one, the one with the bun with streaks of gray.

“Fuck you,” Touya muttered, but it didn’t carry any heat. “Your hero name is literally named after your quirk, why can’t mine be the same?”

“If your hero name was based off of your quirk—” Keigo stifled a yelp as the claws of a thorn-coated branch caught on his hoodie—“you’d be like—like Blueflame, or something. I dunno. You just… you just chose the edgiest possible option. At least I didn’t go with—with Raptor or something.”

“Well,” Touya started, anxiety bleeding through his voice. “I—like Hawks. Actually. Suits you.”

The racing of Keigo’s heart was for another reason entirely, now, as a flush crept up the back of his neck. “Thanks.”

“Besides,” Touya said, his piercing turquoise eyes darting around the foggy haze before them, “Aren’t all hero names… kinda cliche?”

The unmistakable creaking of the trees behind them was almost unbearable, now.

“You have a point,” and Keigo did not whimper, not at all.

Silence swept between the pair for not even ten seconds.

“Is it just me or are the branches getting closer?” Touya said slowly.

Keigo eyed the branches that lined the sides of the path warily as he instinctively pressed closer to Touya’s side. They were bone-white in the poor light, and scrabbled for the two like the fingers of a skeleton, unearthed from an early grave. Keigo clearly recalled that they were a good two feet from the path, at least initially, but now they had been forced into the very center of the well-worn path, with thorny branches less than four inches away from them.

Keigo swallowed hard. 

“I… yeah.” His voice was steadier than he felt, but he still couldn’t suppress his voice crack.

“I think maybe we should run again.” Touya breathed.

Keigo nodded rapidly. “Yeah, okay, sounds good.” he squealed.

Just like that, they were off. 

Adrenaline roared in Keigo’s ears as he sprinted along the path, dragged behind his taller classmate. Not for the first time, he cursed his own short, spindly legs as he panted to catch up. The branches raced alongside them, the thorns tearing at the cloth of Keigo’s hoodie.

Touya hollered obscenities, but they were lost as the wind howled around them. It tore at Keigo’s wings and the night sky was soon punctuated by flashes of crimson as Keigo lost control of the feathers that hurtled through the air.

A bout of horrendous, cackling laughter burst through the air like a splatter of blood against the forest floor as the adrenaline fully took over and all of Keigo’s thoughts faded in comparison to the knowledge that he needed to run.

Finally, though, his panting grew ragged, and sharp bouts of pain stabbed through his ribs with every breath. From in front of him, Touya slowed.

“I think they’re gone.” he panted, turning back to Keigo with a wince.

Keigo whipped his head around behind them. Sure enough, the forest was as peaceful as it always had been. Ivory-white stars twinkled above, and the familiar, out-of-tune chirp of the orchestras of crickets and frogs had never felt so welcome. There was nothing to prove that anyone or anything had ever been there, save for their own footprints in the thick mud.

Upon a glance ahead, Keigo felt a fresh wave of relief wash over him as tears pricked at his eyes. Pride swelled in his chest, and he couldn’t suppress the wild grin that catapulted over his features.

Was this what it was to be a hero? To return home each night, thinking of all the lives you’d saved? 

True, in this circumstance, the life in question had been his own, but still! A life had been saved from the terrors of balloons and ice shards and thorns, and Keigo was proud.

From out beyond the trees, the unmistakable wink of a bright neon green light beckoned them forward.

A relieved laugh burbled out of Keigo’s throat as he all but collapsed against Touya’s side. “We did it!”

To Keigo’s shock, Touya’s frame shuddered with a bright laugh and he wrapped his free arm tightly around Keigo’s shoulder.

Keigo pressed his eyes shut and wrapped his own free arm around Touya’s back. He leaned into the half-hug blissfully, each and every ache forgotten with the sheer joy of having made it through whatever circle of hell this night had been. 

“Well, Wing Hero Hawks?” Touya said warmly, his voice muffled by Keigo’s shoulder. “Not so bad?”

Keigo had an urge to correct him—he’d always workshopped his name as the Bird hero, and he wasn’t even sure that Hawks was what he wanted to go with, but hearing Wing Hero Hawks on Touya’s tongue felt nothing short of perfect.

Keigo lifted his head to grin fondly at Touya as the butterflies in his stomach did flips that could easily rival those of any Olympic athlete. “This was just… absolutely terrifying. I hated it so, so much.” he said sweetly.

Touya tipped his head back as he guffawed. “You really don’t hold anything back, do you?”

Keigo grinned and finally slipped his still-cramped hand out of Touya’s in order to properly hug him. “I dunno about that, but this was miserable.”

Touya shrugged and finally pulled away. “You ready to go lose this thing, fastest student at Shiketsu?”

Keigo pumped his now-free fist in the air and let a cool breeze carry him up just a few feet above the ground. “Hell yeah!”

“You wanna be taller than me that bad?” Touya teased, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

Keigo stuck out his tongue and landed on a tree stump in the middle of the path. “You know, with my wings, I’m like, twice as tall as you.”

“Yeah, with your wings , feathers-for-brains.” Touya rolled his eyes with a grin. “That doesn’t count.”

“You’re just jealous of how attractive I am, I get it.” Keigo rolled his eyes dramatically and jumped back down to the ground.

“In your dreams, chicken boy.” Touya retorted.

For a minute, before Keigo reminded himself that it had to be the reflection of Touya’s hair on his skin or something, he thought that his classmate had flushed seashell pink.

He was kind of relieved, honestly, that he wasn’t holding Touya’s hand anymore. He had been in danger of spontaneously combusting. That said… he missed it. He didn’t have an excuse to hold Touya’s hand anymore, now that they weren’t in potentially mortal danger. But maybe—

“Hey, do you wanna eat lunch together, tomorrow?” Keigo blurted out suddenly.

Touya gawked at Keigo for a few seconds.

Keigo scratched the back of his neck. “If you don’t want to you really don’t have to, it's totally fine and you’re really cool and I know you probably have tons of other cooler people who like to eat with you and—” he babbled.

Touya grabbed Keigo’s arm. “Hey, Keigo! Keigo!”

Keigo finally glanced back up at Touya, his eyes wide. 

Touya smiled softly, his turquoise eyes filled to the brim with the same warmth that flickered in Keigo’s chest. “I’d love to eat lunch with you.”

Keigo’s heart skipped a beat. “Oh. O—okay.” 

As another burst of frigid air washed over him, he flipped up the hood on his jacket.

Touya wrinkled his nose. “Is that a bird head?”

Oh. Right.

“Just a beak and eyes,” Keigo said sheepishly.

Touya rolled his eyes—at this point, Keigo was pretty sure that eye rolling was his reaction to most things—but his gaze held a sort of unfamiliar warmth. “Dork.”

Keigo scoffed. “You act like you’re so much better, Mr. Cremation . It’s a wonder your costume is blue instead of black.”

It wasn’t until they got just a few feet away from the light that Keigo realized something was wrong. There was a bend in the path, and glowing on a tar-black, crooked branch of a tree that looked older than Touya and Keigo combined, hung a small, tarnished lantern, the bulb inside a sickly, flickering green.

Keigo glanced over at his classmate, his brow furrowed, the odd light turning Touya’s hair a nauseating shade of brown. “That’s not the e—”

The air shifted, and through the feathers that danced around the edges of the trees, Keigo could feel the unmistakable pulse of someone approaching. Fast.

“Someone’s coming—” he started, before he was faced with the most horrifying thing that he had ever had the misfortune to witness in his fourteen years of life.

Some sort of illusion burst from the woods, donned in an eye-blindingly neon clown costume. Fake blood dripped from the empty eye sockets and it held a long, wickedly sharp dagger in one hand.

But like, that was whatever.

But in one hand—one horrible, wizened, blood-soaked hand, it held one sole, terrible, cursed string.  

A string that led to something bright orange, in a shape that was absolutely unmistakable.

A fish.

A fish balloon.

He grabbed onto Touya’s upper arm for dear life and shrieked. The only thing he registered before his fight or flight response kicked in was that barely a second after Keigo’s squawks pierced the tranquility of the forest, Touya started screaming, too.

Keigo ran . 

He didn’t think that he’d ever, in his life, run as fast as he did in that moment. But he could hear that infernal clown’s laughter echoing in his ears and he could see the reflection of that—that thing, even as he screeched like a fire siren and raced through the forest, dragging Touya along behind him. 

He probably flew half the way, he didn’t know. His heart was pounding out a symphony in his chest and he could see anything but black or feel anything but sheer panic until Touya squeezed his hand, hard.

Keigo slowed to a stop yet again, his panting echoing between the gnarled, corpse-like trees that leered out at them from the shadows. From between the deepest shadows, what seemed like thousands of blood-shot, fish-like eyes began to glow.

Touya whimpered and tightened his grip, his nails digging into Keigo’s skin as Keigo tightened his wings around them. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I changed my mind, fly us out of here, holy shit—”

That was all Keigo needed to scoop his classmate up and zip through the rest of the forest, his eyes half-closed the whole time. He was pretty sure this counted as cheating, but at this point, he just wanted out.

Finally, they burst into the clearing, which was completely coated in neon green light.

Keigo let Touya down from his arms slowly, his teeth chattering, as Mizushima-san approached with a heavy sigh.

“Takami, Todoroki, the point of the exercise was to—”

“We got most of the way through!” Keigo tried for a casual tone, but given that he was quite literally trembling with fear, he wasn’t sure how effective it was. “Besides, you didn’t say that we couldn’t use quirks!”

Mizushima-san sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I… will discuss this with the other teachers… when it comes time to place those who completed the maze the fastest. You two can just… go wait with the rest of the students.”

“Hey, Takami,” Ueno grinned, her normally pristine, neon green braid now reduced to a half-up, half-down ponytail, with strands flying around her face. “Was it the skeleton army? I bet it was the skeleton army, with the bodies all around them, I almost cried when they started walking towards us! Right, Arima?”

At the moment Keigo locked eyes with Touya, he could feel their silent oath being set in stone. No one has to know.

“Yeah, that was crazy.” Keigo lied.

“Yamamoto’s quirk is really something, huh?” Arima Kaito, another one of their classmates, and Ueno’s fellow partner in gossiping about the entirety of Class 1A, grinned.

Yamamoto. Keigo was definitely filing that away. He definitely did not want to be on their bad side in a fight.

Touya nodded slowly. “You could say that again.”

As another group stumbled out of the woods, Mizushima-san clapped loudly. “That should be it, everyone. Get ready to switch out with the people in the woods. Remember, you are not allowed to team up for this part. We don’t want anyone getting scarred for life, here.”

Keigo sighed heavily. Not allowed to team up, huh? Oh, Class 1B was gonna have some fun going past Keigo’s section of the woods, that was for sure.

Keigo glanced down at his lunch tray and then back up at Rumi, his previous thoughts forgotten as he studied who had just come through the door. 

Touya walked into the cafeteria, glaring at someone Keigo didn’t recognize who had a hand pressed over their mouth as they giggled.

Keigo glanced back down and mashed at his mapo dofu absent-mindedly. He doubted Touya even remembered his promise. Enough had happened that night that Keigo really wouldn’t blame him. Besides, who would want to sit with Keigo, anyway? He was lucky that Rumi didn’t mind him.

“Aw, come on, Kei.” Rumi’s voice interrupted his pity party. “Still mad about the fried chicken?”

Rumi was a fantastic friend, but there was no way in hell that Keigo would ever tell her that he had gotten his hopes up about his dumb crush because they were paired up during the test of courage, which he still hadn’t fully told Rumi about, despite her begging. He suspected that somehow, some way, she was behind it, but that was ridiculous, obviously.

Probably.

Keigo sighed. “But Ikoma said there was gonna be chicken today, though.”

“Maybe she just got tired of you asking,” Rumi pointed out with a grin. “Also, can I have your salad?”

Keigo grinned, despite his pity party, and pushed his salad over to her. “Here’s your carrots, rabbit girl.”

Rumi rolled her eyes. “I told you, I changed my hero name. I’m Miruko, now. No thanks to you. Also, I gotta get going. Got a club thing.” she wiggled her eyebrows and pushed back from the table. “By the way, the vice president of 1B’s really cute, huh? Think I should go for it?”

Keigo grinned. “I’m gay, Rumi. And sure, but only if you give me your sweet potato tart first.”

He took a sip of his milk and grabbed for her tart, immediately after she shifted the package away from his reach.

Rumi wrinkled her nose, her ears flattening against her head. “Oh, hell no. Take my tofu if you want it. Anyway, speaking of being gay, bubblegum boy’s coming our way.”

Keigo almost spat out his milk. He glanced up, and sure enough, Touya was walking over to their table.

“Hh—I—yeah—” he said intelligently, his face burning.

Rumi guffawed just as Touya set his tray down across from Keigo’s.

Touya smiled slightly, but the tension was clear. “Didn’t know if you still wanted—”

“Yeah!” Keigo blurted out before he composed himself. “I mean, uh, yes. I want you to sit with me.”

Rumi took an obnoxious sip of her milk. “Hey. You’re a Todoroki, right? I know your older sister.”

“Touya’s the older one,” Keigo replied automatically.

Touya couldn’t suppress his smug grin. “That I am. No matter what she’ll tell you.”

Rumi balanced her chin on her hand and grinned devilishly. Keigo paled. “First names already, huh? So, when’s the wedding?”

“Oh—we—we’re not—we’re not even dating or anything!” Keigo said feebly, after far too long to sound anything but pathetically smitten.

Touya glanced at Keigo out of the corner of his eye, his brow furrowed.

“For now,” Rumi said smugly, before she stood, patted a sputtering Keigo on the shoulder, and tossed him her tart. “I gotta go, for real. Have a nice lunch with your boyfriend, Keigo. Also, I better be the best woman at the wedding, or I’m gonna beat you both up.”

Keigo couldn’t suppress his groan. As soon as Rumi left, he buried his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, she’s just kinda… like that.”

When Touya didn’t respond, Keigo glanced up. “Touya?”

Finally, Touya puffed out a breath and glanced down at Keigo, his voice slow, the unmistakable tremble of anxiety heavy in his words. “We could. If you want.”

Keigo blinked as his treacherous heart beat out a symphony in his chest, this time for a far different reason than what he was used to around Touya. No clowns with nightmarish, fish-shaped balloons were hiding around the corner. “What?”

Touya sighed heavily and glanced down at the table. “Be boyfriends. If you want.”

Keigo froze, until finally, he forced out, “No. That’s okay.”

Keigo almost kidded himself into thinking that Touya deflated. “Oh. Sorry.”

Keigo scratched the back of his neck. “I just—I don’t want you to think that you’ve gotta go out with me. Plus, you’re super popular and stuff. You don’t want a boyfriend like me. I’ll get over my crush, it won’t even take long, it’s cool.”

Touya’s brow furrowed. “Wait, wait, you’ve got a crush on me?”

Keigo buried his head in his hands. This was just as mortifying as he’d feared. “Yeah,” he said, agonized. “Since that one training where you used your quirk for the first time. I thought it was really pretty and I thought you were really pretty and—sorry, this is probably super weird. It’s cool, we can talk about something else.”

“No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. I have a crush on you too.” Touya blurted out. 

Keigo froze. “What?”

Touya sighed heavily and glared at the ceiling. “Look, you were doing some training, I dunno what, and you used your feathers to get everyone out of the way and I didn’t know you could do that. And you were joking around with that rabbit girl while you were training with her. And I've never seen anyone, you know, be that happy. While they train. So then I realized I had a crush on you. Okay?”

Keigo’s heart had skipped so many beats at this point, it was a wonder he was even still breathing. “I—wait, so you weren’t just asking me out because you felt bad for me?” he gaped.

Touya wrinkled his nose. “No. Why would I feel bad for you?”

“I mean,” Keigo said slowly, “I’ve got a weird quirk, and nobody really likes me, except for Rumi and you, now, so…”

“Keigo, if anybody here was gonna be a hero, it’d be you.” Touya rolled his eyes. “I hate heroes. All of ‘em. And everyone who wants to be one. But you? You’re the only exception to the rule.”

Keigo didn’t even try to hide his blush. “Oh.”

“So, um.” Touya brushed a bang out of his eyes self-consciously, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “Do you… maybe want to go do something sometime?”

Keigo grinned and nodded frantically. “Yeah, I do.”

“So, uh… how about Friday? We could get ice cream?” Touya said nervously.

Keigo grinned giddily, his feathers fluttering behind him. “It’s a date.”

Touya nodded quickly, his face as pink as his hair. “Uh, yeah.”

“So… does that mean I can hold your hand when I’m not stress-gripping it, now?” Keigo said with a smile.

Touya offered Keigo his hand with a faint, but fond, grin. “Only if I can have your tart.”

“In your dreams, Touya,” Keigo huffed. “Do you know how hard I had to work to get this from Rumi? No way. We haven’t even gone on a date yet, you don’t have tart-stealing privileges.” 

Touya rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you just shoot her googly eyes or something?”

“It’s a strategy!” Keigo pouted—no, no, not pouted, complained. Complained rationally. Professionally. Like a pro hero would.

Touya burst out laughing. “Yeah, uh huh, sure, birdie.”

“Meanie.” Keigo stuck out his tongue at his boyfriend— boyfriend! —and fought to suppress the grin that burst across his face in response to Touya’s laughter.

The real understatement of the century? Keigo was really, really happy. 

Rumi grinned and closed the library door with a heavy thud. As soon as she caught sight of her “partner in crime,” as she’d elected to call them, she speed-walked over to where Fuyumi had her nose buried in some textbook.

Fuyumi glanced up and pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose as soon as she noticed Rumi approaching. “Did it work?” she whispered.

Rumi hummed, her smile widening across her face. “Well, now they’re holding hands and laughing, so I’d say it did. You ever gonna tell your brother that you were behind this?”

“Are you ever gonna tell Keigo that you proposed the whole thing?” Fuyumi raised an eyebrow. “You were the one who suggested that I rig the drawing so they’d be matched up.”

“Touche.” Rumi shrugged and plopped down into the chair across from her crush. “But, hey, I mean, you didn’t rig it, per se. You just kinda…”

Fuyumi balanced her chin on her palm. “Begged Nishiya to let me pick the pairs and then folded over the pieces of paper with Takami and Touya’s names on them so that I’d be able to make sure they went through the test of courage together?”

Rumi finger-gunned in Fuyumi’s direction. “That. And besides, what was I supposed to do? I’m just being a good best friend, Fuyumi.”

Fuyumi rolled her eyes fondly. “Yeah. And I’m just being a good sister. And as such, I know that if I ever told Touya, he’d burn me alive.”

“Kei’d probably skewer me.” Rumi shrugged with a grin. “So no worries there.”

“Well,” Fuyumi said warmly, leaning over the table to grin at Rumi, “unless they find out, I think we can say this little scheme of ours was a success.”

Rumi leaned back in her chair. “So, any other siblings of yours we can set up?”

“Well, Natsu’s pretty young to be dating,” Fuyumi mused, “and Shou’s just a kid, so no, not really.”

“And you?” Rumi suggested, her heart trembling.

Fuyumi ducked her head down towards the table as a faint crimson blush spread across her cheeks. “Well… if you wanted to do something with me, sometime, I think that problem would be solved, too.”

Rumi grinned. “You’ve got a deal.”