Chapter Text
There are rules to being an oiran and they often lead to boredom in times not consumed with entertaining or pleasuring adoring men in the ornate rooms of Kyoto’s tea houses. Matters are made worse when so few can afford your company.
So, Keigo relaxes near the furnace, savoring the warmth that buries into his feathers through the thick, stifling fabrics of his kimono. He pulls at the collar, and Rumi clicks her tongue. “I wouldn’t fuss with that if I were you.”
Keigo narrows his eyes and reaches for his teacup, his fingers grazing over the elaborate flowers painted on the sides. “Like you’re one to talk. At least you get to keep your ears free! My back hurts.”
“It’s not like my bunny tail ain’t smooshed!” She humphs back. “You wanna break the rules and get Madame Shuuzenji to fire you for ‘flauntin’ her goods’, I ain’t gonna stop you!”
“She’ll fire you for talking like that! We’re supposed to be sophisticated!”
“Or,” a high, curt voice cut in, making both their blood run cold. Keigo and Rumi slowly turned their eyes towards Madame Shuuzenji, now standing in front of them with her tortoiseshell cane held firmly between her wrinkly, jewel-clad hands. “I’ll fire you both for lazing about. Does that sound fair?”
Keigo’s slick smile falls for an instant before he replaces it, rising gracefully from the tatami to hold out an arm for his boss. “We apologize, Mistress,” he says softly, guiding her to a cushion Rumi has fluffed upon the floor.
When seated, she places her cane on the mat before her, clasps her hands and looks critically between the two. “Rumi,” she says. “Officer Kamihara is in room four. He’s requested you to bring him Jasmine Tea.”
Rumi’s mouth gapes, her eyes flicking quickly to Keigo before resting on their boss once more. “ Jasmine Tea?” She laughs, pounding her fists together. “Looks like I’ll get to enjoy myself today.”
She bows to her mistress, rises from the floor and shuffles out of the back and into the public tea room. Madame Shuuzenji shakes her head as she goes, turning back to Keigo. “Some my mice at the police department have told me that after his last visit here, Kamihara’s wife nearly put out a mugging report.”
Keigo snorts. “I can’t believe they still return to see her.”
“Some people prefer rough pleasure,” she shrugs. She places her hand on the rayan fabric covering Keigo’s knee and grins at him. “And others prefer the gentler approach.”
“If only they knew who their Gentle Keigo was behind closed doors.”
“But I need my Gentle Keigo now,” she tells him. Her eyes look glassy when she speaks. “I want you to gather information on someone for me.”
“Oh? And who am I a spy for now?”
“Me.” Madame Shuuzenji laughs, though it's short and curt because she doesn’t want the clientele hearing through the shoji doors. “Do you know the Todorokis?”
Keigo quirks a brow and leans into her side.
Does he know the Todorokis?
What kid raised in the orphanages at the corners of the Gion district didn’t know the Todorokis? Every geisha bastard and child with a morphological quirk, every comfort woman’s mistake and American soldier’s unwanted, half-breed child grew up with the stories of dark and light, of the Todorokis, the masters of Darkness who controlled Kyoto with fear, and Toshinori, the almighty image of Japanese strength that had survived the nation’s crushing defeat in the last World War.
And for Keigo, who has never been a part of the light, the leader of the Todoroki yakuza was a symbol of hope for the lowly.
The eternal flame, Endeavor.
But he settles on, “Yes.”
“Excellent,” the Madame says. “You see, ever since the tragic fall of his son, the head of the household has waned in his appearances in public, and has sent his children to act on his behalf. The issue that arises, though, is that the criminals in Gion can’t be quelled by the security of the police. The Todoroki clan balances that security with fear, and without their leader, without their Endeavor, wicked men have made a name for themselves on my streets. I want it ended, and I want Endeavor back on the chessboard to secure my business security. I’m entrusting you with this, Keigo. Find out what these hoodlums are doing, and find out where the yakuza’s boss has run off to.”
Keigo blinks, unsure how to respond to such a request. The obvious answer is ‘yes’, because saying no puts his job on the line. He just doesn’t know where to begin. Still, he nods silently at her, and she accepts it.
Once she’s dragged herself up onto her feet, she cards a hand through his waxed hair and kisses his scalp. “Good child,” she says. “Make me proud.”
She shuffles out the room, leaving Keigo to his own devices.
The following week passes in quiet contemplation. There is very little to be known of Endeavor, the master behind the Todoroki conglomerate. The only time Keigo makes progress is when he memorizes the face of one of the delinquents behind the sudden surge in crime, a boy with a mangled face and wild black hair. He and his friend come to the tea shop, but they can’t afford an oiran, let alone a geisha. They sit in the corner of the public room, drinking from ceramic bowls and muttering over white bean paste tea snacks while a hulking man with a deformed face keeps watch.
Keigo had stayed in the back that day, on his knees in the dark storage room in hopes of hearing their conversations through the thin wall. He won’t approach them alone, not enjoying the way their guard watches him.
He doesn’t trust the watchdog to answer to the word ‘no’.
He is shuffling along a quiet hall on the first floor of the teahouse when he hears laughter through the wall.
“Keigo,” a voice calls from behind a shoji door. The shadow behind it moves, the door slides open, and Mirai Sasaki’s head pops out, golden hairpins holding back his green and blonde hair. “Are you busy?”
“Enough,” Keigo says, though it is the first moment of the day he’s had free, the first few hours spent with a politician in the chambers upstairs, and the last few reapplying his hair ornaments and carefully embroidered layers for his later appointments. “Why?”
“I am with a client right now,” he says, nodding to the room behind him. “But he has brought a guest who does not wish me to pour sake for both him and Toshinori. I thought, should you not be busy, you would-”
“-I’d be happy to, Mirai,” he nods, grabbing the edge of the shoji in his palm and advancing through the threshold as Mirai stepped aside. The private room is quiet and stuffy. Often, Keigo would immediately pace to the window, lift it open so that the cool breeze could filter through.
But something in his gut warns against it.
At the low table in the center of the room, two men sit face to face. Mirai goes to the one on the right, kneels beside his thin frame and rakes fingers through his long, blonde hair. The stranger, he recollects, is called Toshinori. He runs the local police, maintains peace in the reconstruction. The people idolize him for the comfort he brings the masses. He seems gentle, considerate.
Much different from the large and somber individual opposite him.
Red hair sits like fire on his scalp, and purple marks half his face ugly with a hypertrophic scar. Keigo can’t help but wonder how he got it, what life altering disaster led to evidence on the body.
But there is a job to do, and he is not paid to think. He bows at the door, then shuffles silently across the tatami to take a seat beside him. “Good afternoon,” Keigo says gently, smiling up at the man. “May I pour your drink, sir?” He inclines his gaze towards the sake glass before him, and the man simply puts his hand over it.
“Not today.” His voice is deep, husky. It’s warm and it’s startling all at once, and Keigo’s interest piques. The man looks down at him and does not smile, but there is no bite. “Forgive me, but I do not need a courtesan for a meeting. It is-”
“-Forgive me for interjecting,” Keigo says, and it startles the man. Keigo places a soft hand on the forearm of his suit to ease him. “But it is not in good manners to leave a geisha to sit idly, alone, while two men speak. We come in pairs, and, if I might add, I am doing this of my own volition, sir. You may think of this as a,” Keigo licks his lips as he thinks, then smiles up at his new client. “You may think of this as a sample of my worth.”
The man blinks down at him, looking aghast. Keigo may be trained in the shamisen, in the arts of tea ceremony and song, but nothing has ever captivated an audience like his witty banter, and this stranger is no exception. “What is your name?”
“Keigo.”
The man rakes Keigo’s body with his eyes, and this one, this man, he does not mind taking him in. “I will take oolong, Keigo.”
And Keigo complies. The meeting drawls at a tedious pace, leaving Keigo with nothing more to occupy his thoughts than picking out words and determining where he knows them from, as well as refilling this mystery man’s cup from time to time.
It’s dull until they mention the name.
“We need Endeavor,” Toshinori says, his hand squeezing into a fist on the table. “The police can only provide so much hope right now. Emperor Hirohito surrendered, the occupation is a disaster, and crime is the only thing keeping people from dying on the streets. Even if crime continues for the sake of survival, there needs to be order. There’s a difference between petty theft for the sake of eating and rape for the sake of sick pleasure. If-”
“-If you want to speak of order,” the redhead says, taking a swig of his tea. “I suggest you speak with Natsuo, and if there is an internal matter, to Fuyumi. Even if you need a symbol for a world of crime that keeps the real monsters at bay, then Shouto should be fine, but Endeavor?” He shakes his head. “Endeavor is retired.”
A moment’s silence passes, and Keigo thinks of the implications of this conversation, on the fact that he has so simply wandered into a discussion about the very man he’s been tasked to spy on. This stranger so obviously works for the Todoroki family, has inside knowledge on the Endeavor he needs to find, and so Keigo leans a little closer to him, exposing the sensitive underside of his wrist as he adds tea to his companion’s cup.
But the night progresses with little more information shared. The stranger speaks of Endeavor’s son as his chosen heir, while Toshinori speaks of a meager common boy with a heart of gold that he’d found in the slums. And while they talk about legacies, Keigo plays his shamisen to the tune of Mirai’s song.
And then the night wanes and the men leave. Keigo returns to his quarters on the second floor, wondering what impression he made and if the official from the Todoroki family will come back to see him with more money, more physical contact, and more information.
He sits on his futon half naked with his sore back and wings bare to the heater behind him. He massages Rumi’s scalp in camellia oil when the apprentice boy comes in with his blonde hair pinned back and a characteristic scowl on his face. “Pay for the day,” he says, handing envelopes to the two.
Rumi snatches hers when it comes near her face, but does not dare take her head off Keigo's lap. “Haha,” she says, counting the bills she pulls out. “I knew that dumbass would like getting kicked in the balls.”
“Rumi.”
“What?”
Keigo rolls his eyes and plucks the remaining envelope from the messenger’s hands. “Thank you, Katsuki.”
“Whatever.” The errand boy disappears, nearly slamming the door behind him, and Keigo opens the envelope to a sum of money with oily fingers, eyes bulging at the thick wad.
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
“N-nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “I joined Mirai in a meeting between his regular and another man for fun, but I didn’t- I didn’t expect him to pay me, let alone this much. For all he knows, I’m just a geisha.”
Rumi drops her envelope to the ground and waves her hand. “What's the matter? You’d have gotten more if you’d have told him what you are.”
Keigo ignores her, feeling the texture of the bills beneath his fingers. “No,” he whispers. “I want him to give me something better.”
Their next meeting is unplanned, so believes Keigo. He steps across the threshold of Madame Shuuzenji’s main teahouse and finds Rumi immediately in his face, grabbing him fiercely by the arms. “He’s back!”
Keigo furrows his brows. “Who?”
“The- the man! The one who gave you all that money,” she says. “He came back with Toshinori and he asked for you.”
Keigo pushes into her, seizing her shoulders. “You’re sure?”
She snorts. “The fuck do you mean ‘Am I sure?’ I wouldn’t have tried to take your place if it hadn’t been!”
Keigo ignores the admission of sabotage because his mind is racing with wild fantasies of the future. If this Todoroki yakuza has come back for him, it means that Keigo has an in into the family, into finding out what’s happened to Endeavor, master of Kyoto’s shadow world, and how he’s linked to the proliferation of crime in Gion. “Where is he?”
Rumi jabs her finger towards the hall at the end of the main room. “Second door,” she says, then steps to the side. Keigo barely takes the second to remove his shoes before barreling down the tatami, grabbing hold of the shoji door in the narrow hallway, and pulling it open.
Three sets of eyes come to rest on him. On one side of the low table, Toshinori sits with Mirai hanging off his side, combing fingers through his hair as he watches Keigo questioningly. The red haired man is different, though, his blue eyes flicking over the expensive oiran kimono wrapped snugly around Keigo’s body. He looks intrigued.
“You’re late,” Mirai says. “I thought we may have to take up Rumi’s offer on taking your place.”
Keigo ignores him, deciding it more important to bow to Toshinori and his mysterious guest. “I apologize for my tardiness,” he says. He straightens his posture and shuffles over to the red haired man. “If I had known I would be summoned, I would have been sure to be here on time.”
The man ignores his excuse and gestures to his empty cup on the table. There’s a full bottle of sake sitting in the middle of the table, and Keigo smirks. “Oh? No tea today, sir?”
He kneels beside him, raises his sleeves to reveal slender, milky white wrists and pours the sake. It is not long after that the two guests continue their conversation, and Keigo fades into the background, only making himself known the few times he steals glances at his guest’s rugged face and gnarly facial scar, or when he brushes their hands against each other on his way to pour more sake.
And then a knock sounds at the door and Kaoruko appears at the threshold, a timid bow in place. “Forgive me for the intrusion,” she tells them. “Officer Toshinori, Gran Torino is here for your meeting.”
“Ah!” The officer says, clapping his hands together before resting one on Mirai’s and squeezing it tight. “You’ll have to forgive me for cutting our time short.”
Keigo’s companion waves the apology off like the abrupt end is of no importance. “I should be leaving soon, anyways. Natsuo will be looking for me soon.”
Natsuo? The second Todoroki son? Keigo knows he handles security. It is hard not to know when he and his men scour the streets of Gion for petty criminals who bring dishonor to Todoroki territory.
If only they’d handle those hoodlums and their nomu, he thinks.
Toshinori and Mirai leave and Kaoruko shuts the door behind them, leaving Keigo and his companion alone with the aroma of burnt sandalwood wafting through the room and the sound of muffled laughter coming through the walls. They sit there silently for what seems like ages before the guest drums his fingers on the table. “So,” he sighs. “You’re an oiran?”
“Do you think a Geisha would be so bold with touching you or offering a chide remark?”
A sneer curls the man’s scowl, and he offers a single, curt laugh. “I suppose that’s fair.” He looks down at him now, all serious and foreboding. There’s a sadness that lingers in his eyes, and Keigo wants to know what it is and where it comes from, part of his mission or not. “You’ll have to forgive me, Keigo. If I had known you were an oiran, I would have provided better compensation on my last visit.”
Keigo’s hand comes to rest atop his guest’s when he reaches for the sake bottle. “I don’t know yours.”
The stranger quirks a brow. “Pardon?”
“Your name. I don’t know it.”
The man watches him for a long, silent moment, and Keigo feels the stranger’s eyes bore holes into the side of his neck, into the bare part of his collarbone as he leans into the table to reach for a second, unused cup. When the stranger speaks, his voice is gravelly, and sends shivers down Keigo’s spine. “Enji.”
Keigo smiles softly. “Well, Enji, I don’t mind so much that you did not pay my typical rate on our last visit. If anything, I’m wondering if I should even charge you full price for this visit, seeing as you aren’t taking advantage of my-” Keigo licks his lips and traces circles into the back of Enji’s hand with his finger. “ Sexual services.”
The tension dissipates when the smack of wood on wood reverberates off the walls and Keigo and Enji jerk towards the door, towards Toshinori standing there with Mirai hovering awkwardly behind him. “Enji, I need you. Now.”
“What’s going on?” He’s up in an instant, leaving Keigo to carry himself up onto his feet and follow behind as he rushes out the door.
“A nomu appeared on the street,” Toshinori says just as a crash echoes from outside and a scream follows. “He grabbed a hold of a maiko, and-”
“ A maiko?”
A cold hand grabs Keigo’s wrist as they enter the main room and Toshinori and Enji run out the front door and into the street. Keigo stops still and whips his gaze up to Mirai, who won’t let go and won’t let him follow. “It’s Katsuki,” he says. “That man with the blue hair that always comes in here… I went outside to fetch water for Toshi’s tea and he ordered his nomu to grab him.”
“ What?” Keigo jerks out of his grip and barrels for the door. Out in the streets, there’s havoc. An artist’s stand has toppled over across the street, and a small child is crying over their father’s unconscious body. In the center of the cobblestone is a delirious man three feet too tall to be natural, and two times too muscular to be due to anything but the sick quirk experiments people got away with during the war. He’s got the teahouse’s youngest apprentice in his vice grip, and Katsuki is shooting off a barrage of explosions in his attempts to get free.
A young boy tries to run out and hit the noumu with a bat, and Toshinori yanks him back.
The officer is quelling the turmoil, grabbing terrified civilians and dragging them to safety while Enji sheds his suit jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his cotton button-up. Keigo’s eyes flick between him and the nomu, his lips parting because he’s surprised the man has the gull to go at the monster alone. He only barely recognizes the color that peeks out of his rolled cuffs, the edges of a tattoo that cements Keigo’s speculations; Enji is a yakuza, part of the Todoroki clan.
A door busts down across the street and a dozen men in crisp yukata flood the pavement, each with a weapon in their calloused hands. At the front is a man Keigo has seen in tea houses and in the streets. Natsuo Todoroki, who’s been keeping turmoil at bay while Endeavor is gone, shouts at his men to take the nomu down, then sends a wave of ice to the creature’s feet. It cements him in place.
A man with six arms bends down and lets a black-haired man hop into his hands before he thrusts him up into the air. Tape shoots from the latter’s elbows and connects to building tops and the dexterity at which he does it let’s him spin in circles around the monster, wrapping him in tight adhesive. The nomu tries to fight, but the bindings are strong and he falls to the cobblestone with an earth shaking smash.
Then it’s a rush to pull Katsuki out from under him and tend to the open wound in his forehead. It dribbles blood onto his face and the floor, and the boy who’d tried to hit the nomu with a bat is crying over the apprentice’s unconscious body.
“Sir!” The Todoroki son shouts from the crowd, and pushes his way over to Toshinori, to Enji, and the two courtesans who accompany them. Keigo can’t help the surprise apparent on his features when Natsuo bows to Enji. “I apologize for intervening,” he says. “We understand that Madame Shuuzenji’s… workers are under protection, and felt it was best to intervene before more got hurt.”
“They wouldn’t have hurt the rest of us,” Keigo says before he knows what he’s doing, before he realizes he’s intervening in yakuza business. He is a spy, not a gangster, and he knows he should step back, but-
“What do you mean?” Enji asks, furrowing his brows.
Keigo does not miss the way Natsuo’s gaze jerks between him and Enji, the way his eyes eventually rest on the oiran like he’s seeing a god in a mortal vessel. But Keigo ignores it because the man he’s chosen to help him in his investigation is staring at him like his words are the only ones that matter right now, and Keigo wants to revel in it. “Mirai told me that it was the blue haired man that told the nomu to take Katsuki. The man’s name is Shigaraki. Him, a man named Dabi, and a few others have been causing problems around here. Shigaraki’s been eyeing Katsuki since he first came to the teahouse. It’s only him he’s after.”
Enji’s jaw clenches, and he looks back out into the street at the nomu Natsuo’s men are dragging away from public view. Katsuki is being carried back into the teahouse, and when the door closes behind them, Enji steps forward and brushes a loose hair from Keigo’s forehead. “You keep him out of sight when those men come around here,” he orders. The sadness in his eyes from early has been replaced with fire. “I will start an investigation into them, and I will be back.”
Keigo bites his lip and leans into the space which the yakuza occupies, seeking his warmth in the cooling fall. “Okay,” he says.
And Enji looks almost ashamed to step away. His chest swells with a deep breath and fixes a scowl on his face. “We should go, Natsuo,” he says, and the Todoroki son nods in agreement. A curious question tickles Keigo’s throat:
Why would Natsuo Todoroki bow to an officer of his family’s empire?
What sense did that make?
Fall bleeds into winter, and Enji visits the tea house for meetings twice a week. He always requests Keigo, and Keigo makes himself available on a moment’s notice. Madame Shuuzenji is not pleased with the disruption of her scheduled appointments, but Keigo says it’s for the mission, and who is she to argue that.
Shigaraki has appeared three times since the incident in the streets of Gion, and each time the geisha and oiran usher KAtsuki out the back and hide him in a peasant’s home, where a green haired boy with a fierce determination to protect Katsuki keeps him out of view (even if Katsuki himself fights it).
Keigo has yet to learn much more of the men wreaking havoc in the Gion district save for the fact that the scarred one, Dabi, has it out for the Todoroki family in particular, but couldn’t care less about the other villains or law enforcement in town. And Keigo tells Enji this when he comes to visit, and Enji tells Keigo about anything and everything save for who he is and where Endeavor is hiding, and Keigo has to bite his tongue and deal with it.
And then, one night, Enji arrives drunk at the back door of the teahouse.
Keigo remembers being woken from his sleep with the giggles of the younger geishas as a dozen security men drag Enji up the stairs and into a spare room— a room for entertainment. The girls tell him to go see his visitor, and Keigo is unprepared for what he finds.
Enji is lying against the wall in a loose, wrinkled Yukata, his cheeks rosy from sake and his eyes fixed on his fists. When Keigo steps quietly across the threshold and shuts the door behind him, Enji’s eyes flick up towards him, then narrow with the slurring of his words. “You’re… you’re Keigo.”
Keigo nods, stepping barefoot across the wooden floorboards to kneel beside Enji’s body. He lays a hand on his ankle and a shiver shoots up his spine.
“That’s right,” he says, smiling over at the man. “And you came to visit me like this” Keigo clicks his tongue and shakes his head. “Madame Shuuzenji would be ashamed of me for seeing a man in this state.”
Enji scoffs and shakes his head. “I’ve got more troubling things on my mind than that old woman’s formalities.”
“Oh?”
“Mmm.”
“Like what?”
Enji stiffens and looks back up at Keigo. He studies him as if he is an ornate tapestry and wants to waste time counting every thread; Keigo lets him. A hand raises off the ground and fingers trace his cheek. “My son says you’re the most sought-after oiran in the prefecture, perhaps even the country…”
Keigo wonders who his son is to be such a flatterer. “You might say that.”
“And yet you’re wasting your time with someone like me.”
Keigo can’t help but snort, crawling up closer to Enji’s face. It’s risky, coming so close, sliding a leg over the man's lap and straddling his waist, but he looks like he needs comfort, and he’s denied Keigo’s attempts to give him that every time he’s come here.
Maybe this time can be different.
He traces the scowl lines on Enji’s face and sighs, so very close to his lips. His hands sink to the loose yukata and pull at the hem. “You’re stressed, Enji. Let me take it away.”
Enji grabs his hand and squeezes it in an instant, keeping it still on his chest. Keigo shivers at the rough texture of his palm and the warmth that bleeds into his body. His eyes are dark and murky, gone is sapphire in place of a stormy blue. “I don’t want to sleep with you like this.”
And his voice breaks ever so slightly, leaving Keigo to smile softly and say, “A massage, then.”
He guides Enji onto his back and hovers over him, untying the knot in his yukata and shedding the extra fabric. Enji’s chest is large, warm beneath his fingers as Keigo kneads his muscle. Black rings of ash rise into phoenixes on Enji’s swollen arms, and it takes every fiber of Keigo’s strength not to stop and trace them.
But every breathy sigh and moan that Enji makes milks a smirk out of Keigo, and makes it all worth it. The room is hot, and Keigo is so focused that when his own yukata starts to shift and slip off his shoulders, he’s too busy savoring cool air on his skin to realize his wings have come free behind him.
He pays little attention to the way Enji’s eyes widen or his large hands lift until they're on his back, tracing sinew and muscle to the base of his wings. Keigo bites his lip fast and hums into the flesh, focused on performing his massage instead of melting under his touch. “That’s, um- that’s sensitive.”
“You have wings,” Enji breathes. The scent of alcohol wafts up to Keigo’s nose and makes him feel dizzy, drunk himself off the proximity alone.
But he tries to snort and he tries to joke because Enji said no sex and if he doesn’t diffuse the tension in the air, that is where this’ll lead. “Of course I do,” he whispers. “Why else would I become a courtesan?”
Enji’s fingers are still in his feathers. For the first time, he looks up at Keigo lucidly. A curious scowl is back on his face and it looks so at home there that Keigo can’t help but realize he’s missed it when Enji has come in looking so wounded. “What do you mean?”
Keigo exhales a heavy breath and leans down so that their bare chests touch. He can feel the rapid beat of Enji’s heart beneath red hair, colorful tattoos, and taut pectorals. His fingers trace the muscle up to Enji’s Adam’s apple, then finally to his jaw. “People like me, people with abnormalities like mine, are only wanted when they become a commodity. My wings make me special, but only in a place like this.”
“No.”
It comes so quick, and so sure. Enji shakes his head and then his hand is on Keigo’s neck, pulling him close so that they’re eyes are centimeters away and Keigo can’t dare look anywhere else. The heat, the want, they fill him to the brim. He tries to stay put, to hold his stance and not give in to the urge that he has-
“You’re always special,” Enji whispers. “Like an angel.”
And then Keigo can’t help it. He leans in and brushes his lips against Enji’s, feels the heat off them as he presses harder and tastes the stale alcohol like it is a delicacy meant to be savored. His eyes are heavy, but when he opens them, he can’t help but smile softly at the way Enji chases his lips. He laughs, and then falls off Enji’s side to lie on the floor beside him.
He breathes out, and then Enji finds his hand and intertwines their fingers. “I hope you don’t remember that in the morning,” Keigo sighs, closing his eyes. The heat coming off Enji’s body warms him, and he’s ready for sleep.
“Why?”
“You said you didn’t want to do anything.”
Keigo thinks that’s the end of it, that they’ll both drift off and wake up in the morning with their customary relationship back in order. But then Enji’s voice cracks as he whispers, “I don’t think I know what I want…”
And that sounds odd on the tongue of someone Keigo has come to understand as a businessman, as a schedule, and plans, and goals-oriented person. And so he can't help himself from flipping over to watch the sad profile of his companion’s face. He can’t stop himself from saying, “Why did you come here tonight, Enji? Is it because of me, or… or something else?”
Enji lifts his hand to his head and drags it down his face before flipping on his side to look at Keigo. And when he does, their eyes meet and Keigo can’t think. “Both,” he says. “I had a fight with my son, Shouto, tonight about taking over the family business. He won’t listen to me and I understand why— I was a horrible father to him, to his siblings, and a horrible husband to my wife.” He blinked and tears brimmed his eyes. “I am trying to fix that, to be a better father, but- but it’s still so hard to know I caused them so much grief and you… seeing you makes me feel like I can keep trying.”
Keigo doesn’t know what to say, but when he exhales, it’s a sigh of relief. He’s happy to be wanted. He reaches out and binds their hands together before closing his eyes and settling into Enji’s side. Then, it hits him and he hums, “Shouto… Like, Shouto Todoroki ?”
He hears the skip of Enji’s heart before he can answer, but Enji still says ‘yes’, and Keigo is left to breath out an airy laugh. “You’re Endeavor.”
“You won’t tell, will you?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Keigo says, and he realizes he’s being honest. Even as a spy, his job has not been to out Endeavor, and he wouldn’t so long as it’s still an option. Rather, he listens to Enji’s steady heartbeat as he drifts to sleep, and curses the light of the morning when it peeks through the blinds, not ready to give Enji up.
Not ready to let go of a feeling he didn’t know he could have.