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Keigo doesn't know when he first felt it. It was inside his chest, and he knew it wasn't always there, but he couldn't place a clear moment when it had appeared. Perhaps it was gradual, or he was just so caught up with the other person that he didn't realize until he was used to it.
It wasn't a physical thing, he knew that. But it burned in his chest, a ball of flames that never hurt. Somehow, he had the feeling that, if he could see them, the flames would be blue. So hot they had gone past white, capable of destroying anything. They were a warm, constant presence, one that meant that he was loved.
There was only one person Keigo had ever met with a fire quirk. His name was Touya, and he had disappeared off the face of the earth ten years ago. Had supposedly died in a large fire that he had accidentally caused. But Keigo knew that, if it were him, he couldn't be dead. Because if he were, Keigo wouldn't feel the raging fire in his chest that proved that someone out there cared about him.
He wondered if, if he could find him, Touya would help him escape the Commission.
Dabi had always felt that feeling of wind rushing past him, ever since he was a kid. He had always attributed it to running fast or light breezes, until it had started happening when he was inside, standing still. It almost felt like he was falling, but also steady in the air, soaring. It felt free. Sometimes, he could feel feathers around him, even if they didn't actually exist.
It had taken a while for him to realize that it was his soulmate sign. When he did, he almost felt bad, because it meant that his soulmate was someone he had abandoned. They either thought he was dead or were searching for him.
Would they still want him if they found out he was a villain? 'Of course they would,' common sense says. 'Soulmates always love each other.' But what if they didn't? What would he do then?
It felt nice to be loved. He didn't want that to end just yet. He wanted to leave the League, to find them, but if he did…
He wondered if they were a hero, like so many people wanted to be these days. Being able to fly seemed like almost a given for a hero quirk. If they were a hero, would they save him?
"Hey, Hawks?"
"Mm?"
"Have you gotten your soulmate sign yet?"
"Oh, yeah. I've had it for a while."
"What is it?"
"Mm… Fire. Blue. It makes me feel warm, which can be a bit annoying with the jacket!"
The person laughed.
(It was a lie. The warmth would never be annoying, not even in the hottest summer months. It meant he was loved, and he clung to that like a drowning man to a lifesaver.)
"Dabi. Dabi? Dabi!"
"What, Toga?"
"Have you gotten your soulmate sign yet? I haven't… I bet my soulmate's gonna be cute though! I hope I get to taste them…"
"Yeah, I have. What's it to you?"
"Ooh, what is it?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"C'mon, I promise I'll tell you mine once I get it. Plus I can probably get something embarrassing on Shiggy!"
"Fine. It's some sort of flight thing, I think. Sometimes there are feathers, so probably a mutant quirk."
"Oh, that should make them easy to see! Especially if they have wings! Though I don't know of anyone who has a wing quirk besides Hawks…"
"Huh."
(He wondered. The winged hero always had seemed familiar, had always brought to his mind a name other than the man's public name. Something that started with a K…)
Keigo keeps an eye on the news nowadays, even though he knows most of it already, being a hero and all. He keeps an eye out for incidents that might have been Touya. Fires, vandalism, (Touya liked to spray paint things, and he hated a lot of heros. He wouldn't be surprised if those vandalized hero billboards were the boy's fault, but he doesn't have proof), anything.
The closest thing to a lead was a guy in the League. Black hair, blue eyes, covered in scars. Quirk: blue flames, he called it Cremation, apparently.
The scars looked the same as the ones Touya bore from his quirk as a teen. He had likely gained them from the fire he had supposedly died from, if he was Touya. They covered most of his body, but Touya had been in the middle of the blaze, so it made sense. Heck, he was almost surprised they weren't bigger.
The hair was dyed. It would have been hard to tell from the pictures, but Dabi's quirk was memorable, and if he didn't want to be found, he would have changed almost everything else about himself. Touya was clever, and if this was him, the black even made sense. He wanted to be as far from his father (and by teenhood, his family as a whole) as possible, and black would work against his natural hair color, white. Especially if he was worried it would go back to red.
If Touya was a villain, he wouldn't mind. He knew Touya wanted to be as far from his father as possible. He wouldn't trust heroes after how liked his father was.
Touya would be willing to help, though. And that was good.
"Hey. Dabi."
"What, boss?"
"You know anything about Hawks? He's been being a pain in the ass lately."
Dabi hummed, thinking.
"He hates the commission."
"What?"
"They practically torture him, all in the name of creating the 'perfect hero'. He hates the place."
"Huh. That might be useful if we try to recruit him…"
"Hawks."
"Yes?"
"Do you have any information on the League members? It seems you've taken an interest in one, and I was wondering if you had found anything."
"Eh, not really? He doesn't like heroes, specifically Endeavor, I think he's the one that's been spray-painting hero billboards, and he's actually genuinely smart, unlike most of the members. However, I don't think he knows how to control the amount of power he puts into his quirk. Whoever trained him seems to have trained him for large-scale attacks and neglected small-scale attacks despite his body not being fireproof."
"Huh."
They had just been talking. About Hawks, yes, but heroes in general.
"So do we know anything else?" Toga had asked Shigaraki.
"Yeah, we actually figured out what his name is. Apparently, his real name is Keigo Takami."
"Keigo."
He said it with a chocked noise, mind stumbling. Keigo. It was Keigo. How could he have forgotten? He was so memorable. Not just because of his quirk, but because he understood. He knew what it was like to have someone that was supposed to care for you hurt you and run you into the ground. He was Dabi, no, if it involved Keigo he was Touya, Touya's first and only friend.
He barely heard Shigaraki ask him what was going on, barely registered that he had said the name aloud.
"Dabi, what the fuck? Is that somehow important to you or something?"
Dabi was running upstairs to his room, digging through his old stuff. Finally he found it. His old phone, from when he ran away. The case had a geometric design with lines of blue and red, and the popsocket was a hand printed design - a bird made of blue flames above the words Pheonix Hero Agency. It had been their dream, to forge their own way together.
"Dabi, the fuck?"
He looked up sharply, looking at Shigaraki and Toga standing in his doorway.
"You- You know how I used to have red hair, right? And it turned white?"
"Yeah…?"
"M-My name was Touya."
"Why is that important?"
Dabi opened the phone and searched through his gallery. Where was it? There! A video, a few minutes long, with the screen picture showing two boys. One with red hair turning white, and one with blond hair and golden eyes and bright red wings.
He held up his phone for the other two, and the video began to play.
"Hey! My name's Touya!"
"And I'm Keigo!"
"We decided to do this… I don't really know why, it seemed fun."
"Yeah! And because we wanna start a hero agency when we grow up, so we gotta have record of everything!"
"Mhm!"
Touya grinned as he flung his arms over Keigo's shoulders, being careful not to hurt his wings. He rested his head on top of the blond boy's.
"What do you want your hero name to be, Touya?"
"Mm, I dunno. I'm partial to Supernova though!"
"Whoa, that sounds super cool! I want mine to be a bird of prey, but I can't decide which."
"Huh, that makes sense. It would explain your love of chicken too, or is that still cannibalism?"
"Touya! I told you, it's not cannibalism!"
"Keep saying that, birdie."
"Touyaaa!" Keigo half-whined.
"Aw, I'm just teasing, my little birdie."
Keigo smiled, and patted the ground in front of where he was sitting. Touya sat in front of him and bright crimson wings curled around him, arms circling his waist. Touya hummed contentedly, snuggling a little deeper into the hold. Keigo’s head rested on top of his own, eyes closed with a smile.
"Holy shit, how do you have a video of him? As a kid?"
"Do you really not get it, Shigaraki?"
"I don't either!"
Dabi sighed and scrolled to another video, once again turning the phone screen to them.
"It's Touya again!"
"And Keigo!"
"Today we're going to be showing off my quirk. Keigo's been helping me with finer control but I'm still not the best, which is why we're here."
Touya gestures at the clearing around him, and in the background you can see a fire extinguisher, fire blankets, and various other ways to put out fire. You know, just in case. As he gestures, his sleeve slips down to show dark burns. He doesn't seem to notice.
Keigo disappears behind the camera and picks it up, filming as Touya stands and walks to where they set up targets. Slowly, he raises his arm out straight, palm out. He takes a deep breath, and steps forward with one foot.
And blue fire jets from his hand. Dabi pauses the video, the image stills.
It's a wild blaze, definitely not as controlled as Dabi's, but it has to be the same. Which means, to Shigaraki and Toga, that the boy with the white-red hair named Touya is Dabi. And that Dabi knew Hawks, far before either of them knew where life would lead them. He looked down slightly, staring at where Keig still was on the screen.
“What…?”
“We- Dad put me in the same training program as him, when we were kids. He was there because of the Commission. We bonded over a shared dislike for our guardians and how they treated us. Fuck- we were going to open an agency together…”
‘... Okay then. Secret past aside, I want all the information on him you can give me. Anything relevant.”
The first time Dabi really got access to the ability his soulmate gave him, he was lucky enough to be in a fight. Amidst the rest of the blue flames, no one would notice that these were coming from somewhere else than usual. Only Dabi realized that they came from his back instead of his hands, and he was glad none of the others had seen, Toga especially.
When they had gotten back to the base, and he had bandaged up any new burns as best he could, he decided to see what it was. His door was locked, so none of the others could see, and no one would bother him about it. He watched in the mirror as he let the feeling return, revealing a pair of wings, seemingly made of the same blue fire. Like a phoenix.
Shit. It was Keigo, wasn’t it?
Keigo was lucky to access his ability when he did. He had been captured by a lower group of villains while on a mission, but they had planned ahead with special restraints so he couldn’t break the bonds with his wings. Imagine their surprise - and his - when said restraints had suddenly gone up in flames that burned a deceptively warm red for how hot they really were. Keigo had escaped unharmed and went back to his patrols, planning to learn more about that flame when he was off the clock, that warm feeling in his chest spreading to the rest of his body.
When he got home and set up a clear area to test them out, he watched as they danced on his palm, though they didn’t hurt like he assumed they would. No one else was in the building, so he decided to use one of the training rooms the Commission had, see what all he could burn. They were pretty hot after all, from how easily they’d turned even the specialized restraints to ash.
Honestly, there was only one person his soulmate could be, and it made his heart twist.
Touya.
This fight had been going on for hours, and Dabi was getting tired. He didn’t usually tire of fighting, but this had been hours, and there hadn’t been any of the usual victories or anything, nothing satisfying. He just wanted to go back to the base and take a nap, let everything end and sleep through all of it. Forget it all, for just a moment, and go back to being free from pressure from anyone, staying out under the stars and side by side with Keigo.
Which was why head snuck off into the forest surrounding the area, sitting in a clearing and leaning against a tree. Out here it was quiet, peaceful, he could see the sky getting dark overhead, birds flying overhead. He didn’t hear the soft footsteps near him, as focused as he was, and didn’t notice even the bright red of Keigo’s feathers against the dark of the trees.
“Didn’t expect to see you here, Touya.”
“His head snapped up, seeing the smile on the blond’s face.
“Hey, birdie.”
“Hey yourself.”
Keigo sat next to him, leaning against the tree. Dabi- no, Touya thought that it must be a bit uncomfortable to have his wings pinned there like that, especially while he was leaning against the thing. He sat forward slightly, a subtle invitation, and Keigo’s eyebrows rose before he smiled a little more, draping one wing over Touya and leaning on his shoulder. Touya hummed, a smile appearing at the still familiar warmth and weight of Keigo’s wings, feathers strong but soft against him. Keigo shot him a rather serious look, and he grinned before he could stop himself, not able to resist teasing the bird.
“Hey, I didn’t know you could be so serious, Kei!”
Keigo’s expression turned into a light pout as he leaned over to smack Touya’s arm.
“I can be plenty serious, thank you!”
“Haha, I know birdie, I was just teasing.”
Keigo sighed and settled back down next to him, now appearing almost nervous.
“What is it, birdie?”
“Well… It has to be you, right?”
Keigo looked down, holding his hand out palm up, and let a small bundle of red flames form. He sighed a little, settling against Touya.
“Aw, birdie, don’t worry. Nothing’s gonna happen to us.”
“You sure?”
“I promise, Keigo. I’ll stay with you no matter what.”
Keigo smiled at him, leaning his head against Touya’s shoulder.
“I love you, Touya.”
“I love you too, Kei.”