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It’s so cold.
The only problem is that it’s so intolerably cold.
Enji’s not.
Enji’s so perfectly warm that sunbeams should be taking notes. Enji’s so perfectly warm that all the fireplaces in the span of human history must be seething with envy. Enji’s so perfectly warm that kotatsus will up and quit the whole world over. Enji is—
Kissing him.
Enji is kissing him, and he’s so bleary and cold and bewildered by the darkness that he can’t even scrounge up the wherewithal to memorize this.
Fuck it. He’ll try anyway. It’s probably what Enji would want.
Enji’s mouth is—
Really rough, actually. Really hard. Too hard, crushing against his in the endless first instant.
And he can’t—
Breathe—
Partly because something—likely Enji’s very beautiful but unrelenting metal fingers, based on how mercilessly cold those are—is holding his nose shut.
And partly because—
His lungs—
He’s floating somewhere just shy of real consciousness—somewhere under the surface, but the surface might have iced over while he was under. Nothing sticks except the most important bit. Everything’s too fucking hazy to be sure of anything except Enji’s mouth hard on his.
But it’s still—pretty good, honestly. Like, Enji’s still making out with him. Technique can be taught, but intention can’t be imparted, or some shit like that. As long as Enji wants to kiss him, the details are negligible. He eats minutiae for breakfast. If he plays his cards just right, maybe he can eat Enji, t—
Enji breathes into his mouth.
Forcefully.
So forcefully that it pushes the air into Keigo’s uncooperative lungs.
And they fill.
And then collapse.
And then fill again.
And Keigo’s brain starts sparking.
And then they hold the latest breath that Enji lent him.
The floaty part of him wants to keep it forever. Enji always gives his all, but giving Keigo the breath out of his lungs is more romantic than anything else he can think of. At the moment, anyway. Thinking is not it right now.
His lungs do not agree on the topic of oxygenated keepsakes.
They push Enji’s borrowed breath back out—on their own, at least.
And then they heave.
It overwhelms him so fast that he can’t track the individual sensations—it all just registers as excruciation when his whole body backs his lungs’ all-or-nothing hellbent bid to expel every single last drop of water that has infiltrated his alveoli.
It turns out that that is a fuckton of drops.
The coughing racks Keigo so hard his spine twinges, and his diaphragm burns. It grinds his knees against the jagged ground of wherever the fuck they are—he learned a long damn time ago to clock his surroundings, but there’s still water in his eyes, and his body is convulsing so hard that he couldn’t see straight even if they were clear, and—
And Enji’s here. Keigo can just make out the blissful bokeh effect of some blurry flames.
Enji’s here.
Enji won’t let a damn thing happen to him.
Other than the drowning. Which already happened. And which, if the last few feeble scraps in his brain are moderately truthful, might have been his own fault.
That is not important yet.
What’s important is, apparently, expelling all of this evil fluid from his miserable lungs as expeditiously as humanly possible. That’s all that his feeble corporeal form is willing to concentrate on.
He doesn’t think he’s ever coughed this hard in his life. It rapidly evolves into the kind of abject hacking that’s only half coughing, because his besieged body starts confusing the violence of the coughing up with throwing up and tries to be obliging. He still can’t even see straight enough to tell exactly what has come out of his mouth, but it all hurts like hell and chokes him on the way up.
He doesn’t panic. ’Cause it ain’t his first rodeo. And he knows he just needs to keep hitching in as many little gasps of air as he can get to sustain himself—he just needs to keep his cool and keep going.
But it sucks.
It sucks, it hurts, the ground scrapes and nips at his knees and his shoulder even through the fabric of his clothes, but he can’t catch enough of a break or enough of a breath to lever himself up onto his hands and try to straighten out his abused airway. He’s just sort of writhing on the ground like a deeply unfortunate worm. His head spins—lighter and lighter as the fit shakes him, leaving him woozy as well as full of dreck.
Well.
Less dreck now. Since he’s upchucked so much of it.
The grueling rhythm of the coughing, one shove of his lungs after another after another, eases enough that he can start dragging in useful fragments of breath-like air in between them now. The other sensations start to register as his brain branches out from the single-minded focus on self-preservation. Everything is wet—soaking wet, sopping wet, soggy and frigid. He fell on top of one of the wings, and the dull ache of all the feathers pinned by his weight has just started to throb its way through the reigning discomfort.
Enji’s hand clamps down on top of his shoulder.
Enji’s hand is either also wet, or Keigo’s sleeve is so hopelessly waterlogged that it feels like it.
At least Enji’s hand is warm, though.
A few revelations spiral around in Keigo’s mind like leaves falling while the wind blows—just too light to land.
Enji was not—
But he’s alive.
So there will be other chances.
Theoretically.
Through the muddle of continued wheezing, a recollection or two creeps back into the corners of Keigo’s skull, wallflower-shy and sheepish. They were fighting a Trigger-boosted dickwad who could manipulate minerals, of all damn things—which unfortunately included enough of the salt and particulates in the ocean water that he was putting Enji’s flames out left and right.
But he was an idiot. Because he didn’t realize that Enji had obviously seen that coming in the first split-second, so the ineffective but unremitting bouts of Hellflame were a distraction while Keigo went in for the proverbial kill.
Which Keigo is pretty sure he did successfully.
It’s just that he got smacked so hard with a trident made of solid quartz right after dealing the final blow that the parry K.O.’d him in midair. He must have dropped into the water. Enji must have fished him out.
Cool. Now he’s more or less caught up.
He hopes he did a sort of sexy damsel-in-distress drape over Enji’s arms when he was unconscious, but he’s not going to get his hopes up. He probably just looks like a winged wet rat.
On the upside, though, Enji is now gently squeezing his shoulder, and his last gulp for air bought him just enough oxygen to be obnoxious.
“Hey,” he manages, admittedly somewhat reedily. “Rescue breathing counts as making out.”
“It does not,” Enji says.
Keigo knows him too well—a beautifully terrifying thought.
Keigo can detect the faint, faint, faint sliver of relief underneath the annoyance.
“Does so,” Keigo says. He hacks up another half-mouthful of water and spits it out. He’s got one forearm under himself now, so at least the wings aren’t crumpled underneath him anymore. “Slip me some tongue next time.”
“If there’s a next time,” Enji says, calmly, “I will hold your head under the water instead of pulling you out.”
Keigo tries to laugh and just ends up coughing more.
That’s life for you.
“That’d save us both a lot of trouble,” Keigo manages.
Enji’s hand squeezes again, and then moves in a hesitant oblong shape down over Keigo’s shoulder-blade.
“Less bullshit,” Enji says, “and more breathing.”
“Yes, sir,” Keigo chokes out, because that’s part of their game. “Right away, sir.”
Enji’s hand clasps his shoulder again—a little bit too tight, because he still doesn’t know his own damn strength, no matter how many times he holds the world up with it. “Can you move?”
“Sure,” Keigo says, which might be generous. “Gimme a sec. Salsa? Tango? Or should I freestyle?”
“You should shut the fuck up,” Enji says. Keigo has never heard anyone else manage to make an F-bomb sound gravelly and strangely soft at the same time. Enji’s repertoire of hidden talents is every bit as boundless and inspirational as his tits. “You’re lucky your heart didn’t stop.”
Keigo is not as oxygenated as he thought.
“You’re my heart,” his mouth says. “And you don’t know how to stop.”
There’s a pause. His vision swims a little. He should… say something else. That was… not so good. That was… a lot.
“Idiot,” he adds.
Better.
Maybe.
Enji snorts, but Keigo’s attuned to that one, too, and it’s not as vigorous as normal. “You don’t get to call anybody else an idiot for at least the next forty-eight hours.”
Keigo doesn’t even have time to protest before Enji strikes like a viper and scoops him up in both arms. That happens so fast that Keigo barely wraps his well-shaken little brain around it before he’s tucked up against Enji’s impossibly wonderful chest, soaking up the heat. The metal arm is freezing under the backs of his knees, but the left wrapped around his shoulders bathes him in steam as Enji warms it up.
Keigo attempts to flap the wings in a pointed sort of way, but the bedraggled little bastards barely move. Might have something to do with the fact that his entire skeleton feels like lead.
“Stop moving,” Enji says. He pauses, and then he relishes it, the asshole: “Idiot.”
“Put me down,” Keigo says. His body wriggles closer into the warmth, and then heat blossoms up all around them as Enji fires up the jets under his heels and down from his back.
“Make me,” Enji says.
Keigo manages to fold the wings small enough against his back that they won’t get singed, an effort which feels uncannily akin to running a marathon right now.
What the hell? It’s not like he died. His heart didn’t even take a time-out.
“You just signed up for an ass-kicking,” Keigo says, with as much of his voice as he can muster. “Later.”
Enji is moving—fast. Very fast. Char-the-suit-but-never-in-a-sexy-peekaboo-way-because-the-universe-hates-fanboys fast.
“I’m not in mortal danger,” Keigo says—politely, he feels.
“That’s exactly what you would say if you were,” Enji says.
He has a point.
“But I mean it,” Keigo says. “You gotta believe me.”
“Or what?” Enji says.
Keigo thinks that over. Practically speaking, it’s difficult to threaten someone twice your size who you also happen to be hopelessly in love with.
Nothing left but the big guns.
“Or I’ll show the kids the Shibuya pics,” Keigo says.
They ended up at the crossing after a fight that had left them both banged up, bleeding a touch too lightly to fuck around with stitches, and the ebbing adrenaline had made Enji just pliable enough for Keigo to wheedle him into two drinks at an izakaya. The two drinks had made him just pliable enough for Keigo to wheedle him into a purikura booth.
Enji is quiet for a second.
Then he says, “Fine. I believe you.”
Sus.
“So slow down,” Keigo says.
Keigo can only see the very corner of the faint smile from here.
“Make me,” Enji says again.
Keigo tries to lift his head to see more of the delectable little smirk, but it doesn’t want to go. Too heavy. Everything’s heavy. The adrenaline cut out like somebody pulled the plug—no static, no distortion, just dark.
“Who’s covering your agency tonight?” Enji says.
“Me,” Keigo says.
“Who else?” Enji says.
“They’re both on call,” Keigo says. If he hadn’t dunked his phone, he’d probably be getting uppity text messages by now about how he didn’t need a bath that bad.
“You need to hire more sidekicks,” Enji says.
Annoying. It’s an argument they’ve had a billion times before, and neither of them has budged a millimeter on their position. Enji runs an enterprise. Keigo prefers the agility of a skeleton crew where they all know each other way too well.
“Not gonna,” he says, just for the record. “Unless you’re looking for a job.”
Enji snorts.
Keigo’s eyelids are taking a cue from his skull—heavier by the second. Duly noted. Drowning sucks.
“You don’t think we’d kill each other in the first week?” Enji says.
He’s so warm. “Haven’t done it yet. How many years now?”
“Feels like an eternity,” Enji says.
He’s being—funny. Funny-ish. What passes for whimsical, with a man like Enji.
It clicks, very late.
He’s keeping Keigo talking to keep him awake.
Well.
That’s fine.
It’s nice, actually.
Normally he tries to conclude conversations as efficiently as possible.
“The best years of my life,” Keigo says, aiming for a light tone even though he obviously means it and then some. “How are the kids?”
“You probably know better than I do,” Enji says, “given how much you text them. How are my kids?”
“Good,” Keigo says. Natsuo doesn’t really answer him, because Natsuo is a wet blanket; and he only messages Dabi to be a pain in the ass on purpose, and also on holidays. “On average, anyway.”
“Did Fuyumi like the book?” Enji asks.
She mentioned in passing that it was a shame that some obscure encyclopedic tome on historical art had gone out of print, and Enji had instantly gone into detective mode, rousted up a copy, and sent it to her.
Anonymously.
“She’s obsessed,” Keigo says. “You could tell her it was you.”
“I didn’t do it to get credit,” Enji says.
“That’s very noble of you,” Keigo says. “You could still tell her it was you.”
“I don’t want her to have to think about me when she’s trying to enjoy it,” Enji says.
“That’s very self-defeating of you,” Keigo says. “I could tell her it was you.”
“Don’t,” Enji says.
“Dork,” Keigo says.
“I don’t think that’s called for,” Enji says.
Keigo closes his eyes—just for a second. “I don’t think I care.”
“Liar,” Enji says.
Keigo smiles. Even his mouth feels heavy. It’s still nice, though. “I don’t think that’s called for.”
“You care far more than you let on,” Enji says.
“Hi, Pot,” Keigo says. “I’m Kettle. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Boiled any good water lately?”
“Yes,” Enji says. “After you sent us both for a swim.”
Keigo would like the universe to take note that he didn’t even get to see Enji when his hair was still wet, and the suit was clinging to him even more jealously than usual. He’s owed some serious karmic compensation, here.
“I didn’t swim,” Keigo says. “I just sunk.”
“I noticed,” Enji says. “I didn’t know the feathers could take on water that fast.”
“My bad,” Keigo says.
Enji’s quiet for a second.
And then he decides to blow Keigo’s fucking mind a little more.
“You weren’t moving,” he says. “When I pulled you out. I couldn’t feel your pulse at first.”
Keigo swallows. The implication—
“I thought I’d lost you,” Enji says, quietly.
So much for implication.
Keigo tries to keep his voice light, but it wavers on him, because that’s the kind of day he’s having. “You know what they say about bad pennies.”
Enji is looking straight ahead. “You need to be more careful.”
“Pretty rich,” Keigo says, giving in to the urge to nestle just a little closer. Just a smidge. “Coming from you.”
He recognizes the anemic fluorescent lighting of a hospital parking lot so instinctively that he doesn’t have to look. As soon as it starts washing up over them, his body knows it’s go time.
Enji touches down so delicately that Keigo wants to compliment the finesse, but the words won’t come out.
Enji lowers him slowly, setting his feet down first. Maintaining an upright orientation is more important than sweet-talking someone who’s immune to saccharides anyway. Keigo focuses on gravity and the balance of his wobbly limbs.
Enji keeps that warm left hand on his shoulder. “I need to get back.”
Keigo glances at him, raising an eyebrow instead of trying to ask.
“Crystal Carver is still in a heap somewhere on the beach,” Enji says, sounding more than slightly chagrined. “I just left him there.”
Keigo’s never met an advantage he couldn’t press.
“You?” he says. “You left a loose end?”
Enji scowls at him. “Next time I’ll let you and the brain damage get better acquainted before I bail you out.”
Keigo beams up at him. Keigo’s brain still feels so floaty that the risk doesn’t register as his mouth releases the words: “You want me so bad it makes you look heroic.”
Enji’s frown just deepens. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
The fact that he didn’t punch Keigo in the face for putting a name to the electric tension they’ve both been trying not to wrap their teeth around is… promising.
Keigo’s never met a promise he couldn’t push to its limits, either.
“It also doesn’t make sense,” Keigo says, as sweetly as possible, “to use rescue breathing as an excuse to kiss me.” He bats his eyelashes. “Which totally counts.”
Enji’s eyes narrow.
“It does not,” he says.
Then he leans down.
And grabs Keigo’s chin in his left hand.
And inhales right as he closes the distance—stealing back the breath he lent before.
Keigo stands there like a statue for the first three erratic heartbeats, eyes open and everything. He’s just awake enough to stay on his feet, and just awake enough to know this can’t possibly be happening.
Enji really is kissing him this time.
Lips sealed together, nose crushed against his cheek—all of it. The whole buffet.
Keigo has been so fucking hungry for so fucking long.
Thinking about it is overrated anyway. Thinking he knew what was best for himself, what was safest and most sustainable, is what brought him here.
He lets his battered body move towards what it wants.
He fists one hand in Enji’s hair and the other on the collar of that distressingly slutty suit. Both are still steam-damp—slightly wet and very warm and all too welcoming.
Enji has always had such an appetizing mouth—the hard line he sets it in so often can’t change the softness of his lips. Keigo has dreamed of biting the lush thickness of the lower one since he was fourteen. Turns out dreams really do come true.
Enji has been trying to be restrained and respectful to a degree that verges on chasteness, his mouth curious and searching against Keigo’s but firmly, virtuously closed.
The growl starts low in his throat when Keigo nips him none too gently.
They’ve put this off for too long to play games about it. If Enji’s going to invite the lightning, he’d better be ready for it to run its course. Keigo wants the thunder to rattle his bones.
The gamble pays off.
As always, Enji rises to the challenge.
His grip on Keigo’s chin tightens, and his right hand clamps around Keigo’s shoulder, and he dives into it. He chokes on his breath when Keigo sucks on his tongue. They pant into each other’s mouths like a couple of teenagers, and Keigo frees his curled hand from the spandex of Enji’s suit to drag it slowly down, fingers spread, to caress the goods.
But he’s barely even started copping a feel when Enji pulls back.
Enji’s eyelashes rise slowly. His eyes almost glow in the dim light. Keigo tries to pursue his retreat, tries to bite at his mouth again, tries to suck on the corner of his lip before he can twist it out of reach, but Enji’s hand clasping his jaw holds him too firmly.
“That counts,” Enji says, half-voiced, the steam of his breath gently bathing Keigo’s cheek. “Idiot.”
“Fair warning,” Keigo manages with what little remains of his brain and his voice. “At this rate, I’m probably gonna develop a Pavlovian response where being called ‘idiot’ turns me on.”
Maybe he’s more concussed than he thought. He knows what Enji’s I regret all of my life choices up to and especially including the most recent one face looks like, and he doesn’t think that this is it.
“You have bigger problems,” Enji says, using the leverage of the hand still fixed on Keigo’s shoulder to swivel him around. When he’s facing the ER doors, Enji’s fingers loosen, and his hand slides just low enough to give Keigo’s back more of a nudge than a shove. “You need your head examined.”
“Wish it was the first time I’d heard that,” Keigo says.
Pointedly, Enji nudges a little harder.
Equally pointedly, Keigo finds a way to drag both feet while taking one step. “If you don’t call me later, I’m gonna go free that guy from jail myself.”
“Of course I’ll call,” Enji says, but Keigo knows where to look. It’s not the usual sternness—there’s something cautious just below the surface. There’s something fragile underneath. “I expect a report on your condition. Be ready to read me your chart.”
Another little quadrant of Keigo’s brain comes back online. “Oh,” he says. “My phone’s bricked.”
There’s a pause.
“I’ll call the room,” Enji says. “Provided that you even know how to operate a telephone that doesn’t have a touchscreen.”
“Hey,” Keigo says. “My formative TV set had an antenna.”
Enji almost smiles.
Then he squares his shoulders, and the fire flickers back to life. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he says. “Or else.”
Keigo doesn’t even get a chance to argue that that’s a really unspecific and probably unhelpful standard, considering that Enji has done an enormous amount of supremely unwise shit that was just stupid in a different way than Keigo usually is.
Enji’s up and off, straight-backed and regal and dramatically lit by the flame, his national treasure of an ass on full display—the quintessential demonstration of Hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave.
Keigo lets him disappear before trudging off to get lights shined in his eyeballs and tones played in his ears and all the other benevolent tortures.
Anything beats drowning, but a voluntary smooch and a golden opportunity to threaten Enji with hospital room phone sex beats drowning by a lot.
Not too bad, even counting the wet socks and the wooziness.
Not too bad at all.