stealhearted | are you hurting the one you love?

I'm banking my hopes on being the exception. [ The way he says it -- it doesn't actually have confidence so much as a quiet tone that makes it sound almost like a fact. Like he has to be the exception; like Akehci has to make the exception for him.

Akira has to believe that this will work, because if he doesn't, it feels like the floor is being pulled out from under him.

"I'd be okay if you left" was always a lie. ]

Haven't you ever heard the phrase "don't count your chickens before they hatch"? [He wriggles, shuffling his way down so he's slouched but still sitting, and snaking an arm around behind Akira to loop loosely around him.] It...,

[He stops, looking pensive.] Permit me an admission that you won't repeat or get too overly excited over?

Your secrets are safe with me. [ Which -- is definitely more layered than it might be with someone else, but all the same, it's true. Akira reaches over, runs his fingers through Akechi's hair, nails dragging across his scalp in an easy, tender movement. ]

[He closes his eyes, and the fingernails against his scalp are obviously well-received, but in the same wary, uncertain way he takes most positive things in his life. Drawing in a careful breath and holding it, counting backward from ten as he exhales, he pillows his head against Akira's collarbone.]

...I've never really liked being touched, not since I was young, but. It's... easier. With you, and the rest of your group. Takamaki and Sakamoto have no concept of personal space, and sitting in that van... It was cramped and uncomfortable, but it was. Almost pleasant, because misguided as all of yours was, there was a strange degree of trust intermingled. [He fidgets with the strings on the hood of his borrowed jacket.] Trust is likely what I lack, as a whole.

I don't think I knew what trust was. [ Akira doesn't stop the slow, rhythmic movement of his fingertips, concentrating on it almost too hard to compensate for the way he doesn't know how to phrase what he's talking about. ]

But... I think it's someone that will fight for you. Even if you're wrong, maybe. Ryuji and Ann would fight for me even if I was wrong, but they were the first ones, you know? [ Touching Akechi is a good distraction from the way that makes him feel, the deep pit in his stomach.

He doesn't say the obvious -- that Akechi can trust him; that he'd fight for Akechi even if Akechi was wrong -- but leaves it heavy in the air like a morning fog. ]

Ann was the first hug I'd had in... [ Akira drifts off, vaguely. ]

[He makes a sound, and it's definitely a growl but he would deny it if asked, and butts himself up against Akira, mashing his face into his neck instead.]

My circumstances notwithstanding, no sixteen year old should be that unaware of the concept of trust. I'm-- [He worms around again until his legs are swung over Akira's hips, and he looks thoroughly annoyed all up until his whole expression slackens, and he looks a bit startled.] ...I'm glad. That they... [He waves a hand in a vague gesture.] You're the type to enjoy it.

There wasn't anyone that trusted me, before. [ His parents... loved him, probably, but more as a concept than anything else. He doesn't really feel bad about that anymore, because he's been steadily healing his heart with his friends -- with Sojiro -- with Akechi.

It's helping, in leaps and bounds. ]

I know you'll tell me it's stupid, but I trust you too. [ It's stupid to trust someone that killed him, but. Akechi isn't going to do it again. Akira lets his hand move down, knuckles rubbing across Akechi's cheek instead. ]

I think you'll enjoy it, someday.

[He goes immediately silent, and suddenly still, leaning up against him, and fiddles with the strings on the hoodie again.]

...did you trust me before I shot you in the head?

Kind of. I trusted that you'd do what we'd planned for. And I thought -- [ Akira's other hand goes to Akechi's hip. He isn't holding him there, just resting. ]

I wanted to trust you more. I wanted you to trust me.

[He wishes he could have. Wishes he had anyway. He can't say it, because at this point it's like insult to injury to them both, but the grimace to his features and the way he monitors his breath very carefully probably says enough.]

[And possibly the fact that he doesn't dissuade Akira's hands.]

You can trust me now. It's not a limited time offer. Or -- in the future, sometime. [ Akira grins, a little lopsided. ]

I'm not going anywhere.

How is it that you didn't know what trust was prior to coming here, but now you're such a wellspring of it? I still don't think I know what it is. How to properly earn it, to allow it...

[He looks up at him, frowning but curious, and reaches up to pat his cheek.] ...once again, you've something I don't, except this time I've only just learned to be jealous of it.

I speed ran my friendships. [ Akira smiles a little. Coming to Tokyo, making such deep bonds in under a year... it still doesn't really feel like reality, sometimes, to think of how many people he knows, how many people care for him, how many people fight for him.

He kisses Akechi's palm, almost absently. ]

There's nothing to be jealous of. It's there for you, when you're ready to take it.

[He startles at the kiss to his palm, but doesn't recoil, tsking softly.] I know that. You're a fool so forthcoming with trust and affection you don't know how to stop. The jealousy is more that you're so in your element and happy with it. You adjusted so easily.

It wasn't... easy. It took me awhile to really think that-- anyone would want to be friends with me. But they didn't get tired of me, and they didn't move on just because they didn't need me anymore.

[ Akira still wants to be needed, of course; he needs it like a lifeline, hangs onto it when there's nothing else to hang his confidence off of, but his friends have largely solved their most pressing issues. He's helped them.

But they haven't stopped being his friends in casual, easy ways. Texts and hangouts, even if they're going to be less frequent, are still present. He feels like he has a place in their hearts. ]

Really, you're only a little later to the party than I was.

I'm not really in attendance of the party, I don't think. [Not that he wasn't invited. He's been invited countless times. He just keeps turning them down.]

You can be my date. Don't make me bring Yusuke as my +1 to anything, it'll be a disaster. [ Akira will keep inviting him and inviting him and inviting him as many times as it takes, and even then he won't stop. He doesn't think either of them will ever be entirely comfortable in life, entirely used to the idea of not being abandoned.

It's a nice thought, though. ]

It isn't wise to date boys who shoot you, Kurusu.

Add it to my rap sheet of bad decisions. [ Literally, his bad decisions could be an entire novel at this point. ]

[He just closes his eyes, draws in a breath and exhales in a sigh, and hunkers inward against Akira's chest.]

You probably wouldn't get me, if it were in public. You'd get who I pretend to be when in public. I think I hate him almost as much as I hate actual me.

Everyone wears a mask in public. [ Even Akira. Especially Akira. He reaches up -- but he removed his glasses awhile ago, so his hand just hits on empty air, a gesture that's more informative than if they'd actually been there, honestly. ]

Realistically, [ and Akira says this with complete and total confidence, ] you'd put the mask on for everyone else and then you'd give me snide remarks about the other attendees over your drink.

[ Akira is confident because this is exactly how their jazz club hangouts in January went. ]

[The way Akira knows him better than he thinks he knows himself is equal parts terrifying and strangely pleasant. He can't quite put a name to the anxiety it places in his stomach, because it isn't the same as anything else he's experienced. He's not worried about the outcome. He's significantly less worried about the potential to fall short of his expectations, because-- Akira doesn't have them. And even Akechi can't completely deny that that... sounds pretty solidly exactly like what would happen.]

I've always been bizarrely comfortable around you. [It's an admission he doesn't think about before making, and when he realizes maybe he shouldn't have said it, he realizes he doesn't want to take it back.]

I liked it. I liked seeing the duality. [ Akechi might hate the way he puts up a front, and Akira doubts Akechi will ever be able to do it without feeling the way he must have when he was so resolutely not thinking about anything but the tenuous future, in front of a dozen cameras and a live studio audience.

But Akira liked it. He liked seeing the side of Akechi that no one else did. He thinks that the time in Maruki's reality was a different kind of mask, but Akechi let that one down, too, around him -- calmer but still violently bitter, a caustic presence wrapped up in the easy comfort of the jazz club. ]

I felt more comfortable than I should have, with you. [ Those moments in the jazz club -- in Leblanc, with Akechi sipping at coffee and the quiet murmur of variety shows on the television -- in the safe rooms, where the creak of leather gave away every tense shift of Akechi's posture -- they all felt calming. They felt more like home than home ever had.

They felt like Akira could belong with those moments.

He'd been afraid to let himself think of it, before; afraid that Akechi would laugh, would immediately reject him. He might have, back then. ]

[Back then, absolutely. He couldn't have any temptation preventing him from getting what he wanted-- and Maruki's reality was the last thing he wanted. He refused to live based on someone else's perception of what was right for him, what would make him "happy". Even if there was a degree of it that he enjoyed, while waiting to destroy it, even then he did his best to keep any of the positive aspects at arm's length. He couldn't afford to falter just because he was realizing he didn't want to die at all.]

[He grimaces slightly all the same, scrunching his nose up as he looks at Akira from his collarbone.] I'm likely clinically bipolar, or certainly was, to some extent, I don't know what it says about you to enjoy that. But I suppose we've both always been a touch off-kilter.

I don't think you are. I think -- are we doing the science explanations? PTSD, and that disorder kids get when they're not hugged enough. Reactive attachment, I think. I was reading about it once, [ when he was 12 and beginning to think there was something capital-W-Wrong with him ], and it's like, kids that never ask for help, have poorly controlled emotions or control their emotions to the point of not having them, fail to bond with caregivers or other people...

It's not that I enjoy -- that [ there's a hand gesture here, to communicate 'that' meaning 'everything I just said about our shared trauma' ] -- but it's like.

If we did date. Then ten years in the future, we'd be out to dinner and you'd be perfectly pleasant to the waiter and then you'd turn to me to insult someone's shoes, and that's -- what I like. I think everyone does that.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject