stealhearted | are you hurting the one you love?

[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.

[He hears him, and the words make sense, kids that never ask for help, poorly controlled or over controlled emotions. He closes his eyes. Doesn't want to continue to argue with him about it-- doesn't want to keep sharing and over sharing. It has to get tiring to hear him talk about things. Especially when Akira does so little talking about himself.]

[He feels a little nauseous at the idea of "ten years in the future". How do you grasp ten years in the future when you never planned to have one? He shifts, disengaging from where he was huddled against Akira. He brings a hand up in simultaneous apology and to prevent him from protesting the action, rearranging himself so he's sitting beside him again, but not tangled up and around him.]

I've never looked into any of that, but... Maybe I'd like to. I can't prevent what happened to turn us into what we are, but... Maybe, if I get back into the justice system, understanding why we are... I could help prevent it in others. [His tone is curious, maybe a little distant. He doesn't know what, if anything, he wants to do when he strikes back into the world. He'll be an adult, when that happens, and most days he still feels like a terrified orphaned seven year old.]

Sae-san's becoming a defense attorney. [ Akira puts the words there and lets them rest, doesn't force them any closer. He can tell when they're getting too far into uncharted waters, and he doesn't want either of them to drown. He runs his hand up and down Akechi's arm, soothingly. ]

I never really committed to doing anything with my future. Everyone says I'd do well in politics, [ he makes a mild face of distaste here, because while he likes Yoshida very much he isn't sure he could stomach that long term ] I think I'd be happy just running a cafe like Leblanc.

[ Or literally running Leblanc; he won't pretend it hasn't been an unspoken concept for the past few months. ]

You have too much heart to be in politics, [The words are out of his mouth before he can think better of them, and he folds in on himself just after, as if to hide from that declaration.]

...and Sae-san shouldn't want anything more to do with me in a professional sense. I'm not quite fool enough to assume she won't do as the rest of you have and insist on still having me in her life, for whatever reason, but... I could have really hurt her career with the way she looked after me as a junior detective and the things I did. Never mind her personal convictions... [He leans a little more into Akira's side.] You should just refinish this loft and stay here. It would be strange for you to leave, and I'm sure Sakura wants someone to take over once he can't run the place himself.

I want to live in a place with a door, eventually. And a shower. [ The way he says it, it's a little weighty; he's thinking of a future with Akechi, and it shows around the edges. Akechi would want a door; Akechi would want a shower. Akira wants a nice kitchen; they'll need to have two bedrooms, because Akechi won't allow his privacy to extend to Akira every night for awhile, Akira thinks.

That sort of thing.

Akira falls quiet for a minute, and then -- ]

Rehabilitation. That's what Yaldabaoth told me I was doing by making bonds with everyone. I mean, he was a crazy god that was trying to destroy humanity, but I think he was on to something.

[ Which is to say -- Akira may not have quite been the one who needed the rehabilitation. ]

[Akechi, meanwhile, is determined to consider Akira's future without him in it. So he hears it-- the weight including himself, and intones a wordless sound for a moment.] That's why I said refinish the loft. You could put a door at the foot of the stairs... The plumbing for the kitchen downstairs could easily be added onto to include a small shower, up here. Perhaps include some insulation so you don't freeze in the winters and overheat in the summers.

[His expression sours into a grimace and he shakes his head.] That thing fancied itself a God and saw us only as playthings. Don't give it credit for anything.

[ Akira hums. It's a nice thought, to be sure, to stay in Leblanc forever. He thinks they'll refinish it one way or another. Even if he moves out -- with or without Akechi -- there's bound to be some long nights where Leblanc is a more convenient place to stay the night. ]

I don't give it credit. I just think maybe there's more to the metaphor, you know -- jails and rehabilitation and rebellion.

Oh, except yours was different, right?

[His posture and expression close right the fuck off again.]

It isn't worth speaking of.

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