stealhearted | are you hurting the one you love?

They weren't kind because they had to be, you realize. [He presses the point of his chin into Akira's chest for a moment, scowling slightly.]

[But then he lets up, clearly not caring much for the mention of Maruki or his reality, but allowing it in favor of deciphering the statement.] ...I think you decided that for them. You decided their happiest lives didn't include you, or didn't need you, because there wasn't a need for the Phantom Thieves. [He scrunches his face, not-quite frowning and twisting a lock of his hair between his fingers, similar to the nervous tic Akira does on his own.] ...you don't have to be helping someone to be in their lives. You don't have to be needed to be wanted. [He should really listen to his own advice, but, yolo.]

[ Akira's hand stalls for a brief moment, but then restarts, carefully, slipping up to Akechi's face to shift him up until Akira can look him in the eyes. ]

Neither of us can take our own advice, can we? [ Akira murmurs, a little quiet, a little rueful. They're both terrible at this. Even now, with Akechi literally forced to be near him, Akira is afraid of losing him, of Akechi leaving.

He's afraid to do things incorrectly in case Akechi decides it isn't worth it. ]

[Clarity hits him like being doused with ice water at Akira's shifting, until their eyes meet. He doesn't look away, but the way he recoils slightly makes it clear he wants to, but decides it's more important to keep the eye contact.] ...there are a lot of things I'm aware of that I've spent the better part of two years avoiding anyway, unfortunately.

...You don't have to promise anything, [ Akira says, slowly, letting his finger slip across Akechi's cheek like Akechi is a favorite stuffed toy from childhood, like a security blanket that Akira can't bear to get rid of. ]

But... I promise. I'm not ever going to get tired of you, or want to leave you. I want you to be able to believe that, one day.

[That's where he breaks the eye contact, flinching like Akira's words struck him.] Please don't. [It'll hurt more when he can't if he promises. If Akechi allows himself to believe the promise.]

[His breathing shallows again for a moment, but he reroutes it, shaking his head and fixing his eyes somewhere on Akira's chin, instead. He can't meet his eyes, but this isn't supposed to be about him and his constant myriad of problems.] We aren't talking about me, right now. But I'm-- not a cop, I never was, even for working with them, and if we run into another on the street you don't have to put on Joker's mask and come back here shaking. I've dealt with them a lot in the past few years, you know? I don't want it to become widespread knowledge that I'm here, but a few cops making mention of a Detective Prince lookalike will just upset the brass, so let me handle it.

[ Akira considers Akechi's words for a long moment, and then, almost cautiously, almost carefully, like he might be misunderstanding -- ]

You're saying you'll protect me? [ Which is something Akira doesn't... He's not sure anyone has ever protected him from something, actually? What a strange concept, to have someone try and shield him from something he can deal with even if he doesn't want to. ]

[That makes him look at him properly, startled by the caution in Akira's tone. He blinks, tilting his head slowly.]

It's hardly protecting you when it's just bluffing to a cop about why a high school student isn't in class, Kurusu.

It's not what you're doing. It's what you're trying to prevent. [ Bluffing to a cop isn't hard, but that's not the important part -- it's preventing Akira from being a wreck afterwards, preventing him from throwing himself face first into brewing coffee so he can avoid his own trauma response. ]

[He just tilts his head, entirely not understanding. He doesn't realize that lying to a cop so Akira doesn't come back to Leblanc shaking is protecting him from himself, from getting lost in his head and shaking his way through making coffee and cleaning equipment. He registers belatedly that it's... unusual, perhaps, but--]

...it's the same as always, you having a fit and shaking out of your skin up here is inconvenient. I'm simply ensuring the optimal response. [He sounds like a fucking robot when he says it, and he knows that. He can't make himself settle on the idea that he cares. That he's capable of being a caring person.]

[ Akira gets it. Between Akechi's fear of caring and then being rejected, and the fact that he spent so long studiously refusing to admit he gave a fuck about anything, admitting he cares must be absolutely terrifying.

He thinks they'll get there, probably. ]

You could have just let me go back down to work it off. [ Akira says, gently, not wanting to set off another vehement denial but not wanting Akechi to so easily reject the prospect either. ]

It's okay. I... like that you care. It helps.

[Math lady meme.png.]

I literally just said it's because it's inconvenient, don't invent your own narrative, here. [So says the one squirming around until he can lay more fully across him. It might be awkward, with the way he climbs so his hips rest between Akira's thighs? But he's not meaning it sexually in any capacity, he's just a heat leech and Akira is a skinny furnace. He's... projecting, and even he can tell, but Akira's insistence that he likes that he cares, that it helps, just makes his stomach twist itself in knots.]

It wouldn't have inconvenienced you. You could have just gone to do laundry and ignored it. [ A beat, and then: ] I'm glad you didn't. Staying here with me, like this... It feels like, even if it might be a burden, it's one you don't mind bearing, sometimes.

[ Which Akira thinks might be more accurate for both of them. They do have burdens, exhausting emotional ones that take too much energy to deal with, but --

maybe it's the kind of thing they're okay with dealing with. ]

Conveniently for you, I didn't especially feel like messaging Sakura to ask if I could borrow your cat, since I can't message him directly as he lacks thumbs. I wasn't about to go do laundry without your requested quadrupedal chaperone, so I suppose I will just have to continue to wear your things until such a time you aren't rattled by errant policemen. Therefore, it evens out.

[A beat, and he closes his eyes.] Besides, you're warm and I am not.

...you know they live around the corner, right? [ Akira sounds deeply amused by this, but just responds to Akechi's declaration of how much he doesn't care by reaching up to wrap his arms back around Akechi's hips in a loose, easy hold. ]

Thanks, though. I feel better.

You really think Sakura would have answered the door? [He makes a vague grunt of a sound at Akira's arms looped around him, but doesn't deter the contact.]

[He also doesn't say anything to the thanks, because saying he wasn't welcome or he hadn't done it for him would just be beating a dead horse, at this stage, so he just grunts again, little wordless sound of acknowledgment to prove he heard him.]

Yes. She's not afraid of you. [ Futaba would, as she once put it, "fight Akechi behind the Denny's at 3AM", which was a very clear mental picture Akira thinks about sometimes.

She might actually win on sheer shock value alone. It always makes Akira want Denny's omurice, though. ]

I'll text her whenever you want to go, though.

[He frowns a little, curious, but doesn't comment on Futaba's lack of fear of him. He supposed it made sense, but he wasn't sure why. He had never really done anything especially frightening, in her frame of mind. The frustrating part of that was that now his statement read like he was afraid of her. A slight tsk later, he props himself up on his arm, sliding his other out from underneath Akira and flexing his hand to get used to bloodflow again.]

Yet she is afraid of mail couriers.

She's afraid of strangers. But you were a teammate, so she's not afraid of you anymore. [ Akira reaches out, shifting them both so that Akechi can be on top of him in a way that -- under other circumstances -- would be extremely sexual, but right now is mostly for the sake of making sure all their limbs aren't filled with tv static. ]

I also killed her mother, but apparently that is neither here not there with you people. [He stays upright, insistently, so he's effectively straddling Akira's hips which really just makes it worse except for the part where he's not considering that, at all.]

I'm about to say something that's going to piss you off. [ Akira informs him of this, dryly, mostly because Akechi is straddling him and Akira is at a deep disadvantage here for a lot of reasons. ]

But there's this thing where revenge is toxic, so we try not to focus on that.

Suggesting that isn't every time you open your mouth, [He returns just as dryly, rolling his eyes and waiting for Akira to say his irritating statement anyway.]

[It... doesn't actually piss him off as much as he expected it to, more of feels a bit like a second sock to his gut like Akira had done the previous evening. Unconsciously, he brings a hand to the bruise there and presses on it.] Yet you still called me a teammate. Hypocritical, isn't it?

Is it? [ Akira looks a little confused by the idea. ]

We genuinely wanted to be your teammate, you know. We weren't tricking you for revenge or anything.

The entire basis of why I used the Metaverse from Day One was for revenge, Kurusu. That is the hypocrisy in you calling me a teammate while stating you avoid revenge. [He presses his hand into his stomach a little harder.]

In the end, you still fought alongside us to save the world. [ Akira's smile is a little thin, but he reaches up, puts his hand over Akechi's. He of all people understands how pain can be grounding, and he thinks this kind might be better than most, given that Akira was the one who delivered it. ]

It wasn't about revenge, then.

[His expression twists up, but he relishes the deep-seated ache from the bruise.] It still was, [He gasps it, a little, only moving his hand to swat Akira's aside and bunch it into a fist, release it, and bunch it back up a few times.] It still was, for me. I don't really expect you to understand that.

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