stealhearted | are you hurting the one you love?

[There's a funny little quirked grin on his face, which lends to the idea that yeah, he's pretty okay with being an accomplice, and he watches Sojiro make his coffee with a cautious nod in greeting and a smile.]

[He fidgets while he waits for Akira to finish up and get permission from Sojiro to head out, lacing and unlacing his fingers a handful of times and wishing his gloves wouldn't look so strange with a short-sleeved shirt. Hell, they'd look strange to begin with in the spring, but he likes them, damn it.]

[ Akira either makes the situation worse or better by snagging Akechi's hand in his when he passes to tug Akechi out the door as he offers Sojiro a parting nod. They're in date land now, which means subdued handholding and gross smitten looks and Akira insisting on buying them souvenirs.

He does let go of Akechi's hand once they're outside, but it's a slow thing, his fingers drifting up Akechi's wrist like he doesn't quite want to let go. He doesn't, but he doesn't think Akechi is quite ready for PDA in the middle of the daytime. ]

[He's tense in Akira's grasp, but allows it, squirming as he walks and visibly trying to not recoil from his hand. He sort of sags in relief when Akira releases him on his own, reaching up to idly tuck his hair behind his ears several times, like a nervous tic.]

Um, Kuru-- ... [He grimaces, briefly, squaring his shoulders and raising his voice, almost a little too loudly.] Akira, [He shrinks back from his own voice, wheezing without opening his mouth. He reaches out to brush his fingers over the back of Akira's hand, and tries again, more reasonably.] ...Akira.

[ Do not call him cute, Akira tells himself forcefully, as he turns to look at Akechi. He watches the way he tucks his hair behind his ear, the way his voice chokes on the first attempt, and he does not comment on any of it, just offering him a smile.

He also does not return fire with Goro's first name. Too much, too fast. ]

Yeah?

You're-- this-- [He pulls his hand back, tapping his fingertips to his thumb in a sequence from his forefinger to his pinky and back.] This is supposed to be a date, right?

I'd like it to be. [ Akira says. He doesn't think Akechi would say no to him, at this point -- Akechi seems as desperate to make Akira happy as Akira is to make Akechi happy, which is slightly worrying and slightly reassuring at the same time -- but he still wants to give him an out, an option to say "no, it's not a date".

But -- they're dating, aren't they? They agreed. So. It's a date. ]

[He's relatively certain his skin is just going to be permanently crimson, for the day. He'll call it sunburn if Ryuji or Ann ask. Swallowing audibly, he takes a step forward, reaching out and curling his fingers around Akira's, frowning at them with an expression like he's swallowed a bug or is feeling the onset of food poisoning.]

...then, um. You're in charge, I have no idea how this is meant to work.

Okay. Well, first we're going to go to the park, and we're gonna ride the little boats. [ He curls his fingers through Akechi's, tightening the grip enough and giving him a reassuring squeeze. It's nice, because it's an easy, gentle contact, but it's also an easy way for Akechi to -- quite literally -- tap out if he gets overwhelmed. ]

Then we can walk around. You probably don't want anything to eat since you're getting crepes later. [ Maybe Akira can get something and Akechi can try it and Akira can finish the rest because he has a true teenager metabolism. ]

[His hand is-- probably sweaty, he realizes in mild horror, but it's fine, he squeezes Akira's fingers back, uncoordinated. He doesn't say anything, just nods, bunched up where he's standing and looking at anything that isn't Akira.]

[God help him.]

[ Akira doesn't mind the sweaty hands, really. It's hard to mind when they've already had some arguably gross sex in the Metaverse, after all, so he just -- holds on regardless, and leads the way.

Eventually, he starts making idle conversation, which is less a conversation and more of Akira just talking to help soothe Akechi's nerves. ]

Ann's going to want to get so many crepes you're going to wonder how she can eat it all, but she'll really put it all away. Be prepared to buy at least two for yourself because she'll definitely eat your leftovers.

[He takes to smoothing his thumb along the grain of each of Akira's fingernails, tapping intermittently, but never in the 1-2-3 pattern, and the anxious motion slows as Akira continues to natter quietly. He hates, just a little bit, how easily soothed by his voice he can be.]

I cannot fathom how she keeps her figure.

She's started working out more often. She decided she wants to be a really good model. [ Akira still is not entirely clear on how working out a little and buying more clothing makes her a better model when the previous better model was, in fact, just cheating her way to the top, but he will wholeheartedly support her regardless. ]

She's planning to go study abroad soon.

[He hums appraisingly, at first, because any reason to stay in shape is a good one, as far as he's concerned, but the second bit has him turning to focus on Akira's expression with a slight squint. He broadens his gait for a moment to step up more alongside him, bumping their shoulders together.]

She'll keep in touch, I'm sure.

Yeah. She's not going to be gone that long. It's -- weird; everyone's kind of splitting up. It was different when I thought I was going to go home, but -- [ As fun of a phone call as that had been, it had gone relatively painlessly, especially when he'd pulled Sae in on personally vouching for how good Tokyo had been for him and how she was considering extending an internship to him after highschool.

Akira absolutely, unequivocally did not want an internship, but his parents did not need to know that. ]

-- Well, Yusuke isn't going anywhere, and Futaba's starting Shujin next year. Sumire'll still be there. And you're here, so. [ It isn't like Akira is worried about being lonely, exactly. He'd known that his year in Tokyo couldn't last forever, that the group was going to fracture and break apart inevitably, but...

It still feels weird. ]

Ann's not leaving until after summer, at least. She wants to, and I quote, "stick around long enough to see when Makoto buys a motorcycle".

[He's shifted to rubbing his thumb in idle circles around each of Akira's knuckles, focusing on one for a while before moving to the next, and so on and so forth, remaining quiet while Akira speaks.]

It's... very foreign to me to be so entwined in a group of people. Positively, at least.

If it helps, sometimes it's still weird to me, too. [ Akira'd had friends back home, of course, but -- nothing like what he has now. No one that had checked up on him after he'd been accused of assault. He might as well have changed his number for as much contact as he got from his hometown, parents included.

It was all different, with the thieves. ]

It's a little hard to believe, sometimes. I've had more time without friendships like this than I have had with them, but...

That'll change, someday.

[He stays quiet, beyond a hum of sound, and slows to a stop, squeezing onto Akira's fingers to hopefully convince him to do the same.]

...I'm-- can I admit something?

[ Akira slows, automatically, matching Akechi's pace -- or lack thereof, and looking at him. ]

Yeah. Of course.

[He draws in a breath, looks up at Akira, and exhales in a rush, wobbling where he stands.]

I'm so sick of myself, but you all just... want to befriend me, want to accept me. I don't know how to allow it, and I'm-- sorry, for that, for my fumbling idiocy and the fact that I am far too quick to become angry when I'm stressed. I want this to work. I want-- [He squeezes Akira's fingers, and his voice cracks, but he powers through it, even if he looks away again.] I want this to work. So much it frightens me.

[ Akira reaches out, grabbing Akechi's other hand so he can squeeze them both, gentle and steady. It's a rush of honesty that's nearly overwhelming, and Akira swallows it down carefully, plays it over in his mind before he responds. ]

It'll work. Even if you're angry, or I can't communicate, or we have fights, so long as -- so long as we both want it to work, we can work it out. That's true of everyone else, too.

They wouldn't have forgiven you if you weren't trying. But -- you are. We've all been trying to change, and it's hard, so... even if you backstep, I'll still be here. We'll make it work.

[Akira breaks apart each of his arguments before he even voices them, and he wants to be annoyed, but he just feels exposed, feels known and it makes him pinch inward like he's expecting to be struck.]

[He inhales, counts backward from ten, and taps Akira's fingers with his thumbs, simultaneously and too quickly to be the 1-2-3 system they discussed. He feels like the back of his shirt is caught on a coat hanger in the liminal space of his mind he enters when he can't process things, like he's looking down at himself, standing there with his hands in Akira's and his posture bunched together like a frightened animal, and he figures dissociation isn't anything new, but he's not quite so used to feeling so out of body. He exhales, and relaxes his posture, slowly sinking back into his own skin.] I used to apologize a lot more, before I got angry. It never did much, and then I learned that knowing a high vocabulary and how to speak sharply without really yelling got people to listen a lot more effectively.

[He takes a small step backward, loosening his grip on Akira's hands but not pulling away entirely.] ...I'm. Can we sit down, I'm sorry.

Yeah. Here. [ There's an out of the way bench in Yongen-Jaya, easily accessible but no one ever does except periodically an elderly couple. There's no one here today, though, so Akira leads Akechi over to it, even if he has to drop one of Akechi's hands to do it. Akira sits down a little too close to Akechi, fitting alongside him like a warm, reassuring presence, a gentle heartbeat. ]

It's impressive, though. I know you don't think so, because you used your intelligence for things you're not proud of, but you... didn't have a lot to work with, and you still managed to crawl upwards. [ Akira doesn't know a lot about the foster system in Japan, and what he does know he's gleaned from Sojiro, Sae, Futaba, and Akechi, but --

It's not like there were resources there for Akechi. He wouldn't be surprised if Akechi himself -- or later, Shido -- had to pay his tuition on his own, since he'd gone to one of the more prestigious schools. ]

[He's used to being relatively active, or at least constantly in motion, even when he isn't prepared to be, so it's a feat in and of itself that he's willing to ask to sit so early. They've barely even left Leblanc, and his heart feels like it's going to beat out of his chest in some kind of macabre reenactment of that scene from Alien. He appreciates Akira's closeness as they sit, more than he might have expected, closing his eyes and soaking him in with one hand still tangled in his.]

[He angles his head toward him without opening his eyes when he starts talking again, and opens his eyes in short passes, sort of the reverse of blinking. He does that for the whole time he talks, humming thoughtfully.] It was very much a do or die sort of scenario. If I didn't do it, certainly no one was going to do it for me, so... [He claims their joined hands into his lap and runs his free fingertips over the back of Akira's knuckles, and grins sharply.] It was a bit more of a clawing motion than crawling-- picture a cat climbing the curtains.

A lot of people would probably have given up. [ Not Akechi, not Akira. But a lot of people. That's why they specifically had the "spirit of rebellion", after all -- they were young and defiant, still protesting against the system that wanted to crush them. Akira didn't want to be his parents.

Akechi didn't either, but for very different reasons. ]

I know you're not used to people being proud of you, but I am. [ For surviving, even when he didn't want to; for managing to make a turn around. The past few weeks have been rocky, but there's still been a notable improvement: Akechi is trying, working on the slow attempt at changing himself, and Akira knows how hard it is and admires it.

Which might just be because he's enamored, but he likes to think it's a fair and objective opinion. ]

I'm not a lot of people, [He says it staring out at the street, largely unseeing, and the distance is evident in his eyes. He's still running his fingertips over Akira's knuckles, grounding himself with the gesture, but he's floating away in tiny increments.]

[And Akira's statement of being proud of him yanks on the rope dangling from his hot air balloon as it drifts, so he's still distant but stops getting father, laughing in an abrupt, embarrassed way. His whole face dusts pink in a way that shows just how much he appreciates the sentiment, and he shunts his weight sideways into Akira's shoulder.] ...you sure know how to sweet talk.

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