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When Akechi leans in to kiss him, it’s picture-perfect, too good to be true, but that’s not why Akira stops him. Everything about Akechi is too good to be true, after all, and Akira has known it from the start, but he still wants to kiss Akechi almost more than anything.
Almost.
Because god, Akechi is gorgeous, and clever, and fun to be around in a prissy sort of way, and even the detective thing kind of does it for Akira, that dedication to a heroic, shining justice that Akira himself just can’t believe in anymore.
But maybe that’s exactly it: he likes the idea of Akechi, the golden boy overachiever, the celebrity, the city’s sweetheart. And he likes the idea of that person being interested in him, some nobody who lives in a dusty cafe because his own parents don’t want him. And he likes… maybe, if he’s honest, he likes the idea of muddying that perfection up a bit, getting grubby handprints all over Akechi’s pristine reputation, introducing him to the grey areas between the black and white he’s so dedicated to defending.
Maybe, if things were different, Akira would give it a chance anyway. Maybe, if he’d met Akechi sooner…
He catches Akechi by the shoulder, holds him gently back from getting any closer. Akechi stares at him, and just for a second his mask slips, and Akira sees such dismay that his heart gives an awful lurch, and he kind of hates himself a little for the choice he’s made.
But he knows it’s the right one.
“I’m sorry,” Akechi says quickly, looking away, shuffling back towards the edge of the booth, cheeks rapidly colouring. There’s no-one in Leblanc but them, at least. No-one to witness this rejection. “I thought– ah, I misunderstood–”
“No, you… you didn’t,” Akira admits. Maybe he should pretend otherwise, tell Akechi he’s not interested at all, but that’s not a lie he’s comfortable telling. Nor one he thinks Akechi will believe. “I like you, a lot. It’s just… there’s someone else.”
Akechi freezes in the act of adjusting his gloves.
“Oh.”
It’s a quiet, devastated sound, and Akira – okay, maybe Akira hates himself more than a little now. Maybe he hates himself quite a lot. Maybe he’s even questioning his own decision.
But there’s a difference between liking someone and liking the idea of them. There’s a difference between this… performance he and Akechi put on for each other, and really knowing someone else – seeing someone else – and knowing that they see into you as well.
There’s a difference between wanting to kiss the pretty boy with the perfect hair, and realising that you’re in love with the moody asshole whose face you’ve never even seen, but who’s somehow ended up the most important person in your life.
“Yeah, I…” It’s so awkward. Akira doesn’t want to make Akechi feel worse, but he feels like he owes him at least a bit of explanation. “I… only realised recently. How I feel about him. I didn’t mean to, uh–”
Akechi laughs, light and breezy. He’s still looking down at his hands.
“To lead me on?” His tone is teasing and amused, like he doesn’t even care. Akira may not know him all that well, but he’s not buying it for a moment. “I know you wouldn’t, Kurusu-kun. Thank you for your honesty.”
“I’m sorry,” Akira says quietly.
“You have nothing to apologise for. I… would even say that I admire you, for sticking to your principles. I hope that person knows how lucky he is.”
“Oh. He, uh… he doesn’t know yet.” It’s Akira’s turn to look away, staring into the dregs of his coffee cup. “It’s someone I met online, and I’m… kind of afraid that if I say anything, he’ll ghost me.”
Shit, he really shouldn’t be talking to Akechi about this, it’s not fair on him. Akira takes a breath and opens his mouth to apologise again and move the conversation on, but Akechi beats him to it.
“Online?” he asks. His voice is suddenly – odd. Like he’s fighting past a tremor. “You… no, you must mean– one of your Shujin friends, perhaps? You started chatting and realised you went to the same school?”
“No,” Akira admits, squirming in his seat. He knows how weird this sounds on the surface: it’s why he hasn’t actually told any of his Shujin friends yet. “It’s… someone I’ve known for a while, since before I came here. We game together and we talk on voice chat when we have the time. We email each other a lot about all kinds of stuff. He’s just…”
He’s just amazing, Akira thinks: passionate and furious and viciously intelligent and refusing to take a second of anyone’s bullshit. He comes off as an asshole until you realise that he’s someone who’s just done with the world and all its cruelties. He’s still an asshole after you realise that, but to Akira, at least, he’s the kind of asshole that means something.
They met in a random match-up on some game Akira can barely remember the name of now: he just remembers jumping to defend someone else in the chat from this Crow guy who was ripping them to shreds, only to be told in scathingly short sentences exactly what the ‘victim’ had been saying to the twelve-year-old girl who’d just quit the game in tears.
Afterwards, he messaged Crow to apologise for his assumptions, and got a snippy response back about minding his own business – and working on his combos – that pretty much demanded Akira keep the conversation going with a snarky retort. For a long time – months – that was mostly what their correspondence looked like, sniping and prodding and taunting each other across various games.
Until Crow had a very, very bad day. The kind of bad day that drives people to violence, whether against others or against themselves. Fortunately, his first choice of outlet was virtual. Fortunately, Akira was online.
Fortunately, something Akira said or did broke through his walls, and Akira doesn’t think he’ll ever forget that six-hour voice call, or the sound of Crow’s desperately stifled sobs, like he was expecting to be punished for every tear that fell.
Since then, they’ve only grown closer. Crow was there for him when Akira had his own very bad day – that turned into a bad week, a bad month, a bad year – a nightmare of a court case and eventually a move to a whole new city and school where everyone treated him like a criminal.
Crow was the only person there for him.
Akira’s made friends at Shujin since. He’s doing okay now. But another thing he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget is Crow trying so hard when things were at their worst, pushing past his own biting, defensive nature to give Akira whatever comfort he could.
He’s almost surprised it’s taken so long to realise how he feels. To realise that Crow’s the only person he’s ever been completely honest with, the only person he’s ever trusted to see the ugliness and anger that he hides behind his well-behaved facade.
He thinks – he hopes – god he hopes – that Crow feels the same.
But he’s also horribly, miserably afraid that if Crow doesn’t, he’ll vanish from Akira’s life as swiftly as he entered it, and Akira will have no way to find him again.
“… I don’t know what I’d do without him,” Akira says, more to himself than to Akechi.
“That’s ridiculous,” Akechi retorts sharply, yanking Akira’s attention back to the present. “You can’t possibly be serious.”
Akira blinks, stunned by the change in demeanour. Akechi looks angry – no, Akechi looks appalled. Akira’s heart sinks. He really hoped they could stay friends even after this. He shouldn’t have said anything about–
“You haven’t even met him,” Akechi goes on, something brittle undermining the scorn in his voice. “You don’t know him – he could be anyone! He could be– some old man, or–”
“He’s about my age,” Akira retorts defensively. “And I do know him. I–”
“No, you don’t!” Akechi insists, voice rising loud enough that Akira’s mouth drops open in shock. “You don’t! You can’t possibly want– you can’t–”
His voice breaks. His breath hitches hard and he gulps it back like he can swallow his own misery before anyone else can see.
Akira knows that sound. He’s heard it before, through a crappy headset and a patchy connection that makes voices almost unrecognisable.
“You can’t possibly want to choose… that, over–”
Akechi chokes to a halt, and Akira just stares at him, dizzy with disbelief and realisation, barely able to process the epiphany he’s just had.
Akechi takes one look at his face and surges to his feet, fumbling for his briefcase with shaking fingers.
“I– I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have– I don’t– excuse me, please, I’ll just–”
Akira catches him halfway across the room, literally grabs a handful of his blazer and holds on, thinks about masks and what they hide. Thinks about the way Crow reacted when he started making friends at Shujin, the poorly-concealed jealousy and insecurity, and how it wasn’t long afterwards that Akira’s class went on that field trip to the TV station, where an attractive teen celebrity surprised Akira by starting up a conversation after filming was done…
“Wait,” Akira croaks, throat desert-dry even as a fierce, soaring joy fills his chest, as he finally begins to understand that he doesn’t have to choose. “Wait, Akechi–”
“Let me go, I–”
“Crow.”
Akechi stops dead, just short of the door. Akira tightens his hold, can feel him trembling under his touch.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Akira breathes. “It’s you.”
He tugs on his handful of cloth, coaxes Akechi into turning around. His eyes are tightly shut, Akira sees with a pang: his hands are gripping his briefcase so hard the knuckles must be chalk-white under his gloves.
Akechi startles when Akira’s fingertips brush his cheek, eyes flying wide open as Akira cups his face and steps closer. This time it’s Akira who leans in.
Akechi doesn’t push him away. His breath is fast and frantic against Akira’s lips, and at first he sways into the kiss without returning it, but then all at once there’s a thud as his briefcase hits the floor and he’s grabbing onto Akira’s shirt with a grip like desperation, and his mouth opens on a tiny, barely-audible sound of need, and, oh…
Akira isn’t sure how long they stand there kissing. His hands wind up in Akechi’s hair, part sensual, part soothing. Akechi clings to him like he’ll lose his balance without the support, but after a while, he eases into it, his arms settling around Akira, hands on his back warm and firm and possessive.
The only reason Akira stops kissing him is because he really, really needs to hold him as tightly as possible, and that’s easier if they rest their chins on each other’s shoulders. Akechi immediately hides his face in the crook of Akira’s neck. Akira can feel the heat of his blush.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Akira asks, even though he’s pretty sure he knows the answer.
“I…” Strangely enough, it’s now that Akechi’s voice is hoarse and muffled in his shoulder that Akira can really hear that it’s the same as Crow’s. “I thought… you’d like me better this way. Without all the… the messed up stuff and the baggage–”
“You’re an idiot,” Akira tells him softly, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. “Smartest person I know and still dumber than a box of rocks.”
Akechi snorts inelegantly into his shirt.
“At least I recognised you, Joker.”
There’s a little bit of hurt under there, and Akira kind of wishes he could go back ito the TV station and listen a bit harder, look a bit closer, make the connection that has eluded him all this time.
“You talk differently online, and my headphones suck,” he replies: not quite an excuse, not quite an apology. “How did you know it was me?”
“Apart from the fact that you told me you were going on that trip, so I was looking out for you?”
Akechi doesn’t seem in any hurry to remove himself from his hiding place, even as his voice is levelling out into a fascinating mixture of the playful, sweet tone Akira has come to know in real life, and the scathing notes he’s heard so often over a headset.
Akira grins into Akechi’s hair.
“There were at least fifty of us there that day, so yeah, apart from that.”
“You, ah–” Akechi laughs, shakes his head without lifting it. “When the host shoved that microphone in your face, you said, Who, me? - the exact same way you do when I call you out for messing up a kill streak.”
Akira grins even harder, squeezes Akechi until he wriggles for space, swatting lightly at Akira’s chest.
“I take back what I said before,” Akira says. Akechi stills, looking at him uncertainly. They’re still very close, almost nose to nose. “There’s no-one else. Only you. It’s always been you.”
Akechi blinks rapidly, then closes his eyes and sucks in a shaky breath. Akira can’t not kiss him again, soft and slow and almost painfully sweet.
When they part, he smiles at Akechi’s dazed expression, and goes in for the kill.
“And I can’t believe you’ve been bullshitting me for four months about your deep belief in our country’s justice system–”
Akechi smirks, eyes sharpening into fierce alertness, a mocking tilt to his chin.
“I was honestly wondering what it would take to make you snap. You’re surprisingly kiss-ass in person.”
“I’m not– I was being polite!” Akira butts his head lightly against Akechi’s, revels in the puff of laughter that warms his lips. “And the whole time you were blowing up my phone at midnight with your newfound ambition to become a deep-web hitman–”
“It’s the perfect cover, don’t you think? They’ll never suspect I’m solving my own crimes, and once I have their respect, I can tear the whole rotten institution apart brick by fucking brick.”
Akira doesn’t know how he missed it, now. He can hear Crow’s sharpness under every soft syllable of Akechi’s lilting formality, and when he drops the pretence entirely and lets his seething anger bubble out, it feels like a two-dimensional image leaping into vivid reality.
This is Akechi, Akira thinks. The real thing, not the idea of him. This is someone he could fall in love with.
If he hadn’t already.
He steps back, drawing Akechi with him, back to the booth where their half-drunk coffee is still sitting. Akira will make them more, in a while. Right now he just wants to sit like this, just like they were before, only now he can hold Akechi’s hand in his – he takes a moment to peel the gloves off first, ignoring Akechi’s muttering about stretching the leather – now he can lean their shoulders together the way he’s wanted so many times when they shared confessions in the hours after midnight.
“What was your plan, exactly?” Akira asks once they’re settled. “If I’d… let you kiss me. If I’d said yes. Were you ever going to tell me?”
He feels Akechi tense, counters it with a gentle swipe of his fingers over the back of Akechi’s hand. His skin is so soft: maybe because of wearing those gloves all the time.
“I…” Akechi swallows. “I honestly didn’t think… it would last long enough to matter. I just… wanted a little of you. For a little while.”
Akira kind of wants to call him stupid again, but he doesn’t. He gets it. Everyone Akechi has ever cared about – ever trusted – has abandoned him, one way or another.
They have that in common, too.
“I still can’t believe…” Akechi shakes his head, leaning in a bit further so it rests against Akira’s. “You really would have chosen… me?”
It’s a ridiculous question, on the surface, since there was never anyone else involved, but – again – Akira gets it. Remembers nights when Crow whispered about how tired he was of being broken in ways that no-one could see, of how sure he was that his loneliness was his own fault.
“I am choosing you,” Akira murmurs, twining their fingers together. “All of you. Everything. And… I’m not going anywhere.”
Akechi half-laughs, turns to burrow back into Akira’s shoulder. Akira had no idea he would be so clingy. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t love it.
“When you say it like that,” Akechi whispers wonderingly, “I think I actually believe you.”