Work Text:
They meet up at Leblanc. They go through everything for Sae and Sojiro, who keep exchanging looks over all their heads. Then Sae’s gone, and Sojiro tells them not to take too long because sleep is important even when you’re dead, and the Phantom Thieves have the cafe to themselves. It’s quieter than Ren expects. He slowly realises that everyone is trying not to meet his eyes.
Makoto visibly steels herself. “We didn’t want to discuss it in front of Sis and Sakura-san,” she says, “but there’s one more thing you should know.”
“Aw man, do we have to tell him?” mutters Ryuji. “This is so gross.”
“Ryuji!” says Ann.
“I don’t mean gross like that, I mean gross because it’s Akechi and it’s freaky!” Ryuji protests.
Ren gets a sinking feeling. “What happened?”
Makoto looks around for support but no one volunteers to take over telling him whatever this is. She looks resigned. “Well, as you know,” she says, “we were all present and on standby in the Metaverse. After we captured and tied up Sae’s cognitive Akechi to prevent any interference—"
Ren is still sorry he had to miss that.
“—we identified a suitable safe room to act as our base of operations and remained there while Futaba monitored key areas of interest within the Metaverse version of the police station—including, of course, the interrogation room with your cognitive double. We, uh, had a kind of…” she waves her hands around a bit, “security station. A bank of screens.”
She pauses. Ren looks at her. After a moment, Makoto clears her throat and says, “Well…”
Oh.
“You saw him kill me,” Ren says. He can see how that would be… yeah. “Sorry.”
“It’s not that!” says Haru. “I mean—that was horrible, but we knew he would!”
“It was horrible to behold,” says Yusuke. “He truly does have another self.”
“The thing is—" says Makoto, and then grimaces. “Well, he…”
“Akechi kissed you!” blurts Ann. “The cognitive you!”
“Urgh,” says Futaba.
Ren says nothing.
“We’re sorry, Ren,” says Makoto. “We discussed it and we thought you should probably know, in case it had any bearing on… everything.”
Ren says nothing.
“And we can’t keep secrets from you! You’re our leader!” says Morgana.
Ren keeps saying nothing.
“It’s not that bad,” says Ryuji. “Don’t look like that, man, it’s okay—I mean it’s gross because it’s Akechi, but at least it was only the cognitive you, right?”
Ren doesn’t know what he looks like. He licks his dry lips. “Before or after,” he manages at last, which seems to confuse everyone. It’s the most important question imaginable. His chest feels tight.
“You mean, um,” Makoto says. “Well. It was… after. After he killed you.”
“He just kind of planted one on your corpse,” say Ryuji.
“It was so weird,” says Ann.
“There was a perverse tenderness to the gesture,” remarks Yusuke. “Seen in a certain light, it was almost beautiful.”
“I think Akechi-kun is really quite a strange person,” says Haru, which from Haru is more or less the same as saying that guy is a horrible disgusting freak.
“That guy,” says Futaba, “is a horrible disgusting freak.” And when everyone looks at her, “What! He is! He had a special blood-dabbing handkerchief in his pocket for getting the splatter off his face after he made out with his murder victim! That’s definitely freak behavior, guys!”
“We said we weren’t going to tell him that part,” hisses Ann.
“Ren, are you okay?” says Morgana.
Ren is sagging back in the booth with relief. “After is fine,” he says.
Everyone looks sort of blank.
“Oh, I get it!” says Morgana. He leaps proudly up onto the table and goes into lecturing mode. An outsider would see seven teenagers being meowed at by a very chatty cat. “Remember, guys, Ren and I knew there was something off about Akechi from the very beginning. Ren cunningly struck a deal with him early on and he’s been keeping tabs on him ever since. But that necessarily meant letting Akechi think that he was the one keeping tabs on Ren. That’s how a Phantom Thief does it! Use their own expectations against them, haha!”
“Oh yeah,” says Ann, “actually, you did have his number. So you were spying on him?”
Ren shrugs. He feels like he’s really said too much now. “Just hanging out.”
“I see,” says Makoto. “Which means that Akechi probably knows you much better than Sis does. I wish you’d made that clear sooner.” Her eyes narrow. “We got lucky. We were counting on him walking in, killing you, and walking out again, but if he had spent any amount of time really interacting with your cognitive double, he might have noticed the discrepancies between that version of you and the person he knew for months beforehand. Some of it could be explained away with the effect of the drugs, but if he did something that Sis would consider unexpected—like kissing you—and your double didn’t react the way you would, he could easily have grown suspicious. We got very lucky.”
“But there was no way to guess that Akechi-kun was going to kiss him,” says Haru. “Was there?”
The pause that follows is obviously meant for Ren to fill with haha no way and the fact that he doesn’t is. Well.
It is what it is.
He doesn’t want to lie to his friends. He’s already feeling bruised—literally, from what happened down in that dim and terrible room, but also inside, heart-bruised or something like that. Everything’s pretty bad. It’s been a long couple of days. Last time he actually saw Akechi, he was still Crow, fighting at Ren’s side against Sae’s Shadow. Last time he heard Akechi’s voice it was speaking words of confident encouragement through Ren’s earpiece as he hurtled through Sae’s Palace one step ahead of the enemy. He knew the truth the whole time, but there’s knowing and knowing. He puts his hands together so he can hide most of his face behind them.
“Dude,” says Ryuji. “Um…”
“It’s not like he’s done it before,” says Ren to the protective screen of his fingers.
There were a couple of times when he thought—maybe. Nearly. Times when he almost did it himself, because the space between them seemed to be getting smaller on its own, like the gravity of the world was pushing them together, and he was sure Akechi felt it too. But no, Akechi hasn’t done that before. Apparently he was saving their first kiss for after Ren was dead. Weirdly, it’s the first time since everything that Ren has felt truly angry with him.
It’s not fair.
But he huddles up in the booth and thinks about his friends, who love him, and he finds a piece of himself that can smile. “Sae’s me wouldn’t have known,” he says. “So it’s good he waited till after.”
“Ah,” says Yusuke, enlightened. “The two of you were romantically involved.”
“Shut up, Inari, that’s not it!” Futaba snaps.
“More or less,” says Ren. And then, because he kind of owes it to all of them, “Sorry.”
Makoto looks very, very strained. “Ren,” she says, “I’m sorry, but… we all needed that information much sooner. That potential cognitive discrepancy could have gotten you killed.”
Ren tries his best charming look. “I won’t do it again?”
“Um, no, you won’t!” says Ann. “Because I think him murdering you counts as the two of you breaking up!” She starts out sounding appalled but the absurdity hits her in the middle. Ren can see she’s trying not to laugh.
“Yeah,” he says, playing it up for her, “It’s super sad, but I think my secret celebrity boyfriend dumped me.”
Everyone starts to giggle. The tension in the room breaks. Futaba says, “Based on the freaky corpse smooching I don’t know if Akechi thinks he dumped you.”
“No, he definitely does,” says Ren, and this is actually funny now he’s thinking about it. “He thinks I lost our game. That’s a breaking up offence to him.”
“You didn’t actually lose, though,” says Ann thoughtfully. “In fact, you kind of won. Didn’t you?”
“Ren definitely won!” says Morgana. “The Phantom Thieves beat Akechi fair and square this time! That means Ren also wins the whole relationship, right?”
Makoto pinches the top of her nose. She looks like she’s getting a headache. “I believe romantic relationships are not typically meant to be approached as something to win or lose. Not that I’m, well...” She trails off, embarrassed. “But we don’t actually need to discuss this any further, everyone, and I’m not sure Ren wants to.”
“Well, I think you can do better!” says Haru, little bit squeaky, pink-cheeked. “Um, I mean, even if that’s the sort of person you like… there are probably lots of two-faced mean boys in the world who aren’t evil killers!”
This is obviously meant as comfort and from Haru it’s enormously kind. “Thanks,” says Ren.
“Yeah, there’s… someone for everyone out there?” says Ryuji, scratching his head. “Shit, I don’t know. You and Akechi? Really?”
“The human heart is even more complicated than I imagined,” remarks Yusuke. Thanks, Yusuke.
“It was fun,” says Ren, trying to be honest. He finds it harder to talk when it's everyone together; he finds it hard to put himself together into one person who makes sense for all of them. But he tries. “I had fun," he tells his friends. "We both had fun, I think.”
And there's nothing else to say, is there?
The others peel off for home one by one. The plan is to limit meet-ups, to make it look like the Phantom Thieves are scared and beaten and doing as Akechi told them, disbanded. Morgana and Futaba both linger. “If there’s anything else you want to know,” Futaba says, “you can ask me. Unless it’s about your ex-boyfriend’s corpse smooching episode because I’m deleting that from my memory as soon as possible.”
“I’m good,” says Ren.
“He really liked you, huh,” says Futaba. Someone else might say you really liked him but Futaba has the power of seeing clearly, seeing what matters, even if in the real world it comes out in odd ways. “I think if it was me and I really liked someone I wouldn’t murder them!” She thinks about it. “I might do cybercrimes to them. Infiltrate their systems. Bug their house. You know. Hacking is my love language! Do you think maybe murder is Akechi’s love language?”
“Maybe.”
“That would mean he loves this Shido guy, the one he’s doing all the mental shutdowns for,” Futaba says. “Funny. When Haru and I poked him in the group chat about whoever was controlling the true culprit, it sounded more like he hated him.”
“He said he hated me,” says Ren. “Last time we hung out. He got kind of intense about it.”
“Maybe hating people is also his love language?” says Futaba doubtfully. “I don’t think I get this stuff! Your social stats must be really high level to handle it.”
Morgana spares him any more conversation after Futaba goes home. He’s always been able to tell when Ren just needs sleep. He chivvies him into lying down and jumps up on the lumpy mattress next to him. Ren turns over so the warmth of Morgana’s body is pressed against his chest. For someone who’s not a cat, Morgana does a pretty good comforting purr.
He tries to sleep.
After, he thinks. After. Akechi killed Ren—the cognitive Ren—and kissed him after. And now Ren isn’t dead, but Akechi won’t kiss him again. Ren isn’t dead, but Akechi has killed him.
So there’s a Ren who is dead. The Ren in Sae’s head, sure, but also the Ren in Akechi’s own mind. The person who’s been hanging out with Akechi for months is gone and never coming back. Isn’t Ren allowed to be sad about it? That person was quick and cunning and mercilessly competitive and ready for any challenge. That person was having fun. I liked him, Ren imagines saying. I liked the person I was when I was with you.
And maybe part of it is knowing that Akechi would understand. He’s almost sure. Akechi’s two-faced; Ren has a hundred faces. Akechi knows what it’s like to have a heart like a hall of mirrors. And Akechi liked the self he was for Ren too. Ren knows it; Ren is sure. The others clearly thought the kiss for dead cognitive Ren was a weird sex thing or a victory lap or maybe just goodbye—and it was probably all of those, actually. But Ren remembers the ending of a dozen games of billiards. Akechi always said, very politely, thank you for the game!
That’s because he was lying, someone might say. Akechi would say, smiling and condescending.
It’s not lying. Ren is now having an argument with the Akechi in his head instead of sleeping. It’s not lying to be a different person when you need to be. It’s not like that wasn’t you. You were having fun. You had fun too.
I think you really liked me.
Asshole.
The part of Ren that’s always standing back and watching observes: hey, that’s a pretty good guy-who-just-got-dumped performance. Really inhabiting the mask there! Now jerk off bitterly about it!
Morgana stirs at his chuckle and whispers, “Hey, you’re still awake? What’s so funny?”
“Just thinking,” says Ren.
“About that, huh,” Morgana says. “Well, I’m here for you! And you know, I am sorry about that guy. Even if he’s the worst. What do you think he’s doing right now? More murders before the election?”
“Nope,” says Ren with perfect confidence. “He’s jerking off bitterly about me.”
Morgana makes a strangled noise. “That’s why you were laughing?”
“Yeah. Kind of.”
“I definitely do want to be human,” Morgana says, “but sometimes… okay! Go to sleep now, all right? You need it.”
This time Ren obeys, more or less. And he finds he's smiling as he drifts off, and he’s picturing with the near-certainty of his mirror heart that somewhere in the city Akechi is trying to sleep and failing, because he’s thinking about Ren no matter how hard he tries not to. He’s playing over that got you fuck you goodbye thank you kiss and finding it somehow not quite satisfying. He’s missing their game and the person he was to play it. And he doesn’t know yet that it’s not over.