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They insisted he come along. Not just Akira, but all of them. Nothing like an outing to the beach, they said.
Akechi suspected that Ryuji didn't really want him there, what with the way Ryuji avoided talking directly to him as much as possible, the way his eyes passed over and over and over Akechi as if he wasn't there at all. He suspected Ann was just being kind, in her way—like Ryuji, she knew what it was like to feel left out, but unlike Ryuji, she nursed that hurt inside of her in a way she didn't want it to be inflicted upon anyone else. Makoto was civil, as always, and Futaba elusive, as always. Yusuke...Akechi had no idea what to make of Yusuke, even on the best of days.
And the best of days were getting harder and harder to come by.
There were moments he could lose himself in their laughter, forget, for the span of a breath or two, that his entire goal in being with them was to ultimately destroy them, pluck the heart right out of them with cruel, precise claws. In those moments of forgetting, he felt almost like the kid he was, until reality slammed coldly into him in the form of Akira's steady gaze. It was Akira precisely who was the heart needing to be plucked out.
He did not bring a swimsuit. He couldn't, not without coming up with an explanation as to why he wouldn't remove his gloves. Akira knew, of course, but there was little even he would be able to do to stave off fairly reasonable questions.
And so Akechi waved his hand, claimed sensitivity to the sun, and sat on the towel under the umbrella, watching while the others played in the water. They looked so ridiculous, frolicking to and fro, Ryuji lifting Futaba over his shoulders and hefting her into the waves while she screamed. Ann and Makoto were engaged in some kind of tickle fight, while Yusuke and Morgana shot water pistols at each other, dodging and rolling as if they were in the Metaverse. If some small part of him longed to join them, he snuffed it out.
A deeper shadow fell over him, and he already knew before he looked up that it belonged to Akira Kurusu.
Akira sat beside him, dripping water onto the towel, hair clinging in ringlets to his damp face. His pale skin had taken on a faint tint of bronze. Akechi found himself staring at the water droplets rolling down his shoulders, across his wide chest. Before long, he caught Akira grinning.
“Like what you see?” Akira teased.
Akechi hated the warmth that flushed his cheeks. Blamed it on the hot weather.
“I was just wondering,” Akechi said, “how someone like you doesn't turn red in all this sunlight.”
“Is that what happens to you?”
Well, not really. Akechi could bronze pretty well if he wanted to. Not that he ever did want to. It happened sometimes, when he spent long hours on a scene investigating. His face would turn a shade darker than the rest of him. It looked absurd, so he avoided it as much as possible, clung to the shadows like some lurking beast.
Instead of answering, Akechi laughed, a light, wispy fluttering of air. He ran his gloved hand through his hair, hating the beads of sweat sticking to his scalp. He frowned at his sweat-spotted glove and wiped it off on the towel.
“It's a hot day,” Akira observed, obviously, stupidly.
Akechi wanted nothing more than to grind his face into the sand.
“Yes,” Akechi conceded. “It is. I hope you all put on your sunscreen.”
“Forgot,” said Akira. He pulled out a bottle of the stuff from one of the large bags they'd brought along, and held it out. “Help me?”
Oh, that was cruel. Akira knew, and Akechi knew he knew, that in order to do that, Akechi would have to remove his gloves. He stared at Akira aghast, but Akira only smirked.
Bastard.
No matter what, he wouldn't be defeated. Smiling tightly, viciously, he removed his gloves, tugging at them finger-by-finger. When his hands were exposed, crisscrossed all over with pale scars, he didn't feel warm anymore. If anything, he felt cold from the inside out. He wrapped his left hand around the bottle of sunscreen, fingers brushing Akira's, and tried not to shiver. Shifting into autopilot, he slathered sunscreen on both of his hands and waited for Akira to turn his back to him.
Such a trusting gesture, showing his back to the enemy. It was foolish. It was disgusting.
He ran his hands all across Akira's back, recoiling at the feel of warm skin beneath his palms. Shoulders. Spine. Waist. Akira turned around, and waited, expectant, while Akechi stared at his chest. A knot formed in his throat.
“You...you can do that yourself, can't you?”
“I could,” said Akira. His lip curled higher. “I don't want to.”
If Akechi could slap the smirk off Akira's face right then and there, he would have. But he couldn't, not without drawing the others back up from the water, not without them seeing the horror of his bare hands. Akira knew that, too.
So Akechi made sure Akira saw him pout, made sure to run his hands as slowly and sensuously up and down Akira's chest and stomach as possible. Akira shuddered, gripped Akechi's wrist where his palm lay spread across his heart. He couldn't ignore how hard that heart was beating. Couldn't ignore the pool of heat blooming in his stomach at the feel of it.
Akira lifted Akechi's hand, held it to his face, turned his head and lightly kissed Akechi's palm.
Akechi whipped his hand back so quickly, Akira fell forward, just a little. He seemed stunned, but after a brief pause he chuckled.
“Do you ever relax?” Akira asked.
How dare he? Relax, when the world was ever at his back? Relax, when he had to fight himself and everyone else every single day just to keep his head above the hungry, dark water? How could he relax when the boy who could make or break his whole life sat so serenely in front of him, mocking him to his face?
I'm not like you, Akechi thought. I don't have it easy like you do. I don't have—
Friends, he was about to think, but that sounded too pathetic, even to him.
Flustered, angry, he drew himself up and furrowed his brow. This only made Akira chuckle harder.
“You're like a bird,” he said, reaching forward, twirling a strand of Akechi's hair between his fingers. “You ruffle up when you're upset.”
Akechi slapped his hand away. After casting a glance over to the water, presumably to make sure no one was looking, Akira leaned forward rapidly and cupped Akechi's face in his hand. Pressed their mouths together. Flicked his tongue over Akechi's bottom lip.
Akechi shoved Akira away so hard that he tumbled out from under the umbrella, laughing in the sunlight.
That drew some attention. Akechi hid his bright red face in his hands, couldn't stand to see the others looking from just down the beach. He knew they were looking. He could feel their questioning gazes all over him.
“Is...everything alright?”
That was Makoto. When had she shown up? She moved so lightly, so quietly up the sand, Akechi hadn't noticed her approach at all. Or maybe his thoughts were swirling too much, his heart beating too loudly in his own ears, that he couldn't focus on his surroundings as much as he usually did.
“Everything's fine,” Akira assured her.
Akechi peeked up from between his hands, hoping against hope that in the shadow of the umbrella, the scars wouldn't be visible to Makoto. She made no comment about them, didn't even seem, really, to be looking at him at all, as all of her focus was on Akira. As if she couldn't bring herself to look at Akechi, really, not up close like this. Something about that irked him, but he supposed it was better than her scrutiny.
Makoto nodded and headed back towards the others, who shrugged and went on playing after she apparently explained that nothing was wrong.
Akechi removed his hands from his face, sat on them so he wouldn't have to feel the weight of the air on their nakedness anymore. His head was in a million places at once, none of them good. His heart was still a jackhammer in his chest, so much so that he briefly wondered if he was dying. Perhaps Akira had poisoned him, somehow. No, illogical. Still, it hurt to feel so deeply.
“Goro,” said Akira, and Akechi cringed.
He forced himself to look into Akira's face, to meet the other's warm, desperately inviting eyes. It was getting hard to breathe.
“Goro,” Akira said again, “I meant what I said before, the other day. It wasn't a joke.”
And the sun glimmered off the water in his hair, making a milky way of it, and when he turned away Akechi almost ached to see him go.
Akira's words that night at Leblanc echoed in his ears, and Akechi brought his hands up to the sides of his head as if that would drown out the noise in his skull.
I love you, he'd said. I love you.
Akechi couldn't believe it. He wouldn't. Believing it would be dangerous, and too much, far, far too much, for him to take.
His breath left him in a rush, came back in in a rush, and before he knew it, a sob stuck itself in his throat. Standing, swaying, he made his way up to the road, called for a taxi, and headed home.