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Akira learns quickly. That’s always been one of his best qualities: like a fish into water, he blends into new surroundings mere moments after arriving – or, if nothing else, he puts on a convincing facsimile of blending in. Being a Phantom Thief is no different, and tonight, he’s putting that talent to good use, shaping a few pieces of scrap metal into serviceable lockpicks for the team, while Morgana – who once prided himself on giving Akira his expert tutelage – paces beside him, his tail flipping aggressively.
“Akira? Something’s bothering me…”
He’s been agitated all afternoon, so this isn’t a surprise. Without looking up from his lockpick, Akira humors Morgana and asks, “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. That guy we met today, at the TV station… did you notice anything funny about him?”
“Like that he heard you talk?”
Morgana stops in his tracks. “You noticed too?” he exclaims, leaping up onto the desk and scattering some scrap metal to the floor.
“Sure,” Akira says. It would have been difficult for Akira not to have noticed, not with how deliberately the guy inserted himself into their conversation. Just as quickly as he had approached, however, he had vanished, and Akira hadn’t given the encounter much thought since then. Clearly Morgana couldn’t say the same. “Are you worried?” he asks.
Morgana growls and traps an unfinished lockpick between two claws. “Yeah. For him to have heard me, he must have seen me talking in the Metaverse… and if he’s seen me, that means he’s definitely seen you, too.”
“So he’s got a Persona, you think.”
“I do, but I don’t know what to make of it. It might be bad to have another Persona-user running around the Metaverse unaccounted for… and I keep wondering about that thing Madarame mentioned. That other person in the Palaces…”
“I can try to find him again,” Akira suggests, because it seems like Morgana isn’t going to let this go. “Keep an eye on him.”
What that would accomplish, Akira isn’t quite sure. Privately, he decides he’s not going to go out of his way to find the detective again, but in the end, he doesn’t even have to try : Akechi comes to him. That he is investigating the Phantom Thieves comes as less of a shock to Akira than it does to Ryuji and Ann, but the way he brazenly approaches Akira after the show and declares him “intriguing” has alarm bells ringing as loud as sirens in his mind. There no way this guy doesn’t know who Akira is, and his offer to meet up again all but screams I’m suspicious of you and want to catch you slipping up.
So Akira accepts his offer. Correspondence is a two-way street, and if they’re together, Akira can keep an eye on Akechi, too. It’s simple logic.
Akechi comes to Leblanc one day. Akira doesn’t know how he found out that Akira worked at the café – he claims it’s mere coincidence, that his co-worker had recommended Leblanc to him and he just so happened to be craving caffeine today, but Akira doesn’t believe him for a second. It’s too deliberate, the way he sits down at the bar right across from Akira, the way he tracks Akira’s movements around the kitchen while he works – Akira can feel eyes on his back every time he turns around, even though Akechi pointedly looks away when Akira tries to catch him in the act.
“So,” Akechi says to him, his voice light and airy and utterly plastic, “this is where you work?”
Akira looks around. There are no other customers, the sun is well on its way to setting, and Sojiro has retreated into the kitchen to study his crossword, leaving Akira and Akechi largely alone.
“Sometimes,” Akira says. “I have other jobs.”
This makes Akechi laugh a little. It sounds just as forced as it did the day they first met, when Akechi was being interviewed. “Is that so? For a delinquent, you have quite the work ethic.”
That, too, feels deliberate. Yes, I know who you are, Akechi says, his real meaning hidden beneath a layer of pleasantries. What are you going to do about it?
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” Akira says.
Akechi laughs again, a polite little chuckle that Akira imagines him practicing in the mirror each night. “That’s very true. It’s why I’m glad I found this place; I’d much rather confirm such things with my own eyes. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“If that’s how you feel,” Akira says, careful to keep the smile on his face from growing too smug, “you should come visit me when I’m working at the drag bar out in Shinjuku. I bet you could learn all kinds of things.”
This, at last, catches Akechi off-guard; he nearly chokes on his coffee, coughing and spluttering as he struggles to regain his composure. Ultimately, he laughs it off (”Ah, you always say the most unexpected things, Kurusu-kun”), but his cheeks are stained deep pink, and for just a moment, he looks a little less intimidating – looks like the human he is, and not the doll he pretends to be.
The satisfaction it brings Akira is fleeting, but it feels good all the same.
Maintaining a grudge, it turns out, is harder than Akira thought. Oh, he certainly tried; the first dozen times he arrived home to find Akechi sitting at Leblanc’s bar, Akira dropped all his plans for the evening and resigned himself to a night of information-gathering, instead. He kept his guard up, navigating their conversations as if walking over a tightrope, careful to reveal only enough about himself to keep Akechi interested and nothing more.
It’s tiring, though, to expend so much energy acting suspicious towards someone for so many weeks, and it doesn’t help that Akira’s sort of starting to enjoy Akechi’s company, too. In the rare moments that he drops his public façade – moments which seem to happen more and more frequently as the summer goes on – Akechi proves himself to be a fine conversationalist, thoughtful, engaging, and surprisingly sarcastic at times. He has a number of little quirks about him, too, like the way he always orders the same thing, a medium house blend taken black, but then, when he thinks no one is looking, he sneaks a little cream and sugar into the cup.
But Akira notices. Just because he enjoys Akechi’s company doesn’t mean the detective can escape his watchful eye – and he knows Akechi is still watching him, too. He’s less subtle about it now than when he first visited Leblanc, and when Akira turns around to bring him his coffee, Akechi doesn’t even pretend he wasn’t staring. It feels like a taunt – a dare – but to what end, Akira can’t tell.
“See something you like?” Akira asks.
“Perhaps,” Akechi says. “I’m just observing. You can learn a lot about a person by studying their mannerisms, you know.”
“Is that so?”
“Indeed.” Akechi’s mug clacks against its saucer and draws Akira’s attention. Immediately, he wishes he hadn’t looked: Akechi is smiling, his hands laced beneath his chin and his eyes narrowed in half-lidded amusement. “What do you think, Kurusu-kun? Would you like to hear my deductions about you?”
Akira sees a minefield stretching out before him. If he says no, he’ll come off as defensive, as if he’s got something to hide, but if he says yes, he’ll open himself up to another barrage of accusations from the detective, and right now, with Akechi looking at him like that, Akira’s not sure he can handle it.
“Sure,” is what he says, though. “Do your worst.”
Akechi laughs like he’s just roped Akira into a game of his own making. “Well,” he begins, leaning back in his seat, “you wear glasses, but you don’t need them. I’ve seen you take them off before, and even when you do, you don’t seem to have any trouble reading the menu board from across the room. If you don’t need glasses, but choose to wear them anyway, there must be a reason – likely to make yourself seem less intimidating, given your criminal record.
“Speaking of which… you were charged for assault, but I wonder about that.” Akechi pauses and brings a hand to his chin, but his thoughtful pose is blemished by the increasingly smug smirk playing at his lips. “You have a delicate touch, always careful with that coffee pot, and I’ve never once seen you lose your temper with a customer. Now, perhaps that’s a reaction to your probation, but it’s hard for a leopard to change its spots so quickly, don’t you think? If you were the type of person to assault someone unprovoked, it would still show, even if you were trying to hide it.”
He pauses to take a long sip of his coffee, and when he’s done, he peers at Akira from over the rim.
“A false accusation and false glasses to go along with it… it makes me wonder what you’re hiding behind all these false Personas, Kurusu-kun.”
A heavy silence settles over the café, and all Akira can hear is the sound of his own heartbeat in his ear. He feels like he’s been stripped naked – stripped to the bone – and then all at once, the dark look in Akechi’s eyes vanishes. He smiles, looking like a pleased puppy.
“Oh? That’s an interesting face you’re making. Was I that accurate?” he asks.
“…you’re making a lot of assumptions,” Akira says, slow and measured. “I thought deductions were supposed to be based in reason and fact?”
Akechi doesn’t seem even remotely unhappy; if anything, he’s growing more delighted by the second. “Well, I am still an amateur, after all,” he says. “I’ll just have to keep watching you and see if I can’t improve my accuracy.”
He leans forward across the counter.
“You don’t mind… do you?”
Akira swallows, forcing himself to keep eye contact.
“No. Not at all.”
Akechi stays past closing one night, and for once, Akira doesn’t think it’s on purpose. The guy looked dead on his feet when he came in that afternoon, and he spends the whole evening looking over a stack of papers with the same enthusiasm a sloth would use while moving from one branch to another. He doesn’t even engage Akira in any kind of conversation, not beyond the ordinary pleasantries involved with ordering a cup of coffee – a notable departure from his usual behavior. Akira knows he should have kicked him out when Boss left, but he didn’t have the heart, and now he’s stuck here with the detective prince half-asleep at the bar.
He looks more vulnerable than he usually does, and it’s such a rare sight that Akira just has to get up close and take a long look at him, so he loops around to the customer side of the counter and stands beside him. Akechi’s eyes aren’t closed, exactly, but they’re unfocused, the eyes of someone whose mind is far away from the present, and even in profile, Akira can see haggard look to his features, the subtle crease on his brow – he’s completely worn out.
When he finally notices Akira standing beside him, he lets out a startled yelp.
“O-oh, Kurusu-kun… you surprised me. Um…” He pauses and glances behind Akira’s shoulder, noting how dark the café has become. “It’s past closing time, isn’t it? I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
They’re very close. Akira’s not sure they’ve ever been in quite such close proximity before. The atmosphere is charged, and if there used to be tension between them, it’s tripled now.
Catch him off-guard, Akira thinks.
He’s not sure if he’s consciously gravitating towards Akechi, or if Akechi is leaning in close to him, or if it’s a force beyond their control that draws them together. He hopes it’s the latter; it would be easier to explain that way, easier to tell his teammates that no, it wasn’t that he wanted to kiss Akechi – he had to. For the ruse.
Their lips meet, and Akechi arches up into the kiss after only a second's hesitation, a quiet keening noise bubbling up from his throat. Akira’s chest seizes up; he feels as though something inside him has burst, some little bundle of heat and nerves that sends molten lava rushing through his veins as he curls his hand around the nape of Akechi’s neck and threads his fingers through Akechi’s hair. He drinks in Akechi’s presence, his mind going dizzy and his limbs losing feeling – he’s drunk on the sensations and all he can think about is getting closer, feeling more…
It’s his first kiss. Distantly, he wonders if it’s the same for Akechi, if this is a first they can share.
He wonders what other firsts they might be able to share.
How much time passes? Akira has no idea; the next conscious thoughts he recognizes are that his heart has started to beat too quickly, that his skin is burning warm, that he can’t get air into his lungs, and finally, finally he breaks away, gasping when he does.
“Um–”
“I–”
Akira backs away in the same moment Akechi gets to his feet. Akechi’s cheeks look pink in the dim café light, and there’s a split second where they lock eyes, allowing Akira to see just how wide Akechi’s pupils have become.
“I… I need to go,” Akechi says. He turns away to gather a few stray papers, hastily storing them in his attaché case. “To – to think.”
“Right.” Akira takes another step back. He can still feel the phantom pressure of Akechi’s mouth on his lips. “Sorry.”
Akechi stops. “Are you?”
It takes Akira’s thoroughly preoccupied brain far too long to grasp Akechi’s meaning. “Am I what?”
“Are you sorry?”
Do you regret it?
Akira doesn’t, and that scares him, just a little. He can’t answer, just stands there mutely while Akechi walks to the front door.
“…you shouldn’t say things you don’t mean,” Akechi says, just before he leaves. “You may give someone the wrong impression.”
And Akira can’t help but find that ironic, coming from him.