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Small-town charm was always a notion lost on Akechi. Of course, he’d fantasized about disappearing from the bustle of Tokyo and willfully falling out of the spotlight more times than he could count, but when it came time to actually live that experience, it felt more like settling than like a calculated victory. He traded busy streets that never slept for a town that seemed to doze off in the late evening like clockwork. There was no train system, and the few buses were dotted sporadically along sprawling routes, rather than the non-stop coming-and-going he was accustomed to. He’d been a city boy his whole life. This was something that would take more adjustment than he’d thought.
Waking up from Dr. Maruki’s fantastical daydream-turned-nightmare had only proven to him that this was his one and only chance to get out. Staying in the city hadn’t been an option. Sticking around meant having to live with the idea that at any moment, he’d have the former Phantom Thieves sniffing around, trying to forge a bond he wasn’t ready for. He’d rather be alone. Especially now.
He’d heard out Ren’s muted but desperate pleas: reconsider their shared intentions to defeat Maruki and end his reality-altering powers. And he’d clenched his fists and stayed adamant that sacrificing his own existence was worth righting everything else. He hadn’t fully expected to wake up the day after their heist. But he did, alone in his apartment, staring at the ceiling feeling hazy and disconnected. He’d gathered his few precious belongings up into a bag and hopped on a train that very same day, before Ren had a chance to figure anything out.
He let fate decide where he ended up, taking transfers when it felt right, until he reached a destination that seemed as good as any. And, despite its noted lack of charm, he’d made a space for himself. There was enough money in his account to comfortably secure a tiny apartment over a bar — the irony of living in a one-room dwelling over a business was not lost on him for a second — and, though the bar wouldn’t hire him, he was set up with the owner of a small coffee shop a few blocks down. That irony wasn’t lost either.
He chopped his hair off shorter than it had ever been and colored it in his cramped bathroom with cheap box dye that smelled so strongly that he nearly choked on the fumes. He’d trashed all of his makeup, worn for so many years out of a need for perfection, and the resulting shadows under his eyes and freckles splashed across his cheeks combined with dark, short hair and plastic glasses resulted in a reflection that belonged to a stranger. The feeling of freedom was almost instantaneously drowned out by the disconnect of throwing away the last dredges of his own identity.
The Detective Prince was dead, but so was Goro Akechi. He hadn’t been quite prepared for the second part, even with all of his planning. Now he was Taro Tanaka, an adolescent from Tokyo taking a gap year in the countryside for a change of pace. It was mostly true.
His days in the quiet bordering-on-rural town quickly fell into a rhythm: wake up, have breakfast, walk to work, curse the lack of public transportation, tend the bar at the coffee shop for hours, break for lunch where he mostly sat and stared into a coffee mug in silence, more hours at the coffee bar, walk home (cursing, again), have dinner, shower, read for a bit, go to bed. Repeat in the morning. It was undoubtedly boring, but he had no other choice.
More customers came into the coffee shop than he would’ve expected. Most of them seemed to be adults commuting into the nearby city for work, but most days there were also groups of students sitting around talking and laughing loudly amongst themselves. Then there were the quiet regulars who came in, sat at a table in the corner, and read their books or worked away on their laptops.
And then, on a Saturday afternoon, just after the rush had died down, there was someone else: black, frizzy hair and a bag over his shoulder with a hint of blue, feline eyes peering out. Akechi almost dropped the order he was making, but managed to only spill a few drops of it with a swear under his breath.
He was just becoming delusional, he told himself, there’s no way that Ren would be here of all places. This was the middle of nowhere, a random location he’d arrived at by complete chance. He’d once told Ren he believed in fate, but this was just ridiculous. He tried to blink the hallucination away, but the only outcome was not-Ren coming up to the counter and staring past his head at the menu on the wall. If it was Ren, maybe he’d made himself unrecognizable enough. Maybe he’d just order and leave. Akechi would make his order wrong so maybe he’d decide the coffee shop was shit and he’d never come back. How about that?
“Hi,” Not-Ren still wasn’t looking at him, eyes scanning the board. “Can I just get a triple Americano?” His eyes finally settled on Akechi’s face and something in his expression changed. There was a flash of what had to be recognition.
Akechi pretended he didn’t notice it. If he just acted as if he wasn’t himself, like he had been for months now, Ren would have no choice but to believe he was mistaken. It wasn’t as if Ren could prove anything. He avoided meeting his eyes and finished the transaction.
His hands shook as he handed the drink — made correctly — over the bar. Ren mumbled his thanks and made off with his drink to a quiet corner in the back by himself. There was no polite smile, no joy in what Akechi could make out of his eyes behind his glasses. He looked as dead as Akechi felt some days. What happened to the joy of friendship he’d been so adamant about back then? And why was he in this little town alone with his cat?
It got quiet after that. It would be until they closed for the night. There was only one other customer in the building, and if Akechi listened closely he could hear pieces of Morgana and Ren murmuring to each other, Ren achingly desperate and Morgana trying to let him down easily:
“... not him, Ren.”
“I know…”
“... Sorry…”
“... He could have…”
“Ren…”
He stopped listening.
Eventually, Ren finished his coffee and left. Akechi avoided looking at him as he passed, but he could feel eyes on him until the door shut behind him.
He thought about Ren while he walked home in the dark. It was something he’d initially done obsessively, until he felt suffocated by feelings he’d never wanted to acknowledge in the first place. As much as he wanted to feel like it had all been a front, a carefully concocted scheme to get close and then cut Ren off, there were things he’d said that hadn’t been quite so careful. Ren had that effect on him and it scared him. He hadn’t lied about feeling a connection, even if he had at first been insistent that it was nothing but rivalry. In the end, that wasn’t the entire truth. He just hadn’t been able to stomach the reality.
He hadn’t been able to stomach it when Ren had leaned in close and held his jaw and kissed him softly in an empty, late-night Leblanc. He’d shoved and instinctively smacked his palm across Ren’s cheek, sending his glasses flying. He’d snarled “What the hell is wrong with you?” breathlessly.
At first, Ren only stared at him in shock. Then he’d chuckled to himself and muttered “I dunno,” under his breath. Then, “Probably plenty.”
Akechi had stormed out, flustered and angry and feeling like his heart would burst in his chest. But he hadn’t shied away the next time Ren gently touched his cheek and smiled at him outside the jazz club. The kiss hadn’t stopped him from returning again and again to play pool or darts with the man he considered, above all else, his rival.
It hadn’t stopped Ren from clinging to him desperately inside Leblanc in early February and outright begging him to reconsider, voice broken and pathetic. Akechi had swatted his hands off and stood his ground. What was his life worth in the grand scheme of things, really? Not tears, not jeopardizing everyone else’s ability to live authentically. Definitely not witnessing this act of weakness from someone who was supposed to be his equal and opposite.
He’d decided then that he would never let Ren see him cry.
He hadn’t planned on Ren seeing him again at all.
In all of his admittedly haphazard planning, Ren Amamiya shows up in this little town out in the sticks hadn’t ever been a scenario he’d entertained. He lay awake at night and turned the situation over and over in his head, trying to come up with a satisfactory explanation. Perhaps his disguise wasn’t as fool-proof as he thought it was and gossip had traveled back to Ren in some form. There had to still be people out there looking for the vanished Detective Prince. Celebrities didn’t just up and disappear like that without someone asking questions. But then there was the question of the Metaverse and its effects on the public’s cognition. It was equally possible that very few people remembered him at all. Evidently, that didn’t include Ren.
The next few days went by in a blur of memories of shared drinks and stupid little competitions. Little details broke away from the depths of his mind where he’d repressed them and rose to the surface — the way Ren’s voice pitched up when he laughed, how he tapped his foot when he was nervous, how his usually serious expression gave way to gentle smiles when they were alone, how he’d seen Akechi at his lowest and still reached out a hand, how Akechi had rejected it.
They’d never really gotten to talk about that.
He’d accepted that they never would.
On day three of muted panic, having all but convinced himself it was all just some sort of glitch in the system — seeing what he wanted to see, maybe — he looked up at the jingle of the bell on the door and met eyes with him, and it all started over again.
Ren wandered over to the counter to stare at the menu board, hands casually shoved into his pockets, but then he lowered his gaze to staring at Akechi instead. Akechi had plenty of training with staying cool under pressure. He kept wiping down the bar, rearranging mugs, anything to keep from giving Ren the satisfaction of a look of acknowledgement. The worst case scenario was that Ren didn’t recognize him and he earned the coffee shop a negative review for ignoring a customer. But no, the real worst case scenario was —
“Excuse me,” Ren tilted his head in an effort to meet Akechi’s eyes. Akechi tilted his head the other way, but Ren persisted.
He could feel himself starting to sweat. He grit his teeth and took a deep breath, trying to keep himself from outright scowling down at the counter. From Ren’s bag, he heard a quiet “Ren, c’mon,” that must have sounded like a cat’s meow to the two other customers in the shop. If they noticed, they didn’t say anything about it. He thought if he just turned away, maybe Ren would back down. But being ignored by a barista was more abnormal than just continually insisting that no, I’m not the person you think I am and no, I don’t want to talk about it so stop looking at me and go away.
So he finally looked up. Ren immediately locked eyes with him so intensely that he worried his heart might have actually stopped. He pursed his lips and glared back down at the mug in front of him, only for Ren to lean over the bar closer to him.
He lost his cool and snarled “Can I help you?” in a low voice, while leaning an equal distance backwards. It took everything in him not to lash out and shove, but he valued keeping a roof over his head more than that.
Ren’s expression intensified, then softened into one of those gentle smiles Akechi had been awarded only in private so many months ago. He leaned back, tapping the toe of his shoe against the floor and averting his eyes downward. Akechi thought maybe he’d won, only for an instant, until—
“It is you.” Ren’s voice was soft, barely audible, full of an emotion Akechi couldn’t place.
He sighed hard through his nose. Of all the things to blow his cover, it just had to be his temper. Maybe he hadn’t lost yet. Just because Ren thought he was right didn’t mean he had to give in.
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Save it.”
“You must have me mistaken f—”
Ren cut him off with a quiet laugh. “I don’t. I’d know that sneer anywhere.”
Akechi kept silent. So did Ren. Surprisingly, so did Morgana.
“If you make me a triple Americano, I’ll leave.” There was an uptick at the end that told Akechi there was a catch. There was always a catch.
He took Ren’s payment, made the drink, and handed it over, feeling his hands shake the entire time. He noted Ren’s were shaking too when their hands brushed. He swallowed his heart back down into his chest and forced in a breath, then another, willing himself to just calm down and think rationally. But the only thoughts in his head revolved around Ren and how exactly to get far away from him or, in smaller numbers, how to keep him close.
Ren just stood at the bar holding his to-go cup for a moment, not looking at Akechi anymore, but at a spot on the counter, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite figure it out.
Akechi broke the silence with “Will that be all?”
Ren started to reply several times but kept pursing his lips and re-thinking his words. Akechi kept praying another customer would walk in the door and that he’d be forced to direct his attention to them instead. He had no such luck. Instead, he just turned his back and pretended to wash a mug he’d already washed twice.
“Hey,” Ren barely spoke loud enough to be heard over the water. Akechi didn’t shut it off. “Can we talk?”
“I’m working.” Akechi kept his back turned, but stopped washing clean dishes.
“When you’re not working.”
“I’m always working.”
Ren laughed. “Right. Even now?”
Akechi didn’t think that was funny. “You have your coffee. Leave.”
“I’m a paying customer.”
“You’re harassing an employee.”
“I’m not harassing you, Ak—”
Akechi turned to face him all at once and set a mug down too hard to cut Ren off before the discarded name could be heard by customers, glaring. “Stop,” he hissed.
Ren’s expression hardened as well. “Why are you acting like this?”
“Because you’ve come into my place of employment and are causing a scene.” He lowered his voice. “Leave. Now.”
Ren glanced around the shop at the two patrons arguably not paying them any attention and gestured vaguely with his free hand. Akechi crossed his arms. Ren almost spoke again, but was interrupted with a “Let’s just go, Ren,” from his bag. He sighed through his nose, but finally turned and left the shop.
Seeing Ren walk away from him like that, despite being a situation of his own making, put a deep ache into his chest. He’d spent his whole life alone, with only superficial ties to others. Ren was the only one who had ever been different, and Akechi couldn’t even hold onto that. He’d already admitted that they could’ve been friends if things had been different. Now things were different, and he couldn’t accept it. He spent the rest of his shift painfully distracted by thoughts of how readily Ren had taken on all his difficulties, how he’d always been comfortable jumping through Akechi’s hoops just to stay close to him. A fight to the death in the depths of Mementos had been taken on like it was the most normal situation he could’ve been thrust into, all to please Akechi, all to fulfill this role of rivalry.
He’d spent a lot of time wondering what that had really meant to Ren, who had the catalogue of friendship-related experiences Akechi lacked. To him, it must have felt strange. But he’d always played along. And if his actions that last day in February were anything to go on, Akechi meant something to him too.
He got off work and locked the door to the shop behind him, ready to make his lonely trek back to his apartment under cover of darkness. He was still thinking over Ren’s words — Why are you acting like this? — when he heard footsteps and whirled around to find—
“Hey,” He recognized Ren’s silhouette even in the dark. “It’s just me.”
He sighed hard through his nose and walked away.
“Hey!” Ren walked just as quickly after him. “Can we just talk?”
“No.”
“Gor—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Ake—”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Then what? What can I call you?”
“Nothing. Don’t speak to me.”
Ren laughed, although Akechi wasn’t sure what was funny about that demand. He fell silent, and they walked together for a block. Akechi didn’t have the energy to try and shake him.
“I missed you.” Ren’s voice was so soft, so genuine, that Akechi had to squeeze his eyes shut for a second. “I thought you were— I don’t know what I thought, but…”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Then don’t. Just listen.”
“Goodnight, Amamiya.”
Ren stopped and stood rooted in place while Akechi kept walking.
“How are you okay with this?” Suddenly, Ren sounded desperately angry. “Was all that shit you said about fate and having a connection just lies? We’re both here. You’re supposed to be—” His voice cracked. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Then keep pretending I am.” Akechi stood a couple meters down the sidewalk from him and turned to look back with a scowl. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“I did!” Ren shouted.
“Stop making a scene.”
“You know I love theatrics.” He sounded like he was trying to force laughter through the tears Akechi could hear in his voice.
Akechi only stared at him, but couldn’t maintain the anger in his expression and eventually dropped his gaze to the ground instead.
“I’ll give you space.” Ren rubbed at his eyes under his glasses with a fist. “I know I’m being pushy. Just… I already lost you twice, and I… I don’t really wanna make it three times.”
“Goodnight, Amamiya.”
“Goodnight.”
Akechi went home and cried into his pillow until he couldn’t breathe, forgoing dinner for self-loathing and consideration of picking up old habits of violent self-punishment. He hated that Ren was capable of breaking down his walls like this. More than anything, he wanted to pull Ren closer, feel his arms around him like he had their last day together. He’d been too aggressive then, too. He’d gone home and cried and cried. He didn’t know how to let anyone in. Some things never changed.
Ren wanted to talk about feelings that Akechi was only just now starting to let himself acknowledge in the safety of his own mind. He wasn’t ready to hear things like I missed you, or proclamations of wishing to see him again, or outward expressions of the pain of loss. As if Ren could ever truly understand what loss felt like. He had friends and loved ones. Akechi had a job at a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. Akechi had bitterness and anger where affection should have been.
He dragged himself to work feeling hopeless. Day after day, he caught himself hoping he’d catch sight of Ren’s constant bedhead in the doorway. Day after day, there was nothing but the usual crowd. A middle-aged woman ordered an Americano to go and his hands trembled the entire time he made it. His self-hatred grew stronger every time his head jerked up at the sound of the door opening. It grew even stronger with each pang of disappointment at the sight of another twenty-something coming in to order an iced coffee.
He was a nameless barista to these customers. He was nothing. Being nothing was his goal when he came here. He’d achieved that easily enough, but now more than ever, he missed the feeling of being someone. Even if he’d been faking, even if the Detective Prince was nothing but a facade put on to win over the easily swayed masses, it meant that people looked at him and saw something.
When Ren looked at him, his grey eyes went soft and dreamy. He’d look on, enraptured, while Akechi explained the intricacies of sociological phenomena. Only once, in Maruki’s Palace, he’d pulled Akechi aside to personally apply a healing ointment to a cut on his cheek, fingers arcing across his skin longer than necessary. Sumire kept watch for them and didn’t say a word about the flagrant display of intimacy. Akechi’s skin burned worse after, and he wasn’t certain that it was because of the antiseptic. Akechi mattered to Ren, more than Akechi could say anyone mattered to himself.
He walked home alone every night, simultaneously wishing Ren would materialize out of the shadows, and praying he’d never see him again. He’d find a way to drown his own emotions out with apathy, so long as Ren never looked at him with those soft grey eyes again.
Four days since he’d seen him crying on the street and now he was wondering if there was a place to play pool somewhere nearby. Maybe there wasn’t anywhere in town, but they could take a day trip out to a nearby city. They could have lunch and drinks. Ren had likely grown rusty in their time apart, but then he probably had as well, and— He pulled himself out of his fantasy and focused on steaming milk.
Six days out: A memory resurfaces of taking Ren up on the Big Bang Burger Challenge. Ren frantically apologizing when Akechi became ill, but laughing when he acknowledged that he’d known Akechi wouldn’t turn down a challenge. He’d escorted him to the train and rode with him to his stop.
A week since he’d seen Ren and it felt like a lifetime. He hated himself down to his core for caring this much about the presence of another human being. He tried to direct that anger towards Ren, who prioritized flashy imagery over secrecy, whose hardships had been buffered by love and community, who was too soft to understand what Akechi felt, crumbled and defeated on the floor of his father’s Palace. It worked for an hour.
On day ten, he couldn't tell if he’d been blessed or cursed. He’d stopped jumping at the sound of the bell and didn’t even look up when a customer approached. He asked for the order without redirecting his attention from where he was organizing jars of coffee beans.
“Just a house blend.” The voice jarred him out of his concentration and his head snapped up embarrassingly quickly.
Ren looked detached and distant, not looking at Akechi or at anything in particular. The desperation from the last time they’d spoken had died out and Akechi was left looking at someone far more hollow than he was used to seeing. Instinctively, he asked himself if this could have been his fault. The compassion surprised him.
“Not an Americano?” He noticed the bags under Ren’s eyes. “You look like you could use the caffeine.”
Ren barely smiled and shook his head.
Their hands grazed again when Akechi took his payment. Ren mumbled an apology that Akechi pretended not to hear. Ren wouldn’t look at his face, not even when Akechi handed his drink over to him.
His heart clenched in his chest when Ren turned to leave. The pain of the past week overcame him in flashes and, though he knew he could do it again and again if he had to, a part of him knew he didn’t have to. He could stop feeling that bitter anger.
“Amamiya,” he called softly. Ren stopped and turned half-way. “Let’s talk.”
He had Ren come back after close. He’d just locked the door when Ren appeared at his side, seemingly having waited just outside. He still looked just as exhausted as he had before, but there was something just a little more hopeful about him. He didn’t have Morgana with him, Akechi noted. So, he’d been given some privacy for once.
They sat down at a table outside a restaurant that was closed for the night and avoided looking at each other or speaking for several minutes. There was nothing Akechi truly wanted to say. Any searing emotions he’d felt over the past week, or even before then, felt impossible to put into words another person would hear. That vulnerability scared him.
Ren reached over and gently held his hand on the table. His nails had messy, chipped black polish on them. Its imperfection was a comforting sight, somehow.
“You can pull away,” Ren murmured.
Akechi didn’t.
They sat silently for several more minutes.
Ren took a deep breath. “How did you end up here?”
“Well, my life has been a series of arguably bad decisions, and—”
Ren squeezed his hand. “Yeah, yeah. But here?”
“I… Got on a train and simply let fate decide where it led me.”
Ren laughed so hard that Akechi pulled his hand back in surprise. “Fate!”
“What?” Akechi furrowed his brows at him. “I don’t suppose you have a better reason.”
“This is my hometown.” Ren breathed out harshly. Akechi couldn’t tell if it was a laugh or a sob. “This is the origin of all of my arguably bad decisions.” He rubbed his eyes. “Fate… God…”
Akechi’s eyes widened, then narrowed as he glared down at the table. He shouldn’t have been surprised. This wasn’t the first time his life had taken a sharp turn to force him back to Ren. After what he’d been through, there was no choice but to believe some higher power was pulling the strings in some way. Two of them had been stripped away, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be even more. Compared to everything else, being in Ren’s life wasn’t the worst hand he could’ve been dealt.
He was free from Shido’s grasp, regardless of the unfavorable circumstances surrounding that release. He didn’t have to play pretend for the cameras anymore. But being authentic had never been his strong suit, and now here was Ren, who’d seen through it all and still was holding out his hand for Akechi to take again. He laid his palm on top of Ren’s and felt fingers close against his skin.
Ren spoke more calmly now. “When I walked into that coffee shop and saw you, I thought I was going crazy. Sometimes I’d see you everywhere… Just cuz it’s what I wanted deep down, I guess.” He shrugged. “So deep down that it’s what Dr. Maruki pulled out of my psyche.”
“I’m not so certain that’s what happened.”
“No, I know.” Ren barely rubbed his thumb across his hand. “But it was enough that he knew he could leverage it against me.”
“I tried to tell you—”
“I thought you were just being stubborn!” He squeezed Akechi’s hand hard. “And I stand by what I said. Your life is not trivial. It’s never been trivial to me.”
Akechi only stared off to the side.
“I missed you.” Ren squeezed again, softer this time.
“You said that already.”
“I’ll say it again.”
“Please don’t.” Akechi only smiled a little.
“I like the glasses on you. Wanna swap?”
“No thank you.”
“You make pretty mediocre coffee.”
Akechi stared at him in disbelief, lips parted. “Excuse me?”
“It’s not bad!” Ren raised his free hand defensively. “But maybe if you let me, a seasoned barista, give you some pointers, you could really wow your clientele.”
“So I take it you don’t plan on leaving me alone after we have this conversation?”
Ren gripped his hand harder. “Not really. I meant what I said about not wanting to go for three times.”
Ren walked him back to his apartment, hand in hand. He looked up at the humble residence above the bar, then back down at Akechi like he wanted to say something but was restraining himself.
“Don’t.” Akechi began fumbling for his keys.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You want to.”
“But I didn’t.” Ren was quiet until he found his keys, then the words came tumbling out all at once. “Okay, but you’re wearing glasses, you dyed your hair black, you’re working in a coffee shop, you live over a restaurant…” He raised his eyebrows. “Hmm?”
“Coincidence.” Akechi began climbing the stairs.
“Or fate?” Ren stayed at the bottom.
Akechi paused half-way up. “Or fate.”