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Akechi has always been diametrically opposed to forming relationships with others. After all, he has nothing in his life but his mission, an ugly, single-minded vengeance. And he’s always had a scorched-earth policy about his life – no witnesses. No survivors. Nobody that he’s afraid of leaving behind, or trampling in vicious pursuit. (Not even himself.)
So when he gets old enough to care about these things – no, even before then - he stays away from other people. He doesn’t need friends or a crush to derail his focus (and, selfishly, he doesn’t want another woman to fall victim to the tricks of his cursed bloodline. A roundabout, antagonistic way of protecting the mother that he couldn’t save.) He had stopped dreaming long ago, and will not let any foolish desires take their place.
So he keeps his distance from Sae – she’s his superior, so it’s easy enough to be polite, professional, just friendly enough without making any real connection. Once he swindles his way into the Phantom Thieves, he makes sure to gracefully dodge Ann’s attempts at a heart-to-heart. Avoiding Wakaba’s and Okumura’s daughters doesn’t take much effort on his part, when they give him a wide berth and glare at him with a hatred that looks all too familiar. (And Kasumi is annoying, first of all, but he sees through her in a second. Too similar to him, too dangerous, too afraid, blindly treading a path that is angled to intersect explosively with his own. The distance Akechi keeps from her is for both of their sakes.)
He does let himself be friendlier with the boys, deeming them to be less of a possible distraction, even if he’s never felt attraction to girls in the first place. (He considers that to be of his own design.) But he finds Yusuke too loquacious, Ryuji too ebullient, and in the end it’s of no real effort of his own that he ends up alone again.
When Akechi skips an informant meeting without a second thought because Akira sent him a last-minute invitation for billiards, he realizes his careful calculations of proximity have somehow gone wrong. He’d carefully avoided other people his whole life, thinking in his cold way that if he got too close, he would inevitably abandon his goals for a false promise of kindness and forgiveness, that he would ruin the life of somebody he was supposed to love. The temptation of softness would ruin him.
But when Akira winks at him after winning their nth game of darts, he realizes that Akira was never soft. The other boy was as sharp as the darts in the board, and they had hit bullseye in ways Akechi could not foresee. A sinking feeling drowns the butterflies fluttering in his stomach, and something blossoms traitorously in his chest. Akechi resolves to kill it. He steels his heart with that well-worn, familiar hatred, and doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Better to pull out the roots in one go, than to slowly cut off the flowers.
--
When Joker reappears, Akechi feels sick with relief, then nauseous at the feeling. That night, as he falls asleep, it’s not with curses on Shido’s life ringing in his head, or the feeling of blood staining his hands. It’s with Akira’s voice in his ears (“Hey again, Crow – miss me?”), Akira’s name on his lips. Something long-lost takes root in Akechi again, whispering promises of a future with him. He thinks of a future without him. His carefully-planned paths make an imperceptible shift.
When the time comes, instead of pursuing that cursed man to the end like he had always dreamed of, Akechi locks himself in the engine room. He doesn’t move when Akira screams his name.
--
A lifetime later, Akechi starts to dream again. While he sleeps, Maruki lays out for him scenes from a treacherous future that he’s never dared to let himself imagine. A wish fundamentally incompatible with the vicious path he has carved out for his bloody soles to tread upon. Revenge is never carried out for love – indeed, it cannot exist alongside it. He made the decision between the two when he fired the gun.
“You already tried to kill it once,” Maruki chastises. One of many, many failures in his life. (Perhaps the most consequential one.) “But I can make it happen, easily. You can make a different choice. And, anyways, don’t you think you deserve it now?”
No. No. No. No. No.
The Akira he dreams of that night bathes his bloody figure with soft hands. Begs him, through tears, to put down the gun. Makes him coffee with two cubes of sugar and extra cream, insists that it’s because he deserves the sweetness. Says, over and over, “It’s alright. It’s okay. I forgive you. I forgive you.” He holds Akechi with a gentleness that he’s never known before.
When Akechi wakes up, he heads to Leblanc without meaning to, as if in a trance. He feels nauseous with the ghost of dream-Akira’s touch. Right as he sits down at the counter out of habit - or maybe even before, as if having predicted his arrival - a calloused hand pushes a cup of coffee towards him. “Pitch-black. Just how you like it, right?” Akira smiles at him. It makes him feel warm, as if he were still asleep.
Akechi makes a valiant effort to not startle, and takes the drink wordlessly. He lets the bitterness scald his tongue. It wakes him up just enough for him to ask, apropos of nothing - “Do you forgive me?” He thinks about the soft hands in his dream, tenderly brushing bangs matted with blood out of his tear-stained face. He thinks of Akira saying yes.
Akira doesn’t seem phased by the question. Akechi doesn’t think he’s ever seen the other boy be caught off guard by anything. “The people who could forgive you aren’t here right now, silly,” Akira replies plainly, with a crooked smile. “Do you want another cup?”
Maruki is dead wrong, Akechi thinks, with something like self-satisfaction curling in him, like a pleased cat. This is all I need. Black coffee, and a boy that sees everything exactly as it is. “Yes, please.”
Akira’s fingers brush against his as he takes the cup back, with a measured pace, as if to not startle him. He hums as he rinses it in the sink, a nameless song that’s long become familiar to him. Akechi thinks about how in all the hours he’s loitered and whiled away at Leblanc, he’s never seen Akira break a cup.
The road Akechi has painstakingly paved for his life reshapes itself in front of his very eyes as Akira pours him another black coffee - spinning wildly out of control, as if the compass guiding its direction has latched onto another, stronger magnetic field. He knows that Akira – enigmatic, unpredictable, uncontrollable, beautiful Akira – must be just another cruel trick of the universe, placed perfectly to catch him off guard, to throw him off track. But, for some reason, he feels that they’ve both long escaped the path that fate had placed them on.
“I think I can break free this time,” Akechi says. “With you.” He doesn't elaborate, but he thinks Akira knows what he means anyways.
Akira smiles in response. “We’re both stronger than you think.”
He can feel it now – something just ahead of him, undetermined and strange, but bursting with light.