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There are all sorts of myths, rumors, and commonly held knowledge about the names that can appear on someone’s body. An eternal love. The person who will understand you better than anyone else. Someone you’re meant to spend your life with. Some even say that it can be a mortal enemy, someone who will occupy your thoughts and fill you with hatred. The thing most everyone agrees about is that if someone’s name appears on your body, they will be important to you. Vitally so, life-changingly so.
Akechi is inclined to think that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
After all, if you find a stranger’s name on your skin, wouldn’t you be likely to look for them? If it’s the name of someone you know, wouldn’t you place more importance on your relationship with them? And if you look for something, you’ll find it. You discover the name that’s been inscribed on your skin since you were a child is a classmate in college - won’t you watch them more closely? Pick out things about them that appeal, or don’t? Won’t you go into the relationship already expecting there to be something special there?
It’s not fate. Just human nature. Akechi has always thought so - or so he tells himself. If he has memories of being a child, finding a name on his skin, and hoping desperately that it would be a best friend, a family member, someone who would change his life… well, that’s just the sort of thing a child would think, isn’t it?
He’s older now. He knows better. The name Ren Amamiya, in deep black down the side of his ribcage, only has meaning if he allows it to.
He smiles across the table at the boy he’s supposedly tied to. The cafe is dimly lit, the jazz is soothing while also being complicated enough to interest him. If he were anyone else, he might be at peace. A date with his soulmate. This is what you’re supposed to dream of. After all, not everyone even has one.
He wonders if Ren does. If, somewhere on his body, is Akechi’s name. Probably not. If it’s anyone’s, it’ll be one of his idiot friends. Someone much more amenable and trustworthy than Akechi.
But Akechi has Ren’s name, and it’s up to him to decide what that means. When he realized who Ren was, who Joker was, and what the name meant, it made some sense. Enemies. Rivals. Something about him is mirrored in Joker, and something about Joker in him. If he was to believe in fate, then that’s what he believes in.
He doesn’t, though. He’d have to be a fool. And probably it’s some kind of unforgivable sin, if sin exists - planning to murder your soulmate.
Their drinks come, and Akechi thanks the waiter politely. His mask is second-nature, so easy to don, and yet he often feels like Ren sees right through him. It’s unsettling. Is that what it means, this name on his skin? Someone who sees what he doesn’t want them to see?
If that’s the case, he’d really better kill Ren.
He has, of course, considered whether it might be love. That’s the most common assumption about a soulmark, after all. Akechi has always attributed that to people’s tendency to dream, to want the best for themselves. What if there was someone out there who would love them wholly for who they are, who would want them more than anyone else? Such desires are foolish, impossible, but even Akechi can see the appeal of them.
That’s how he knows it isn’t true. It’s laughable to believe that Ren is destined to fall in love with him, even more ridiculous to think that Akechi might return the emotion. It would be convenient, certainly - his plan would work all the better if Ren’s eyes were blinded by love. But that isn’t what’s in Ren’s eyes when he looks at Akechi.
(If it were, would he know? It’s true that Akechi has little experience with such matters. But it doesn’t matter. It can’t be.)
So the name will mean what Akechi makes of it. Perhaps that’s what’s drawn him to Ren. Besides the obvious reasons, of course. Joker could have just been another job to him, and he already knows Ren isn’t that. Much as he might prefer it to be otherwise.
Across the table, Ren grins at him. The music is loud, for the moment, so they don’t need to talk. That means Akechi can simply process that smile - the ease of it, the way it doesn’t really mean anything. He could be anyone. One of Ren’s strange assortment of friends, a stranger, a date. They could be nothing to each other.
Suddenly, more than anything. Akechi wants to know. Wants to tear away at all of Ren’s masks, strip him down more than metaphorically. Find out if, anywhere on his rangy body, he’s marked with Akechi’s name.
It wouldn’t change anything. He still has a job to do.
But he wants it to be there.
He smiles back at Ren, poised and careful. There’s a flash of - something - in Ren’s eyes, something that makes Akechi feel briefly aflame. Then it’s gone, and they’re just two high school boys in a dimly lit jazz club smiling at each other.
Akechi won’t find out, before the end. He’ll look at Ren’s name in the mirror, and he’ll wonder, and he’ll think of all the ways he could find out. All the impossible, stupid ways. He’ll want to know so, so badly, but he’ll never find out.
He’ll never tell Ren, either. They’ll never know they match.
Maybe in another life.