Chapter Text
Ren didn’t really like jazz. Akechi didn’t know that, of course - he’d taken Ren to his favorite spot in Kichijoji a few months ago, and when he asked how Ren felt about jazz, Ren had been surprised to hear himself say that he loved it. Now, Akechi kept bringing him here, without any idea that Ren felt like they were mostly listening to a bunch of whiny noise.
That was okay. Ren was used to lying to Akechi, and there was a lot the detective didn’t know about him. Ren didn’t feel good about it, but he also didn’t want to get arrested for his Phantom Thief-related activities. At this point, jazz was the least of his problems.
Akechi, eyes still locked on some complicated-looking instrument, reached for his float and took a sip. His face twisted slightly, and he looked away from the musicians for the first time in a while.
Ren raised his eyebrows and grabbed his own drink. “Something wrong?” He took a sip, but everything tasted fine.
“It doesn’t taste right,” Akechi said, then shrugged and smiled. “One of those things, right? I got a new flavor. Perhaps I’m just not used to it.”
But he didn’t seem happy with the next few sips either, and he was clearly getting bothered by it.
“Wanna switch?” Ren asked. He probably wouldn’t be able to tell if anything was off. He wasn’t much of a soda drinker, and he wasn’t picky at all, unlike a lot of his friends. Especially Ryuji. Ren hid a smile at the thought of how Ryuji would be acting if his soda tasted wrong.
“No, of course not.” Akechi smiled again, a slightly more frustrated expression that Ren usually associated with discussion of the Phantom Thieves. “I could just ask them to make it again- no, I’m sure I’m overreacting.”
He narrowed his eyes at the offending drink, then went back to watching the performance. Ren mostly watched him. Akechi wasn’t the sort of person who would usually be this upset about a disappointing soft drink, but he’d been having a tough time of it recently. The Phantom Thieves’ newfound fame meant the public was starting to turn on Akechi, and Ren was starting to see his friend’s polished attitude wear away.
Absentmindedly, Akechi took a large sip, this time grimacing. “Ren? Will you try a sip of this? I’m starting to feel insane.” He laughed, not very convincingly.
Ren obligingly took a sip from Akechi’s drink. It was a little more bitter, about what Ren would have expected from grapefruit soda rather than orange. He shrugged. “Sorry. Tastes like soda.”
“Long week. Sorry for bothering you. I must be imagining things.”
Akechi turned back to the performance. Ren watched him tug at his collar a few times, like he was uncomfortable. He was wearing long sleeves, even though the weather was already warm enough to be considered downright summery. But then again, so was Ren, and Ren wasn’t too hot. Maybe the drink was just a little too bitter for Akechi’s palate, and it was making him feel weird. Ryuji didn’t like bitter things much, and he’d probably be acting weird too. Akechi did like coffee, but Ann liked coffee too and there were still a lot of bitter things that she didn’t like.
After another minute, Akechi glanced briskly at his watch and stood. “We should get going,” he said. “I have an early day tomorrow, and I’m sure you have homework.”
Ren did have homework, in math, although as soon as Akechi had invited him out for the evening, he had jumped to assuming it wouldn’t get done. Akechi could watch the jazz players for hours, and this was still their first round of drinks. In fact, Ren had been so sure they wouldn’t be leaving soon that he hadn’t finished his soda yet. He took a few frantic sips.
Akechi turned towards Ren, and Ren blinked. Sometime in the last five minutes or so, Akechi had started to look terrible. He’d gone pale, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and upper lip. Maybe he was allergic to something in the drink, and that’s why he’d thought it tasted strange? Ren’s chest tightened.
“Are you alrigh-?”
“Just tired, as I’m sure you are too. Come, let’s go.”
Ren stood too, even though he hadn’t quite finished his soda, and followed Akechi out of Jazz Jin. It had gotten a little stuffy in there, and Ren relished the feeling of the cold night air and the relative quiet of the empty side street.
Akechi walked up the front steps and paused just before the street, wobbling slightly on his feet.
“Are you-?”
“Sorry,” Akechi mumbled. He pivoted and pushed past Ren. “I seem to have forgotten something. You can go-”
Akechi broke off and hurried into the inviting darkness of the club. Ren stood there, frozen. He wasn’t sure that Akechi even had anything to forget - he hadn’t actually had many belongings with him, and he’d definitely been carrying his briefcase when they’d left. And besides, Akechi had looked strange and sick as he’d said it.
Ren didn’t know why Akechi would be lying about forgetting something, but either way, he wasn’t going to leave until he was sure the detective was alright. He pulled out his phone, checking the time, and saw the other Phantom Thieves chattering about homework. Ann hadn’t finished hers either.
But he probably shouldn’t reply to them right now, because Akechi was surely almost done with whatever he was doing inside the club. Ren stuffed his phone back in his pocket, and then waited, and waited, and waited some more.
Akechi didn’t appear. Ren frowned, then plunged down the steps after him. His waiter looked up as Ren emerged into the club, then pointed towards the back.
“Looking for your friend? He went into the bathroom.”
Ren nodded his thanks, picking up the pace as he hurried towards the back of the club. Akechi definitely hadn’t forgotten something in the bathroom - he must really be sick. As he approached, he saw his friend emerge, pale and disheveled.
Akechi looked up, and his eyes widened with horrified surprise. He didn’t look happy to see Ren in the slightest, which Ren decided he could ignore in the face of the more obvious problem. Akechi had looked bad when he left, but he looked markedly worse now, like he’d left Ren and immediately thrown up for the entire time they’d been separated. His hair was sweaty, slicked to his neck and forehead, and he was pale enough Ren could see hollows beneath his eyes. Now that he was close enough, he saw Akechi didn’t look so steady on his feet, either.
“I thought you forgot something?” Ren wasn’t quite confident enough to contradict Akechi to his face, although he still couldn’t imagine why he’d lied. “Are you alright?”
Akechi waved a hand in a way that was probably meant to be airy, but mostly just looked panicked. “Fine. And I did forget something. My wallet. In the…bathroom.”
He looked like he was going to throw up again. And he was definitely lying - Ren knew he kept his wallet in his briefcase. Why was it so important to him that Ren didn’t find out that he was ill?
Ren was just about to ask when sudden nausea swept through him, and he brought a hand to his mouth. He swallowed convulsively a few times, feeling his mouth start to water as though he was going to throw up, and then it was gone as quickly as it had come.
When he looked up, Akechi was staring at him, eyes suddenly alight in his pale face. “What just happened?”
Ren shrugged. “I felt sick for a second. But I’m…not going to throw up. Not like you….”
“That’s it,” Akechi said sharply. His eyes were narrowed and trained on Ren, and Ren felt suddenly uncomfortable under his gaze. Generally, he tried to avoid being looked at. He knew that didn’t really work with Akechi anyways, but he still didn’t understand why Akechi needed to be so intense about it.
“What’s…?”
“I’ve been poisoned.”
Akechi was already exiting Jazz Jin by this point. He still looked pale and ill and a little bit fragile, but he seemed to have been filled with a new kind of energy now that he’d come to…whatever realization he’d come to. Ren trailed after him.
“What…?”
“I didn’t forget my wallet in the bathroom, as you guessed,” Akechi said. The dim lights of the club had hidden the shadows beneath Akechi’s eyes, and he looked somehow worse in the soft glow of the streetlights. “I was getting sick.”
“Do you need…?”
“I’m fine now,” Akechi snapped. He started walking briskly down the street, away from the club. If he was sick enough that he’d needed to throw up in public, Ren couldn’t really fathom how he was managing to walk so fast.
“Okay…”
Akechi began speaking rapidly. Ren wasn’t sure if he was the one being spoken to or not. “At first, I wasn’t sure what had happened. Or, I suppose more accurately, I wasn’t sure anything had happened. I was sure I hadn’t eaten anything that was a food poisoning risk. After all, I’ve been busy with an investigation. I’ve basically been surviving on frozen meals and microwave ramen for the past few days. The stomach flu was a possibility, of course, but in my experience that doesn’t normally come on so fast. And I felt completely fine when I arrived here with you, or I would have cancelled.”
“So why do you think it’s poison?” Ren asked. He’d had his fair share of upset stomachs, and he didn’t usually jump straight to poison. It was possible that Akechi was being a bit paranoid.
“It was you,” Akechi said. “I finished my…unusual-tasting drink, and threw up. You had just a sip of it, and experienced a moment of nausea, right?”
“Oh,” Ren said. “Yeah. Right.”
“Despite how far-fetched it may sound, it is the simplest explanation.” Akechi pulled out his phone, the glow from the screen lighting up his suddenly sharper looking features. “And, as Occam’s Razor dictates, the simplest explanation often proves to be the correct one.”
Ren couldn’t think of many real-world situations where malicious poisoning was actually the simplest explanation, although he supposed that it was a lot more likely than both of them getting spontaneous, unrelated attacks of nausea. “So…what do we do?”
“First, determine whether or not it’s fatal,” Akechi said, eyes locked onto his phone screen.
Ren accelerated until he was walking beside Akechi, keeping a worried eye out for people or objects that the detective might be about to run into. “Fatal? Do you…think it is?’
“No almond smell, although that isn’t reliable,” Akechi muttered, scrolling busily. “Nor do I feel short of breath…. Cyanide can be ruled out. No sign of muscle cramping….”
Akechi broke off and swung towards Ren, eyes blazing. “What do my pupils look like?”
Ren just barely stopped himself from taking a step back. “Um. Normal?”
“The proper size? Not pinprick? I-” Akechi broke off and swallowed heavily, putting his hand out for just a second before regaining his balance. Ren wondered if he should offer to steady him, but something about the way Akechi was holding himself told him not to.
“Are you okay? Your pupils are normal. Promise.”
Akechi shook his head, hair falling into his eyes. He didn’t bother to push it away. “Fine. Well, I’m not dying. Or at least, not instantly.”
He kept walking, still glued to his phone, and Ren lengthened his pace until he felt like he was half-running to keep up.
Even when Akechi had brought up poison, he hadn’t really thought about it being fatal. All of it had seemed a bit far away, like something out of a cop show rather than his real life. Kind of how being a Phantom Thief sometimes felt, when he wasn’t in the Metaverse. But Akechi really was sick, looking paler by the minute under the harsh neon lights. Looking at his face, the hollows around his eyes looking almost like bruises, it wasn’t too hard to believe that he’d been poisoned.
“Okay,” Ren said, neatly cutting in front of Akechi right before he ran into a pole. Akechi ran into him instead, hair flying back into his eyes as he stepped backwards in surprise. “What can I do to help?”
“You think I’m telling the truth?” Akechi asked. He sounded surprised, which Ren didn’t entirely understand. He could definitely see why other people might not believe he had been poisoned. But if Akechi had thought there was a chance he wasn’t going to be believed, then why had he acted so confident? Ren still felt like there was a lot about Akechi that he didn’t understand.
“Yes,” Ren said.
“This is really all conjecture still. I haven’t presented you with any evidence. You wouldn’t make a very good detective.”
“I know.”
“But…thank you.”
Akechi had already searched all of the most common, deadly poisons that were used in murders, and he didn’t think he’d been given any of those. Of course, without a full blood panel, it would be hard to be certain exactly what he had been given, and getting a full blood panel with no real evidence might not be easy. But the most important thing, at this point, was that Akechi wasn’t going to keel over dead in the next couple of minutes.
Probably.
Which meant he could turn his mind to other, more important matters. He whirled on Ren, who had been trailing vaguely behind him, awkwardly close.
“You should make yourself throw up,” Akechi said.
“What?”
“I haven’t done it myself before, but I can describe the process to you. I’m not sure if you’ll need-”
“Wait. I don’t want to do that.”
“It’s probably best to be on the safe side with this, Ren. After all, we don’t yet know how large of a dose is required to see more serious effects, and there could be some delayed reaction element as well.”
“But-”
“And you did have a sip.”
Ren frowned. “It was a very small sip. And I feel fine now.”
Akechi felt himself scowl with frustration, and forced his expression to relax. He couldn’t quite summon his usual smile, but he’d noticed that Ren didn’t respond to that as well as most others did, so it probably wouldn’t matter.
“Now being the important word, Ren,” he said. He didn’t think he sounded quite as patient as he’d intended. But his head was starting to throb, and his stomach was still lurching uneasily. Surely, it wouldn’t be abnormal for him to be a bit terse. “If there is a delayed reaction, it’ll be too late for you to do anything about it.”
Ren shook his head. “I’m not going to throw up.”
Akechi caught his hand going to his hair, ready to rake it back in exasperation, and froze. “It’s for your own safety.”
He really shouldn’t care about Ren’s safety. In fact, in many ways, Ren getting hurt, sick, or poisoned would benefit him. And yet, none of that changed the strange feeling he got when he thought about Ren suffering the same ill effects as him. It was illogical, and more than that, it was dangerous.
“You’re overreacting,” Ren told him quietly.
“I am not!” Akechi found his free hand closing into a fist. The one around the briefcase tightened, nails digging into his palm.
Ren was staring at him, eyes wide behind his glasses. Akechi had never seen that look before, at least, not because of him. He had always been careful not to be too unpredictable around the “secret” leader of the Phantom Thieves, and he usually didn’t slip up. He was getting sloppy.
“Sorry,” Ren said. He grimaced. “I just don’t want to throw up. I think I’m okay.”
With a mental effort that felt something like nails on a chalkboard, Akechi let it go. “I hope so,” he said, and even though he meant it, his voice sounded uneven. He took a deep breath, but that just made him feel more nauseous.
“How are you feeling now?” Ren asked, with the air of someone not-so-subtly changing the subject.
“I-” Akechi took an awkward, hesitant step forward and paused before he could throw up or fall over. The adrenaline that had swept through him with the realization that he’d been poisoned was draining away. Instant death was no longer a threat, and apparently his body had taken that as an excuse to give up on him. Could the poison really be working this fast? That was…alarming, to say the least.
Akechi knew he needed to keep moving. He likely needed the hospital, and in any case, there was absolutely no point in standing around out there. He still didn’t know if someone wanted him dead or incapacitated - in fact, there was even a chance that he wasn’t actually the target - but whatever the case, staying put could be dangerous. But the ground seemed to be tilting gently underneath him, and Akechi realized somewhat distantly that his legs had started shaking. He swallowed hard.
He took a step, his knee buckled, and he stumbled. That was embarrassing, distressing…he barely managed to straighten before spilling forward.
Ren was at his elbow now, clutching his arm very carefully with both hands. Akechi turned towards him. Ren’s eyes were wide and fretful.
“You should sit down,” he said softly.
“I need to-”
“At least for a minute.”
Akechi couldn’t think of any solid arguments, so he allowed Ren to guide him towards a bench, lit by a solitary street lamp. He sat gratefully. Maybe Ren had been right. He couldn’t push his body as far as he wanted to, not when it was weakened like this. Maybe a rest was a good thing. He’d gather enough strength to make it to the hospital after this, he was sure of it.
Ren settled himself next to him. He was close enough that Akechi could smell the scent of warming spices and coffee rising off his clothes. Akechi couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this physically close to someone, at least not that he’d been aware of. Why had he let Ren in this much? He knew Ren was the leader of the Phantom Thieves. Was he stupid? Did he like torturing himself? Did he have a death wish?
“Are you going to throw up again?” Ren asked in the same soft, measured voice.
“No,” Akechi snapped. He knew that was likely a lie - his stomach was still twisting, and his mouth seemed full of excess saliva. But he wasn’t going to throw up right now, at least.
“You’re going to the doctor, right?” Ren asked.
“Yes.”
“Is someone trying to kill you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. That’s not really something I can figure out without any evidence, is it?”
Ren didn’t say anything, just sat and watched him with those wide, soft eyes. Akechi knew he was being too short with Ren, he knew his tone didn’t fit the mask he’d so carefully crafted, but Ren didn’t seem to mind.
Still, he took a deep breath. Snapping at his one ally, the one person he almost trusted, even though it was idiotic, wasn’t helpful.
“Who do you think poisoned you?” Ren asked, still calm and even. It made Akechi feel calmer, even with dizziness still pressing at his temples and nausea coiled in his stomach.
He took another breath and thought about it. “I only have two active cases right now,” he said quietly, focusing on each word as he said it. Speaking aloud helped him keep his deductions straight, and usually he just talked to himself in his empty apartment. It was nice to have someone else, if a bit strange.
“One of them is investigating a new underground leader who’s trying to fill the hole Kaneshiro left. He goes by the codename ‘Jackal.’” Akechi remembered who he was talking to, or rather who he was supposed to think he was talking to. “Forgive me. Kaneshiro was a mafia leader in Shibuya, who was in the news recently. Supposedly the-”
“The Phantom Thieves left him a calling card,” Ren supplied. It was a good thing for Ren that Akechi wasn’t actually trying to identify the leader of the renegade group, because he would have figured Ren as Joker in about two minutes flat.
“Right. I see you remain an enthusiast. Anyway, I’ve been trying to uncover Jackal’s true identity. The other case is, of course, the Phantom Thieves.”
Akechi watched Ren turn a shade paler. “The Phantom Thieves wouldn’t poison you,” he said quietly, but fiercely. “They just wouldn’t.”
It was odd that Akechi had never suspected Ren, he supposed. After all, Joker would have ample reasons to wish him out of the way. Akechi was obviously the person best positioned to catch him, and Ren had definitely had access to his drink.
But Akechi hadn’t thought to blame Ren for even a second, and he didn’t now. He would call it intuition. A few inches away from him, Ren’s face was slowly getting paler. “You don’t really think-”
Akechi would have liked to bury his face in his hands, but that would be far too demonstrative. He was sick and a little scared, and he didn’t really want to expend the mental energy to come up with a cover story to explain his lack of suspicion to Ren.
“I don’t believe the Phantom Thieves were involved myself either,” Akechi said. “The methods that they use to change hearts is still…unclear, but they certainly don’t use poison. It doesn’t seem like their style. If they wanted to harm me, they would likely pursue using their normal methods, and besides, since I’m publicly against them, suspicion would immediately fall to them if anything were to happen to me, and something like poison is traceable and could put them at significant risk. I don’t believe they would make a choice that was so dangerous for them.”
“I don’t think so either,” Ren agreed vehemently. “It was probably-”
“Jackal,” Akechi finished. “I do agree he’s the more likely culprit, assuming this is related to one of my two cases, of course. That being said, I can’t exactly go to the police with just circumstantial nausea. There’s nothing they’re going to be able to do.”
“So…?”
“I need to do some further investigation. To start, I’ll-”
Akechi’s insides twisted with a violent cramp, cutting him off abruptly. Nausea so intense it felt like vertigo washed over him. Sweat seemed to spring from every pore of his body, and started to cool almost instantly in the chilly night air. Akechi took a deep breath, hoping Ren wouldn’t notice. Surely Ren would be able to tell that something was wrong, but he didn’t want him to know how bad it had gotten. He swallowed delicately.
The initial reaction to the poison had been so quick and intense that part of Akechi had hoped that he’d ended up mostly getting it out of his system. But that clearly wasn’t true. He was going to vomit again - it was just a matter of time. He was probably going to be in for a mortifying, uncomfortable, dehumanizing night. And that was the best case scenario - there was a decent chance that whatever he’d been given was intended to kill him, and the gastrointestinal symptoms were just the beginning.
“You need to go to the doctor,” Ren said firmly. “Before you do any more investigating.”
So he had noticed. That wasn’t surprising, but it was a bit embarrassing.
“You’re right,” Akechi said. “I’ll need the hospital to run some tests. Even knowing what type of poison this is will probably help me narrow down exactly who dosed me with it.”
Ren’s eyebrows drew together. “And they need to help you. You don’t feel good. You need medicine.”
Akechi resisted rolling his eyes. “‘Medicine’ is too simple a word for-”
Akechi had to cut himself off and focus on breathing through his nose for a moment. What the hospital would or would not do for him didn’t really merit discussion right now.
“I’ll go to the doctor, in any case,” he said when he was sure he could speak without throwing up on Ren’s shoes. “You’re right.”
Carefully, he pushed himself upright, his mind already racing ahead towards the eventual test results, letting the navigation he was pulling up on his phone fill only the back of his head. Jackal had made a mistake by drugging him, he was sure of it. When the doctors were able to tell him what he’d been dosed with, he was sure he could trace the poison all the way back to Jackal, and arrest him for it. That was a good plan, a workable plan, and now all he had to do was keep his useless legs under him until he could make it to the doctor.
“Akechi. You don’t look good.”
Ren’s hand grabbed at his upper arm, and Akechi couldn’t quite stop himself from tensing violently. Ren paused, just long enough for Akechi to yank away, stumbling before catching his balance.
“Um….”
It was normal for Ren to want to help his friend. He probably…touched the other Phantom Thieves all the time, unthinkingly. It wasn’t strange or wrong for him to offer assistance.
Akechi knew all that, and it didn’t stop his skin from crawling at the idea that he’d been so obviously in need of help. He needed to keep it together, but Ren made that so difficult, and he’d already let him see far too much. Anything more was a risk that Akechi couldn’t afford to take.
“I don’t need that,” Akechi said, as nicely as he could. Not as nicely as he needed to - damn Ren and his ability to break down Akechi’s walls - but almost. He took a small, shallow breath, all he could afford with the nausea and his suddenly racing heart, and tried again. “You don’t need to touch me.”
He followed it up with a smile, knowing even as he did that it probably looked anything but unthreatening.
Ren’s eyes widened, just a little, and he took a step back. Akechi forced himself not to grimace.
“Sorry,” Ren whispered. “I won’t. But I have a question?”
“What.” Akechi glanced at the directions on his phone and focused on putting one foot in front of another, steadily enough that Ren wouldn’t try to help him again.
“What if you’re falling over?”
“I won’t,” Akechi said. Truthfully, he’d rather fall. But Ren didn’t need to know that.