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“Hey, Queen, wait a second.” Joker’s voice stops Queen in her tracks before she returns to the car. They’d just finished dealing with a rather persistent Shadow and the effect of using her Persona so much was beginning to get to her- she’d have to check in with the others and make sure that they weren’t getting too tired.
“Everything okay?” Queen asks, turning to face him. There’s a slightly nervous set to his shoulders, which she isn’t used to seeing while they’re here. As Joker, he’s the epitome of confidence.
He nods, hands slipping into his pockets. “I’ve got a math test coming up tomorrow. I was wondering if you’d be willing to help me study later?”
Queen frowns and takes a closer look at him, trying to gauge his energy levels. He doesn’t seem to be getting tired yet, even though he does the most out of any of them. But how much of that is the truth and how much is yet another one of the masks he wears to put others at ease? They’ve become close over the last few months- partially out of necessity and partly due to how well they click regardless- and she’s gotten good enough at reading him to tell he’s putting up a front, but she remains unable to see behind it.
“Are you worried about it?” Queen finally asks, accepting that scrutinizing him isn’t going to get her anywhere.
Joker shrugs nonchalantly. “I don’t want my grades to slip.”
After a few more seconds of consideration, Queen sighs in defeat and nods her head once. She can’t just ignore a friend in need like that, even though one could argue that him trying to study now was poor timing on his part. (And, well, there’s no denying that a very very small part of her is happy for the excuse to spend more time with him. But it definitely didn’t factor into her decision at all.) “Alright, but only as long as you’re sure you’re not trying to do too much.”
“I would never,” Joker responds with a grin that could light up the depths of Mementos. He doesn’t linger for long, though, and it’s not long before he hops into the Mona-bus in preparation to drive all of them to the next target.
Queen follows suit, neatly sliding into her usual seat next to Panther, who swiftly elbows her in the ribs and whispers “What took you two so long?” in a conspiratorial tone.
“Doesn’t matter,” Queen replies, careful to keep her tone flat to discourage any further questions.
A knowing smirk appears on Panther’s face, but she doesn’t press it. For now. Queen can practically see the text message she was going to get later asking for all the details.
Thankfully, the remainder of their errands in Mementos didn’t take much longer. Skull had long since exhausted his energy and had to wait in the Mona-bus while the others took care of the final requests, leaving them two members down. It was less than ideal, but they made it work. Despite having to pick up the slack, Joker didn’t waver, seeming almost superhuman in his ability to keep pushing through exhaustion. The one hint that he might have been getting tired came when he asked Fox to grab him a Mountain Dew from the cooler that Oracle had supplied.
Emerging from Mementos was just as unsettling as usual. One moment they were in the depths of what could only be described as hell in the form of the Shibuya subway tunnels, and the next they were crowded around the table in Ren’s attic just like they had been when they left. Futaba groans and slumps back in her chair.
“Not even the caffeine can save me now!” she declares. “No more leaving requests to stack up like that again, okay?”
Ren lets out an amused little huff and slips his hands into his pockets again, but doesn’t say anything in response. He’s probably trying to avoid getting dragged into an extended conversation so the others will leave sooner.
“Man, you weren’t even fighting! I don’t wanna hear it!” Ryuji grumbles. He rubs at his eyes and scowls, still seeming a little disoriented. He’d fallen asleep sometime between their last fight and the drive back up to the entrance.
“Do you even realize how much of a pain it is to read the maps AND keep you losers out of trouble?” Futaba asks petulantly.
Before Ryuji can respond, Ann gasps and smacks a hand to her forehead. “Oh my God, I just remembered how much packing I still have to do!”
Ryuji’s own face pales at the mention of packing. “Shit, me too!”
“Seriously, guys?” Makoto sighs. Leave it to those two to be behind. She was never going to understand how either of them functioned while being so disorganized. “I trust I don’t need to remind you that we’re leaving in three days?”
“I’ve been busy! Besides, I don’t wanna pack somethin’ away too soon and then need it before I leave!”
“Yeah, what Ryuji said,” Ann calls over her shoulder as she hurriedly stands up and starts toward the stairs. “See you guys at school tomorrow!”
With that, it doesn’t take much longer for the others to follow suit and say their own goodbyes for the day, leaving just her, Ren, and Morgana in the attic. Nobody bats an eye at her staying later- it’s not uncommon for her to leave last so the two of them can discuss the team’s next steps.
Ren turns to her, his signature lopsided little smile appearing on his face as he does so. Her heart skips a beat at the sight, as always. “Shall we go downstairs? Sojiro shouldn’t have any customers this late.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Makoto responds, a nervous little flutter settling in her chest that she does her best to ignore. She’s noticed that happening more frequently around him and isn’t quite prepared to think about what it might mean.
Ren takes a moment to gather his schoolwork. Makoto does the same, as she had brought her own to work on at the hideout, then they head downstairs together. Morgana doesn’t follow them, though. Instead, he heads over to Ren’s bed and jumps up on it, seemingly settling down to go to sleep.
Predictably, the cafe is completely empty aside from Boss standing behind the counter and polishing mugs. He glances up at them as they step off the stairs.
“You two planning on studying?” Boss asks. He sets the mug he had in his hands down and braces himself on the countertop.
“Yeah, if that’s alright,” Ren answers.
“Of course it is. Glad to see you taking an interest in your studies.” Boss checks the time and sighs. “There’s still a little bit of time before I’m going to head out for the night. Try not to be too disruptive if any customers come in.”
Ren coughs, sounding like he’s trying to cover a laugh. “At this hour?”
“Yes, at this hour.” Boss fixes Ren with an impressive glare.
“...Okay, okay. I get it. We’ll be so quiet you forget we’re here.” Ren raises his free hand in surrender.
Boss scoffs, though he doesn’t sound too upset, and turns his attention back towards polishing the mugs again. Ren places his books down on the table of the booth in front of them and then sits down. Makoto slides into the seat across from him but doesn’t move to start on her own work just yet- she wants to make sure that Ren is set before she does any of her own.
“What are you guys working on right now?” Makoto asks, keeping her voice low enough that only Ren would be able to hear her.
“Quadratics,” Ren replies in a similar quiet tone as he opens up his math book. “I’m pretty sure that I’ve got it down, but I’d like a second opinion.”
“No problem. Do you want to just work through a couple examples on your own and have me check your work?”
“Yeah, that would be great. I’ve got a couple homework problems to finish so I’ll just use those.”
Makoto squints at him accusingly. “You’re not behind, are you?”
As if sensing her disapproval, Ren looks up and smirks. “I’d never dream of it. They were assigned in class and were taking me longer than usual.”
“If you say so,” Makoto sighs and opens her own math book. Her own neat, if somewhat cramped, handwriting stares back at her. Typically she enjoys derivatives, but the ones they’ve been doing in class have been awfully tedious and she doesn’t quite have the energy for that right now. So, instead, she closes the book again and takes out a scratch sheet of paper. “Can I see the equations? I’ll solve them too- it’ll be easier for me to check your work that way.”
Wordlessly, Ren hands the sheet over. Mercifully, the two problems he has left are much more straightforward than her own assigned problems. Makoto copies both of them down before handing it back, then quickly starts working on the first one. Based on the brief pause and then the faint sound of another pencil moving across paper, Ren does the same.
They lapse into a comfortable silence as they work, the sound of the TV playing quietly in the background all but fading away as Makoto loses herself in the rhythm of solving the equations. Sitting here and doing second-year math like this can’t help but remind her of last year, doing it for herself as she sat at the dinner table in an empty apartment. Sometimes, if she was lucky, her sister was there, working on her current case at home for once instead of the office. Makoto pauses in the middle of writing the answer to the first problem, feeling a frown tug at the corners of her mouth. Sae has only been getting worse ever since their dad died, with the change being even more apparent in the last few months.
The mechanical voice of the Meta-Nav echoes in her ears again.
“Candidate found. Conditions for navigation have not been met.”
Makoto shakes her head slightly to push the thoughts out of her head. She looks up at Ren, who is still deep in thought- his brows are furrowed intensely in concentration and the tip of his tongue is just barely visible at the corner of his mouth- and feels the tension melt from her shoulders.
Cute.
She quickly looks back down at her paper and resumes her work before she can let that thought catch up with her.
It takes Makoto significantly longer to solve the second problem, which only makes her feel worse. She’s supposed to be better than this. She knows how to do this, but it’s frustratingly vague in her memory. How can she call herself smart if she can’t even solve a simple quadratic equation like this?
In the end, she manages to get through it, which quiets some of the self-loathing thoughts echoing around her mind. For the moment, anyway. They’ll come back. They always do. She sets her pencil down with a sigh and scrubs a hand over her face. Before she drops it again, she laughs once and says “I can see why these were taking you so long in class.”
Ren doesn’t respond.
Puzzled, Makoto drops her hand. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting- him still working and so focused that he didn’t hear her, maybe- but what she sees definitely isn’t it.
Instead, Ren is slumped over the table, head pillowed by his right arm and pencil still in hand. His shoulders rise and fall gently, signaling that he’s fast asleep. He hadn’t even taken his glasses off first- he’d just passed out on the spot. Clearly he must have been more tired than he had let on.
Makoto reaches across the table, intending to tap his shoulder to wake him up, but stops right before she actually touches him. The peaceful look on his face, coupled with how he’s prone to pushing himself through discomfort for the sake of others, keeps her from actually going through with it. Better to just let him sleep.
I should at least take his glasses off. He might accidentally break them in his sleep.
Her hand hangs awkwardly in the air as she stares blankly at his sleeping figure, paralyzed by indecision. On one hand, taking his glasses off would surely be more comfortable for him. On the other, it feels so… intimate for reasons she can’t even fully explain. She’s never seen him without his glasses on, and he’s long since turned it into a part of his mystery. Were they real or were they fake? Nobody could seem to agree, and Ren would never confirm any of the theories. Taking them off for him felt like a violation of that mystery he wears like armor.
Finally, after far too much internal struggle, Makoto reaches over all the way to gently slip off Ren’s glasses. She tries to be as careful as possible to avoid waking him, and aside from a slight shift, he doesn’t react. As she’s folding his glasses, she takes a moment to look down at his face and promptly freezes up. Her breath catches in her throat and she can feel her heartbeat quicken in her chest. He’s always been unfairly attractive, but seeing him now, completely relaxed in a way he never was and without one of his final masks he maintained to keep people from seeing his true self, he’s absolutely stunning.
She’s never noticed how long his eyelashes were before now.
Makoto jerks back into her spot, still holding Ren’s glasses. She can feel herself blushing intensely. Shamelessly ogling her best friend while he’s asleep like this… what on Earth has gotten into her?
Purely to distract herself, she hurriedly folds up his glasses and places them on the table next to him (but just far away enough that he won’t crush them accidentally in his sleep). Still with that damned blush on her face, she checks her phone for the time before gathering all of her textbooks and putting them back in her bag. She leaves the sheet of paper with her solutions, though, and slides it across the table for Ren to find when he wakes up.
“Leaving already?” Boss asks as she stands up. He looks about ready to head out himself.
“Ren fell asleep,” Makoto says, smoothing her hair behind her ear in a halfhearted attempt to get a grip on herself again. “I don’t want to wake him up, but if it’s not too much to ask… could you make sure that he properly gets to bed at some point?”
Boss studies her for a long moment. She’s half certain that she did something wrong and is about to apologize and quickly take her leave when a half smile not too unlike Ren’s own trademark smirk appears on his face. “Well, I’m not staying all night to look after him. But sure, I’ll stick around an extra thirty minutes.”
“Thank you, Boss. I’m sorry to make you stay later.” Makoto bows her head to him and adjusts the strap of her bag to make it more comfortable to carry.
“Yeah, yeah.” Boss waves her off, though he doesn’t seem upset. He looks over at Ren and she doesn’t miss the fond way the corners of his eyes soften. “It’s a good thing he’s got friends like you to keep an eye on him.”
“I try my best,” Makoto responds quietly. She actually dares to sneak another glance at him as she speaks. Which is, of course, a mistake. It sets her pulse quickening again just as it had started to settle, and she definitely doesn’t enjoy feeling so mixed up. Hopefully it’ll go away soon and she won’t have to worry about it anymore. “Goodnight, Boss. Thank you again.”
As she turns to leave, one thought repeats in her head for reasons she can’t quite explain, matching the rhythm of her still too-quick heartbeat and accenting the flush lingering on her cheeks.
I’m in so much trouble.