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The blanket over Akechi is more for the routine than anything else. It’s light and thin, and it’s only pulled up far enough to cover his lower half. Not that he really needs it, anyways. It’s plenty warm in here.
Faint shadows are cast along the wooden floor by cool moonlight that filters in through the window. Across the room, Ren’s shape is bathed in darkness, too close to the window to be hit with the dim light from outside. Akechi’s eyes have adjusted enough to the darkness, though, that he can see Ren’s side rise and fall. Unlike Akechi, Ren didn’t bother with a blanket at all, instead leaving it in a pile next to him.
This isn’t the first summer night that Akechi has spent in LeBlanc’s attic with Ren. It probably won’t be the last, either. The first time had been odd, surreal. He’d felt so out of place. The few times afterwards were almost too natural. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s begun to find Ren’s sofa just as comfortable as own his bed in his apartment. No, he definitely won’t admit it. And especially not to Ren. Akechi can still hear Ren’s smug statement of, “You’re attic trash too, now, Akechi,” that he’d given the morning after Akechi slept over for the first time.
The comfort isn’t there tonight, though. Instead, the room is tense and a little too warm. The air feels heavy in a way that makes Akechi want to hold his breath. He’s sure Ren must feel it too. After all, Akechi can tell that he isn’t sleeping. He’s not sure how, but on some instinctive level, he just knows.
“If neither of us are going to sleep, we might as well just talk,” Akechi finally says.
The humid silence is just too much. Akechi doesn’t want to lay in it, trapped with nothing but his own thoughts. No, much better to at least say something.
Ren doesn’t move, doesn’t roll over or turn his head. He just asks, “What if I was asleep?”
“You weren’t.”
“Okay, you’re right.”
Ren rolls over to his back. Akechi tries to look him in the eyes, but it’s too dark to make out exactly where Ren’s brow stops and his eyes begin. Akechi faces him anyway.
“What do you want to talk about?” Ren asks.
“You know what I want to talk about.”
Akechi wishes he could see Ren’s face more clearly, because when Ren goes quiet, all Akechi can imagine is a deep frown. It’s easy, in the dark, for Ren’s face to twist into an expression Akechi has never seen him make before, even when he knows it isn’t the truth. He tries to dismiss the thought.
Finally, Ren speaks, but some of the lightness has been drained from his tone, “We don’t have to.”
But they did. They had to at some point. It had been coming for a long time.
It was easy, at times, when the two were playing darts or billiards, or going to the jazz club, to forget everything and just exist together. It was easy to fall back into old habits of texting invites, of talking and pretending like there was nothing hanging over them. But that had never really been the case, had it? Even now, even when neither had to lie, they couldn’t get out of the shadow of November. That day still clung to them both like smoke in the air, stubborn and suffocating.
Then Akechi had made the mistake of asking “What’s that?” on instinct when Ren was changing into sweatpants and Akechi noticed a mark — a scar — on his leg.
Ren had brushed it off easily, if not rather awkwardly, at the time.
“Oh, it’s just from— yeah.”
But it was after that that the uncomfortable feeling started. From the moment Akechi realized his mistake, his shoulders had been stiff, his muscles mirroring the tension in the air around him.
“We should,” Akechi forces the words out only for part of him to wish he could take them back.
It isn’t easy, but there are so many things stuck in his head. His mind is a storm that he just needs to unleash somewhere. As for Ren — well, Akechi has always thought they were rather similar.
“You’re probably right,” Ren admits, “but I’m not sure where to start.”
He’s facing the ceiling now. Once Akechi sees, he does the same. With his eyes, he follows the lines in the wood, tracking them like he’s tracing a path through a maze.
He’s realizing that despite how much he wants to say, he doesn’t have the honest words for any of it. It’d be easier if he could lie. If he could put on a fake smile that no one ever seemed to see all the way past and talk like he’s being interviewed. But Ren deserves more than a fake smile and a lie, especially with everything Akechi’s put him through.
It’d be easier if their roles were switched. Akechi knows what he’d feel if he were Ren. Anger. Hate. Feelings that Akechi is familiar with. He knows what to do with those, he knows what they are, and as much as they make him want to claw his way out of an invisible box that no one else can see, they make sense. This sinking feeling in his lungs, the sudden chill in spite of the heat, the desire to reach out and be in Ren’s space and the simultaneous wish that Ren would just tell him to go away already — none of that makes any sense.
Akechi doesn’t know what to do, because he has nothing to be angry at Ren over, and he’s been angry at himself for so long that he’s numb to the feeling.
It’d be easier if he could apologize, but that’s not like him. He’s worried it would sound insincere (even more worried that it would be insincere). What would it do, anyways? How would it sound?
Oh, sorry for shooting you. My bad.
Sorry I tried to kill you. Sorry I sold you out and got you arrested.
How ridiculous. What would Ren do with that?
“I’m sorry.”
Akechi should’ve been the one to say it, but instead, it’s Ren.
“What are you even sorry about?” Akechi asks, sounding a hint more frustrated than he means to. How does Ren say it so naturally? How, when he doesn’t have anything to apologize for?
“The way it all turned out.”
Akechi scoffs, “I’m the one who shot you, you don’t need to apologize to me.”
“You didn’t actually shoot me,” Ren corrects, “And I think that means I won, by the way.”
Akechi can practically hear the smirk in Ren’s voice. He’s surprised when he doesn’t even feel the least bit annoyed by that. When he says, “You can think whatever you want,” it comes out weak.
“You’re a sore loser.”
Akechi’s eyes reach the edge of the ceiling. If they drift much lower, he’ll be looking at the window, and then at Ren. He looks at his hands instead and starts picking at a little piece of fingernail.
The attic has been quiet for far too long.
“I…” he wants to say more, he wants to say so much, but it’s all getting stuck in his throat, “…I wish it all happened differently.” He finally says. It feels like cheating, like he’s taking the safe way out. He’s more or less already said that much.
“I know.”
Akechi tries again, tries to force out even the slightest bit of what’s in his head, “I want you to know that I regret it.”
“I know.”
The stray piece of his nail that he’s been picking at comes off, and he’s left with a jagged edge. He picks at that, too, with the nail on his other hand’s thumb, trying to smooth the surface.
“I didn’t want to— I mean, once I got back…” he isn’t making any sense. He knows that, and he scrapes his thumb harder against his other nail. He just needs to get the words out, get anything out, and Ren is letting him talk and not saying anything, “…I realized… I think that was the only time I ever regretted approaching that bastard Shido. Because you were…” he can’t bring himself to say gone. It sounds too pathetic, too pitiable. It sounds selfish, too, after everything he’s done. He swallows and realizes his throat is dry, “I’m trying to tell you that I’m sorry, even though I know that could never be enough.”
There it is. His true feelings, or something close to them. Everything is mixed up inside Akechi. It has been for years. It’s this twisted mind of his that turns guilt into hatred, longing into jealousy, and puts a thick coat of numbness over just about everything else. His mind plays dirty tricks on him. It hides things, it makes him believe other things that aren’t true. He can’t be sure of much of anything. But this, this regret, that comes from somewhere deeper. That, he’s sure of.
“I know, Akechi.”
Akechi breathes. His hands finally stop moving.
“…Thanks.”
A few seconds pass. Maybe a minute.
Akechi finally looks at Ren. “Can I ask you an odd question?”
Ren turns his head to face Akechi. He has one arm between his head and his pillow.
“No,” Ren says.
“Ha, ha,” Akechi states flatly.
He still can’t make out Ren’s face, but he can hear the smirk in his voice when he says, “Go for it.”
“Did I… say anything, before I…?”
“Didn’t actually shoot me?” Ren completes his sentence when Akechi trails off, then hums and answers, “Something about justice I think. It’s fuzzy. Why?”
Akechi looks away. He looks back at the ceiling, this time at the little stickers that Ren put up there.
“I don’t remember it at all.”
It’s the first time he’s admitted to it, but it’s not the first time it’s happened. The mental shutdowns, the psychotic breakdowns, he can only remember so many of them. He can only remember the ones that made him angry, the ones he could justify as taking out evil people. The ones that felt like he was killing Shido himself.
It always felt selfish to him. Monstrous. Like he was so easily able to wash his hands of blood and move on. Like the lives he’d taken meant so little to him that he couldn’t even remember all of them.
But Ren’s not-death made him realize that it wasn’t just that. It was unnatural how quickly he’d forgotten the details, and then the whole event. Almost like his memories were being erased.
Like he didn’t want to remember.
Not that that was any better. He hated that, too. He hated that his mind was so easily able to hide things from him when he should remember, when he should think about it every second of every day. What he did — didn’t do, technically — to Ren, to others, should haunt him forever. He gets the easy way out instead.
Then again, when has the world ever been fair?
“And here I thought I was the one who got drugged.”
Akechi nearly winces, “I can’t believe you joke about that.”
“I joke about a lot of things.”
A silence settles between the two, but it’s not as heavy as before. Akechi’s eyes bounce between the different stickers.
Ren breaks it first this time, “My turn to ask you something.”
“Alright.”
Ren takes a long moment to say anything. What he’s going to ask must be difficult, more difficult than his joking comments, anyways. Akechi just waits, and his gaze settles on one particular little star on the ceiling.
“Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“Know that…” it sounds like Ren is trying to force the words out as he continues, straining to add, “…they would…”
Oh.
Ren isn’t able to get the rest of the question out, but Akechi has enough of it. He knows what Ren is asking. The interrogation, the— whatever happened to Ren before Nijima and before Akechi saw him. He knows it must’ve been bad somehow. He must’ve seen some of the injuries when he was there, or maybe just the look on Ren’s face gave it away. He isn’t sure. He hates this memory of his for hiding that from him, too.
However he first found out, he knows it was bad. It’s not something Ren talks about much, but every so often, Akechi will catch Ren’s hand shaking. He’s noticed the way Ren will sometimes stare at nothing at all and take too long to respond to anyone trying to break him out of his trance. Akechi knows about Ren’s nightmares.
Akechi doesn’t know how to comment on those things. He doesn’t know the first thing about what you’re supposed to do when you care about someone. But he sees them.
If he can’t do anything else, at least he can give Ren an honest answer.
“No, I didn’t.”
Akechi hears Ren exhale.
“Okay…” Ren breathes, “Okay.”
Akechi can hear the relief in Ren’s voice. He feels a confusing desire to do more.
“I…” Ren sounds nervous, maybe even afraid. Akechi rarely hears that from him, “That’s all I needed to know. The rest…”
“You don’t need to talk about it right now,” Akechi says before he realizes he’s talking.
It takes Ren a couple seconds before he says, slowly, “I… just can’t right now. I’ll tell you more some day, but… not now.”
“That’s alright.”
When the silence settles again, it’s light. Akechi can breathe in and out air that feels much fresher. He looks at Ren, and Ren has rolled over again. Akechi turns onto his side and looks at the back of the sofa. He wonders if anything either of them said made any difference, if either of them will ever be able to get out of that shadow.
Ren speaks, “Hey, Akechi?”
“What?”
“You don’t have to sleep on the sofa, you know.”
“What do you—oh.”
Akechi is still for a few seconds. Then he’s sitting, then standing, then Ren is scooting over and Akechi is laying down next to him. They face opposite directions, but Akechi can feel his presence, warm and there and alive. Akechi doesn’t know what to do with most of his feelings. He doesn’t know how to begin to unravel the twisted knots inside his head. He doesn’t know how to care about someone, how to stop Ren’s nightmares. And when the feeling of wanting to simply lay there in that comfortable silence forever washes over him, he doesn’t know what to do with that, either.
But it doesn’t matter.
Akechi closes his eyes.