Chapter Text
Once upon a time, Akira had been looking forward to his third year summer vacation.
Four months stuck in his quiet hometown was torture in sheer mundanity after the physical-mental-emotional roller coaster that was his probation in Tokyo, but Haru had decided that the Phantom Thieves should reconvene and spend some quality time together again and invited them all to spend the summer in one of her father's seaside vacation homes. It was still comparatively mundane, but at least he'd have more company than Morgana's silent snoring and an empty dining table.
(He was still working on wearing his parents down and getting them to send him to Shujin again; it wasn't like they couldn't hire a housesitter to do what he did all day long, and Shujin was a 'vastly superior school in every way,' anyway.
...Rampant rumor problem and social ostracization aside, but they didn't need to know that.)
But there were three days between his re-arrival in Tokyo and the trip to the ocean, which his friends took as an opportunity to catch up (copiously, like they wouldn't have a solid 25 days living in the same house anyway), and by the end of the second day, he was ready to drop.
At some point in the past four months, Shiho and Mishima had been absorbed into the fold—Shiho by product of spending time with Ann again and Mishima by product of wiggling the details of the Phantom Thieves' escapades out of Ryuji—so the press of people was even denser than he'd been prepared for.
(Mishima he knew how to deal with, but Shiho...
There was this unnerving politeness to her everything, even when her eyes were dancing with mischief. He could sort of see how she'd become Ann's friend, because Ann liked people who were real with her while still being even-tempered and kind, but she was Ann's best friend and a little too perceptive for comfort. That gaze felt like she'd have all of his deepest secrets served up on a platter if he gave her so much as an inch.
It made for uncomfortable conversations that felt like interrogations even when they didn't sound like it. A guy could tell when he was being dissected and put back together again, okay.)
(Plus, there were a few things that he'd really prefer Ann's very devoted best friend didn't know.)
The nonstop parade of people wasn't the main issue, really, nor the promise of spending the next month with nine people instead of the seven he'd expected.
No, the main issue came up on the third evening.
Setting: Leblanc Cafe, half past ten P.M.. The party had dwindled down until only Ryuji, Yusuke, and Mishima had yet to leave, Morgana was dozing on a bar stool, and Akira had taken up crepe-making as he listened to the chatter more than participated in it.
(He still wasn't a crepe guy, but it was fun to think about what Ann's reaction might be if he made them for her—delight with the treat? Anger for ruining her latest diet? To make him eat her share again?—and it was something to do when he was bored, so they'd gotten more and more elegant and elaborate as time went on. At this point, he was trying to perfect lace-looped crepe edges because he'd already done about as much as he could with carved strawberries and silver coating.)
"Man, you know the one thing that sucks about this trip?" said Ryuji into his fourth glass of grape soda. He was drooping over one of Leblanc's empty booths across from Mishima. "There won't be any chicks at the beach."
"Indeed," said Yusuke, sitting at the bar with a cup of herbal tea. Akira suspected that he'd be lending his couch out tonight. "Private beaches have their advantages. I anticipate that the uninterrupted scenery will be truly a sight to see."
"No, it's a thing that sucks, dude. It's gonna be so boring. So empty..."
"What are the girls?" Mishima wondered. "Dead meat?"
Akira's question exactly as he stooped to finish arranging the choco-strawberry crepe into its cone.
Ryuji mulled this over, then said, "I mean, sure they're hot, but..."
Yusuke stared at the countertop with a distant look in his eyes. "Their aesthetics are a bit..."
Piping bag in hand, Akira paused. Excuse me?
"Huh... I guess I see what you mean," said Mishima, the traitor. "They're great, but not really girlfriend material."
"They're all way too scary," Ryuji muttered. "The longer I know 'em, the harder it is to think of 'em as even, like, girls."
Yusuke took a sip from his cup. "I have come to realize that true art comes from passion of the heart, and knowing them as well as I do..."
Frankly, that was an unforgivable insult against each and every one of the girls—Haru's blushing dignity and inviting softness, Makoto's passionate morality and straight-laces that were just begging to come undone, Futaba's mischievousness and infectious energy, and Ann's general... Ann-everything—
(Her bright blue eyes and bubbly laughter, her endless warmth and loyalty and trust, her teasing, her silliness, her affection, her soothing chatter and open vulnerability despite everything she'd been through, the way she seemed incapable of not existing in technicolor even when the rest of the world had drained to monochrome, her competitiveness, her unexpected humility, her happy-go-lucky outlook on life that always managed to bring him back down to earth and remind him that the world was so much more than shades of grey...
Plus, you know. Hot. Cute. Fucking gorgeous. Pick a word, any word.)
—and if his friends didn't think any of them were 'girlfriend material', then they were cowards with terrible taste. And that was that.
"What do you think, man?" Ryuji said, directing the question at Akira.
"You all have terrible taste."
No sense in sugarcoating the truth.
Ryuji spluttered. "What the eff?! There ain't nothin' wrong with my taste!"
Akira finished piping the vanilla mousse into its carefully swirled peak. "Then you're a coward."
Ryuji gaped.
"Is your head feeling quite alright?" Yusuke wondered in Akira's general direction.
Akira didn't deign to answer that.
"So... wait," said Mishima, too used to his occasional scathing comments to react. "Does that mean... you think they're girlfriend material?"
What else would it mean? Akira wondered as he put down the piping bag and started fan-cutting strawberries.
"No way..." said Ryuji, like that was an honest-to-god foreign concept. "Like, one of 'em or all of 'em?"
Across his mind floated a sweet summer smile and easy laugh, blue eyes that burned like a flame and that uncomfortably sexy mettle—rapidly followed by the times she'd blithely brushed off or just plain missed his attempts at flirting.
They hadn't been particularly subtle attempts, for the record.
"Just in general," he said aloud, a little too casually.
"Queen's got a nice ass but she's, like, made of iron, dude," Ryuji said, apparently too much of an idiot to see that that was exactly the appeal. "And you've seen the way Haru holds an axe! You just know she's a closet sadist or somethin'—" Hot, but okay. "—and Futaba's practically a kid—" Only enough of one to push that little sister act to the very edge of eroticism with a crafty grin and a breathy voice that could get a guy to agree to almost anything, but okay. "—and Ann..."
Akira looked up, paring knife poised.
Ryuji was squinting at the ceiling while Mishima was glancing between him and Akira, desperately trying to catch Ryuji's eye as he sliced a finger across his throat.
Ryuji didn't see it. "...Yep, her attitude still hasn't gotten any better." He stretched over his sigh. "If anything, it's gotten worse."
Akira put down the paring knife.
"And I wonder who's fault that is..." said Yusuke as Akira ducked under the bar to look for an extra ingredient.
Mishima exhaled slowly, then reasonbly added, "She seems the same to me."
"Wha—? You're saying it's my fault?!"
"You do seem to have a talent for upsetting her," Yusuke noted idly. He was regarding his tea when Akira reemerged with Sojiro's ancient bottle of sriracha.
"Bah." Ryuji downed the rest of his soda. "She goes after you guys too."
"Yeah, but just like the normal amount," Mishima said.
"Indeed..." Yusuke looked like he would be rubbing his nose in remembered pain if he were the type. "She is a reliable teammate and a loyal friend, but as a romantic partner..."
"She's hot, but it would be hell dating her," Ryuji summarized.
The other two nodded in sync.
Which removed any vestiges of guilt Akira might have felt as he pushed his three test crepes over the counter. "Can you taste test these?"
"Ah, certainly."
"Sure, man—woah they're fancy."
"Thanks, Kurusu!"
Call him petty, but the choking and shouts and desperate rush for water was music to his ears, quenching the urge to deck three of his dearest friends (well, two of his closest friends and one tolerated person who he'd probably still end up dying for if push came to shove, but you know).
"Dude, what the eff?!"
"Ah, sorry." Akira smiled. "I thought I might have gone overboard with the chili. Your taste is so awful I thought you wouldn't notice."
"You got a grudge or somethin'?!" Ryuji demanded, rasping and with tears in his eyes. He thumped his chest, hacking a cough. "All I said was Ann'd be a terrible girlfriend."
And that was where you went wrong. Akira turned around to start cleaning up the crepe-construction supplies. The chili-laced strawberry sauce was now useless and the whipped cream would melt before he used it again, so those went in the trash while the washed strawberries were put back in the refrigerator.
Making a variety of exaggerated grimaces as he slowly regained his equilibrium, Ryuji groaned, "What, you got a thing for her or somethin'?"
Akira froze in the middle of shaking out a rag to wipe down the bar with.
A beat of silence passed.
"...Wait. Seriously?"
His face felt traitorously hot, panic icing his veins. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"No way..." said Mishima, awed, and Akira found himself the focus of three lazer-focused stares.
He decided that the best way to escape the situation was to pretend it had never happened, and dedicated himself to removing the sparing flecks of hazelnut-chocolate spread that had made their way onto the counter, though that didn't stop his ears from burning.
"Ann?" Ryuji repeated. "The hell?"
"I suppose your aesthetics do match rather well," Yusuke rasped thoughtfully from where he'd wilted against a cabinet. His eyes were red.
Flattering, if blatantly untrue. Girl who was part-time sunshine, part-time model, part-time divinity and a guy like him? They made good (very very good) friends, but 'matching' was a bit...
Well. She'd made it perfectly clear that she didn't think about him like in that way, so it was a moot point anyway.
Surprisingly enough, Ryuji seemed to agree with Yusuke. "Well, yeah, I guess... Jus' like... what do you see in her?"
When Akira didn't immediately answer, Mishima joined in with, "I wanna know too," like that was any encouragement at all.
Ugh.
"She's..."
She's hot had already been discussed and established and felt fake and flimsy anyway. She's amazing was just begging for clarification requests that he really didn't want to answer. She makes me feel sane—just... no. True, but no. What kind of reason was that, anyway?
"...sweet."
(Affectionate, forever forgiving and forever the optimist, the first person to hear the rumors and accept him anyway. It was impossible not to feel warm around her.)
"...Sweet?" Ryuji looked like that had somehow never occurred to him before. "I-I guess so..."
Frowning, Yusuke said, "You aren't incorrect, though I don't think I ever would have said that that is one of her defining traits."
"Huh," said Mishima. "Guess that's as good a reason as any."
Akira let out a discreet sigh of relief.
Now, to change the subject before they kept going—
"Ma-an," Ryuji said as he rummaged another grape soda out of the fridge without so much as a by-your-leave. "I knew you've been crushin' on someone for a while, but I never thought it'd be Ann."
Akira did his best not to twitch. Ryuji had known?
"Can't believe I didn't see it." Mishima closed the tap on the dish sink and scrubbed his scarlet face dry with a perfectly good dish towel. "I shared a class with both of you for, like, a year!"
"Our noble leader is not known for his forthcoming nature," Yusuke said, like Akira hadn't just fed him a choco-strawberry crepe generously doused in hot sauce explicitly as revenge for insulting Ann. "It does not surprise me that he keeps matters of heart close to his chest, so to speak."
If this conversation doesn't involve me, can I leave? he didn't ask, but desperately wanted to.
"Ehh..." Ryuji sighed as he slid back into his side of the booth. "Wish you'd told me, at least."
Akira hummed noncommittally, guilt leaking in despite himself. By the time he'd known Ryuji well enough to confide this kind of thing in him, Ann had already made it pretty clear that she thought of him as a friend and nothing more, so what was the point?
...Maybe he should have told him anyway.
"So?" Ryuji leaned forward, leering. "When are you gonna tell her?"
"I'm not." Did he really have to keep talking about this?
"Wha'? Lame!" The grape soda can hit the table with a tinny clang. "Why the hell not?"
Akira didn't answer that, instead muttering, "What happened to 'terrible girlfriend'?" because he'd rather die than admit to the three or four times he'd tried and failed.
"Eh, she likes you, dude," was what Ryuji said, completely unaware that there were three words in there that had Akira's blood pressure skyrocketing for a few seconds. "If anyone can deal with her, you can. 'Sides, you're the one who's crushin'. That's gotta count for something."
Can we go back to that first part? Akira wondered pathetically, because 'eh, she likes you, dude,' was a much more pleasant thing to think about than the fact that everyone in this room now knew that Ann Takamaki had his heart in her hands and he had yet to retrieve it.
Dammit.
But whether or not she 'liked' him, he knew better. "I... don't think she's interested."
"What? Seriously?" said Ryuji, a man who had obviously never given any of this any thought in his life.
"Seriously." Akira had no desire to elaborate further, so he tried to add, "How are trip preparations goin—"
Ryuji refused to drop it. "But how can you be sure, man? It's Ann; nobody knows what's going on in her head."
She's actually completely transparent if you look away from her chest for five seconds, Akira thought but didn't get the chance to say. Ryuji was already barreling on.
Punching a fist into his palm, Ryuji declared, "If she's not interested in you, then we just need to get her interested in you."
"Please don't."
This couldn't end well.
Yusuke folded his hands in front of his mouth Gendo-style. "Interesting. How do you propose we do this?"
Et tu, Yusuke?
"Heheh," said Ryuji. Akira didn't like it. "If this guy here thinks she's girlfriend material, then obviously we just need to prove to her that he's boyfriend material!"
Hope flashed in front of Akira's eyes for the two seconds it took him to remember the countless times he'd attempted to do just that.
Keyword: attempted.
"We... really don't," he objected—tried to object. It came out much weaker than he'd intended; that unwilling hope was fighting death to the end.
"Yeah, we do!" said Mishima, and Akira wasn't sure he liked that grin on his face. It was reminding him of old times with guns and things. "And hey, you know what?"
Ryuji fired a finger gun in Mishima's direction. "Shoot."
"We have a whole month to prove it to her."
"...True," said Yusuke, a steely glint dawning in his eyes.
Akira realized something very important at that moment: not only could this not end well, but now there was no possible way for it to end well.
Ryuji, what have you done?
Ryuji grinned like he could hear Akira's silent lamentation. "So it's settled."
"Nothing is settled," Akira tried to interject, but he was ignored wholesale this time.
Grape soda raised in a toast high above the cafe table, Ryuji declared, "There won't be any chicks at the beach, but we won't let this summer go to waste!"
Empty coffee cup and half-full teacup were solemly proffered.
"I, Ryuji Sakamato—" And there he stopped, looking pointedly at the other two.
"Oh, uh, m-me too?" Mishima stammered, and Ryuji rolled his eyes. "A-and I, Yuuki Mishima—"
They both stared at Yusuke, who nodded once before saying, "And I, Yusuke Kitagawa—"
"We herby swear to work hard and make sure our bro, Akira Kurusu, gets the girl. Deadline? The end o' summer."
"Let's do this!" said Mishima while Yusuke nodded with a deep, "Mm-hm."
And it was settled.
Akira wondered if he should just stay home.