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“We have to win this—no matter what.”
Akechi’s voice echoes through Ren’s head, and he almost goes dizzy with the need to stay with him for longer. Stay with him before he’s…
Rushing forward, his steps are loud against the wooden floors in the quiet hours of Le Blanc. Ren clasps his fingers around Akechi’s left wrist, brushing against the artificial leather of his gloves instead of warmth. Akechi halts his movement towards the door, and whips around to face Ren.
“Surely you haven’t changed your mind?” Akechi frowns, brows pinching together, “I told you. I refuse to be under someone’s control.”
“No, I—“ Ren’s throat closes up with another onslaught of emotions. “I… Can you…”
Irritated, Akechi shakes Ren’s hand off of his wrist and crosses his arms. He raises a brow, and Ren can’t help but stare at the hard shadows the overhead lamps cast onto his face. “Spit it out, Joker. I didn’t take you for someone who can’t form full sentences.”
Multiple thoughts flash into Ren’s head in response to Akechi’s snapping at him.
This might be the last time we’ll talk with each other alone.
I don’t want you to die.
I wish I could’ve saved you in Shido’s Palace.
Ren says none of these sentences. Instead, what comes out of his mouth is—
“Stay?”
Akechi’s facial expression twists into something unrecognizable. The crease between his brows softens, but with it comes a hauntingly devastated look in his eyes. His lips quiver as if to say something, but then he purses them together. The gaze aimed towards Ren is gone as fast as it appeared, and Akechi sighs.
“Fine. I’ll indulge you this once.”
For the last time, a vicious voice in the back of Ren’s head whispers.
The two of them stand in Ren’s room above Le Blanc, a bit of distance away from where they’re supposed to sleep. Akechi scrunches his nose disapprovingly at the state of the space, and Ren’s eyes follow the movement shamelessly.
His eyes wander back to his bed, and he remarks, “I think we can fit.”
Akechi glares at Ren’s makeshift bed, specifically at the boxes beneath the mattress. “On that? Ren, do you want us to be crammed together like sardines?”
Ren brushes against Akechi’s shoulder as he walks towards the bed, before promptly sitting down at the edge of the mattress. He looks up at the boy before him, now changed into more casual clothing from his tan peacoat.
Dressed in a simple t-shirt and sweatpants from Ren’s closet, Akechi glares down at him with clenched fists. Ren can’t help but think that he looks vulnerable, dressed like this, in his clothes.
Would he have thought about Akechi like this before, too?
He stares into tired auburn eyes, and Ren wills himself to look at him pleadingly.
Akechi sighs for the nth time that night.
They end up fitting on the bed. Akechi’s head is tucked underneath Ren’s chin, with his back pressed against Ren’s chest. Somehow, in their tussle to get comfortable, Ren’s arms end up snaking around Akechi’s waist, their legs entangled under the sheets. Neither of them make any move to adjust themselves.
Ren basks in the silence of both of their breathing—the gentle rise and fall of Akechi’s chest, the warmth of his skin, the steady beat of his heart. Proof that, at this moment, he is still alive.
His breath fans across Akechi’s hair in a sigh, and a heavy feeling lingers in his ribcage, gnawing at his abdomen up to his throat until it feels like breathing is impossible. Despite Akechi’s weight against chest, it doesn’t go away.
“Akechi,” Ren mutters, and his voice sounds strained with use, despite the minutes of silence that had been shrouding the room. Akechi tenses at the mention of his name.
Akechi must hear something in his voice, because Ren can almost sense the displeased expression creep onto his features. “Don’t let your emotions get in the way of this, Amamiya-kun. We have more important matters to focus on tomorrow.”
“You’ll die,” Ren whispers.
“I’m already dead.”
Ren feels like he’s about to throw up. He chokes back an emotion he can’t name and exhales shakily.
Akechi shifts his upper body to look him in the eye, and Ren moves from where he was resting on Akechi’s head to adjust. “This was all an illusion. It was from the beginning.”
“But–”
“Don’t pity me. Don’t you dare,” Akechi spits almost viciously, a vice grip on the arms wrapped around his waist. The small amount of natural lighting seeping through the window shines onto his face, a sheen of something close to sorrow glistening in his eyes.
“I’m not,” Ren says softly, and an emotion he can’t recognize flashes across Akechi’s face. He quickly faces away from Ren, curling up as if to escape his touch.
“Sure,” Akechi huffs, a cross between an aborted laugh and a scoff. The sound of it weighs heavily in Ren’s stomach. “…There’s no use in talking about this, Amamiya-kun.”
The formality again. A stab of hurt spreads throughout Ren’s body, and permeates into his skin through the bone. “Don’t call me that.”
“What?”
“Please, Akechi, just…”
Maybe it was Ren’s tear-choked voice, or the fact that his hands were trembling as they held the boy he’s about to lose, but Akechi relented. “…Okay. Okay, Ren.”
Ren buries his face into Akechi’s hair in a half-hearted attempt to muffle words that were far too honest coming out of his mouth. “Maybe I am spineless. Maybe I don’t want you to die. Your life isn’t trivial, Akechi. Not to me.”
Silence saturates the room. Akechi grips Ren’s shaking hands wrapped around his waist. His hands are warm, without gloves, and Ren stifles a sob.
Ren knows this isn’t what Akechi wants. To keep living in a lie, to keep being manipulated like a doll when he’d just escaped the clutches of Shido.
But Ren is selfish. And selfishly, it is Akechi he wants. “I’m sorry.” I love you, like the fool you say I am.
“… I forgive you.”
Ren blearily blinks his eyes open to an empty space beside him, with only the disturbed sheets as evidence of someone being there.
He splays his hand across the imprint of Akechi across his bed, and grieves.