Work Text:
Akira sat in the dark. His phone was in his hand, silent for the moment. He looked down and clicked it on to view his messages, the screen illuminating his face and the unruly waves of his hair that fell forward into his eyes.
Akechi Goro
Happy birthday.
Stay up for me? I have a late class.
I’ll make it worth the wait.
Kurusu Akira
How late are we talking?
Akechi Goro
Your parents are still overseas; does it really matter?
Akira had mulled this over while sitting in class.
Kurusu Akira
It doesn’t.
Akechi Goro
That’s what I thought.
Kurusu Akira
Anything in particular I should bring with me? Dress for?
Akechi Goro
Not particularly. Just yourself. You can leave your bag.
That was the last Akira had heard from Akechi since earlier in the day. He knew better than to text for further clarification; he was just as likely to get a “be patient, you’ll see” text as he was to get absolutely nothing at all in response.
It was already late. His clock had just clicked past 10 PM when he heard a rumble outside. Even Morgana’s ear twitched, and he cracked open a blue eye.
“Is that…?”
Akira jumped up and grabbed his keys. “Don’t wait up for me, Mona. I’ll be back later.”
Mona grumbled something about being irresponsible before closing his eyes again.
When Akira stepped outside, his breath caught in his chest. Akechi sat on a motorcycle on the street just outside Akira’s home. It was obvious to Akira that he’d just taken off his helmet – his hair was sweaty, slicked to his forehead. Never one to dress down for any occasion, Akechi was wearing a pair of dark pants and a fitted shirt that made Akira’s brain go a little fuzzy. He locked the front door and quickly ran up the driveway.
“Since when do you have a motorcycle?”
Akechi gave him a half smile in response and held out a spare helmet. “Get on, Akira.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. Akira slid the helmet on, buckled it, and then climbed on behind Akechi. He felt something unclench in his chest when his arms settled around Akechi’s waist. Sure, he had heard from his friends in Tokyo all throughout the day. The amount of birthday wishes from Futaba alone in the group chat had made his phone heat up. His parents had sent him a polite, but clipped, happy birthday message, and reminded him in a follow up that he needed to trim the bushes in the front yard.
Spending his birthday alone was…less than ideal. He tightened his hold and rested his head against Akechi’s back.
The motorcycle rumbled to live underneath him, and then it felt like he was flying. It didn’t surprise Akira that Akechi was a little bit of a reckless driver. Ever since the dissolution of the Metaverse, Akechi had been…unmoored. He’d told Akira once that he never saw himself making it to adulthood; yet here he was, saddled with a life and a future he had no idea what to do with. The two of them had had multiple long conversations about the future that went well into the night; Akira remembered several where he’d never gone to sleep, instead sitting in the window with his knees pulled to his chest, listening to Akechi’s quiet, even voice talk about his university entrance exams until the sky turned pink and he needed to get ready for school.
Akira would never say this to Akechi, but going to university was the right choice for him. It gave him something to focus on, something to put his mind to instead of the past. Something to tune out Shido’s voice or the sound of gunshots in his head.
Neither of them were particularly inclined to seek out a therapist to process said past. Not after Maruki.
So, yes. If Akechi took a curve a little too fast and made Akira’s stomach drop to his feet, well. He couldn’t blame him. He just tightened his hold and went along for the ride.
And it wasn’t as if he wasn’t something of an adrenaline junkie himself.
The roar of the motorcycle was too loud for them to hold any sort of conversation, so Akira sat in silence as they rode. He closed his eyes, letting the feeling of Akechi in his arms and the smell of his cologne ground him, even as the world flew by. When a new sound overtook the sound of the bike, he opened his eyes.
The ocean. Akechi had brought him to the ocean.
A few minutes later, Akechi parked the bike and turned it off. Akira’s ears rang in the sudden quiet.
Akechi pulled off his helmet and turned around to face Akira.
“Are you going to let go of me?”
Akira flushed and unwound his arms from around Akechi’s waist and sat back. He pulled off his helmet with a quiet gasp. His hair was slicked to his forehead and the back of his neck, but the sea breeze felt heavenly on it. He brushed his fingers through it to try and tame it, but he knew it was a lost cause. His hair was always a lost cause.
When Akira climbed off the bike, his legs wobbled. If Akechi noticed, he didn’t say anything. He unclipped a pannier from the side of the bike and nodded towards the beach.
“If we hurry, I might get to do this while its still your birthday.”
Akira glanced at his watch, and his eyes widened. They’d ridden for over an hour.
The two of them walked down the steps onto the beach. It was a clear night, and the moon reflected off of the water. The tide was out, and gentle waves lapped at the sand. Akira followed Akechi until he stopped. He pulled a blanket out of the bag and held it out to Akira.
“Spread this out, will you?”
“Making me work for this surprise? How very like you.”
Akechi let out a quiet laugh and shook his head. “When you’re done, sit down and close your eyes.”
When it came to Akechi, Akira would always do as he was asked. He slipped off his shoes and sat down on the blanket, legs crossed, and closed his eyes. He heard Akechi rummaging through the bag, tearing something open…but he also heard the ocean. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Tried to remember the last time he’d been at the beach, realized it was a trip he took with his friends a year and a half ago.
He heard a click, and then felt the blanket shift as Akechi sat down next to him.
“Open your eyes.”
Akira opened them, and he saw a flame. He blinked and realized the flame was attached to a candle, on top of a small strawberry cake. On top of the cake was tiny writing that said “Happy Birthday!”. Akira felt his lips part in surprise, and his heart clench.
“Well? Make a wish.”
It didn’t take long for him to come up with a wish. He blew out the candle, and the sea breeze took the wisps of smoke away. Akechi plucked the candle from the top of the cake, and then reached into the bag to get out two forks, offering one to Akira
“Plates wouldn’t fit in my bag with the cake and everything else, but I assumed you wouldn’t mind.”
“Your assumption was correct,” Akira said, and he heard his voice catch. He cleared his throat, trying to will away the stinging in his eyes as he took the fork from Akechi.
Before Akechi could comment on it, and before the tears threatening to spill over could ruin the moment, Akira stabbed the fork into the cake, freed a larger-than-advisable bite, and shoved it into his mouth. He turned to the ocean, watching the water wash onto the sand as he chewed and tried to not choke on a piece of a strawberry.
Akechi didn’t say anything. He took a more reasonable sized bite of the cake, and then set it down on the blanket between them. He still didn’t say anything when a tear finally slipped free and fell down Akira’s cheek before it could be wiped away. Akira finally swallowed the last bit of his bite of cake.
“S-Sorry,” he managed to get out. He took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, trying to stem the flow.
“Surely you aren’t apologizing for being understandably upset on your birthday,” Akechi responded dryly.
Akira was more shocked by his tone than anything. He let his arm fall so that he could look at Akechi.
“What?”
Akechi sighed. “You’re stuck out here, away from your support system.” Akira filled in the unspoken away from me. “Your parents, useless as usual, from what I’ve gathered from our conversations, have left you alone to your own devices. Of course, you have Morgana, but it’s difficult to throw a celebration without opposable thumbs.”
“I don’t need a celebration –”
“I know you don’t. You’re not the kind of person that needs grand gestures or huge parties. You shy away from attention. That doesn’t, however, mean you aren’t lonely.”
Akira closed his mouth, knowing better than to protest. Akechi had always been good at reading him like an open book.
Akechi continued. “When we spoke a few nights ago, you sounded…down. More so than usual. I hadn’t been keeping track of the date, so by the time I realized your birthday was coming up, I didn’t have much time to throw anything together beyond this.”
“This is enough, Goro,” Akira said, his voice soft, nearly drowned out by the ocean waves. He sniffled and wiped his eyes one final time before putting his glasses back on. “It’s just…difficult, I guess. When I first moved to Tokyo, I had no plans to make friends. I think I wanted to disappear more than anything. I thought, maybe, if I kept my head down and did exactly what I was supposed to do, I’d make it out on the other side okay. Maybe I wouldn’t be a massive disappointment to my parents, and maybe I’d be able to come back and everything would be the same.”
Akira took a breath, and Akechi was silent.
“On my worst nights out here…there’s a part of me that wishes I’d taken Maruki’s offer.”
Akechi blew out a slow breath. “I’m not surprised.”
Akira looked sideways at him, but Akechi continued before he could speak.
“Any psychologist would say that sending you back out here after the year you had was a terrible idea. When I was finally well enough to visit Leblanc, and Sakura-san told me you were gone, I think my words were ‘Whose brilliant idea was that?’.” Akechi looked down at the cake and stabbed his fork into it to take another bite.
“I say all of this because…I get it. You’re alone, and you feel like you’re a bother or a burden if you bring it up to anyone else.”
Akira felt like he was being read a little too well. He smacked Akechi’s fork to the side so he could get another bite. It was his birthday cake, after all. Several minutes of silence passed between the two of them.
“If Nijima were here, I’m sure she would say what an excellent motivator this is for studying for your entrance exams.”
Akira just stared at Akechi. “What?”
Akechi looked amused. “Come to the same university I’m at. You wanted to study psychology, right? I have no idea why, after Maruki, but I’m not going to discourage you. Come back to Tokyo and live with me.”
Live with…Akechi.
“Wait – how do you know that’s what I want to study?”
“Because Sakura told me you asked her to look up the admission rates for that program at several different universities.”
Akira sighed. He really needed to have another conversation with Futaba about what she was and wasn’t allowed to share with everyone else.
“Then you know how unlikely I am to get in.”
Akechi raised a single eyebrow. “I think if you apply yourself, you’ll get in with no trouble.”
“Okay, now you’re really starting to sound like Makoto,” Akira said, but he found that he was smiling. Akechi gave him a small smile in return.
“Give it some thought? I have a spare room, and I can promise you a bed that’s much more comfortable than that ridiculous setup you had in the attic.”
“As if I’d ever say no to getting to spend more time with you.”
It was well after midnight by the time the cake was finished. Akira scooted over on the blanket to rest his head on Akechi’s shoulder, and earned an arm wrapped around his own shoulders in return. The two of them watched the water, how the moon’s reflection danced and wobbled on the waves.
“Moving back would be good for me. I can’t stay in my parents’ house forever. I suppose we could study together.”
Akechi made a small noise of approval, and one of his hands moved up to wrap a strand of Akira’s hair around his finger.
“I’m sorry I haven’t visited much.”
Akira shook his head, just slightly. “You’re living your life. I get it. I wouldn’t want you to give that up for my sake.”
“When you’re in Tokyo, things will be better. I’ll make them better.”
Akira believed him.
It was strange, having something to look forward to. The weight of it settled on him, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was…it loosened something in his chest. He felt like he could breathe a little easier.
Akira didn’t even realize he had dozed off until Akechi gently nudged him awake.
“Come on. I need to get you home, and I need to get back in time for my morning class.”
The two of them packed everything back in the pannier and trudged through the sand, until their feet hit concrete. Akira watched as Akechi secured the bag back to the bike.
“Do I get the story of how you got this bike?”
Akechi pauses, holding his helmet in his hand. “A proposal: pass your entrance exams, and I’ll tell you. Deal?”
Akira smiled and slipped his helmet on.
“Deal.”