Chapter Text
The first time Ren ever had a sip of alcohol he was fourteen years old. His father set a glass of red wine on the kitchen counter in front of him and told him to drink just enough to recognize the taste. And then never drink it again! he’d said—a slight twist on a common mantra. Alcohol is the devil’s drink—killed your uncle, and it’ll kill you too if you don’t watch yourself!
For Ren, who had just started his third year of junior high school, “enough to recognize the taste” turned out to be about half a mouthful. And then Ren’s dad turned out to be a piece of shit, so his second sip is going to be right now. November 12th, 2016.
It’s all Ryuji’s fault.
“To the Phantom Thieves!” Ryuji calls out, holding out his full beer can to the rest of those foolish enough to join him: Ann, Futaba, Yusuke, Ren himself, and Akechi. (Makoto doesn’t want to drink. Haru doesn’t like this flavor of beer, which was a statement so surprising Ren forgot to follow up on it in the moment—though, it does sort of make sense in a roundabout way because this is all her fault. Morgana is a cat.)
Five out of the six of them cheers and respond: “To the Phantom Thieves!” while the last chuckles performatively: “To the Phantom Thieves.”
Then, Ren braces himself and sips. They all do.
The taste is… underwhelming, honestly. Anticlimactic. And he doesn’t feel any different.
“Well?” Makoto asks, almost shouting from the opposite end of Ren’s attic like she could catch a case of mild teen delinquency if she were to get too close.
Ann shrugs. “I like wine better.”
“Course you’d say that.” Ryuji takes another long drink, scrunches up his eyes and nose and swallows hard. Ren can almost see his fourteen year-old self reflected in his friend, gagging in surprise and disgust at a drink that wasn’t made almost entirely out of sugar. “You just, uh, don’t know how to appreciate good quality beer.”
So, Ren was pretty sure even before all this that Ryuji had never had one alcoholic beverage in his entire life. But he’s not about to call him out on it. Bro code, etc.
“Uhhh pressing X to doubt.” Futaba says, having no such restraint and/or code. She points an accusatory finger at Ryuji. “You had no idea these were beer when Yusuke brought ‘em in, I was there.” The haphazard, overly dramatic way she’s waving her can around makes Ren worry for his shitty attic floor, and she jabs her finger again at Ryuji, then Yusuke. “This sucks by the way. Tastes like soda gone bad!”
“Wha—you don’t know anything about anything! I totally knew—”
And there they go. Arguing again. Ren sighs, takes a quiet sip of his drink. He isn’t sure why he bothers to be surprised anymore.
Yusuke has the right idea at least. Completely disengaging from the fight, he’s now wandering away toward an empty corner of the attic, taking tentative drinks from his colorful can. He’s earned it, Ren supposes, considering this is all his fault.
So—hold on. If Yusuke's on his own, Ann Ryuji and Futaba are bickering in the center of the room, Makoto Haru and Morgana off to the side talking on Ren’s mattress that means… means he’s realized far too late that leaves him alone with—
“What do you think of it, Ren?” Akechi asks. Ah, hell.
The stranger masquerading as Ren’s friend-slash-Detective Prince turned Phantom Thief is right next to him, standing just the tiniest bit too close. He’s leaning against Ren’s shelves, holding his can of beer in a casual way that screams I practiced for this, somehow. And maybe he did. He probably did.
“I think the taste probably isn’t the point,” is what Ren decides to respond with.
That makes Akechi laugh pleasantly, like he does at most of the things Ren says. Faker. “You might be right,” he muses, peering carefully at the label around his beer can. “Let’s see… 3.2 percent, it says here. So I can’t imagine anyone will be feeling much of anything. If the taste isn’t the point and the alcohol isn’t the point then what is the point, I wonder?”
Ren takes a moment to think. He’s not sure if he always took a moment to think around Akechi or if that’s a new habit he picked up thanks to the knowledge of certain treacherous, murder-y things he’s recently learnt about the guy, which is great because he never knows how he should be acting in a situation where he really, really should not be changing his behaviors at all or else risk raising the suspicion of the dude planning to kill him in cold blood, the same dude who is staring intensely at Ren, waiting, and Ren is not about to ask what percentages have to do with anything or what 3.2 is actually supposed to mean because that would be admitting defeat and he doesn’t know if he always took a moment to think around Akechi but he sure does know he never once admitted defeat to Akechi and that sure as hell isn’t changing now, so—
“Yusuke liked the label design,” Ren shrugs, steering the conversation to safer territory.
Akechi blinks, speechless. Ren does a little internal fist pump—got him—and they both take a moment to examine their cans, the multitude of colors splashed in what has to be a completely random pattern around them. “The label? It certainly is… something.”
“Bold?” Ren offers.
“Ah!” Akechi blurts out. His eyes go all wide and his entire upper body shakes as he laughs, making his school jacket stretch a little tight around the shoulders. Ren wonders briefly if he sizes down on purpose to be a show off before promptly shoving that thought somewhere else. “Bold, yes, a perfectly apt description for—what is this? An elephant, perhaps?”
Ren peers at the abstract blue blob. “I thought it was a tree.”
“But there, isn't that a trunk?”
They scoot closer together and huddle over Akechi’s can, peering deeply at the blob that curves brazenly around it. Ren can’t see the elephant but can see a joke, so he says: “Tree trunk,” which makes Akechi laugh again, ha. Ren is just racking up the points today, isn’t he?
“I have to ask—how on Earth did Kitagawa-kun manage to acquire these?”
Ren shifts the two inches required to bump their shoulders good-naturedly. “If I tell you are you going to turn him in?”
“Surely you know you can trust my intentions by now. I'm one of you for another week, aren’t I?” Akechi tilts his can in a cute little cheers motion and winks before he takes another drink, and Ren’s heart plummets from the top of his throat all the way down to his feet.
Oh, right. Trust. Intentions. One week. Ha ha.
“Ha,” he forces out a quick laugh and then takes a long, long drink from his beer. He’s seen people do that in movies when they’re pissed off or they need time to think and right now he is definitely feeling both. It doesn’t help all that much but it does convince him to not immediately punch and then flee from his future murderer, like an obvious idiot.
The warmth radiating off of Akechi, still suffusing through Ren’s shoulder where they’d touched (where Ren had touched him, Ren had initiated that because he forgot, again) makes his stomach turn unpleasantly. And his scent is so clear in this close proximity, that familiar combination of clean laundry and artificial cedar. Likely from whatever body wash he uses.
Fake, fake, fake.
Ren buries his disgust somewhere deep inside to deal with later (later, definitely), hopes it doesn’t end up close to that stupid thought about Akechi’s shoulders, tries to pretend nothing has changed, and takes a breath. Ren can be fake too and a fake Ren, full to the brim with a heady cocktail of hubris and blissful ignorance, would probably say something like, “But after that all bets are off, right? I wouldn’t put it past you to find a use for some valuable blackmail.”
A pleased expression flashes across Akechi’s face for just a moment before he tilts his head and pouts. “Do you really think so little of me?”
Yes, I do. I really fucking do. “Nah, I’ll tell you. It’s not that juicy anyway. Yusuke really had no idea what they were—Haru gave him some money for drinks and the cashier just didn’t check his age,” he explains truthfully. Probably thanks to some combination of Yusuke’s unique countenance and his complete ignorance as to what the six-pack of cans really were—he wouldn’t have seemed nervous or suspicious at all. “Then Ryuji figured out they were actually beer and here we are.”
“Fascinating… it’s almost unbelievable that the cashier wouldn’t check. Why, I’ve heard the adults I work with complain about having their age checked constantly and, forgive my bluntness,” Akechi says, with a sly little smile, a secret just for the two of them, “they look a great deal older than Kitagawa-kun. I wonder if that poor cashier was simply caught at a bad time… or perhaps it was Kitagawa-kun’s unique disposition which threw them off guard.”
“I thought the same exact thing!” Ren straightens up, pulse picking up in excitement before he immediately, immediately hates himself. And then hates himself for hating himself—he’s supposed to be acting like everything is the same as before, he’s doing the right thing. Even if he doesn’t mean it. Or does.
Ah, his drink is empty.
“Ha! Once again we’re on the same wavelength I see,” Akechi says. “Talking with you is always so enlightening, you know, I can’t help but—”
Who are you? Ren thinks at Akechi.
“—the moment I heard your first argument,” Akechi says. “I wonder how often it is that two like-minded people such as us find each other? Though, perhaps like-minded isn’t the correct phrase, considering—”
Is any of this real? Ren thinks. He wants to grab him, shake him until he tells the truth, just one truth. The can in his hand bends with a small metallic clink as his grip tightens around it. The clothes, the scent, your eyes, your smile? That voice on the phone, plotting a murder, two murders, my murder, so casually—was that real?
“—valuable insight. In another world, perhaps you could have helped me solve crimes instead of perpetrating them,” Akechi says, and smiles, and laughs so pleasantly. “You have a very keen eye which is—”
Who are you? Ren screams behind his teeth. What are you? He wants to reach up and dig his fingers underneath Akechi’s chin, deep into the skin—to rip his mask off, to claw at the pieces underneath to find if anything there is genuine—any part, any piece, any word he’d said, any second of the hours and hours they’d spent together—
“Hey, Detective Prince!”
Ren snaps out of… god, whatever the hell that was. He turns along with Akechi to find Ryuji holding his phone up to the two of them. “How much d’ya think a photo of you would go for right now?”
“However much you’re imagining I guarantee it’s not as much as I would get for turning you in for being a Phantom Thief.” Akechi jiggles his beer can in a friendly (threatening?) way, then upends it to finish his drink.
“I’m about to turn you in myself,” Ren grumbles at Ryuji, which to his great distaste Akechi catches and snickers at.
He shouldn’t be pissed, considering Ryuji probably saved him from doing something rash and stupid and kind of horrifically violent, but—damn it. It’s the beer’s fault. 3.2, whatever that means.
Ryuji joins him and Akechi after that, easily dominating the conversation and acting far more drunk than Ren thinks he ought to be, his own dubious mental state aside. Then Ann and Futaba meander over, then Yusuke, and Makoto finally steals Ren away with a nervous look on her face.
“Probably best to limit your contact with him, don't you think?” she whispers quickly into his ear.
Ren nods, takes a seat on his mattress and watches Akechi silently for the rest of the evening. Morgana says something to him, Haru says something to him, whatever. A few feet away Akechi is deep in conversation with Ren’s friends—smiling and winking and laughing along—and Ren, despite any and all of his better judgement, wants nothing more than to know what he’s saying.
So yes, it’s probably for the best. Makoto is right. Besides all the Palace excursions and the billiards games and the Mementos runs and the quiet evenings in Leblanc and the Phantom Thief meetups and the dinners at their jazz club and the near-constant occupancy in Ren’s thoughts… best to limit his contact with Akechi Goro.