(you can pm me here or on plurk if you'd like to beforehand, but also if you'd just like to drop something at my doorstep with no preamble please do!!)
[ At the time, Maruki didn't understand why Akechi wouldn't just take the offer in gratitude and then let it go. But if it felt half as monumental as this, half as unbelievable– a genuine chance to start over, dropped unceremoniously into his lap.
He gets it, all at once. Standing in the middle of the kitchen listening to coffee percolate and watching the sun slowly rise over Tokyo, it suddenly makes sense. ]
I've told you again and again that you don't owe me anything for that. You certainly don't owe me this.
It's not a debt to be repaid in my eyes. Not anymore.
[It's not atonement. It's-
A sensation that settles heavy on his chest every time they hang up from a video chat, a call, a text exchange with too many truths shared. Even separated by distance and time, their paths cross more often than they don't. Their routines adjust to new schedules. They never disappear.
Akechi called Maruki to look at the stars in a part of Europe untouched by light pollution. Maruki called him from a new udon restaurant to see if the Detective Prince moniker could still earn a discount.
Maruki once said Akechi was the closest thing to family he had, to a false version of him that feels further and closer than ever. Akechi could never reconcile with it. Never agree. Even now, it feels like a betrayal to a set of ashes only he remembers.
But sometimes-]
What good is a reality where only one of us is off a leash?
Whatever your decision is after you fulfil our agreement - I'll respect it.
[ It's the most mature response he could have given. Certainly more mature than Maruki had expected. Akechi viewing anything about their relationship outside the rigid structure of unpaid debts is a clearer indication of his progress than everything else he's accomplished over the years, and that bar was already set high.
He misses Akechi. Of course he does. Every day, in every way, he misses having him nearby – but it's always been offset by pride in him for taking the help given and striking out on his own, carving a life for himself out of a reality that was never going to make it easy for him.
It would be enough just to see him for a week or two, intrude on his new life long enough to get his fingerprints on it again and then return home. To Tokyo, to the same small apartment they once shared, to a series of oddjobs that have never felt half as fulfilling as the research career he had to leave behind. Maruki isn't unhappy – he knows better than to look the gift horse of a peaceful if boring life in the mouth – but he's stagnant. And Akechi knows it.
It takes a while for his response to come, busy starting breakfast and thinking this over, but finally: ]
I wouldn't mind the opportunity to go back to school. It's something I've considered.
[ But it's always felt risky in Tokyo, even if it was for something wholly unrelated to his former field. ]
Yes, you get one opportunity to meet my high expectations. If you don't, I'll fire you and you'll be passed down the ladder until you're the assistant of a low tier sellout.
[Caesar Zeppeli - he fucking hates that guy.]
I've already vouched for you and sent them an old resume. Prepare a current one. They're willing to allow it after a short assessment and background check.
I can only hope that tax evasion doesn't come back to haunt you.
Every day. Every second. He never thinks about her because she's a persistent ache in his heart that didn't vanish with the pop, pop, pop of bloody bubbles that left a dying man's mouth. It got worse in the days after - in the moments after, in the weeks after, when all he could do was flip through the television to catch the already waning news coverage of someone he spent his whole life trying to kill, to expose.
A day of coverage. A few hours. A ten minute segment on the evening news. A passing comment in a late night opinion piece only a week later.
Illicit affairs were mentioned - his mother wasn't among them. No unwanted children confirmed from the multitude of rumors that spread across the internet like wildfire on a dry plain.
His whole life culminated into a pop instead of the explosion he craved. His mother wasn't avenged, wasn't remembered, wasn't anything so she came for him - the real killer. Every morning her dangling corpse filled his eyes. Every night, he wondered if a memory could cause a mental shutdown. Hoped it could. Wanted it to. She deserved to dig her fingers into Akechi Goro and pull out his heart, piece by piece, the way he shattered hers.
Akechi isn't sure what pulled him out - doesn't know if it was Maruki coaxing him from a bedroom that wasn't his, uncurling Akechi's frozen fingers around a remote and replacing it with a new book, bringing food and water and treating him like a child in need of coddling until Akechi's mouth spewed out every disgusting, vile word he could imagine. He sharpened his tongue on Maruki's nonplussed reaction, kept going until he couldn't form a single noise from a throat ripped to shreds.
He doesn't remember the days after. The weeks after. Foggy memories start to form the month he began to wander through town again. Conversations recalled when he settled back into weekly routines at Jazz Jin, local haunts. When discussions about the future felt cruel, raw and attainable.
He misses his mom, and brings her with him to every place he travels, every stop he lingers at.
He tours gardens off the beaten path in town with little to their name and rests near places that could be graves.
He misses Maruki.
Time spent together so profound and intense. A man who rests in his chest by Loki and Robin Hood's shadow. Someone who has always been there. Is there. Continues to be there. Will never stop being there because Akechi knows for the first time in his life, there's nothing he can do to stop the care that pours freely from someone who understands.
It's the memory of banter at a barstool in a thousand different realities, in a million untold worlds. Extra mushrooms, less spice in meals shared. Snacks pulled out of a bag he never stops carrying when they're together. It's frustration over crosswords that Akechi refuses to click the `reveal answers` button for and would sooner shove his face into a dictionary app for ten days. It's evenings out, movies seen, nights spent at relaxed clubs that never quite feel like Club Quartz. Darts, arcades, gatcha machines for Featherman collectables Akechi's too old for, but they always try their hand at anyway. Maruki got Black Condor and Akechi never forgave him. It's preparing for entrance exams and the last minute realization he needed to cram in history lessons from forgotten online assignments. It's the nights spent nursing coffee in the living room, never alone, with a dimly lit laptop full of college comparisons.
It's Maruki handing him a round-trip ticket to Greece, with a promise and a request.
It's freedom he never felt before - unbound, unburdened - the moment he stepped onto solid ground of a world that felt as new and foreign as Somnius.
He misses Maruki, and brings him to every struggle he faces.
Life isn't easy, but Akechi never wanted it to be. He remembers a voice and faces it. Is stronger for it. Gets better with it. There's nothing he can't accomplish because Maruki Takuto remains in his heart. A man who couldn't be kept down by anyone - Shido, Akechi, or an unjust world that tried to grind them both into dust.]
Tokyo was my home for years - naturally, there I things I prefer there.
The konbinis for one. The corner stores are shit most places. Transportation too - it's acceptable, but not up to par compared to the trains.
There are other factors not worth mentioning. Every place I move, there's a good deal of time where I wonder if I should have stayed in the previous city. Then I move on, again and again. Every place finds a way to put its grip into you. All of them have their own charm.
Tokyo will always be my home - I will refer to it as such until I die, but I have never regretted a moment of my life. Not a single decision.
The world is large, Maruki.
Your persona had the power to create an ideal world wherever you went. That remains within you - Azathoth had that skill because you held that desire and power to begin with. Take advantage of it and create it with your own two hands.
this is like a top five lexy tag ever for me and also i want you dead. my revenge IS coming
Isn't that exactly what Maruki tried impressing upon him so many times? Conversations back in Somnius about travel, a day at an onsen in the mountains before that stretch of time when Akechi became too busy with the election and his own plan, documentaries watched late into the night, road trips during school breaks, insistence on finally getting a passport, the ticket to Athens that he saved for over a year to be able to buy. He always wanted Akechi to see, to understand, to fully internalize and then experience the simple truth that there is life outside of Tokyo, outside of this perfect hell he'd created for himself, even after it dissipated around him with little fanfare.
And it worked. Akechi left. Saw the world and realized he wanted to truly live in it. Every time he's moved, Maruki has stayed up with him past midnight on video calls, screen sharing apartment searches and websites for attractions he could visit once he settled in. He's taken to his more nomadic life with the same intelligent curiosity as everything else, and Maruki couldn't be prouder.
He doesn't know why he never extended the same possibility to himself.
Akechi told him once back in a traditional home in a false reality, seated around the kotatsu in between scary stories, that he ought to move to a rural village and start over once they returned. Maruki said he would consider it, and he did. But other things became more important, and in the years since those other things left his immediate vicinity, he hasn't had it in him to restart his life from scratch.
But a softer landing, in a new place with Akechi by his side, a shared home once more, support and firm pressure when he needs it–
He could do that.
It buzzes through his blood: The unknown, terrifying and thrilling in equal measure. He could do that. ]
You really are the most remarkable young man. I'm proud of you, you know.
Inherent desire and power are important, but so is having the means to make them into reality. That's the gift you're giving me. I'd be a real idiot to turn it down.
[Two fingers press down against buttons that stick when he pushes too long. Akechi Goro isn't the Detective Prince and doesn't have a endless coffers to pull from. His phone is one purchased off market and two years behind after his life restarted in an apartment smaller than the one he was raised in.
I'm proud of you, you know is saved into a folder, unmarked and untitled. A person that saw the first ten images would likely think it's meant to record the words of one man alone.
It's praise, and he's never stopped yearning for it. It warms his chest, in the spot Robin Hood used to be. Maruki dispenses it small doses, even though Akechi-
When he watches him during video chats and their yearly meetups, he can see it. Wonders if it reflects in his own eyes.]
Don't get sentimental.
You're a fool, but you're not idiot. You won't take the easy way out.
[A couch already set up for his arrival, a second desk he forced student workers to move into his office space ready for use.]
I'm ready to see who Maruki Takuto really is. Don't let me down.
sleep with one eye open forever <3 revenge will be sweet
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
no subject
Be my assistant.
Take care of my class and my apartment for a few weeks while I'm at a conference overseas.
Decide whether you want to return then.
no subject
And then what? What happens if I decide I don't want to return?
That's a hypothetical question. I can hardly imagine it.
no subject
You will work. Travel. Study. You won't sit around doing nothing for extended periods.
You'll live with me until you decide a new path.
Don't overcomplicate it.
no subject
He gets it, all at once. Standing in the middle of the kitchen listening to coffee percolate and watching the sun slowly rise over Tokyo, it suddenly makes sense. ]
I've told you again and again that you don't owe me anything for that. You certainly don't owe me this.
no subject
[It's not atonement. It's-
A sensation that settles heavy on his chest every time they hang up from a video chat, a call, a text exchange with too many truths shared. Even separated by distance and time, their paths cross more often than they don't. Their routines adjust to new schedules. They never disappear.
Akechi called Maruki to look at the stars in a part of Europe untouched by light pollution. Maruki called him from a new udon restaurant to see if the Detective Prince moniker could still earn a discount.
Maruki once said Akechi was the closest thing to family he had, to a false version of him that feels further and closer than ever. Akechi could never reconcile with it. Never agree. Even now, it feels like a betrayal to a set of ashes only he remembers.
But sometimes-]
What good is a reality where only one of us is off a leash?
Whatever your decision is after you fulfil our agreement - I'll respect it.
no subject
He misses Akechi. Of course he does. Every day, in every way, he misses having him nearby – but it's always been offset by pride in him for taking the help given and striking out on his own, carving a life for himself out of a reality that was never going to make it easy for him.
It would be enough just to see him for a week or two, intrude on his new life long enough to get his fingerprints on it again and then return home. To Tokyo, to the same small apartment they once shared, to a series of oddjobs that have never felt half as fulfilling as the research career he had to leave behind. Maruki isn't unhappy – he knows better than to look the gift horse of a peaceful if boring life in the mouth – but he's stagnant. And Akechi knows it.
It takes a while for his response to come, busy starting breakfast and thinking this over, but finally: ]
I wouldn't mind the opportunity to go back to school. It's something I've considered.
[ But it's always felt risky in Tokyo, even if it was for something wholly unrelated to his former field. ]
You'd really let me be your assistant?
no subject
Yes, you get one opportunity to meet my high expectations. If you don't, I'll fire you and you'll be passed down the ladder until you're the assistant of a low tier sellout.
[Caesar Zeppeli - he fucking hates that guy.]
I've already vouched for you and sent them an old resume. Prepare a current one. They're willing to allow it after a short assessment and background check.
I can only hope that tax evasion doesn't come back to haunt you.
no subject
1/2
Huh.]
no subject
Unless you're murdering in the Metaverse, that is. Then you'll still manage to pass the background check. What a flawed system our society has.
no subject
Can I ask you something?
no subject
no subject
I've never lived anywhere else. I can't fathom leaving and not missing it. It's a step into the unknown that I can't begin to imagine.
no subject
Every day. Every second. He never thinks about her because she's a persistent ache in his heart that didn't vanish with the pop, pop, pop of bloody bubbles that left a dying man's mouth. It got worse in the days after - in the moments after, in the weeks after, when all he could do was flip through the television to catch the already waning news coverage of someone he spent his whole life trying to kill, to expose.
A day of coverage. A few hours. A ten minute segment on the evening news. A passing comment in a late night opinion piece only a week later.
Illicit affairs were mentioned - his mother wasn't among them. No unwanted children confirmed from the multitude of rumors that spread across the internet like wildfire on a dry plain.
His whole life culminated into a pop instead of the explosion he craved. His mother wasn't avenged, wasn't remembered, wasn't anything so she came for him - the real killer. Every morning her dangling corpse filled his eyes. Every night, he wondered if a memory could cause a mental shutdown. Hoped it could. Wanted it to. She deserved to dig her fingers into Akechi Goro and pull out his heart, piece by piece, the way he shattered hers.
Akechi isn't sure what pulled him out - doesn't know if it was Maruki coaxing him from a bedroom that wasn't his, uncurling Akechi's frozen fingers around a remote and replacing it with a new book, bringing food and water and treating him like a child in need of coddling until Akechi's mouth spewed out every disgusting, vile word he could imagine. He sharpened his tongue on Maruki's nonplussed reaction, kept going until he couldn't form a single noise from a throat ripped to shreds.
He doesn't remember the days after. The weeks after. Foggy memories start to form the month he began to wander through town again. Conversations recalled when he settled back into weekly routines at Jazz Jin, local haunts. When discussions about the future felt cruel, raw and attainable.
He misses his mom, and brings her with him to every place he travels, every stop he lingers at.
He misses Maruki.He tours gardens off the beaten path in town with little to their name and rests near places that could be graves.
Time spent together so profound and intense. A man who rests in his chest by Loki and Robin Hood's shadow. Someone who has always been there. Is there. Continues to be there. Will never stop being there because Akechi knows for the first time in his life, there's nothing he can do to stop the care that pours freely from someone who understands.
It's the memory of banter at a barstool in a thousand different realities, in a million untold worlds. Extra mushrooms, less spice in meals shared. Snacks pulled out of a bag he never stops carrying when they're together. It's frustration over crosswords that Akechi refuses to click the `reveal answers` button for and would sooner shove his face into a dictionary app for ten days. It's evenings out, movies seen, nights spent at relaxed clubs that never quite feel like Club Quartz. Darts, arcades, gatcha machines for Featherman collectables Akechi's too old for, but they always try their hand at anyway. Maruki got Black Condor and Akechi never forgave him. It's preparing for entrance exams and the last minute realization he needed to cram in history lessons from forgotten online assignments. It's the nights spent nursing coffee in the living room, never alone, with a dimly lit laptop full of college comparisons.
It's Maruki handing him a round-trip ticket to Greece, with a promise and a request.
It's freedom he never felt before - unbound, unburdened - the moment he stepped onto solid ground of a world that felt as new and foreign as Somnius.
He misses Maruki, and brings him to every struggle he faces.
Life isn't easy, but Akechi never wanted it to be. He remembers a voice and faces it. Is stronger for it. Gets better with it. There's nothing he can't accomplish because Maruki Takuto remains in his heart. A man who couldn't be kept down by anyone - Shido, Akechi, or an unjust world that tried to grind them both into dust.]
Tokyo was my home for years - naturally, there I things I prefer there.
The konbinis for one. The corner stores are shit most places. Transportation too - it's acceptable, but not up to par compared to the trains.
There are other factors not worth mentioning. Every place I move, there's a good deal of time where I wonder if I should have stayed in the previous city. Then I move on, again and again. Every place finds a way to put its grip into you. All of them have their own charm.
Tokyo will always be my home - I will refer to it as such until I die, but I have never regretted a moment of my life. Not a single decision.
The world is large, Maruki.
Your persona had the power to create an ideal world wherever you went. That remains within you - Azathoth had that skill because you held that desire and power to begin with. Take advantage of it and create it with your own two hands.
this is like a top five lexy tag ever for me and also i want you dead. my revenge IS coming
Isn't that exactly what Maruki tried impressing upon him so many times? Conversations back in Somnius about travel, a day at an onsen in the mountains before that stretch of time when Akechi became too busy with the election and his own plan, documentaries watched late into the night, road trips during school breaks, insistence on finally getting a passport, the ticket to Athens that he saved for over a year to be able to buy. He always wanted Akechi to see, to understand, to fully internalize and then experience the simple truth that there is life outside of Tokyo, outside of this perfect hell he'd created for himself, even after it dissipated around him with little fanfare.
And it worked. Akechi left. Saw the world and realized he wanted to truly live in it. Every time he's moved, Maruki has stayed up with him past midnight on video calls, screen sharing apartment searches and websites for attractions he could visit once he settled in. He's taken to his more nomadic life with the same intelligent curiosity as everything else, and Maruki couldn't be prouder.
He doesn't know why he never extended the same possibility to himself.
Akechi told him once back in a traditional home in a false reality, seated around the kotatsu in between scary stories, that he ought to move to a rural village and start over once they returned. Maruki said he would consider it, and he did. But other things became more important, and in the years since those other things left his immediate vicinity, he hasn't had it in him to restart his life from scratch.
But a softer landing, in a new place with Akechi by his side, a shared home once more, support and firm pressure when he needs it–
He could do that.
It buzzes through his blood: The unknown, terrifying and thrilling in equal measure. He could do that. ]
You really are the most remarkable young man. I'm proud of you, you know.
Inherent desire and power are important, but so is having the means to make them into reality. That's the gift you're giving me. I'd be a real idiot to turn it down.
my goal is to murder u in blood fuckin blood ur so mean 2 me
I'm proud of you, you know is saved into a folder, unmarked and untitled. A person that saw the first ten images would likely think it's meant to record the words of one man alone.
It's praise, and he's never stopped yearning for it. It warms his chest, in the spot Robin Hood used to be. Maruki dispenses it small doses, even though Akechi-
When he watches him during video chats and their yearly meetups, he can see it. Wonders if it reflects in his own eyes.]
Don't get sentimental.
You're a fool, but you're not idiot. You won't take the easy way out.
[A couch already set up for his arrival, a second desk he forced student workers to move into his office space ready for use.]
I'm ready to see who Maruki Takuto really is. Don't let me down.
sleep with one eye open forever <3 revenge will be sweet
Thank you, Akechi. I can't wait to see you.
no subject
I'll call you tomorrow.