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She slapped a wad of cash down and mumbled something like smoke break, grabbing her purse. The bartender let her go with a dubious expression.
Even as she stood to leave, even as she rushed out the back exit, she felt that it was pointless. It was like a movie she'd already read the script for. She was just one of the actors, forever playing her role.
Akechi turns to the left, ready to leave through the alley behind the bar.
A dark figure already blocks the way. Its eyes glint.
Akechi turned sharply, and, just as she knew would happen, a hand closed around her wrist, shockingly warm.
"Wait."
Akechi fails to suppress a shiver. The voice behind her is deep, resonant, and achingly familiar.
She curses the gravity that won't be denied, and slowly, slowly faces her captor.
"Is there a problem?"
Her countenance is camera-ready, but already she knows it won't work. The other woman's eyes narrow.
"Don't give me that, Akechi."
Akechi exhaled.
Scene end.
"What do you want, Kurusu?"
Their hand lingered on her wrist before dropping it. "An explanation would be nice. Maybe an apology."
She sighed as she backed up against the wall, arms crossed and staring deliberately forward. There was a rustling sound as Akira mimicked her posture beside her.
"You'll be left wanting, then. I have nothing to say to you."
She couldn't see them, but she felt the raised eyebrow in her soul.
"Really. You never prepared a monologue in case we met again?"
She clicked her tongue.
"I was counting on there not being an again."
Their eyes were heavy on her. Her neck itched. "Did you think I wouldn't accept you?"
Yes. No. Maybe.
She had thought about it. Of course she thought about it.
"I imagined… a few possibilities."
Sometimes he would grow bored of her, her biggest secret revealed. Sometimes he would hit on her. Another man to disappoint her. Sometimes she went home with him anyway, and came back with an itch scratched, disenchanted but relieved. In her most embarrassing ones, he told her—that he had known the whole time. That he had seen into her heart and still took her out to billiards and the jazz bar and just about anywhere. That he had been her rival, even something like a friend, while seeing her as a girl. And he'd let her cry on his shoulder.
In none of her hypotheticals was he showing up at a lesbian bar with bigger boobs than her.
Her hand itched for a cigarette. Her lips pursed.
"I did not imagine you would appear to me like this." She gave in to the desire to look in their direction, let her eyes crawl up and down their figure for clues on how the last 4 years had gone.
They were wearing a cute little black lace tank top and a chunky grey cardigan that swamped them. So even Joker wanted to be small and delicate on occasion.
"So you're…"
They shrugged. "I'm Akira."
"Hm. I suppose that follows. But I can't personally imagine having such a wishy-washy identity."
They didn't look offended at the jab. They'd probably heard much worse. "So your relationship to gender is totally straightforward and uncomplex, huh?"
She flashed a plastic smile. "So glad you understand!"
Akira snorted.
They let the silence hang for a moment.
"...So, how've you been?"
Fuck it. She dug into her purse for her cigarettes and lighter.
"Fine," she grunted around the cigarette stuffed in her mouth, rustling through her purse with growing irritation.
An ebony lighter popped up in her peripheral vision. It had a little white domino mask on the side. She stared, wide-eyed for a moment. Akira looked predictably smug. They waved her to lean in.
Feeling like she had lost a game of some kind, but still undeniably enjoying the thought of them lighting it for her, she tucked her hair back and leaned over, eyes fixed on Akira's. There was a familiar spark of excitement in them. They flicked the lighter without glancing away. Then, the hiss and smell of burnt paper hit.
She pulled out from the little alcove they had created and let her head hit the back of the wall as she sighed out her first draw.
"You smoke?" She asked after a moment, looking at them sideways. She could afford to give them a cigarette if they asked, but she didn't really want to.
They tilted their head. "Guess."
She took another pull, staring at the wall.
"Your squeaky clean friends wouldn't like it, I bet." Futaba was sensitive to the smell, she remembered. She had complained to Sojiro once during a meeting because he took them out before going on his break, and she could smell the opened carton.
They rolled their eyes. "You don't know them that well. Sojiro, actually, is the one with a zero tolerance policy. He and my primary care really hounded me on it, since it mixes bad with the estrogen."
Her eyes widened in interest. Not that she couldn't have guessed, but, well, you could fake all kinds of things with padding and makeup. "How long have you been on it?"
They tilted their head thoughtfully. "Coming up on two years."
Her cigarette narrowly escaped a quick death by being crushed between her fingers. Instead, her hand merely tensed.
"I see," she bit out. "With a body like that, I would have guessed longer."
"I eat a lot," they said. The way they shifted subtly pushed their tits out. She wasn't convinced it wasn't on purpose.
She stared glumly ahead. "Bully for you."
"You look good," Akira returned.
"I've been on estrogen for three years," she said, answering the unasked question. "Some surgery, too." Whatever she could afford. She wasn't in a good place for chest implants, but she was starting to get itchy about it.
They hummed. Another silence.
Joker broke the last one. It was her move, then.
Akechi cleared her throat. "Well. While I didn't see it coming, I'm less surprised than I would have imagined. Suppose I should have seen the writing on the wall, what with the 'ironic' crossdressing."
Their eyes flickered away in memory. "Yeah, I figured it out… less recently than you did."
"Hm." She could enjoy that, at least.
Then, when they were quiet again, she needled: "You don't seem too shocked by my appearance, either."
"Yeah, no." They stared up, toward the black sky, stars drowned out by Tokyo lights. "I mean… I always knew part of us was the same. So after, I wondered… I didn't want to assume anything about you, when you couldn't speak for yourself, but I…"
Their eyes softened, then turned to stare into hers. "I was sad. Thinking that you might never have gotten the chance. So… I'm relieved. That you're here, and that you got to meet yourself."
She swallowed. Looked away from that hot silver gaze. Exhaled harshly. The tears would not be denied. One streaked down her face. Her makeup must be running.
"I can't stand you. You really are…" her voice was wetter than she would have ever wanted.
Their eyes widened. "Akechi?" A note of concern that lanced a knife in her gut.
"It's the hormones. I'm just… reacting." She squinted at a dumpster, hoping the pressure would hold back further tears. "You know how it is."
"Okay."
She blinked erratically. "What's the lighter for?"
"Hm?"
"It's not for smoking," she snapped. "What's it for?"
Oh, they breathed. They retrieved the lighter, and started playing with it, flicking it on and off.
"Just handy to have. Good conversation starter, light other people's smokes for 'em." Their mouth crooked. "Though my doctor wouldn't like that, either."
"Ah. Wouldn't be Joker if you weren't throwing yourself on the sword for others, would you."
Akira laughed. Their voice had a new fry to it that scratched nicely at her brain.
"My selfless crusade to light other people's cigarettes outside clubs," they muttered, low but loud enough to be clearly heard. "I'm practically a bodhisattva."
"You're a menace," she agreed. Took another draw.
Something about what they said picked at her brain.
"So… Sakura. You're still working for him?"
They hummed. Nodded. "You should come by sometime. Eat something."
"Joker," she said. All she needed to convey that it was a catastrophically bad idea. And a little bitterness, about the jab at her figure.
"I'm serious. They'll be glad you're alive." Voice so soft, so plying. Sickening.
"You want me to play nice with all your little friends?"
They shrugged. "They're good people"
"I have enough friends already," she said. And they're going to be fucking annoying once they find out this happened.
She didn't like that, actually. She wanted Akira to be her secret, tucked away from the rest of her world. And now she was thinking of them as hers, already. Ridiculous.
Akira didn't respond for a while, so she chanced a glance at her, and froze.
It was such an odd expression on her face. Glowing with happiness. Because Akechi had friends.
"You're so strange. You act like you're my—" she cut herself off, re-occupying her mouth with her cigarette. Bad thought. Weird thought.
"I'm just proud of you."
"See, that's the shit I was just talking about." Her face was hot. Her chest was burning. "—and anyway, you have no idea what they're like. They could be habitual kitten-eaters for all you know."
Akira stared at her for a beat too long. She felt the once-over they gave her like a smack to the face.
"...I trust your judgement."
A hyper-speed montage of her teenage decisions blasted through her brain. "Really."
"You're not letting anybody control you, are you?"
Her face hardened. "Never."
Akira made a gesture like, well, there you go.
Enough pieces of this new Akira had come together for her to see the figure of who they might be.
It was like something so small that she hadn't realized it's misalignment was bothering her had clicked into place. It was like the moment you see the hidden face in an optical illusion.
It was the construct of Akira, a boy of 17 years, which had faded and rusted and lost detail over the last four years of reminiscing and ruminating and fantasizing herself to sleep, transforming as if by magic into a living entity, vibrant and unexpected and real.
And that entity, her object of guilt/lust/fear/joy, which had been laying safely dead in her memories, became a subject, which could reach out and touch her, or flit out from between her fingers, alive.
She laughed, and she didn't know why, and she wanted, and she didn't know what. It was familiar, but she didn't hate it. It terrified her.
You are one of the only things from my past I have ever wanted to keep.
She laughed so hard that she started coughing.
"That's why you shouldn't smoke," Akira said, helpfully.
"Fuck off," she wheezed.
"You know, boss is trying to quit. Since he's getting older. You could join him. Start a club."
That spark, that giddy feeling…
"You're starting to sound desperate, Kurusu," she said, pitching her voice low. "Do you want me back in your life that badly?"
Akira's ears reddened. They tucked a strand of hair behind their ear, then tucked it again when it immediately fell out.
"Ah," they said, and nothing else. They tucked their hair back in.
She felt electricity in the tips of her fingers.
"Hey," she said, letting the corners of her mouth turn up. "Why were you coming here, anyway? Looking for something?"
She shuffled a little closer.
"Someone to light a cigarette for? Just from the goodness of your heart?" She blew her next draw in Akira's face, making them blink.
But they didn't recoil, or bat it away. Their eyes narrowed. "I was gonna get a drink. What about you?"
"Mm? What about me?"
"Aren't you projecting? Assuming I would only come here with… certain motivations?"
She blinked innocently. "Oh, well. Maybe I do like to meet people. Socialize."
Their eyebrows raised, eyes heavy-lidded. Their I don't believe you face. They lean ever closer.
"Don't you have enough friends already?"
Her heart was beating too fast. Her tongue itched.
"I guess I'm not here to make friends, then."
She watched their eyes rake over her again.
They were close enough for her to feel their body heat.
Akira was leaning in like they might touch her, so she put a hand on their collar bone and pushed them back with the tips of her fingers. They froze, fear and shame alight on their face.
"If you want to get closer you'll have to take me to dinner first," she said.
She almost cursed herself, the heat in her blood wanting more, now. But that wasn't their game. The push and pull was as a part of their relationship as anything else. And she felt like if she broke the boundary they had never crossed together too soon, this feeling would dissolve like sand in her fingers, and Akira would be gone.
"Do you make all the girls you meet here take you out?"
"You said you would feed me." She batted her eyelashes.
They didn't quite manage to bite back their smile. Their teeth dug into their bottom lip. Plush and shiny. She wanted to chew on them like a dog toy.
"Yeah, honey. Anything you like so long as it's curry."
A laugh crackled out of her. "Honey. That brings back memories."
Their smile was slanted. They reached out and curled their index finger around her thumb, pulled lightly on her hand.
"Could be more than a memory, if you want."
"Desperate," she teased.
"I don't know how else to act around you," they said. Too honest. Their mask was cracked open; pure, earnest want was flowing from the fracture. Their eyes were wet.
Her chest felt so heavy, it was like she was breathing through a straw.
Impulsive and stupid, she interlaced their fingers and brought their knuckles to her lips. Akira looked at her like she was an angel on earth.
"You should make me curry," she said.
Akira blinked as if coming out of a trance.
"...yeah. Um. Yes." They cleared their throat. "I can, let's. I have. My apartment?"
It felt a little soon. She felt the evening spiraling out of her control. As if she'd ever had any in the first place.
"Just curry," she said, a reminder to them both. Something safer (never totally safe). Something familiar.
"Just curry," they repeated. They tugged on her hand, and looked almost surprised when she followed.