Memories of the Past [Persona 3, Shinjiro/Akihiko]
Title: Memories of the Past
Author/Artist: ruby_shards
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for up to and including October 4th.
Prompt: Akihiko/Shinjiro: Between dreams and reality; forgetting things from the past - "Maybe you are just going insane"
Word count: 3,713
A/N: This... turned out a lot longer than I had originally planned. Name taken from the song "Memories of the City" that plays in town during the last month or two.
It scares him that he can hardly remember Miki’s face. Every picture that existed of her was in the orphanage when it burned down, and the pictures in Shinji’s and his minds are all he has left to remember her by, but those images are beginning to fade and blur with age. He has to lie in bed with his eyes closed, thinking back as far as he can, surrounding himself with images of the orphanage, its white-wash walls and tidy little rooms. He can fit her into the scenery after this, like a cardboard cutout standing in the middle of an empty room; she is smaller than him and overly friendly with everyone. She wouldn’t have it in her to hurt anyone, man or beast, and she would scold him if he or Shinji ever showed signs of violence or unnecessary anger toward another person. He remembers these actions, but her face and voice have become blurred, like he’s watching an old, grayscale film that’s suffered damage from water and age, where you can get the gist of the story from the faded images but not the details of the actress’ face.
This process becomes easier when Shinjiro is there: the familiar feel of Shinji at his side helps him remember their times in the orphanage and the similar history they share allows him to put himself back into that time. He’s brought this to Shinjiro’s attention on occasion, and even though Shinji doesn’t completely agree with Akihiko’s desire to remember each detail of the past, he’ll humor him, describing what he remembers of Miki and their time together. This helps, albeit only slightly - it’s welcomed either way, however, and he’s spent several nights, lying in bed with Shinjiro sitting on the floor at his side, discussing their times in the orphanage. He dangles his hand over the side, sometimes tangling it in Shinji’s hair, other times seeking out the other boys hand, traces his fingers over the lines in his palm as he thinks. Shinji is mostly silent during these times, but he contributes sometimes, and he listens to what Akihiko remembers; that is enough, because talking about it to someone helps bring the memories to the surface.
This is perhaps why Shinjiro’s death struck him so hard: watching him die was like watching his sole connection to the past, the orphanage, and Miki crumble at his feet. The feeling of helplessness he felt at the sight of the orphanage burning to the ground returns to him as he watches, wide-eyed and cemented in place with horror, as Shinjiro collapses to the ground and blood begins to pool beneath him. It only occurs to him to move to Shinjiro’s side when Mitsuru and Minato start. He can see the startled expression on both of their faces, but it doesn’t register that this is really, truly happening until he’s turned Shinjiro over and is frantically trying to press his hands to the blossoms of thick, warm blood blooming on his chest. It takes both Iori and Aigis to pry him away from Shinjiro’s still-warm body - Aigis could have done it alone, but Iori had been the first to grab him. The feel of Aigis’s cool hands on his wrists, forcing him to face her and, in a way, the truth, snaps him out of his desperate denial of the situation. It is replaced with an abnormal sense of calm, and he reverts to his old self almost too soon. He can feel Minato’s eyes on his back as he walks to Mitsuru, standing by her side as she phones Ikustuki, her voice wavering as she explains what has just occurred.
It won’t be until late that night, when everyone has returned to the dorm and he has collapsed, half dressed, into his bed, that he’ll allow the full wave of emotions to wash over him, the first pricks of tears will sting at his eyes (he won’t cry yet, however), and the realization that he’s not only lost one sibling throughout the course of his life, but two, will fully settle into his mind.
----
Two months after Shinjiro’s death, Akihiko fights with strength he hadn’t known he was capable of achieving. He keeps Miki and Shinjiro close in his thoughts, using them as his motivation for fighting. The thought of Shinji watching over him, making sure he doesn’t screw this one up, makes him want to prove himself just that much more. Yet despite this constant reference to Shinji, he sometimes gets to thinking: what if he begins to forget Shinji as well? He can imagine him in great detail still. The feel of his body sharing the too-small bed, the smell of old cigarettes and sweat as he presses his face into the back of Shinjiro’s neck, and the way Shinji would talk to him, rough yet kind, as if he were addressing a younger brother, are still firm and clear in his mind. Yet he knows it won’t remain this way, and he fears forgetting these things like he’s forgotten the sound of Miki’s voice.
It is on one of these nights, when he gets to thinking about Shinjiro and what he was like, running over the details so as to permanently imprint them in his mind for future reference, that he finds himself stepping into Shinjiro’s room instead of his own on his way back from Tartarus. He thinks he spies Minato out of the corner of his eye, watching him walk into the wrong room; if he does, he doesn’t say anything. That is the benefit to Minato: he’s silent, yet he understands, and he won’t question him even if he had seen it, like Iori or Takeba would.
He steps into the room, quietly closing the door behind him. Shinji’s room is mostly bare save for folded sheets on the bed and a box of the possessions he had on him at the time of his death. He shuts the door behind him, but he doesn’t turn on the light - the moon provides enough light for him to see comfortably. He stands there for a moment, taking it in, before moving to the desk, sitting down and pulling the box closer so it is directly in front of him. He’s surprised Minato hasn’t come to reclaim the equipment he had assigned to him - some of it would be beneficial, yet it remains untouched, a thin film of dust over top. Minato is a weird person like that: he likely thinks it’d be disrespectful to Shinji or something, and Akihiko laughs, very softly, about this idea. Shinji wouldn’t give a shit. Most of it wasn’t his to begin with, and he would understand the use the others could get from it. He digs through it idly, moving aside a chest protector and Shinji’s Evoker. At the bottom of the box rests a small, unlabeled pill bottle and he tugs it out from the mound of belongings, holding it up to the light. There are only five left, and he can’t help but feel a strong sense of disgust with the little yellow things. If Takaya hadn’t killed Shinji these would have, and it bothers him more knowing his friend had been slowly destroying himself from the inside out than it does knowing Takaya had been the one to provide them.
“You idiot,” he mumbles, his voice sounding too loud in the empty room. He tosses the pills back into the box with a huff of disgust, pushing the box away from him and getting to his feet, moving instead to the side of the bed. He sits on the edge, kicking off his shoes and pulling off his gloves, tossing both to the floor, before lying back, his arms folded behind his head. He slides his cell phone out of his pocket and deposits it on the floor, next to his shoes. The bed smells of Shinjiro still, although the smell has faded, likely due to the sheets being washed; regardless, he grabs the nearest one, disturbing the neat pile at the end of the bed. He folds it up and props it under his head. The room isn’t cold, but the mattress isn’t very comfortable, and it doesn’t look like there’s a pillow anywhere. It isn’t until he lays back that he realizes just how exhausted he is from that night’s trip into Tartarus, and he stifles a yawn behind his hand. He stares at the ceiling, thinking about Miki and Shinji and how things have turned out lately, and it is only a matter of minutes before he drifts off to sleep.
----
He wakes with a start, feeling like someone is watching him. His brain pulls itself sluggishly from slumber, and he opens his eyes, attempting to drag himself fully from the realm of sleep. He can’t shake the feeling he’s not alone, and he glances around the room, not seeing anything in the immediately visible areas - the moon fills the center of the room, yet the darkness of each corner is still obscured from his vision. Deciding it is likely nothing, he reaches over the edge of the bed, picking up his cell phone and flipping it open. It’s four o’clock, and he groans to himself - to keep with his training regime he would have to wake up in three hours, and it feels as if he hasn’t slept more than ten minutes. It’s the brightness of the screen that awakens him enough to show more interest in examining the sinking feeling in his gut, and he twists himself around, popping his spine before sitting up in bed-
and immediately catching a glimpse of movement. He attributes it to his mind playing games with him, yet his muscles tense regardless, a fighter’s instinct to a potential threat. He feels his arms thrumming with built-up energy and anticipation, and he swings his leg over the side of the bed, allowing himself a more thorough look about the room. It is as he’s about to reach for the desk lamp that he sees the source of the movement and his uncomfortable feeling: there is someone sitting in the corner of the room, on the computer chair, who had been obscured by the box and the dark up until this point. He is about to flip the light on when the person gets to their feet and he immediately drops his phone in fright and surprise, the small device falling to the floor with a clatter. It lands out of sight, but he can see the spill of its light over the floor; he doesn’t move to pick it up, however.
“Sh-Shinji,” the word comes out strangled, and even upon voicing it out loud he can’t believe what he’s seeing. The person (Shinjiro, his brain supplies once more) rolls his eyes, huffing loudly in the quiet room. He walks over to Akihiko’s side; Akihiko notices that he sticks to the shadows, his startled brain choosing to pick up on the smallest of the important details that are being thrown at him right now. Shinji. Shinji is standing in front of him, is glancing down at him with a scowl, and he can hardly think beyond that.
“I- You-Shinji, what-“ he tries to voice his thoughts, falters each time. Shinji still doesn’t say anything, instead choosing to sit on the end of the bed, next to Akihiko but not close enough that he can feel him at all. There is silence while Akihiko looks him up and down, checks the bed to see that it really is depressing under Shinji’s supposed weight.
“Who said you were allowed to sleep in my bed?” It is the familiarity of it, the bland normality of the statement, that makes Akihiko want to laugh and cry and punch Shinjiro in the face all at once. He chooses the former of the three, a small, forced chuckle coming from his lips, yet he cannot think of a response. His brain refuses to move past a constant chanting of “it’s Shinji, it’s really Shinji” and he isn’t sure what he would say in response; as a substitute, he leans back in bed, turning himself so he is facing Shinjiro head-on.
After a moment he has gathered his thoughts, and he takes a deep, shaking breath.
“What’s going on?” he questions, and despite the fact he is almost certain this is a dream, he feebly hopes that, maybe, it was the past two months that were a dream. The box on the desk refutes this point, but his brain, in its tired state, informs him that Shinjiro wouldn’t have unpacked to begin with, so it could likely be left over from his return to SEES. Shinji shrugs, but says nothing in response, instead nodding at the wall beside Akihiko.
“If you’re sleeping in my bed, you’re making room,” he remarks, and Akihiko instinctively scoots closer to the edge of the bed. It’s only a twin sized bed, but they have done this on several occasions so it’s not necessarily uncomfortable for either of them. Shinjiro pulls himself onto the bed completely, fitting into the spot between the wall and Akihiko with ease. They sit there for a moment, and Akihiko can’t help himself but look Shinjiro up and down, taking in every inch of him. He wants to say something, anything, but he can’t find the words; instead he moves as close as he can to Shinjiro. He doesn’t think about it; he tosses his arms across Shinjiro’s chest with almost too much force, pressing his face into his arm with a sense of extreme desperation. He has moved on the best he can, but it still weighs heavy on his chest, and he can’t completely forget what has happened between the two of them in their time together. Shinjiro seems shocked, and Akihiko can feel him flinch beneath him, as if he were afraid of his touch. There is surprise on his face when Akihiko presses his arm into his shoulder, but it quickly disappears, and he instead chooses to rest a hand on the small of Akihiko’s back. His fingers are incredibly, painfully cold, but he disregards this.
“Shinji, you idiot. You stupid, selfish son of a bitch,” Akihiko says, as if a dam has broken in his mind and everything he has thought these past two months has come rushing out of his mouth. He latches on to Shinji like he’s a lifeline, ignoring the slight chill that seems to emanate from his body, wanting to press himself as close as he can, to make sure he’s really, truly there. “You son of a bitch, what you put us through, what you put me through,” he repeats it again, and he can feel the warmth at his eyes. He doesn’t allow himself to cry, swallows it down and ignores it instead, because Shinji would never leave him alone about it if he were to give in. He’s done his crying; he did his share and now it’s over. Shinji just lies there, listening to his tirade and keeping that ever-present hand on his back. After a moment of this desperate clinging and swearing, punctuated with another slur of “you moron,” he moves on from this, too. He replaces the frantic action with calm, heaving from the effort of getting it out of his system. It is the one thing he felt justified to do when he saw Shinji next - he had anticipated it to be in the afterlife, not here - and now that he has gotten it out of his system, it has been replaced with a somber, disbelieving awkwardness.
“You done?” Shinji asks, and Akihiko laughs and sighs all in one awkward, strangled sound. That would be just like Shinji; Akihiko could pour his whole heart out to him and he’d still just answer with some gruff, impatient response.
“You don’t-” he drops this thought, shakes his head, and starts again, “I’m dreaming. I have to be.” Shinjiro laughs this time, shaking his head and pulling Akihiko just a fraction of an inch closer. They lie there in silence for a while, Akihiko running through the possibilities of the situation in his head; that this is a dream, that the last two months were a dream, that he’s losing his mind and this is all in his head, caused by exhaustion, the injuries he sustained from that night’s fight in Tartarus, and the thoughts he’d had of Shinjiro before falling asleep. He is thinking this when Shinjiro situations himself so he’s facing Akihiko, his hand shifting to his waist, and his lips pressing, hard and brash, to Akihiko’s. Shinji had never been the romantic type, and the harsh movement is so much like him that Akihiko forgets the oddity of the moment, instead focusing on the coolness of his lips and the weakness in his knees that is caused by this. Shinjiro kisses him for what feels like forever, first soft and conservative, then with more vigor, his tongue tracing the lines of Akihiko’s mouth, lingering on the split in his lip that had been caused by a swift punch he’d suffered from Iori while under Charm. They break apart, and Akihiko has a take a moment to catch his breath. He kisses Shinji’s chin, feeling like he could punch him and kiss him and yell at him all at one time. The emotions spiral in his stomach, fighting each other and canceling each other out, the result being a calm stillness spreading over him. He accepts this for what it is, be it dream or reality or some trick of his mind; he realizes just how tired and sore he is, and he yawns widely. He can feel himself drifting back into sleep, and despite his attempts at fighting it, his vision begins to blur with sleepiness.
“I have to be going insane,” he remarks, looking up at Shinji with half-closed eyes, and then “don’t” slips from his mouth. The rest of that thought fades away, and sleep creeps on him remarkably fast. He thinks this has something to do with the comfort and familiarity of Shinji’s presence, and he snuggles closer, making a final, feeble attempt at fighting the weariness that is overtaking him.
“Stop moping. This is how it should be,” the familiar words sound distant, separated by a veil of sleep, and, unlike the first time he heard them, Akihiko feels oddly content with this idea. He is only barely aware of a lessening of the sensation of Shinjiro’s hand on his waist before he finally succumbs to sleep, darkness taking over his vision.
----
He wakes up two hours later than he had wanted to. It’s still vacation, so he hasn’t missed anything more than his training, yet he is still irked by this when he opens his eyes and judges the amount of light that has come pouring through the window, invading the privacy of the room. He is lying there, half asleep, feeling oddly content, when the events of last night come to him like the memory of a distant dream, and he turns to face the wall, despite knowing there is no possibility anyone could be there. As expected the spot is empty, and he draws a hand over it. There is nothing that suggests Shinji had ever been there - the bed is not particularly rumpled, the spot Shinji would have been in is as cold as if no one had been there to begin with, and nothing else in the room seems to have changed at all. He does a once over of the room, and he can’t help but feel slightly disappointed that there is no one there with him and he is, indeed, alone in Shinji’s old room. The emptiness confirms his suspicion that it was all a dream, and he sighs, looking at the wall with a sort of mild detachment.
He lies there for a moment longer, taking everything in. This bothers him, yet he feels oddly content, like he has finally been given the chance to have closure; he has finally been able to move past that final step, the awkward goodbye that he had been cheated out of before. He flips onto his stomach, fishing with his fingers on the floor for his cell phone, and he frowns, disgruntled, when he doesn’t find it where he had placed it last night. He gives himself a moment to fully awaken before he sits up, getting to his feet and stretching his arms above his head. His muscles are sore and he yawns before bending down to gather up his shoes and gloves. He spots his cell phone underneath the bed, of all places; the cover for the battery has snapped off, and is lying several inches away from the phone itself, amongst a pile of dust bunnies and dirt. Placing his shoes back on the floor he gets to his knees, reaching beneath the bed and fishing the pieces of his cell phone out of the murk. He dusts it off with a breath of air, popping it back together. It would have had to be dropped to come apart like that - he’s done it on several occasions, and it has always taken a bit of force to cause that to happen. He knows it couldn’t have been caused when he sat it down last night. He remembers sitting it down, not dropping it, unless-
He doesn’t continue the thought. He is content to know that the possibility exists, and he pockets the cell phone, gathering up his belongings once more. With a last glance around Shinjiro’s room, breathing in the musty, old cigarette smell one more time, he steps out into the hallway, shutting the door with a click. The click resounds inside him as he walks down the hall toward his own room - Minato is there once more, observing him with a gentle, understanding smile - and he feels content, for the first time in two months, to continue moving on, knowing there’s no chance he’ll forget Miki or Shinji now.
Are you watching, Shinji? Miki? ‘Cause I’m not giving up.
He steps into his room and shuts the door behind him.
Author/Artist: ruby_shards
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for up to and including October 4th.
Prompt: Akihiko/Shinjiro: Between dreams and reality; forgetting things from the past - "Maybe you are just going insane"
Word count: 3,713
A/N: This... turned out a lot longer than I had originally planned. Name taken from the song "Memories of the City" that plays in town during the last month or two.
It scares him that he can hardly remember Miki’s face. Every picture that existed of her was in the orphanage when it burned down, and the pictures in Shinji’s and his minds are all he has left to remember her by, but those images are beginning to fade and blur with age. He has to lie in bed with his eyes closed, thinking back as far as he can, surrounding himself with images of the orphanage, its white-wash walls and tidy little rooms. He can fit her into the scenery after this, like a cardboard cutout standing in the middle of an empty room; she is smaller than him and overly friendly with everyone. She wouldn’t have it in her to hurt anyone, man or beast, and she would scold him if he or Shinji ever showed signs of violence or unnecessary anger toward another person. He remembers these actions, but her face and voice have become blurred, like he’s watching an old, grayscale film that’s suffered damage from water and age, where you can get the gist of the story from the faded images but not the details of the actress’ face.
This process becomes easier when Shinjiro is there: the familiar feel of Shinji at his side helps him remember their times in the orphanage and the similar history they share allows him to put himself back into that time. He’s brought this to Shinjiro’s attention on occasion, and even though Shinji doesn’t completely agree with Akihiko’s desire to remember each detail of the past, he’ll humor him, describing what he remembers of Miki and their time together. This helps, albeit only slightly - it’s welcomed either way, however, and he’s spent several nights, lying in bed with Shinjiro sitting on the floor at his side, discussing their times in the orphanage. He dangles his hand over the side, sometimes tangling it in Shinji’s hair, other times seeking out the other boys hand, traces his fingers over the lines in his palm as he thinks. Shinji is mostly silent during these times, but he contributes sometimes, and he listens to what Akihiko remembers; that is enough, because talking about it to someone helps bring the memories to the surface.
This is perhaps why Shinjiro’s death struck him so hard: watching him die was like watching his sole connection to the past, the orphanage, and Miki crumble at his feet. The feeling of helplessness he felt at the sight of the orphanage burning to the ground returns to him as he watches, wide-eyed and cemented in place with horror, as Shinjiro collapses to the ground and blood begins to pool beneath him. It only occurs to him to move to Shinjiro’s side when Mitsuru and Minato start. He can see the startled expression on both of their faces, but it doesn’t register that this is really, truly happening until he’s turned Shinjiro over and is frantically trying to press his hands to the blossoms of thick, warm blood blooming on his chest. It takes both Iori and Aigis to pry him away from Shinjiro’s still-warm body - Aigis could have done it alone, but Iori had been the first to grab him. The feel of Aigis’s cool hands on his wrists, forcing him to face her and, in a way, the truth, snaps him out of his desperate denial of the situation. It is replaced with an abnormal sense of calm, and he reverts to his old self almost too soon. He can feel Minato’s eyes on his back as he walks to Mitsuru, standing by her side as she phones Ikustuki, her voice wavering as she explains what has just occurred.
It won’t be until late that night, when everyone has returned to the dorm and he has collapsed, half dressed, into his bed, that he’ll allow the full wave of emotions to wash over him, the first pricks of tears will sting at his eyes (he won’t cry yet, however), and the realization that he’s not only lost one sibling throughout the course of his life, but two, will fully settle into his mind.
----
Two months after Shinjiro’s death, Akihiko fights with strength he hadn’t known he was capable of achieving. He keeps Miki and Shinjiro close in his thoughts, using them as his motivation for fighting. The thought of Shinji watching over him, making sure he doesn’t screw this one up, makes him want to prove himself just that much more. Yet despite this constant reference to Shinji, he sometimes gets to thinking: what if he begins to forget Shinji as well? He can imagine him in great detail still. The feel of his body sharing the too-small bed, the smell of old cigarettes and sweat as he presses his face into the back of Shinjiro’s neck, and the way Shinji would talk to him, rough yet kind, as if he were addressing a younger brother, are still firm and clear in his mind. Yet he knows it won’t remain this way, and he fears forgetting these things like he’s forgotten the sound of Miki’s voice.
It is on one of these nights, when he gets to thinking about Shinjiro and what he was like, running over the details so as to permanently imprint them in his mind for future reference, that he finds himself stepping into Shinjiro’s room instead of his own on his way back from Tartarus. He thinks he spies Minato out of the corner of his eye, watching him walk into the wrong room; if he does, he doesn’t say anything. That is the benefit to Minato: he’s silent, yet he understands, and he won’t question him even if he had seen it, like Iori or Takeba would.
He steps into the room, quietly closing the door behind him. Shinji’s room is mostly bare save for folded sheets on the bed and a box of the possessions he had on him at the time of his death. He shuts the door behind him, but he doesn’t turn on the light - the moon provides enough light for him to see comfortably. He stands there for a moment, taking it in, before moving to the desk, sitting down and pulling the box closer so it is directly in front of him. He’s surprised Minato hasn’t come to reclaim the equipment he had assigned to him - some of it would be beneficial, yet it remains untouched, a thin film of dust over top. Minato is a weird person like that: he likely thinks it’d be disrespectful to Shinji or something, and Akihiko laughs, very softly, about this idea. Shinji wouldn’t give a shit. Most of it wasn’t his to begin with, and he would understand the use the others could get from it. He digs through it idly, moving aside a chest protector and Shinji’s Evoker. At the bottom of the box rests a small, unlabeled pill bottle and he tugs it out from the mound of belongings, holding it up to the light. There are only five left, and he can’t help but feel a strong sense of disgust with the little yellow things. If Takaya hadn’t killed Shinji these would have, and it bothers him more knowing his friend had been slowly destroying himself from the inside out than it does knowing Takaya had been the one to provide them.
“You idiot,” he mumbles, his voice sounding too loud in the empty room. He tosses the pills back into the box with a huff of disgust, pushing the box away from him and getting to his feet, moving instead to the side of the bed. He sits on the edge, kicking off his shoes and pulling off his gloves, tossing both to the floor, before lying back, his arms folded behind his head. He slides his cell phone out of his pocket and deposits it on the floor, next to his shoes. The bed smells of Shinjiro still, although the smell has faded, likely due to the sheets being washed; regardless, he grabs the nearest one, disturbing the neat pile at the end of the bed. He folds it up and props it under his head. The room isn’t cold, but the mattress isn’t very comfortable, and it doesn’t look like there’s a pillow anywhere. It isn’t until he lays back that he realizes just how exhausted he is from that night’s trip into Tartarus, and he stifles a yawn behind his hand. He stares at the ceiling, thinking about Miki and Shinji and how things have turned out lately, and it is only a matter of minutes before he drifts off to sleep.
----
He wakes with a start, feeling like someone is watching him. His brain pulls itself sluggishly from slumber, and he opens his eyes, attempting to drag himself fully from the realm of sleep. He can’t shake the feeling he’s not alone, and he glances around the room, not seeing anything in the immediately visible areas - the moon fills the center of the room, yet the darkness of each corner is still obscured from his vision. Deciding it is likely nothing, he reaches over the edge of the bed, picking up his cell phone and flipping it open. It’s four o’clock, and he groans to himself - to keep with his training regime he would have to wake up in three hours, and it feels as if he hasn’t slept more than ten minutes. It’s the brightness of the screen that awakens him enough to show more interest in examining the sinking feeling in his gut, and he twists himself around, popping his spine before sitting up in bed-
and immediately catching a glimpse of movement. He attributes it to his mind playing games with him, yet his muscles tense regardless, a fighter’s instinct to a potential threat. He feels his arms thrumming with built-up energy and anticipation, and he swings his leg over the side of the bed, allowing himself a more thorough look about the room. It is as he’s about to reach for the desk lamp that he sees the source of the movement and his uncomfortable feeling: there is someone sitting in the corner of the room, on the computer chair, who had been obscured by the box and the dark up until this point. He is about to flip the light on when the person gets to their feet and he immediately drops his phone in fright and surprise, the small device falling to the floor with a clatter. It lands out of sight, but he can see the spill of its light over the floor; he doesn’t move to pick it up, however.
“Sh-Shinji,” the word comes out strangled, and even upon voicing it out loud he can’t believe what he’s seeing. The person (Shinjiro, his brain supplies once more) rolls his eyes, huffing loudly in the quiet room. He walks over to Akihiko’s side; Akihiko notices that he sticks to the shadows, his startled brain choosing to pick up on the smallest of the important details that are being thrown at him right now. Shinji. Shinji is standing in front of him, is glancing down at him with a scowl, and he can hardly think beyond that.
“I- You-Shinji, what-“ he tries to voice his thoughts, falters each time. Shinji still doesn’t say anything, instead choosing to sit on the end of the bed, next to Akihiko but not close enough that he can feel him at all. There is silence while Akihiko looks him up and down, checks the bed to see that it really is depressing under Shinji’s supposed weight.
“Who said you were allowed to sleep in my bed?” It is the familiarity of it, the bland normality of the statement, that makes Akihiko want to laugh and cry and punch Shinjiro in the face all at once. He chooses the former of the three, a small, forced chuckle coming from his lips, yet he cannot think of a response. His brain refuses to move past a constant chanting of “it’s Shinji, it’s really Shinji” and he isn’t sure what he would say in response; as a substitute, he leans back in bed, turning himself so he is facing Shinjiro head-on.
After a moment he has gathered his thoughts, and he takes a deep, shaking breath.
“What’s going on?” he questions, and despite the fact he is almost certain this is a dream, he feebly hopes that, maybe, it was the past two months that were a dream. The box on the desk refutes this point, but his brain, in its tired state, informs him that Shinjiro wouldn’t have unpacked to begin with, so it could likely be left over from his return to SEES. Shinji shrugs, but says nothing in response, instead nodding at the wall beside Akihiko.
“If you’re sleeping in my bed, you’re making room,” he remarks, and Akihiko instinctively scoots closer to the edge of the bed. It’s only a twin sized bed, but they have done this on several occasions so it’s not necessarily uncomfortable for either of them. Shinjiro pulls himself onto the bed completely, fitting into the spot between the wall and Akihiko with ease. They sit there for a moment, and Akihiko can’t help himself but look Shinjiro up and down, taking in every inch of him. He wants to say something, anything, but he can’t find the words; instead he moves as close as he can to Shinjiro. He doesn’t think about it; he tosses his arms across Shinjiro’s chest with almost too much force, pressing his face into his arm with a sense of extreme desperation. He has moved on the best he can, but it still weighs heavy on his chest, and he can’t completely forget what has happened between the two of them in their time together. Shinjiro seems shocked, and Akihiko can feel him flinch beneath him, as if he were afraid of his touch. There is surprise on his face when Akihiko presses his arm into his shoulder, but it quickly disappears, and he instead chooses to rest a hand on the small of Akihiko’s back. His fingers are incredibly, painfully cold, but he disregards this.
“Shinji, you idiot. You stupid, selfish son of a bitch,” Akihiko says, as if a dam has broken in his mind and everything he has thought these past two months has come rushing out of his mouth. He latches on to Shinji like he’s a lifeline, ignoring the slight chill that seems to emanate from his body, wanting to press himself as close as he can, to make sure he’s really, truly there. “You son of a bitch, what you put us through, what you put me through,” he repeats it again, and he can feel the warmth at his eyes. He doesn’t allow himself to cry, swallows it down and ignores it instead, because Shinji would never leave him alone about it if he were to give in. He’s done his crying; he did his share and now it’s over. Shinji just lies there, listening to his tirade and keeping that ever-present hand on his back. After a moment of this desperate clinging and swearing, punctuated with another slur of “you moron,” he moves on from this, too. He replaces the frantic action with calm, heaving from the effort of getting it out of his system. It is the one thing he felt justified to do when he saw Shinji next - he had anticipated it to be in the afterlife, not here - and now that he has gotten it out of his system, it has been replaced with a somber, disbelieving awkwardness.
“You done?” Shinji asks, and Akihiko laughs and sighs all in one awkward, strangled sound. That would be just like Shinji; Akihiko could pour his whole heart out to him and he’d still just answer with some gruff, impatient response.
“You don’t-” he drops this thought, shakes his head, and starts again, “I’m dreaming. I have to be.” Shinjiro laughs this time, shaking his head and pulling Akihiko just a fraction of an inch closer. They lie there in silence for a while, Akihiko running through the possibilities of the situation in his head; that this is a dream, that the last two months were a dream, that he’s losing his mind and this is all in his head, caused by exhaustion, the injuries he sustained from that night’s fight in Tartarus, and the thoughts he’d had of Shinjiro before falling asleep. He is thinking this when Shinjiro situations himself so he’s facing Akihiko, his hand shifting to his waist, and his lips pressing, hard and brash, to Akihiko’s. Shinji had never been the romantic type, and the harsh movement is so much like him that Akihiko forgets the oddity of the moment, instead focusing on the coolness of his lips and the weakness in his knees that is caused by this. Shinjiro kisses him for what feels like forever, first soft and conservative, then with more vigor, his tongue tracing the lines of Akihiko’s mouth, lingering on the split in his lip that had been caused by a swift punch he’d suffered from Iori while under Charm. They break apart, and Akihiko has a take a moment to catch his breath. He kisses Shinji’s chin, feeling like he could punch him and kiss him and yell at him all at one time. The emotions spiral in his stomach, fighting each other and canceling each other out, the result being a calm stillness spreading over him. He accepts this for what it is, be it dream or reality or some trick of his mind; he realizes just how tired and sore he is, and he yawns widely. He can feel himself drifting back into sleep, and despite his attempts at fighting it, his vision begins to blur with sleepiness.
“I have to be going insane,” he remarks, looking up at Shinji with half-closed eyes, and then “don’t” slips from his mouth. The rest of that thought fades away, and sleep creeps on him remarkably fast. He thinks this has something to do with the comfort and familiarity of Shinji’s presence, and he snuggles closer, making a final, feeble attempt at fighting the weariness that is overtaking him.
“Stop moping. This is how it should be,” the familiar words sound distant, separated by a veil of sleep, and, unlike the first time he heard them, Akihiko feels oddly content with this idea. He is only barely aware of a lessening of the sensation of Shinjiro’s hand on his waist before he finally succumbs to sleep, darkness taking over his vision.
----
He wakes up two hours later than he had wanted to. It’s still vacation, so he hasn’t missed anything more than his training, yet he is still irked by this when he opens his eyes and judges the amount of light that has come pouring through the window, invading the privacy of the room. He is lying there, half asleep, feeling oddly content, when the events of last night come to him like the memory of a distant dream, and he turns to face the wall, despite knowing there is no possibility anyone could be there. As expected the spot is empty, and he draws a hand over it. There is nothing that suggests Shinji had ever been there - the bed is not particularly rumpled, the spot Shinji would have been in is as cold as if no one had been there to begin with, and nothing else in the room seems to have changed at all. He does a once over of the room, and he can’t help but feel slightly disappointed that there is no one there with him and he is, indeed, alone in Shinji’s old room. The emptiness confirms his suspicion that it was all a dream, and he sighs, looking at the wall with a sort of mild detachment.
He lies there for a moment longer, taking everything in. This bothers him, yet he feels oddly content, like he has finally been given the chance to have closure; he has finally been able to move past that final step, the awkward goodbye that he had been cheated out of before. He flips onto his stomach, fishing with his fingers on the floor for his cell phone, and he frowns, disgruntled, when he doesn’t find it where he had placed it last night. He gives himself a moment to fully awaken before he sits up, getting to his feet and stretching his arms above his head. His muscles are sore and he yawns before bending down to gather up his shoes and gloves. He spots his cell phone underneath the bed, of all places; the cover for the battery has snapped off, and is lying several inches away from the phone itself, amongst a pile of dust bunnies and dirt. Placing his shoes back on the floor he gets to his knees, reaching beneath the bed and fishing the pieces of his cell phone out of the murk. He dusts it off with a breath of air, popping it back together. It would have had to be dropped to come apart like that - he’s done it on several occasions, and it has always taken a bit of force to cause that to happen. He knows it couldn’t have been caused when he sat it down last night. He remembers sitting it down, not dropping it, unless-
He doesn’t continue the thought. He is content to know that the possibility exists, and he pockets the cell phone, gathering up his belongings once more. With a last glance around Shinjiro’s room, breathing in the musty, old cigarette smell one more time, he steps out into the hallway, shutting the door with a click. The click resounds inside him as he walks down the hall toward his own room - Minato is there once more, observing him with a gentle, understanding smile - and he feels content, for the first time in two months, to continue moving on, knowing there’s no chance he’ll forget Miki or Shinji now.
Are you watching, Shinji? Miki? ‘Cause I’m not giving up.
He steps into his room and shuts the door behind him.