#with akimitsu and akishinjimitsu on the side

[still-breathing-au-p3r]

Akihiko returns to the lounge, hairbrush and painkillers in hand, to find that Shinji has not put the hat back on (it had been a fifty-fifty shot whether Shinji would listen or if he’d feel compelled to be a contrary ass on principle). He dozed off in the handful of minutes Akihiko had been upstairs, still sitting up with his cheek propped against his fist.

From this vantage point, the light from the television makes him look monochrome, like a character from one of those old ‘classic’ films Shinji and Mitsuru enjoy but that had never been of much interest to Akihiko.

Shinji shifts and grimaces in his half-slumber, and Akihiko realizes with a start that he’s been standing in the same place just looking at Shinji for several minutes now. Shaking his head at himself, he makes a detour to the kitchen before returning to Shinji’s side and nudging him awake. He passes over the pills and the bottle of water he’d grabbed from the fridge, watching as Shinji carefully swallows them one at a time and steadfastly ignoring the way Shinji glowers at him for his (as Shinji would put it) fussing.

If the TV light was nostalgic, then the feeling that settles over Akihiko’s shoulders as he starts pulling the brush through Shinji’s hair is– he doesn’t quite have the words for it. He can almost feel the smaller body he used to inhabit superimposed over him, going through the exact same motions. He can almost, almost feel an even smaller body warm against his back– Miki leaning the entirety of her negligible weight on him, silently demanding to be given a turn with the brush.

It’s funny– he didn’t feel this way when he’d brushed Shinji’s hair just a couple of months ago. That moment in September feels as far away right now as any of his memories of Miki. What has him feeling so unmoored from the present, he wonders? Maybe it’s the yawning uncertainty of their future after tonight. Maybe he’s just exhausted.

Most likely it’s both.

Shinji’s hair is clean, but it’s even more of a mess than Akihiko had realized, so it’s slow going. He tries not to tug too aggressively through the snarl, even though Shinji’s never been especially tender headed.

As he works, he watches the slope of Shinji’s shoulders deepen, his spine bowing loosely forward as he begins, once again, to drift off. 

Until Akihiko’s phone buzzes and Shinji nearly leaps out of his skin.

“That Kirijo?” Instantly alert, he asks the question before Akihiko can get the phone out of his pocket, let alone read the message.

Akihiko frowns at the screen. It isn’t Mitsuru. It’s not even anything worth reading.

“Spam. I guess that’s what I get for ordering from that shady television program.”

“Yeah it is.”

Akihiko scoffs like he can only hear the derision in Shinji’s voice and not the antsy concern hidden underneath. Then he sighs, because who are either of them fooling. He sets the phone aside on the coffee table and picks the brush back up. “I’ll tell you as soon as I hear from her.”

“...I’ve never seen her like that,” Shinji murmurs after a long pause. He must have come to the same conclusion Akihiko had, because he’s no longer bothering to pretend he’s not worried.

Akihiko closes his eyes briefly, and tries to will away the memory of her despair. “I haven’t either. The only time– the closest I ever saw was…”

“That night, right?” Shinji doesn’t need to spell out which night he means.

“She kept her head together pretty well until the next day, actually.” Akihiko works the brush’s bristles into a particularly dense tangle, hoping to start teasing it apart from the center outward. “It was when, um. When they told us just how bad it was. That you might not ever wake up.”

Shinji whips around to look at him so abruptly that the brush, still embedded in the knot he’d been working on, is yanked right out of Akihiko’s grip.

…So maybe Shinji should have spelled himself out, since evidently they weren’t as on the same page as they’d thought. But even so– why does Shinji look this surprised?

“Are you serious?”

Akihiko stops mid-reach for the brush and stares. Is he serious?

“Shinji, why would I lie about that?”

Shinji doesn’t have an answer, apparently.

Does he really think like that? Does the idea that Mitsuru would fear for him, that the prospect of losing him would be as devastating to her as it is to Akihiko, really seem so far-fetched to him?

The fact that Shinji sees so little of his own worth has long been a point of confused frustration for Akihiko– but to project that disregard onto Mitsuru? A hard, cold weight settles in Akihiko’s chest that he can’t reconcile as being either anger or sorrow.

Is it because Mitsuru hadn’t chased him all around Port Island the way Akihiko had? Shinji should know better than that, should know that simply isn’t how Mitsuru does things.

How should he explain this? He feels like he shouldn’t have to, but he knows from experience that getting Shinji to understand is a better use of his time than just fuming over the fact that he doesn’t get it on his own.

“I– I don’t know if she’d ever tell you this herself… She might not want me to tell you either, but… I think you deserve to know.” Akihiko speaks slowly, pauses often, his hands stilling between brushstrokes as he weighs out his words. “She always wanted to reach out to you like I did after you left. But– I think she was nervous. She didn’t know if you’d even want to talk to her, or see her.”

“…Back then, I prob’ly wouldn’t have wanted to see her, no. I already had you annoying me every chance you got. Last thing I needed was twice as much of that crap.”

Akihiko snorts softly. Shinji is lying through his teeth, and he’s not even making a token effort to pretend otherwise. But Akihiko doesn’t call him out on it. “Well. The point I’m making is: she missed you. A lot.” He gives Shinji’s good shoulder a gentle prod. “Asshole.”

“If you say so.” Shinji’s tone is doubtful, dismissive. The drop of good humor that Akihiko had managed to reclaim evaporates in an instant. The lump in his chest is definitely mostly anger now.

“Why is that so hard for you to believe?” He tries to make the question sound like a joke, but his failure is downright miserable. Bitterness and sadness and even a little disappointment (which Shinji will take offense to most of all, he’s sure) color his tone unmistakably. “She cares about you. She cares about you, Shinji. You know that, right?”

Silence and a subtle extra tension throughout Shinji’s frame are the only answers he receives.

Akihiko grits his teeth. “If she didn’t care, why would she visit you in the hospital whenever she had time? Or go out of her way to make the time, even when you weren’t awake yet? Why would she help you with your makeup work?”

“‘Cause she’s nosy and always needs to butt in when people suck at school.”

Akihiko rolls his eyes. “Yeah, because the Student Council President has that kind of free time to tutor someone whenever they ask. Or don’t ask, in your case. She helps random people catch up on two semesters of school work all the time. Do you know how stupid you sound right now?”

“You sure seem happy to tell me.”

“Shinji, would she have cried on you if she didn’t like you even a little? If she didn’t trust you?”

“I was the only person in arms’ reach, Aki.”

“Oh my god.” Aki throws his hands up in surrender. The brush once again stays trapped in Shinji’s hair. “You’re impossible.”

“I don’t wanna hear that from you of all people.”

Akihiko exhales harshly through his nose, and the two of them lapse into terse silence for a while. He returns to his work with the brush, measuring out the strokes with patience and deliberation, keeping them gentle and even. He tries to match his breathing to that same rhythm and settle his churning thoughts.

He only has any real luck with the breathing exercises.

“I’m not–” Shinji eventually mutters. “It’s not like I’m tryin’ to accuse her of not caring or anything like that. I just…don’t get it.”

“Shinji…”

“Aki I am beggin’ you– can we talk about literally anything else? Please?”

Akihiko sighs. If Shinji’s breaking out the social niceties with him, he knows it’s serious. “Let me say one more thing and then I’ll drop it, I swear.”

Shinji doesn’t answer, and Akihiko knows that not being rebuffed is as close to being given permission as he’s going to get. “Answer me this: if it’d been Junpei closest to her, do you really think Mitsuru would’ve done what she did with you?” No offense to Junpei of course.

“...Can’t really picture anyone crying on Junpei’s shoulder, to be honest.”

It’s a weak joke and an even weaker deflection. For all intents and purposes, Shinji is conceding his point, and Akihiko could just let it lie. Maybe he even should. For some reason he can’t.

“If it was Arisato, then? Or Takeba, or Yamagishi?”

“Okay Aki, I get it.”

Akihiko really isn’t sure if he does, but he drops the subject like he should have three questions ago.

Silence returns, and Akihiko continues to methodically work through the disorder. The one-two punch of adrenaline from the false alarm text message and their argument that had reanimated Shinji begins to ebb, and Shinji ebbs along with it. He droops degree by degree, his breath slowing down and deepening. 

Even once Akihiko has undone all of the knots he can find and the brush glides smooth and uninterrupted, he keeps running it through until he’s absolutely certain that Shinji is well and truly asleep and not just drifting again.

He sets the brush aside and eases Shinji down into a recline. At the last second he realizes that there’s nothing to support Shinji’s head– his coat might work as a makeshift pillow, but he’d have to fold it first and he doesn’t think he can prop Shinji back upright without waking him. As a temporary measure, Akihiko ends up resting Shinji’s head on his leg.

He folds up the coat as planned, but once that’s done, it sits perched on his other knee, forgotten.

“I really don’t get it, you know?” Akihiko murmurs, quietly enough that even a light sleeper like Shinji wouldn’t be woken by it. “I don’t understand how you can’t see how much you matter to people. To me, to Mitsuru… Everyone else, too.”

With a last sigh, Akihiko gently sweeps hair from Shinji’s forehead. “What am I going to do with you?” 

There isn’t so much as a flutter of his eyelids in response. His expression is placid, serene. His features are at once softened by sleep and sharpened by the light from the television– the tension he habitually carries in his brow and the corners of his mouth has been, for the moment, smoothed away; while shadow boldly outlines his cheekbone, the hard edge of his jaw, the ridge of his nose.

The effect is striking. The effect is…attractive. Shinji is, even without the compelling lighting. Akihiko is reminded once again of those old black and white movies, or the illustrations in Miki’s favorite book of fairy tales– the one she’d cajoled him and Shinji into reading to her so often that in the end it had been held together by tape and prayers, and he can remember the pictures with perfect clarity even after all this time.

Shinji wouldn’t look out of place at all in one of those pen-and-ink drawings. Akihiko can picture him there so clearly: not as a prince (which he’d hate the idea of anyway, Akihiko is sure), but perhaps a heroic woodcutter or fisherman. The thought brings a soft smile to Akihiko’s face, but it quickly wilts.

He’s had a long time to mull over what he feels ever since their second awakenings, and his– moment of weakness. He’s had even longer to grapple with what had happened with Mitsuru in July, and what it made him realize. He’d been hoping that the end of the Dark Hour would mean he had time to do something with all of those feelings; or at least figure out what, if anything, he even wanted to do with them.

But acting on any of it just isn’t an option anymore. When it comes to Shinji, the last thing Akihiko wants is to risk disturbing what they already have, or worse– to drive Shinji away again. Not when Akihiko and Mitsuru need him more than ever. And as for Mitsuru…

She has far more important things to worry about. He can’t make himself into yet another of Mitsuru’s problems. He won’t do that to her.

So he’ll hold the same pattern he has been, and he’ll focus on what actually matters.

But…one more moment of weakness won’t hurt, right?

He’s allowed his fingertips to linger at Shinji’s temple, and he allows them now to stray back into his hair, tucking it behind his ear.

And he allows himself, for the very first time, just for right now, to really appreciate how handsome Shinji is. He can go back to pretending he hasn’t noticed tomorrow.

He never does end up moving to the other couch. He falls asleep where he sits, Shinji’s head in his lap and his hair threaded through Akihiko’s fingers.