Work Text:
It's on an unassuming Thursday afternoon when Akechi receives the call. A normal time for anyone else, but Akechi is far too used to Shido calling him at all sorts of ridiculous hours of the night, so being contacted sometime reasonable is the first sign that something is wrong. Upon hearing the first beat of that ringtone, a particularly annoying one specific to the array of unknown numbers that Shido uses for him, he instinctively reaches into his pocket and has the call started with swift ease.
"You called, sir?" He answers, trying not to scowl in the middle of the street— as a new member of the Tokyo Police Force, he has an image to maintain, after all.
"The Tokyo Police Department will be receiving a transfer from Sumaru to join the investigation into the Mental Shutdown Cases," Shido tells him, sounding every bit as irritated as Akechi feels having to deal with him, "We'll need a plan for dealing with it. Report back to me once you've met up with him."
"We" means Akechi will do the actual planning, and Shido will sit on his ass and then pretend it was an ingenious plot granted to him by god. The plan is most likely either an unfortunate incident on the field or a mental shutdown, neither of which are any stroke of genius. What a pain.
"Understood." Akechi says despite the fact this new revelation has in fact ruined the perfectly good day he'd been having, and Shido hangs up without another word.
He places the phone back in his coat pocket, muttering a string of curses. For good measure, he briefly fantasises about wringing that old bastard's neck. Remembers his poor mother, who he is doing this all for. Then, Akechi brings a hand to his chin, mind turning.
A transfer request specifically for Akechi's cases is unusual. Thus far, the police had only been notified on a few infrequent cases of mental shutdowns. It was far too early to begin getting more than one officer on the scene to investigate. Sure, Akechi was still a teenager, but he had the backing of the SIU Director, and had clearly solved the previous cases with a competence befitting his much older colleagues. Not to mention that few veterans of the force would actively choose to hang out with a naïve, upstart teen detective. It certainly did not warrant the assistance of a more seasoned officer, least of all one from a faraway seaside city like Sumaru. Why, then, had they come all the way to Tokyo? And why hadn't anyone rejected the transfer request? It would have saved everyone (mainly Akechi) a whole lot of trouble.
Akechi supposes he will simply have to do what he does best, and look into things himself.
⸻⸻
The new detective arrives a mere two days following the phone call heralding his appearance.
Akechi is, as he usually is when not on any active case, chipping away at a mountain of paperwork other people had decided to thrust on the young intern because they couldn't be bothered to do it themselves. Sae sits at the head of the same table, brows furrowed as she rifles studiously through the court files strewn about her. They both remain silent, Sae focused on her case and Akechi mentally floating away as his eyes slowly glaze over, with nothing but the quiet rustle of paper and faint droning of the copier machine in the room next door.
The door to their room swings open, and Sae doesn't so much as glance up from her work until the SIU Director coughs pointedly. Akechi, on the other hand, feels his new colleague's presence bleeding through the room the second the door cracks even an inch, and finds himself sitting expectant and upright before he even steps inside.
"This is our new officer joining the Mental Shutdown Cases," The Director explains nervously, likely having been made aware of Shido's displeasure at the fact and now subject to Akechi's too, "Detective Suou."
For all that everyone (Shido) had been moaning and groaning about him, Detective Suou is remarkably average-looking. He's certainly seen better days; his dark brown hair sits ever so slightly unruly, and the red-brown eyes set in a tanned face are wrought with exhaustion, lacking much of a spark. In Akechi's humble opinion, he could also use a good shave and a steamer for his clothes.
"Tatsuya Suou," he greets slowly, saving Akechi the trouble of asking for his full name later. His eyes are firmly planted on Akechi, and he feels distinctly uncomfortable from it. He's no stranger to the odd look, but something in the way Suou does it feels distinctly different, "Looking forward to working with you."
With his job complete, the SIU Director scurries back up to his office without waiting for the introductions to finish. Sae gives him her name and position before returning once more to her beloved files, leaving Akechi to bear the brunt of socialising with their new recruit.
"It's nice to meet you, Detective," Akechi smiles as innocently as he can, "I'm Goro Akechi. Although I am still young, I hope that you can trust me in helping with the investigation."
Detective Suou nods awkwardly, seemingly uncharmed by the face of a boy who has literally primed himself to be the most endearing young gentleman alive. Instead, he shuffles up to the table and places down the box he'd been carrying with him. Akechi then watches as he rushes to fumble through his pockets until he finds a lighter and begins clicking it non-stop.
"I brought something." Suou explains over the incessant clicking of the lighter. Akechi feels one of his eyebrows twitch.
"Oh! How kind." He says gracefully, tactfully not commenting on the noise.
He reaches for the box as Suou finally seems to catch himself and stop clicking that damn lighter, instead clasping his hands on the table. Oddly self-conscious under Suou's unwavering gaze, Akechi carefully opens it up to reveal a small, round cake decorated with a ring of fruit slices and a couple of cheerful, colourful macarons. In the centre, somebody has piped a disgustingly cutesy depiction of what Akechi assumes is supposed to be Suou himself, winking up at him with a thumbs-up. It's quite honestly overkill.
"Sae-san," Akechi prods her lightly under the table, eager to be free of Suou's sole focus, "Look. Isn't it lovely?"
Sae, his saviour, brightens at the sight of the cake and finally frees the court document from her clutches. She leaves her spot at the table to draw closer, inspecting the cake up close.
"Ah, is this you, Detective?" she asks.
Suou nods, hands twitching towards the lighter again before he remembers himself and pockets it instead. Despite his flat, tired expression, his mannerisms give the sense that he's surprisingly nervous about the whole thing. Not a particularly outgoing one, Akechi notes as Sae hums, amused.
"Did you make it yourself?" she follows up, pulling out her phone and snapping a couple of pictures before she begins texting. Suou's eyes still haven't left him, even as she flits about. Akechi swallows, wondering at what point it no longer becomes impolite to point it out.
"My brother.... Insisted I bring it." Suou answers, a full shade redder than he had been before. Sae finally takes pity on him by dropping the subject.
"How thoughtful. We should take a break to try it later."
"Indeed," Akechi agrees, finally pulling himself together. "I'm looking forward to it."
The cake ends up being quite delicious. Akechi finds himself unable to properly enjoy the taste under Suou's piercing, watchful eyes.
⸻⸻
Over the first few days of their collaboration together, Akechi learns a fair few things about Suou, with all the useful parts granted through the SIU Director's files rather than the man himself. Detective Tatsuya Suou is the younger brother of a well-respected former detective, and son of a much less popular one. He lived out his whole life within Sumaru's city walls with nothing particularly exciting happening (besides a bit of mass hysteria years back), until the mental shutdowns brought him to Tokyo. The transfer was something he requested personally, because he "just wanted to". Thank you, detective, very useful, detective.
When Akechi inputs his name into the Metaverse Navigator, it pings, leaving him the undesirable task of having to wheedle keywords out of an obtuse conversationalist such as Suou.
"What do you think of the mental shutdowns, Suou-san?" Akechi asks him one day, hoping to gain further insight into his mind.
Suou hums thoughtfully, before turning the question back to him.
"What do you think?"
What sort of mind game is this? Akechi asked it first, old man! Just answer the damn question! Suou simply stares at him. He's been doing that an awful lot since he arrived; staring right through Akechi as if he really can see the twisted, rotten truth lying within. Like he expects that with enough sad, wet dog eyes Akechi will spill every answer, every motivation, every step that led him here. It's ridiculous and frankly a bit pathetic of him.
"It may be the start of some sort of epidemic, like the Apathy Syndrome cases from 2009." Akechi suggests lightly, trying to dance around the elephant (assassin) in the room. Suou frowns.
"Might be? You're not sure?"
Akechi laughs sheepishly.
"I can't be 100% sure without knowing the truth, can I?"
"You don't?" Suou asks, looking genuinely incredulous. Akechi's stomach drops. What the fuck is he talking about? In what world would Akechi, freshly sixteen years of age, be able to solve a string of cases that have no discernable connection and leave a grand total of zero pieces of evidence behind?
"As flattered as I am by your belief in my abilities, Suou-san," Akechi's smile feels more forced than usual as he says it, "there's simply no way for us to be able to solve the cases so easily."
Suou's brows furrow at that, like he's four years old and Akechi has just told him that Santa isn't real. He flicks at his lighter a few times, a visible sign that he's realised that he took a wrong turn in the conversation somewhere. Akechi's quickly picked up that the lighter is a source of comfort for him, and, annoyingly, that Suou needs assurance from it quite frequently.
"I just thought.... Sorry."
No, no, Akechi wants to cry, Please tell me what on earth you thought! I'd love to get inside your brain, you absolute madman! Was he delusional, or just stupid?
With indignance and spite in his heart, Akechi throws all the words he can think of at the Meta-Nav until he comes out with Tatsuya Suou, the entire fucking world, and Sumaru City. The app then, unhelpfully, pipes up with a "Candidate Unavailable."
Akechi frowns. First of all, the order of the words is all wrong, because what sort of mental gymnastics could Suou be doing in order to perceive the entire world as only Sumaru city? What the hell does that even mean? If the city were his entire world, wouldn't they be the other way round? (If he loved it so much, he should've just stayed put!) More than that, his palace is apparently "unavailable", i.e. entirely inaccessible, rather than simply "not found", meaning whatever it is, Akechi can't get there anyway. It can't be a matter of distance if the location is "the entire world", and his shadow clearly exists if the palace does, yet Akechi is barred entry for something. His best guess is that there's a requirement he's missing to gain entry, such as gaining a certain degree of Suou's trust, or knowing something specific about him.
He relays as much to Shido with shame burning deep in his stomach. Akechi is supposed to be efficient, indispensable, able to do whatever it takes to get Shido where he needs to be. And yet, some random detective hailing from halfway across the country has him on the verge of ripping his hair out. He quickly decides that he hates Detective Suou. Not quite as much as Shido, but getting quite close.
⸻⸻
It seems that either Shido or the SIU feel the exact same way, because a short string of "misfortunes" befall Suou during his time outside the office: two traffic incidents, a warehouse fire by the ports, and an explosive mailed anonymously to the apartment he's staying at. By some great miracle, Suou escapes them all unscathed, to the point that Akechi begins to wonder if the universe has bestowed him with an armour impenetrable by anything other than divine intervention.
He endeavours to discover more about Suou, which is easier said than done when your target has taken the initiative to start trailing you first. He leaves the office at the same time as Akechi does and follows him to the station despite the fact that Akechi's seen his motorcycle parked outside the police station multiple times. He conspicuously lurks outside of shops and on street corners, sometimes smoking, as if Akechi doesn't have a working pair of fucking eyes. Sometimes, he'll insist on dragging Akechi somewhere for dinner, only to stare at him with that same unreadable gaze the whole time. At least he pays for it. Akechi is still on the fence as to whether it's worth it— Sae treating him to ask about his nonexistent social life is preferable to whatever Suou is up to.
Annoyingly, Akechi can sense Suou still watching him when he finds himself waiting outside the Diet building, counting down the minutes before a long-overdue meeting with Shido. Akechi wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing Shido's ugly mug in the first place, so Suou's meddling is just another grievance for the pile. Vein throbbing in his forehead, Akechi checks the time on his phone; it's almost 8pm, after which if Akechi wastes more than five minutes, Shido will start calling to bark at him to hurry up. It's not nearly busy enough for Akechi to try losing him in a crowd— he'd tried it back at the train station, but Suou had been locked onto him like he posessed some sort of radar specifically for Akechi. He must have bugged his briefcase or phone. Ugh. Akechi is tired, irked, and very much wants the whole ordeal to just be over. At this point, his only option to get Suou off his ass for good is to disappear into thin air.
He all but runs to the nearest alleyway, slipping down it and hurriedly pulling up the Meta-Nav application and rifling through the bookmarks. With all the new foolish, self-important men that Shido had been shaking hands with recently, the list is overloaded with a series of palaces Akechi had been sent to scope out, and Shido's own lies a decent few months down in the history. When he finally lays eyes upon that unforgettable, loathsome name, he taps down as rapidly as he can. As the world finally goes hazy around the edges, Suou manages to sprint up to him and clap a hand on his shoulder.
Akechi will blame Shido for this, he decides, watching Suou inhale deep breaths of Metaverse sea air. He looks Suou down through the red-tinted lenses of his mask as a thought slowly occurs to him. Suou's own palace may be untouchable, but he has no power here, in Shido's. His luck would very quickly run dry in a place like this, and he is too far from his home in Sumaru to have somebody waiting for him. Suou isn't especially social, taking up to days to respond to even Akechi's work texts, so who knows how long it'd take before anybody even realised something was wrong? Akechi wouldn't even have to lift a finger; just throw him to the shadows in the halls and let them rip Suou apart for him. His nose wrinkles at the thought. Alright, he doesn't want to see that for himself, but the principle is there. Since he has a meeting to be at, Akechi promptly takes a few steps towards that god-awful ship.
"Akechi—" Suou starts, reaching out for him, but Akechi doesn't bother to turn back. He only needs to make it far enough away from Suou to leave without him; after that, being followed won't be an issue any more.
"What's—" Akechi hears him ask, before his voice cuts out abruptly as Akechi is tossed out of the Metaverse.
⸻⸻
With Suou out of the equation, the rest of Akechi's life slots back into place, just the way it should be. He doesn't feel bad for Suou one bit— Akechi had long since learned to steel his heart against such feeble regrets. Instead, he allows himself to relax again, no longer stuck under Detective Suou's hovering.
He even finds some joy in doing that godforsaken paperwork, now that he at least gets some privacy when he does it. It's back down to him and Sae, he thinks almost fondly. He hadn't cared much for her before, uninterested in starting conversations with her, but after Suou's suffocating, ever-present eye, it doesn't seem so bad.
"Ah, Akechi," she calls, setting down her bag in the chair next to her usual— head of the table, opposite the door. At the address, Akechi lifts his head up from the witness reports he'd been perusing.
"Yes, Sae-san?"
"I was wondering if you'd seen Detective Suou around. He hasn't answered my messages, so I thought I'd catch him in the office."
As suspected, Suou's elusiveness is indeed his downfall. He'd been gone almost a week, as Akechi had noted that morning.
"I haven't," Akechi replies lightly, "I believe he's been absent for a few days now."
Sae frowns, likely recalling the numerous accidents he'd been entangled in prior.
"That's odd. He's usually sticking to you like glue."
Akechi tries not to scowl at that.
"Perhaps he's learned to mind his own business." He suggests, somewhat bitterly. Sae stifles a short laugh.
"I'm sure he's just protective of you, given your age," she explains. It doesn't change how utterly unpleasant Akechi feels about it, nor douses any flame of Akechi's hatred for the man, "Perhaps he got caught up with something."
"Something" is an understatement. Suou only has his own hubris to blame.
"He could have fallen ill," Akechi suggests, so that it doesn't look like he's celebrating the disappearance too much. Sae thinks for a moment, considering the possibility.
"That's true.... Still, I—" She pauses, and then visibly brightens, "Ah, speak of the devil."
Akechi whips his head to the door so fast he almost strains a muscle. Indeed, pushing open the door to their shared office and looking entirely too healthy for somebody who should, by all accounts, be dead by now, stands Detective Suou. He looks completely unperturbed, waltzing right in without a word as if he'd been there the whole time.
"Detective," Sae greets, blissfully unaware that this may just be the moment that Akechi's sanity shatters for good, "It's good to see you again."
Suou nods. Akechi follows every movement, desperate to catch a tell that he was in some way injured or pained, physical or mental. Yet, as Suou stands there, unruffled, engaging in casual conversation with Sae, he betrays absolutely nothing. Not even a familiar click of a lighter. Akechi wants to grab him by the collar and shake him, screaming Why? How? What the fuck?!, but that's inappropriate workplace behaviour and so he doesn't.
"Yes, it's been a while," He points out politely instead, "Did something happen?" How the hell are you still alive? How did you get out of there?
Suou turns to look at him then, and it's the same gaze that he always uses for Akechi; right through him. But now, with Suou unharmed and in the flesh when Shido's palace would have killed a regular man within minutes, Akechi realises with cold dread that something in his eyes is almost understanding.
Akechi breaks out into a sweat. Inexplicably, he can feel it. Suou knew. Even before the palace. Before he asked Akechi what he thought of the cases. Perhaps before he even sent in the transfer request. He can't explain how, or why, but something in his shaking heart is resolute: Suou has been acutely, keenly aware of the full extent of Akechi's involvement with the mental shutdowns.
Suou hums, and Akechi wrenches himself out of his stupor, hanging nervously onto his next words.
"Not really."
Akechi clenches his fists under the table. That's it? Getting tossed into a very evil, very ambitious man's personal hellscape in the cognitive world was "not really" something happening? Then, what the fuck would count as something actually happening, the end of the world? He needs Suou dead immediately. Letting fate do the work is not enough, Akechi needs it done with his own two hands.
"That's good then." He says, strained, and the conversation dies down from there. Sae engages with him after the case she'd been looking at, the one that had led to the warehouse burning down, and Akechi returns to discreetly having an internal crisis.
Suou does not bring up the day at the Diet building. Instead, he takes his usual seat beside Akechi and opens up the worn notebook he carries around. It's one reserved solely for the shutdown cases, Akechi remembers, well-adjusted to the sight of Suou taking notes in it when interviewing witnesses. He casts a furtive glance Suou's way once he starts writing.
No, Akechi thinks with dismay, looking down at the paper and trying, unsuccessfully, not to begin trembling with an odd combination of rage, fear, and desperation, I won't let him ruin my plans.
"What's this about, Suou-san?" He asks, blinking innocently up at Suou as he points to where the words "Ship??" and a list of familiar names have been listed down. Not only had Suou not died, the nosy bastard had apparently gone around interviewing the cognitions! Akechi thinks he's seconds away from just having an aneurysm.
"Oh," Suou says, awkwardly covering the notes up like a teen girl caught writing a love letter to her crush, "Um. It's nothing."
Nothing his ass! Suou was basically a week away from unravelling the whole damn conspiracy! And all because Akechi had made one mistake in thinking Suou could actually die like a normal person. He was so, so fucked. Shido can never find out about such a catastrophic blunder, or Akechi can kiss revenge goodbye.
"Don't worry," Suou adds, and then, in a tone Akechi has only ever heard from not-yet-disillusioned social workers and therapists in films, "If there's anything you want to talk about, you can trust me."
And then, infuriatingly, Suou never brings it up again.