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Ren learns early that Goro Akechi is a thing to be observed.
Not in the way people watch birds, or sunsets, or even train wrecks. No—Goro is curated. Framed. Lit from the right angle. Every gesture deliberate, every smile practiced into something sharp enough to cut glass. He speaks like he’s auditioning. He laughs like he’s listening to himself from outside his body.
Ren recognizes the type immediately.
Akechi is a performance piece.
And Ren—thief, trickster, false-faced god—knows what it means to survive by becoming art.
They meet in cafés and studios and places that pretend to be neutral ground. Always public. Always watched. Akechi leans forward with his chin in his hand, eyes bright, voice sweet, saying just enough to feel intimate while giving away nothing real. He talks about justice like it’s a painting he’s restoring, scraping grime from the surface so something pure can shine through.
Ren nods. Smiles. Lets his reflection live in the glass between them.
What he doesn’t do—what he can’t do—is stop looking.
Because the longer Ren watches, the more the cracks show.
Akechi’s hands shake when he thinks no one sees. His smile slips half a second too late. His eyes go dark not with anger but with something worse—want. Not desire. Hunger. Like if he stops moving, stops talking, stops being adored, he’ll vanish entirely.
Ren thinks, not for the first time, You’re beautiful in the way knives are.
And maybe that makes him sick. Maybe it makes him complicit. But Ren has never been good at turning away from sharp things.
It starts with mirrors.
Akechi loves them. Hates them. Stares too long. Avoids them entirely. Ren notices the way he positions himself in reflective surfaces, always slightly angled, always composed. Like he’s terrified of being seen straight-on.
One night—late, quiet, the city holding its breath—Ren catches him in Leblanc’s bathroom, fingers braced against the sink, breathing like he’s drowning.
They lock eyes in the mirror.
For a moment, Akechi looks real.
Then he laughs.
“Oh,” he says lightly. “You shouldn’t look at me like that. People might get the wrong idea.”
Ren doesn’t look away.
“Like what?” he asks.
Akechi tilts his head. Smiles wide. Empty. “Like I’m worth keeping.”
Something ugly twists in Ren’s chest.
Something reverent.
If Akechi is a gallery piece, then Ren becomes his most devoted viewer.
He watches the way Akechi performs grief on television. The way he softens his voice for children and sharpens it for criminals. The way he builds a persona so immaculate it borders on obscene. Ren understands it instinctively—the labor of being palatable, admirable, chosen.
What Akechi doesn’t realize is that Ren sees the scaffolding.
And worse—Ren likes it.
Likes the wires and joints and strain marks. Likes the idea that beneath the pristine surface is something furious and raw and desperate to be touched. Ren’s hands itch with the urge to peel the mask away, not to destroy it, but to keep it.
To own the truth of him.
“You’re staring again,” Akechi says once, amused.
“Can’t help it,” Ren replies. “You’re… striking.”
Akechi laughs. Preens. But his eyes narrow, searching Ren’s face like he’s trying to figure out whether this is admiration or threat.
It’s both.
Everything fractures eventually.
The truth spills out like blood on polished floors. The masks shatter. The gallery burns.
When Akechi stands in front of Ren with a gun in his hand and hatred in his mouth, Ren thinks—This is the most honest you’ve ever looked.
“You don’t get to look at me like that,” Akechi snarls. “Like you understand me.”
Ren takes a step closer.
“I do,” he says softly. “That’s the problem.”
Akechi laughs—too loud, too sharp, like glass breaking. “You think knowing makes you special?”
“No,” Ren says. “Wanting does.”
The gun wavers.
For one terrible second, Akechi looks afraid.
Not of dying.
Of being seen and still desired.
They don’t get a clean ending.
There’s no soft forgiveness, no absolution wrapped in warm light. There’s just aftermath. Ruins. The knowledge of what they’ve done to each other and what they can never undo.
But Akechi stays.
Bruised. Furious. Alive.
Some nights, Ren finds him sitting on the floor of his room, staring at nothing. Other nights, Akechi presses too close, like he’s trying to crawl under Ren’s skin, like proximity might anchor him to existence.
“You’re still watching,” Akechi mutters once. Not accusing. Tired.
Ren nods.
“Good,” Akechi says quietly. “If I disappear, I want it to be because you blinked.”
Ren reaches out.
Touches him.
Not gently. Not reverently. But real—fingers digging into fabric and bone, grounding them both.
“You’re not disappearing,” Ren says. “Not while I’m here.”
Akechi laughs, breath hitching. “You say that like it’s a promise.”
“It is.”
Because Ren doesn’t just admire the art.
He wants the artist.
The violence.
The rot.
The devotion.
And if loving Akechi means standing in front of something dangerous and calling it beautiful—
Ren has always been good at stealing priceless things.