o how gentle the rain can arrive

[unfoggedlotus]

Ren follows Goro to the Dojima house, steps as sure and confident as he can make them with his heart pounding a bit louder than normal in his chest. Maybe he's nervous for this, so what? It's not every day you get to meet the alternate-reality-family your boyfriend found during his two-month timeskip that was only five hours or so to you. His head's still kind of reeling from the...everything, but he's rolling with the punches. Not like I expected things to be normal with us, he says to the part of himself that's maybe not-very-Joker-like and trying to shy away from everything.

Life comes at you fast, but Akechis come faster-- well. Hopefully not, and Ren's not thinking about that right now, nope throw curveballs at half the speed of light and expect you to catch 'em. And Ren isn't letting one slip by him yet! ...Even if this one might be aimed right between his eyes.

Ren squeezes his boyfriend's hand -- it's what boyfriends are there for, after all -- and readjusts his grip on the little...okay, large bag of gifts against his chest (hey, everything's free here, and he didn't wanna show up unprepared) as they come to a stop in front of the door.

He takes a moment, letting go of Goro's hand, for a once-over just to make sure he looks good, brushing invisible bits of dust from his jacket and readjusting his glasses. Then, with a nod to his boyfriend, Ren raises the hand carrying the pile of gifts to knock on the door.

It's showtime.

"Hey guys!" He calls out as his boyfriend opens the door, resisting the urge to run his fingers through his hair (for now). "We're here!"

> Say hello to Crow's boyfriend?

Comments

[unfoggedlotus]

Out of the frying pan and directly into the mouth of the lion, or something. Ren subtly takes a deep breath and waves back at the Akechi sitting on the couch — obviously Magpie just from the sheer defensive prickliness radiating off him — and approaches with a smile of his own.

“Akechi Goro,” he replies, proud his voice doesn’t waver. “I’ve heard lots about you in the past couple hours, too. Glad to finally meet my boyfriend’s other-special-someone. He’s done a lot of crowing about you, you could say. Absolutely raven reviews.”

[pancakeboy]

Oh, the smile never falters. He's so good. His fingernails are itching in their gloves. "Ah, you go in for puns. Magnificent. No wonder Crow flocked to your side. Quite the feather in your cap." His nose wrinkles. "Not the best, but you see how little I have to work with.

"How are you liking the hall of mirrors?" Special someone, his ass. Then again, Crow does seem to have worried about him a lot. It's almost touching.

[unfoggedlotus]

"I think you're making a pretty Go-od-ro effort," Ren grins, trying -- tentatively -- to be encouraging in the face of the prickliness. "At first I was a little thrown off, but I think I could get used to it -- as long as I get to see your face in my mirror every day." A wink.

[pancakeboy]

"Oh, no, no, no. You're trying much too hard. We've left pun logic behind—that was terrible, by the way—and sailed into some nonsensical magic land." Hm. "Which I suppose is literally what we have done, isn't it?" The prickles are a single molecule wide, and six feet long.

"Sit down, if you'd like. There's plenty of room." He indicates the rest of the couch.

[unfoggedlotus]

"Thanks." This Goro is spiky in a way fuzzy cacti are spiky, Ren decides. There are so many spikes so thin and clustered together that you don't think they're there. But they're there, waiting to impale you.

"Isn't it the nature of puns?" He grins as he takes a seat, a polite distance away from Goro, and puts down his bag of gifts. "To be bad on punpose?"

[pancakeboy]

Nngh. He smiles again, blindingly bright. "Really, if my Ren made as many puns as you, I'd have drowned him in the bath, not kissed him." Not that there has been any kissing. At all. His gut cringes in on itself.

"I take it this is your charm offensive? Because I'm assured we're going to be friends." Actually, it's interesting to come at it from the other side.

[unfoggedlotus]

"Kinky," Ren replies, mostly joking but a little contemplatively. "I wonder if you could do that in the Metaverse. Drown someone and then bring them back. For fun."

Ren rifles through his bag of gifts. "And, well, I'd like to be your friend one day," he says, surprisingly honest. It was easier to imagine throwing Magpie for a loop and winning his trust over in his mind, definitely, and now that he's here...well, it's obvious that there's a lot more on the line. "You mean a lot to my Akechi, so you're important to me, too. Here, I got you something."

Ren passes him a magazine. The cover reads Catfish & Lady Issues Digest: How To Fish, Wrangle, & Tackle Away Those Dating Blues! with what might be the world's worst imageshop of a salmon crying over a phone with a horrendous breakup text on it while holding a fishing pole, fishing in a stream for deformed humans.

[pancakeboy]

And he just has time to short-circuit over you mean a lot to my Akechi before he's staring at... at... what even is this? He cranes his neck down a little, trying to read the breakup text.

"Let me guess. Crow is the lady in question."

[unfoggedlotus]

"Why don't you open it up and sea for yourself?" Ren grins. "I was flipping through it and found something interesting."

[pancakeboy]

Okay, the mask cracks for a moment. He knows when he's being set up. "Is that right?" Fucking sea. But sure, he'll turn the page....

... only to reveal a glorious, high-res, true-colour shot of Crow fast asleep in what is clearly the Leblanc attic, drooling. His eyebrows flick up; he fails to react outwardly, or look at Crow at all. But holy shit.

"I see. You really do want to charm me. Should I have told you I prefer flowers?" What? He does. Cool picture, though; he turns the page to reveal....

[unfoggedlotus]

...Crow's face, beet-red and flustered, clearly shouting at a smug Sojiro and a laughing Futaba about something. They flutter out onto Magpie's lap as he turns the pages. Ren's grin just keeps getting wider.

[pancakeboy]

His eyes fix on Sakura-san, again; he folds the photo back into the magazine, and keeps going. Crow, unflatteringly eating a crepe with whipped cream on his nose. Raven, strangely, crossly trying to pull away from an older boy with silver hair, on the very couch they're sitting on; Akechi taps his image.

"That's Yu Narukami?" High-school aged, a pain-in-the-ass oniisan, absolutely unhinged; he's heard quite a bit.

[unfoggedlotus]

"Yep. And that's Crow when he was Raven, pretending he's too cool for him." Ren smirks. "Dojima sent me that one."

[pancakeboy]

Something tells him Raven hasn't seen this image, nor experienced the events it describes; he resolves to keep it under lock and key, lowering his voice to a level that will hopefully bypass Raven's acute hearing. "I suppose it can't be worse than co-habiting with your much older self. Still, it would be a shame to prejudice his judgement too much."

Narukami's hair reminds him of Sae; his mouth twists a little as he turns the next few pages, revealing Crow with his hair knotted above his head, grumpily trying to untangle it. "Goodness. So... you brought all of these with you? Or were they there in your residence?"

[unfoggedlotus]

"They're on my phone," Ren admits, lowering his voice to match Magpie's quieter tone, surreptitiously stealing a glance at his boyfriend -- distracted, good. "Where we stopped for gifts had a printing service. I shoved trashy magazines in his face to keep him from looking and stuck 'em in the worst one I could find."

[pancakeboy]

"Something you knew he'd never look at. Cunning. I like it." And he is, in all honesty, a little impressed. Until he turns the next, to reveal a picture of Crow—at least, it had better be Crow—with his hair a dishevelled mess, and a pair of glasses perched on his nose, sitting on what is very obviously the pavilion of Miel et Crepes in Kichijoji.

"Right, and you just happened to have this? He let you take it?" Because dear god.

[unfoggedlotus]

"You think he let me take it?" Ren's grin is fully shit-eating now, even as something tense inside him unwinds at the small hint of approval from Magpie. "As far as he knows, I erased that one off the face of the earth, but I know how to get stuff out of my phone's recently-deleted. I trust you'll put it to good use." He taps the photo in a I'm-entrusting-this-to-you sort of gesture.

[pancakeboy]

... yeaaah. He glances, one eyebrow arched, from Ren, to the photo, to Crow, who surely can't be this unknowing....

Again, he secures it tightly inside the page of the magazine. "You are treacherous, aren't you?" Could be disapproving; could be amused. Could be both, easily.

[unfoggedlotus]

Ren lets out a laugh, but makes sure it's quiet. "Never heard calling embarrassing photos of a boyfriend "treachery", but if the shoe fits for the joke, I guess."

[pancakeboy]

Ye-es, the joke. What about his own Ren, then? Would he be so quick to humiliate Akechi with a pile of incriminating photos?... Really, what's he thinking? After that business with the takoyaki, not to mention however the hell, in retrospect, he clearly gave himself away, Akechi is self-incriminating. It is so easy, here, to lose sight of who they all are at home; of who he is...

On the other hand, the photos are really amusing; precious cargo. It's just the feeling....

Yeah, the feeling of Ren conspiring against Crow is what he doesn't like. It's too close to home. So again, he smiles. "Well, treachery is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?—though far be it from me to judge. Your relationship seems to encompass many things most wouldn't be comfortable with. No matter what they might claim."

[unfoggedlotus]

Aaand just when he thought he was getting somewhere. “I wouldn’t betray him in a meaningful way.” Cross my heart and hope to die, stick one of Magpie’s needles in my eye… “It’d be pretty apparent even if I did try. Not that I would.”

[pancakeboy]

"Would it be apparent?" It's soft, like a hangman's hood is soft. His hand rests lightly on the page of the magazine, which bears no photo at this point, just a mindlessly pretty girl.

[unfoggedlotus]

The air is weighted. Ren can feel that he's under some sort of pressure, that how he responds to this is going to be important. But he isn't in the Metaverse and there are no Shadows for him to leap cackling onto, so instead of rising like a hero to the occasion, something in his brain breaks and along with it goes his filter.

"Like my foot in your mouth," he says. It takes him a full second to process what he says, and that he actually said that out loud, face slowly morphing into an obvious "ohmygodIhatemylifewhydidIsaythatdon'thatemethisissoembarrassing" cringe as the full force of the stupidity of what he said dawns on him.

1/2

[pancakeboy]

It takes a second for him to comprehend what Ren has said. The moment stretches between the two of them as his eyes begin to pop, the way boiling sugar stretches, twisting, sticking, maiming....

2/2

[pancakeboy]

And then he turns away, audibly swallowing a laugh beneath his breath. "Really. How has he not kicked you to the kerb yet for the things that come out of your mouth?"

Yet it is, bizarrely, not unfriendly. He's heard shit so like that from Ren—the real Ren, at home.