Chapter Text
“I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t sit down,” Junpei grumbles.
Carlos stops pacing. He’s been circling the tiny hotel room for the last few minutes, trying to get rid of his nervous energy, trying to convince himself to do as Junpei and Akane say and just rest, but he can’t get Maria off his mind. He just wants to know she’s okay. He wants to see her with his own eyes, to tell her happy New Year and hold her hand.
Junpei and Akane are perched at the edge of the hotel bed, just watching him. Akane is leaning into Junpei and he has his arm around her. It makes Carlos happy, but it does little to calm him.
“Sorry,” Carlos mutters. “It’s just—”
“Your sister,” Junpei cuts in. “I know. Listen, we’ll get going tomorrow. I promise. Me and Akane are going to help her. But we’re not going to be of any use to her like,” he waves a hand vaguely, “this.”
“Junpei’s right. I know your body is fine, but your mind needs to rest. We’ve all done a lot of SHIFTing. Just come to bed.”
Carlos watches with amusement as Junpei’s eyes narrow. “Come to bed? Really, Akane?”
Akane rolls her eyes at him. “You know what I mean, Jumpy.”
“And what do you mean, Kanny?”
Carlos doesn’t miss the way Junpei looks at him, as though trying to gauge his reaction. But he doesn’t have time to dwell on it.
“Nothing dirty, pervert.” Akane knocks her shoulder into Junpei’s playfully. “But I mean, after everything that happened are we really going to let Carlos sleep on the fold out couch?”
A silence settles over the room. Both of them are looking at Carlos now, who’s got his gaze carefully trained on the carpet. He has spent the last few hours trying very hard not to think about everything that had just happened.
Or not happened.
The only thing that happened in this timeline is that Carlos shot an old man in cold blood in the middle of the Nevada desert.
He can still feel the hard metal in his hand, the recoil, the blood spatter. Everyone assured him that he had done the right thing. They didn’t blame him. Delta was dangerous. If Delta lived, they could never truly rest easy. But that didn’t stop him from throwing up after he’d done it.
“Hey, don’t make that face,” Junpei says softly.
Carlos snaps to attention. He tries to wipe away whatever expression he’d been wearing, but he’s too tired to force a smile. Instead, he just presses a hand to his face and sighs.
“Come on,” Akane says again. He can hear movement on the bed and when he looks up, she and Junpei are settling in under the sheets. She waves him forward, gesturing to the spot to her left.
Carlos swallows thickly as he complies. When he’s settled, they’re all shoulder to shoulder. Too close, Carlos thinks, to be comfortable like this. He’s about to offer to move to the couch when Akane rolls onto her side and lays a tentative hand on Carlos’ shoulder.
The touch is nice and it must show on his face for Akane curls up into his side. And then Junpei’s there, pressed against Akane, his arm across her, brushing Carlos’ waist.
He needs this. He doesn’t question it, even though some part of his mind is sounding a million alarm bells. Carlos melts into them, letting Akane burry her head under his chin and Junpei tangle their legs together.
Even though his mind is buzzing, even though there are a million things plaguing him, Carlos closes his eyes. Sleep comes surprisingly quickly.
The next morning, Carlos awakes to find Junpei sprawled across his chest. He blinks very slowly as his brain begins to wake up and process the events of the previous day. It hits him with a wince and he very pointed pushes it from his mind.
Carlos tries to twist his body slightly to look at the clock, but in the process, jostles Junpei who groans and digs his fingers into the fabric of Carlos’ shirt.
“Stop,” Junpei mutters, not even bothering to open his eyes.
“Sorry.” Carlos tries to keep his voice low, not wanting to wake Akane, but the yawn from the other end of the bed tells him it’s too late.
“What time is it?” Akane asks, her voice clouded by sleep.
“Too early to be awake.” Junpei hasn’t moved.
Akane sits up and suddenly Carlos feels very strange about having Junpei on top of him. But she doesn’t comment on their position. It’s natural for them to want to be close like this, isn’t it? After all, they’ve just been through a traumatic experience. That’s how Carlos justifies this in his head. It’s a special circumstance, there is no deeper meaning. They’re all friends, after all.
Akane leans over the both of them to check the time. “It’s nearly nine.”
Carlos blinks. He hardly ever sleeps this late. But the drawn curtains of the hotel have blocked out all the morning light, robbing his body of any sense of time.
But it’s morning and it’s time to go. Thoughts of Maria make him sit up suddenly, dumping a scowling Junpei from his chest.
“The hell?”
“We should get moving.” Carlos knows it isn’t fair. He knows Junpei and Akane probably want to rest, but Maria is weighing heavily on his mind. “Please. I’ll buy you breakfast.”
He probably looks as desperate as he feels, because when Akane offers him a smile, it’s too understanding.
“Give me ten minutes and I’ll have Junpei up.”
“Like hell you will.”
Somehow, Akane does get Junpei up. She also manages to gather the rest of the D-Com crew, who are in two hotel rooms right down the hall. After escaping from the shelter, it had been Diana who suggested they stop for the night. If it had been up to Carlos, he would have driven that cramped van all through the night until he got back home.
There are a few tears over breakfast. Carlos promises to call later, wishes everyone the best of luck. Phi announces she and Gab have “bonded” and says the dog is coming home with her. There is a bit of an argument, but in the end, Phi wins out.
When it’s finally time to leave, Diana hugs Carlos tightly and whispers, “You had to do it.”
Her words linger with him as puts his bag in the rental car.
Was there really no other way? There was no other easy way, certainly. Even if they managed to convict Delta with some charge, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t just mind hack whoever had custody of him. He was dangerous and uncontrollable. At least that’s what Carlos had to keep telling himself.
“Now you’re just being silly,” Akane says, snapping Carlos back to reality. She and Junpei are arguing behind him as he slams the trunk shut.
“Am not,” Junpei retorts. “My legs are longer, therefore, it makes sense that I should be in the passenger seat.”
“But I’m better at navigating.”
As Carlos watches them bicker, a new thought dawns on him. These two have just gotten engaged (in some timeline anyway. But he can see the ring glittering on Akane’s finger so he figures it’s official in this timeline as well) and here he is, coming between them. He’d even gone so far as to sleep with them last night. Of course they had invited him, but now the morning has come and the last thing they want to do is be dragged back to his tiny apartment and forced to spend the next few days with him. They want their alone time, obviously. But here he is, eating up their few precious moments before they’ll have to dedicate their lives to stopping that terrorist.
“There you go with that face again.”
Carlos is mildly startled to find that Junpei is addressing him.
“It’s gonna freeze like that if you’re not careful.”
“It’s nothing,” Carlos says quickly. He looks between them, acutely aware of the concern on their faces and tries to change the subject. “So who’s riding shotgun?”
“In this universe, it’s me,” Akane says with a hint of a smile. She holds up the quarter in her palm. “It’s heads. But, I suppose, if Junpei wanted to, he could SHIFT to a timeline where it’s tails. But that would just make him a sore loser.”
Junpei snorts. “Give me a break, I’m not that petty.”
Carlos shivers at the mention of other universes. Even though Akane and Junpei can be so casual about it, he still can’t wrap his head around all this madness. There’s a universe where he didn’t shoot Delta. There’s a universe where his parents never died. There are a million universes where he’s dead.
He tries to put them out of his mind as they get into the car.