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The first time it happens, it’s mostly on accident.
After a taxing first day in Sae’s Palace, Akira is tending to a particularly nasty-looking bruise on his abdomen, courtesy of a Valkyrie. He’d managed to talk her down eventually and coax her to his side, but not before she had ridden towards him with the force of a hurricane and knocked him on his ass. He can feel the spot throb dully every time he twists his body around to reach for something. According to Morgana, the group’s resident healing expert despite not sharing any of their anatomy, he probably isn’t suffering from internal bleeding, and he should be okay with some ice and compression pads—and most importantly, rest, Morgana grumbles at the end.
When he lifts his shirt up to stare at it in the bathroom, his abdomen patchy with blue and purple discoloring, Akira thinks that—honestly—it looks pretty sick.
Holding the bottom ends of his shirt partially in his mouth, he snaps a selfie in the mirror while making a peace sign and immediately sends a direct message to Ann.
(9:03 PM)
Akira: [IMG_0467.jpg]
Akira: ay this big ass bruise kinda looks like a fish
He takes a pack of frozen peas from Leblanc’s fridge and heads back up to his room, pressing it against his skin and wincing at the cold. When he flops back into bed, he’s surprised to see a notification from Akechi.
(9:09 PM)
Akechi: ?
Akechi: Oh my.
Akechi: Are you alright? That looks rather gruesome.
Oh. Oh, shit. He scrolls up—and yep, because Akira is an actual dumbass, he accidentally sent the photo meant for Ann straight to Akechi. The photo, where he is definitely half shirtless and bruised and holding his shirt up with his mouth.
Well, too late to salvage it now, Akira thinks, and he sends off a reply.
(9:12 PM)
Akira: o
Akira: yea im chilling, dont worry about it
Akira: just got a little beat up while we were out today lmao
(9:12 PM)Akechi: I see.
Akechi: Are you sure that you’re fine? With a bruise of that size, I can only imagine that it would hurt more than you’re letting on.
Akira’s interest perks—is that concern he’s reading in Mr. Detective Prince’s tone? Akechi had seem unfazed today after they departed, even after hours spent trekking through the many slot machines and underground rooms and mazes of Sae’s casino. When they made it into another safe room, most of the Thieves panting and hungry with exhaustion, Akechi had merely smiled at them, dusted off his prince’s coat, and taken dainty bites of the matcha bun Akira had thrown at him.
He’s about to needle him more through text, when his phone vibrates and lights up with Akechi’s contact pic and name.
Akira sits up, waits to pick up after a few rings. “Hello?” he answers, innocuous. Morgana is rolling his eyes at him from his spot in the bed, but Akira flips him off.
“Good evening, Akira,” Akechi says, polite as always over the static of the call. “I just wanted to check in with you over the phone since that bruise looked rather grisly. Are you getting it properly treated?”
Akira eyes the slowly melting pack of frozen peas against his ribcage. “Oh, yep,” he says. “I’ve got it all taken care of. Icing it. Compressing it. The works.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Akechi replies. “You’re my leader—for the time being, of course—so I would hate to see you taken out of action so early on in the game.”
“Oh, I’m not as frail as you think I am,” Akira says, loftily. “I can take a good beating.” Morgana gapes, and then digs his claws into his feet at that. Akira bats him away, shushing him with a finger.
There’s a stilted pause on the other side of the phone. “Is that right,” he hears Akechi say, finally. The low pitch of his voice makes Akira scoot the phone closer to his ear. “Well, I suppose I’ll ascertain that for myself once we traverse into the Metaverse together again.”
“Can’t wait,” Akira says, and he swallows past the tightness in his throat.
“It’s getting late, so I should finish up the last of my assignments,” Akechi says. “But do let me know the next time you sustain an injury like that. I’ve seen my fair share of nasty wounds from my time as a detective—I’m surely not an expert, but my experience may prove useful in assisting you, even over the phone.”
“Okay, Mr. Detective,” Akira teases. Morgana gives him an unimpressed look that Akira studiously ignores.
“Haha, it’s not just a title,” Akechi says back, and Akira can practically hear the good-boy wink in his eyes as he says it. “In any case, I’ll talk to you sometime later. Good night, Akira.”
“Good night,” he echoes. He sets his phone down. Interesting.
It wasn’t concern that he heard, after all.
—
The second time it happens, Akira tests out a theory. He calls the Thieves out into the Metaverse a few days after their first stint in Sae’s Palace, and they head down to Akzeriyyuth to find one Yohei Kiritani, whose shadow proves fearsome and tricky to defeat.
“Man, I hate the ones with no weaknesses,” Skull complains from his side, as he wails on Kiritani with another Swift Strike. The attack makes the Rakshasa recoil but not back down, readying itself quickly for a comeback. “Like c’mon, dude, just friggin’ go down already!”
He can hear Oracle snicker from her position above them. “Yeah, you got killer negotiation skills, Skull,” she says. “Anyways, just try to slice him up with a crit, and he’ll go down in no time! Bam bam!”
“Thank you, Oracle! One-shot Kill!” Noir calls out, summoning Milady and her frankly fucking terrifying assortment of guns and artillery. The bullets pound against Kiritani, devastatingly loud, but still, he remains standing.
Fuck. Joker flips backward to dodge another Tempest Slash, landing next to Crow as he does so. “Well, leader,” Crow says, casting another Kougaon with a sweeping flourish of his hand. His eyes are boring into him. “What are we going to do?”
He thinks for a second, flitting through the Persona he has stocked up in his head. He summons Setanta to the forefront and casts a Rebellion over himself. In the next moment, with magic cast over his skin like a thin glamour, he whips out his dagger and bolts toward the shadow, deftly maneuvering past its defenses to sink his blade into the soft parts of its belly. He grins sharply as he feels the hit land just right, blood streaking across his face as the shadow cries out and falls to the ground. In its death throes, it manages to swing its sword in a long slice across his cheekbones. Joker wonders, idly, adrenaline-high, if he’ll get to be tossed around even more, but then he leaps back, dagger spinning around his finger, as the Rakshasa melts and bursts back into the hunched form of Kiritani.
They say their spiel and pile back into the Mona-bus, sweaty and triumphant.
Ryuji nudges him with his elbow. “Way to go, Joker,” he cheers, the loudness of his voice filling up the whole backseat. “Landed the killing blow and everything!”
“Yes, it was a beautiful culmination of the battle,” says Yusuke solemnly from his other side. He’s sketching something fervently in his journal, wrist darting across the pages. “Simply show-stopping.”
“He’s just a show-off,” Ann says from her seat in the front, sticking her tongue back at him. He smirks and waves back at her cheekily, and then catches Akechi’s eyes in the car mirror, staring at him curiously. Without thinking about it, he smiles back brightly at him, even as the motion makes the cut on his cheeks stretch wider. A small, enigmatic smile curves Akechi’s lips up, and he looks away.
When he returns home, Akira decides to put his little theory into motion.
Back at Leblanc, he stares at himself in his phone’s front camera. Today’s trek into Mementos hadn’t left him too fucked up, but he still has the cut from Kiritani’s shadow, crossing from his right cheekbone to the edges of his nose. His glasses seem to obscure it, for the most part, but he removes them to look more closely at the wound. He lets his fingers press down, briefly, into the flesh of the line, and blood begins to trickle out in slow, red beads. Perfect.
He gets a good shot with his head tilted to the side, his eyes demurely looking down. In the picture, the cut actually looks worse than it actually feels, a sharp, red line carved angrily across his face. Blood smudges at the corners, blotchy and wet. He hums tunelessly to himself as he scrolls through his contact list.
(8:22 PM)
Akira: [IMG_2848.jpg]
Akira: this doesnt look that bad right(8:23 PM)
Akechi: It looks bloody, but it doesn’t seem like it requires much treatment. I’m sure that in a few days, it’ll be fine.
Akira frowns. Not the response he was goading out of him, but okay. He tries another angle.
(8:24 PM)
Akira: ngl it hurts more than i thought
Akira: like i flinch every time i have to move my face(8:26 PM)
Akechi: Hm.
Akechi: Is it truly causing you that much pain?(8:26 PM)
Akira: dunno
Akira: like
Akira: hard to explain over text lol
A few minutes later without a reply, Akira is ready to admit defeat and clean his face up. Just as he’s about to head into the bathroom, his phone lights up with a familiar picture and name—victory, he thinks, with a pump of his inner Futaba’s gamer fist.
“Hey,” he answers, coolly.
“Hello, Akira,” Akechi’s voice says pleasantly.
“To what do I owe the pleasure this evening?”
“You said that the cut on your face was bothering you,” Akechi says patiently. “Were you able to clean and disinfect it properly?”
“Mhm. Yep.” Akira nods into the phone, even as his hands come away sticky and red on his face.
“Really, it didn’t seem like it in the picture,” says Akechi, in his Akechi voice that means he’s smiling but not buying any of Akira’s bullshit. “You should put some antibiotic treatment over it to at least ensure it doesn’t get infected. Infected wounds can cause a variety of problems down the road.”
“Okay, okay, you’re right,” Akira says as he shuffles over to Leblanc’s medical cabinet. Phone shoved between his ear and shoulder, he fishes for the tube of antibiotic ointment stashed away in the corner, along with a wet towel and bandage. “Alright, what do I do now?”
“… I wonder how you and your teammates have lasted this long if you have to ask me that,” Akechi says, static crackling over his soft sigh. “Anyways, clean the cut first, before you adhere anything to it.”
Akira dabs the towel around the cut. “Alright.”
“Then, get some of the antibiotic and apply it to the area where your wound is.”
“Mm, okay.” Peering at himself in the bathroom mirror, Akira squeezes out a drop of the ointment onto his fingertip and smears it over his cheek. The sudden cold contact shocks his skin and makes him hiss under his breath as he tries not to flinch and drop his phone into the sink. “Fuck—"
He manages to hold onto it, washing his hands quickly under the running water. “Okay, crisis averted.” He turns off the faucet. “Akechi?”
The other line is silent for a moment, before it crackles again with Akechi’s voice. “Yes. I’m still here. Is everything alright?”
“Oh, you know, just dying,” Akira jokes. Akechi doesn’t react to that, so he continues, “Nah, the cream just felt cold on my face, and I almost dropped my phone. I’m good now, though.”
“Ah. Yes, it can be even more painful than the actual wound sometimes when you’re applying antibiotic or rubbing alcohol.”
“Honestly, I always thought that this kind of stuff would be disappear once we left the Metaverse,” Akira says, dabbing the last bit of antibiotic onto his cheek. He tosses it aside, and then begins walking back up to his room, phone cradled in his hand. “But most of the time, when I finally make it back, I always find myself sore with a bunch of little bruises or cuts that I never even noticed getting.”
“If your body believes it to be real, then I think it’s plausible to see why wounds would carry over from that reality to here,” Akechi replies. “Have you sustained many injuries from your time in the Metaverse, Akira?” Lying down in bed, Akira doesn’t know why Akechi saying his name over the phone feels more intimate. Maybe it’s because his voice seems closer, whispering into his ear, the crackling of static the only thing separating them. Or maybe, as his inner Futaba is saying obnoxiously in his head, it’s because Akira is a fucking disaster with a dangerous crush on a boy who may or may not also be dangerous.
“Yeah, here and there,” Akira says, politely ignoring the small cackling Futaba in his brain. “That bruise I showed you last time was pretty bad. I’ve been punched in the face by some more irritable shadows in the past, and that's busted up my mouth for a bit. I’ve gotten used to finding stray blood behind my ears, or dried spots of it on my clothes.”
“Oh, I see,” Akechi says. Akira doesn’t know if he’s just imagining it, but his tone sounds more strained, pitched lower. “Perhaps you weren’t bluffing, and your pain tolerance is as high as you initially claimed it to be.”
“I told you, I can take a good beat-down,” Akira says, and if his voice sounds lower, too, well—he’s a hormonal, hot-blooded teenager, and these things are perfectly normal. “In the moments we're out there, I don’t even feel the pain until the battle’s done.”
“It’s reassuring to know that the leader of the illustrious Phantom Thieves is so resilient,” Akechi says quietly. “I wonder, though, what it would take for him to truly break.”
“Seems like an interesting train of thought,” Akira says. His throat feels hot. His face feels hot. His hand has, mysteriously, started to make its way to the edges of his pajama’s waistband, flitting aimlessly around the skin of his stomach. Morgana is at Futaba’s for the night, he remembers, his fingers creeping further and further down his body.
“Don’t you think about it?” Akechi asks him. Ok, fuck it, they were doing this—or Akira was doing this, whatever, because he was a dirty, no-good pervert who was ready to have one-sided, Fight Club-esque phone sex with his rival. Akira wraps a hand around his dick, already half-hard, and presses his face closer to the speaker, willing himself not to breathe. “About how much of a bruising Joker could take, about how much blood he could spill, about how many enemies it would take to finally bring him down, gasping and pleading?”
Holy fuck. “Sounds like you’ve wondered about it quite a bit,” he rasps, hand stroking himself once, twice. He moves the phone up closer to his head, so Akechi can hear less of the rustling, the desperate movements of his fist. Hopefully. Or not. Akira’s degenerate mind doesn’t know which it prefers. “You have something to tell me, Akechi?”
Akechi chuckles lowly. The sound goes straight to his dick. “Oh, it’s nothing, really, just a thought I’ve had here and there,” he says. “It’s almost intriguing to think of the Phantom Thieves’ leader as someone who thinks of himself as invincible, unbreakable even, and then watching him meet his downfall in a wild, bloody clash of willpower.”
“Unbreakable, huh,” Akira says, biting down the noises catching like sandpaper in his throat. “You think Joker sees himself like that?”
“Oh, I’m positive,” Akechi says. Infuriatingly, he sounds as composed as ever. “Each time we fight alongside one another, I watch him as he throws himself into battle as if he possesses a skin made of ivory and steel.”
“Touch him, and maybe you’ll find out if he does,” Akira says, horny lizard brain taking over any other rational responses his brain feebly offers up. His concentration has been sharpened to the sound of Akechi’s breath in his ear, the pleasure twining through his spine. “I’m sure you’d like to fight some of the shadows yourself to get your own turn at beating down Joker, wouldn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t sound so eager about that,” Akechi says, after a pause. And now, Akira is definitely not imagining things—his voice has taken a distinctly darker tone, the rough silk of it making Akira’s hand work faster over himself. “I doubt he would survive a true encounter against me.”
“Yeah?” Akira says, between clenched teeth. Fuck, fuck, he was so fucking close—
“There would be nothing left of him, after I was done,” Akechi says softly, like a promise, and Akira comes, silently, in white stripes across his belly. As he catches his breath, he faintly registers muted rustling on the other end, the stutter of something else buried beneath the static of the phone. He gets up to swipe himself with some tissues on his desk, listening to the sound of Akechi in his ear.
“You alright?” Akira asks casually, like the last ten minutes haven’t happened.
“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?” Akechi replies back evenly, because he’s a good bullshitter, too.
If that’s how he wanted to play it, then Akira would smile and play along. “Just checking up.”
“It’s getting late—I should start heading to bed,” Akechi says, polite. “It was nice speaking to you as always, Akira. Good night.” He hangs up.
Akira just lets the dial tone echo mockingly at him for a few seconds, before locking his phone and tossing it away from him. He stretches languidly against the sheets, not thinking at all about the way he had heard Akechi’s breath stutter, in the suspended space of that call, the way he could imagine him alone in his sparsely decorated apartment, Akira’s voice filling up the empty corners of his room, his bed.
“Sometimes,” Morgana says, suddenly from the doorway, and fuck, when did he even get there, “you make me not want to be human.”
—
The next few times, admittedly, are completely Akira’s fault, with Akechi to partially blame as well.
It becomes just another game they play, each time they descend together into the Metaverse. Joker gets the living shit kicked out of him, Crow watches from afar, and then when he returns home, sending Akechi crude selfies of his battered face and body, Akechi tutting in mock concern, they both pretend like they’re not getting off on it. So, yeah—just another round of chess and billiards, for Akira and Akechi.
One such night, Akira is trying to figure out the perfect angle for a nasty gash just below his collarbone, when his phone starts blowing up with messages from the Phantom Thieves'—minus Akechi—group chat.
(8:19 PM)
Futaba: @akira @akira @akira
Futaba: why are there a bunch of pics on ur phone of u bloody and sweaty and all cut up
Futaba: ur shirtless in some of them huh???? (＠_＠)
Makoto: Akira, this is hardly appropriate material to be keeping on your phone.
Ann: yah akira its kinda narcissistic and weird, even for u lmao
Akira: ok FIRST of all my phone storage is supposed to be a private and sacred space thx futaba ):<
Akira: SECOND of all theyre not 4 me
Akira: theyre for akechi lol
Haru: Oh, dear! 0:
Haru: You’ve been sending nudes to Akechi-kun?
Akira: nononon no not like that
Akira: i’ve been sending him pictures of me beat up after we go to the metaverse
Akira: yknow like the bruises on my face, the cuts all over my body, the dried blood and stuff
Akira: its sexy (;
Ryuji: bro fr…
Ryuji: r u ok???
Futaba: wait EW
Futaba: r u texting him rn u kinky weirdo (＃`Д´)
Akira resolutely decides to mute the chat. He’ll send the photo later, when his boner eventually comes back.
—
The last time it happens, Akechi is the one who invites him into the Metaverse. He points his gun at Joker’s head, face drawn into a tight grimace, and makes his intentions clear from the start.
Crow is relentless. Robin Hood wails on Joker with a Megaton Raid, then a Kougaon, and then with the overwhelming force of a Megidola that shakes Joker’s bones from the inside. Joker thinks about summoning Rangda to him in order to deflect some of Crow’s more savage physical attacks, but then he figures that whatever Crow wanted to give him, Joker wanted to take it and throw just as much back. He uses Kushinada to heal, sparingly, and then eventually brings the fight to a close stalemate by letting Crow’s Bless attacks bounce back at him and using his stronger Personas to wear down his defense.
Crow eventually calls it off before either of them can sustain more serious injuries. The mission comes first, he tells Akira, but Akira can see the dark unhappiness swirling in his eyes, the grim knowledge that the next time they would meet up like this, Akira would be staring up at his death in the form of Akechi. For whatever reason, the thought of that makes Akira want to finish their fight even more, to see how long it takes for Crow to knock him on his knees and press the cold barrel of his gun against his head again.
They linger in Mementos for a bit after the fight, nursing the wounds they’ve accumulated in the past hour. Akechi is rigid and silent as Akira dry-swallows one of Takemi’s special pills and holds a hand against a sore part of his abdomen, wincing.
“I’ve seen you take worse,” Akechi says, almost boredly. Robin Hood’s mask obscures the rest of his expression from Akira as he assesses him coolly.
“Well, it’s not every day one of my teammates wants to hang, just to kick the ever living shit out of me,” Akira retorts, taking a long gulp of soda he packed away in his bag. He offers one to Akechi, who refuses stiffly with a shake of his head. He sweeps his gaze over Akira’s figure.
“So which wound will you take an artfully contrived photo of today?” he drawls, crossing his arms against his chest. Akira catalogues how the motion makes the sleeves of his prince-boy outfit tighten against his biceps, for later.
“I don’t know, maybe you didn’t rough me up enough for me to find anything noteworthy,” Akira teases.
Immediately, Akira feels like he’s said the wrong thing. Akechi’s eyes flash dangerously at that, and he looks darkly unamused, twisting his face away from him. “A pity,” he says, flatly, and then brushes past Akira. “Let’s go. We’re done here.”
They make it back to the front of Shibuya’s station square, where Akechi tells Akira just how much he fucking hates his guts, and then proceeds to throw one of his gloves at him.
When Akira goes back, something numb stirring underneath his chest, he holds the glove in his hand. For a brief, depraved moment, he thinks about putting it on and tracing the worn bruises on his face, on his stomach, and then snapping a picture of it to Akechi. He shakes himself out of it and stores the glove deep in his bag. He would give it back to Akechi, when they fulfilled their promise to one another.
—
They don’t quite get to it, for a while.
—
Some months later, when Akechi has seen what the inside of Akira’s brains look like and Akira has seen what Akechi looks like, dying and furious with years of desperation spilling out of him, they’re in Maruki’s Palace, fighting side by side again. With just the two of them, even with Joker’s flexibility and Crow’s—enthusiasm, the battles take longer and hit harder. They just barely make it to the next safe room, with Crow cursing profusely the whole bloody way there.
The door closes behind them as they throw themselves in. Akechi slumps against the wall and tears off his mask, swearing as he picks at a wound on his chin. Opening up the front camera on his phone, Akira assesses the state of his own face, frowning at the little cuts that have opened up on his lips, his chin, the bruises that have already begun to bloom against the paleness of his skin. Those ugly tentacle bastards—honestly, Maruki’s head was a scary place to be in—had gotten him good. Out of habit, he angles his head up, down, to the side—the others, he thinks with a dull, bittersweet ache, would roll their eyes and say he was being narcissistic again, but he has come to develop a morbid fascination with the way his body can break and peel open as easily as rotten fruit. The pictures are a good reminder that if nothing else, he can still feel this.
He sneaks a sideways glance at Akechi, who is scowling away from him. He can probably take a few pics of himself, Akira decides, without him noticing. He runs a hand across the blood streaking his face, raising his phone up to get the right angle, when it’s suddenly snatched out of his hand.
Akechi is gripping his phone and glaring furiously down at him, expression made even more imposing by his Black Mask outfit. He can see a smattering of bruises across Akechi’s own face, stray traces of red droplets streaking through his long hair. Dazedly, Akira thinks it looks even better on Akechi than it does on himself.
“The next time you take a photo of yourself like this, bruised and bloody,” Akechi says, snarling, “I want to know that I’m the one who did that to you.”
He throws Akira’s phone back at him savagely, and then stalks away to another corner of the room, facing away from him. Akira is confused, and his dick even more so. This new, everyday Akechi was both surprising and familiar all at once, making all the insane, wondrous faces that Akira had only once dreamed of seeing him make, his mouth contorting constantly to say the filthiest and meanest things possible.
Discretely, Akira whips out his phone one more time, and snaps a photo of Akechi in the corner as he tightly winds a bandage around his arm, a haughty, ragged expression on his face. The blood on his face and clothes matches the dark glint of his eyes, the same red eyes that would light up maniacally as he and Joker took down a shadow together, Joker following in the wake of Crow’s blinding, brilliant, beautiful fury.
He’s so fucked, Akira thinks, and marks the photo as Private in his phone.
fin.