Archive of Our Own ^beta

The new Mementos isn’t all that different from the old, really — a little lighter, maybe, and less worn down with grime and age, but the never-ending organic sprawl is much the same.  Sometimes, it reminds Ren of the Mementos of Maruki’s time, though he doesn’t linger on that.  If Morgana and Lavenza have said it once, they’ve said it a million times: the Metaverse, like every other living thing, is constantly changing.  It’s just shed one skin and grown another.

Their target today is the Shadow of a little boy of only nine or ten; a teacher posted a notice for help after his mood and performance at school dropped drastically.  Now, his Shadow stands resolutely before Ren, head hung low and hands clenched into fists.

“I should have told,” he’s saying.  “I wanted to tell; I really wanted to!  I knew they were hurting it, and I knew it would get worse, and if I had just — ”

The post had noted that the class pet, a rabbit, had died a recent and mysterious death.  Ren is beginning to see the whole picture.

Before he can try to offer any words of reassurance, the boy contorts and melts, and something new takes his place.

They’ve faced most of the Shadows down here before, but a new face is liable to crop up now and then.  Ren is certain the one before him is in that category: a young, mostly nude man floating airily, hair like sunlight spread behind him, with a bow in one hand and a lyre in the other.

It’s a tough fight; Ren’s cheeks ache from smiling so much.  The rest of the main team for the day — Morgana, Sumire, and Akechi — are keeping up, though Morgana and Sumire’s wind and bless respectively are completely useless against the Shadow, and Akechi’s skills are draining his health fast.  Ren trades blows with the Shadow, dancing here and there as he flicks through his arsenal of Personas: not electricity, not curse, not fire —

The Shadow strums its lyre, and an attack Ren doesn’t recognize zips through his body like a shiver.  His legs give just as he’s supposed to be landing his jump, knees hitting the ground hard.

“Joker!”, three sets of voices call.  Sumire follows it up first.  “Are you alright?”

Akechi’s voice is much less forgiving.  “You’re supposed to dodge, you know!”

But Ren doesn’t have time to answer; from the moment he was hit, he’s been recalibrating.  The Shadow darts forward when it attacks, then stalls in midair while the victim recovers; if he can just will his body to move fast enough, then —

His dagger tears through the Shadow like paper; it was the last bit of damage they needed.  When it fades away, only a crying child is left in its wake.

“I should have told,” he says, “before it was too late.”

Getting to his feet, Ren pats the boy’s shoulder.  “You’ll tell next time.”

The whole team breathes out a collective sigh of relief as the figure dissolves.  Just as quickly, an array of faces turn to him, all poised to speak.

Akechi is the quickest, though.  “What kind of spell was that,” he mutters, and then, cocking his hip and looking Ren up and down, “Well?  How do you feel?”

This is an easy one.  Regardless of the truth, it only ever has one answer.

“I’m fine," Ren replies instantly, clipped and already distracted by their next target.  And that’s good; that’s normal; that’s on the forecast.

And Ren swears he stops there, really — except his voice doesn’t.  “Kind of horny, I guess,” he continues, fiddling with his gloves while he thinks.  The next request was… what, that creepy landlord?  He hopes it’s not too many levels down.  “All your growling and screaming is pretty distracting.”

All of his teammates, Akechi included, freeze.  Ren takes a minute to catch up.

Wait — what did he just say?

His skin flares red under the high collar of his vest, crawling up his neck until it reaches his face.  Okay, that was weird, but there must be a reason.  Keep cool, Joker.  The answer is right there; he just has to reach it.

“Joker-senpai?” Sumire squeaks, looking just as mortified as him.

Time to play it off as a joke.  Akechi is — well, not a good sport exactly, but they’re close enough now that he probably won’t stay mad and weird forever.  He should just —

“I didn’t mean to say that,” he blurts, then smacks his hand over his mouth so hard it hurts.

His teammates’ concerned faces swim into a blur as Ren’s brain scrambles to come up with something to do.  It must be that spell he was hit with; certainly, Ren has never heard of a status effect that causes you to irreversibly ruin your image in front of your closest friends, but Mementos is changing all the time.  Head turned down, he focuses on his shoes and pretends the room isn’t spinning.  God, he wishes he could crouch down on the floor; he’s starting to feel sick.  But that won’t do anything to fix the situation, so obviously, he isn’t going to do it.

A plan — Ren needs a plan.  He needs —

A hand settles light on Ren’s shoulder, another tapping at the hand over his mouth.  Ren flinches, hearing rushing back to him all at once as the hands pull away.

When he looks up, he sees Futaba, arms raised like she’s facing a wild animal.  “It’s okay,” she’s saying uneasily.  “It’s okay, Joker.  Just…”

She struggles to find the words.  Haru finds them for her.

“Will you remove your hand, Ren-kun?” she asks, eyes gravely intense behind her mask.  “You’re hurting yourself.”

Belatedly, Ren realizes he can feel his own nails digging through the glove and into his cheek.  How embarrassing.  He bites his tongue and obliges, keeping his face as still as possible.

“It must be a new status effect,” Ann says resolutely, arms crossed in front of her and stare so worried Ren can feel it crawling in under his skin.  “Some sort of… what?  Inhibition lowerer?”

“A truth serum,” Morgana says lowly.

It’s been years since the interrogation room, and Ren’s as well-adjusted as he’ll ever be, but the comparison still makes every muscle in his body tense.  Something else.  He should focus on something else.

For instance: he doesn’t feel compelled to say anything at all in response to his teammates’ musings, which tells him — something.  That it’s based on being questioned, maybe.  That things have to be addressed to him specifically, or else he can choose not to answer.

“Related to the Shadow we just defeated, perhaps?” Yusuke suggests, looking back toward the spot it had disappeared from.  “His pain was concerned with, ah — ‘telling’.”

That makes sense, now that he has time to think about it.  Then really, it could be worse: Ren doesn’t talk much as is, so as long as he can get home and lock himself in his room, the damage shouldn’t be too catastrophic.  Better it happen to him than someone else; they’ll prepare better next time.

“Will it just… wear off eventually?” Ryuji asks, hands shoved uncertainly in his pockets.  “Like, on its own?”

Akechi waves his hand, other pressed to his brow like he’s fighting the worst headache of his life.  “We have no way of knowing.”

And Ren knows it’s true.  Mementos has thrown a new status ailment at them every so often from the beginning: all of them temporary, none of them lethal.  But what Akechi is saying is that there’s no guarantee.  They have to wait this one out, just like all the rest, so it can make a nice, neat page in the codex.

Behind his stony mask, Ren panics.  He can’t live like this for the rest of his life.  “I can’t live like this for the rest of my life.”

Akechi whips around to face him, but Ren covers his mouth again and turns resolutely away before they can lock eyes.  This fucking sucks.  Ren would drink exclusively canned coffee for a year to make this situation magically resolve itself at this very instant.

“Woah,” Ryuji says, wide-eyed and obviously worried, but still the only person smiling in this crowd.  The sight of it does set Ren at ease, weirdly.  “Who said it’s the rest of your life?  Lighten up, man.”

This time, Ren can taste the words before they slip off his tongue: I’m scared, flat but honest, and as whiney as a child.  Completely unacceptable and utterly mortifying.

So, of course, he does the only thing reasonable to do in this situation:

He bites his tongue, pulls out his dagger, and digs it into his thigh.

In retrospect, Ren should have factored his team’s response into his plan.  In the backseat of the Mona Bus, thoroughly tied up and jammed between Ann and Akechi, he reflects that he always gets a little reckless when he’s thinking on his feet.

It makes sense that Ann would want to be here: she’s one of his oldest friends, and she gets a little overprotective over her broken birds.  Akechi makes sense too in a different way, though Ren doesn’t want to focus on that right now when he’s liable to actually say things he means for once.

Akechi’s hand, half-hidden by his cloak, rests on the spot on Ren’s thigh he’d just stabbed.  It doesn’t hurt, though the gesture isn’t quite comforting either: his gauntlet is too heavy, the points of his fingers too sharp.  It’s strangely grounding anyway.

In contrast to the shouting and grabbing and arguing of a few minutes ago, the air is eerily still.  Ren is grateful, because it means he’s less likely to blurt out something embarrassing.  On the other hand, if he does say something, everyone will be able to hear it.  This is the worst status effect he’s ever dealt with.

Makoto’s eyes meet his in the rearview, snapping him out of his thoughts.  Her voice is overly loud with nerves.  “How are you feeling, Joker?”

“Fine,” he says, which he is; the medicine poured on his leg did its work before they even sat down.  “Tired.”  Okay, too much information; his brow furrows momentarily before he can smooth it out.  “I wish you would gag me.”  Stop talking, Joker.

Haru giggles, but it’s a little forced.  From either side, Ren can feel Akechi and Ann’s eyes staring holes into his face.

“We’re not doing that,” Ann says, downcast but firm.  “Is there anything else that would make you more… comfortable?”

Ren wonders if she’s feeling guilty about tying him up.  “It’s okay.  You’re really good with rope.”

Akechi’s hand tightens on his thigh.  Ren makes a noise, quiet and mortifying, and it relaxes in an instant.

“I don’t think that’s what she was asking,” Akechi says lowly, right into Ren’s ear.  Ren had kind of expected him to be happy about how humiliated he is right now, but he sounds anything but.  Maybe his patience for Ren’s antics is low today.

Normally, he’d make a joke right now, get under Akechi’s skin, dig some reluctant smile out from that grumpy outer crust of his.

“Too close,” he blurts instead.

Every person in the bus turns to look at them.  Akechi stares like he’s grown a second head.

Most days, Ren revels in being the leader of the Phantom Thieves.  He loves being part of a team; he loves the danger; he loves knowing the inner workings of his friends, all the things that make them tick, the types of praise and critique that motivates them to work the hardest.  It isn’t as impersonal as it sounds — it’s just how Ren shows he cares.  Even years into the game, with members forming their own stalwart relationships with each other, Ren is still the corner stone of this group, and he knows exactly what part to play to keep it running like a well-oiled machine.

Morgana likes him confident, kind, and idealistic.  Makoto likes him as her rock: a steady leader, a shoulder to cry on, always there to give the advice she needs.  Ann likes tough love; Sumire likes an ally; Haru likes an equal; Yusuke likes an anchor.  Ryuji wants his best friend, through thick and thin.  Futaba wants a lighthouse, a hand reaching out.  It’s all genuine, and Ren reciprocates genuinely, tweaking this response or that, thinking over his words.  It’s like a Persona: no matter how many masks he flips through, they’re all a part of him.  You get by with a little help.

In some ways, when Akechi had returned a couple years ago, he hadn’t been any different.  Akechi likes him coy; he likes him difficult; he likes the game of cat and mouse.  Akechi makes biting remarks at Joker, snaps his teeth at him, giddy laughter bubbling out of his mouth as the two of them work together in perfect sync in the Metaverse.  Akechi watches him with a gaze so heavy it could choke when they resurface, and Ren slides instead into the comfortable blank mask of his normal civilian self — like he aches to peel it off, to see some version of him underneath that even Ren isn’t certain exists.  It’s a more mercurial dance than the others, more adrenaline-inducing and difficult; Ren fumbles and slips and messes up.  But if there’s anything that’s stayed consistent even from the beginning, it’s that Akechi doesn’t want him sentimental, or needy, or pathetic.

Unfortunately, right now, all Ren can manage is pathetic.  He feels like he’s dropping everything he’s ever been good at in loose, scattered piles, layers peeled and grime scrubbed away by his unwilling honestly until it reaches bone.

His reputation is never going to recover from this.  “Gag me,” he says miserably.

Akechi must be feeling especially merciful today: reaching around to Ren’s tied hands, he takes off one red glove and shoves it into Ren’s mouth.  It tastes terrible and it must be absolutely filthy, but he doesn’t even care.  Closing his eyes, he tries his best to drown out his teammates’ objections and peacefully zones out.

He’s glad this awful status effect at least kept him from ending up in the driver’s seat.  He hates driving.

They remove the ties and gag before emerging into the real world.  Morgana already tucked neatly into his bag, Ren endures some public fretting before Akechi whisks him away with the excuse of the coming train.  His gloved hand on Ren’s shoulder blade pushes him through the crowd, away from their friends, and toward home.

Living with Akechi was one of those things that just kind of happened.  The year Ren was leaving his dorm, Ryuji moved closer to his job, and Yusuke to his studio — and Akechi, newly appeared and frighteningly unfettered, happened to be enrolling in the same university as him.  They were bickering over furniture placement before the other Phantom Thieves even knew they’d signed the lease.

Even more surprisingly, it works.  Akechi is awfully particular with his things and he never does the dishes; he wakes up surprisingly late when his schedule is open, and whenever he has an exam coming up, he paces around the place like he’s trying to set their cheap rug on fire.  Ren shudders to think what his high school apartment must have looked like.

There are other things, though.  Akechi likes to sit on the living room floor in the evenings, glancing up from his laptop when Ren shambles in.  If Ren leaves a grocery list on the fridge for too long, those groceries may mysteriously show up days later.  He keeps Morgana company when Ren has to go somewhere alone, even if they both complain about it.  Ever since Ren made an offhand joke about hating the nearby laundromat, his pile of dirty clothes in the bathroom is always disappearing, then reappearing in a heap on his futon, like a delivery from a particularly unbothered guardian angel.  And if Ren falls asleep on the couch, or the floor, or slumped over his school work at the table — he wakes in bed without fail, with no memory of moving there.

It’s been amazing for his back.  He tries not to think too hard about the other implications of it, though.

Ren is used to living without other people, sans Morgana; between college dorms, Leblanc’s attic, and his coldly empty childhood home, it’s all he knows.  Still — he likes this.  He likes being with someone like this.

Not that he’s ever said so in so many words, of course; it’s so sentimental that Ren wouldn’t be surprised if Akechi packed up and left the moment the words left his mouth.  In the subway car, Akechi’s hovering hand occasionally brushes his back as they rock and sway, and Ren forces himself to space out again.

He just needs to get to his room and he’ll be fine.  He just needs to be alone.

Blissfully, neither Akechi nor Morgana ask him anything.  In the underground’s rush of noise and bodies, Akechi’s heavy presence is a familiar anchor; as they emerge onto the street and start the walk home, he pulls away, hands in his pockets and eyes focused steady in front of him.

The moment Akechi has the door unlocked, Ren is hurrying to his room.  From down the hall, he can feel Akechi’s eyes watching him.

“Sleep it off,” he calls out, like Ren wasn’t planning on it anyway.  There’s a clipped, clinical distance to it, as if to distract the both of them from the fact that he’d said it at all.

Ren likes to give him grief; he likes to fight back, to push, to get a rise out of him.

But frankly, he’s exhausted.  With a weak salute, he closes the door, shucks his outside clothes, and climbs into bed.  Morgana wordlessly crawls in beside him, worry relayed in his familiar, comforting weight on Ren’s chest, and it’s only minutes later that Ren falls asleep.

When he wakes, it’s dark outside his window.  He scrubs a hand over his face and forces himself upright, trying not to wake Morgana on his pillow.  Thankfully, Morgana only mumbles something blearily and turns around, back asleep in an instant.

There must have been a pile of laundry on Ren’s futon that he hadn’t noticed in his rush to sleep, now halfway scattered to the floor; blearily, he throws on the first cozy-looking clothes he sees and stumbles out into the hall.

The light is on in the living room; under it is Akechi, sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, laptop open in front of him.  He doesn’t turn when Ren comes out, but when Ren makes it into eyeshot, he finds Akechi already watching him.

He doesn’t say anything.  His gaze drags slow up Ren’s body, from his bare feet to his bedhead, with an expression too north of bored to be truly neutral.  On his keyboard, his fingers don’t move, and no matter how long Ren stays there in the spotlight, he doesn’t look away.  But he doesn’t ask him anything.

Ren shrugs it off, glancing at the kitchen clock over his shoulder.  It’s entirely too late for dinner.  “Have you eaten yet?”

Akechi seems distracted tonight.  Still, he dutifully turns the television on when Ren comes back to the coffee table with an unreasonable amount of microwavable dumplings, and he dutifully takes the chopsticks offered, and he dutifully stuffs his face, dividing the dumplings into neat piles that Ren is almost completely certain are stacked in Akechi’s favor.

Watching stuff is nice, though.  They’re running some movie right now; plopped right into the middle of it, Ren’s tired brain struggles to unravel who and what everyone is talking about.

Meanwhile, Akechi’s laptop stays open.  He doesn’t type anything, and Ren can feel the familiar meat hook-dig of Akechi’s attention.

Absently, Ren reflects on the old Akechi, when they were both just high school idiots backed into a corner.  No doubt sharp-tongued, eagle-eyed teen detective Akechi Goro would have taken this opportunity to its limits — mainly looking for intel about the Phantom Thieves, certainly, but Ren can easily picture him wrangling any manner of secret or weakness or embarrassing memory from his unwilling mouth.  Akechi wouldn’t have hesitated; he wouldn’t have felt bad.  Ren had liked that ruthlessness about him.

Now, 23-year-old law student Akechi Goro sits quietly at Ren’s side, mouth full of frozen dumpling.  He hasn’t asked Ren a single question since they realized what was going on — and Ren likes this, too, if in a different way.

The movie’s female lead has just discovered a body in her attic when Akechi finally speaks.  “Is the status effect still in place?”

Ren keeps his eyes on the screen, though it’s already lost most of his attention.  “I’m not sure.”

Akechi’s fingers clack across the keyboard.  Ren watches him press the backspace key multiple times in a row out of the corner of his eye.

“Why are you wearing my shirt?” Akechi says eventually, short and unconcerned.

Even when Ren slides his gaze up, Akechi’s expression doesn’t give anything away.  Dropping his head, Ren picks at the collar of his pullover instead, surprised to find that Akechi is right.  It’s the big soft one Haru had brought back for him on her trip to the States last year, loudly proclaiming its love of New York on the front in big blocky letters.

He blinks.  “I didn't realize.”

At his side, Akechi’s typing accelerates.

“It was in my room,” Ren adds in his defense, and he feels it then: that he wouldn’t have said that usually, that his honesty is out of his own control.  Instinctively, he bites down hard on his own cheek to keep any possible additional words down, blunt teeth tearing into this afternoon’s preexisting wounds.

Wordlessly, Akechi’s hand leaves his keyboard and goes to Ren’s mouth.  His palms are warm and fingers soft in spite of their callouses as he holds Ren’s jaw; Ren’s breath catches in his throat, confused if not unwilling.  And when Akechi’s thumb hovers over Ren’s lip, pressing down lightly until Ren is certain he’s about to push it inside — Ren is fully prepared to let him.

He doesn’t, though; the moment Ren’s jaw goes slack and his molars come unstuck from his cheek, Akechi pulls away.

“That answers that, then,” he says like nothing happened, leaving Ren blinking at him owlishly as he scrambles to catch up.

The woman onscreen ahead of them screams, and Ren uses the excuse to turn away, pretending his face isn’t burning.  It’s fine; it’s not a big deal.  It doesn’t have to be weird if he doesn’t make it weird.

The thing is that this kind of thing isn’t entirely unheard of.  Ren wouldn’t describe Akechi as warm or cuddly in any way; certainly, he’s less prone to casual touches than their other friends.  Where Makoto might wrap an arm around him or Yusuke might pull him in for a hug, Akechi will at most just rest his hand somewhere on Ren’s body: his shoulder, his arm, his waist, always fleeting and half-hidden, like he’s fully prepared to scram at a moment’s notice.  And he never touches anyone but Ren at all; even when someone else initiates, he slips free in seconds.

Ren doesn’t think about the reasons.  Maybe Akechi doesn’t feel like one of them; maybe he’s not used to a lot of physical affection.  Maybe he gets prickly and overstimulated after battle, the way Ren sometimes does when he’s thinking too hard.  Maybe he just doesn’t really like being touched.

Either way, Ren doesn’t push it; he never really has.  And like a skittish rescue cat, the less Ren pushes, the closer Akechi comes, until in the relative peace of their shared apartment, Akechi is the one doing the reaching.

He’ll slide Ren’s glasses up his nose when they start to fall.  He’ll pull on his sleeve to get his attention.  He’ll pass close behind him, hand on the small of his back to wordlessly tell him to stay.

Mostly, Ren just tries to play it cool.  His age-old crush on Akechi must be obvious by now considering it’s a flame he’s carried since he was a bumbling teenager — but if he wants to stay close, he can’t make this small amount of contact a big deal.  Nothing sentimental, nothing needy, nothing pathetic.

The rest of the night passes uneventfully.  Eventually, Morgana wakes up and comes padding out looking for him.  Not long after, Akechi gets tired of pretending to work and goes to bed.  Ren lies on the floor with his limbs splayed everywhere and Morgana curled on his side, staring at the television without paying much attention to it.  They’re running a really good sale on instant protein shakes right now.  Maybe he should order some.

If he falls asleep on the floor and wakes up in bed, no one needs to know.  Even Morgana, staring judgmentally at him from the dresser, doesn’t comment.

“Is it still going?” Morgana asks instead, tail flicking idly behind him as they both try to wake up.

“Don’t know,” Ren says.  “Ask me something.”

Morgana seems to consider this a moment.  “Did you eat Lady Ann’s pudding the other day?”

It wasn’t pudding; it was a wonderful, blissful, delicious bit of cake in a can — the kind you usually only see at fancy pop-up vending machines on social media.  Ren tries to deny it, just to see if he can.

“Yes,” he says instead.  He’ll have to plan some way to make it up to Ann if Morgana tattles.

In the quiet of his bedroom with only him and Morgana, the truth spell doesn’t seem like as big of a deal.  In a group of people Ren is trying to ensure the teamwork of, he cares a lot for his unshakeable outer shell; there’s a lot of people talking, which means a lot of things he could reply to.  One on one, though, he feels more or less the same as usual.

Plus, Ren’s schedule is blissfully clear today.  He lazes around his room until his stomach grumbles, then makes breakfast.  He’s already cleaning up by the time Akechi wakes up.

Akechi’s sleep schedule is fitful and irregular; it seems he’s constantly playing catch-up.  Sometimes he’s up even before Ren; sometimes he sleeps well through the morning.

It’s somewhere in the middle today.  Half-awake, he almost trips over Morgana, blinking and scowling at Ren from the hallway.  His skin is still shiny and wet from his morning routine.

“Still going,” Ren says before Akechi can ask.  Then, a moment later: “I made breakfast.”

Akechi stares at him while he eats — though every time Ren looks, Akechi is wholly focused on his phone.  “The others want to come over,” Akechi says, face leaned inelegantly on his hand, elbow on the table.  “They said they have some ideas.”

Ren tries to say, Okay.  Instead, he says, “I don’t want them to.”

The familiar weight of Akechi’s gaze drags his fraying nerves down into something more comfortable.  “Why’s that?”

He wants to say, I’m nervous; he can feel the words building on the tip of his tongue.  He bites down and holds it like that until the feeling abates somewhat, then says, still truthful but less painfully so, “Too many people.”

Once again, Ren can feel Akechi studying him like he’s a particularly nasty math problem.  It’s so familiar that Ren doesn’t even need to look to know what face he’s making: eyes slightly squinted, mouth taut, all overly still in his focus like a hunting dog.

So Ren doesn’t look, gaze fixed solidly on his soapy hands.  He kind of likes washing dishes, in a weird way.  The warm water is nice.  He likes having something to do.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Morgana peek one eye open from the windowsill he’s pretending to sleep on.  Ren steadfastly ignores him too, until the eye closes again.

Ryuji, Sumire, and Futaba walk in less than an hour later.

“Yo,” Ryuji says, kicking his shoes off haphazardly and taking a flying leap onto the couch.  The springs and Morgana alike complain as he settles, half-sitting and half-lying on his side just above Ren.

Futaba approaches with similar enthusiasm, settling on the floor to tuck herself neatly beside Ren until they’re very nearly touching.  Like Ryuji, she doesn’t take her jacket off.

“Yo,” she echoes quietly.  Ren immediately feels guilty for ignoring his messages.

At the door, Sumire is politely handing Akechi a small white bakery box before neatly taking off her shoes.  Ren is immediately reminded of why she’s Akechi’s favorite.  “Thank you for having us, Ren-senpai, Akechi-senpai.”

“Hey!” Morgana complains without any real ire as if by habit, fur still ruffled from Ryuji’s sudden landing.

Sumire smiles and adds, “Morgana-senpai.”

“Thanks for coming,” Ren says, by his own will.  “You didn't have to,” he adds, less so.

The three of them share a glance.  Morgana starts licking a paw; Akechi is very industriously opening the box of pastries on the kitchen table.  Ren has a sinking feeling that a team meeting may have gone on without him.

A moment later, Ryuji pokes Ren’s cheek curiously.  “It’s weird to hear you talk so much, man.”

Futaba’s head whips up so fast to glare at Ryuji that her glasses nearly knock Ren’s jaw.

“Not that it’s bad,” Ryuji backtracks quickly.  “I mean, we all like hearing your opinion on stuff, you know?  It’s refreshing.  I’m all for it.”

“Thanks,” Ren says simply.  There’s more building in the back of his throat, obtrusive and thick as bile, but he swallows it down artlessly, staring at the rug underneath him.

There’s a quiet moment.  Sumire tries next, grabbing two of the plates Akechi set out.  “Of course we would want to come, Senpai; we’re your friends!  Now, leader gets first pick.  Would you rather have mango or strawberry?”

“Strawberry,” Ren says.  If it’s more immediate than he might usually answer, that’s for him to know and everyone else in the room to unfortunately and obviously notice.  “Thanks.”

Sumire smiles brightly at him as she hands him the plate, and Ryuji seems to have relaxed some, too.  Akechi, Morgana, and Futaba, Ren notes, are still obviously tense.

“I thought mango was your favorite,” Futaba says, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve.

“I can fix that for you,” Ren replies.  He has a mending kit somewhere, from when fixing up various machines started feeling a little tedious and he needed a new hobby to stay busy; it should be around here somewhere —

Futaba’s forehead butts his shoulder.  “Ren.”

The truth bubbles out of him, gross and unwilling.  “Mango is your favorite,” he says, and then, at Futaba’s stricken expression.  “I do like it.  I just… like to share things with you, so whenever you want to split something, it’s better if it’s your favorite.”

The room is overly still, and Ren curses this status effect once more.  He for one would be perfectly happy never having a conversation like this again.

Sumire’s words are casual enough, but she has her battle face on.  “So mango is your favorite, Futaba-chan?  You can have this one, then.”

Morgana bears the brunt of entertaining their three guests, directing questions and conversations while Akechi leans brooding against the doorframe and Ren drags out eating his cake for as long as physically possible.  Eventually, they arrive at their only logical destination.

“I thought it would go away overnight,” Morgana is saying, ears flicking back, “but we tested it this morning, and —  Well, you can see.”

“We certainly can,” Akechi mutters.

“What did you ask?” Ryuji asks curiously, leg jittering.

Morgana delivers the news with no small amount of solemn import.  “He was the one who ate Lady Ann’s pudding last week.”

Ryuji gasps.  “Renren!  You let me take the fall for that?”

Ren pushes his glasses up.  “Sorry.”

Sumire laughs, and the tension dissipates a little bit.  It almost feels normal.

Then Akechi puts his hand under his chin in an overstated pantomime of deep thought and says, “Should we move onto discussing what we know, then?”

He wants to ask, About what?, but it’s so obvious that to ask feels like a lie.  It won’t come out of his mouth no matter how he tries.

The sinking feeling grows.

Futaba’s fingers drum on the rug.  “The kid seems to be back to normal.  His teacher posted a thank you on the site, and the CCTV’s at his school showed him playing and talking with other kids and stuff.”

From behind him, Ryuji voice sounds mildly creeped out.  “You got the CC-whatever footage?  Isn’t that kind of overkill?”

Ren feels Futaba look at him, then away.  When she shrugs, her shoulder brushes his.

Ryuji sits up, swinging his legs over until his knee bumps Ren’s other shoulder.  “We didn’t find anything weird leftover in Mementos.  No powders, no suspicious figures, no writing in blood — we went a few levels further than we’d gone the other day, but it was all clear.  Nothing to report.”

“You went to Mementos?” Ren asks, dumbstruck.  It isn’t safe, he wants to say, without him there.  His wildcard fills the gaps in their team; they could be caught blind without him.  Couldn’t they?

Scratching the back of his neck, Ryuji looks the very picture of sheepish.  “Sorry,” he stage-whispers.

Next in line, Sumire pulls a stack of thick books out of her bag and sets them carefully on the coffee table.  “The library had a lot of information on mythical and supernatural entities,” she reports.  “I haven’t had the chance to read all of them yet — but I brought all the ones I could carry, just in case!”

It makes sense that this would be Sumire’s job, Ren thinks distantly as he eyes the size of the tomes.  They look heavy.  He’s not entirely certain how she fit them in her bag in the first place.

Finally, all eyes turn to Morgana, whose eyes flit guiltily to Ren’s, then away.  “Like I said, we tried it out already.  The truth spell’s definitely still going strong.”

Akechi looks thoughtful and a little irritated, the way he gets when he can’t solve the Sunday crossword right away.  “If its duration isn't purely time-related, then it’s much more potent than any other status effect we’ve faced.”

Morgana nods seriously.  “There may be another condition we haven’t considered yet.”

“Maybe,” Ryuji suggests, “he just has to, like — tell the truth?”

Everyone turns doubtfully to Ren, who stares stoically back and shrugs.

They pour over the books.  Ren tries to remember what the Shadow had looked like: floating, and as eerily still as a statue, with hair like light and a young, masculine face —

“Didn't it have a bow and a lyre?” Sumire asks suddenly.

Ryuji leans over to look.  “A what?”

Sumire sets the book on the coffee table for everyone to look at; it’s open to an entry on Apollo.

“The god of light and truth,” Akechi reads aloud.  He sounds almost bored, but there’s a look in his eye that sends an instinctive shiver down Ren’s spine.

“The god of everything, it sounds like,” Futaba says, eyes wide.  “Archery, music, disease, the sun…”

“It looks like him,” Ren pitches mildly, which seems to settle matters for everyone.

They start discussing a game plan right after.  Unfortunately for Ren, he is really not a fan of this one.

“So I was right,” Ryuji cheers, flopped bonelessly back into the couch.  “He just needs to tell the truth!”

Almost everyone in the room droops with relief.  Morgana, tail flicking lightly behind him, still looks doubtful.  “We don’t know for sure.”

“It’s worth a shot, at least,” Futaba says, seeming less dejected now that they have something like a plan in place.

“That seems right,” Ren adds, dragged reluctantly out of him as a truth he didn't even know until now.

The room of faces brightens.

“What’s something we don’t know about you, Senpai?” Sumire asks eagerly.  “It can be anything.”

The lurch in his throat to tell the truth is no less strong, but its direction is unclear; Ren steers it as safely as he can.  “I was scared of snakes as a kid.”

“Something racier than that,” Ryuji laughs.  “Who was your first kiss?”

The urge is more pointed now, less out of his control; it rears like a wild animal.  “Kimura Mio,” he says against his will, “a classmate from junior high.”

Sumire looks curious; Akechi’s expression is distinctly unamused.  Futaba whistles, eyes a little wide.  “Junior high!  That’s… wow.  I guess you’ve always been popular, huh?”

His first year in Tokyo comes back to him.  “Not really.”  Don’t mention the librarian; don’t mention the talk in the halls; don’t mention the way no one was willing to share books with him in case his delinquency rubbed off — “No one at my old high school would talk to me for all of third year.”  No, Ren, that’s worse.  That’s news.

A beat.  “Right,” Sumire starts, wincing, “before your charge was rescinded…”

“Woah,” Ryuji says, looking sheepish, “I didn’t know that, man.”

Ren’s answer tumbles right out.  “I didn’t want you to.”

Another tense stretch of silence.  All of the earlier camaraderie and hopeful brainstorming has been swept down the drain, and Ren feels rotten about it; he’s irritated at them for being here, and irritated at them for making plans without him, and irritated at himself for being irritated.  For the first time in a while, he’s unsure how best to proceed, and he flounders in that uncertainty.  No plan is a good plan; doing nothing at all might be worse.

He wishes he was alone right now.

Futaba’s head leans on his shoulder with a sudden thunk.  When he looks down, he finds her solemn again: worrying her lip, eyes cast down, thumbs twiddling.  Her voice is quiet, but resolute.  “Do you want us here right now?”

Ren wants to have a different answer for her.  He wants a way to twist the truth, to bend it; he wants to tell her everything’s okay, she can stay as long as she wants, of course he wants her here.

But right now, he literally can’t lie to her.  “No.”

It takes as little time for the group to file out as it had for them to come in.  Morgana is in the middle of saying his goodbyes when Futaba scoops him up in her arms.  When she reaches forward to hug Ren, Morgana is cradled loosely between them; and Morgana doesn’t even question it or complain when Futaba opens her backpack for him.

“See you soon,” he says, head pushed through the gap in the zipper.  His eyes dart to Akechi, loitering in the background, then back to Ren.

Ren nods, exhausted and strangely distant, like his mind and body are miles apart.  “I’ll text you guys.”

Then the door closes, and his friends are gone, and it’s just Ren and Akechi once again.

There’s never been a time when Ren has been really, genuinely afraid to be alone with Akechi.  Their teenage years saw the tense months when it was dangerous, risky, when any slip of the tongue could end his life — but it wasn’t scary in any way he didn't want it to be.  Even when he found out that Akechi meant to kill him, he wasn’t exactly afraid.  It didn’t feel good, certainly — but he was just going to have to stick to his plan, and he had to count on Akechi doing so, too.

For better or for worse, he did — twice over.  And then it was done and over, and years passed before they saw each other again.

Sometimes, Akechi watches him like he wants to kill him.  Sometimes he watches him like he covets him, or envies him, or hates him.  But even when Akechi says something particularly mean or stares particularly hard or pushes his limits particularly far during a battle, Ren isn’t afraid of him.

Now, though, when Ren turns around and sees Akechi leaning expectantly in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest —

His heart picks up.  Alarms ring in his head, the way they do when a Palace master catches wind of him, telling him to go, to run with his tail between his legs, to come back another day when the playing field is more even.

But there’s nowhere to run, and no Palace master to run from.  There’s only Akechi, who studies him a long moment with a scowl punched across his pretty face before he pushes off from the wall.

“C’mon,” he sighs over his shoulder.  “If you don’t want them coming back tomorrow, we should just get this out of the way.”

Ren follows, curiosity leading him like a leash.  “Get what out of the way?”

Akechi gives him the stink eye as he slides into his chair at the table.  “You need to tell the truth to get rid of the status effect,” he says, like it’s obvious.  “You hate telling the truth in front of your friends.  Here we are.”

He motions between the two of them.  Ren stares at him blankly.

Another sigh, shorter this time.  “I doubt Morgana will give you another day alone after this.  Come on, sit.  I don’t have time to play twenty questions with you all afternoon.”

When he kicks the bottom of Ren’s chair, it clatters out and into his shin.  He barely feels it, though; he’s already lost in thought.

It kind of makes sense.  Not being able to lie is as uncomfortable as learning a new way to breathe, but it’s exponentially harder with groups of people; he can’t focus, can’t smooth things over, can’t take one for the team.

As he’s learned being home with Akechi and Morgana, though, it’s much easier one-on-one.  Maybe it makes sense for Akechi to have noticed that.

He nods, fully settling into both the idea and his chair at the table.  “Okay.”

Akechi looks artfully bored; he has his phone in hand, though his thumb isn’t moving.  “Who was your second kiss?”

A surprising question, but —  “Haru.”

It was during the peak of the overpowered lust status effects; she’d climbed him like a tree.  They laughed about it after.

Akechi’s knuckles grow white around his phone for just a second before they relax.  When he speaks again, his voice is completely normal: neutral, short, uninterested.  “What’s something or someone you hate?”

If he were asked this normally, when his brain was at full capacity, he’d probably think on it a long time.  As is, he just says, “Driving.”

The expression on Akechi’s face is at once fascinated and disdainful, like he’s looking at a particularly disgusting, newly-discovered species of parasite under a microscope.  “You drive all the time in Mementos.”

Ren shrugs.

The phone is set down — a win, in terms of getting Akechi’s attention.  Akechi leans his chin on his hand, halfway across their tiny kitchen table, eyes fully focused and lit up like a searchlight — which is a loss, in that it’s going to be much harder to hide.

“What’s a secret you keep from your friends?” 

The truth all but leaks from Ren’s mouth, but he manages to wrangle it by the skin of his teeth.  “Why are you asking?”

One of Akechi’s eyebrows hikes up; Ren is just as jealous of his ability to do that as he was the first time he saw it.  “This is taking too long.  The boy’s Shadow had something big he was holding onto that was eating him up; perhaps the nature of your… ailment is the same.”

Yusuke had said something similar — that the kid’s pain was related to ‘telling’.  Ren isn’t entirely sure what that means for him, but he’s sure it’s nothing good.

Still, he can’t object; he just doesn’t have the time.  The truth jumps out of his mouth the instant he opens it again.  “I don’t actually like crepes.”

That raised eyebrow twitches.  “What?”

“I don’t like crepes,” Ren repeats dumbly.  Oh, this is just awful; what if Akechi tells everyone?  Only Morgana knows, and he’s kept this up for years.  “Ann always wants to get them, and she’s recruited Makoto, too — but I just don’t like them that much.”

Akechi gapes at him.  “Are you fucking with me?” he asks, thankfully barreling right on before Ren is forced to say, I wish.  “Ren, that is — That’s not even a secret.  That…  It’s weird that you even hid that at all.”

“I know,” Ren says, miserably and against his will.

The sound Akechi makes is exasperated and guttural and definitely shouldn’t be hot.  “What’s next,” he asks, hand pressed to his forehead, “a mild cat allergy?”

Ren bites his cheek and conspicuously holds his silence.  Akechi looks seconds away from strangling him.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Akechi mutters once he’s taken a moment, tapping his finger on the table.  Ren watches it with a single-minded intensity, all his brain power focused on not thinking anything at all.  “A pain related to telling — so real secrets, then.”

Ren doesn’t have any evidence, but —  “That sounds right.”

Maybe this would have been easier with Morgana, who’s been with him every step for six years.  Maybe he could have told him anything without fear of judgement, because Morgana has already been with Ren at the bottom of both their lives, and Ren can’t imagine him ever deciding he’s too much work to deal with.

But it isn’t Morgana sitting across the table from him; it’s Akechi, all wilted and sour like this experience has been draining for him, too.  Ren had sent Morgana away just minutes ago; he’d chosen to be here with Akechi instead.  And he doesn’t even have the guarantee that Akechi won’t leave him behind when he becomes too much trouble.  After all, it’s always been Ren chasing him.

But then — Akechi had come back, two years ago.  He’d come back, and moved in with him, and joined his team, and done his laundry.  The intoxicating magnetism that has always drawn them together has only strengthened with time — Akechi watches him with a fevered intensity that isn’t even two parts bloodlust anymore; every time Ren turns around, Akechi is watching him.  Akechi treats him differently than he does everyone else, touches him, spars with him, laughs with him, waits up for him on late nights.  And when Ren had made his first accidental spell-induced confession yesterday, Akechi had frozen and flushed and stared like a particularly carnivorous deer in headlights.

It would be foolish to assert that there’s no feelings between them.  Ren isn’t stupid; he knows Akechi wants him.  It’s only that, with all these walls up and these lips sealed, there’s no way to bridge the gap.  Sometimes, Ren tells himself to be happy with what he has: that he’d never thought he’d see Akechi again, much less like this.  Sometimes, that placation only feels like an excuse.  Vulnerability has neither been the forte of either of them.

Thinking about this isn’t making it any easier; still, he needs to fix this, and fast.  In some ways, the risk is higher — but then, there’s specific things Ren doesn’t want to say with each of the Thieves.  It might as well be Akechi.

Ren braces himself.  “Okay.  Hit me.”

Akechi takes a second to form his question, but when it does, it slams into Ren like a freight train.  “Do you feel like the other Phantom Thieves are using you?”

“No,” Ren spits, eyes flying open, and then, in a reluctant drag, “I want them to use me.”

It’s late afternoon now, and the light is already dimming down into something meek and warm.  Under it, Akechi’s eyes are so red that even his cold expression can’t dim them.  “Why?”

It’s too close, too much, too soon.  Ren doesn’t have a choice.  “I don’t want them to go.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” Ren says with a shrug.  “Somewhere else.  Away.”

There’s an undercurrent of suspicion in Akechi’s expression, like there’s any way Ren could possibly be tricking him.  There’s something else, too — quieter, more open — that Ren doesn’t need to examine right now.

“Am I using you?” Akechi asks.

You could be, Ren almost shoots off — but in his current state, it would be honest, not grotesquely sexual, and that’s too much to bear.  “No,” he says instead — the second-most true answer.  “Not anymore.”

Akechi’s eyebrow hitches up again.  “What are you trying so hard to keep from me right now?”

Ren knows he literally invited this, but it feels mean.  He is not confessing his unfortunate, soggy feelings because a god of truth cursed him.  Especially not when Akechi has that glint in his eye — like he’s winning, and he knows it.

“I wanted to kick your ass when you came back,” Ren blurts instead.

Relief almost crushes him when Akechi takes the bait, straightening up in his seat.  This is better; violence has always been the safer option between the two of them.  “If I recall,” Akechi replies smoothly, “you tried to.”

Typical Akechi, to make it sound like he won that fight.  In reality, they’d both beat each other into the ground until the other Phantom Thieves had to drag them out of Mementos kicking and screaming.

Ren waves an airy hand.  “Yeah, well.”

But Akechi isn’t done yet.  The intention on his face has sharpened to a dangerous degree, cutting into Ren until the base of his skull tingles.  “Why did you want to?”

It’s too close again.  Ren holds the truth back by the skin of his teeth.  “Is this an interrogation, Detective?”

Akechi’s smile is thin and mean.  “If that helps you sleep at night, sure it is.  Why did you fight me, Joker?”

It doesn’t feel like this is about the curse anymore.  Suddenly, Ren pictures himself standing at the top of a mountain, moments from slipping down, down, down.  “I was mad.”

“Why?”

“Because you pissed me off.”

“Why?”

Contained rage and some other emotion shakes under Ren’s skin, knocking his teeth into each other.  He meets Akechi’s gaze with fire flashing in his eyes.

“Because,” Ren spits, “you took three years.”

Three years — with no call, no text, no news of if he was alive or dead.  Ren had always told himself he didn't expect anything from Akechi; from the start, theirs was a transactional relationship, a mutual attempt at using, with friendship as a side effect.  He didn’t want to form such a strong attachment; it insults them both to admit that he had.  But then Akechi had given his life for him that day in the engine room, and then waltzed back in through the doors of Leblanc, offering his cooperation on a silver platter — and against his better judgement, Ren had begun to hope.

Akechi had accused him of brainless sentimentality once, that windy January night in Kichijoji.  And Ren had felt there for the first time exactly what he feels now: that there is a string tied to his heart, and he has no control over where it leads.  He’s terribly scared if he pulls hard enough, he won’t find anything attached to the other end at all.

But then, after all of that, and Ren had resigned himself to never seeing the other end — Akechi had come back.

“There it is,” Akechi says, leaning back in his chair all simpering and victorious and raw.  And Ren must be a sentimental fool after all, because — heart battering against his ribs, adrenaline humming, all remaining reason in his body screaming its objections — he lunges across the short distance of the table, grabs Akechi’s face in his hands, and kisses him.

If being suddenly and aggressively kissed shocks Akechi at all, he doesn’t let on; his mouth moves immediately with an equally-matched fervor.  He doesn’t make it any easier for Ren by leaning forward, either; if anything, he only settles further, until the angle Ren bends at digs the edge of the table into his hips.

Akechi’s lips are soft; he tastes like coffee and chapstick.  When his hand sneaks up Ren’s body, it lingers in all the places he might usually brush him: his shoulder, his arm, his waist.  Somehow, the caress is more distracting than the kissing, and Ren pulls away to catch a quick breath without thinking.

When he does, he comes face to face with Akechi Goro, as red-faced and smug as Ren’s ever seen him.  His thumb brushes Ren’s lip with a bare amount of pressure in an echo of last night.

This time, Ren opens his mouth, licking over the tip of Akechi’s thumb before he has time to pull away.

“Trying to get out of talking, Amamiya?” Akechi asks breathlessly.  “I’ll have you know I don’t accept bribes.”

This impromptu roleplay is almost too close — almost.  “We’ll see,” Ren says as he comes around the table, voice even and unspirited in the way he knows drives Akechi crazy.  Then, before the other can react, he climbs onto his lap and kisses him again.

Akechi is a good, practiced kisser, meeting Ren’s every move with ease.  It almost feels like another competition between the two of them: Ren nips and Akechi bites; Ren’s mouth opens and Akechi pushes inside.  Whereas Ren’s hands go up, holding onto the back of the chair with one hand and the back of Akechi’s neck with the other, Akechi’s go down: he grabs his waist, thighs, ass, like he can’t decide where to settle, like he can’t get enough.

This is probably a bad idea: they’re roommates still, and teammates besides, and neither talking about what this means nor not talking about it are feeling like good options.  But it’s the one honest thing that Ren actively wants to do right now, so he doesn’t fight it in the slightest.

They’re close enough in height that Ren’s neck starts to ache from bending down.  He pulls away, and Akechi chases his mouth with a wounded animal sound that makes Ren’s heart drop low and hot into his gut.  When he arches back, Akechi latches instead onto his neck, digging his teeth into the skin there without any warning whatsoever.

It hurts; Ren loves it.  His grip tightens around the back of Akechi’s neck, pulling his hair as he pushes him closer.  

His other hand works at the highest done-up button on Akechi’s shirt, right in the center of his sternum.  But before he can wiggle it loose, Akechi has his wrist caught in his hand.

His eyes are wild, face flushed to the ears.  “Do you want this?”

The truth is too dangerous to touch; Ren diverts with a challenge.  “Do you care?”

When Akechi’s thumb swipes over the back of Ren’s hand, it feels somehow more intimate than the throbbing teeth marks on his neck.  “I won’t be an excuse for you to hurt yourself with,” Akechi hisses with a furious intensity, pitched low like he doesn’t want Ren to hear it at all.  “Maybe three years ago I would have had a different answer.  Not now.”

For maybe the first time, Ren doesn’t like the feeling of Akechi seeing straight through him.  He bites his cheek and tries to mash their mouths together again, but Akechi only pushes him back and down.

Even for all Ren’s flexibility, this new angle is uncomfortable: seated on Akechi’s lap, shoulders to the table, he’s arched as far as he can go.  Akechi’s hand presses down on his ribs, and between the pose and the energy, he can hardly breathe.

Too fast to dodge, Akechi snatches Ren’s glasses and tosses them carelessly on the floor.  “Do you want this?” he repeats, gaze pinning Ren like a sword through the heart.

Ren likes to think, under different circumstances and while not magicked into spilling his guts, he could come up with a really cool, witty response.

But the familiar kick of the truth against his teeth forces his mouth open, and all he says is, “Yes,” rough and sentimental and pathetic.

Akechi makes an interesting, strangled sound in his throat, standing and crashing into Ren in one movement.  It makes Ren lose his footing, sliding uncertainty along the tile as the table rocks to and fro with him.

“Stop squirming,” Akechi mutters with a nip before pinning Ren’s hip down with one hand.  In the same motion, Akechi slides his thigh between Ren’s spread legs so that he’ll grind against it if he falls anymore.

For a moment, Akechi just stands there looking at him, other hand coasting up his side and toward his chest.  His fingers brush over Ren's nipples; the stimulation is practically nonexistent through his thick hoodie, but it makes his breath catch anyway.  For all that Ren wants to undress Akechi, he lets him look — head lolled loosely to the side and lips parted, putting on his very best show.

This time, when Akechi’s hand tightens on Ren’s hip, it’s to drag him closer.  The table creaks its protest, but if Akechi notices, he doesn’t seem to care; he pulls Ren in until he has to lift his leg to keep the pressure from being painful.  Akechi catches his thigh automatically, rolling leisurely and half-hard against Ren like he’s already fucking him.

The friction is nice — not enough yet, but nice.  Ren rocks along, reaching forward to unbutton Akechi’s trousers.

The trouser button is easy; the shirt buttons are smaller and snugger, and Ren’s usually nimble fingers fumble when Akechi bends further down.  The motion pulls Ren’s leg in close to his chest; it also means that when Akechi continues his lazy movements, the angle is better.  Ren can feel Akechi’s forming erection pressed against his own, biting his lip to keep down his panting breaths as he unbuttons endlessly.  Why does Akechi bother with these shirts on his days off, anyway?

A low noise in his ear distracts him.  Ren turns as much as he’s able to find Akechi ducked, nose buried in his neck.  Heat sparks like fireworks at the thought that in the middle of foreplay, Akechi is smelling him.

Ren is grabbing him by the hair and kissing him again before he can think twice about it.

Now that some of his controlled bravado has fallen away, Akechi kisses Ren like a man possessed.  He’s hungry, greedy, and unmeasured; he licks into his mouth without giving Ren any room to fight back or breathe.  When he groans, it seems to reverberate through him and into Ren, bouncing inside his skull and blood and ribcage until it’s all he can feel.

And all the while, his hand keep wandering.  The one holding up Ren’s leg can only clench and unclench, digging so painfully hard into the bend of Ren’s knee that he wouldn’t be surprised to find finger-shaped marks there later.  The other seems to travel everywhere: across his neck, his waist, the strained muscles of his sides.  It unzips and unbuttons his jeans only to barely ghost over his underwear; it slips under his hoodie and shirt in one motion.

There, it traces Ren’s navel, his abdominal muscles, the faint indents of his ribs.  Ren’s anticipation is being pushed out of his mouth and into Akechi’s in sharp gasps as that hand finally, finally brushes over his nipples directly.

Instinctively, his legs try to close; his hand in Akechi’s hair curls tight.  But this doesn’t deter Akechi at all: he only laughs, giddy and rough, and pinches.

To be honest, Ren has thought about Akechi in bed — a lot.  When they’d first met, he’d had daydreams about leading the gentle-voiced detective with the defiant look in his eye to his room, taking them both in hand, and rocking together until Akechi lost that false, distant pleasantness.  Then it had become something rawer, more real: the Akechi he met with on the weekends was only nice in the way a Venus flytrap is nice, and Ren spent more time than he’d care to admit thinking about falling straight in: maybe Akechi would bully him, degrade him, step on him, peeling off his come-covered gloves with disgust.  Those fantasies stayed much the same even after he found out Akechi meant to kill him — if anything, they only because more frequent, more extreme.

When they’d met again that winter, Ren had been too busy and worried to have time for any of that.  When they’d been separated again, it had been too raw to think about for any longer than a guilty afternoon alone.

But when Akechi had come back, bursting into Ren’s life and living space with an undeniable, vicious vivacity, those daydreams had come back full-force, too.  The way Akechi sounds in battle, the confident way he stands, the things he says — “Tell me how much it hurts,” and Ren would, he’d love to, he’s so eager to.  He’d never been jealous of a losing Shadow before.

He hadn’t been lying yesterday when he’d said Akechi’s mid-battle noises were distracting; he literally wasn’t capable of it.  He just didn't expect the conclusion of that confession to be this.

Akechi plays with his nipples with a fascinated enthusiasm, interest sparking into and around his expression like a static shock.  Something between a smile and a snarl pulls his mouth, greedy and animalistic, watching Ren like he's something to eat.  Ren’s hips jump at the thought.

If this is going to continue, then — “Hold on,” Ren says, pushing Akechi off himself and twisting onto his front to reach the junk drawer.  Their kitchen is so tiny that the hardest part of the maneuver is just that now that Akechi has permission, he hardly seems able to keep his hands off him; Ren rustles his hand around old keys and rubber bands with Akechi’s hands on his waist and his teeth carving a mark under his shoulder.

Finally, a thoroughly-distracted Ren finds what he’s looking for.  “Here,” he says breathlessly, slapping down two travel-sized packets of lube.

Akechi surfaces from licking a stripe up Ren’s back and pauses.  His voice is pointed and cold.  “Why is there lube in our junk drawer.”

It’s coincidence, really: one night, walking to the station late from a bartending shift in Shinjuku, an adult shop had been handing out free samples.  When Ren smiled in thanks, he’d found an extra slipped into his palm by the blushing employee.  He’d thought nothing of it, and he always empties his pockets in this drawer, so it had been thoroughly pushed to the back until now.

“I put it there,” Ren says unceremoniously, trying to turn over.

A hand on the small of his back keeps him in place.  “You put it there,” Akechi echoes, ominously pleasant.  But before Ren can struggle free and investigate his expression himself, he finds himself being stripped by Akechi’s grasping hands.

Partway stripped, at least — Akechi leaves his hoodie and t-shirt twisted around his arms, effectively tied together.  His hand takes hold of them, pressing them down into the table so hard that even with the fabric barrier, it still hurts.

This is exciting.  Ren gasps, wiggling his hips backward to try to feel if Akechi is half as excited as he is, but only gets a hand in his waistband for his trouble.  In an instant, Ren finds his jeans and underwear both yanked down.

He lets out an accidental gasp when Akechi grabs hold of his bare ass.  After it pulls away, there’s a plastic sound of something ripping — but Akechi’s other hand is still holding his arms, so —

Ren pictures the small packet of lube held in Akechi’s teeth.  He’s gasping before Akechi’s cold, wet fingers even make contact with his skin.

Akechi doesn’t take his time fingering Ren open.  Ren barely has time to process Akechi’s finger inside him before another is added, thrusting roughly in and out until it stops feeling like Ren’s body is actively rejecting them.

“You seem used to this,” Akechi says evenly, but when Ren peeks at him over his shoulder, there’s a viciousness in his expression that sinks heat deep under his skin.  “Do you do this often?”

Clearly, Akechi has not gone poking around in Ren’s bedroom when he isn’t home.  His toys are only thinly concealed in his underwear drawer, and the bottle of lube in his nightstand is only half full.

“Yes,” he admits in a gasp, the effects of the truth spell still potent.

That look deepens into a blank-faced, swirling intensity.  Akechi’s fingers change angles, searching until they find the spot that makes Ren’s hips jump.  The table creaks ominously underneath them, but neither pay it any mind; Akechi is too busy targeting that spot with an alarming, merciless precision, and Ren is too busy trying not to get fingered to overstimulation this early on.

When Akechi makes to shove another finger in, Ren instinctively tries to squirm away.  Akechi tightens his hold on Ren’s wrists and laughs at him.  “I thought you were good at this.  Are you tapping out already?”

“No,” Ren bites, devolving into a moan when that third finger slides inside.

It’s harder to nail his prostate with three fingers than with two, but Akechi makes an admirable go at it.  “How like you to be talented at this, too,” he tuts, somewhere between derisive and fond, his hand leaving Ren’s wrists to slide further down his body.  It pauses at the back of his neck, cupping it loosely like the bare consideration of a choke, and Ren arches into it like he’s begging for it.

Then, all at once, Akechi’s hands retreat.  Ren lets out a small sound at the loss, instinctively pushing his hips backwards — and freezes when, a moment later, he feels the hot weight of Akechi’s cock on his ass.

“I don’t suppose you keep condoms in the kitchen drawer as well, do you?” he asks, rubbing loosely along Ren’s rim; through his put-upon evenness, Ren can hear the way his breath comes out in quick, short pants.

It’s reassuring that he isn’t as unaffected as he lets on; Ren wants to bend that composure until it breaks.

“Nope,” Ren says with an emphatic pop, relaxing with his cheek to the table.

Akechi sighs, but his voice is altogether too giddy for it to be genuine when he says, “A shame.”

Ren has a retort on the tip of his tongue, but it dissolves into a wordless gasp when Akechi pushes inside.

They had prepared beforehand, and this isn’t Ren’s first rodeo; still, the initial stretch strains almost into stinging.  A single packet of lube can only do so much, and Ren feels that limit now, hiding his face in the sweater-tied mass of his arms, forcefully relaxing as much as he’s able.  It isn’t pain, exactly — not yet.  Just the satisfying ache of too much at once, pushing in and in and in until Ren can’t tell if the heartbeat racketing through his body is even his at all.

For all his talk, though, Akechi isn’t overly rough.  His hand settles on Ren’s ass, thumb brushing where his entrance spreads around his cock.  “Poor Joker,” he taunts, that raw syrupy timbre leeching into his voice that Ren has only ever associated with battle — pleased, gravelly, gloating.  “Is it too much for you?”

It isn’t too much, not yet.  His spine tingles and his cock aches; his bare chest is oversensitive against the cold table.  He feels bared and split open, pressed down with the weight of Akechi over and inside him.

But it isn’t too much.  “No.”

A noise slips from the back of Akechi’s throat — like a purr, or a growl.  “It’s nice to see you so honest,” he says meanly, and then slams the rest of the way inside Ren in one hard movement.

Retroactively, Ren recognizes the earlier banter as a form of gentleness on Akechi’s part.  This time, there is no waiting.  No sooner has Ren had time to process the feeling of Akechi fully inside him than he’s already scrambling under the stimulation of him pulling out.  The pace isn’t fast but it isn’t slow either, and Ren feels Akechi spreading him open with one hand again, watching himself push again and again into his body.

Ren doesn’t hear the sound of plastic this time, but the distinct slick of additional lube is poured over his hole on the next inward thrust.  It does make it better, though the difference in temperature forces a shiver up Ren’s body: the unwarmed lube is freezing, and Akechi’s bare skin is burning hot.

All the way inside him, Akechi breathes shallowly in Ren’s ear and noses at his pulse point.  There’s no direct, pointed stimulation to Ren’s prostate the way there had been with Akechi’s fingers, but the weight of him puts a sort of constant, dull pressure on that spot that has sparks jumping up Ren’s neck anyway.  And Ren lies there, held still under Akechi’s body but for his twitching fingers and shaking thighs, grateful to be face-down because he has no control over his expression right now.

Once again, the table creaks ominously under them, but neither pay it any mind.  With the extra lube, the glide is easy, the friction sweet; Ren can’t help but tighten around Akechi as he pulls out, as if to keep him there.  Akechi’s answering snarl resounds in Ren’s ear as he buillds his pace, relentless as a machine.  Dreamily rutting against the table, Ren thinks that even if he came early, Akechi wouldn’t let him go.

He’d had grand plans to free his hands the moment Akechi let go of them, but it’s harder to focus while getting fucked than he’d expected.  He pulls until he hits the first tangled snag in the fabric, and then Akechi pulls back out just right; he detangles from another, and then Akechi pushes in, and the force leaves him empty-headed and gasping.

In contrast to his earlier honeyed voice and sharp words, Akechi isn’t saying anything at all now: all Ren can hear is his hurried breathing and the force of their two bodies meeting.  Every thrust is deep and punishingly hard, setting Ren’s thoughts into pure white noise, buzzing at the base of his skull.  Even once he’s managed to free his hands, Ren isn’t able to actually do anything with them but hold on for dear life.

Maybe that’s part of why it’s so shocking when the table collapses underneath them.

As Ren lies there, crushed to the point where he can’t breathe under Akechi’s body weight, a hard cock in his ass, he reflects that maybe having rough sex on rickety secondhand furniture wasn’t the best idea.  It’s too late for regrets now, though.  Ren wriggles on the tilted but thankfully still in-one-piece tabletop, noting his bruised and battered knees and elbows.

“Is this our sign to move to a bed?” Ren intones, glancing over his shoulder.

But the Akechi he sees there isn’t poised to answer; there’s no exasperated sigh at the loss of their furniture, no overly-barbed attempt to hide his embarrassment.  Even as Akechi raises himself out and off of him, he’s still just… staring at him.

Akechi’s expression is wild, his body like a coiled spring, and Ren knows this feeling — the ache of the frenzy, the way Akechi loses the dregs of his composure, the impatient and selfish way his body jerks.  After all, he’s been fighting at his side all these years.  Ren’s chest constricts and a wicked grin pulls his mouth, internal pressure gauge rocketing up and up as some animal part of himself recognizes the urge to run.

So he does: he bolts straight down the hallway without questioning it a single second, Akechi hot on his heels.

He makes it two steps before Akechi’s grabbing at him again, hand wrenched around his upper arm to pull him back.  Ren shakes him loose and makes another step — Akechi is strong, but Ren is faster.

For better or for worse, though, Ren doesn’t really want to get away, and Akechi really does want to catch him.  This time, Akechi grabs him around the waist, and when Ren tries to shake him loose, he only loses his footing instead; Akechi’s other hand grasps his shoulder, yanking him around until they're facing one another, and Ren feels himself slipping.

It’s too slow and calculated of a fall to hurt — almost frustratingly so.  Ren braces himself for the reverberating hit of the floor to his tailbone, but instead Akechi does some kind of maneuver that has him half-bouncing off of him, lightening the blow.  Still the adrenaline makes Ren almost giddy, flushed with the pleasing exertion of fighting and sex, combined in a way he can’t help but feel he should have expected with Akechi.  When Akechi shoves him down on his back on the hallway floor, Ren loops his arms loosely around Akechi’s neck and lets him.

It’s not another second before Akechi is pushing inside him again.  Even tensed from their brief chase, Ren is still stretched and wet enough from before that the first thrust doesn’t bring anything but pleasure; if anything, the angle is better this time, Akechi’s cock pushed up toward his navel and dragging along his sweet spot with each movement.  Ren’s own bobs on his stomach, red and neglected, until Akechi takes it smoothly in his hand as he leans down to kiss him.

Any artistry or restraint is gone.  Akechi licks at the seam of Ren’s lips until they part, then kisses him breathless.  It doesn’t last, though; as soon as Akechi begins moving again, rough and hurried, the angle becomes too difficult to maintain, and their mouths separate.  Still, Akechi maintains his devastating accuracy: every drag in and out has stars bursting behind Ren’s eyes.  When Ren looks up again, bleary and unfocused, he expects that mean, knowing smirk on Akechi’s face — but that isn’t what he finds.

Ren is completely nude, spread out on the floor on Akechi’s cock.  By comparison, Akechi is almost fully clothed, bare chest peeking out from under his unbuttoned shirt, fly undone.  Maybe it should make Ren feel ravished, more undone — but Akechi is the one losing it like this.  His eyes are wide and red, pupils blown; he simultaneously looks very focused and a million miles away, eyes darting over Ren’s face, his neck, down the length of his body.  There’s affection buried somewhere in there, almost too bright to look at, but it’s buried in the feral want radiating off of him: his grip around Ren’s cock tightens and he drives into him until it aches, sharp teeth bared.

Instinctively, Ren reaches for him, hand coasting up Akechi’s neck and jaw.  His hair is in a disarray and his skin is flushed and shiny with sweat, and before Ren can touch his face, he has his wrist caught in hand.

Akechi brings Ren’s hand to his mouth, lips coasting over his palm.  Then he bites it, and Ren yanks it away with a breathy laugh.

That laugh bursts suddenly into a moan when Akechi hikes up Ren’s leg and the angle changes.  Ren obligingly lifts the other too, crossing his ankles behind Akechi’s waist and reveling in the way Akechi lifts his hips with one hand.  The angle is phenomenal and overwhelming all at once; he claws at Akechi’s shoulders and neck and hair, every muscle in his lower body straining as he feels himself climbing steadily to orgasm.

Akechi’s rhythm is relentless, speeding up without losing any of his power; Ren can feel him in his guts, so deep he can hardly breathe, heavy and all-consuming.  His hips slam into Ren’s thighs, rocking his body up the floor inch by inch and subsequently rocking Ren’s cock into his hand.  It’s wet from precum and almost painfully hard, and the back of Ren’s skull hits the floor hard when he throws his head back with a gasp.

He’s so full that he can’t think.  There’s a warm, floating feeling in his body and only Akechi anchors him down: his hands, his cock, the dig of his teeth when he bites hard on Ren’s neck.  Ren grabs fistfuls of his hair and pulls him closer, fighting him when Akechi starts trying to pull away.

A growl rips from Akechi’s throat; his teeth drag along Ren’s skin, leaving stinging red streaks all the way across his collarbone.  His hand tightens around Ren’s cock like a warning but it does nothing but spur Ren on; he tightens his legs around Akechi and pulls until he can see the muscles in Akechi’s neck strain as he attempts to keep himself up.

As if in response, Akechi’s pace changes: fast and rough and brutal, like he wants to unmake him.  He starts actively jacking Ren off and Ren’s defiance dies like a lightbulb going out: his lips fall open, jerking as much as he’s able against the hard floor.  When Akechi dips low to kiss him again, the new angle has him finding that spot again, again, again, and suddenly, Ren finds himself right there on the edge.

He can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t focus on anything but the feeling of Akechi on and inside and all over him.  He can’t even kiss back, limp and dumb and panting while Akechi licks into his mouth; the only things in the world are Akechi’s tongue on his tongue, his hand stroking his weeping cock, the blissful friction of every thrust, the loud slap of skin on skin.  Akechi presses his palm down on Ren’s stomach hard, like he’s trying to leave an imprint there; half-delirious, Ren imagines he can feel Akechi’s hand and cock touching straight through his belly every time Akechi thrusts in, like he’s stabbing right through him.

Akechi pulls away from the kiss suddenly and grabs Ren by the jaw.  Even flushed and undone, his intense eyes gleam like a blade.  “Come,” he snarls, voice raw like he’s been screaming —

And just like that, Ren does.  His body locks and a sound rips from his throat, and he shakes under the body holding him down.  Hot come spurts onto his chest but Ren doesn’t even notice: head falling back, arched and tense, he holds to Akechi tight and falls.

There’s no blissful afterglow for him now, though, because when he comes back into himself, Akechi is still fucking him.  Dropped down like he can’t support himself anymore, he holds Ren tight to himself, cradling the back of his head where he can already feel soreness forming.  He came so hard that he can’t hear anything, but judging by the lips moving across his temple and the way Akechi’s breath tickles his ear, he thinks Akechi must be saying something.

Like this, loose and soft and fucked-out, Ren feels like his own body is just the space for Akechi’s body.  Every irregular push of Akechi’s hips almost hurts but it’s the best kind of hurt, zipping up his neck and behind his ears, smooth and satisfying and quicksilver.  He’s never been so relaxed in his life.

Akechi says something again; through the post-orgasm white noise, Ren can hear his fervor, his ache, his desperation.

The truth spills from his lips, though he doesn’t know the question.  “Yes.”

Just before Akechi’s pace stutters and stops, he kisses him again.  Ren kisses back, gasping for each of Akechi’s gasps, moaning when he finally comes deep inside him.

Things go fuzzy after that; Ren must pass out right there on the hallway floor.  The next time he wakes, he finds that Akechi has continued the long tradition of carrying him to bed.

It’s night again out the window, and Ren fights déjà vu when he looks down and finds himself in Akechi’s cozy 'I Heart NYC’ pullover again.  But when he lifts it to his nose, it already smells more like him than it does the cheap laundromat soap, and when he glances around, there’s no sign of Morgana.  His legs feel shaky like they do after a long run, and his face is still bare, glasses nowhere to be found.

When he rubs the back of his neck absently and finds it aching, he checks himself in the mirror: dark red hickeys and deep, overlapping teeth marks stare back, stark against his skin even in the dim glow of the city's light.

The hallway is dark, but there’s a familiar light on in the living room.  Clad only in the sweater and underwear he’d woken up in, Ren makes his way to the figure seated under the spotlight.  It doesn’t move, but when Ren makes it into eyeshot, he finds Akechi already watching him.

Akechi’s hair is pulled back into a low ponytail.  He seems freshly bathed and dressed, leaned against the base of the couch all casual and bored like the sex appeal radiating off him is effortless.

But Ren has seen his skincare routines, and he recognizes the look on his face besides: a little too tense, a little too searching, trying a little too hard.

Fondness bursts like a shotshell in his chest.

Ren leans against the doorway, eyes curved at the way Akechi’s gaze traces each one of the marks on his skin.  “Have you eaten yet?”

Three years ago, Ren never would have guessed he could achieve something like domesticity with Akechi.  Five years ago, it wouldn’t even have been a possibility to guess at.  But here he is, sitting on the floor beside the boy who’d once tried to kill him, watching him pretend to work from the corner of his eye.

The drama they’re rerunning tonight is sappy and oversaturated; the music plays a little too loud so that the actors are hardly audible.  Ren discreetly turns the volume down; neither of them like a loud house.

At his side, Akechi is obviously restless.  His knee jitters; his hand drags through his hair, yanking it loose of its tie.  He doesn’t type a word, and there’s a bead of sweat on his jaw.  If there wasn’t a very big elephant in the room, Ren might think he was coming down with something.

Ren hates emotional conversations; the last couple days have hardly done anything to change that.  Vulnerability has never really been his forte.

The voice of a little boy’s Shadow rings in his ears: I should have told, before it was too late.  It’s not the same at all; it shouldn’t mean anything.  Even if it did, things are still just as loaded and complicated between him and Akechi as they’ve always been.

But it would be foolish to assert that there’s no feelings between them.

When Ren puts the remote down, he lays his pinky over Akechi’s on the floor.  Akechi jolts like he’s been shocked and whips to face him, but Ren keeps his eyes solidly on the screen ahead of him.

Eventually, Akechi flips his hand over and laces their fingers together.  In the corner of Ren’s vision, he’s all tense and flighty like a nervous little animal.  But when minutes tick by and Ren doesn’t pull away, he relaxes.

Akechi’s palms are sweaty, but his voice is admirably even.  “Is the status effect still there?”

“Don’t know,” Ren says.  “Ask me something.”

It’s as much as an invitation as he’s ever going to give.  Akechi must know it, too; his hold tightens like Ren’s going to try to slip away.

Ren’s heart beats hard against his ribcage; he burns under Akechi’s watchful eye.  But Akechi only releases his tight-knuckled grip on Ren’s poor fingers and asks, “Do you want to buy our new table secondhand again?”

Surprised relief bursts in a chuckle from Ren’s mouth.  “Oh yeah,” he says.  “I hear pre-owned holds up just as well.”

The next morning, Akechi stumbles into the kitchen with a hickey hidden under his hair and his face shiny and wet from his morning routine.  After breakfast, they buy and subsequently assemble a new table — though Ren does all the actual assembling.  Akechi sits on the counter and flips through the instructions, relaying the steps and throwing corresponding screws at Ren.

Then they take the new table for a test run.  It doesn’t break, though Akechi complains that the squeaking leaves something to be desired.

The other Phantom Thieves come over in the afternoon.  Futaba comes in for an immediate hug, and Morgana all but glues himself to Ren’s side.  Makoto’s nervous jitters don’t go away until she’s asked him what feels like a thousand questions, all of which Ren replies with cheeky and increasingly ridiculous lies.  Ann chews him out for eating her dessert the other day.

“You’ll have to pay me back,” she says with a light punch to his arm, though her eyes are sparkling.  “Let’s get crepes tomorrow, ‘kay?”

Ren almost agrees automatically, then changes his mind and recommends a cake shop instead.  Ann looks surprised, but agrees readily — and it’s nothing big, but just like that, a knot Ren didn't even know existed loosens somewhat in his chest.

“How did you get it to go away?” Sumire asks once everyone’s settled in to talk.  Her eyes are wide and curious.  “Was it time-based after all?”

Discreetly, Ren glances at Akechi out of the corner of his eye; he’s staring back, eyebrow raised.

Ren shrugs.  “I guess Ryuji was right.  I just had to be honest.”

“I told you,” Ryuji gloats, spread out proudly on the couch.  “It never hurts to just tell the truth, right?”

Under his turtleneck, Ren’s neck throbs; his lower back aches, thighs sore and throat raw.  Pushing his glasses up, he reflects fondly that sometimes, it hurts just a little bit.

Morgana squawks like a bird when Ren changes for bed that night, revealing his battle wounds in the process.  His squawking only grows more impassioned and disbelieving when Ren leaves his bedroom and heads down the hall.

Akechi’s bedroom door is cracked.  He never sleeps with the door open.

Ren takes the invitation and creeps in, quiet as a thief in the night.

In the dark room, Akechi’s body is just an indistinct lump on a futon.  His curtains are drawn but for a barely-there sliver for the moonlight; Ren might be able to see Akechi’s face in that beam, if he was turned toward him.

He’s obviously awake; he all but turns into a wooden doll the moment Ren comes in.  But Ren doesn’t call out to him.  He only closes the door behind him and crawls under the covers, nestling his forehead in between Akechi’s shoulder blades.

Maybe Ren should try finding Apollo again the next time they’re in Mementos.  He kind of wants to thank him, and kind of wants to kick his ass; either way, he can probably convince him to join his cause.  When he doesn’t have honesty shoved down his throat, Ren can be very persuasive.

But that’s an issue for a future day.  For now, Ren focuses on Akechi’s breathing, on his own, on the pleasant soreness of his tired body.  Akechi’s heartbeat sounds just like his, thumping out of his body and right into Ren’s, back and forth in a loop until they’re hardly separate heartbeats at all.

Between the blanket and Akechi’s high body heat, it’s almost unbearably warm.  Ren mumbles a low goodnight, soaking in that warmth and sinking into a long, peaceful sleep.