stealhearted | are you hurting the one you love?

It's not what you're doing. It's what you're trying to prevent. [ Bluffing to a cop isn't hard, but that's not the important part -- it's preventing Akira from being a wreck afterwards, preventing him from throwing himself face first into brewing coffee so he can avoid his own trauma response. ]

[He just tilts his head, entirely not understanding. He doesn't realize that lying to a cop so Akira doesn't come back to Leblanc shaking is protecting him from himself, from getting lost in his head and shaking his way through making coffee and cleaning equipment. He registers belatedly that it's... unusual, perhaps, but--]

...it's the same as always, you having a fit and shaking out of your skin up here is inconvenient. I'm simply ensuring the optimal response. [He sounds like a fucking robot when he says it, and he knows that. He can't make himself settle on the idea that he cares. That he's capable of being a caring person.]

[ Akira gets it. Between Akechi's fear of caring and then being rejected, and the fact that he spent so long studiously refusing to admit he gave a fuck about anything, admitting he cares must be absolutely terrifying.

He thinks they'll get there, probably. ]

You could have just let me go back down to work it off. [ Akira says, gently, not wanting to set off another vehement denial but not wanting Akechi to so easily reject the prospect either. ]

It's okay. I... like that you care. It helps.

[Math lady meme.png.]

I literally just said it's because it's inconvenient, don't invent your own narrative, here. [So says the one squirming around until he can lay more fully across him. It might be awkward, with the way he climbs so his hips rest between Akira's thighs? But he's not meaning it sexually in any capacity, he's just a heat leech and Akira is a skinny furnace. He's... projecting, and even he can tell, but Akira's insistence that he likes that he cares, that it helps, just makes his stomach twist itself in knots.]

It wouldn't have inconvenienced you. You could have just gone to do laundry and ignored it. [ A beat, and then: ] I'm glad you didn't. Staying here with me, like this... It feels like, even if it might be a burden, it's one you don't mind bearing, sometimes.

[ Which Akira thinks might be more accurate for both of them. They do have burdens, exhausting emotional ones that take too much energy to deal with, but --

maybe it's the kind of thing they're okay with dealing with. ]

Conveniently for you, I didn't especially feel like messaging Sakura to ask if I could borrow your cat, since I can't message him directly as he lacks thumbs. I wasn't about to go do laundry without your requested quadrupedal chaperone, so I suppose I will just have to continue to wear your things until such a time you aren't rattled by errant policemen. Therefore, it evens out.

[A beat, and he closes his eyes.] Besides, you're warm and I am not.

...you know they live around the corner, right? [ Akira sounds deeply amused by this, but just responds to Akechi's declaration of how much he doesn't care by reaching up to wrap his arms back around Akechi's hips in a loose, easy hold. ]

Thanks, though. I feel better.

You really think Sakura would have answered the door? [He makes a vague grunt of a sound at Akira's arms looped around him, but doesn't deter the contact.]

[He also doesn't say anything to the thanks, because saying he wasn't welcome or he hadn't done it for him would just be beating a dead horse, at this stage, so he just grunts again, little wordless sound of acknowledgment to prove he heard him.]

Yes. She's not afraid of you. [ Futaba would, as she once put it, "fight Akechi behind the Denny's at 3AM", which was a very clear mental picture Akira thinks about sometimes.

She might actually win on sheer shock value alone. It always makes Akira want Denny's omurice, though. ]

I'll text her whenever you want to go, though.

[He frowns a little, curious, but doesn't comment on Futaba's lack of fear of him. He supposed it made sense, but he wasn't sure why. He had never really done anything especially frightening, in her frame of mind. The frustrating part of that was that now his statement read like he was afraid of her. A slight tsk later, he props himself up on his arm, sliding his other out from underneath Akira and flexing his hand to get used to bloodflow again.]

Yet she is afraid of mail couriers.

She's afraid of strangers. But you were a teammate, so she's not afraid of you anymore. [ Akira reaches out, shifting them both so that Akechi can be on top of him in a way that -- under other circumstances -- would be extremely sexual, but right now is mostly for the sake of making sure all their limbs aren't filled with tv static. ]

I also killed her mother, but apparently that is neither here not there with you people. [He stays upright, insistently, so he's effectively straddling Akira's hips which really just makes it worse except for the part where he's not considering that, at all.]

I'm about to say something that's going to piss you off. [ Akira informs him of this, dryly, mostly because Akechi is straddling him and Akira is at a deep disadvantage here for a lot of reasons. ]

But there's this thing where revenge is toxic, so we try not to focus on that.

Suggesting that isn't every time you open your mouth, [He returns just as dryly, rolling his eyes and waiting for Akira to say his irritating statement anyway.]

[It... doesn't actually piss him off as much as he expected it to, more of feels a bit like a second sock to his gut like Akira had done the previous evening. Unconsciously, he brings a hand to the bruise there and presses on it.] Yet you still called me a teammate. Hypocritical, isn't it?

Is it? [ Akira looks a little confused by the idea. ]

We genuinely wanted to be your teammate, you know. We weren't tricking you for revenge or anything.

The entire basis of why I used the Metaverse from Day One was for revenge, Kurusu. That is the hypocrisy in you calling me a teammate while stating you avoid revenge. [He presses his hand into his stomach a little harder.]

In the end, you still fought alongside us to save the world. [ Akira's smile is a little thin, but he reaches up, puts his hand over Akechi's. He of all people understands how pain can be grounding, and he thinks this kind might be better than most, given that Akira was the one who delivered it. ]

It wasn't about revenge, then.

[His expression twists up, but he relishes the deep-seated ache from the bruise.] It still was, [He gasps it, a little, only moving his hand to swat Akira's aside and bunch it into a fist, release it, and bunch it back up a few times.] It still was, for me. I don't really expect you to understand that.

Was it? [ Akira asks, gently. ] I thought it was trying to prove that you couldn't be controlled like that anymore. I guess that's a kind of revenge. [ And now Akechi is trying to get revenge on himself, through pain and denial and all sorts of things that Akira wants to free him from.

It's not that easy, Akira supposes. Akechi's always had something to be furiously focused on. ]

Stop.

[It's all he says for a moment, wheezed, and he takes a few careful breaths before he looks at Akira, head ducked forward so his chin is against his collarbone and only his eyes are raised enough to look at him.] Just... stop. You're deflecting, and now I'm deflecting, I am too tired for this.

We're both a minefield of issues we haven't dealt with. [ A beat, and then: ]

Want to make out instead? [ Akira offers, and it's the kind of offer where he can deflect off if Akechi says no but also he's entirely serious and thinks it would be, frankly, a great distraction for both of them. ]

[He groans, a sound that is frankly obscene under these particular circumstances, dropping his head backward to stare at the ceiling for a moment at that first mention.]

[...and then Akira has to go and make it horny, and he exhales on a scoff, angling his spine so his shoulders shunt his head back forward. He fixes Akira with a scrutinizing frown for a moment, and their argument from the night before runs viciously through his mind again.] I'll make a deal with you, [He says, slowly stretching forward and lounging across Akira's front, splaying his hands flat where his collarbones meet and resting his chin atop them.] I kiss you, and in an hour we contact Sakura so I can go wash my things. [It has to benefit him, somehow, or he can't justify allowing the pleasantry. Because clearly, he isn't allowed to just want to make out.]

[ Akira allows his hands to wander a little, pressing up the sides of Akechi's waist and flattening out onto the plane of his lower back like he can minimize the already nonexistent space between them. ]

Sure. That's fair. [ Which is, in part, because Akira thinks they both know that was going to happen anyway -- but if Akechi needs an excuse for it, then Akira will give him one for awhile longer. It's still progress.

Then Akira carefully lets himself drown out all the dull noise in his head by reaching out to pull Akechi towards him so they can, in fact, make out. ]

[His eyes fall about half-closed at the way Akira's hands smooth out over his back-- it feels nice, to the point that he eventually fully closes his eyes, making a wordless sound as Akira pulls him forward.]

[He likes kissing, he's finding. It's a simple thing, and it's a little bit invasive, depending on how vigorous they get with it, but it's pleasant in that it's constant skin-on-skin contact, which incurs that strangely pleasant "charging" sensation at an accelerated rate. He considers taking his time and making Akira work for the things he's already learned he likes about it, but doesn't bother in the end, going pretty quickly from their lips sealed to one another's to swiping his tongue along Akira's lower lip.]

[ Akira's content to let Akechi set the pace, for the moment, but as soon as Akechi swipes his tongue Akira opens his mouth. He can't help it; it's automatic. He knows he could make out with Akechi for hours, at this point, knows he'll do it even if the end result is that they're not actually going to have sex. It's fine because it's enough, for the moment, but Akira is always, always willing to give more.

Maybe that's why Akechi is so reluctant to take it.

Akechi still tastes faintly of coffee, and it's as addictive as the substance itself. Maybe more, Akira thinks. He slips his hands just underneath the hem of the hoodie Akechi's been wearing, his fingers trailing across the bare skin there. It's electrifying even for him, without the influx of energy Akechi feels -- it's still the thrill of Akechi's skin, of being able to touch him, being able to feel him. ]

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