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“I’ll rip your heart out, you bastard!”
Ah, hell.
Ren watches helplessly as Ann ignores a direct order, instead throwing herself and her whip at the Shadow in front of her with full force—an Alitat which, naturally, repels physical attacks. Her whip, fairly weak in the best of scenarios, bounces off the thing and smacks her right in the face.
This is going to be so annoying now.
It was kind of Ann to jump in front of the attack for him, but certainly not the most tactically sound decision considering she’s now essentially incapacitated. He makes some quick adjustments to the battle plan in his head, weighs attempting to get the effect off her (tough—these newer, worse status effects really stick like a motherfucker) versus finishing the battle quickly (let's do that one). Alitat’s weakness to Fire attacks was sure great until his one single Fire attacker got brainwashed into being stupid, and he's not sure…
“Crow?” he calls out to his left.
Akechi flicks some Shadow muck off his sword, answers, “It’s weak to Curse too. I can—” and is immediately hit with all the hallmarks of a Distorted Wrath attack as well. Ghostly tendrils sink into his body, and eyes fixed on Ren flash an even brighter, even more malicious red than usual.
So, this has turned from annoying to bad. Very bad.
It’s gonna be just Ren and Ryuji now, against this thing which is strong against everything they’ve got. They can do it, they’ve always made it work somehow, but he can’t see them continuing past this point, and Ren was really hoping to get to the next—
“I can hit it with an Eigaon, but I’m getting low on SP,” Akechi says next to him like nothing happened. Ren wonders briefly if it was himself that was hit instead, with some kind of brainwash condition. He saw that, right? “I’ll have to take a rest after this battle,” he adds very reasonably.
He’s definitely still got the Wrath on him. Ren can sense it, feel it crackling under Akechi’s skin even as he stands beside him.
Well, there's no time to wonder about that. “Yeah, fuck it, do it,” Ren commands quickly. Losing Akechi for the rest of the night is better than the whole team being down.
“Eigaon!” Akechi calls out, summoning Loki and targeting the Alitat. He avoids poor Ann, still accidentally whipping herself and screaming obscenities, and annihilates the Shadow in one clean hit.
As it disappears so does the grip of those ethereal tendrils on Ann and Akechi (?), and all of them let out a simultaneous sigh of relief. Ann throws her whip to the ground, yelling out one last uncharacteristic, “Fuck!” of frustration.
Ren tosses her a Diarahan rather than making her heal herself. It feels like the right thing to do. Then, while Ryuji and Ann are occupied with their own little post-encounter self-care rituals, he turns to the MVP of the battle. “How did you fight past that status effect?”
“Hm?” Akechi hums, in that way he sometimes does. The one that says I’m playing dumb because I feel like making you work for it because I’m a little shithead sometimes.
The thing is, fighting past status effects and shaking them off used to be a pretty frequent affair. They were more like little flies buzzing in their ears, annoying suggestions that would only work if the affected person was having a particularly rough time.
But just as the Phantom Thieves grew in power, so did the enemies they faced. By the time they’d faced Yaldabaoth, those “Distorted” sin-based bullshit effects had become so potent that there was really nothing to do but wait for the thing to wear off and hope for the best in the meantime. And of course, these frustrating abilities had all carried over into the inheritor of that god’s power: Ren’s old school counselor.
Times like these make him regret sharing his sandwich with Maruki that time he’d forgotten his lunch on the train. He doesn’t deserve Ren’s sandwich.
Anyway.
“You weren’t affected at all. Do you have a special item on you or something?” Ren asks, giving Akechi a once-over. It’s hard to tell with the full coverage of his bodysuit, but he should have a Night Necklace equipped for Curse Amp. Or, he'd better have it equipped. Ren spent ages in Stoneon looking for something that would be both functional and appealing to Akechi’s particular tastes.
An appealing thought pops into his head, the way it usually does if he gazes at his rival for more than a millisecond: he could rip that outfit off him and see for himself. Slide the point of his dagger right between Akechi’s pecs and tear the bodysuit apart. But the last time they did that in the middle of a Palace Futaba yelled at Ren for being “gross” and “inappropriate” and “melting my eyes out of my skull and turning me into a skeleton like a disgusting Ark of the Covenant.”
But on the other hand, Futaba’s already started hovering ahead, and Akechi’s done after this anyway, so…
“Of course not. I don’t believe I’ve come across anything that can negate these more special effects,” Akechi answers, interrupting Ren’s thoughts and innocently examining his claws.
Okay, he definitely has a secret.
Ren narrows his eyes in suspicion. Now that he thinks about it, the last time he saw Akechi under the influence of a status effect was all the way back in Sae’s casino. And even then it was just a Dizzy spell, Akechi easily could have faked that. Lord knows he’s a faker.
“How did you do it?” he asks again.
“Disappointed, Joker?” Akechi deflects. He drops all pretense at innocence, stepping closer to Ren in a way that has no choice but to be read as menacing. “Did you want to see me lose it? Wanted to go another round with me, perhaps?”
Ren mirrors him, nearly getting his nose too closely acquainted with the point of Akechi’s mask. “I thought you were out of SP.”
They’re close already but Akechi will never be outdone, upping the ante until their chests are touching, his hot breath tickling Ren’s ear. “Be careful Joker, you know what they say about playing with fire,” he murmurs. Ren suppresses a shiver.
“Sounds pretty hot to me.”
Akechi chuckles, and oh, he wants it. What it is right at this moment Ren isn’t sure, but he knows it involves them on top of each other, bodies writhing and—
“Guys?” Ryuji’s voice interrupts beside them. Right. Palace stuff. Ren reluctantly returns to a world which contains more than just Akechi, and steps away at the same time his rival does. The moment is broken. “Can we please get the hell out of here?” Ryuji sighs as he watches them, his back slumped, looking maybe the most exhausted Ren’s ever seen him. Shit, does Ryuji need a break too?
“Yeah,” Ren replies. He clears his throat. “Let’s get back to the safe room, we need to switch out some people.”
This isn’t over, but it’s over for now. Dagger sheathed, mask adjusted, gloves adjusted, and coat flicked out—just to look cool, he’ll admit that. Ren leads the way further down the path.
“Laevateinn!”
Sound and fury whoosh past Ren, racing at light speed down the hallway ahead of him, petering out in the distance even as he can still feel immense power sizzling right next to his face. Right next to his fucking face.
Behind him, Akechi is cackling.
“Crow!” Ann snaps. “What the hell?”
Akechi ignores her. Continues walking past Ren and laughing to himself, despite the fact that thanks to that little stunt, Akechi’s HP is dangerously low. Ren can’t help but be thoroughly charmed.
“You missed!” he calls after Akechi jovially, then follows after him with a fresh spring in his step. Today has been a great day—a close brush with death (or at least, serious injury), and he’s got a new mystery to solve. The Case of the Mysteriously Ineffective Status Effect. He’s a lucky guy.
Ryuji falls into step beside him, staring at him for an uncomfortable amount of time before shaking his head. “I’m beggin’ you, man. I’m begging.”
“What?” he asks through the grin he can’t keep off his face.
Ryuji sighs. Shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“Joker, look out!”
A common refrain, but one he never likes to hear. One of his friends is about to get hurt instead of him—there’s Yusuke, good ol’ Yusuke, pushing him to the side and out of the way of…
Distorted Lust. Ah hell, that pink cloud coming from the mouth of a Scathach is unmistakable. The bane of all their existences. Living in general is bad enough already, but living with the embarrassment that comes with being openly and honestly horny for your fellow teammates… that’s a fate worse than death.
But if it had to be anyone today, well. Yusuke could probably handle all that the best.
“Panther… Panther, your exquisite form!” Yusuke declares as he lurches toward Ann, the enemies directly in front of him completely forgotten. “How could I have ever let you out of my sight? I can hear your body calling to me, those beautiful curves, those voluptuous—”
“Gross!” Ann punches him. Yusuke crumples to the floor with same grace and muscle mass as a sheet fluttering off its hanger. “Get ahold of yourself, you animal!” she shouts after him, wiggling her whip menacingly before turning her attention back to the Shadows.
And that could have been the end of it. For literally anyone else, that might have been the end of it. Unfortunately for all of them, Kitagawa Yusuke has a preternatural ability to make a comeback. The rest of the party, the ones who still have their wits about them, manage to get in just one measly round of attacks before Yusuke is shakily standing back up on beanpole legs, his pink heart-shaped pupils finding their mark on… Ren.
“Joker!”
No. Nooo.
Yusuke staggers toward him like a horny zombie, a terrible development which distracts all of them just long enough for a second pink cloud to smack Akechi right in the face.
Oh, god.
This is it. This is the worst case scenario. Yusuke, with his attention currently fixated on Ren. Akechi, who will inevitably do the same. What if they start fighting over Ren? What if Akechi, in order to assert his claim over Ren, strips him right there, goes to town on him and makes Yusuke watch? God, that would be just awful, Ren thinks to himself, his heart pounding in anticipation. The most awful thing to ever happen.
Pink hearts settle into Akechi’s pupils and Ren watches intently, making sure Akechi’s direction ends up focused on Ren, and only Ren. Or else.
Sure enough, there he is. Akechi's attention slides over from the Scathach to land on Ren. He blinks, slow and deliberate. He smirks.
Ren licks his lips.
And then Akechi turns his attention back to the Scathach and attacks it.
What the fuck.
“Seriously, how did you do that?” he asks his rival again after all the threats have been annihilated. Yusuke’s back to normal too, busy across the room supplicating himself to Ann.
But Akechi shrugs him off again. “Guess I’m stronger than you,” he says with an infuriating amount of nonchalance.
“This is important for the team to know.”
“The ‘team,’” Akechi sneers, “won’t find anything useful in any answer I could give you, I promise you that.”
He really doesn’t want to make this easy for Ren, does he?
“What is this really about, Joker?” Akechi needles back at him. “Could you perhaps be upset at my lack of reaction? Was your little ego hurt? Wanted to see Akechi Goro on his knees for you?”
“Nah. I just think you’re grumpy cause you’re jealous.” Ren tilts his head toward Yusuke. Speaking of kneeling… well, at least Ann seems to be getting closer to accepting his many apologies.
Akechi smiles pleasantly at that, which is always dangerous. “Please,” he says, then reaches down and—and grabs Ren’s entire everything in one clawed hand, and squeezes with enough force to just cross over to the wrong side of “gentle.”
“Aughck—!”
“I know what belongs to me,” Akechi murmurs in his ear, would have made him hot if Ren hadn’t accidentally let out that extremely unmanly screech, if his entire body weren’t the most tense it had ever been. And then, thank fucking god, Akechi releases him. Sheer relief, along with the familiar thrill of surviving a life or death encounter rushes in after him to pleasantly to fog Ren’s thoughts. “Jazz club tonight,” Akechi says. “Bring the handcuffs.”
And then he saunters away.
God.
Their little code phrase has ruined an entire genre of music for him forever. And, thanks to the all-encompassing elation of knowing he’s getting laid tonight, Ren blissfully forgets about his little status effect sidequest for the rest of the day.
But his time does come. It comes for them all, one day.
Hey there, bud. Aren’t you hungry? a little voice whispers in his ear, an uncomfortable feeling starting to curl in his gut.
No? He’s pretty sure he—
Shit, wait, yes, he’s starving.
Wouldn’t some curry be nice right about now? the voice continues, and damn is it smart. The smartest thing Ren’s ever heard. Fluffy white rice, flavorful sauce, seasoned tender beef that melts in your mouth…
Part of him knows this is a status effect. Part of him knows he really wanted to conquer this so he could prove he’s just as cool and immune as his rival. But that part of him also doesn’t care all that much anymore, because he’s so fucking hungry.
Ren curls in on himself, tries despite himself to land an attack on the Shadow in front of him but finds he can barely move his arms. He’s so weak, he needs food, he needs sustenance, he needs—
And then as quick as the hunger came on, it clears. All the Shadows have been defeated.
He doesn’t get it. He just doesn’t get it.
That feeling, that voice in his head, it was impossible to ignore. He just doesn’t know how Akechi does it—and he does it every single time.
“What?” Makoto asks, interrupting Ren’s self-indulgent little vent. She was kind enough to join him on his trek to the nearest safe room and back so he could indulge in a bit of leftover curry—he may not have been quite so hungry, but the comfort was still worth it. “Crow was hit with that Distorted Avarice right after you, and he was just as bad. Worse, even. He didn’t even try to fight. Ryuji and I had to finish the Shadows off on our own.”
What the hell? “Really?”
“Really,” Makoto confirms.
Ren stops, stretching out this rare moment away from the rest of the team, in a place with no enemies or distractions. “But those other status effects we’ve seen in here—they haven’t had any kind of affect on him.”
“Well, of course they haven’t.”
Once again, a response Ren wasn’t expecting. He tilts his head in a silent question.
“Haven’t you noticed…?” she gets that Makoto-expression on her face, the one he usually sees while they’re studying together, when he’s messed up a math problem. He doesn't like the Makoto-expression. “Okay, try picturing an Akechi which is more forgetful than he’s ever been.”
Yeah, he can do that. That’s kind of funny, actually. Akechi all confused about where he is, what he’s doing. And if Akechi forgot him then Ren could seduce him all over again…
“Ugh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. You were able to imagine that?” Makoto asks patiently.
Ren nods.
“Alright, now picture an Akechi that’s more wrathful than he’s ever been.”
More wrathful… well, that awful time on this ship was just about as “wrathful” as he’s ever seen anyone in his life, and that was just pure, authentic, uncut Akechi. He can’t see how Akechi could be any more furious than that… which is probably the point. He's fixed his incorrect math problem, and the Makoto-expression disappears with it.
“I know that as a tactical rule we try not to let you get hit by those effects, but I’m sure you’ve felt that some of them aren’t quite as bad as others, depending on your own personality and experiences,” Makoto explains. “And Akechi is. You know. Akechi can be intense about certain… feelings. It’s very uncomfortable for all of us, actually.”
“Really?”
Makoto blinks at him, then gently says, “Ren, he told you he,” she gathers herself, then whispers so quietly Ren can barely hear her. “He told you he ‘wanted to see you in a dog collar’ barely twenty minutes ago.”
Huh. He didn’t realize anyone else heard that, but he supposes they weren’t trying very hard to be discreet either. “Sure, but that’s normal couple stuff.”
“I don’t think it is," she sighs. "But as long as you’re happy.”
It takes a while for another ailment to hit him—his team really does try to keep him clean, and his team really is very good at their jobs—but it does inevitably happen. Ren has one second, one brief moment of blessed, blissful clarity before that evil pink cloud bursts in his face and sends him straight to hell. An awkward, mortifying hell of deeply unfortunate lustful behavior, all tinted in pink.
He mentally braces himself and then on cue, it arrives.
Hey, pal. That guy over there, a voice in his head slithers and whispers, directing his attention toward Akechi with a magnetism that feels nothing less than absolute. He seems like just your type.
Yeah, he really is.
Don’t you want to kiss him? Make out right there on the floor?
Momentarily trapped within this half a millisecond, stretched out ad infinitum inside his mind, Ren narrows his eyes suspiciously. Sure…
The voice is silent after that, as if it's expecting Ren to do something.
Is that all?
No, no, I’ve got more, the voice hisses quickly. You want to fuck him, right? Wouldn’t that be hot. To drop your weapon and just go to town on each other right there?
No shit that would be hot, but… he assesses himself, and yeah, he’s good. He’s fine, actually. He’s got other priorities right now. And besides, it’s not like he’d leave his dagger behind for—this can’t be their best pitch, can it?
…Uh, the voice sputters as time starts to spin again, and the world easily comes back into focus.
Huh. That really wasn’t that bad at all. Was that weaksauce proposition because these Shadows are manifested within a cognition created by Maruki’s consciousness? Is his counselor actually… lame?
Well, uh—
Ren spins his dagger in his hand, easily adjusts to the gravity pushing him towards Akechi with nominally more force than usual, and looks his enemy dead in the eye. Does he want to fuck Akechi? Yeah, of course he wants to fuck him. He’s wanted to fuck him for months. He’s been thinking all day about how last night Akechi straight-up licked his face in the middle of sex—a warm, wet, slimy thing up the full length of his face—and how weird it was, and how weird it would make Ren if he asked him to do it again.
Come on man, that’s gross.
Don’t kinkshame me, voice, Ren shoots back, then blasts the sad little Shadow and the rest of its group with a Hassou Tobi, clearing out the room in a second.
That pink distortion clears from his vision—the only reason he remembers it was even there in the first place. And behind it, he makes eye contact with Akechi.
I’ve solved the mystery, he thinks at him, wishing he could hear it. I know your secret now.
Akechi doesn’t hear Ren’s words, and yet Ren knows he does. He rolls his eyes at whatever face Ren is making but Ren sees right through him, like he always can these days—can see the slight flush coloring the skin showing beneath his black mask.
He’s just as disgustingly into Ren as Ren is into him. Of course he is, it’s obvious in hindsight. But it really is another thing entirely to know for sure, to have experienced the exact same thing Akechi has and come to the same result. A warmth blooms in Ren’s chest at being understood so completely, at having found a true partner-in-crime. He's here, right across the room, staring at Ren just the same.
"They're doing it again," Sumire whispers loudly to Ryuji.
"Ew, look away!" Ryuji hollers, covering the eyeholes of her mask with his hands.
Ren ignores them. He's going to absolutely wreck Akechi tonight. He’s gonna tell Akechi to lick his goddamn face again, and he might even tell him all that mushy stuff too.