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Akira knows there’s something wrong with him. He’s always known this, sort of, perpetually half-haunted by a distant but undeniable sense of alienation. Deviance, insanity, loneliness, he’s never been able to quite grasp the right words for it.
Yesterday, he had barely escaped with his life. Their convoluted little plan had been thrown off the rails completely by the simple fact that the Tokyo police force is full of sadistic assholes who had had absolutely no problem with gleefully pumping a defenseless teenager full of drugs. All of a sudden his survival had been entirely dependent on his ability to convince a woman who was dead set on prosecuting him to help him instead. While drugged out of his mind. Without his friends or his supernatural powers or even just his regular human brain in working order. No Phantom Thieves. No Arsène. No Joker. Just Akira, drugged and beaten within an inch of his life, all alone in a concrete box.
He, by all rights, should’ve been terrified. And he was terrified, he remembers that part more clearly than anything else. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more scared in his life, not even when he was dragged away by the police in the middle of the night for a crime he didn’t commit back in his hometown. But that’s fine, the others don’t need to know about that. It all worked out in the end.
It doesn’t matter that if he hadn’t regained his senses in time, Akechi would’ve killed him. That Akechi would’ve pointed a gun at his head and shot him, point blank, and would’ve watched Akira’s brains splatter against the wall behind him and seen his life bleed out of his limp body right in front of him. It doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen.
But it could have happened.
Hence why still being scared would be oh so appropriate. But, as established, there’s something seriously wrong with Akira. He’s been trying again and again to muster up that same sense of terror he felt back in the interrogation room ever since getting back to Leblanc. So far it’s proven to be an exercise in futility. No matter how many times he turns the scenario over in his head, no matter how many times he thinks about how he could have died, the fear never comes. Instead, guilt and something else he refuses to name roil heavily in his gut as he turns over on his shitty mattress once again and bites down a little groan. Even the tiniest movements make the bruises on his chest and arms and thighs sing in pain still.
The problem is he can’t stop imagining it.
Would Akechi have laughed? Imparted some final words of mockery onto Akira’s corpse? Would he have gloated about his impending victory? Did he do any of those things when Sae’s cognition of Akira was staring him down, no doubt with the appropriate caliber of terror neatly arranged on its imagined face. The pure kind of terror, unmarred by this sick, sick feeling that’s been worming its way deeper into Akira’s insides ever since the door of that godforsaken room fell shut behind him and Sae.
The problem is he can’t stop thinking about it.
He knows there’s something wrong with him, but in this case it’s not just because he can’t stop thinking about it but because he’s not actually just thinking about it. He’s not just imagining it. He’s fantasizing.
He can almost see it, can almost picture that smug grin curling up Akechi’s pretty lips as he places the muzzle of his gun against Akira’s forehead. Would he have enjoyed it, Akira wonders idly, a soft moan slipping from his own lips when he thinks about Akechi finding killing him pleasurable. Maybe he would’ve fucked his corpse, that sick, dark, twisted part of his brain gleefully supplies and Akira bites down on his tongue. The pain grounds him, if only momentarily. It doesn’t stop the insane thoughts from trickling in, though, unfortunately. Did Akechi fuck the dead cognition? Did he want to fuck it? Would he want to fuck Akira’s dead body?
Yeah. There’s definitely something extremely wrong with him, Akira thinks despairingly as he unties the drawstring of his sweatpants — deft and quick despite the bandages still wrapped around his knuckles — and slides a hand into his boxers. His hands are shaking only a little bit.
The guilt thrashes around in his gut like a feral animal, tearing its claws into the sick, wrong, dirty thread of arousal wrapped around his insides and flaying it open, only to lick the blood off its corpse and take on its shape for itself. Akira whimpers, a tiny, telling noise. Incriminating. He’s suddenly so very glad Morgana went to stay at the Sakuras’ house tonight.
The images come more easily once he wraps his fingers around his cock properly, and it’s just a bit mortifying to find that it’s already hard and leaking. In his mind Akechi’s smooth voice mocks him for being such a desperate little slut and Akira’s hips twitch at the thought of getting to hear such filthy words directed at him in the detective’s soft-spoken lilt.
God, Akira can’t help but laugh to himself a little — the sound interspersed with small gasps on every delicious, damning stroke he grants himself — he’s messed up. Akechi would’ve been able to tell, he’s sure of it. Or maybe he knew already, has known from the moment he first shook Akira’s hand at the TV-station. Maybe he saw the depravity skulking behind Akira’s eyes, felt it in the way their fingers interlocked, twisted, perfect, meant to be. Akira hopes he did.
All at once, he’s struck with a bolt of entirely irrational jealousy directed at Sae’s cognitive version of himself. A cognition isn’t worthy of that kind of attention from Akechi. It should’ve been him on that chair, across that table. The point is that is wasn’t, not really, and that’s the only reason why Akira is still breathing and able to tease, torture, tantalize himself with these fantasies but he can’t help it.
If it had really been him at the other end of Akechi’s barrel Akira has no doubt that Akechi would’ve noticed his flushed cheeks and dilated pupils in a heartbeat. He wears the mask of the detective so well after all, he would take note of important, incriminating details like that. Maybe he would’ve blamed it on the drugs but Akira can’t stop thinking, hoping, wishing that he would’ve known. He doesn’t think anyone else has ever seen as much of his foul, rotten soul as Akechi did and yet that greedy, disgusting little voice in his head keeps telling him it wasn’t enough. That he should’ve torn open his guts with his own dagger and let the monster lurking below the surface of Akechi’s soft smiles and stern convictions climb inside and ruin him.
Distantly, Akira wonders whether the cognition bled the same way he himself would’ve, warm and red and alive. He’s sure Sae’s seen her fair share of crime scenes, but he can’t quite be sure how that translates to the accuracy of her mental image of someone getting their brains blown out by a bullet. He settles on maybe. Maybe isn’t good enough, of course it isn’t, but the thought makes him chuckle a little regardless, breathless and frantic.
In his fantasy Akechi’s face twists into an incredibly attractive mixture of disgust and intrigue when he takes note of Akira’s heavy breathing. The muzzle of his gun slides down Akira’s face — dangerous, solid and cool metal gliding against his skin with all the care of a besotted lover’s touch. It caresses his cheek almost gently before Akechi pulls it away from his face for a second — Akira barely has enough time to mourn the loss of contact — only to bring it back down lightning fast. A resounding crack rings through the small room and Akira moans like a whore at getting pistol whipped by his soon to be murderer. He can feel his skin split open. Does Akechi like how easily he can make Akira bleed for him? Akira hopes he does, desperately so.
He doesn’t have time to scramble enough of his brain together to feel ashamed before Akechi hits him again. Akira’s head spins. He’s almost tempted to find something to hit himself in the face with to make the fantasy more palpable but he doesn’t think he can stop stroking himself for long enough to get out of his bed. Not now, not when this terrible fantasy is presenting itself so easily, so smoothly for him — as if he’s not really the one in control of it, just a guest along for the ride. So instead, he settles for slapping himself in the face, one of his hands blessedly unoccupied and therefore up for the job. The bruises on his face sting but it doesn’t hurt as much as he wants it to. As he needs it to.
In his mind the pain is deliciously intense, pulling a pathetic whimper out of Akira’s mouth when a gloved hand grabs his chin, cruel fingers digging into the quickly forming bruise on his cheek. Akechi’s face is so close to his now. There’s a smirk gracing his lips that Akira is convinced he would deem ugly on anyone else. On Akechi though, it makes him look borderline divine. Mania suits him, Akira thinks blearily, lips twisting into a bloodied, dopey smile.
“You,” the Akechi in his head croons, “are unbelievable. I’d never have thought you’d be this depraved, Joker.” There’s a dark sort of delight in his voice, like finding out just how fucked up Akira is is the best thing to ever happen to him. Maybe it is. Maybe it would’ve been. Fuck, Akira wishes he’d been there. To hell with caution and the threat of imminent death, he’d have taken the bullet to the head in stride if it had meant he would have gotten to see Akechi’s leering grin as he traced Akira’s jawline with his gun in real life instead of only in his mind’s eye.
The rush of adrenaline he’d felt when he’d realized he’d won had been equal parts mind-blowing and addicting — enough even, to almost make him forget about the myriad of bruises blooming all over his skin while Sae dragged him out of the station — but somehow, insanely, it pales in comparison to this disgusting fantasy that Akira just can’t shake. He’s too weak and fucked up to stop imaging just how thrilling losing would’ve been.
Akira sighs, a little desperate and a lot ashamed, and slows the pace of his hand. His hips buck up involuntarily at the loss of the tight, frantic kind of pressure he likes so much and a needy little keen slips from his lips, unbidden. Even so, he resists the temptation to go right back to stripping himself raw. He wants — no, he needs to make this last, to savor it. He doesn’t want their game to be over yet, even though he’s the only one still playing.
Akechi spits on his face. His saliva slides down Akira’s nose and mingles with the blood dripping from his check, viscous and cloying. It feels like absolution.
“I could do anything to you, couldn’t I,” Akechi says and it’s not a question because they both know it’s the truth. “I could do anything to you, and you’d like it, you disgusting piece of shit.” Akira keens like a dog and Akechi hits him again in response. The crack of his gun against Akira’s overheated, clammy skin is just as amazingly agonizing as it was the first two times. Akechi is laughing now and Akira can’t blame him. He must make for quite the sorry sight, head hung low and panting like the desperate animal he is, skin sticky with sweat and blood and spit. He wonders, deliriously, if maybe Akechi would entertain the thought of keeping him on a leash instead of killing him if Akira just begged him nicely enough.
“You’re revolting, you know that?” Akechi says, conversationally like he’s discussing the weather instead of how much of a fucked up mess Akira is. “I’m sorry,” Akira whimpers quietly and gets another laugh in response, bright and clear and mean. Akechi hadn’t wanted a response, not really. They both know that.
“You disgust me, Joker. You truly do,” the detective purrs and he sounds downright thrilled. Despite himself, Akira’s lips twitch up into a manic little smile of his own. This is what he deserves. It’s what he needs, too. This is exactly what he’s been craving all along, for someone to look at him and see him for the repulsive, nasty creature he truly is. It’s so, so hard bending himself out of shape to be the perfect student or the perfect friend or the perfect leader all the time and Akira is so very tired. Letting Akechi see, having him tear out all of these unsightly parts of him to put them on display and mock him for them — it feels like finally being able to breathe again after a lifetime spent drowning. A relief of inconceivable magnitude — it doesn’t even matter that the air he’s breathing is laced with toxins.
As he imagines the mildly crazed grin on Akechi’s face twisting into something equally crazed but more akin to curiosity, Akira wonders whether or not he’d be letting Akechi do much of anything. Something tells him there wouldn’t be much of a choice for him to make. The thought makes his cock throb in his hand.
As if on cue, Akechi tilts Akira’s chin up with the muzzle of his gun and says slowly, syrupy, sweetly: “I wonder just how many of your revolting little fantasies I could squeeze out of you.” He draws the gun up a little, stroking Akira’s cheek with it like he’s a pet, not a person. Akira thinks about getting leashed again. “Tell me, Joker. How far do the depths of your perversion reach?”
There’s something to be said about how clearly Akira can hear the words reverberate in his head in Akechi’s not-quite-gentle-anymore tenor. Probably more proof that there is something irredeemably wrong with him, he thinks, equal parts chagrined and hysterically amused. His grip on his cock tightens well past the point of being painful. It’s what he deserves. (It’s what he likes, too.)
Akechi taps the muzzle of the gun against Akira’s mouth almost politely, cold metal nudging his lips apart until it’s pressed right up against his teeth. It’s that mental image, the actual, concrete thought of getting a hole blown in the back of his throat that finally, finally, makes Akira’s body seize up with something that feels at least close to fear.
The problem is that it’s way too late at this point.
His strokes barely slow down and he shudders uncontrollably as he imagines the way Akechi would laugh while he’d force the gun past Akira’s teeth into his mouth. Apparently his fucked up brain is insane enough to find that idea exciting. Not that that’s at all surprising anymore at this point. His cock spurts an absolutely ludicrous amount of precum — as if in agreement — and he’s almost too relieved by the way the fluid slicks up his hand to feel ashamed. He’s going to have to change his bandages after this anyway.
What would it taste like? What would it feel like? Akira can picture the sharp edges and corners of the weapon pressing against his tongue and catching uncomfortably on his teeth way too clearly. He feels dizzy.
Akechi is palming the bulge in his own uniform slacks now. He’s getting off on this, too — the sight of Akira with his gun shoved in his mouth is doing it for him. Akira knew they were the same all along, he knew Akechi would understand him the way no one else ever has before. He can’t say any of that though so he just moans uselessly around unforgiving steel, drool dribbling out from the corners of his mouth, and Akechi seems to take that as his cue to thrust the gun in deeper. It scrapes against the roof of Akira’s mouth and makes him gag but Akechi doesn’t give him any reprieve. Uncomfortable doesn’t even begin to describe this — it fucking hurts and then some — but it’s worth it. If not for the way the pain and fear add more of that delicious, addicting edge to his arousal then for the way Akechi is looking at him.
It seems like he can’t decide whether Akira is the most astonishing, amazing creature in the world or worth less than the dirt under his dress shoes, the expression on his face strangely torn between a snarl of disgust and rapt admiration. Akira thinks he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his entire life.
Backlit by the harsh light of the interrogation room it might as well be an angel who’s fucking his throat with a handgun right now.
He gurgles a pathetic little moan when Akechi cups his cheek with his unoccupied hand. The leather of his glove feels strangely comforting against Akira’s overheated skin. He wonders if he’s still bleeding where Akechi pistol whipped him earlier.
“Unbelievable,” Akechi murmurs, punctuates the words with yet another thrust that has Akira choking around the gun again. “Even now, you’re still finding new ways to surprise me.” It’s intoxicating, the way he’s filling up all of Akira’s senses at once. His voice, his touch, the taste of his gun, the smell of metal in the air. And the sight of him. Fuck, the sight of him.
Akira’s never been in love before but he’s sure this is what it must feel like. He barely manages another moan but the sound of it seems to spur Akechi on regardless. His fist tightens around the grip of the gun — Akira hears leather creak as it’s stretched too tightly over skin — and his pace goes from hard and mean and mocking to brutally efficient. Like he’s really just trying to hurt Akira now.
There’s blood on the gun when Akechi finally pulls it out of Akira’s mouth. Akira’s entire body feels like it’s on fire.
“How fascinating,” Akechi chuckles, a little breathlessly. He’s running a finger through the blood staining the otherwise pristine metal of his weapon and his pupils are blown so wide Akira can barely see the red of his irises anymore. “It seems there really is no end to the things you’ll let me do to you. I suppose I should thank you for indulging my curiosity, shouldn’t I? This has been quite enlightening.” His smile is a knife’s edge and Akira wants to cut himself open on it.
And then Akechi leans in and kisses him, hard and bruising and painful and perfect and Akira almost comes all over his own hand when he imagines Akechi’s canines in place of his own, digging into his lower lip hard enough to make it bleed. Metal blooms twofold on his tongue, the lingering taste of the imaginary barrel and blood mixing deliciously with the very real liquid pooling on his tongue. He must’ve been biting his lip hard enough to make it bleed for real.
In his head, Akechi pushes the muzzle of the gun against Akira’s temple in tandem with the way his clever tongue is plundering the still bleeding depths of Akira’s mouth. It leaves a wet smear of Akira’s saliva and blood in its wake. Akira wonders, for one single, insane moment whether Akechi would pull the trigger like this. And then he does and Akira is gone.
Akechi’s name takes the form of a strangled cry in the quiet attic as come spurts from Akira’s cock, staining the inside of his boxers and the gauze wrapped around his fingers with the evidence of his transgressions.
After that, Akira’s labored panting is the only noise besides the quiet humming of the space heater across the room that fills the silence for a while as he tries to get a hold of his faculties again. His whole body feels lax and his toes are tingling. The maelstrom of guilt in his chest has gone quiet, drowned out by the all-encompassing endorphin rush of the afterglow. It settles over him like a blanket, heavy and warm.
He breathes in the dusty attic air in calm, measured beats but it doesn’t help him process what just happened any faster. Eventually, he just starts laughing. Nothing about this is funny but it’s just so absurd that he can’t help himself. He just got off to an elaborate violent fantasy about Akechi killing him for real. He didn’t even get around to imagining Akechi fucking him before he blew his load over the thought of getting his brains blown out. What else is he supposed to do but laugh at himself?
Well then, he thinks a little hysterically. So much for being terrified.