Work Text:
Akira (19:36)> Hey.
Akira (19:36)> Inoka, next train?
k?? sup? <Me (19:36)
Akira (19:36)> Talk there.
So Ryuji took the next train to Inokashira Park, where Akira was waiting for him on a bench in a heavy coat. If he were Yusuke, he’d probably find something absurd and poetic to say about it, but all Ryuji could think was that their cheeky, eccentric leader wore the same blank face as he had when he first arrived at Shujin.
“Hey dude what’s up?”
Akira stared blankly into the treetops for a while, long enough that Ryuji thought of clearing his throat and repeating himself, but before he could, Akira stood up. It was sudden and smooth, fluid but not in the lazy, unassuming way he did at school. It was sharper, with intent - the way he’d move in the Metaverse.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Akira suggested with a small, undecipherable smile, and started walking, giving Ryuji no chance to object.
For a while they walked in silence, keeping a brisk pace but not enough to break a sweat. Akira looked composed, relaxed, and utterly in control, taking broad strides with his hands in his pockets, half-lidded eyes calmly following swaying branches in the trees or ripples from falling leaves on the lake surface, and every minute Akira said nothing, Ryuji became more desperate for his mask to materialize so he could finally tear it the fuck off.
“I was thinking,” he said at last, partway through their second lap around the lake, “that flirting, and maybe all love, is based not on love or lust, but power.”
Ryuji wracked every inch of his brain, digging for a scrap of context, however small, to make sense of this, and came up with holes in his hands. “...What?”
“No, actually, lust probably does play a part, but it’s not the core. You know?”
‘Uhh, no?’ he thought. But even Ryuji knew better than to actually say so. Akira probably had a point he was trying to make. He always had a point. “Uh, go on?”
“Think about it, to be with someone is... sharing. You share your time, your location, your feelings with someone. It’s like... a Palace that you’re in together.” Akira gestured loosely as he talked, a small smile whenever he found the analogy he wanted to use. “And like in a Palace, what happens influences you. So, if you trust someone, you surrender your power, in the hopes that you can make your Palace brighter and nicer together. Or, if you’re shitty, you try to make the other person surrender their power, take control of the Palace so to speak, so you can do how you please.”
While he talked, Akira had started to get ahead of Ryuji, and when he finished, he turned around, though kept walking, backward, and spread his arms wide with a theatrical flourish. “That makes sense, right?”
“Uhh, I guess? But, dude, you gotta slow down, I don’t get half of what you’re on about.” Ryuji ran his hand through his hair. “Start at the beginning?”
Akira lowered his arms and replaced the grin that had etched itself onto his face with a more sober, thoughtful look, and he suddenly looked like the teenager he was again.
“I got hit on at my job.”
Ryuji raised an eyebrow, unsure how to react.
“Now, don’t get too excited, he was like, forty.”
“Wait wait wait, ‘he’-?”
“Anyway, he offered to buy me a drink, which, if you think about it, is warning sign number one.”
Ryuji thought about it, but came no closer to understanding.
Akira turned back around, seemingly unfazed by Ryuji’s blank look. He returned to his gesturing, the movements gradually becoming sharper and more pointed as he went on.
“So I said, I’m working, because I was. He said if Lala-chan don’t mind - so I told him I’m a minor. He may have gotten the hint, but then he slips me his number anyway. I can’t tell him to fuck off, so I just smile and tell him to try again in a few years, hoping he’ll give up and -“ Akira shook his head. He adjusted his glasses, something Ryuji saw him do more often when he or one of their classmates said something rude and ignorant.
Sometimes he wondered if the guy needed them at all or if he was using them as just another mask. Ryuji couldn’t exactly blame him if it was; it was easier just to mouth off and act the fool than admit when something got to him after all. Like, he really wished he had something to kick right now.
“So he says, and I quote, ‘You look like you’re one’a them Shujin kids, don’cha’,” he mimicked the man’s drunken slurring. “And I think both of us have enough experience by now to know what a threat sounds like.”
Ryuji grunted in agreement, forgoing speech in the event he said the wrong thing. What Akira must have put up with was, while not on the level of Ann or Shiho, definitely not cool.
“...So what happened then?”
Akira shrugged, his face still turned away from Ryuji, although almost certainly still with a blank expression that hid any true feelings.
“Smiled sweetly and told him he spent too much time checking out school kids at his age while Lala-chan threw him out. Little else I could do.”
Ryuji jogged a few steps to catch up with Akira and put his hand on his shoulder. “Good thing, uh, she, got your back?” he said admittedly not quite as confidently as he wanted to, though most of that was his confusion about how to refer to owner of the bar Akira worked at. Akira understood. Probably.
He hummed, at any rate. “Yeah. Definitely. She’s great.”
“He comes around again, ring me ‘n I’ll kick his ass, dude.” Ryuji mimicked swinging his pipe to emphasize his point.
“If there’s any of him left after Lala’s done with him,” Akira said with a grin more genuine than the ones before.
“Aw, she needs to leave me a piece. Ain’t no one mess with my bro.” He wasn’t serious, he wouldn’t get himself or Akira in trouble. If only there was a way to get him back without - Ryuji could slap himself. “Damn, he didn’t give you his full name did he?”
Akira shook his head. “I’ll keep an ear out.” Finally, he stopped marching like a man possessed, near a lakeside bench and, ever the gentleman, invited Ryuji to sit down.
Akira sat down heavily as well once Ryuji was seated, in a way not unlike how any of them would take to a safe room seat after a long day in the Metaverse. With the way their Personas sapped mental energy, maybe it wasn't too bad a comparison.
“It’s not like I haven’t been hit on before,” Akira mumbled. “Old men are especially bad, but the girls get the worst of it... But the threat was new. Got me thinking.”
Ryuji nodded mutely, feeling his guts writhe in protest at the casual nature Akira relayed his troubles. Somehow knowing it wasn’t the first time made it all so much worse.
Then all of a sudden Akira leaned over and flashed him a mischievous smile. “Maybe if he’d been hot I wouldn’t have minded so much.”
Ryuji recoiled. “Dude! You can’t be serious!”
Akira wasn’t into dudes, he was just a normal teenage guy who’d gotten dealt some shit hands. Gay people were, like, weird, and Akira wasn’t like that.
Akira just laughed, giving away nothing of his true intentions as always. It should’ve been annoying, but it wasn’t. Maybe because his maybe-jokes were the only times he seemed to let himself laugh without abandon. His cheeks were rosy from the exertion - or were they?
On instinct, Ryuji reached out and traced a finger along Akira’s face, letting out a confused “huh” when it came with a fine dusting of red.
Akira copied the gesture, a mild look of understanding dawning when he looked at his fingers. “Oh, yeah, that’s from my job. I got to wear the whole uniform today.”
With another of his signature small smiles, he jumped up from the bench and stripped off his coat. With a twirl he showed that underneath, he was wearing a short red yukata only reaching down to his thighs with black flowers - roses - printed around the hem, and Ryuji saw that what he’d assumed to have been skinnies, were actually a very opaque pair of tights.
It was fucking weird to see Akira, his bro, a dude, in such a girly outfit, but at the same time it was hard to deny that it looked like something he’d wear. The only thing not so much: the yukata’s sleeves were wrinkled from being stuffed into the coat, in stark contrast to Akira’s usually impeccable appearance. A heavy weight settled in Ryuji’s chest when he realized how badly Akira must have wanted to get out of there.
“Don’t I look cute?” Akira asked, one index finger teasingly placed against lips set in a Cheshire grin.
Ryuji started sweating. There had to be a right and a wrong answer, but what was which depended on what Akira was like. It was too much to handle, and Ryuji just sat with his mouth open like the idiot he was. This was why Akira always handled the negotiations.
He didn’t even consider simply telling the truth.
After what seemed like an eternity but was realistically probably more like a few seconds, Akira gave another chuckle and put his coat back on, and Ryuji blamed the conflicting feelings that arose on how Akira made a damn good girl.
“We'll change things,” Akira said softly, almost reassuringly. “We’ll make the Phantom Thieves so big, shitty adults will have to think twice before messing with people.”
Ryuji chuckled, amused that Akira would use his words. As if he really was trying to make Ryuji feel better even though he’d been the one in trouble. But then, the entire time he’d known him, Akira had always been that way, risking expulsion to stop Kamoshida for Ann, Mishima and Shiho; to expose Madarame for Yusuke; and most recently not just expulsion but worse to protect everyone in Shinjuku. The only reason he was even in Tokyo was his self-sacrificing nature. Ryuji would tell him not to worry about other people so much and think about himself for a change, but then, that just wouldn’t be Akira.
So Ryuji just shook his head. “You’re so fucking weird, dude.”