Archive of Our Own

“Well,” said a voice just at the edge of familiar, “This is new.”

Akira groaned, dragging himself into a seated position, and tried to blink the spots from his eyes. Everything ached; he was disoriented, and confused, and, apparently, lying on a low table. “…What?”

There was a strange, staticky laugh from somewhere…behind him? To his left? All around him, maybe, or was it—

He rubbed his head. He had his mask on, at least, and didn’t have any obvious injuries he could feel. When the laugh died down, the voice came again. 

“I said, this is new, little thief,” it purred. It seemed to ricochet around him, the same way the laugh did; at first he wondered if it was one of his Personas talking in his head, just being really weird about it, but they had never felt so physical, and he— couldn’t-

He couldn’t feel them. Akira jolted straighter, his eyes finally flying wide, and raised one hand to his mask; all he could feel from it was a strange, distant pulsing, a chain deep in his heart, like he was too far to reach what should always be right under his skin. 

“What the fuck,” he amended. The voice laughed again, louder, with open delight; it had a hatchety, cruel kind of laugh, rough and sharp and vicious, but… Akira kind of liked the sound of it, once he’d pushed down the pounding in his head. He stood, exhaling, and looked around— if he didn’t have access to his Personas, it seemed like the best option was to get a feel for the space he was in, and maybe to actually find his mysterious companion. 

He was in… what seemed to be some kind of lounge, a dim room draped in dark reds and brassy gold, card suit patterns worked in unsubtly wherever the eye fell. Still in the Casino, then, although the room itself was unfamiliar. It was oddly comfortable; a word that rose to the surface of his mind and refused to leave was intimate. 

Perched on the back of one of the sofas was one of the strangest creatures Akira had ever seen. It was massive, in the way a lot of Shadows and Personas were massive, although its true size was difficult to gauge due to the intricate, blocky striping that covered it, making every minute shift an almost dizzying dance; it had braids that twisted lazily behind it like living things, and long, wicked horns an impulsive part of him itched to touch; it had clever-looking hands and mischievous eyes and a cruel, sharp-fanged smile, spread too wide and ever-grinning. It had hooves, brilliant gold things edged in what looked like fire, that it didn’t seem too fussed about getting on Sae Nijima’s cognitive upholstery, and a gargantuan sword that matched that fire’s glow leaning up against the back of the sofa on which it sat. 

The sword was probably taller than Akira. When he made tentative eye contact with the creature, its grin shifted and widened; it waved cheerfully, waggling red fingers, and said— proving itself the voice’s owner— “Hello there, sleeping beauty. I was starting to wonder if your little nap was ever going to end.”

Even looking right at its face, it was hard to convince himself the voice was coming from it. It had to be, but it also seemed to come from every dark corner, and from right behind him, and from just in the periphery of his vision; stubbornly, he brushed that sense off, took a breath, and said, “Who are you? What happened?”

“I have no idea what happened,” it said, shrugging. The gesture sat wrong on its jagged shoulders, uncanny and jarring like bad stop-motion animation. “Your little gang was bumbling around like you always do, and then-” it snapped its fingers- “-You and I were here.”

Akira frowned. “That doesn’t answer my first question.”

“I know,” it said, its smile growing by degrees. 

Ah. So it was going to be like that. 

“Look,” Akira said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose through his mask. “I can’t access any of my Personas right now, so chances are I wouldn’t have a chance against you in a fight. Can we skip this? I-”

“You wouldn’t have had a chance anyway,” it said haughtily, leaning forward on its elbows. Something about the gesture, and the nature of the insistence, felt intensely familiar. “I’d crush you in an instant, Joker. But I have to be good, I have to wait. It’s infuriating, you know that?”

He blinked. 

“I’m…sorry?” He said. He wasn’t, but it seemed like the thing felt personally wronged by him somehow, and it had a sword, so. 

“Oh, don’t lie to me.” It sounded oddly endeared. It unfolded from the sofa, stretching out dizzying limbs like some sort of nightmarish cat, and said, “I probably won’t have an opportunity to face you anyway. It’s a shame, really—a gun’s an awfully impersonal way to go.”

Akira rolled on the balls of his feet and frowned, shoving his hands in his pockets. So it knew about the assassination plan, which didn’t really mean a lot— everyone on the team knew about it, one way or another— but it did mean it couldn’t be part of the Palace proper. Which meant it wasn’t a Shadow, which meant it was a Persona, which meant… a lot of things. 

That echoing, migrainous voice sounded so, so familiar, just sharp and cruel and dropped through seven or eight thin, telescoping layers of maddening vocal distortion. 

“You’re Akechi’s Persona, aren’t you?” He murmured, taking a step closer. Every logical cell in his body was shouting at him not to, that it was dangerous, that just being near it might be enough to harm him in unknowable, permanent ways, but…

God, the thing was gorgeous. It tilted its head to the side, slitted eyes glittering bright, and it laughed, and that laugh was a headache was a dizzying spiral of phosphenes was a dream and a dance and a blade, teeth and claws and acid and ice and raw, primordial fury, a rage so deep the pressure could crush him before he ever had a chance to drown and a delight that buoyed him anyway, dragging him up into a harsh and unforgiving light. 

“We knew we hated you for a reason,” it purred, except it stuttered and skipped like a corrupted recording on hate; the word jumped and layered over itself, twisting with others, too many, hated-wanted-chose-liked; the one only won out because he’d heard it before, he thought, the spite in Akechi’s voice sharp and thick as he threw a glove. He could hear a bit of that same spite from the creature in front of him, but it felt almost… fond, comfortable, the vitriol a teasing, familiar thing in its ricocheting voice. 

It bent to take his chin in its hand, tilting his head up, and hummed. The sound made his teeth hurt a in a weirdly pleasant way. 

“…I have gone by many names, little clever one,” the Persona told him, trailing the fingers of its other hand through his hair in a way that felt oddly gentle. Akira’s mouth went dry. “But what is most familiar is easiest, I think, and you already know the role in which I have been cast. You may call me Loki, if you like.”

“Loki,” he murmured, rolling the name on his tongue. This close, it felt less like syllables and vibrations and more like him, like babbling rage and gunfire and blood. “…There are two of you? What about Robin?”

Loki let go of him and flopped back down onto the sofa with a catlike sort of disdain, throwing one knee over the arm and gesturing vaguely with a hand. 

“Oh, him,” he said. A braid twisted itself idly through his fingers. “Yes, there are two of us. He gets to play the outer face! It’s a little funny since the whole point is to cast aside your masks, but, of course— better to play the part of the noble hero that still believes in righteous justice than… well.”

He propped his grinning face on his other hand, tilting his head so his teeth glinted in the light. Akira thought he probably got it. 

Still, he found himself asking, “Don’t you get bored?” 

Loki paused. 

“No,” he said, some fondness seeping back into his jittery voice, “I do most of our work outside of this little charade. It’s why I’m so much stronger than Robin, not that you could probably tell— I’m not bored. But I will admit…I am a little… jealous.”

He shifted so he could sit cross-legged and rest his elbows on his too-sharp knees, considering Akira with his head still propped on his hands. 

“Jealous?” Akira asked, when it became obvious no more was forthcoming. Loki’s grin grew, his face shifting to reveal more and more length in his knifelike fangs. 

“Well, obviously,” he said. 

Obviously, the corners of the room hissed, and the darkest parts of the furniture’s shadows laughed, and something just at the back of his neck gasped, in a way that sounded almost like crying and almost like— something else. Obviously, obviously, obviously. Akira shivered. 

“What- um, what do you mean?”

“Don’t pretend to be bashful, it doesn’t suit your face,” Loki said flippantly. “I’m sure you can guess that I wanted you, Joker.” 

Ah. 

“I still haven’t quite decided why I want you to see me so badly,” he continued, unfolding long legs and stretching them out far enough the flames on his ankles brushed Akira’s coat, “I’ve narrowed it down— I’m pretty sure I either want to kill you or to fuck you— but I think in large part I just resented the way you looked at Robin and at him without even knowing I exist.”

“Oh,” Akira said. He swallowed. “Uh. Okay, that’s— I mean, we’re here now.”

He tried not to latch on to it too much. Loki was a god of debauchery, an inherently lustful being— just because he’d said that didn’t necessarily mean anything about Akechi, except Personas were a reflection of desires as well as rebellion, so- maybe—

He tried to banish it. He should probably have been more worried about the murder part; he wasn’t, though, if only because he doubted there was any part of Goro Akechi that would willingly ruin whatever convoluted zillion-step revenge plan his death was a lynchpin in. 

“So we are,” Loki said. He crooked his fingers at Akira, gesturing him closer. “Come here, little trickster.”

As if in a trance, Akira found himself stepping forward, only stopping when he had almost hit the material of the couch. He’d let himself get drawn into a position that felt almost provocative; Loki had lazily spread his knees in a way that reminded Akira of a king, and he found himself between his thighs, so close he could easily reach out and touch a striped leg, or his chest, or even his face. 

He didn’t. Loki, on the other hand, seemed to have no hesitation at all; he lifted one hand, tracing a line up from Akira’s chest to the underside of his jaw, forcing him to tip his head up so his claws didn’t dig into the delicate flesh under his chin. He had already been looking up at the creature’s face, so it didn’t functionally change much, but the cold press of sharp nails against his skin made his blood rush in his veins, something hazy and heady beginning to cloud up in the back of his mind. 

Akira took a careful breath, gathered as much composure as he could, and cocked an eyebrow. He had rarely been more grateful for his mask. 

“Hello,” he said, injecting amused curiosity that didn’t quite match how he really felt into his voice. “Can I help you?”

This close, Loki’s laugh really did seem to surround him, the sound eerie and skittering as it wound around his body. It tangled in his fingers and his coat and his hair, stuck in the hollow parts of his mind like echoing cobwebs; he felt it twist around his throat as much as he heard it, loose, deadly, and less frightening than it probably should have been. 

“Can you?” Loki returned, trailing fingertips up the side of his face. He seemed fascinated by the way it made him shiver. “Tell me something honestly— do I frighten you, Joker?”

Akira took a breath, looking Loki up and down slowly. Just doing it made his head swim a bit; the dazzling patterns on his body were difficult to think around, difficult to piece together into a concrete shape, and if he focused too hard on it everything else cracked apart. 

Tell me honestly. He got the feeling that instruction mattered. Loki seemed like the kind not to mind lies overmuch most of the time, but something about his tone of voice—odd, soft, curious, a little cruel and just off the coast of coaxing—had inclined Akira to actually take the request seriously. So, after a moment of thought:

“A little,” he admitted. “You’re dangerous. You actively want to kill me. Looking at you gives me a headache.”

Loki tilted his head. “But…?” 

“But you’re fascinating,” Akira sighed. He took the last half-step forward until he felt the sofa pressing against his legs and reached up to trail his fingers along Loki’s strange, angular chest. Too late, he silently cursed his gloves. “And beautiful. And I have a million questions and I’d bet money you won’t answer a goddamn one of them.”

A richer, stranger sound curled around him with the chuckle he got for that; at first he thought it was a growl, and then he realized—from the cadence, from the warmth of the laugh, from the affectionate, pleased way Loki had gone to ruffle his hair as he spoke— that it was more likely a purr. The more he recognized it the more the sound sunk into him, equal parts menace and comfort. 

“You do catch on quickly,” he murmured, running nails along Akira’s scalp. The feeling was sweet, soporific— he had to resist the urge to lean into it and shut his eyes. “Do you feel the same way about him, then?”

Akira laughed, a soft exhalation more than a sound, and splayed his hand on Loki’s chest for balance. “What I feel for him is more complicated than that, but close,” he said. “Is there a word for having a thing for the guy that’s planning to murder you?”

“Autassasinophilia,” Loki said, not missing a beat, “Or maybe just questionable taste. I am pleased to be right, though. He thinks he’s imagining things.”

“I wish,” Akira muttered. “It would make this whole mess a lot easier.”

Loki settled one hand on Akira’s hip with a little hum, urging him to lean just a little more forward. He couldn’t walk any further, so he shifted instead, almost on autopilot, to prop one leg on the velvet of the couch, his knee brushing against the inside of a black-and-white thigh. 

“It is a shame,” Loki sighed. He cupped Akira’s cheek in one hand, the other resting on his hip, both sharp and clever and huge compared to what a human being should be, dwarfing Akira’s face and curling too far around his waist. He felt small; he felt stared at, seen, held. “In a better world, you would have been ours. We do what we must, but…”

A red thumb swept across Akira’s bottom lip, pressing down just slightly, and he dropped his mouth open almost involuntarily to take a sharp breath. Loki chuckled. 

“…What a waste,” he concluded, his voice curling along and blooming out of the paths his laughter had carved into Akira’s mind. “I’m sure he’ll be upset with me for not caring how you knew about our intentions, but there are better uses of your limited time, pretty thing.”

Akira was absently kind of glad he’d balanced on the couch, even if the position was a lot, because he was pretty sure that between the conversation and the strange, pulsing-swirling waves of feeling that seemed to emanate from Loki every few seconds, ever-shifting and varying in intensity, he wouldn’t be great at standing on his own at this point. He didn’t relish the thought of looking weak in front of this thing. 

Out loud, he swallowed and said, “…Yeah?”

Loki hummed. “Yes,” he said. “I’m curious to play with you before you’re gone, little thief. Will you indulge me?”

Akira took another calculated, slow breath, keeping his response paced and relatively calm because he didn’t really want to seem like he had something too fundamentally broken inside him, and he said, “Sure.”

Loki’s grin split into something genuine and delighted, the jagged scarlet knives of his teeth parting slightly as he made a sound somewhere between a trill and the screeching of metal. The air in between them swam with a strange, manic sort of electricity, a chittering madness just below the surface. Akira kind of wanted to know what it felt like when it shattered. 

“Wonderful,” Loki whispered, from inches in front of him and from all around him, breathed into the skin at the back of his neck and etched in tingling lines into his collarbone and wound around his wrists like stinging wire. 

He curled down, holding Akira in place with the hand he had on his head— it was big enough that he could curl his fingers around to the nape of his neck and keep his thumb pressed against his lip, caging him, making him feel small and oddly precious— and pressing their foreheads together, curving horns bracketing Akira’s skull as his purr sank deeper, settling like lead in the marrow of his bones. Akira raised one hand to the back of his head, settling his fingers between thick braids, and tipped his own chin upwards just enough to press a soft, tentative kiss against the jagged blades of his teeth. 

Loki crooned in approval, one smooth red plait twisting around his hand and up his arm at the same time as something slick and burning-hot pressed against his lips. They were already slightly parted— he hadn’t ever fully gone to shut his mouth after Loki had touched his lip, and he’d been breathing unsteadily anyway— but it still took Akira a moment to follow the unspoken command and drop his jaw open, his startled sound muffled quickly by the thick, undulating length of Loki’s tongue. 

There was nothing else it could have been, although it was nothing like anyone Akira had ever kissed; admittedly his experience was fairly limited, but nothing had ever come close to this, searingly warm and twisting and long, too long, dipping into his mouth until he nearly gagged— nothing had ever tasted like this, either, the too-slick slide of it acidic and weirdly sweet, a layer of bitter honey coating his mouth, dripping down his throat until the burn of it cleared away any token resistance he’d reflexively put up. 

It felt good. Weird, wrong, choking-invasive, particularly when Loki seemed to feel him react to whatever it was in his spit that made him relax and sank even deeper until he was sure he’d made it halfway down his throat— but good nonetheless. There was an indescribable kind of glittering sensation sparking just under his skin, a burning in his veins that pulsed in time with the swirling, impossible waves of emotion Loki exuded, and he was finding it harder and harder to exist as a single being in his own head through it all. He wasn’t entirely certain why he would want to. 

Akira clutched Loki’s head with one hand, clinging to the chain on his chest with the other, and pushed insistently against the Persona’s hands in an effort to get closer; he wanted to press his body up against his dizzying chest, wanted to lose himself in the impossible, staticky smoothness of his patterning and rest in the curling shell of his hands and drown in the sickly-sweet taste of his kiss—

He gasped, swaying and coughing, as Loki’s tongue retracted out of his mouth and vanished from sight, chased by another dizzying spiral of laughter. The hand on his face kept him vertical, the thumb sweeping across his cheek anchoring him to reality, by a certain metric. 

“Goodness, you are susceptible,” Loki chuckled. “Well, it’s all cognition. You must really want this, mm?”

It took Akira a second to gather himself enough to speak, blinking spots from his vision and breathing heavily. Finally, hazily, he said, “…I’ll take whatever you want to give me.”

Distantly he thought maybe that was too much, but he still felt floaty and euphoric, and he had told him to be honest, and at the core of Loki’s layered maze of voices was Akechi’s familiar tenor, and, well— he meant it. 

Loki paused, holding his face in a startlingly gentle hand for a long moment. Then he huffed, a soft little rolling sound, and bumped their foreheads together again.

He sat up a moment later, the braid that had wound itself around Akira’s hand twisting and pulling it down and away from his face, and he said, crooning-coaxing and mocking and affectionate in a way he either couldn’t or didn’t bother to hide, “On your knees, then.”

Akira dropped. He didn’t even think about it; there wasn’t a mote of hesitation in his mind, even setting the thick, honey-scented haze aside, he just sank to the ground. He would have gone to his knees for Loki even before their kiss. He would have gone to his knees for Loki the moment he’d realized what he was.  

It was probably fine. 

He still had one hand wrapped in a thin scarlet braid, the twisting hair wound around his wrist and his palm until it seemed like it would have been inescapable even if he’d been at all inclined to escape; that hand hung in the air above his head, dangling uselessly, while the other dropped into his lap. Breathlessly, he stared up at Loki’s inhuman face, waiting. 

“More obedient than you look, aren’t you, Joker?” he asked, carding long fingers through Akira’s hair, and if the sensation had been good earlier it was breathtaking now, dreamlike and shivery enough that he couldn’t remember for the life of him why he’d resisted the instinct to shut his eyes and drop the weight of his head against Loki’s palm, his to control, even when that control extended to pulling off and casting away his mask. He didn’t resist the urge to moan, either, the drawn-out whine pulled from him at his touch entirely unthinking; Loki chuckled and stroked his scalp, as if in reward. “Just look at you. Pretty little thing, kneeling so easily… What a treat. I didn’t even have to break you.”

“Uh-huh,” Akira mumbled. “Feels nice.”

The shifting, stutter-skip layers of Loki’s voice were sharp when he spoke next, tugging lightly at the roots of his hair. “Should have guessed you were a slut, I suppose,” he murmured. “How many of your little friends have you given yourself to, leader? You are so very generous, after all.”

His tone was a strange mix of acidic and sweet, dripping loathing condescension and desire in equal parts, and Akira had to struggle to drag himself to the surface of his own mind to parse what the fuck he was talking about. When he did, he almost laughed. 

“Are you jealous? Don’t be, I haven’t.” He leaned against Loki’s thigh, fluttering his eyes open to gaze up at the impossible, monstrous creature above him, reveling in the humanity of it, and said, “You’re special. Use it or lose it deal, gorgeous.”

Loki snarled, a rattling, bottomless sound, all radio static and animal fear; at the same time, though, he laughed, and he snagged Akira’s other hand with a braid, dragging it up to join the first one, pulling them both above his head and binding them together until he was quite thoroughly helpless. Even though he could probably stand if he tried, he could hardly go anywhere— the braid that remained knotted around his wrists tethered him where he was as securely as a chain. 

(As a leash, he thought, and then promptly buried. He would have to drag that fantasy out of him by force.)

“Oh, I have no intention of losing you, thief,” Loki purred. “You belong to us now. I’ll have you as I like.”

Akira turned his head to muffle another involuntary noise into the fabric of his sleeve, unsure how much of his internal response to that was from whatever it was Loki had dosed him with and how much was all just him— either way, he couldn’t think straight. Either way his blood pounded in his veins, arousal twisting in his gut, his mouth watering even more— and, god, there was that sting of honey wine in his own saliva now, making all of it spiral, and he had to swallow it down if he didn’t want to drool, which just made the fuzzy brightness behind his eyes rocket higher. 

Loki’s crooning laughter surrounded him, cradled him, wrapped around him like a living thing— hands, maybe, or tendrils, or something else entirely, not quite tender and not quite as cruel as he thought it might be; his voice cut through the fog. 

“Oh, you do like that, don’t you? Funny little thing,” he said, dragging gentle claws across his scalp, “We’ve been a fool not to use you before now, haven’t we?”

“Nnh-” Akira squirmed; Loki purred, soothing and enticing in turns, and hitched one dizzying leg up to make it all the more obvious when he slipped his free hand down to a subtle seam between his thighs, running two fingers up and along it, revealing a sliver of ember-red flesh underneath. His fingers came away faintly slick; he hummed and held them idly in front of Akira’s lips. 

“Open,” Loki murmured; Akira let his mouth slacken, and the god chirred in approval and dragged those selfsame fingers down his tongue. The flavor was strange, bittersweet and a little intoxicating, and he didn’t bother to think about it before licking his fingers clean, swallowing a whine at the way Loki pressed them deeper into his mouth, toying with his tongue and slipping in another, farther, until he felt like he could choke on that, too, except for how he was still relaxed and pliant from earlier— and it all felt so good, and he wanted it so badly—

Loki chuckled as he pulled away, possessive and hungry and more than a little mocking, and it twisted through his mind like a nest of snakes, and it was one of the most euphoric things he’d ever felt. 

“You’re so easy,” he murmured. “Oh, if I had known this was your weakness this all would have been so much simpler, little trickster. Go on.”

He was shifted, the grip on his wrists slackening enough to let him drop forward, and laughed breathlessly as he realized what was expected of him— the angle of his arms was awkward and Loki’s body was strange and unfamiliar, but he was a skilled improviser, if nothing else. He ducked his head forward and brought his mouth to the just-visible slit, demarcated as much by the patterns of his stripes as it was by any obvious physical difference, and tentatively slid his tongue up it, and oh.  

He tasted— well, divine seemed a little on the nose. It was stronger than it had been on his fingers, the liquid thick and strange and bitter on his tongue, and he tasted faintly like honey, still, but more than that he tasted sharp, vaguely toxic in a heady, addictive sort of way. His skin was smooth, unyielding, oddly inorganic on the surface but velvety beneath, searing-hot the same way his tongue had been. 

“Good boy,” he chirred, pinning Akira in place easily with the hand in his hair— his grip was loose, almost casual, but at the same time he was about as yielding as iron. Akira moaned, cracked and reedy, and buried himself deeper, working as best as he could with lips and tongue to earn the praise, to deserve the white-hot pleasure it sent shooting through him. If he could make Loki feel fractionally as good as he felt, it would have counted as winning the encounter in his own mind. 

As it stood he busied himself with the task he’d been given, laving his tongue over the slick entrance he’d been granted leave to touch, muffling his own increasingly-needy little whines into soft, burning-hot flesh, licking over— something— unfamiliar, alien, something hot and satiny and moving, pressing into his mouth, and he couldn’t pull away and he didn’t even really want to anyway, even as his tongue was pressed flat and his jaw wrenched wide, bitter-sugar stickiness dripping down his esophagus— as something fucked into his throat, heavy and hot and unyielding— until it was all he could do to drag in threads of breath through his nose and slump in Loki’s hold, whimpering with his mouth buried in his cunt and stuffed with what was probably a cock, oh, god-

With a pleased, trilling laugh, Loki pulled Akira’s head back a few inches; the thing in his throat slipped out a little ways, then twisted and pressed back in, exploratory and poison-sweet. Akira tried not to choke; his own arousal throbbed between his legs, utterly ignored in favor of his service to the aphrodisiac whims of the god above him. 

“Very good boy,” Loki amended, stroking his head. His crooning voice came from everywhere, and it was a balm and a stinging nettle and a chain and a key, and Akira shuddered helplessly and let himself be used. The powerlessness was almost as much a drug as the aphrodisiacs, his own weakness something startlingly enthralling. “I suppose it’s no surprise you take to this quickly as well, mm?”

He tugged him back by the hair, unforgiving but not forceful, and at the same time his length pulled out of his throat of its own power, and he was finally granted sight of it. The thing was less a cock and more some manner of tendril, wet and prehensile, curiously ridged, tapering at the end but entirely thicker than his tongue had been; it was striped, too, in a way that would have seemed a little absurd if Akira had been in any state to appreciate absurdity, solid black spiraling around a gradient of white at the base to that same glowing-ember red where the tip was twisting lazily in front of his face. 

It was also proportionate to his body, which was to say it was almost comically huge. The fact that it had already been down Akira’s throat kept his head spinning.

“Wow,” he said, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat roughly, then licked his lips, grinned, and said, “Uh- wow. Okay. Goddamn.”

“Enjoying yourself?”

“Mm- hmm,” Akira hummed, shutting his eyes for a hazy moment and smiling. He felt dreamy, foggy, a little outside of himself; at the same time, he felt a bit like he was on fire, trapped inside his own body and unable to search for relief. He shifted on his knees, breath hitching, and said, “Not really how I expected to spend my afternoon, but hey.”

Another rattling, ricocheting chuckle, cool fingers carding through his hair; Loki petted him absently for a moment, then said, “No, I suppose not. I much prefer this outcome, to tell the truth.”

Gently, he guided Akira forward again, the slick head of his dick sliding over his bottom lip but not pressing any deeper, and then he loosened his grip; there was mirth tied into the sense-haze in the air around them, now, and curiosity, thickened and twisted with arousal and a deep, heavy desire. Akira exhaled shakily, a soft noise on his breath. 

“A- ahh - me, uh- me too,” he laughed, nuzzling at his hip before mouthing at him, dropping messy kisses and slow licks against the slick, moving length, each press of his tongue sinking Loki’s skittering, shivery influence deeper into his mind. He meant what he said; this was a lot more fun than another day of stress, no matter how much he enjoyed his role in the Metaverse, a thousand times more enjoyable than managing a team and throwing people he loved into combat and managing all the fucking tests the world kept throwing at him and having to keep pretending everything was fine— 

At least this was honest. Loki had admitted out loud that he might want to kill him; he wanted this, too, though, wanted Akira, and the weight of it was electric, the force of his regard a palpable danger in its own right. And he wanted to have him, to take him, control him, and— well— fuck. He couldn’t admit it, not out loud in any way that mattered, but that was so, so tempting. 

He couldn’t move. The monster surrounding him had him hooked and held, and could kill him at any time, and it was his enemy, and it was so good he could have fucking shattered on the relief of it. The kindest thing was that he at least didn’t have to explain any of that to his team; he could just surrender, because he was trapped and lost and alone, and there was nothing to do but surrender. 

The tendril’s end twisted around his tongue in what felt like a filthy mockery of a kiss; when he took it into his mouth, Loki’s fingers tightened in his hair, twitching like he wanted to pull him down— when Akira moaned in encouragement he laughed, low and cruel, and yanked. The feeling was blissful-agonizing, a burst of pain blinding-white across his scalp and a choking weight in his throat as he was dragged roughly back down onto the creature’s cock. 

“Desperate little thing,” Loki said fondly, stroking his face with the thumb of his free hand. Akira whined, jerking against his bonds, and blinked the tears from his eyes. “You’re happier like this, aren’t you, slut? I can feel you squirming, you know.”

Moaning something incoherent, Akira took an unsteady breath through his nose, nodded, and let himself go almost entirely limp, his hips jerking involuntarily every time he had to swallow around Loki’s length. He really, really wanted Loki to touch him, or at least to release his hands so he could touch himself; he was the most turned on he’d probably ever been in his life, and he was somehow still entirely clothed and wholly neglected. 

He rubbed his thighs together, resettling his weight. If he came like this he’d never live it down. 

“It’s not your fault you’re such a mess,” Loki purred, scratching at the nape of his neck in a way that sent shivers shooting down his body. “You were made for this, Joker. Can’t you feel it? How much better you are stuffed full of me? Mm— don’t worry, I’ll give you what you need-”

He dragged Akira up and down his cock almost lazily, using him like some kind of toy, and the second-best thing about it was that his mouth was full, so he couldn’t accidentally admit out loud how much he liked it. He liked being used, liked the bitter-honey taste of him, liked the weight on his tongue and the unnatural way he twisted and moved, liked his voice and the things he was saying-

A red-tipped thumb brushed tears away from his eye. 

“-Don’t worry,” said Loki’s voice— only he’d softened, grown less distorted, quiet and dangerous and so, so close to another, to a voice he almost knew, a voice every nerve in his body wanted to hate and to love and to want. “Once I’m done with you, there’ll be no question of who you belong to, Akira.”

He sobbed, yanking against the knots around his wrists and choking around the heavy weight in his mouth, light burning behind his eyes and every muscle in his core seizing at once wholly without his input. It almost hurt, ecstasy tangling with frustration and confusion and discomfort, and when he went limp in Loki’s grasp there was a long moment of quiet before the next scintillating laugh got its barbs in him.

“Oh, you are cute,” he breathed, his voice back to what it had been. Thick braids wound around his torso, pulling him up and off his knees, freeing his throat as he was lifted gingerly into the Persona’s lap. He nuzzled his sharp, eerie face against Akira’s throat, winding segmented arms around him; with one hand he absently palmed the wet stain in his pants, cackling at how he keened and tried to jerk away. “Hush, pet, we’re not finished yet. But how charming! You really are a treat. Here, lift your hips, I’m sure these are less than comfortable now.”

Even before Akira could gather himself enough to obey, he was yanking his pants and shoes off and tossing them absently away; a moment later he hooked his claw in the fasteners at the top of his vest and dragged it open, leaving his coat and his top on but hiding nothing. Until now there had been a certain comfort to his armor, but like this it was somehow even more humiliating than being naked would have been— he felt like a parody of himself, some kind of Joker-themed sex doll. It didn’t feel bad, necessarily; it felt good, even, which somehow made that embarrassment run even deeper. 

“Loki-”

“Joker,” he drawled, his braids slithering away from Akira’s chest to wind loosely around his thighs instead. They didn’t do anything— not yet, at least— but the threat of them made him shiver. Akira’s breath stuttered. “Don’t pretend you dislike this, sweetheart. You’re not very subtle.”

“I— what- what are you… gonna do to me,” he asked. He arched his neck, offering more of himself to Loki almost on autopilot, and leaned closer; when he felt the warring cool-warm of sharp teeth and a searing tongue against his throat he shuddered, gasped, curled his fingers around one curved horn and gripped it like an anchor. 

Loki teased his skin with the blades of his fangs, little pricks of pain on his neck and his jaw, but didn’t bite down; and then he said, “Well, that’s up to you, I think,” in the most self-satisfied tone he’d ever heard, like a cat playing with the wounded rodent that was the last shreds of his dignity. 

“W-what do you mean?”

Loki trailed long clever fingers along the inside of Akira’s thigh, resting his other hand on his ribs like a sort of gentle cage. His touch burned.  

“I’ll give you whatever you need, Joker,” he purred. “I could take you apart, if I wanted, break that clever little mind of yours— I could make you mine— it wouldn’t even be hard. You’re so beautifully pliable already; all it would take would be a little push.”

As he spoke, every shadow in the room seemed to twist and fracture around them, spiraling in and down in grasping, thorny waves, a thousand whispers tinting the world a vivid, sickly red— like fury, like hunger, like desire, the chittering glow of it creeping under his eyelids even as he dropped them shut and let his head fall back against his chest. The braids around his wrists and his thighs were chains and ribbon and wire, puppet-strings and a hangman’s rope, pulling his body taut and his legs wide, displaying him, like a conquest, a trophy, a toy, and he could feel it, the way the god’s fingers pressed against his skin like he was feeling out how much strain he could take before he shattered. The way his soft, crooning words did the same to his mind, the thin spiderwebbing cracks in his shields growing and spreading—

And then he said, “But where’s the fun in that?” and it all stopped much faster than it had started, and the world was just the world again, still weird and wrong but only as weird and wrong as the Metaverse always was; Akira was left gasping and bound in Loki’s lap, dizzy from his sudden relative lucidity and helplessly turned on by— everything, unfortunately, Loki’s power and his mocking laughter and the way he was holding him, his inhumanity and beneath it the brilliant, heartwrenching little shards of his humanity he was letting Akira see. His obvious, cruel-possessive-sweet affection for Akira, and the bizarre ways it manifested itself. 

“What— what was that,” Akira asked, strangled, and Loki hummed and wound his odd segmented arms around his waist. 

“As I told you,” he said, propping his chin on Akira’s head, “It would be quite simple for me to break you. But I have no interest in that, Joker. What I want-” -he ran his hands down Akira’s thighs, sending jolts of desperate arousal through his body; for an instant a fingertip pressed teasingly against his hole, and he jerked hard against the braids around his wrists, gasping- “-Is for you to do it yourself, of your own volition.”

“Break-” 

“Oh, we could take the easy way,” Loki sighed, performance obvious in every layer of his eerie, fractious voice. “I could let you go, we could have a perfectly boring and pleasant time finishing this up, and then we’d go figure out how to get out of here and never talk about it again, and on Sunday we’ll kill you, and that’ll be that. Or—”

He thumbed idly at Akira’s nipples, chuckling at the way he gasped and flinched away from and then into the touch before moving to twist them loosely, sending jolts of unthinking pleasure up Akira’s spine, making his back arch and his legs shake where they were still held so pathetically up and wide-

“-We can have some real fun,” he purred, shifting to nip at the back of his neck. “You want me to fuck you, don’t you, trickster? You want me to play with you. You want me to wipe all the thoughts from your head—” -Akira bit into the fabric of his coat to muffle a whine; Loki laughed- “-You want me to put you in your place—” -something brushed against him, slick and hot, not pressing in or really even applying pressure; just the touch was enough to make him thrash, though, unable to decide if he wanted to escape or get closer and having neither option- “You want me to stuff you full and use you.”

A sharp hand roughly grabbed his chin, turning his head to the side and up, shoving his tongue back into his mouth. It was hungry and claiming and sweet as honey, and for that Akira didn’t bother to hide his moans— for that he melted, eager and acquiescent, and leaned up to take what he could get. It wasn’t a kiss, not really, and it wasn’t from who he wanted it to be from, not entirely, but it was close enough and meaningful enough that he’d chase it with everything he had anyway. 

(And it was a headrush being so close to those teeth, and his saliva was an aphrodisiac, and Akira apparently had some kind of oral fixation he hadn’t known about until today, but those were all secondary.)

“I’ll do whatever you ask me to, darling,” Loki breathed, once he’d pulled away. Most of his voice was still mocking-teasing-goading, but at the core of it was something hopeful and anxious and young, something familiar, someone Akira—

He turned his head farther, pressing his closed eyes into the creature’s neck, and tried to breathe slowly. Finally:

“Okay,” he whispered. 

“Okay what, dear one,” Loki asked him, trailing nails down his sides, leaving the ghosts of something vibrant and electric in his wake. “I told you— you have to do this.”

Akira yanked on his bindings pointedly; the god laughed, nuzzling at his cheek, and massaged little circles into his inner thighs, working his muscles in a way that made him first tense, then shudder and melt back against his chest. 

“You’re clever, you can work it out,” he said. “Okay— what.”

“Okay, I want that,” Akira hissed, his cheeks burning. “I want you to— to fuck me- you know I- agh.” He pressed his eyes into his upper arm, trying to hide his face; Loki didn’t allow it for more than a moment. “What, do you— do you want me to beg or something?”

A scintillating laugh, pressed right against his ear; smooth fingers playing carelessly with his body; a slick, monstrous, too-long tongue curling around his jaw in a way that should have been disgusting but sent shivers down his spine instead. 

“Of course I do,” Loki told him, whatever chemical it was that made his head spin so much on his tongue leaving tingling paths as it dried on his skin. “I want to humiliate you, Joker. I want you to need me so badly you ruin yourself on it.” 

He pulled him as close as he feasibly could, flush against his impossible, jagged chest, and he purred, curling around him with what felt like too many hands and too much wanting, making him feel small and breakable and helpless and so, so seen— like he needed Akira as much as he wanted Akira to need him, like he hated him and adored him and wanted to open up his strange jagged ribcage and consume him. 

“Y- ahh- you’re an asshole.” Akira shut his eyes, chest heaving. Loki hummed and stroked him slowly, softly, little feather-light taunts that felt sort of like if lightning had the ability to be mocking. For a moment he even brushed slick fingers over his entrance, only to vanish again, snickering, the second Akira rolled his hips into the touch. 

“Am I really? Next you’ll be telling me I have stripes,” he drawled, richly amused. Akira kicked at him ineffectually—the motion only really had the impact of pressing into his touch, which— fuck. 

He knew he was going to lose this one. He wanted to, even. But that didn’t mean he wanted to go down easy; a small but hysterical part of him felt like he’d be letting Akechi down as a rival if he did. So he rode out the waves of desperate not-enough pleasure as best he could, biting his tongue and knocking his head back against Loki’s chest, and whined through his teeth. 

“The worst.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Here, pet, open your mouth a moment,” Loki laughed. Akira obeyed, immediate and unhesitating; the god’s ‘kiss’ this time was slower, deeper, more languid, and it filled first his mouth and then his throat and his mind and his veins with the fuzzy, searing-scintillating sweetness of acid and honey wine. He laughed, muffled and relieved, and swallowed as much as he could, let himself enjoy how it was lighting up every nerve he had to burning and then lingering even after that, tongue buried deep in his throat, pleasure and pressure and want mixing until his eyes flicked back and he was choking desperate little whimpers around him, his body twitching reflexively. 

This time, when he retracted his tongue, Akira tried to follow it on impulse, a pathetic, broken noise dragging itself out of his throat after it— he gasped for air a moment later, then said, “Th-thought— ah- I- I thought, you said— said you weren’t gonna do it for me?”

Loki chuckled, resting his chin on Akira’s head and sliding his hands slowly up his body to toy with his nipples, rolling them between long clawed fingers in a way that would have felt almost careless if he wasn’t so obviously memorizing and making use of every little twitch and noise he pulled from him. Akira arched his back, eyes wide and unseeing, and opened his mouth in what couldn’t even be called a noise, really. 

“I’m not,” Loki said. “Listen to yourself. Still defiant, aren’t you? Even though I can taste how much you need it. I bet I could make you come again like this.”

He whined, biting his lip, and twisted uselessly to escape his touch— it didn’t work, of course, and every spot his hands mapped out and tormented was a spark of fire and every inch his braids were coiled around was a line of distracting, agonizing want, and he was dripping and desperate and so fucking empty, his breath caught somewhere in his chest and arousal coiled tight and violent in his core. “Loki—"

“Joker,” he purred. Akira shuddered. “Does it hurt, precious? Not being used like you need?”

“Nn-!” He thrashed, only really accomplishing a tightening of the braids curled around his thighs as Loki pulled them up higher, spread him farther, and the way he’d phrased it shot around his head like a ricocheting bullet— being used, like he needed, like a thing; instead of how he was now, displayed and open and left pointlessly fucking empty. 

Loki traced his fingers around him, and he had to have been sucking on them or touching himself with them or something, because they were slick and wet with something that left him tingling and twitchy everywhere he touched; he pressed the very tip of one finger in and Akira wailed, coming in jerky, short waves that were over far too fast— it would have lasted longer, he thought, if the horrible fucking creature hadn’t immediately laughed and slipped away again. 

“Oh, but you do fall apart beautifully,” he murmured, curled so close around him and speaking in a voice so soft it felt weirdly, twistingly intimate in a way everything else hadn’t; Akira sobbed and pressed his face into his arm, trembling. “Come now, little thief. You’ve made your point, don’t you think?”

It took a long moment to summon anything that wasn’t a shattered sort of auhh-hh-h sound, but he did eventually manage it. “Loki, please.”

Loki petted his side with one long hand, his purr a mix of soothing and riotous agony against his back. “Good start.”

“Please,” Akira gasped, his body straining, his voice shaky and helpless, “Please just— fuck me, use me, break me, whatever you want I don’t care I need it— please, fuck- please—”

Loki curled down to rub the side of his face against Akira’s with a fondness that he could feel shifting and crackling in the air itself, one hand raising up to curl loosely around his throat while the other finally, finally slipped between his legs. Akira tensed, swallowing around a whine, more desperate pleas tumbling from his lips the longer he had to wait. 

“Good boy,” Loki breathed. The force of his regard was potent and almost physical, a psychic web winding around and through him and filling him with a maddening fire; at the same time he pressed in with fingers so much longer than his own that he couldn’t even really try and comprehend them as the same thing, and Akira broke off into wordless noise. “You barely need me to do this part, you know. The cognitive world is so convenient, and since you and I both know your body was made for me to use— well-”

A low chuckle into his ear, followed by a light nip from sharp teeth. Akira could barely process his words. “But I want to feel you, so. Mm—”

He scraped those fangs down Akira’s throat, burning lines of pain mixing with the blinding pleasure enough to make him wail. Absently, part of him wondered how much of a mess he must have looked like. 

“-If we had more time, I’d fuck you on my tongue, too,” Loki said conversationally, driving three fingers in deep and hard with a filthy sound, hitting a spot deep inside him that stars burst in his vision and his entire body flex and tremble. “But unfortunately, I think your little friends are probably looking for you. And as much as I’d love for them to find you split open and sobbing for me, it probably wouldn’t be ideal.”

Akira’s eyes flew open, but he didn’t actually see much of anything, too preoccupied with the thought of that, the image the god was painting— of the room’s stuck door swinging open, of someone seeing him, catching him like this, wrecked and drooling and begging for a monster’s cock, and, god, what if his friends saw? What if he saw, what if he came in to find Loki using him like a toy, what would he say— what would he do— 

“Oh, you are a little freak, you liked that,” Loki crooned, delighted. “I could feel you. Do you want that, Joker? You want to make a show of it? Of letting me own you?”

“I— ahh- I’m not- I didn’t-” his face burned. Loki dragged his fingers out of him achingly slowly, then shoved them back in hard enough it punched the air out of him, snickering. 

“You’re not what?” He nipped what was probably going to be a mark into his throat. “Not the kind of slut who begs to get used? Not the kind of slut that tightens up and sucks my fingers in when I mention getting caught? You’re not picking your best lies today, precious.”

He shuddered, choking on his breath, and buried his face in whatever part of Loki’s neck he could reach. “Please…”

“As you command, leader,” he purred, slipping his fingers free and setting his hands on Akira’s waist; a moment later there was the strange, alien feeling of something slick and heavy pressing against him, each delicate ridge making stars pop behind his eyes. It was too mobile, twisting and pressing against his inner walls as it stretched deeper and deeper into him, unlike anything he had ever felt or even really imagined— and it was still all and entirely covered in that fucking slick, and every single point of contact burned a thousand times hotter than it should’ve, and he came again, sobbing, before Loki had fully bottomed out. 

“Aw,” he crooned, nuzzling his hair fondly, “Is this too much for you, precious?”

Gasping, Akira tried to shake his head— tried to cling to the braids curled around his hands, to words, to his mind — but it wasn’t like the Persona was really waiting for a reply anyway; instead he tightened his grip on Akira’s sides, claws digging into his ribs and his hips, and he yanked him downwards, rutting up at the same time to fuck the rest of the way into him hard and fast enough any kind of coherence left on his tongue abandoned him entirely in favor of a strangled scream. 

“Too bad,” Loki said, harsh and low, trailing one hand up to toy with his chest while the other held his hip firmly, rutting into him with a rough, steady pace, deeper than anything had ever gone— than he thought it was possible to go. He could feel it moving, every inch of it textured and impossible and alive, remaking him, claiming him, and he desperately didn’t want to stop but, fuck, he was so, so powerless, and that filled him with its own shameful rush of heat. “You asked for this. You’re mine now, and I can use you however I fucking please.”

He rolled his head back, feeling tears slipping down his face, and jerked helplessly within Loki’s hold, less to get out and more because his muscles needed to do something with how much he felt, how completely blank his mind was. “Yes,” he managed, barely; “Y- nnh— ah- yes— yes, I- fuck- y-yours— and, and hhhis, I, oh god-”

Loki’s chirring-crooning purr paused, like he was startled, and then he laughed; this one was less mocking, less cruel, and more fond, more openly, warmly delighted— he nuzzled their faces together for a moment, bracing his palm on Akira’s sternum, and breathed, “Oh, what am I going to do with you?”

Akira didn’t have as much of an answer for that one. He’d used up most of his words on the last bit. But he could—and did— laugh breathlessly and arch against him and moan, and that seemed to satisfy him well enough. 

“He’s going to be furious at me for this, I imagine,” Loki told him, hitting a spot deep inside him that made his eyes roll back in his head. “But I’ll tell him you said that, and I don’t think he’ll be at all upset with you.”

“A— ahh- a-”

“Shh.” He covered Akira’s open mouth loosely with one hand, laughing when he took two fingers between his lips without thinking. “He’s not here, he won’t be able to hear you. And anyway— he’d like it if you called him by his first name, you know. He’ll never admit it, but he thinks about it constantly.”

“Nn- gh-?”

“Mmhm. Now hush, pet. Save it. Let’s both just enjoy this, yes?” 

Before Akira could even begin to formulate a response, Loki’s tongue was plying at his lips again, and as though trained he opened his mouth wide to accept it, deeper and deeper into his throat until it felt like it would go all the way through him— until he felt like he’d been speared, impaled from two directions with blinding, writhing want, concentrated arousal dripping off down his throat and up into him and filling him to bursting and using him, making him whole, making him his and theirs and his, and—

Things got kind of fuzzy after that, for a bit. 

He had no idea how many times he’d come, only that he was drenched in sweat and honeyed saliva and less savory things and that the hand Loki had been off and on using to bring him over one edge after another was worse, or it would have been if he hadn’t occasionally made him clean it off, laughing sharply as he watched Akira try to follow instructions with less and less coordination. He knew he felt like he’d been run over by a particularly enjoyable and particularly possessive train; he knew his neck and shoulders had finally been bared a while back, albeit his coat had still not fully been removed, and his flesh was a mess of huge just-not-bloody bite marks. 

He only really came fully back into awareness of his surroundings when Loki made a sharp sound and sat up straight, swiveling to look at something away from Akira and releasing his hands; first because of the useless and petty burst of jealousy that he would want to pay attention to anything but him, not right then, and then, immediately thereafter, because of the much more intense burst of panic that filled him when he realized he was looking at the door. 

Every bit of the hold Loki had on him tightened, possessive and protective, and he felt the shadows fold cool and gentle around them, a soundless growl resonating against his back. 

“Wh’s,” Akira managed, his voice sounding thoroughly ruined and almost inaudible even without trying to whisper, “What’s— happening.”

“Quiet.” Loki’s hands were curled around him carefully, holding him close like he was something precious, and he was having trouble focusing on anything else. Even so, he heard it— something, muffled and quiet, from beyond the door. 

“…bly nothing,” said a familiar voice. It was a tone he knew, polite and earnest, but so far away and after the last few… hours? Days? Lifetimes? it sounded jarring and wrong. “But I thought I…” it got quieter, like he’d turned away. Akira trembled, clinging to the chain on Loki’s chest, and Loki pulled him closer. It sent shockwaves of burning pleasure through his overtaxed system; he choked down a moan, flexing his hands and trying to concentrate on staying quiet and listening as the voice faded back. “…Any clues at all. I’ll rejoin you all in a moment.”

There was a pause, and then a stilted, plastic laugh. Loki huffed into Akira’s hair. “Aha, perhaps a bit of that as well. But we do have to keep going. I’ll be in touch.”

And then, just out of Akira’s line of sight, the door audibly opened; and then it closed again, a little too hard, and there was a pause, followed by a long, drawn-out hiss of a sigh, irritated and venomous, and the familiar tapping of a boot against the carpeted ground. 

“Loki,” Akechi said, his tone flat and unkind in a way Akira had never heard it before, “I can feel you in here. Drop it and tell me what the fuck is going on.”

Loki sighed. 

“I woke up in here after that bizarre roll on the slot machine that you insisted on doing, master,” he drawled, combing soothing fingers through Akira’s hair. “The door wouldn’t open for me.”

Another frustrated noise from Akechi. “Fine,” he said. “Can you explain why the hell I’ve been— feeling- feeling—”

“Well, you’re going to have to be more specific than that,” Loki said. Akechi actually growled, and it wasn’t entirely dissimilar to Loki’s, and Akira actually could be more turned on, apparently. Neat. He was in hell.  He could hear Akechi pacing on the other side of the sofa they were sitting on, Loki’s body and the low velvet upholstery the only thing keeping him from seeing— 

“You know what I mean,” Akechi hissed. “Why has the only thing I’ve been getting across our bond for the last hour— while you’ve been missing, you fucking reprobate— been- been…”

He made a helpless, strangled noise; Loki burst into a delighted peal of laughter; a moment later Akechi snapped, “That’s not helpful, Robin!” and Loki’s laughter redoubled hard enough that his shaking was actually beginning to make it very, very difficult for Akira to be quiet. 

“I don’t know, I rather enjoy his phrasing,” Loki said, “I am a known proponent of the lusts of the flesh.”

“You’re both terrible and I’m about to be the first person to find out what happens when someone murders their Personas,” he groaned. “Explain yourself.”

“Oh, fine. I had to keep myself entertained somehow, didn’t I?” Loki hitched his knee, bouncing Akira a bit in a way that definitely punched a noise out of him, tiny but fucked-out and vocal. Akechi’s pacing stopped. 

“What was that?”

“Mm?”

“That noise, Loki, what— what are you doing?”

Loki hummed, stroking Akira’s back. “…Keeping myself entertained,” he said. Then, to Akira, amused but full of warning: “This was one of the things you wanted.”

He banged his head against Loki’s chest wordlessly, wondering vaguely if this was a curse insta-kill spell he just hadn’t heard of before. From the other side of the sofa, Akechi’s voice was weak; he said, “…Loki…”

“Yes?”

“Joker is also missing.”

“…Yes.”

“Loki. What the fuck did you do?”

Loki hummed, sounding amused, and rippled his cock inside Akira in a dizzying, liquid sort of motion, seemingly for the singular and explicit purpose of making him keen helplessly and curl in on himself. It worked— Akira sobbed, jerking uselessly, his vision flickering at the edges and his fingers spasming where he was clinging to Loki’s chain— but it was still almost funny. 

“Oh, this and that,” the persona said mildly. “Would you like to explain, thiefling?”

Akira opened his mouth, tried to say something, and landed on a rough, fucked-out kind of uhhnhah noise instead, useless and shattered and maybe half-conscious at best; he heard a strangled shout, and then feet stumbling at half a run, and then a sharp, disbelieving intake of breath. 

And then Akechi was there, staring at him with wild eyes and an open mouth, his face almost as red as his mask. God, he was so cute. He was so cute and so pretty and Akira wanted him so badly he could barely think. 

“Holy shit,” Akechi whispered. He sounded choked, like he almost couldn’t breathe. “What— what did you-”

He swallowed, raising a shaking hand up to remove his mask, and it was only with a clear view of his face that it suddenly hit Akira that there was fear there, real alarm mixed with the confusion and the desire— a realization that crystallized when his voice was too soft a moment later, quiet and unsure and a far cry from the haughty, sugar-coated boy he’d been slowly unraveling or the cruel thing he’d been dancing with today. 

“Joker?” he breathed. Then, small, “…Akira?”

Akira took a deep breath, trying to calm some of the uncontrollable tremors wracking his body, and let go with one hand to hold it out as steadily as he could to him, dragging up a smile with what felt like the last of the energy he had. 

“Hh,” he said, which was not a great start; he shook his spinning head, swallowed, and tried again. “Hah- Ah— nh- Ake- Goro—”

Goro caught his hand before it succumbed to gravity, and he was distantly fascinated by the way the white of his glove contrasted Akira’s red. He wondered which of them was shaking harder. It was probably Akira, by exhaustion alone, but he was faintly impressed by how Goro was giving him a run for his money. 

“Akira,” he said again, tangling their fingers together. He wasn’t even looking at Loki anymore; his eyes were dark and unreadable, fixed on Akira’s face. “Akira. Are you alright?”

It was easy enough to nod, letting out a huff of a laugh that was also half a moan. “Y-yeah.”

“How did— what did he- why did you let him do this to you,” he asked. Akira decided it wasn’t worth it to mention that he had been powerless the whole time; instead, he told the better, easier truth. 

“W- ahh-! Wanted it,” he said, half shrugging. “He, nn, he offered. Hhhe’s. You.”

He dropped his head, panting, and clutched Goro’s hand; he didn’t know how much more he actually had in him to say; he didn’t know how much more consciousness he had in him. Goro was staring at him like he had said something completely impossible, like he had just offered him the moon on a string. 

“What?”

“I can take over from here,” Loki offered, resettling Akira’s weight in his lap in a way that made him whine and twitch uselessly. “Since our little treasure here isn’t really up for chatting at this point. If you’d like to play with him, by the way, I’m sure he’d want it.”

Goro hissed. “Don’t talk for him, you-”

He cut off when Akira squeezed his hand and grinned weakly, clicking his jaw shut, his blush darkening and spreading. 

“…Be that as it may,” he said instead. “Finish your fucking sentence, Loki.”

Loki snickered, the sound rattling and skittering, and said, “I was right, idiot. He’s wanted you for ages. He figured out what I was, I offered, he accepted, he begged me for it— and before you get all snitty, no, I didn’t do anything serious to his mind— and he told me- well—” 

Another, sweeter laugh. Loki combed through Akira’s sweaty hair gingerly with the long red-tipped fingers of one hand, purring at him. “Why don’t you take the last point, mm? Go on, tell him what you are, pet.”

Ah. Well, that was easier. 

“Yours,” he gasped, spreading his bound thighs on reflex, pulling weakly at Goro’s hand to try and drag him closer. “Yours, yours, ‘m— I’m- Crow, ‘Kechi, I— fuck, god- Goro, I’m yours, please-”

“Oh,” Goro said softly. “Oh, I-”

And then he shook his head, stepped forward, balled his free hand in the hanging lapel of Joker’s coat, and kissed him so deeply and so hungrily his vision went white. He was small, comparatively, weak and human, and he tasted like nothing, really, except for skin and chapstick and a faint hint of toothpaste and the coffee Akira had foisted upon him before they’d left the hideout, and he wasn’t a god and he was only a little bit magic and it was better, somehow, burning and perfect and everything he wanted, and Akira was his, and

he

Woke up. 

Everything ached. He was disoriented, and confused, and lying on a now-familiar low table, his coat draped over his body like a blanket; when he sat up, groaning, he heard a soft curse and a clattering sound from a few feet away. 

“You’re up,” Goro Akechi’s voice said, single-layered and from just one place. He sounded nervous, careful, a little harsh and entirely mortal. He sounded beautiful. Akira rubbed at his face, swallowing down the lingering taste of bitter honey, for a moment before glancing over at him, and— oh. Huh. 

That… wasn’t the outfit he was used to. Goro was dressed in black and blue, a tight striped bodysuit hugging his curves and flaring out into creeping shadows at his wrists and ankles; he had on clawed gauntlets, too, a fact Akira took in, promptly lost his mind silently about, and filed away for later, and… had a helmet in his hands, held carefully like he’d just picked it up. 

It was black; it would have covered his whole head if he’d been wearing it; and Akira could understand, looking at it, why he had wanted to be named for a corvid. 

Dork. 

He was definitely a murderer. Akira was definitely in love with him. It was probably fine. 

“…Cool belts,” he rasped. Goro pursed his lips. 

“You’re an idiot.”

Akira laughed weakly, stretching. “Yeah, maybe. You have two personas.”

“Yeah.” Goro sighed, slumped into one of the plush chairs, and dropped his head into his hands. “And you fucked one of them.”

“Well, more accurately, I’d say one of them fucked me,” Akira said, trying not to sound embarrassed about it and failing spectacularly when his voice cracked about two-thirds of the way through. Goro snorted. “Uh. I— are we- are you… um…”

Goro squinted at him through his distractingly-sharp fingers. “If you’re about to ask me if I’m mad at you, I will become mad at you.”

“Okay.” He didn’t. He breathed, instead, slow and careful, and gingerly set his feet on the floor, and winced at how it felt when his legs moved, all of his everything still oversensitive and sticky. After a pause: “You kissed me.” 

“You asked the manifestation of my soul to fuck you,” Goro said, sounding defensive, and Akira snickered. 

“I wasn’t complaining,” he laughed, running a hand through his hair. “Just making sure that part wasn’t some kind of…really good dream.”

Goro paused, red blooming back into his cheeks, and huffed a fragile little smile. 

“No, that, ah…that was me,” he said. He set his helmet down next to him and stood up, walking slowly to Akira’s side. At the first touch of claws to his chin he dutifully tipped his head up, obedient, immediate, eager and unhesitating; Goro looked briefly thrown, but mostly pleased. “Did you mean it? What you said.”

Akira blinked. “I…said a lot of things.”

“Not while I was here,” he pointed out, which was probably true. At Akira’s sheepish laugh, he shifted to hold his chin more gingerly, flicked his eyes away, and said, “No, I, ah— you said… mm. You said you liked him because he… was me.”

“Yeah, I did.”

Goro rested his palm on his cheek, and Akira’s hand came up to curl around it; he couldn’t feel the heat of his skin, not through leather and metal, but the shape of him was enough. Goro shivered. 

“And… you…” He took a deep breath, swallowed, and let it out again. “You said…Akira—”

He looked like he was at war with himself, like he couldn’t quite drag the words from his lips— he looked frightened and heartbroken and hopeful and beautiful, and Akira had never wanted anything as much as he wanted him. The bitter taste of mistletoe lingered, mixing strangely with the honey on his tongue.

Loki was incredible, powerful, godlike and eldritch and concentrated-intense in a way that felt like a hit into a vein, but the boy in front of him was a totality; he was all of an everything, messy and beautiful and awful and perfect and his. 

Akira liked Loki; he’d happily do all of this again, if given the chance. But, god, Goro. 

“I said I was yours,” Akira murmured. He tipped his face gently into the sharp grace of Goro’s hand, pressing a kiss to the heel of his palm, and reveled in the way it made him shiver. “I was. I am. Whatever happens, whatever you’ve done, Goro, I am.”

“That’s— extraordinarily foolish.” His breath sounded unsteady. Akira smiled. 

“You wouldn’t like me if I only made careful decisions,” he pointed out. “Can I kiss you?”

He didn’t bother to answer him with words. 

At least Akira didn’t pass out this time. He leaned up instead, arching into Goro’s hands and pulling him down, laughing into his mouth when they fumbled and clattered their teeth together— it was clumsy, imperfect, absolutely perfect for it, and he’d do anything to keep it, to keep him, to be kept. He would do terrible things to be held in the hands that were clutching him. 

He didn’t have to, not pressingly at least; Goro leaned down and swept him up in arms that were startlingly strong, toppling back into his chair with Akira in his lap, not pulling away even when Akira squeaked in surprise; when he finally did he sighed, resting their foreheads together and hooking his arms around his waist. 

“Your dumbshit fucking friends will probably be back soon,” he mumbled. Akira hummed, kissing his jaw. “You should clean up. I’ll need to explain how I found you when Oracle’s scans didn’t, we don’t need to add on an explanation of why you’re, uh…”

He trailed off, leaving Akira to fill in the blanks with something roughly to the tune of half naked and covered in cum and bite marks. Akira huffed into his shoulder. 

“Why did they let you split off on your own anyway?” he asked, not getting up to look for his pants even if maybe he should have. “We don’t split up unless we have to. It’s not safe.”

“Well, we were already in groups looking for you,” Goro sighed. “And apparently I looked… stressed… so when I offered to search a wing that Oracle’s scans hadn’t even picked up any shadows in I think they assumed I needed to cool off.”

“Stressed?”

“Something about the one tolerable person in the entire metaverse vanishing at the same time as half of my soul did made it a little challenging to keep up my usual level of decorum,” he sighed. “Not to mention the only thing said little freak was sending me through what bond remained was— was just— waves of inexplicable lust. I can’t imagine I was good company.”

Akira resisted the urge to laugh. “Aw, you tolerate me?”

“I hate you. And all of your little friends.”

“You want to fuck me so bad,” Akira said, stretching out in his lap. Goro hissed. 

“Fucking apparently so! Hell, and now Robin is- ugh-!”

He dropped his face into Akira’s hair, groaning. It was an almost identical motion to how Loki had done it; it was sweeter, warmer, smaller. His laugh was smaller, too, when he broke out into snickers to join Akira’s helpless wheezing— but he could hear the shapes of it where they still clung to his mind; he could still feel claws on his skin and fire in his throat and a deep unnameable thing everywhere his blood touched telling him not to let go.