deercountry | when the hand you wanna hold is a weapon (closed)

Entry tags:

when the hand you wanna hold is a weapon (closed)

Who: Bad Thief

stealhearted & Loving Kouhai

virtuosital.
What: Discussing bad life decisions and the healing power of coffee.
When: End of the month, ish.
Where: Akechi's place that Akira squatted in two months ago and never left.

Content Warnings: Minor wounds (scratching/skin), minor body horror, discussions of past injuries.

[ Pop quiz. Akira is:

a) recovering from the ramifications of making out with his friend-turned-rival-turned-enemy-turned-ally-turned-???
b) morosely making coffee while alone in said friend-turned-rival-turned-enemy-turned-ally-turned-???'s house while said friend-turned-rival-turned-enemy-turned-ally-turned-??? studiously avoids him despite it being literally his house
c) scratching the everloving shit out of his arms and revealing some really weird black and red skin underneath, leading to him contemplating the merits of a coffee exfoliant scrub
or,
d) all of the above?

That's right! It's all of the above, and whether you guessed the correct answer or not doesn't matter because Sumire's internal Senpai Alarm is undoubtedly going off. When approached, Akira will either answer the door or be found in the kitchen with a bowl of coffee grounds in one hand, a container of some sort of petroleum jelly-like substance in the other, and bandages on his forearms. He looks a little like a deer caught doing something that deer should not be doing, like making out with enemy deer, or holding something that can be used as lubricant while thinking about making out with enemy deer.

The metaphor escapes him. ]

... hey. Do you know how to make lotion?

[ For his arms. ]

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[Sumire's Senpai Alarm was most assuredly going off-- for both of them, really. She just Knew something was amiss, and had spent just enough time as a Phantom Thief to know that when something was wrong with either of them, knocking on the door was probably not going to get it answered. Sure, Akira would have, but she figures he'll be proud of her for picking the lock as she strides cautiously into the kitchen.]

[She'll worry about Akechi's thoughts on her breaking and entering later.]

[When met with... all of the above, she has a solid moment of second-guessing herself for her breaking and entering, and wonders if turning herself into the police would be any worse than determining exactly why a bandaged Akira was combining coffee grounds and Vaseline. Her expression reflects this.]

...Um. Not like how you're doing, for one. Are you all right?

I think so? [ Akira is not actually entirely sure how he is for a number of reasons that are all playing into each other. Most of them, being Emotional (tm), are things that he is simply doing his very best to ignore in favor of the much more pressing physical emergency of his skin sloughing off cheerfully. ]

I remembered Ann saying that you could use coffee grounds for an exfoliant for dry skin. [ Which... kind of explains at least part of the situation. He sets the coffee grounds and the vaseline down on the counter, and then lets his hands go into his pockets, instead. ]

My skin is dry. [ As is his humor, apparently. ]

[His uncertainty only pulls her concerned expression a little tighter.]

You can, [She addresses the coffee grounds as exfoliant instead of his dubious state of being all right, moving to stand next to him.] Like a scrub, on wet skin. Do you have a strainer? [She's going to coffee-exfoliate with senpai now, she figures.]

[Of course, the dry statement makes her look at his arms a little closer, and she frowns.] Bandages aren't going to help much, they'll just wick further moisture out of your skin.

...I have coffee filters? Like, metal ones. [ Because this place was a weird mishmash of anachronisms, and seemed to veer towards eco-friendly reusable concepts instead of disposable ones. Which would be great if they weren't in a place where sometimes people went insane, shed their skin, and then got flayed alive by cultists.

Like, as far as climate change goes, Akira would not be sad about it happening to this place. ]

I, uh... was mostly trying to keep the skin on. It looks really weird. [ He offers an arm out, but doesn't move to undo the bandages himself. Underneath them is just bright red skin -- not the red of normal inflamed skin, but a very distinctive red that starts to bleed into black near his hands. ]

[She isn't surprised by this, somehow, but she frowns slightly at him anyway. Of course he has coffee filters.] All right, next question-- are any of those clean, currently?

[She reaches for his arm and pauses, looking from him to it a few times before deciding his offering it means she's fine to touch it and carefully unraveling the bandages to reveal the red skin beneath. She frowns, not reaching out to touch it but holding her fingers near it.] ...does it hurt? It doesn't... quite look raw, but... [Her hand skims downward without touching him, toward where the skin blackens.] It... looks familiar, don't you think? [She supposes she spent a bit more time looking at his Persona than he may have looked at him himself.]

Yeah, some of them are clean. [ Both Akechi and Akira are relatively tidy, so there's never a particularly dire build up of dishes even when Akira is trying not to get his wrists wet and risk more skin peeling off. ]

It mostly itches. I've heard a lot of people had really weird things underneath their skin, and I don't really want to shed my skin and find out there's a top hat attached to my head forever, or something.

[ Or the flames. That sounds... inconvenient. As nice as Arsene is in the metaverse, Akira thinks it's a little impractical of a getup for reality. ]

[Okay he does recognize that his arms look like Arsene, good. She chuckles at the notion of having a top hat forever, reaching over his head to swat at the air that she can't quite reach.] No? I think you'd look pretty dashing. If it itches, try patting it gently in the meantime to avoid scratching and irritating the skin, and we'll see about getting you some lotion. Exfoliating if you're trying to not shed skin is probably not a great idea.

I'd have even worse hair if I had a hat I couldn't remove. [ Akira wraps his arms back up, only a little exasperated by the entire thing. He supposes that at least he is not a girl? He could have had that experience, which would have been ... weird. ]

I thought maybe it would get off the dead skin and then... refresh... the stuff underneath.

I don't really know much about skin care.

[She smiles at him, patting the bandages gently.] Your hair is just fine, it's charismatic.

That..., if you're trying to not peel all the skin off to underneath, is probably not the greatest idea. I'll help you, but-- I'm surprised you didn't ask Akechi-san, he has great skin, I'm sure he knows a lot about skincare.

I think he's avoiding me. [ Akira doesn't sound hurt by it, just sort of -- tiredly exasperated, in the same tone of voice you'd use to scold a particularly naughty cat when it knocks something off your bookshelf for the eighth time. ]

He'd probably just tell me to go ahead and shed all my skin and maybe I'd find some rational thought underneath it, or something. [ But, hey, at least Akira doesn't really need to worry about keeping the coffee grounds, so -- into the normal container they go, to be used later on for gardening and Akira's attempts at thwarting the deer when they steal his laundry. ]

[Akechi isn't the most social of guys, and Sumire knows that, but-- Akira may not sound hurt, but his tone sure is something. She can't quite place it, so she asks.] While that certainly does sound like something he would say-- did something happen? I assumed you two were getting along, since... [She looks past him and around to the subtle, yet obviously-Akira touches to the space.] Well, you live here with him, don't you?

He gave up on kicking me out. [ Which is to say that Akira just sort of started squatting and then never left, and after a few cursory attempts to evict him, Akechi just ate the loss and decided it would be more offensive to his pride to just let Akira live there.

Akira's pretty sure it's because of the coffee. ]

Um... We might have had a... heated conversation? [ There is a lot he isn't saying there, so Akira does what he's best at and drifts over to the kitchen counter and starts taking stock of the ingredients. ]

[It's less what he says and more the way he walks away, busying himself. Truth be told, she doesn't know him extremely well-- they've stretched together, she's imparted gymnastics tricks and he's imparted general wisdom, they fought in a weird parallel universe with demons against other demons, but at the end of the day, she didn't know a hugely great deal about Akira Kurusu as a person.]

[But she knew enough that his busying himself was telling.]

[She folded her arms neatly around one another, holding her own elbows.] So, you fought?

... kiiiind of? [ Akira hedges, gently. He isn't quite sure he should confess that he made out with Akechi when they both still tasted like (admittedly nice) champagne. Akechi might kill him, for one, and Akira is also pretty sure Sumire likes him in ways that go beyond 'dude that helps me with gymnastics and also saving reality', but --

Also he did make out with Akechi and it's a very pressing, important memory that he kind of wants to scream from a tower. God help them if they ever have sex. ]

He kind of turns most things into a fight.

[She tilts her head slightly. The aspect of them having made out after champagne might be stranger for her than the idea as a whole, but-- she can sort of tell that he has something he'd like to say, she just can't quite figure out how to get him to say it.]

Mmn, I did call him ruthless. What did he turn into a fight, this time?

He's, uh... really aggressive about the idea that people like him. [ To say the very least. Akechi and Akira haven't come to blows about it, but it's kind of a near thing, honestly. And mostly because Akechi would probably count "actual physical fight" as too over the top. It'd be a loss in his weird, competitive little mind.

Akira's also kinda sure that any punching would give way to more kissing, but maybe that's wishful thinking. ]

Like, really, really aggressive.

[She tilts her head again, a little farther to the side to the point that she sort of looks like a little bird. She digests the statement, rolls it around in her head a moment, and tries to pull apart the layers of meaning that come from the occasional croissants of words Akira is forthcoming with.]

...which probably means you like him in a way that is "really, really aggressive", too? [She's careful in how she asks it.]

I'm not really an aggressive kind of guy. [ He offers this a little cautiously, like he's not entirely sure it's true, since he isn't that aggressive but also Sumire has seen him absolutely whale on a shadow before, so... ]

...but I do really like him. [ He's awkward about it, but his hands still for a minute as he says it, because it's a heavy thing that he never quite knows what to do with -- his feelings for someone who was dead; who isn't dead anymore. His feelings that he can't get Akechi to believe in. ]

[She frowns a little, bringing a hand to her mouth and tapping a knuckle against her lips.] Mmn..., I don't know that I would call you aggressive in a traditional sense. But you do... like people aggressively. Or at least invest in them quite sincerely in a way that would read as aggressive to someone like Akechi-san.

[She smiles in a way that falters for a moment-- it's sort of like she trips over the emotion, doesn't make eye contact, and then smiles wider and looks up.] And is that what you two fought about? That you like him.

...yeah. [ He can tell, of course. He's intuitive enough that he can see her falter -- but he also knows when you should talk about something and when you shouldn't, and there's a level of faking it until you make it that's always required with emotions. So Akira doesn't bring it up. ]

I'm definitely invested in him. And he's... not good at letting people be invested in him.

[It's-- hard, but not impossible. Akira had let her down very gently, when he did, and at the end of the day she valued him too much as a friend and mentor to want him to herself more than she wanted his happiness. The notion of his happiness being... Akechi Goro was a separate sort of hard, but less in jealousy and more in concern. Akechi... was not going to go quietly, for something like this.]

That might be an understatement, senpai.

Yeah. He's... [ Akira is well aware that he is clinically insane for being romantically interested in Akechi Goro, the least eligible bachelor in Japan, especially when Akira has an entire variety of friends he could probably date instead.

But he can't handle the idea that he might date someone and be thinking about Akechi and what could have been the entire time, so he has to actually get Akechi to reject him full out -- which Akechi won't. Hasn't. Has tried, kinda. Sorta. ]

He thinks it's just that I have a martyr complex. But I really like him. He's been alive here, and even if he isn't alive back home and I have to go there without him, I still --

We're here now.

[Sumire isn't an overly romantic person, but she can feel Akira's pining with the way he talks. He so rarely talks much, and even now it isn't very many words, but she feels the pull in his stomach about the shaggy-haired detective. Never mind that her philosophy on confessing had gone very much the same-- they'd been there, even if they weren't an us. Her smile is a little stronger, then, and she reaches out her hands, palm-upward.]

He's wrong, but he would rather see something that doesn't include him than something that does, I think, so he's forcing his own narrative. He's very silly for it. Would... you let me help you?

Um. [ Akira has no idea how to let people help him, actually. How does? That? Work? Does he just sit back and let Sumire fistfight Akechi in the pit? Does he fistfight Akechi and then tag out when Akechi is already down? ]

...how? [ Be kind to him, Sumire, he looks so genuinely confused at the idea of someone else helping him with anything-- ]

... like with the lotion?

[Oh Akira, you sweet summer idiot. While she will absolutely fistfight Akechi in the pit whether it's for Akira or otherwise, she can't help but laugh quietly at his absolute confusion, reaching out to take his hands.]

That, too, but I mean with Akechi-san, mostly. You're both pretty terrible at talking, maybe having someone you can both explain yourselves to individually can help you navigate.

Oh. Um. Okay. [ Akira's a little awkward about it. Between the fact that he's usually the one to help other people, and the fact that he's directly involving Sumire in his torrid love life, it feels... weird?

But he also knows he feels better when he helps people, and he likes helping people quite a bit, even if sometimes it's inconvenient or a little emotionally draining. Especially if it's someone he cares about.

He also knows that he is notoriously bad at accepting help. ]

He'll probably be kind of an asshole about it, though.

[It's a little strange for her to be involved in what she didn't realize was a torrid love life for Akira, if she's honest. It does shed light on things she hadn't previously considered (like Akira's sexuality, for one) and makes her feel a bit less like he turned her down because she honestly wasn't the most mature of sheltered teenage girls.]

[It also gives her an entirely new objective, which is to get him and Akechi together, with the added bonus of getting to know them both a little better, herself. She smiles, faintly to herself at first and then broader, up at Akira.] I did call him a ruthless sort of person without prompting once, I think I know what I'm getting into.

I know you can handle yourself, I just know he can be a jerk. [ And when Akechi feels the slightest bit threatened he'll lash out specifically at things he knows are weak points -- but that's something Sumire can deal with if she's prepared for it.

It doesn't stop Akira from wanting to try and sidestep it all. Like, if Akechi is mean, he should be mean to Akira about it.

Akira's going to get a weird complex, he's pretty sure. ]

But thanks.

[She's an athlete, and a young female one at that, and never mind that she's pretty solidly aware that Akechi's lashing out is more in an effort to push people away from him more than it is specifically to harm them. She will meet him in the pit and probably win, in all honesty. She folds her arms over her chest and pops her hip to one side, smiling.]

See again, "ruthless sort of person". Though I guess it's harder to think it's funny or like something out of a cheesy movie when he isn't covered in stripes.

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when the hand you wanna hold is a weapon (closed)

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