Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/10717404. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Rape/Non-Con, Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Persona_5 Relationship: Persona_5_Protagonist/Sakamoto_Ryuji Character: Sakamoto_Ryuji, Persona_5_Protagonist Additional Tags: Descriptions_of_past_rape, PTSD, homophobic_slur, Past_non-consensual teacher/student_sex, Insufficient_consent, Oral_Sex Stats: Published: 2017-04-24 Words: 1534 ****** Thank you and sorry ****** by racie Summary Akira tilts his chin up and presses their lips together, softly, and without a hint of desire for Ryuji's to part. Managing after pain is never easy, but Akira helps. Akira helps so damn much. Ryuji doesn't know what he'd do without him. Notes Please mind the tags! Not many people realise that Ryuji makes himself small. He talks loud — not to mention a lot — so they assume he's playing the big guy. The tough dude. The rebel living on the edge. Most people miss his hunched shoulders and how easily he startles when someone gets the jump on him, how he spends his time looking at the ground as soon as he's called out for being wrong. And he's always wrong. Akira tilts his chin up and presses their lips together, softly, and without a hint of desire for Ryuji's to part. Ryuji's heart hammers like an alarm, and he pulls away, rubbing his hand through the back of his hair and pivoting so he can see the angle of the door to his room. It's open. His heartbeat slows. "Still don't really get why you want to kiss me," he says, and laughs that tight, terrified laugh. Akira tests his tongue on his bottom lip, and Ryuji watches with longing. If Akira would just take the kiss — or more, god he wants him to take more — they could get over this, but Akira won't. Akira isn't— "You're beautiful," Akira says. Ryuji's ears flush, and he's sure the sprinkling of freckles that show up in summer are standing out against the rest of his skin, turned bright red. "C'mon, you can't tell me that." Not Akira, with his dark eyes and creamy skin and hair that curls up from the nape of his neck. Ryuji is glad they don't share a class, he's sure that if they did he'd spend the whole time watching Akira. "Can I kiss you again?" Akira is asking. If Ryuji said no, he'd stop. And that would be the end of it. Ryuji nods. He doesn't want this to be the end. None of the team have asked what happened with him and Kamoshida. He's pretty sure they've guessed. Or at least Akira has, and Ann if she isn't purposefully ignoring it (he wouldn't blame her.) They all know about his leg — the whole school knows about that. He couldn't hide a cast or keep himself unobtrusive as he fumbled to get himself and his crutches through doorways, while the rumours flew around, from people who never considered that maybe none of it was the truth. He probably did deserve it. Akira breaks off his lips. "Are you—" "I'm fine," he says over Akira's concern. "Just got a lot to think about." He grins, gives Akira a swift peck, so he won't think it's about him though, god, it could never be about Akira. The guy's perfect. "Did you do this a lot, before?" Before your life was ruined. Ryuji is always quick to mention that Akira got fucked over the most of the lot of them. And he's pretty sure that's true. What happened with Kamoshida didn't leave him with a criminal record. Akira's look goes soft, amused. "Kissing boys?" Ryuji pulls a face. "Kissing anyone, dude." He shrugs. "You're pretty good at it." Akira puts up with him freaking out every time he realises he's relaxed, so he must know it's just Ryuji, and it's not anything he did. Ryuji figures he's not allowed to relax, otherwise he'll poison Akira with what happened before. He knows it doesn't work like that, but it feels like if he's giving, he’d hand the festering part of himself over, and he couldn't cope with that. Akira studies him, and Ryuji kicks the toe of his bad leg against the floorboards in Akira's room. He's thankful Morgana makes himself scarce for this. "You can ask for what you want, if you want to," Akira says in that way of his that's circular but still manages to strike home. He laughs. Still that shitty nervous sound that makes him shrivel up inside. "Doesn't mean you'll do it," he points out. He's pretty sure they both know he's stalling. "Doesn't mean I won't," Akira replies, ever reasonable. To look at him now you'd never think he had it in him to steal the hearts of monsters. Ryuji rubs his hands over his face, taps his foot so hard his leg aches where the break healed. He's fucked up. "Can you just fuck me? Even if I say no or—" he swallows, but plows on, "—or ask you to stop?" He hadn't bothered asking Kamoshida. Hadn't seen the point. Kamoshida had been disgusted that he'd just... stopped once he was inside him. He'd called him a fag, told him he must like it. He's got a boyfriend now, so maybe he did. Akira looks like he's about to be kind again, so Ryuji interrupts, "Please?" He can beg Akira. He figures that's fine. Akira knows what it's like to sink to the bottom. Akira looks at him, like he sees right to his putrid centre, corrupted from Kamoshida filling him. He's asking this time. It's different. It's okay. Ryuji taps his toe to the floorboards. He kicks his heel. "Not right now," Akira says, turning the words over before each of them pass his lips, like he's thinking about what each of them could do to Ryuji. "But I could jerk you off, if you like?" "Yeah," Ryuji says, before he can think. "Yeah, okay. I mean, if you want to." The last word is an embarrassing squeak, but Akira doesn't give him the chance to dwell on it. He kisses him on the corner of his mouth. The perfect kiss, as far as Ryuji is concerned: he gives nothing, Akira still gets to kiss. Akira positions him with nudges like questions, until he's sitting on the bed with his jeans on the other side of the room. He squeezes his eyes shut. Just because he's away from it doesn't mean the door closed. The door is open. Akira doesn't speak, but he keeps moving forward, regardless of how tense Ryuji is. He's embarrassed for himself as he grips the covers of Akira's bed. Akira's fingertips rest on the waistband of his boxers. "Is this—" "Keep going." He shouldn't be ordering Akira around. Really, he should be asking if Akira is okay touching someone like him. Akira nods, and Ryuji somehow makes his body cooperate with him until his boxers are around his thighs and his dick is exposed to the air. He looks as the ceiling, unable to make himself look at his own junk. He's not remotely hard. His dick has paid attention to even some of the demons they've faced down, but it's not rising for his boyfriend. He's pretty shit at being a teenage boy. He thinks he might hear Akira say, "Cute," before he slips his long fingers under it and raises it like it's a weird sea creature in need of a delicate touch. Ryuji feels Akira press his lips to his slit. He's kissing his dick. "You're embarrassing," he mumbles, not looking at Akira and gripping the sheets tighter. His knuckles must be white about now. Akira makes a noise that says I know and Ryuji feels warm envelope the head of his cock, with a muscle rolling his foreskin down underneath. "H-hey, I thought you were giving me a handjob!" Akira isn't listening, only guiding Ryuji's dick further into his mouth. "Oh, come on, this isn't—" His breath is catching, and he's looking now, can see Akira's tossled hair, always perfect, between his legs. He can't breathe. "N-not funny..." he says, and squirms, trying to get his dick out of Akira's mouth without moving away. Akira reaches up to his hip — the tips of his fingers are cold — and he holds him in place. With no pressure at all, it's as effective as a vice. "Please," he tries again. His dick doesn't feel like it's a part of him, and as Akira hollows his cheeks he wonders about cutting it off. Or maybe just his balls, he's heard that if those go getting an erection is harder. He doesn't want to be hard inside Akira's mouth. But he is hard, and Akira steadily works him towards climax, his pace smooth like the jazz records he's played for Ryuji. "Please..." he whispers, as, after so long listening to his best friend smack and slurp over his dick, and after so many moments of pretending this isn't happening, he comes. He shakes from head to toe. It's not until much later that he remembers Akira pulling off at the last moment so he could get Ryuji's cum on his glasses, or the way he asked him if that was what he wanted, fear in his eyes, like he didn't know that Ryuji could never hate him. He does remember Akira easing his boxers back under him after wiping spit and cum off his skin, and stroking his thumb over Ryuji's hand until the shakes stilled and his eyes could focus. Once he could think again, he'd eased off the bed and put on a wrestling DVD, then sat back on the bed to lace his fingers with Akira's, not knowing how to say thank you and sorry in a way that would make anything better, but he thinks Akira, of all people, might get it. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!