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Like every February 2nd, Akira woke up where he desperately didn’t want to be - yet desperately wanted to be.
In bed with Goro Akechi, who was smiling at him with that cute sleepy bed face that never got old. Hair messily hanging into his face in a way Akira had never seen outside of this bedroom, his red eyes still dulled from the sleepiness.
“Morning,” Akira muttered, not bothering to stifle his yawn. They were beyond caring about politeness, after all. It was the third year of their marriage. Akira knew.
Akira knew the trusting expression in those familiar eyes, he knew the lips that leaned over to kiss him tenderly but shortly, because there was no need to deepen the kiss quite yet, he knew the way his husband sat up and stretched his arms, always grinning at him when he decided to stay lying a little longer.
It was a day like any other for Goro Akechi.
Akira knew that.
Akira also knew that once he went to sleep that night, he’d wake up back in his reality, alone in a cold bed, no ring on his finger, no dead man lying beside him, just a snoring cat unaware of what day of his life he had just missed.
“Coffee?” Goro asked and though Akira only got to be in this marriage once a year, he understood this as an efficient tactic to get him out of bed.
And he complied, went through the motions, swung his feet out of bed and onto the soft carpet to walk to the kitchen he by now knew very well and when he prepared the coffee, his hands shook much less violently than the last few years.
He’d sort of expected it this time.
But he still wasn’t sure if that made it easier or not.
“Here you go, honey,” he told his husband when he came in behind him. He held out the cup but Goro took it, set it down on the counter and instead wrapped his arms around Akira, holding him against his chest from behind.
For a few tender moments, they just stood there. Goro Akechi, living through a normal day in his marriage and his husband, close to tears he was glad he could hide by standing with his back to him.
“You’re acting off today, what’s wrong?” Goro asked quietly, lips nibbling affectionately at Akira’s ear.
“Nothing,” he quickly reassured him and Goro huffed.
“Fine, don’t tell me then.”
Akira blinked in surprise as the arms around his waist left him, the warm, tempting embrace suddenly gone, to be replaced with the disgruntled look of one Goro Akechi, leaning against the counter with a bit of distance between him, taking a sip of his coffee with scrutiny.
Akira felt a surge of amusement and surprise at the view, so familiar, so much like the Goro Akechi he had known, the one who’d scolded him for his sentimentality and aggressively hidden away his own, that he spoke without thinking, old instincts taking over.
“What, you’re mad at me now?”
“Of course I’m mad at you,” Goro grumbled, but Akira noticed that he still drank his coffee - so he figured he hadn’t ruined this fake marriage quite yet. “You keep lying to me.”
“I’m not lying to you,” Akira lied.
“Please, who do you take me for? Have you forgotten I used to be a detective or do you actually think so little of my skills? Every year, on this exact day, you act like a deer in headlights. I’ve let you lie your way out of it again and again, but I’m tired of it. You think I don’t know?”
Akira stood very still, frozen in place. He’d given it his all to act natural, every single time it happened. The first time, admittedly, he’d barely managed to keep it together, it had been such a shock, but he thought, by now, he’d had quite a good grip on himself.
“I- I didn’t- I mean I don’t-”
“You didn’t what, Akira? You didn’t think I knew what day it was? Didn’t think I cared? I was there too, you know?”
You were there once , Akira thought numbly. You were there once and you came out of it in your dream marriage. I am there every year and I keep coming out of it alone, again and again, with no one.
With his back against the wall, there was only one thing left for him to do.
Goro Akechi was dead.
Akira knew .
Because Akira decided it so, every year again.
“We’ve been married for years,” Goro kept going, his voice going quiet now. “How do you still trust me so little?”
Not fair. This wasn’t fair.
“That’s not true,” he said.
“Then what is it? I’m your husband. Why won’t you talk to me? Do you think I can’t handle it? Do you think I can’t help you? Don’t you want me to help you? Don’t you respect me?”
The bitter laugh had slipped from Akira before he could stop himself. A hollow, twisted sound, even in his own ears.
Goro immediately froze, his expression falling with something close to fear on his face.
“You don’t,” he finally said, growing pale. “I-”
But something inside of Akira broke at his words.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he yelled and watched with overwhelming satisfaction, as Goro flinched back against the counter, the hands he used to hold himself upright trembling beneath his weight. “To tell me I wouldn’t respect you? Isn’t that what this is all about? The only choice I had? To put aside all my wishes and respect yours? And now you want to tell me that I can talk to you, that I don’t get to be upset ? Are you serious right now?”
Goro just stared at him, not moving, apart from the tremble of his lower lip. For a moment, there was nothing to hear but heated silence and the slow trickle of the heating in the background.
Goro looked like he had just seen a ghost. Absolutely terrified, his entire face white, eyes widened in shock.
So much for not ruining this marriage.
“I asked you not to yell at me again,” Goro finally said, voice infinitely quieter than Akira had ever heard him speak. “Didn’t we say you wouldn’t yell at me again?”
“I don’t remember that.” Akira almost spat the words, anger still burning through him. Anger at this fake rule in a fake marriage that didn’t belong to him, with a fake husband he would never see again.
“You don’t remember it,” Goro responded flatly. “You don’t remember the one thing I asked you to do when I completely lost my shit after we had our last big fight, thinking you would leave me forever?”
“Leaving you?” Akira felt the rise of his voice without any control of his own. Felt the heat surging through him without any way to contain it. “Leaving you ? Oh, is that something that you find unpleasant? After you demanded of me to let you go, to live without you, to watch you disappear, you suddenly want reassurance that I won’t leave you ?!”
Goro closed his eyes, pushed himself off the counter and, with trembling hands, set down the coffee.
“That was years ago,” he said and Akira could hear it now, the shake in his voice indicating that he was holding back his own anger.
He needed to hear it. Needed it to explode.
“Akira, we’ve moved past this. We’re both here. We’re happy. I thought we were happy!”
He didn’t explode. He tried to salvage this. Somehow his forced calmness made it worse, stoke the fire inside of Akira.
“
You’re
happy,” he spat. “I’m just… stuck.”
Goro flinched back as if he had hit him in the face. Akira felt the first sting of guilt somewhere in the tornado raging inside of him.
Without another word, Goro turned around, went back into the bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him. Akira tried to follow but heard the lock click before he could reach the door. He knocked against the door but didn’t get a reply. He thought he could hear a muffled sob from the other side, but wasn’t sure. Didn’t know the protocol for when he hurt a husband that wasn’t his but was.
“Let me out,” he yelled at the ceiling instead, letting all his rage out on it and realized with an aching heart that, from the very beginning, Goro had not been the one it should’ve been directed at. “This isn’t what you wanted, now, is it? So let me out. I don’t want to be here!”
The room faded, turning dark, turning blue, turning dizzying. Tentacles were wrapped around Akira’s entire body, like he was a puppet on a string.
He stared at Maruki and Maruki stared back, his eyes filled with sadness.
“I’m just trying to help you. Why do you have to make it so hard on yourself?”
“Just ask me,” Akira asked, suddenly tired. “Just ask me if I want this or reject it. So I can go home. I don’t want to be here. I’m so sick of being here.”
“You don’t have to go home. You could be happy. Both of you could be-”
“Do I look happy to you?” yelled Akira. “Does any of what I just said make it seem like I’m happy? You did this to me, don’t you get it? You keep doing it to me! How am I supposed to heal from a wound you keep tearing open? He’s dead! He’s dead! He died years ago and you keep giving him back to me just to take him away!”
“I’m not taking anyone away,” Maruki explained calmly. “That’s your doing alone!”
“He didn’t want this. He doesn’t want this.”
“In this-”
“In this reality, my fucking egoistic self caved and chose wrong!” Akira screamed. “I didn’t. I never will. Stop trying to make me. Goro Akechi is dead. He’s dead. And I love him too much to bring him back like a puppet on a string in your shitty fake-ass reality with your shitty fake-ass coffee and your shitty fake-ass beach home. Let me go back to my lonely, miserable one-bedroom apartment in my lonely, miserable reality, Maruki. I don’t belong here. I didn’t choose this. And no matter how often you ask me, I won’t choose it.”
The blue evaporated, leaving him back to the calm beige of the beach house carpet. The heating was still trickling. The beach was a fucking shitty place to live at during February.
Akira sank to the floor and buried his head in his arms, sobbing. Maybe, if he hurt Goro enough, he could stay like this in peace until the day was over and he was returning back home. Just here, on the floor, the door to his back, sobbing until he had once again given up the man he loved.
Except, the door behind him opened with a creak and he almost fell backwards, would’ve fallen, if it wasn’t for two arms catching him and wrapping around him so tightly, he felt like he couldn’t breathe for a moment.
“Shh,” Goro Akechi whispered, lips kissing his hair so softly, they could’ve been a ghost’s (and they were). “Shh, it’s okay. I’m here.”
“None of this is okay,” sobbed Akira, hearing his own voice crack.
“Yes, it is. Don’t think. Just focus on me. Just me. I’m here.”
Akira did as he was told. He almost always did as Goro told him to. His face buried in the crook of his neck, his nose running and probably ruining his shirt, he sat there and let himself be held as he weeped for years and years dangled in front of his nose and then stolen from him.
“I love you,” he finally brought out, something he had never told him, had never wanted to tell a fake, but what was the point, really, of holding back words that he would never have anyone else to tell them to? “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I love you, I do.”
There were warm lips at his temples, comforting him, sinking lower, kissing away his tears.
“Yes, you did mean it, and it’s alright. I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” Goro whispered. “I heard you.”
What?
Akira wanted to sit upright, escape his grip, but Goro’s arms around him felt like restraints now, holding him in place.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “You suffered enough for me. Now it’s my turn.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m living a lie, aren’t I? Everything. Everything’s a lie. Because this… this version of you - the version I’m married to. He chose-” Akira could hear the disgust in his voice.
“He chose wrong. Once. Once , Goro.” Akira did slip from his embrace now, both hands brought to his face to make him look at him. “Listen to me. I lost you and it nearly killed me. That choice, it was the hardest choice I ever had to make.” He shook his head, tears still caught in the corners in his eyes. “Still is. Doesn’t get easier. So believe me when I know. I know how hard it is. He might regret it. He might not even remember it anymore. But it was one mistake.”
“But you didn’t,” Goro insisted. “You-”
“I- Goro, look at me. Look where your shitty egoistic demand led me to. He just wanted to save you. He just wanted to give you some happiness before you died. He just wanted to be happy. You can’t-”
“But you-”
Akira groaned, letting him go and jumping to his feet.
“Listen. Listen to me. If your mother came back to you today and asked you to let her go again, what would you do?”
Goro opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He looked small like this, still sitting on the floor, staring at the empty spot where Akira had just sat. There were dried tear tracks still visible on his face.
Finally, he let out a breath.
“I’m living a lie, though,” he finally told Akira. “Everything, this whole reality-”
“No, you’re living a truth in the middle of a lie,” Akira assured him, kneeling back down, taking both his hands. They were cold in his, freezing almost. “It doesn’t matter what the rest of it looks like, but I promise you, in every, any reality, I love you.”
He kissed him, because Goro honestly looked like he needed it and Akira needed it too and he tasted of salt and tears and coffee and Goro.
The only Goro he had ever gotten to kiss.
“I’ll end this,” Goro promised him when they parted again. “I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way. We’ll find a way.”
“You might disappear if you do,” Akira told him, feeling something constricting his throat.
“I might not,” Goro responded and there it was, the old fire blazing in his red eyes. “But I won’t let you get pulled back here again and again. If you love me in every reality, then I will find a way to come back to you in every reality. No matter what happens. No matter how hard we kick Maruki’s ass. We’ll end this. That I promise you.”
Akira couldn’t help the little smile. Now that was the Goro Akechi he knew. He wanted to lean in, steal another kiss from a reality that wasn’t his, but something inside of him pulled and he screamed and he saw Goro scream back but no sound came through and then…-
“Joker, jeez, Joker, what the hell? Stop screaming, what is wrong with you! It was a dream, it was just a…-”
Akira sat upright, the blanket falling off him. The room was dark and quiet. A glance to his usual alarm clock on its usual spot told him that it was February 3rd, at roughly 2 am.
Someone sure had hit fast forward today.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to calm his racing heart. Usually, Maruki brought him back while he was asleep, which was infinitely less traumatic than… whatever that had been. Must’ve gotten scared. Dictators always did, when the first whispers of resistance were sparking.
“Sorry Mona.” He stretched out a hand and found his cat blind, petting his head for a few moments, calming down both of them. “Had a nightmare.”
“It’s okay, I get it,” Morgana purred. “February 2nd, huh?”
Akira blinked.
“I- yeah. You… know, huh?”
“Of course I know.” His cat climbed on top of him, curling up in his lap. “It’s okay to be upset, you know? You don’t have to hide it.”
There were a million ways to respond to this. A million deflections. A million ways to stay silent.
Akira was tired.
“I just miss him. I miss him a lot. Every day. Not just today. Today is just…”
A different kind of hell. The sweetest of them all.
“Wherever he is now,” Morgana told him sweetly, “he’s probably calling you an idiot for it.”
Akira snorted and leaned down, kissing his cat on the head.
“Yeah,” he said after a short while of silence. “I think you’re right.”
A day later, on February 4th, Akira woke up, not in his own bed, not in Goro Akechi’s bed in another reality, but on a rough prison bed, blue light making him wonder how he ever slept at all. He sat up, a familiar swooping feeling of deja-vu coming over him and instinctively dragged his leg, expecting a heavy ball chain, but finding it free. He looked down at himself and found himself in an outfit he hadn’t worn in a long time, Joker’s coat greeting him like an old friend and his old dagger on his side.
Akira looked at the open cell door and found himself face to face with…
“What?” he asked Goro Akechi, who was leaning against the bars, arms crossed and his black helmet open to show his completely annoyed looking face.
Goro Akechi rolled his eyes.
“About time you woke up, just how long were you going to make me wait?”
“Oh, I made you wait, did I?” Akira bit back, looking around frantically for something that explained…. this change. His eyes found Lavenza, who stood in the middle of the Velvet Room, observing them like they were her latest science project.
“Explanation, please?” he asked her.
He didn’t have it in him, saying goodbye to yet another version of Goro Akechi. Best to not even say hello, really.
But Lavenza just shook her head softly.
“He showed up in one of our cells a day ago. We weren’t sure what to do with him. He kept yelling at the bars and threatened to tear us all apart if we didn’t let him out.”
Goro looked down at his claws, moving them as if inspecting his nails, giving himself entirely unimpressed.
“I don’t take well to being locked up.”
“The door was unlocked,” Lavenza responded dryly.
“Well, I didn’t know that, did I?” Goro spat and Akira - Akira couldn’t take it anymore. He started laughing.
Both sets of eyes jumped to him with open concern showing in them, but Akira couldn’t stop. Tears were running down his eyes as his body was shaken again and again from a new hysterical bout of laughter, just when the last one died.
“Will someone-” he finally brought out between gasps. “Will someone just bloody tell me what’s going on?”
“I think he’s lost it,” Goro told Lavenza.
“Wild Cards certainly… have a flair for dramatics,” she finally mumbled. She took a deep breath, turning to Akira.
“The power Takuto Maruki took, had many layers. It came from a God who controlled reality and even after you defeated him, he seemed unable to completely let go of it, in hopes to one day create a reality friendlier not just to him, but to his loved ones as well.”
Akira crossed his arms, his lips pressed together as every notion of laughter burned to ashes.
“Maruki again?”
“In order to uphold his one chance to regain control, he had to pull you in,” Lavenza told him. “But you resisted him time and time again.”
Akira bit his lip.
“I thought that was another Maruki. From another reality.”
Lavenza shook her head.
“That’s what he wanted you to believe.”
But it had felt real. The pain had been real.
He turned to Goro. Found that he couldn’t bear looking at him. Turned back to Lavenza.
“So what’s this now?”
She nodded towards Goro.
“The real thing.”
For a moment, there was absolute silence.
“Huh?” Akira finally managed to ask.
Goro groaned, a hand rising to pinch his nose, then quickly falling again when he remembered that he had claws for hands.
“He’s always been a little obtuse, maybe you could give him the details a little faster, so that I can finally leave this place?”
Lavenza nodded as if she couldn’t hear the bite in his voice and turned back to Akira.
“That place you visited. The one Maruki showed you. It was a world inside a heart.”
Akira didn’t understand. He didn’t even particularly care. He just wanted to know if he could keep this Goro Akechi or not. He was so tired, so-
A heart?
He blinked.
“As in… a palace?”
Lavenza nodded again.
Akira remained quiet, stunned.
“My palace?” he finally asked her again and she shook her head.
No one spoke for a moment. Akira waited. And waited.
Then, subtly, barely moving, he glanced at Goro. Goro glared back.
“Go on, then,” he finally said. “Give me crap, why don’t you?”
“ Your palace?” Akira asked.
“Whose fucking palace else, you absolute buffoon?”
Another long silence.
Then-
“A beach house? Really?”
“Go to hell.”
“You didn’t strike me as a beach person, is all. If I had to guess, I’d have put my money on you being one of these ski-people.”
Lavenza cleared her throat, making both of them turn back to her.
“As I was saying,” she beamed at Akira. “For the last few years, Goro Akechi has been trapped inside his own palace as the source of his own distortion.”
“Is that even possible?” Akira asked, feeling his heart beat faster. Did that mean-
Goro huffed.
“Well it happened, what other proof do you need?”
Lavenza frowned at him.
“His own conflict birthed a palace directly mirroring his deepest desires that he actively worked against. Only when you brought him to let go and effectively changed his heart-”
“Okay, stop.” Akira raised a hand. “I- I think I get it but I just- All I need to know is if he is real or some- some fantasy version Maruki created or what is happening. I just need to know if-”
“She already told you I’m real,” Goro rolled his eyes.
“He is,” confirmed Lavenza, her voice soft enough for Akira to almost miss her over how hard his heart was beating now. “When Maruki brought back Goro Akechi, he brought back the real version. WIth you shattering his reality, he is free to do as he pleases. He uhm-” She cleared her throat. “Well, he never returned to his time of death and instead ended up trapped in his palace and we see no reason to send him back. So…”
“So he’s alive?” Akira asked.
“So he’s alive,” Lavenza said.
“Evidently,” Goro added, annoyed.
“Maruki, he-”
“He tried to give you two genuine happiness inside of his palace, a place he deemed safe from all outside pains. With the palace gone, his influence over you should be too. All he did was find you on a day you were most likely to,” she threw a glance at Goro, “think about the necessary keywords and pull you into the palace.”
Akira finally turned fully back to Goro, who was watching him with his arms crossed still.
“You’re real,” he said.
“Obviously.”
“And alive.”
“I keep telling you.”
“And you’re yourself .”
“Well, my entire marriage was fake. So much for happiness.”
“Yes, but we can start again. A real one. You and me. In reality.”
Goro raised a single eyebrow.
“Are you proposing to me? Because I’ll have you know, you did better in my distorted mind.”
“No. Yes. God, no. I’m asking you out. On a date. Outside.” Akira was laughing now, but this one wasn’t hollow nor hysterical, it was genuine and warm enough to fill his entire insides.
Goro let out a long-suffering, entirely fake sigh, the absolute bastard.
“Well, as long as it’s to coffee and curry. I’d die for some curry right now, actually.”
Akira hit him hard against the shoulders, making him flinch and glare at him.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“Don’t you ever - ever - talk about dying again.”
He flew into Goro’s arms, wrapping his own around his neck, pulling him tight, ignoring the way that rubbish helmet poked into his cheeks and after a moment of hesitation, Goro carefully held him with his wrists pressing against his back, claws pointing away from him.
“For the record, this might work better in the real world. Which I’m missing dearly, by the way.”
“We could plan a trip to the beach,” grinned Akira into his shoulder, unwilling to let go just yet.
Goro intentionally dug his claws into his arm.
“Bring up the beach one more time and I’ll go back to fake Akira.”
“No, you won’t. Idiot didn’t even love you right.” Akira buried his face in the leather of Goro’s silly bodysuit, feeling his laugh beneath him more than he heard it.
“No, I suppose he didn’t. Come on, Joker, you sentimental, loyal, idiot. I made you wait long enough. We’ve got a life to get to.”
With a last wave at Lavenza, Goro simply pulled Akira up into his arms and carried him out of the velvet room, with arms and legs clinging to him like he was hugging an oversized Koala.
“For the record, when I did this on our wedding night, you were a lightweight,” he groaned as they took their first step back into reality, the cool night air of Shibuya greeting them.
“Well, in reality, I’m hard work, honey.”
“You’re a piece of work, that much’s for sure. Will you please walk on your own two feet now.”
Akira did, if only because he could feel Goro get wonky beneath him and quickly moved to catch him instead.
“Goro? What’s wrong?”
“‘s nothing,” Goro muttered. “Just exhausted. Metaverse.”
Right. Right. He had been in there for a long time. Akira already felt tired but that was likely nothing compared to how Goro felt.
“It’s okay, I live nearby, I’ll get you home.” He kissed his forehead, couldn’t help it. Not now that it was visible beneath tousled-up hair. Goro was wearing the same outfit he had last seen him in. Like he had just disappeared. Like no time had passed. Like all the shards were pieced back together and slowly he forgot about the cracks. Healing. “You’re safe now.”
Goro nodded tiredly, then broke down in his arms.
And Akira brought him home.
On February 5th, Akira woke up where he desperately wanted to be.
In bed with Goro Akechi, smiling at him with that cute sleepy bed face that never gets old. Hair messily hanging into his face, his red eyes still dulled from the sleepiness.
“You snore,” he said instead of a good morning. “Fake Akira never snored.”
“Fake Akira can suck my dick,” muttered real Akira, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
Goro smirked.
“He actually wasn’t bad at that.”
Akira yawned.
“Will I forever have to compete with a fake version of me, from now on?”
“Aw, what’s wrong? Not up to the challenge?” Goro asked, eyes gleaming and Akira hit him with his pillow.
“I see you’re feeling better.”
“More alive than ever,” Goro assured. “Told you, the curry was going to do the trick.”
Akira tried to sit up, ready to ask him if he wanted pancakes just to tease him, when Goro rolled on top of him, pressing him into the mattress.
“You don’t need to worry,” he promised him quietly, serious for just a moment. “This is infinitely better than anything I could’ve dreamed up in my fucked up palace. It’s real. It feels real every minute I’m with you. It’s everything I didn’t know was missing.”
Akira thought about all the things he spent years wishing he could tell Goro Akechi. All the things that were left unsaid during his palace visits. All the regrets that had welled up inside his chest. And then looked down between them and instead said,
“Uhm.”
Goro blinked, rolling off him.
“Sorry. I’m- still getting used to it. I spent the last… years? Being married to you. You haven’t even taken me out on a date yet.”
“No, that’s fine, I don’t mind you being on top of me at all,” Akira let him know with a little smirk. “It’s just that you were squishing my cat to death.”
Goro looked down at him stunned and found Morgana, flatly lying on top of Akira, claws buried in his shirt, pretending to be dead.
“Oh. Uh. Hello Morgana.”
“What have I ever done to you?”
“Well… there was the whole pancake incident…”
Morgana finally moved off Akira’s body, his entire fur bristling.
“I’m going to stay at Haru’s.”
“Do give her my-” Goro interrupted himself, looking horrified. “Oh God, no, don’t give her anything actually.”
Akira gave him a knowing look.
“Palace friends?”
With a groan, Goro hid his face in his hands.
“This is going to take some getting used to. I swear we were friends in my palace but now that I think about it… I never actually… saw anyone but Fake Akira. Your shadow. Whatever that was. It’s like waking up from a very realistic dream and only now noticing all the inconsistencies.”
He looked around Akira’s small bedroom.
“You’ll have to catch me up on all that I missed.”
“I will. We’ll have all the time in the world.”
Akira yawned and sat up, not bothering to cover his mouth. No need for politeness when they had been together for so long already, right? All the little married life rules were his now. All that
time
.
But Goro, with a disgusted face, shrieked back.
“You’ve got horrible breath. Go brush your teeth.”
Akira grinned.
They were going to be just fine.