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The list of places Goro can safely go in Tokyo without running into Kurusu Akira continues to incur great losses. This time, it's his 777 of choice, which is nowhere near his new apartment complex for this express purpose, and yet. Ineffable Joker will always find a fucking way. And if he can't, he'll circle like a bird of prey until a way opens up.
"Find everything okay, sir?" he has the nerve to ask when he encroaches on the aisle Goro is standing in. The garish uniform still makes him look like a tube of children's strawberry-flavored toothpaste.
"How has this company not fired you yet," Goro says, sardonic, wearing his best painted-on smile. He pretends to analyze the back of a cup of 7Premium curry noodles. Perhaps if he doesn't look at him, he'll crumble into dust and Goro will have a minimum of a dozen less problems to contend with.
"I'm real good at upselling." Akira strides over to stand back-to-back with him, pretending to care about organizing the aisle behind Goro. Still not dust. Bummer. "I didn't expect to see you here," he adds after a beat, tone less lighthearted. Somber, almost. It might have passed for honesty if it wasn't one variation of his line every time.
"That's bullshit," Goro bites. Wow, this ramen has 8.8 grams of protein. "As if your favorite gremlin wouldn't jump at the chance to help you make my life a living hell."
"For her birthday, Futaba asked for a five-year restraining order between her and snooping on you for my sake," Akira deadpans, which does actually sound like her.
Goro scowls to himself and drops the cup into his shopping basket without a word. He moves further down the aisle and when he stops, Akira parks his insufferable self directly behind him again.
"You blocked my number. Again."
Goro's lips twitch.
"Are you going to tell me you didn't deserve it?" he asks airily, surveying the shelves.
"Mm. No. Are you implying you didn't deserve having the shit beaten out of you after you screwed up my chances at landing the only full-time gig to reach out to me in this economy?"
His blunt words conjure up three months ago's image of Akira, flushed red all the way down to his knees, desperately trying to salvage a big boy phone interview with a vibrator in his ass and Goro's hand around their cocks. Which he invariably deserved, once Goro found out he'd not only taken his last nameless-faceless-valueless boyfriend to Jazz Jin, but fucked him in the bathrooms—something they'd never done. Something Goro had to hear about the month before from him, and in the goddamn missionary position on top of that; something that made him cum in the moment and incandescently, vitriolically, jealously furious after the fact.
"Perhaps you should've thought of that before soiling my favorite establishment," he retorts, dropping a random can he didn't register the label of but had been pretending to stare at for too long so it then felt right to pretend he wanted to buy it into the basket. He enters another aisle and Akira follows.
Goro is about to turn around and ask him if there's any real work he should be doing when he says, still behind his back, "You're so obsessed with lying, even now. I guess now that you can't lie to people en masse, you're resigned to only lying to yourself and me."
Gloved fingers clench around whatever's in their grip. If this were any other 777, he'd probably start screaming at him, and if this were taking place several years ago, he'd probably beat him to death with this basket, painstakingly-forged new identity be damned.
He likes to think moments like these can serve as testaments to how far his mental fortitude has come.
Akira's voice sounds like he's turned toward Goro now. "That wasabi tube's gonna explode if you grip it any harder," he points out.
Goro's head whips up and he glances at him sidelong, briefly, before he just sets the tube back on the shelf.
"I'm not unblocking your fucking number." He shoves past him as harshly as possible, power walking to the self-checkout area on purpose.
~~
"Akira wants to know when you're going to unblock his number."
"Stop. I've already fallen for that once."
"…Okay, fine, he hasn't reached out to me about it, and he most likely will not. But you should still at least give him the time of day. It's killing him, the distance."
"That is truly gratifying to hear."
A long exhale through the speaker. "You know, Senpai, you are quite the stubborn asshole."
Goro adjusts the bag of frozen peas over his eyes with a hum; maybe he just hasn't found the right angle to kill his Akira-brand migraine yet. He sinks further into the couch, resting his head in the crook of his elbow. "Thank you, Sumire. It's many years in the making—I work on it every day."
"I'm getting the feeling we have two very different definitions for 'working on it' in mind."
"Yes."
Even before the labored breaths start to crackle through, Goro could already tell she was exercising mid-call. It was roughly four in the morning in Los Angeles, but the Summer Olympics have just begun, and so Sumire's priorities have shifted in kind—trying to coax him into playing nice with Akira was now secondary to staying in shape. As if she'd ever fallen out of it.
"I just feel like you two are above this, by now." That was Sumire-speak for you idiots are too fucking old to be acting like you're still in your early twenties.
"Above the friends-slash-enemies with benefits state of affairs, or above the squabbling-then-ghosting rinse and repeat?"
"Yes," Sumire says, sounding out of breath, both in an overexerted way and exasperated way.
Goro snorts. "Then I'm afraid you think too highly of either of us."
"That sounds very final. What if I said I want to believe in the best of you both?"
"Then I would call you foolish and naïve, two things you're long past."
Sumire laughs heartily, and it does make him smile. Just a little.
A beat of comfortable silence comes and goes.
"Listen, Goro." Her tone takes on that new assertive edge she's been experimenting with, mostly at Goro's own behest. "I'm not going to tell you to apologize to him. Just as I don't intend to tell him to apologize to you. You both have your own language when it comes to navigating this sort of thing—relationships, I mean. Or at least your relationship with one another. Therefore nothing I say has any larger impact in the grand scheme of it all, because we simply don't speak the same language. And that's fine. I don't mind it. Neither of us speak the other's, but we can understand each other all the same, and that's all that matters to me, really. But… if I may divulge to you one small truth: there is something within you that seems to shine brighter when you're in each other's orbit. Something I think Akira would stop at nothing to preserve, given any cost."
Goro remains quiet as he parses that.
"That is the issue with him, isn't it?" he asks seriously, after a while.
"What is?"
"That he doesn't stop chewing even after he hits bone."
Sumire goes quiet, too. The sounds of the exercise machine have stopped, and it's just her taking steady breaths, then a sip of water, then more breaths.
Then she sighs.
"Akira is someone who would catalogue every taste if he could. But not all of them are memorable enough, to him, to want to take the bones between his teeth and crush." A pause. "And there's only one set of bones that wants to do the same to his."
~~
Unlike Goro, Akira has lived in the same building for the past decade or so. Also unlike Goro, he's had a vast collection of roommates in that time, most of them salarypeople with normal schedules that harshly contrast his own erratic routine.
However, Goro's pretty sure his current one works nights. That's one of two reasons he's standing outside the door to his unit right now.
Akira appears behind the deadbolt chain, wearing a bartender's uniform, face impassive. He must've just gotten back from one of his innumerable odd jobs.
"Yeah?" is all he says in place of a greeting, like he's not surprised Goro is here.
"Is he home?"
"Nope," Akira says with an emphatic pop.
Goro nods at the deadbolt chain. "Lower it."
They stare at each other for a moment. Then Akira blows air through his nose, lowers the chain, and backs up. His face is still blank. Goro wants to take a saw blade to it.
His hand flies out and bangs the door fully open. It lets out a threatening squeak as he marches past it, grabs two fistfuls of Akira's collar, and lifts him a centimeter or two off the carpet.
"You are such a sorry, sappy sack of shit."
"Can you take your shoes off before you start beating the shit out of me?" Akira says calmly.
Goro scoffs and drops him; he crumples to the floor in a pathetic pile of limbs.
He turns around, slamming the door shut. Akira says, "I have neighbors."
Goro says, "I don't care," and starts untying his laces at the genkan. In his peripherals, Akira props himself up on his elbows, watching him.
His head is swimming in viscous red and he feels like a live wire. He needs to touch him. He needs to never let him touch him again.
"Not that I'm against having my shit rocked by you," Akira starts, tone cautious, "but I'm just, uh, a little lost on what this is about?"
Swallowing down the urge to chuck his loafer at his stupid face, Goro neatly sets both of his shoes down side-by-side. He steps into the apartment proper again, not before locking the door behind him. In the corner of his eye, Akira's cat hops off her tree and darts into his bedroom.
"This is about you, and me, and us, and the whirlwind you've made of my life. This is about how little I understand your presence in it and what I want to do with it. This is about how much I want it gone; this is about how much I don't know what I'd do with myself if it was gone," he says, clearly, as if stating it plain would make it sound any less convoluted.
Akira blinks at him from the carpet. Goro drags him to his feet and shoves him back, hard enough that he stumbles backward, nearly toppling over the back of the couch.
"So… um. You want to… beat me up because you don't understand what you want with me?"
That was accurate, but they both know he's not going to simply tell him that, so instead he glares at his grey widened eyes. And—he was going to say something else. Something vitriolic. He was going to berate him, punch him in the liver, maybe lash at him with his belt, then not address their arousal until his nose is bleeding and they're both dizzy, slurring their words, and Akira's still grinning. It's happened before. It could happen again. He came here fully intending for it to happen again.
But Akira's not grinning. His body is tensing up, fingers digging into the top of the couch. A rare sight for him—trepidation—is plucking at his uncoiled spine like strings. This is easier when he looks ready to pounce, not ready to run. This is easier when he's smiling, laughing like a maniac; because he enjoys it, the thrill of the mutual hunt, and they both know that, too. But something in his body, in his face, in his eyes—is enough to make Goro's brain switch gears.
"No." The word feels heavy. Dry. He swallows thickly. "No, I've changed my mind. Sit down on the couch."
Even Akira looks confused at how quickly the tone shift had washed over Goro.
"Goro—"
"Sit. Down, Akira."
Slowly, methodically, Akira doesn't break eye contact as he hoists himself up over the edge, dropping into a crouch. Only when he turns around and sits normally does Goro yank his beige sweater vest over his head and toss it near where his shoes are, leaving him in his work dress shirt, white and unironed, and his black trousers and socks. He takes a breath in and out through his nose, loosens his tie, and then he walks over to the couch.
Before Akira can say a single word, Goro drops himself onto one of his legs, one hand supporting his weight behind Akira's head, the other fiending for his tie. It's a clip-on because of course it is. He pulls it down and then over his head.
Akira's face is more visibly flushed at this distance. "What are you doing," he says, voice sounding slightly strangled near the end.
The bare fingers of Goro's right hand crawl up to Akira's collar, popping one button out, then two. "Figuring out what I want with you," he says quietly.
"Seems a bit pedestria–aah—" Akira’s breath hitches and he sucks air in deep when Goro grinds down, once, against his leg, testing the waters. They come back scalding. "Oh," he whispers wondrously. One of his hands snakes around to clutch Goro's waist and he bats it away.
"No touching. No touching and no hands," he says, and Akira actually whimpers at that.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" His head knocks back over the top of the couch and he's breathing hard, now. Goro pulls his shirt half-open and taps his Adam's apple twice. Circles it. Scrapes a nail against it. Akira's shoulders wind up and down with each breath.
Goro moves into a rhythm, grinding slowly, hips circling in tandem with the tip of his fingernail. Akira takes to gripping the sides of the seat cushion, and he watches him low-lidded from his angle. His brows are scrunched together. Goro likes that look on him. Severe. Dissecting. Like he's trying to put pieces together but the pieces keep rearranging themselves every time he blinks.
"Since we were young, all I've ever wanted to do is figure out how you work. Lock all the people you incessantly involve yourself with out of the room, lay you down, and take you apart under a light." He glances up at the round ceiling light above them, casting them in a warm glow and bouncing off their irises. He looks back down at Akira. "Most things make sense under a light. Things you haven't seen before become visible, like the beauty mark at your jaw's mandible, or the light dust of freckles at the bridge of your nose, or the cluster of acne scars on your chin." He drags his finger along an almost-perfectly diagonal pretty pink line near Akira's collarbone, and it brings a smile to his face. "Or the first scar I gave you in the Metaverse."
Akira swallows and, being this close, Goro feels it roll through his body. "Is that… why you insisted we fought without our Personas at our side, that night? To leave a mark on me only visible under the light?"
God, it's been so long since he's thought of that night without his dick in one hand and a tissue in the other.
In the here and now, he just hums. He drags his quickly-forming bulge along Akira's leg and bucks against it, making him sputter out a swear.
"That, among other things. Intimacy springs to the front. There's a peculiar closeness to be found in assuming a position that most Shadows would have been rendered dust before they could reach." The finger leaves, replaced by his hand, and he massages his Adam's apple with the palm as Akira makes a shivery noise of satisfaction. "With my blade at your throat, and your dagger sticking out of my back, and both of us delirious and devoured by bloodlust and holding back the intervention of our Personas at all fucking costs—I felt closer to you than all these years of fucking each other stupid could ever hope to reach."
Akira shudders a little. Maybe Goro's making it harder for him to string his thoughts together on purpose, in the way the hand keeping himself up briefly moves to tuck his still-unruly curls behind his ear. His index traces behind the shell of his ear before it leaves.
"Are you trying to say—" He takes a deep breath in as Goro's hand flattens against the column of his throat. The heel of his palm rests right against his sternum, fingers free to drag their nails in, toward the thyroid, then push the fingerpads out toward the anterior borders; a rhythmic, steady motion that has Goro touching nearly every part of his neck at once. "Are you trying to say—you haven't felt close to me since we could stab each other without sustaining actual long-term injuries from it, and that's why you don't know what you want with me? Because hurting me has real consequences now so you don't know how else to deal with it?" He makes an incredulous noise. "Do you even realize how you sound?"
"Do you know how to deal with it in any way other than fucking?"
Akira starts to make the motion like he's going to nod. Goro stops stroking back and forth, slides his hand further so that his fingers and thumb reach all the way up to press into the little dips on either side of his jaw. It makes him freeze mid-motion, and he watches Goro with semifocused eyes and parted lips.
"No, you do not," he answers for him. Gently, Goro pushes down on his throat. "So don't act like this is any different. Neither of us know what we want. Why else would this cycle be going on for as long as it has?"
"I'm your rival, though," Akira says, a slight wheeze behind his voice. Goro squeezes again, and it comes to the forefront this time. He does it again. And again. "And that means I know exactly what I want," he gasps.
Goro stops.
Yes. He was. Is. He was, and is, and likely will always be his godforsaken rival. Goro hates it. Goro hates not hating him. More, still, Goro hates that Akira doesn't hate him. They wouldn't be in this mess if Akira could just hate him, because it would be so much easier to leave. Instead it's excruciating every time, and he eventually comes back every time, and he hates it, and he hates it, and he hates it.
"That's irrelevant," he spits, bitterly, instead of any of that.
"Fuck you, no it's fucking not," Akira insists, raspy but clearer. "The fighting, and the fucking, and the vitriol and the rare moments of tenderness—it's because we're rivals, it's because we've always been rivals." One of his hands comes up to grip around the one holding him by the throat. "And I fucking love it. All of it. All of the mess. All of your stupid mind games. All of it except—except—"
Heat is building up, an eternal flame unfurling inside Goro's soul. He grinds down again as if friction could serve as anything but the accelerant it is. "Except what, Joker?"
"Except when you run away!" Akira shouts suddenly. In a too-quick motion he slides out from under him and shoves him face-first into the couch. Goro flips himself around, expecting to see him ready to fight, or with eyes welling up with tears, and instead finds him aggressively unlatching his belt with a hard look of defiance on his face. "Except when you make me find you! Except when you leave me in the dust, in the dark, make me feel like nothing that just happened matters to you, like nothing has ever mattered to you, like I'm still attic trash and you're too fucking good for me. You're not. You've never been good for me." He throws it off to the side, then crouches so he's just below eye level. His voice dips lower, and he says, slowly and carefully, "Do you want to start now, and do the good thing and run away from me, from all of this, or do you need me to fuck you until it clicks that what you really want with me is to be my rival like you fucking mean it?"
The choice of words is far from lost on Goro. Does he want it? He doesn't know. His mind is clouded and he wants to shut him up with a kiss, fuck him over the table, then leave before midnight. He also wants to cut this off completely, never answer his texts, never speak to him again, flee the country if he has to.
But does he need it?
He hasn't thought of Akira as his rival in years. The way he thinks of him now is always shifting, never solid as it used to be. And perhaps that's why there's this pit in his stomach: he keeps trying to reframe something that doesn't wish to be reframed, and that makes him want to run away.
He needs… Akira to know he's sorry. But the words are impossibly heavy, and they sit as counterweights at the bottom of his throat; unseen, always felt, supporting the weight of everything else.
Goro looks at him. Still watching him. The front of his pants are open. His shirt's crumpled. He's a mess. They're both a mess. This is a mess. And Akira loves all of it, some-fucking-how, and rivals are supposed to match wits.
He swallows, keeps looking at him, and finally says, "I need you to do it like you really think you're capable."
Akira's face doesn't change at first. And then it pulls into a smirk.
He gets to his feet, smacks Goro across the face once, then grabs him by the tie and pulls him up into a rough kiss.
They always kiss like they want only to hurt each other, even now. Incisors clack against incisors, canines seek purchase within lower lips, hands come up to dig into the fleshy skin of necks. Goro has never been careful with his teeth and Akira has never cared to mention it. Even if he did, he'd be a hypocrite. The hypocrite bites down hard into Goro's lip, then opens his mouth wide enough to catch the strangled sound he makes, letting it die in his throat with a receptive hum.
Goro opens his eyes when he hears a bottle cap pop open, realizing one of Akira's hands had slipped away and under one of the seat cushions, which was now clear had become one of his new hiding places for lube.
"You're disgusting," Goro says into his mouth, fingers digging into his waist when he detaches from his lips and moves back, trying futilely to drag him on top of him.
"You never know." He grins, sporting a tiny smear of Goro's blood under his mouth. Following the line of his gaze, he laps it up with his tongue.
He rolls up his sleeves and Goro does the same; neither of them have attempted to take each other's clothes off, so he supposes that wasn't on the agenda tonight. Akira makes a quick motion with his hand that means turn around. Goro obliges—they both despise missionary unless they're actively arguing.
The couch is big enough for him to kneel fully on it sideways, at least. Akira helps him pull his belt through the loops, letting it drop before fumbling with his zipper and button and yanking his pants down to his thighs. Goro hurriedly frees himself through the pouch in his boxer briefs, starting to pump himself with one hand and keeping himself upright with the other against the arm rest, only for Akira to push his back down, effectively smushing his face and dick against the couch, before dragging him back up by his back collar.
His lower back arches reflexively, bucking upward, cheek still pressed into the couch and right arm now dangling uselessly. The hand flattens against the carpet. He hears his phone fall out of his pocket but he doesn't care. Two lubed up fingers press into his hole and his breath catches in his throat.
"Just give it to me, you fucking coward," he growls, voice pitching forward into an incriminating moan when muscle memory guides Akira's fingers to his prostate.
"Don't be so impatient," he tsks. "You haven't been with anyone lately, have you?"
"The hell do you care if I have or not?"
"You haven't," Akira says affirmatively. Goro utterly despises it when he's right. "So you're pretty damn wound up back here. Try to relax, even though I know that's not in your vocabulary."
"Fuck you."
"Next time." His fingers curl, pumping in and out of his now-slickened hole. He hears him spit into his other hand, which reaches around Goro and finds its way to his ignored cock. It makes Goro realize spit has been pooling in his own mouth; he swallows hard, and a little bit of it dribbles out onto the couch fabric.
He stabilizes himself with both lower arms against the seat cushion. He drags his face up to press his cheek against the arm rest, hands gripping around it, clenching like he's trying to fucking claw into it. Akira works his fingers—three now—deeper, stroking him off slow, both hands moving at the same pace. It's going to make him implode. His hips keep seeking contact unwittingly, chasing the feel of literally any part of Akira inside him without his brain's input.
He feels like he could cum from this. They both know he could cum from this, which is probably why Akira's left hand stops and his right hand finally pulls out. Then the couch shifts in his direction as he leans one knee onto it. The bottle pops open again.
As he's slicking his own cock with it, Akira suddenly leans in and bites into Goro's ass cheek.
"What the fuck," he deadpans, with concerted effort. He hates the electrified jolt it sends through him. "Stop."
Akira laughs. "Like I could resist," he fires back, his smirk audible, smacking the same cheek once. Goro groans, about to verbally eviscerate him about it, but then he feels him lining himself up with his hole and aborts the thought. Or any thought, for that matter.
"You want this?" he asks, and his tone is casual but they've been at this for long enough that Goro can hear the notes of thinly-veiled desperation weaved into it, always making it sound more like you want this as much as I want this? Please. Please say you do.
"Joker," Goro snarls. A single word that carries the same intonation of please just shut up and fuck me. Please.
He feels Akira's fingernails curl into the skin of his hips as he uses it as leverage to pull himself inside. Warmth floods him near-instantly, seeping further and further until Akira's own hips are flush against his ass. He's still wearing his pants. The fucking jackass.
"Fuck, you're so tight for me," Akira mumbles, only a few degrees of separation off from a babble, and the thought and feelings attributed to it collide to wrangle a muffled moan from Goro, who has squeezed his eyes shut and shoved his face into the couch. "Mmmh, don't do that, I wanna hear you," Akira says immediately, nails practically clawing into his skin to prove his point.
Goro lets out a whine that intensifies when he turns his head, and Akira coaxes him with a yeah?, starting to thrust properly once he's found his pace.
"I–I need… fuck, Joker…"
"What do you need?" he huffs through interlaced quickening breaths and a quickening pace, "What can I do?"
Akira has always been the antithesis of symmetry. Smooth lines on one side, coarse coils on the other. An almost systematic structure of thoughts, actions, words; the mishmash of senses, desires, expressions scattered all throughout. It was mesmerizing, how they pilot him so effortlessly, how they seem to exist in harmony beside their polar opposites; how he fucks him like he's the only one who's mastered his topography, and maybe he is but he doesn't need to know it. It was fucking mesmerizing, how he kisses him like he'll die if he doesn't, touches him like he'll drop into hypoesthesia if he doesn't, steals his oxygen like he's lived his entire hurricane of a life in the eyewall and the sun's dry warmth finally broke through, and he can finally take a breath in the eye.
His hand snakes along his back to grip his shoulder. "Please, Goro," he shudders breathlessly, nails clawing into the fabric as he thrusts hard and deep, "Just tell me what I can do."
Desperate, is what Goro would say if he could form complete sentences, and wanting. You couldn't hide it even if you bothered to try.
The truth is: Goro is enamored with desire—Akira's desire; his too-long suppressed desire—and how it overrides his mainframe, splits him into two distinct creatures, each with the mutual goal of possessing something in its entirety even if it unmakes him. Especially so.
Akira was raw fire and plasma; Akira was charged particles, pure electromagnetism; Akira was Akira, undiminished by any contradictory forces. And Goro fucking needs him.
He sucks in a gasp of air, body alight.
"Get me off while you… ughhh, fuck," he cuts himself off with a groan. His mind starts whiting out. His cock is burning the longer it goes untouched.
He feels Akira lean over him, understanding, obliging, nearly flattening himself against his back as he does. The stench of sex hangs high in the air and Goro pulls it deep into his lungs. God, he's close. He starts to voice the fact, but Akira does the opposite of what he needs: his hand slides to grip him by the base.
He opens his eyes. "What the hell are you—"
Akira tosses his phone into the tiny gap between his chest and the couch. Then he yanks him up by the back collar again, forcing him to put his arms straight out to keep himself upright. He's still pounding into him.
"Unblock my number, Crow," he says, rich and low. An order. A fucking order, from his long-dormant Joker voice. Goro is going to kill him. Kill him.
"You're—hahh—" Goro corrals himself and his voice into something vaguely resembling controlled. When you, of course, ignore the deafening heartbeat wracking him all throughout, the pulsing of which he can feel in his dick. Which is still being held over the precipice. "You're out of your goddamn mind—"
Akira aggressively taps at the screen until it wakes. Goro can barely make out which boring default lockscreen he chose when he bought the damn thing, how the fuck is he supposed to navigate to his contacts like this?
"Unblock my number, and you can cum," Akira breathes, simple and rough. "You want to bad, don't you? You need it? Quid pro quo."
"You're a fucking piece of fucking shit," Goro spits, basically a garble, head swimming in red again, unable to bite back the moan chasing the tail of the words.
"Do it," Akira retorts sharply, through a particularly hard thrust. He pushes the phone closer to his face as Goro lets out an involuntary whine that only makes Akira squeeze his cock tighter, and the note stretch higher and louder.
"Jesus fucking Christ, fine, fine," he exclaims, taking a trembling finger to punch in his passcode, angling the phone so that his face blocks it from Akira's sight. His left arm strains and shakes as most of his weight is redistributed onto it.
Blinking through the tears at the corners of his eyes, he navigates to his Messages app. The last time he texted Akira was over three months ago, but he's still on the first page of recent texts; he taps it at the same time as Akira hits his prostate, and his arms go slack. "Fuck, Akira, fuck…" he heaves out, voice jumping an octave.
Akira's hand lodges in his hair and pulls him back up to right himself, sending prickling needles in an angry array down his scalp. "Do you want to cum or not?" he hisses.
"I am going—" Shaking even more now, he taps Akira's contact photo—or rather, lack of it—and scrolls down—"to fucking—" He practically slams the UNBLOCK CALLER button, several times until it registers, then grips the phone hard and holds it up so that Akira can see it—"kill you in your sleep, Joker," he gasps through a genuinely painful moan.
Akira lets go of his cock, sinks his teeth into his shoulder, shoves the phone out of his hand, and Goro finally fucking cums. It's so bodily, so overpowering that he registers the fact Akira's stopped thrusting before he does the cum spilling inside him, and had already started to voice a complaint which quickly derails into another noise he may never live down.
The release floods his senses and all he can do is breathe, in and out, in and out. Recentering himself. His knees feel raw, numb. His arms are shaking. His scalp radiates pinpricks of white-hot pain. A few moments pass like this before Akira slowly pulls out of him.
Sure enough, Akira was 80% of what was holding him up so his body slumps into the couch, directly into his own wet spot.
He's going to kill him. He's going to use his washing machine to clean these clothes, first, and then he's going to kill him.
Akira walks around him, observes him for a moment, lets out a slight chuckle, then plants a chaste kiss to his dazed lips. Goro, unmoving, simply glares daggers at him.
"Mm. Vengeance tastes like cheap instant coffee. Remind me to send you home with the good stuff," he says, playfully tousling Goro's sticky hair. "Thanks for playing. You were great. Feel free to join me in the shower once you remember how to use your legs."
And then he just fucking walks away.
Goro, bare ass still in the air, yells in the most threatening voice he can muster right now, "If I kill you in the shower I can easily make it look like a suicide."
From the bathroom, Akira calls back, "Just so y'know, the reminder that you put conscious thought into how you'd orchestrate my murder consistently gives my refractory period a run for its money."
"I hate you," he yells again, uselessly. He doesn't have the brainspace to process how hot that is.
"And yet," is all Akira counters with, before shutting the door as though it proves his nonexistent point.
Goro flops down onto his side and lies there for a good few minutes, emphatically groaning to himself and running his hands down his sweat-soaked face.
He should go. He should just pull up his pants and go. But there's something—fuck it, a lot of things—that he enjoys about being the only set of bones that desires to crush Akira's into bits and pieces right back. There's a lot of things he enjoys about that knowing, and how much it implies.
The knowing that both of them can do whatever, go wherever, fuck whoever, and still end up running back to each other. The knowing that Akira likes it when Goro remains. The knowing that he expects nothing from Goro, other than his rivalry, and his presence.
It's exhilarating and he doesn't want it to ever end and it's unhealthy and they should stop and he should leave.
And yet.
About five minutes later, Goro drags himself to his jelly-filled legs and staggers toward the bathroom.