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The weight on top of him was heavy the way only a body warm with sleep could be—limp and lax sprawled over him. Goro instinctively matched his breathing to Akira's, slow and even, and watched how Akira's head rose and fell where it pillowed on his chest.
Akira's trust sat as fragile as a baby bird and leaden in Goro's palms. Each puff of Akira's breath across his skin lanced through his heart, and Goro didn't deserve this.
Yet Akira handed it to him anyway. And Goro, every impulse check shattered by the relentless storm of a boy sleeping on him, accepted it. Craved it. Took it in greedy hands to covet and treasure, knowing full well he would only hurt them both by the end.
The entire night had spun so wildly out of his control. What started as a white-hot need to keep Akira away from Leblanc and the bed-sharing harlot became a test of will Goro was destined to fail.
Akira, dressed in Goro's clothes and looking like he belonged to him, with him.
Akira, curling against him and baring his neck in such an absurd display of trust with the one person he never should.
Akira, selfless to a fault, finally confessing a desire for no one else's benefit. A desire for him. For Goro, just as he was, bloody and ruinous and full of shards.
Akira, flinching and waiting for a blow, stupidly believing Goro could do anything but say yes.
Akira's lips, the taste of his mouth, his laughter like dripping honey Goro wanted to bottle.
Akira, Akira, Akira.
God, he never stood a fucking chance.
And so here he was, trapped and despairingly happy about it, undeserving and entirely too selfish to not take everything Akira offered him anyway.
Akira snuffled in his sleep, somehow nuzzling even closer. Goro held his breath, waiting for him to settle, desperate to not wake him.
(He hated the shadows under and in Akira's eyes. Hated the exhausted tilt of his shoulders.)
Akira's fingers twisted in the fabric of Goro's shirt, as if even in sleep he was worried Goro would slip away from him. Goro worked his hand into the hair at Akira's nape, scratching lightly. Even after Akira settled, he kept running his fingertips over his scalp, already dangerously addicted to the way the soft curls slipped and bounced between his fingers.
Goro's eyes drifted from the nest of Akira's hair to the hand tangled in his shirt. The sleeve inconspicuously slid over his knuckles.
When Akira stepped out of the bathroom, the meager synapses left in his brain able to think normal, rational thoughts outside the howling urge to push Akira into the wall and stake a claim that would last, had thought it odd how Akira's nervous tick changed from twisting his hair to tugging at sleeve cuffs in the span of a week.
Just an odd tweak in behavior caused by stress.
Or.
The shadows in Akira's eyes burrowed deep in the moments after he crashed into him, before Akira remembered himself and reined in his expression.
He remembered shadows in his mother's eyes and lines along her delicate arms a naive child hadn't understood.
Akira wouldn't. And even if he would, his motley band of friends never left him alone long enough to try.
They—no one—had looked twice at Akira in days.
Blood roaring in his ears, heart all at once lodged in his throat and sunk to his stomach, Goro grabbed Akira's hand and tugged back the sleeve before he could think further, only sparing enough consideration to move slowly to keep Akira asleep.
There were scars, gnarled and deep, but not in the way he feared.
Goro stared, mind blank and heart still not where it was supposed to be in his body.
The Akira he met in the interrogation room, whoever or whatever he actually was, bore all the signs of police brutality. He had seen the bruises, the track marks along a pale throat, the blood-crusted edges of sleeves. He had not allowed himself to care. (Had soothed the sobbing, screaming thing inside him by promising to put Akira out of his misery.)
And then Akira was in Shido's palace, alive and none the worse for wear, and Goro assumed that whatever the fuck he'd done to survive Goro's gun, he'd also done to evade the pigs' fists and violence.
He'd been wrong.
He stared at the proof of Akira's suffering in a room Goro had put him in.
Bile turned his tongue to acid. The festering knot in his stomach twisted. A nauseating cocktail of emotion whirled through his head. Guilt, a feeling he thought he'd long killed. Rage, familiar in the din of its fire. Shame, because he didn't deserve this and he shouldn't be here, and why the fuck would Akira ever allow him—
He swallowed, forced his erratic breathing to steady before he woke Akira and made everything so much worse. He carefully pulled the sleeve down over Akira's knuckles and wrapped his hand around his wrist, right over the scar like he could protect the damaged skin from further pain.
—Protectiveness, unfamiliar in its shade. The fire to it was an old friend, the violent desire to shred the muscle off the bones of his adversaries, rip their tongue out and force it back down their throat so they couldn't spew their deluded bullshit anymore. But the need to do it on behalf of someone, to ensure their safety, that was new. (Or, perhaps, had been wilted and dying in Goro's heart, slowly coming to bloom under the slow, inexorable care of a boy who understood and stayed and wanted. Unnoticed until Goro took the time to look and found his ribcage swathed in ivy and flowers.)
Goro looked down at Akira, at dark lashes and the bridge of his nose barely visible beyond unruly curls. Somehow, Akira looked at him, stained hands and bloody shards and violent history between them, and found him worthy of his trust. Akira wanted him, wanted to kiss him and hold him and fall asleep in his arms like he truly believed Goro could be made for gentle things.
Goro had known he wanted Akira since the unassuming day in November he'd fallen asleep beneath Akira's hand, and likely before that still.
And now he had him, in some way—some unbelievable way—and all Goro wanted was to deserve it. To prove to Akira that he could be worthy of his trust and all those gentle things.
But he was the universe's favorite laughingstock and a dead man walking, and dead men couldn't be worthy of trust and couldn't prove shit.
What a fucking joke.
The measuring cup shook in his grip. Coffee grounds jumped over the rim, skittering across the counter and spilling over the edge to the floor.
"Fuck—"
He dropped the measuring cup back into the pile beneath the grinder with only enough care to not add to the mess and buried his face in his hands. He dug the heels of his palms into his closed eyes, biting his tongue on a worthless cry.
His ears rung in the pervasive silence of the cafe, and he should've brought down his phone for music. He should turn the TV on or run the sink, anything to keep it back.
He didn't do any of that.
"Akira?"
He startled at the soft, tentative voice, prying his hands away from his face.
Morgana jumped up on the counter, deftly dodging the spilled grounds and sitting in front of him. His blue eyes were drowning with worry, ears slumping the way they always did when he was tired. Akira hated himself a little bit.
"Mona," He cleared his throat. "Hey. Did I wake you?"
His tail flicked. "Trouble sleeping again?"
Playing chess with Akechi, staring at the board as he tried to find his path to victory. Akechi's voice, smug and teasing, because they both knew Akira didn't have a chance in hell of winning this game.
Looking up to jab back. Finding Akechi's degrading corpse across from him, hollow eyes staring into him. Blood sluggishly dripping down his torso and staining white chess pieces.
Tripping back out of his chair, a scream lodged in his throat.
Akira blinked the image from his eyes, forcefully shoving the nightmare in the box with all the others and slamming it shut. Morgana was still staring at him, even though the answer was obvious. Akira didn't come down into the cafe proper and brew coffee (or attempt to) in the middle of the night for any other reason.
He nodded. "It's fine, though."
Morgana kneaded at the counter, hopefully not puncturing the wood with his claws for Sojiro to find later. "You haven't been sleeping well for months. You should talk to somebody. Maybe Takemi could help?"
Akira was already shaking his head halfway through the suggestion. "It's nothing I can't handle." He smiled reassuringly and added, before Morgana could argue again. "I'm not coming down here as much, am I?"
It was objectively true. The nightmares didn't plague him every night. And, most nights he was able to stay in bed and fall back asleep when they did jar him awake, Morgana none the wiser.
He'd take any improvement over sleepless nights in that solitary cell after dethroning another god, alone and grieving and afraid.
Morgana frowned. "That's true, but…"
"Don't worry so much." Akira poked a droopy ear, watching it flick wildly and grinning at the irritated meow it earned him. "Head back to bed, I'll be up in a bit."
Morgana hunkered down instead, tucking his paws and primly wrapping his tail around himself. "I'll keep you company until then."
His lips quirked in a soft smile, and he set his hand lightly on Morgana's back in quiet thanks. Already, he felt frayed nerves settle at the simple prospect of someone staying by his side.
The silent cafe hummed with Morgana's pronounced purring. Akira knew he was doing it for his benefit. Morgana was more perceptive than anyone gave him credit for; he noticed how Akira shied away from silence—playing music, tapping the table, even humming to himself—to keep it back over the last couple weeks.
Akira was grateful, somewhere beneath the nettle-sting of burdening his friends with the weight of his problems.
It made cleaning up spilled grounds and actually making coffee more bearable, at least.
Goro woke up.
Blind, overwhelming panic immediately swept him under. He was alive, which meant they failed, which meant Maruki won, and now Goro was nothing but a puppet—
The uptick of a heart monitor blared in his ears, knocking ajar the screaming thoughts and panicked wheeze of his breath. On his next desperate inhale, he recognized the sterile scent of a hospital, which sent its own fissure of panic through his lungs because fuck hospitals. His mind seized with the need to wrench himself out of the hospital bed beneath him, wanted to throw himself through the nearest exit whether that was a door or a window—he didn't care how high—but despite the terrified adrenaline ripping through his veins, his body was impossible to move.
He'd been cornered by Shadows much stronger than him in his early months of Metaverse venturing—escaping by the skin of his teeth and coughing up blood the entire way back to the real world—enough times to know how an obscene amount of painkillers felt. His whole body numb, a glass wall between him and his ability to prod the neurons controlling movement.
A perfect reality wouldn't allow his panic, much less injuries so severe he required enough morphine to tranquilize an elephant.
The truth settled slowly, seeping into his bones. Reality was restored. Goro was alive (and in a fucking hospital.)
He actually managed to survive.
His next thought was, simply: Akira.
The memory of him: tears crystal on his lashes, standing in the low lights of Leblanc, kissing Goro desperately as he shook against him. He was beautiful even in his grief, in the anger poorly-hidden in melting-steel eyes when he bit at Goro's lip until he tasted iron. Beautiful and silently begging to be his in any way Goro would let him, and Goro had to leave while he was still able, before they both chose things they couldn't take back.
Even if pulling away from him that night felt like sawing off a vital piece of himself. Akira had weaseled into Goro's pathetic heart and lodged himself there like a damn splinter, and Goro had long given up trying to dig him out.
Now, though... He could do everything he thought he couldn't. He would do everything he thought he couldn't. Deserve Akira's trust. Earn it back if he lost it. (He must have, even Akira wouldn't be foolish enough to offer such a fragile thing after Goro crushed it between his palms over and over.)
He just needed his body to move—pry his eyes open and force himself into working order, or if that proved untenable, find the call button hospital rooms always had, and demand the doctors give him some form of communication, he didn't care what, just something to tell Akira he was alive. Because he knew Akira, knew he'd blame himself for Goro's death a second time over, bearing that weight and a thousand others like Atlas. Goro's first act in keeping him would be nipping that shit in the bud, if only he could move.
He punched through the glass wall separating him from his motor controls with the same stubborn, violent spite he threw at the world everytime it tried to break him. He managed to half-open gritty eyes and lurch half an inch off the bed before something in him screamed a warning. Goro dropped with an aborted cry, a dull pulse breaching the numb haven of morphine and emanating from his chest as it threatened to tear. He froze, scarcely daring to breathe until it eased.
The door knocked open, nurses piling in with blurring faces, drawn by however many alarms Goro just set off.
Fine. The moment he was able to move without killing himself, he'd let Akira know.
Until then, Akira would have to bear the weight.
His little attic room bustled with the noise and movement of eight teenagers and a (not) cat trying to study and woefully struggling to stay on task.
Akira let Makoto's chastising and the combined hijinks of whatever Futaba and Ryuji were doing wash over him, focusing on the advanced math equations in front of him. Makoto was an excellent tutor, and Kawakami had practically dragged him into her office after school to catch him up on the lessons he missed, but the complex formulas still tripped him up too easily.
Absently, he rolled up his sleeves and erased half his work because he carried the wrong variable. The attic got hot with so many people, especially Ann and Ryuji who were both walking furnaces, and only one of them could blame elemental affinity for it.
The conversation around him stuttered. The back of his neck prickled with too many eyes on him.
Akira immediately knew what he did wrong.
He glanced up and found himself on center stage, a range of expressions directed at him and none of them good. Their worry and concern sat heavy on his shoulders, stinging nettles through his skin and between his ribs. He yanked his sleeves back down, scrambling for words to take away the darkness in their eyes and coming up dry.
The atmosphere weighed heavy with the blatant reminder their infallible leader wasn't so infallible and their plan in November didn't come without a cost.
He knew better than to parade his bare wrists and their ugly scarring around by now.
The people who caught sight of them and didn't know what they were stared and gawked in poorly-concealed pity. The people who did were almost worse; the way his friends' eyes would darken and drop, their smiles turning forced as they tried not to let the mood freefall—just like they were doing now. Conversation and pencil scratching slowly filled the air, stilted and unsure.
Akira hated, hated, hated worrying them. Hurting them.
He hid the scars for a reason.
"Are you okay?" Sumire reached over and clasped her hand over his.
Akira could've laughed, the question lancing a fissure through his carefully closed box of everything he wasn't thinking about. Of course he was okay. He had to be.
He survived a year of seeing everything the dark underbelly of humanity's unconscious had to offer, so many murder attempts on him and his friends he lost count by June, an underground room with a broken camera, and shooting false gods in the face because no one else was going to.
He was fine.
(Anytime police milled anywhere near him, he was little more than a cornered dog about to snap.)
(Needles sent him running. Takemi tried to give him a shot last week during a check-in, and Akira didn't even remember fleeing. Only remembered himself when Leblanc's bell rattled above him, phone vibrating nonstop in his pocket with Takemi's stream of texts asking what the hell that was about.)
(He had a gaping chasm in his heart where the boy with starbright eyes and a knife-blade smile Akira condemned to death belonged.)
He was fine.
He slammed the box closed and taped over the cracks. He smiled at Sumire, flipping his hand around to squeeze hers. "Of course."
"Mm, these are so good!" Ann moaned happily.
Akira watched the guy passing them trip over his own feet and flush a ruddy red at the frankly indecent noise Ann just made over crepes. He snorted, catching Ann's attention and pointing out the passerby's too-red ears. "You've killed another one."
Ann laughed, smacking a hand over her mouth to keep powdered sugar from puffing out of it like dragonfire. "That's five this month! I'm on a roll."
The park bench they sat on overlooked the water, sparkling in the cold March sun. They leaned shoulder to shoulder to share their warmth.
Ann had dragged him out of a shift at Leblanc to try out a new crepe stand she found as a reward for surviving final exams. All his friends had taken to stealing him away at a moment's notice: Futaba chasing him out of his room to explore a new game shop, Haru grabbing his hand to sample different vegetable options, Yusuke leading him on a wild goose chase around half the city for the right-colored leaf for his latest inspiration; every day, a different friend determined to spend time together.
Akira always sent Sojiro helpless shrugs as the man's afternoon help was carted away. Not that Sojiro ever put much effort into stopping them, sighing and grumbling even as his mouth twitched with a smile.
Akira's days in Tokyo were dwindling rapidly, after all.
So, crepes.
They chattered and worked through their bag of pastries. Akira listened with a soft smile as Ann rambled on about how Shiho was doing and the weekend trip she was taking to visit her for White Day.
"…Actually, I did want to ask you something."
Akira turned to her, brow scrunching at the sudden somber tone to her voice. She fiddled with the ends of her hair, lips pursed.
"Okay, shoot."
Ann drummed her fingers on her knees, hesitating. "Well, it's on the topic of White Day." Ah. He didn't like where this was going. "And it reminded me. After Valentine's Day, Ryuji told me you boys all ended up at Leblanc, because none of you had dates. And that he wasn't there long before you asked to be alone. And I started to wonder…"
"Ann, I don't—"
"I started to wonder if you spent the night alone because the person you would've asked wasn't… here, anymore."
Akira's breath didn't shake. He turned away, counting the ripples in the water. "Why are you bringing this up now?"
"Well, you haven't talked about him once since you came home. And I'm worried you're going to do the same thing again on White Day. That you'll hide away and— and grieve alone, when you're not."
That wasn't strictly true. He was going to get Sojiro flowers. Whatever he did after that was his business.
"…You loved Akechi, didn't you?"
His heart rattled in his chest. His inhale wasn't any better. He tried again, and the next breath shook just as bad.
He was not going to break down in the middle of a park.
"Oh, Akira…"
Damn it.
Ann pulled him into a fierce, tight hug. He hid his face against her shoulder, glasses digging into his nose, and valiantly kept his eyes dry. The knot in his throat kept him from swallowing the truth. It was easier to admit—felt a little less like vomiting up all the roiling mess inside him—tucked into Ann's shoulder: "I did. I do."
He loved him, and he vehemently didn't regret him. He didn't regret moments leaned together in Jazz Jin, didn't regret kissing him, didn't regret taking the time to know him beyond the pleasant mask and falling helplessly and endlessly. He never would. He cherished every memory, every moment. They were his only lifeline when the grief threatened to break him.
He would grieve Akechi longer than he knew him—
He bit his lip, hard, and tried to stop thinking for a moment.
Ann's arms tightened around him, bone-crushing. "Did he love you?"
Akira's vision swam. He blinked hard. "I'm—I'm not sure. He never said, but…" He remembered the fragile warmth Akechi watched him with in their quiet moments, the possessive intensity of his mouth against his own, the ache in his eyes and in his touch the last night. "I think he might have."
"I think so, too." Ann rested her cheek against his head. "Do you remember in Maruki's palace, when you got knocked down by that Fafnir?"
Akira nodded. It had been the first one they'd ever come across, and Akira's leading Persona had been susceptible to physical damage. Akira went down hard, and the Fafnir nailed him with another devastating hit that staggered him for the rest of the fight. When he finally blinked the stars out of his eyes and remembered how his lungs were supposed to work, he was yanked back on his feet by an irate Crow and scolded to 'pay more attention' and 'not be an idiot about his peanut gallery of Personas'.
(And if that was one of the days they kissed, Akechi's grip on him too tight and mouth insistent as he pinned Akira against a booth seat, well. That was his memory to keep.)
"Akechi went ballistic. Loki completely tore the thing apart. None of us even had a chance to move before it was over and Akechi was at your side. And he was so gentle with you, Akira. I think it was the most candid I'd ever seen him—he held you and you leaned into him, all out of it and mumbling, and he got this look like you were the one that put the moon and stars in his sky. It was really sweet." He could hear the smile in her voice. "Honestly, I felt like I was intruding just standing there."
Akira laughed, a wet little thing. He didn't remember that, and he carefully slotted the knowledge away with all the other memories of him. And, because his mask was still cracked to shit, said, "I miss him so much."
Ann nodded and swayed back and forth, rocking him like a child. He hated dropping this grief on her, but her embrace felt like the first lifeline thrown his way since February. He could recognize he needed this, somewhere in the honest part of him. And he knew Ann understood. He had been there as Ann paced and bit back tears when no one was sure Shiho would wake up. He stayed on the phone with her at 3am through panic attacks those first few days.
Akira closed his eyes and accepted the comfort for what it was, leaning against her until the chill grew too strong to stay outside.
Ann held his hand in both of hers and promised to be a listening ear anytime he needed to talk—about anything, but especially Akechi. Her eyes held no judgment, easing a knotted fear he hadn't been fully aware of until it loosened.
(He never did take her up on that offer, though.)
A few days later, come White Day, there was an immovable rock of a best friend in the attic, and Akira knew Ann, correctly assuming what Akira's plans were, had sicced Ryuji on him. Their care, meddlesome and unrepentant and steadfast, lodged a bittersweet pang between his ribs that he knew would soon become chronic.
He was going to miss them.
March 20th came too soon. He wasn't ready, not at all, but the world had never waited for him and wasn't about to start now. He shot one last look across the attic that had become more of a home to him than his parents' house had ever been. A piece of him was going to stay here when he left, ripped off and bloody.
(He wondered how many more pieces he could lose before he bled to death.)
He shot one last look across the attic, hand clenched too tight around his bag, and went downstairs.
Sojiro stood behind the counter, sifting through a precariously stacked pile of mail. He looked up as Akira came close, a wistful smile crossing his face. "On your way out, huh?"
"Yeah—"
The words were on the tip of his tongue, just like they'd been on miserable nights with fire ants under his skin and every day leading up to now: 'Sojiro, can I stay?'
The fantasy unfurled behind his eyes: staying in the attic, maybe paying his way towards having an actual door. He would help Sojiro in the cafe as often as he needed, so Sojiro could take time off and explore the city with Futaba. Kawakami could help him enroll for his third year at Shujin. All his friends and confidants' eyes would light up when he shared the news, hugging him or clapping his shoulder, and Akira could keep this home nurtured over the last year.
He could fend off the silence here. He wasn't alone here.
He knew what waited back in his hometown.
But Sojiro had already given him so much, and Akira didn't dare ask for more.
He wouldn't be too much.
"—Thanks for everything, Boss."
Sojiro's goodbye ached like all the others had yesterday. Akira smiled at the promise of a future coffee, a budding hope he would be welcomed back one day. He wished the man who was more of a father to him in the last year than his biological father had been his whole life well, and there was no other reason left to stay.
He inhaled the scent of coffee and curry and weathered wood floors, trying to memorize it.
The bell rung above him, the last time for a long time—
"Huh... Kid, wait!"
Akira turned, frowning in confusion.
Sojiro held up a plain envelope from his stack. "This one's addressed to you." He flipped it around, squinting. "No return address, though."
He didn't know anyone who would send a letter over just texting him. The door shut behind him as he stepped back over to the counter. He took the offered envelope, looking it over.
The handwriting…
Akira viciously smothered the hope, because it was impossible. No matter how similar it looked to case notes and essays seen in brief, upside-down flashes across the counter before his attention was drawn away by gloved hands wrapping around a coffee mug and the glint of wine eyes.
His heart beat a staccato rhythm against his chest despite himself, uncaring of how devastating this would be if he was wrong.
He slid his finger beneath the envelope's lip, gently tearing it open. Inside was a small piece of paper, more post-it note than anything. It held one sentence, scrawled in blue ink.
'Hold onto my glove.'
Akira's legs gave out on him and he tumbled into one of the chairs, deaf to Morgana's startled yowl and Sojiro's worried questions.
A breathless laugh punched out of him, tears blurring the words he read again and again.
Akira cradled the note to his chest, laughing and crying and probably scaring the shit out of Sojiro and Morgana. He barely spared them a thought, too overwhelmed by the relief ricocheting like champagne bubbles in his chest.
Akechi was alive.
The weight of his death crashed off his shoulders, and Akira only realized how heavy the grief was when it was gone.
Akechi was alive.
He got a hold of himself, eventually, at least enough to string together a coherent sentence and reassure a fussing Sojiro everything was okay, it was good news—great news, even. He still didn't let Akira walk out the door until he got the waterworks under control, that gruff kindness and concern seeping through every action.
And Akira, floating on bubbling relief, thought one more time about asking to stay.
But he was out of time.
As it was, he barely made the train amidst the excitement of his friends leading a pair of suits on an impromptu tour of the city and the surprise encounter with Maruki (and what a perfect summary of the entire year that chaos was).
The city faded behind him, keeping a part of him he could only hope to stitch back on one day. Watching the woods and countryside, Akira's thumb slid over soft, worn leather within his pocket.
November was unseasonably warm in the countryside.
Goro walked down the cracked-pavement streets, autumn leaves crunching under his shoes as he followed his phone's navigation. The late afternoon sun warmed his back, a faint breeze toyed with his hair, and Goro ran through his plan and all its contingencies a fifth time since he stepped off the train to distract himself from the vague nausea turning his gut.
He was three minutes from Akira's house.
Acquiring his address had been easy. As soon as Goro bothered replacing his phone and logging back into his IM app, he discovered hundreds of unread messages. Nobody had thought to remove him from the Thieves' group chat, apparently, and Goro was not against using that to his own advantage. Akira's address sat within the mountain of messages. All he had to do was copy it down.
(He did find it curious how messages from the fake reality still existed, but trying to puzzle out the hows and whys of that always left him with a headache. At the end of the day, the Metaverse operated on unknowable, fickle rules and figuring them out simply wasn't worth the effort.)
He was two minutes away from appearing on Akira's doorstep without the faintest warning, only mostly certain he would even be home.
…Perhaps he should have texted first, but he needed every edge he could get, surprise being one of them.
His stomach twisted in an anxious knot; his heart jumped with erratic excitement. His mind ran itself in circles. Would Akira be happy to see him? Angry? Or worse—had he moved on? That would be rational, after all. Months had passed with their only contact a one-sentence letter, and for all that they shared, they hadn't shared it for long. Perhaps Akira had come to his senses about how insane it was to care for a person like Goro and found someone easier—
Goro could handle Akira's anger, hoped for his joy, but if Akira's face held nothing but indifference—
He inhaled, forcing his thoughts still. Held his breath to clear his mind, and shut the spiral down before it could start on his exhale.
He had a plan for any number of ways Akira could react to seeing him again. He came prepared. It'd be fine. He gripped the strap of his bag tight enough to feel the bite even through his gloves, and continued on.
He reached the end of the block, phone pinging that he'd arrived. The house before him was large and no different than any other on the block of well-off suburbs with a modest stone half-wall wrapping the perimeter. He walked up the path leading to the door, spotting a familiar figure sunning itself on the front steps.
Morgana's ears flicked at the sound of Goro's footsteps. His little head raised, blinking sleepily. His eyes popped open comically wide when they landed on him. Yowling something Goro did not believe were actual words, he sprinted off around the back of the house before Goro could open his mouth.
Well. Morgana was as good a messenger as any.
Goro stopped at the base of the steps, fingers drumming against his thigh in time with the rapid beat of his pulse. A bird sang somewhere overhead.
He ran through his list of potential opening lines:
'It's been a while.'
'Don't you dare slam the door in my face, we need to talk.'
'Miss me?'
'I missed you.'
Once he saw and interpreted Akira's expression, he'd choose the most apt one accordingly.
From inside the house, there was a racket of thudding steps followed by a sound suspiciously similar to a body crashing into a wall. The door flung open.
Goro hardly had a moment to take in shining grey eyes before Akira threw himself off the steps and into his arms. He grunted, bracing and rocking back on his left foot as he took all of Akira's weight. Akira's arms wrapped tight around his shoulders. Goro's hand mindlessly rose to support his back.
"Akechi." Akira buried his face in Goro's neck.
Goro's heart flopped uselessly in his chest. All his plans went up in a spectacular pillar of smoke, forgotten on the wind.
Nerves left to starve and atrophy flared with an overwhelmed ache everywhere they touched, converging into a dazzling supernova sparking and popping behind his eyes. Akira's hand shifted, rising from his shoulder blade, up his spine, and tangling into the hair at his nape. Goro's breath hitched, the caress threatening to buckle his knees when bearing all of Akira's weight and momentum hadn't.
Akira still smelled like coffee, even months removed from Leblanc.
Goro breathed him in, pressing Akira closer with the hand on his back. "Hey." His voice came out whisper-soft and creaked partway through.
Akira leaned back, studying him from behind those stupid fake glasses. His lips quirked in a playful smile, teasingly tugging at a strand of Goro's hair. "You're back awfully late."
Words from a lifetime ago.
Goro barked a surprised laugh. He knew the grin on his face was crooked, the real one only Akira seemed capable of dragging out of him. "Terribly sorry, honey. I'm home now."
Akira's smile widened, eyes gleaming with unbridled joy. His thumb traced beneath his jaw.
Goro shuddered. He desperately grasped at the charcoal scraps left of his plan in the wake of Akira dropping a grenade in it. Or perhaps the smoking, scattered remains were his own fault for forgetting how hopelessly enthralled he became the moment Akira touched him. "Is there someplace private we could talk?"
Because they needed to talk. Goro couldn't lose himself to gentle touches and the warmth of Akira against him. He came here to throw all his cards at Akira's feet, transparent and raw, and if Akira rejected him, Goro would bear the knife between his ribs and leave. Because no matter how desperately he wanted Akira's want, and trust, and love, he was never going to pretend to be something he wasn't again.
Akira nodded. He didn't move—just kept watching and touching him, like there was nowhere else he'd rather be. His heart did something complicated at the thought, stuttering over a beat and squeezing so hard it ached.
"I did mean now, Akira." He dropped his hand from Akira's back to further his point.
Akira didn't quite pout as he stepped back and motioned towards the house. The heavy sleeves of his plush red-knit cardigan nearly covered his fingers. "Let's go inside."
"Your parents—"
Akira's expression shuttered, the soft wonder on his face disappearing beneath a mask of neutrality. "Not home for another week."
There was an ocean of meaning behind the toneless words.
Goro knew… very little about Akira's home life. Looking back, anytime it may have come up in conversation, Akira expertly dodged around it and pivoted the topic elsewhere. And Goro, so caught up in the deadly, snaring web of his own life, never noticed.
He was noticing now.
Goro followed him inside. Made note when Akira locked the door and deadbolt behind them.
He glanced around while toeing off his shoes. The house was decorated to be a pretty picture for guests, perfectly sanitized with vapid landscape paintings and plastic flowers on shelves. The rugs were a tidy, patterned affair, and Goro was sure there would be hell to pay for whoever tracked mud on them. The whole place was as impressive as it was hollow.
It didn't suit Akira at all, stifling the storm in his eyes and choking everything he was meant to be.
Morgana sat perched on the stairway banister, blue eyes wide.
"Hello, Morgana."
"Akechi," The not-cat bobbed his head, a soft rumble of a purr in his chest. "Welcome back!"
Goro blinked, thrown.
"Mona, do you mind staying down here a while?" Akira asked while Goro stood dumbstruck by the sincere greeting.
"Sure thing!" Morgana chirped. "I'll catch up on my show." He jumped down, traipsing off in the direction of, presumably, the living room. He rounded a corner, tail flicking out of sight.
"Can he turn on the TV?" Goro wondered.
"He's lockpicked doors with those paws before. A TV remote is nothing."
"He's done what?"
Akira glanced over, shooting him a sly little smile, and headed upstairs.
…Whatever. Not important right now.
"Morgana's unusually dexterous paws aside," Goro said as he carefully followed. "I was half-expecting to track you down in Leblanc, rather than the countryside."
"You know I was only there for the duration of my probation." Akira opened one of several doors on the second floor, stepping through the threshold.
"You loved it there, though. A sentiment you don't seem to share here." Goro prodded, closing the bedroom door behind him and automatically flicking the lock. He scanned over all the details and sentimental bits and bobs that made this room Akira's, many of which he remembered from Leblanc's attic. Part of the headboard was obscured by a pile of familiar heart pillows. Goro's scrawled message on a hospital notepad sat on the bedside table. "I'm sure Sakura-san would've been happy to keep you, had you asked."
Because everyone who met Akira was helpless against loving him, and Goro knew Sakura Sojiro had come to see Akira as his own son. It was absurd Akira was here, isolated in this empty house with absent or, if Goro's suspicions were true, downright neglectful parents, rather than in a cafe where he was loved.
(And Goro had hated him for being so easy to love. Had bitterly envied it everytime he saw the warmth Sakura regarded him with.)
Akira stepped onto his bed, walking across the mattress and dropping cross-legged in the center of it. He twisted at his hair. "I didn't ask."
"Perhaps you should have."
Akira shook his head, a subtle little thing. A smile veiled the distant expression on his face. "It's fine." He patted the bed next to him. Voice light and curious, he asked, "Where have you been?"
It was certainly not fine, and they would be circling back to ferrying Akira back to Tokyo later if Goro had any say about it.
He shot Akira an unimpressed look for the blatant topic change, setting his bag on the floor. "I woke up in a hospital some time after we destroyed the fake reality." He lingered by the bedside table, brushing his fingers over the unassuming note he'd spent hours deliberating over. Akira had kept it, set it somewhere in plain sight and easy reach. Surely that meant something. Akira's elated reunion, his attention, the note, surely it meant… But he couldn't assume. Life had never been that kind to him.
"I sent this as soon as I was able to."
"Thank you."
Goro glanced at him. "Save your gratitude. It was the least I could do."
Casually, he pulled off his gloves, one at a time, and set them down beside the note. He ignored Akira's surprised 'oh'.
Goro knew he would understand. Given the choice, he wore the gloves as another barrier between himself and the world—part of a mask against all its rot. Little different than Akira's glasses, when he thought about it.
He sat on the bed, settling across from Akira. "I spent the first couple months suffering through hovering nurses and arduous physiotherapy. After, I found Sae-san and helped her weed out the remnants of the Conspiracy. I had to put the various personnel lists and evidence I'd painstakingly gathered to use somehow, since someone had already taken the fall to convict Shido."
"Should I say 'sorry' or 'you're welcome'?"
"You can be quiet." Goro snipped.
Akira snorted, amusement flashing in his eyes, and ducked his head in the most insolent acquiescence someone could manage.
Goro scowled, briefly entertaining the urge to cuff him over the head. "Sae-san drove a hard bargain, however. She only allowed me to help if I showed continued proof that I was working through my 'traumatic experiences.'" Goro was not above using air quotes on the last words.
"...Like, therapy?" Akira asked doubtfully.
"Fuck no. She and I compromised on an independent study."
Once they'd finished arguing over it, Sae had dropped a veritable mountain of books on him. Most were the damn psychology and mental health books, but she also hounded him into studying so he could test out and earn his diploma.
He hated every second of it, rotting away over calculus and the difference between CBT and DBT when he just wanted to rip down the last of his father's legacy. When he just wanted to look Akira in the eye and tell him Goro had crushed the scum that had bruised and bled him in the interrogation room beneath his heel.
(Sae didn't permit that, either.)
She stayed when she arrived at his apartment and found a book shredded and thrown across the floor. She listened as Goro snarled and snapped that a damn book wasn't going to magically fix broken, unwanted things. Stood there as he turned vicious to hide the frightened thing inside him trembling beneath words like grooming and abuse, of children used and pressured under an adult's hand without even knowing.
'No,' she'd said. 'Of course not. That's something you have to do.'
She worked with him even when he wanted nothing more than to gouge someone's eyes out (gouge his own eyes out) as he tried to heal.
She smiled at him, unveiled pride in her eyes, when he quietly slid his diploma across the table to her.
He would never be able to repay her for everything she did for him.
Akira's brow scrunched. His eyes lit with the realization. "Oh my god, Akechi Goro read self-help books."
Goro grabbed a pillow from the head of the bed and chucked it at him, ears burning.
Akira caught it easily, laughing as he hugged it to his chest. He looked deplorably cute. Goro smothered the urge to grab him or bite him or squeeze him until he wheezed.
"Did they help?" Akira asked softly.
Goro sighed. "Yes. They were… illuminating. And beyond frustrating."
"I'm glad," Akira murmured. "Frustration notwithstanding, of course."
"It was the lesser of two evils." Goro waved his hand to brush away the topic, skin prickling beneath his gentle stare and genuine words. "Moving on, as of last month, all remaining members of the Conspiracy will be going to trial, with my name nowhere on record."
"And now you're here?"
"…Now I'm here." Goro twisted the duvet beneath them with his fingers and couldn't quite meet Akira's eyes when he asked, "Tell me, do you regret the time we shared together?"
"No." Akira's response was immediate. Relief turned Goro's bones to melting candle wax. "Never." He bit his lip, words clearly trapped behind his teeth.
No stranger to Akira's penchant for keeping the vast majority of his thoughts to himself, especially when his own emotions were involved, Goro stayed quiet. Left the baton in Akira's hand and waited for his truth.
"I've never regretted the time we spent together, but… I was angry, for a while." Akira admitted, finally and slowly. "If Maruki hadn't forced your hand, you were planning to just vanish without a trace and leave me to learn the truth after you were already gone. But it didn't last, because I understood why you did it." And, quieter, eyes slipping to the side, "I just wish you could have trusted me."
"I did trust you. I wouldn't have let you so close otherwise. I just…"
"I know."
"Didn't make it hurt less, though. Is that right?"
Akira's arms tightened around his pillow. His silence and downcast eyes were admittance enough.
Goro breathed in, held it, breathed out. Threw his cards down. "I don't regret my actions, not the way society wants me to or how better people would. I hold no remorse for the vast majority of the people I killed. But," He reached out, the back of his fingers tentatively trailing over the soft cardigan hiding Akira's wrist. Akira stiffened. "I do regret the pain you suffered because of me. I want to amend that."
Akira caught his hand and laced their fingers together. He looked down at their entwined hands, face carefully blank.
The truth wasn't pretty. It was far less than Akira deserved. It wasn't even an apology.
Any apology would be a lie.
"I'm hardly reformed—I'm not a good person, or even a decent one, and you should hold no illusions to the contrary," Goro continued into the silence. "Given the necessary opportunity and motive, I'd kill again."
"You sound certain." Akira glanced up, and it wasn't judgment in his gaze, but curiosity.
"I had one of the men who was in the interrogation room with you in front of me, and if not for Sae, I would have cracked his skull in half on the pavement."
As it was, he only got as far as breaking the man's nose and shutting him up before Sae hauled him back and the startled Pub Sec officer shoved the man into the police car.
(The next book Sae forced into his hand was for anger management. It felt slightly patronizing.)
Akira's eyes went wide behind his glasses. He stared for a long moment, before his gaze skittered away. "Ah."
"In case it wasn't clear, you were the motive."
"Yeah," Akira said, strangled. "I got that."
Goro tilted his head, studying Akira's reaction. He didn't seem revolted or uncomfortable. Akira still held his hand, tighter than before. He almost looked like he was pleased, and trying very hard not to be, and failing.
Goro allowed himself a small smile. "Quite the peculiar Achilles' Heel I've found myself with, caring about you."
All cards down.
His pulse roared in his ears and dragging the words from his chest cavity felt rather like dying, but there was the bloody truth of him, beating and convulsing on the duvet between their knees.
Akira exhaled shakily, hand squeezing his almost painfully tight.
Goro waited. Told himself he was ready for a knife or a gentle touch.
"I care about you, too." Akira looked up, smiling with the same relentless acceptance that knocked Goro to his knees time and time again.
"As I am?" He needed to be sure.
Akira's hand not threaded with his own rose, brushing Goro's bangs aside and tucking wayward hair behind his ear. "As you are. I never liked you because you were nice, Akechi." Akira's smiled shifted, a little more playful. "But maybe don't go around attempting murder in broad daylight. We can't do much if you get thrown in jail."
"Oh, is that the only reason?" Tingling warmth remained along the paths Akira's fingers took, long after he'd returned to holding the pillow in his lap.
Akira shrugged, the curve of his lips enigmatic, and maintained plausible deniability by not answering.
"Fine," Goro sighed, as if he actually had plans to return to assassination and was painstakingly parting with them. "Being hunted by the law would make it significantly harder to spend my time how I want to, anyway."
"Yeah? What'd you have in mind?"
I want to make you happy, he couldn't quite manage to say, even bolstered by the giddy brightness threatening to crack his sternum open. What a foreign concept, happiness. "Well," He started conversationally and confessed, "I'd like to ruin you for anyone else."
Not words Akira had been expecting, considering the way he sputtered, "Akechi, jesus—"
"Call me by my given name, Akira."
"—Goro. Do you know how that sounds—"
"I'm aware." He held Akira's gaze, making certain he understood the promise behind the words. "You know I'm a selfish person by nature. I want to ensure you can't look at anyone else the way you look at me. That I ravage your thoughts the same way you do mine and claim a permanent place behind your ribs. Will you let me?"
"I think you already have." Akira's laugh was a helpless thing. His free hand dipped into his pocket and pulled out a long-familiar glove. "I carry your glove everywhere." His gaze flickered away, embarrassed. "I have from the moment you gave it to me. It was all I had left of you when I thought..."
The dark part of his mind, the one honed into too sharp a knife, reveled in Akira's inability to move on when he thought Goro dead. To be so wanted…
God, it was everything he ever craved.
He covered Akira's hand and curled his fingers around the glove in his palm.
"That's not an answer."
"Yes."
Goro edged closer, knees pressing into Akira's shins, and kissed him.
Akira's lips slotted against his own, perfect and soft and his. Stars danced across the back of his eyelids, spelling Akira's name, and Goro was going to make damn sure he ruined Akira as thoroughly as Akira had him. He savored the slow slide of the chaste kiss for a moment, perhaps an indulgent two, before pulling himself back.
Akira swayed after him, but Goro had a promise to uphold. He took the glove from Akira's hand, hooked a finger under the bridge of his glasses and stole those, too.
Akira watched him, the unobscured intensity of his eyes stronger than any neutron star. He'd nearly forgotten the totality of their gravity, the knife's edge threat of being seen, seen through, known.
He blindly set his procured items aside and raised their still-entwined hands. He saw the flicker of trepidation across Akira's face, felt the tense resistance of his arm as he moved it. Goro tightened his hold and pulled him closer. With his free hand, he grazed the tips of his fingers just beneath the hem of his sleeve, purposeful.
"So you did see, then," Akira realized, sagging. "I don't blame—"
"Hush," Goro interrupted. "I know you don't." He pushed the sleeve up, revealing the heavy scarring circling Akira's wrist. "Even if I don't understand how."
Akira may not blame him, but Goro knew his part in putting them there.
Time had done what it could, but against ragged, repeated trauma and a lack of proper care—Goro knew Akira didn't allow them to heal properly—there was only so much to be done. Raised, pale lines crossed over bruise-red valleys in a knotted, twisted braid banding the delicate skin. Each overlapping scar a history of pain suffered, endured, and survived.
Perhaps he looked at them too long, perhaps he didn't keep the shadows from his eyes, and Akira tried to tug away, free hand flitting at his sleeve to hide them away again.
Goro refused to let him.
He raised their joined hands to his face. Holding Akira's gaze, he pressed a tender kiss to the inside of his wrist, right over the ragged scars.
Akira choked on air. Bright pink pooled across his nose and cheekbones, sinking down towards his neck.
Goro grinned, eyes glinting. His lips dragged across Akira's skin. "So, this is how I make you blush."
"You—don't have to—"
He wasn't listening to a word of that. He pressed another kiss to another scar, and Akira's jaw snapped shut on an aborted squeak of a noise.
Goro lavished every bit of the scars in gentle attention, acutely aware of Akira's rapid pulse fluttering beneath his fingers. Akira's face was a burning red by the time Goro let go of his hand. He was hopelessly trying to hide in his pillow.
Goro caught his other hand. Akira didn't fight him this time, pliant in his grip despite—or perhaps because of—the flush on his skin and stuttered, uneven breaths.
He pulled back the sleeve and kissed the knotted scars of his other wrist, too. He did it slowly, pressing against skin until he was sure the warmth of his mouth sank deeper than bone. Until he was sure Akira would look at these scars and think of this, before any of the other memories attached to them.
By the time he was satisfied, Akira was trembling in his grip.
Goro traced his thumb over the scars. "My job is going to be quite easy if you react like this to something so small."
"'Small—'" Akira repeated indignantly, head jerking up. His lashes glistened in the light.
Goro almost backpedaled, a shard of anxiety cutting through him. But then the pillow was carelessly flying across the bed; there were hands on his face, in his hair, and Akira smashed their mouths together. He worked Goro's lips open immediately, and any worry he'd made a mistake shattered to nothing.
They'd gotten good, in January, at the push and pull of this. The rhythm and the dance without choreography. Just the spontaneous call-and-response of their mouths, their hands, their bodies.
It felt so good to fall to that rhythm again, answering Akira's every step with his own to pull them higher, brighter, closer to the stars. Akira's tongue pushed into his mouth, slick against his own. Goro dragged him closer, closer, until Akira was in his lap and Goro had to tilt his head back to not lose the kiss.
In his more delirious moments, drunk on Akira's mouth, he'd thought about asking Akira to learn to dance with him. The thought returned now, a film's reel of what could be: Akira would take to dancing as splendidly as he did anything else, his feline grace and Joker's showmanship translating perfectly to the dancefloor. Music would urge him into motion, into a hypnotic sway of his hips, into sparkling eyes over a siren's smile, into a hand offered to go together. Goro would take it, of course he would. They would domineer the floor, matching and playing off each other the same way they kissed. They would compete to see who would lead and inevitably slip into something far more mercurial—Akira's hand on his waist guiding him through complex footwork across the room until Goro spun them and dipped him, Akira throwing his head back and laughing—
Goro's hands clenched bruisingly tight on Akira's waist, punching a moan from him Goro eagerly tasted. Greedy, so fucking greedy. He had Akira in his lap, panting into his mouth, and Goro drowned in wanting more.
Akira nipped the swell of his lip, purposely provocative, and Goro lost his train of thought in favor of teaching Akira his actions had consequences.
Back in January, stolen kisses were always just that—stolen in a moment, rushed and discrete.
(When Joker pulled him around a corner with a flimsy excuse, dexterous fingers working at the fastenings of his helmet, Goro had almost wished the other thieves would track them down. Would see Joker pressing him against the wall. Would see Goro's clawed gauntlets slipping into the unseen space between greatcoat and clinging vest.
Would see who Joker chose.)
But now, they had time. They had privacy.
That said.
Goro caught Akira's hands before slender fingers worked open the next button of his shirt.
"Too fast?" Akira pulled back, winded. The violent blush had faded to a mild blossom pink across his nose. His lips were kiss-swollen red, and a vibrant cherry at his bottom lip where Goro rolled his teeth until Akira moaned for him.
Goro may have forgotten the question.
Akira wiggled captured fingers.
"No." Goro kicked his brain back online, forcefully reining it away the distraction of his mouth. "You're not the only one scarred by last year."
Akira glanced down, where the cost of Goro's survival hid beneath his shirt. He nodded, eyes liquid silver when they met Goro's. "Let me see?"
He released Akira's hands, finding his waist to hold instead. "Not your best excuse to get me shirtless. Think of a better one next time."
Akira grinned, leaning forward to knock their noses together. "Do I need excuses to see my beautiful partner?"
Partner. A blush crawled over Goro's face, and he despised it. "Just get on with it."
Laughing under his breath, Akira did as demanded. His fingers brushed fleeting glances on Goro's chest as they made quick work of the buttons, leaving warm, skittering sparks in their wake.
He pushed the shirt off his shoulders, and Goro slipped his arms free.
Akira's breath shook, looking between wounds that nearly (should have) proved fatal. His hands hovered just short of touching. "Do they hurt?"
"No," Goro said automatically and tasted the lie. He grimaced. "Sometimes. The bullets left their mark." Akira watched him with his lacerating stare, waiting. "...It's fine right now. Don't treat me like I'm fragile."
Akira huffed, eyes catching with determined fire.
Goro miserably failed holding back a stuttered gasp as Akira spread his hands over his chest, all at once, molten gold sinking through his skin and gilding his sternum, his ribs.
"The last thing you are is fragile." Akira's lashes hung low as he watched his thumbs brush sweet, scalding lines beneath Goro's collarbones. "I'm still going to touch you gently and treat you with the care you were never given." His fingertips pushed into and against him. His voice steeled, all Joker. "Now lay back."
Goro obeyed without a thought, too dazzled by Akira's hands on his bared skin to do anything else. His head hit the pillow. His chest and hip pulsed with a single, aching throb.
He laid there and trusted Akira wouldn't play target practice with the obvious chinks in his armor. Wouldn't drive hands meant to hurt through him and leave him for dead.
(He learned early on no one but his mother put their hands on him with the intent to touch gently. Touch was a threat; bruising his jaw, ripping his hair, grinding the bones in his wrist to dust. Any longing for it he might've had died under heavy hands.
For years, his skin crawled whenever someone touched him. For years, he violently suppressed the conditioned flinch response when hands reached for him—)
The vulnerability tore through him. Instinct to throw Akira off and never be put on his back again reared its head. Goro viciously beat it down, hands fisting into the sheets, because Akira was safe.
He trusted him.
For all that trust, Goro was still entirely blindsided when Akira ducked down and pressed a slow, searing kiss to the pale starburst scar just right of his heart. Goro swallowed whatever pitiable noise was about to come out of his mouth.
Akira's hands wrapped around Goro's sides, fingers finding the sensitive spaces between his ribs and holding.
Goro inhaled sharply, just to savor their resisting pressure against him. His hands snapped up to tangle in soft curls as Akira branded the scar to the shape of his lips. He shut his eyes against the pressure building behind them.
(He didn't remember much of anything after being shot pointblank in the chest. He had no idea how he got out of that ship alive—had only the vaguest impressions of slipping in his own blood and Loki's clawed hands dragging him upright because they weren't going to die like this. Of Robin Hood's voice and steady shoulder, urging him forward because they had a promise to keep.
He survived that bullet with a grazed lung and rod of raw scar tissue piercing through his chest and out his back, scant centimeters from his heart.
The doctors told him it was a miracle it didn't perforate his heart or lung. That if it had, he would have been dead long before ever reaching the hospital.
Goro didn't believe in miracles. He didn't have a better answer.)
Pressing one more kiss right over his heart, Akira slid down the length of his body. Goro wanted to wrestle away the cardigan and shirt, and know if the bared breadth of his shoulders and the line of his spine were as sinuous and graceful as he thought they'd be.
Akira kissed the crest of his right hip and the raised, gnarled scar there, with a pressure gentler than before, like he knew the tender bone and muscle underneath.
(He remembered the lightning-snap pain from the cognition's first shot, the innate understanding that something in him had just broken. His leg had all but given out on him, and any half-cocked thoughts of reaching Joker before bringing down the bulkhead door died in their cradle.
Later, he would learn the bullet had shattered and lodged in the iliac crest of his pelvic bone, requiring intensive surgery and hellish recovery. Even after months of physical therapy, he couldn't move the way he used to. Trying laid him out for hours afterwards.)
Akira branded the scar there, too; soft, reverent kisses pressed to the pale mark again and again.
Goro trembled under him, fingers clenching in Akira's hair to keep from shaking. He remembered much too late, lashes wet and suffocating on ruthless affection, why Akira was a bad idea.
A knife would have been so much easier to bear.
Every soft press hurt like a gunshot like moonlight eyes like the noose of loving and being loved. He couldn't breathe, and if Akira pulled away now, Goro wasn't sure he wouldn't start begging.
(He was the best choice Goro ever made.)
Akira drifted just to the side of his scar, lips brushing over hale skin as he asked, "Does here hurt?"
"No," Goro managed past the knot in his throat.
Warning bells echoed in his head as Akira's hands moved, one locking around his good hip and the other holding down his thigh well beneath his scar.
Akira's mouth latched onto the skin at his inner hip and sucked.
Goro moaned, high and reedy and humiliating. Hot sparks fractured through every nerve. Akira's grip on him was the only reason he didn't jackknife off the bed.
"Akira—" He tugged at his hair, to push him away or force him closer—he wasn't sure.
Akira raised his head, mouth breaking from his skin with a noise turned gasoline to the fire under Goro's skin. He admired the dark mark left behind, absently thumbing over it.
"Yeah." Akira nodded decisively, grey eyes a fascinating shade of dark, and set about bruising fucking hickeys in a ring around his scar and across both hips.
And Goro didn't, exactly, try to stop him.
Rather, laid there ruined by the contrary sensations of Akira's agonizing sweetness and tender possessiveness.
Once Goro's breath was suitably ragged, he moved on, trailing glancing kisses back up his stomach and lingering over his rapid-beat heart. There, he whispered, "I'm so happy you're here." He pressed another kiss to the scar centimeters to the side. His voice teetered. "Thank you for coming back to me."
Goro's breath cracked on a sob. He dragged Akira up, muffled himself on Akira's lips and let him taste the noises he caused instead. His hands caught in the soft fabric of Akira's cardigan and shoved it off his shoulders until Akira got the hint and shrugged out of it. He worked his tongue into Akira's mouth, flicking behind his teeth the way that always made him shudder.
Akira whined, weight settling over him so he could bury his hands in Goro's hair.
Their hips slotted, pressing the truth of their arousal flush together. Akira gasped low into his mouth, bucking reflexively against him. Shocks of pleasure ratcheted up Goro's spine, wrenching a keen from his throat.
They both froze.
Akira tilted back, just enough to stare at him like a deer. His pupils were blown wide in desire, cheeks staining with a new wash of red, mouth parted. He hesitated.
"Is this okay?" Akira asked, as if he couldn't feel just how mutual the desire ran. As if Goro didn't walk back into his life with the sole intent to take and give everything he could with greedy hands and an all-encompassing hunger.
In a move better suited for wrestling mats than the bedroom, Goro rolled them, barely remembering not to crush his poor-off hip beneath his own weight. Akira yelped as he fell, back hitting the mattress.
Goro straddled him. "Hesitating now, Joker? After mauling my hips? That doesn't seem particularly fair, does it?" He toyed with the hem of Akira's shirt. He smiled with a knife's edge, watching how it made Akira's throat bob.
Akira's hands settled on Goro's thighs. He didn't rise to the bait. Instead, his eyes flicked between Goro's, searching.
Goro leaned over him, hands on either side of his head. He softened and said, "I want everything I can of you. That includes this."
Akira relaxed back into the mattress, hands tracing symmetric patterns across his thighs. "Me too." Then, he grinned, and there he was. His Akira, brazen and confident and infuriating for it. "Do your worst."
Goro matched his grin. He was going to make Akira eat those words.
He rucked up his shirt, revealing swathes of pale, unmarked skin. He left Akira to fend for himself getting the shirt over his head, focusing his attention on mapping the flat plane of his stomach and the slats of his ribs beneath his hands. Softly-toned muscle quivered under his touch, and Goro swallowed dryly. He was so fucking attractive, and sorely missing Goro's mark on him.
Akira's shirt flew over the edge of the bed. Goro ducked down, nosing at Akira's jaw until he tilted his head back. He pressed sweet, unassuming kisses down the line of his throat. He caught the muscle along the side of his neck between his teeth and bit.
"Ah— Fuck!" Akira cursed, jolting beneath him and moaning loud enough Goro clapped a hand over his mouth. Morgana was still downstairs.
Goro soothed the bite with a pointed swipe of his tongue. Akira shuddered, breath hot and damp against his palm. Goro leaned back to admire his work. A perfect impression of Goro's teeth branded the side of Akira's neck, already bruising a pretty shade of red-violet. A thrill curled through him, adding to the molten heat steadily flooding his veins.
"Pretty," Goro purred.
Akira moaned a muffled, intelligent, "Hn."
Goro laughed, low and breathy, and lowered himself to further his claim. He kissed and bit (gentler) bruises across Akira's throat and down his chest. He didn't stop until Akira was panting and whining beneath his hand, fingernails digging bruised crescents of their own into Goro's shoulders. His hips twitched with short, aborted rolls.
He released Akira's mouth, fingertips dragging down his jaw and tracing over the canvas of Goro's mark on him. Bruises and bites collared Akira's throat, dripping down the lines of his tendons and over his collarbones. They were going to be near impossible to hide.
He grinned, prideful and pleased. "Anyone who sees you is going to know you're mine."
Akira whined, rutting up into him.
"You like that? Being mine?"
Akira nodded eagerly. "Yeah—yes—"
Goro pressed against the marks to feel their heat, so Akira would feel their honeyed ache—
—And realized where his hand was when Akira's pulse jumped against his fingers. He dragged his thumb over Akira's pulse point, palm pressed to his windpipe. His fingers twitched against the side of his neck.
It would be so easy to bear down and crush his trachea. Squeeze his carotid arteries and suffocate his brain. Claw open those arteries and watch his blood stain the bed.
He didn't want to.
His hand was shaking against the fragility of Akira's life.
Did Akira know?
"Goro." Akira's voice vibrated up his wrist, sinking into his bones.
He looked up. Akira watched him with lidded, trusting eyes blown dark with desire. His chin was tilted back, baring the entirety of his throat to Goro and the weapon he could be.
Akira's trust sat in his hands, under his palm, leaden and fragile as a baby bird. He didn't know when Akira had given it back to him. Hysterically, running through everything that happened since Akira's door flung open, he realized Akira may have never taken it from him in the first place.
His fingers pressed along the sides of his neck. Gentle. Firm. Testing.
Akira's lashes fluttered shut. Kiss-swollen lips parted on a soundless whine.
Which was—
They would definitely be revisiting this, Goro thought wildly. Another night.
"You're insane," Goro breathed. "Cracked in the head, even."
"For you, yeah," He agreed easily, voice strained and smile serene.
Frenzied, he cradled Akira's face and caught his mouth in a bruising kiss. Iron stained their tongues, dripping from a lip nicked by eager teeth. He didn't know which of them was bleeding, didn't care to find out when Akira hooked his hand around the back of his skull to pull him impossibly closer.
Akira pushed at his knee. Goro shifted to lie flat on top of him, Akira's legs parting to make space. Akira's hand slipped around his side to his back, blindly tracing up then down the length of his spine. Goro jolted, something high-pitched and startled tripping off his lips, when that hand slid lower and shamelessly groped his ass.
Akira laughed into his mouth and held him there as he experimentally bucked his hips.
Goro hissed against the sparking pleasure, removing his tongue from ravaging Akira's mouth just long enough to demand, "Again."
Akira repeated the action, this time guiding Goro down as he came up, and oh, that was better.
Goro was going to berate Akira for the wanton fondling of his ass, but later, after the steady, mindless grind of their hips and the slick slide of a kiss growing decidedly more uncoordinated as they chased their own pleasure.
He knew they could be satisfied with just this—heat dripping syrupy-sweet, Akira's soft, breathy gasps a drug hit straight to the veins—but it could be better.
Goro broke the kiss, drawing in a desperate inhale. He licked Akira's taste off his lips, feeling the sting of a cut. His blood, then. "Tell me what you want."
Akira's breathless answer came far more readily than he expected. "Touch me, let me touch you, anything—" Fingers hooked in one of his belt loops, tugging. "Take these off."
Goro raised himself just enough to let them work free of the last of their clothes, eager hands knocking against each other and struggling through belts and buttons. Everywhere he wasn't touching Akira iced over, and he needed to feel Akira's chest heaving against his own again immediately.
With an impatient growl, he kicked off his pants and briefs. He hooked his heel in the band of Akira's pants, caught halfway down his calves, and wrenched those off, too.
He pinned Akira back down, chasing after him and pressing achingly close. Akira was so hot. Everywhere they touched shattered to fractals and shooting stars. He could handle the bare press of their chests, but this—
Goro's head dropped to rest against Akira's, trying to breathe.
Akira's hips rocked, chasing friction like he was helpless to do anything else. Goro whined, wounded and low, overwhelmed by the frissons of pure heat. Akira coaxed him into a slow grind that was so much sharper now. Goro panted helplessly into the scant, heady space between their lips.
This close, foreheads pressed together, Akira's features blurred—long lashes fuzzy and indistinct, pupils voids of space eclipsing hazy grey.
He could—He could make this better.
Shakily, he shifted, dragging his fingers down Akira's stomach, and took them both in hand.
Akira's back arched off the bed, head knocking back against the pillow. A broken, choked mewl tore from his throat.
Goro needed to make him sound like that again, no matter how his own hand and the firebrand of Akira against him brought overwhelmed tears to his eyes.
"Fuck, fuck— Do you have—"
Akira was already reaching for the table drawer, blindly smacking around before finding what he wanted. A cap popped open.
In a moment, a slick hand joined his, working in tandem to spear white-hot pleasure through Goro's spine and force the tension in his core close to snapping.
Goro twisted his hand and was instantly rewarded with another broken sound. Warmth bloomed through his chest.
Akira's lips pressed to his temple. "Nnh, yes—just like that—so good, Goro—"
There was no hiding his reaction—the cracking sob or the whole-body shake. Goro buried his face against Akira's shoulder, losing the fight against the tears building on his lashes.
He felt Akira smile against him. His hand urged them faster while he flayed Goro to ribbons with quiet, hitching words, "You, ah, make me feel so good—So perfect for me. All mine—"
He stifled the cry of Akira's name in his shoulder, teeth biting one last bruise. The tension snapped, the world blurring to a white din of stars collapsing and flaring outwards into blinding supernovae.
Somewhere outside the collapsing universe of his body, he felt Akira's thighs quaking against his hips, heard Akira's broken moan of his name, knew their hips stuttered to a slow stop in the aftershocks.
He floated on stardust, content and not a thought in his head for hours, minutes, some indistinct pass of time.
Akira drew pleasant, nonsensical patterns in the valley of his back. A less-than-pleasant tackiness was drying between their bodies.
He couldn't be bothered to move from his boneless sprawl trapping Akira to the bed, however.
"That better be your clean hand," Goro warned, at some point.
"Mm, 'course, honey," Akira mumbled, clearly still caught up in his own afterglow.
Eventually, he dredged up the energy to roll off Akira, wrinkling his nose at the way their bodies stuck.
Akira followed him, rolling onto his side and coaxing him into a lazy kiss.
"Towel," Goro demanded, even as he kissed him back.
"Mhm," He agreed and didn't leave the bed until Goro got irritated enough to start kicking at him.
Goro watched him as he walked around the bed looking for his underwear, eyes roving down the defined slope of his back, the swell of his ass, the strong line of his legs. His teeth itched with the need to mark more of that pale skin.
Akira noticed the heavy weight of his stare and smirked, tongue flashing over his lips. Goro wanted to catch it between his teeth and scrape against its surface. Akira arched his back and swayed his hips, making a show of dragging black fabric up his legs.
(And Goro thought about dancing.)
He considered the prospect of grabbing the little tease and throwing him back on the bed for another round.
He was too sated to act on the impulse. For now.
He hummed in appreciation of the pretty picture before him regardless, let his lashes hang low as he watched. Akira grinned with all the self-satisfaction of a cat with cream and, with a wink and a blown kiss, was out the door.
Alone, Goro shut his eyes and exhaled all the air in his lungs. He stretched, feeling scar tissue pull, but nothing flared.
Everything had gone… well. Unbelievably well. It felt impossible, but then again, Akira was impossible, and confounding, and surprised him at every turn, so maybe this was all par for the course, really.
He knew he should be wary of such good fate, but…
He left the pointless thought behind, looking towards the window instead. The sky was dark. Through the half-closed blinds, he couldn't see the locking mechanism of the glass panes.
His fingers twitched.
The door clicked open, and Goro's attention jumped back to Akira. Who was stalled in the doorway, staring at him with a small towel in hand.
Goro tilted his head. Akira looked positively transfixed.
"Are you going to give that here any time soon?" He asked, raising his eyebrows.
Akira blinked back to himself, eyes settling into something a little less wide and a lot more coy. "Sorry," He shut the door and crawled into bed, fingers lacing with Goro's hand resting just above his head. "I've got this beautiful man laying naked in my bed—" Goro jumped at the touch of warm, damp cloth swiping over his stomach— "Posing prettier than a renaissance painting." Akira kissed him, smiling all the while. "I got a little distracted."
"Seems like you're still distracted." Goro steadfastly ignored the burning in his face and the heart tripping over itself in his chest. He'd been complimented before, knew he was conventionally attractive—he wouldn't have been near as popular as the Detective Prince if he wasn't—but the words coming from Akira's mouth were lethal. His half-hearted swipe for the towel was deftly dodged. "I can clean myself."
"I want to," Akira said, and kissed any argument off his lips. The slide of their mouths was sweet, all of the affection and none of the heat. Goro settled into it, let Akira do as he pleased until his skin was clean and he drew back. "Do you want a change of clothes?"
"I have my own." He gestured in the vague direction of where he'd set down his bag.
"You're spending the night?"
"…That, or getting a hotel—"
"Stay here," Akira interrupted, fast and eager, hand tightening in his. "…Please?"
Goro squeezed Akira's hand before letting go, standing up to grab his bag and root through it for sleep clothes. "I have some conditions," He said, pulling on underwear with far less showmanship than Akira.
Akira blinked at him, slowly, like a cat.
"Morgana stays downstairs." Goro ticked down one finger.
"Planning on getting handsy again?" Akira teased, eyes glinting.
Goro didn't resist the urge to cuff him over the head, this time.
Akira laughed, ducking. "I'll bribe him with sushi."
"You're certain your parents won't come home earlier than expected?"
The neutral shutter slammed over his expression, again. "Yeah. It'd be hard for them to do so from Europe."
"…Fine. Last one, then." Goro sat on the edge of the bed after tying off his sweatpants, forgoing a shirt for the moment. "Answer a question."
Akira was smart enough to be wary, pausing before he said, "Sure?"
Goro caught his hand, threading his fingers through Akira's. Akira relaxed beneath the swipe of his thumb over his knuckles. "How bad are your nightmares?"
Akira startled. A hunted look passed over his face. He wavered, and Goro prepared his accusations to smash through Akira's denial or deflection. But, his shoulders slumped and, quietly, he asked, "How—?"
"Don't insult me. 'Not sleeping well' only ever means one thing, and if they were so severe in January you were in Kichijoji at midnight running from them, I doubt they've stopped."
"I—if I have them, I don't thrash or anything. Morgana doesn't even notice if I get out of bed, anymore." Akira twisted a curl around his fingers, avoiding eye contact. "I wouldn't disturb you."
"Akira," Goro barely kept from growling. What the fuck. "That's not why I'm asking."
Akira sank further into himself, head turned away.
Goddamn it.
Kurusu Akira, always so selfless. For all he meddled in people's lives and took a bat to the corrupt pillars of society, he wouldn't do a thing for himself. Wouldn't share his burdens with anyone, wouldn't ask for help, wouldn't be too much for the people he cared about. The modern Atlas for no fucking reason.
It drove Goro insane.
"Have you forgotten?" Despite the bite of his tone, his fingers caught Akira's jaw gently, firm but nonviolent as he turned his face back to him. "You don't get to hide from me."
"What's the point? They're just dreams." Akira still wasn't looking him in the eye, instead focused somewhere by his mouth. "You can't exactly kill them."
Goro dug deep for patience he hardly had. "You can, however, talk about them so they don't rot and fester, which I'm certain they're doing in your head now."
"I'm handling them, I promise."
"That's not what I'm asking. You fucking know that."
"Just—drop it, please." Akira tried to shift away.
"No." Goro's fingers tensed on Akira's jaw, hard enough to dip hollows into his skin and keep him in place. "You may fool everyone else with your smoke and mirrors routine, but I'm not that easy."
Akira sagged, eyes closing. "I know you're not."
"Then tell me."
Akira leaned forward, and Goro allowed him to tuck his face away into the crook of his shoulder. Goro's hand slid from his jaw to wrap around the back of his neck.
"They're not… fun, ever." Akira murmured. Which translated roughly to 'god awful'. His lips brushed featherlight over Goro's skin. "But they are rarer."
"Define rarer."
"Once or twice a week? I don't keep track."
"Have you talked to anyone about them?" Goro asked. Then frowned. "Does anyone even know you have them at all?"
Akira shook his head. "Think Morgana and Futaba suspect it, but…"
Fucking Atlas.
Goro tugged at Akira's hair, making his displeasure known. "When you have nightmares, you're going to tell me immediately. I don't care what time it is, you will wake me up if I'm sleeping, and we're going to talk about it."
"Bossy."
Goro tugged his hair again, harder.
"Ow—"
"Promise me."
Akira groaned, burrowing further into Goro's neck. His arms rose, vining around Goro's waist. Finally, he nodded, a hesitant little thing. Good enough.
Goro rewarded him by working his hand up into his hair and running gentle nails over his scalp.
Akira sighed, sinking into him. "You'll do the same, right?"
"I rarely remember them when I wake up."
"Still."
"Yes, fine," Goro relented. Not that he had many night terrors lately, but they did startle him awake on occasion.
"Thank you." Akira pressed a kiss to the curve of his shoulder. "…You're a very bullheaded and unrelenting person, you know." He paused before whispering, "I think I need that."
"Clearly," Goro agreed. His heart hammered at the unspoken, loud 'need you'. "You're a trainwreck under all your pomp and glamour."
Akira snorted. "You say the sweetest things, honey."
"Mm. Perhaps you should be reading self-help books, too."
"…Maybe."
Goro rested his cheek against Akira's head, considering which books he should dump on him once they were back in Tokyo.
"Are you hungry?" Akira asked, slowly extricating himself from his hiding spot in Goro's neck. "I can start on dinner."
"Alright." Goro looked him up and down. "Though, maybe put on more clothes first before you traumatize your cat more than he already will be."
Minutes later, Goro was partway through rinsing off his face when he heard Morgana's scandalized shriek at the bruises splayed over Akira's neck, crystal clear even through a closed door and running water on the second floor.
He laughed, so hard he had to grip the sink to steady himself.
That Akira was flaunting Goro's mark on him with a loose-collared shirt didn't help Morgana's poor eyes, granted.
The not-cat stared at them, aghast, all through dinner. He covered his ears, yowling, when Goro drawled that he better get used to the sight and Akira batted his eyelashes asking if that was a promise.
They may have had a little too much fun tormenting the poor thing all through dinner and at least half of the movie they watched afterwards. Goro wasn't about to regret it, especially when Morgana wanted nothing to do with them or the bedroom after.
The movie ended. Goro was shooed upstairs while Akira shut down the first floor, turning off lights and ensuring Morgana was comfortable for the night.
"Are you going to actually sleep this time, or just stare at me all night again?"
Goro growled, halfway under the covers, and shot Akira an unimpressed look. Akira raised his eyebrows.
"I'll have you know I have been taking measures to fix my sleep schedule. It would be much easier if you stopped dawdling and got in the damn bed."
Akira laughed. "Where have I heard that before?"
He finished messing with his phone, soft instrumental music filling the air. He left their phones on the chargers, flicked off the light, and padded back across the moonlit room to crawl into bed. He immediately cozied up right in Goro's space.
Goro let him, wrapping his arm around Akira's waist and tugging him closer. He smiled at the little intake of breath it earned him.
Clever fingers burrowed into his hair. Akira's chest pressed against him with every inhale; his breath displaced his hair every exhale. He worked stars along his scalp.
He almost dozed off, guided by Akira's hands.
Something smacked against the window.
Needles stabbed into the skin under his nails. Ice lodged in his spine.
He tilted his head, dislodging one of Akira's hands from his hair. A shadow of a tree branch swayed in the night wind.
Was the window locked?
He tried to ignore it, dropping his head back on the pillow. Akira's hand slowly wove back into his hair.
Did Akira lock the bedroom door?
They were fine. They were safe.
He fell asleep in Leblanc's attic during open hours for fuck's sake, he could fall asleep with Akira in a quiet suburban house in Small Town, Japan.
…They would both be asleep this time, though. They would both be vulnerable.
Hissing, he tore himself out of Akira's arms and lurched out of bed.
"Goro—?"
"Stay there," Goro ordered, prowling to the door.
Locked. Just with a simple knob lock.
He glanced at Akira's desk chair.
This house was large. He was unfamiliar with it, with no idea where all the doors and windows he'd need to check were if he wanted to secure the whole house. And even if he did, it was simply too much ground to thoroughly safeguard.
He dragged the chair over and jammed it beneath the doorknob.
Akira's gaze followed him across the room to the window. His concern coiled like corded rope around his neck, shoulders, ribs.
Goro pushed aside the blinds. The basic latch lock was thrown, but latches were notoriously easy to work open with finessed knifework. Trying would cause noise though, and Goro trusted he'd wake to it before someone could actually get through the window.
But what then? He didn't have his gun—didn't have a way to get it on the train unnoticed. He'd even forgotten to bring a knife like a fucking idiot—
He could go downstairs and steal one from the kitchen, but where would he even stash it without accidentally stabbing one of them in the middle of the night—
"Hey."
He turned. Something small arced towards him, glinting in a slash of moonlight. He snatched it out of the air.
A switchblade. He flicked it open, noting the smooth, snappy transition and fine edge.
The ice in his spine splintered. He looked at Akira, unable to parse his expression in the dark.
"I usually have that hidden behind my table," Akira explained. "But you'd prefer it under your pillow, right?"
Goro closed the knife. Opened it again and got familiar with its weight. The switchblade was high quality, durable wood and metal, weighted balance—
"Come back to bed, gorgeous."
The pet name, of all things, jarred him out of hair-trigger survival instincts. He flicked the blade shut, face uncomfortably hot for more than one reason.
Gorgeous rattled around his skull on echo. Mortification ate through his nerves. He'd just torn around the room like a paranoid, once-kicked-twice-shy dog in front of Akira.
(Akira had, admittedly, seen him in worse straits.)
He returned to the edge of the bed.
Akira caught his hand, and he fell into his arms. He tucked Goro's head back under his chin, slinging the blanket over them. His hands carded through Goro's hair.
Goro slid the switchblade beneath their pillow.
"We're safe," Akira whispered. "You don't need to do anything else."
"The comfort isn't necessary—"
Akira's thumb swept across Goro's lip, pressing just hard enough to dent the skin and quiet him. "You're safe here, remember? I've got you."
Goro shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut.
Akira traced his spine, trailing stars behind his touch to melt the last of the ice. He began to hum, low and lilting with the soft guitar in the background.
Goro sighed and wrapped an arm around his waist, nosing closer until he felt the vibrations of Akira's voice against him. Akira held him impossibly tighter, until there wasn't a breath of space between them. It should have felt claustrophobic. It didn't.
The stabbing beneath his nails faded.
Goro pressed the flat of his hand to the space between Akira's shoulder blades, feeling the quiet strength hidden beneath skin.
Caught in his embrace, all those cottony feelings of the first time he gave into Akira surged with none of the poison to turn them to ash.
He was safe.
He was home.
Goro let go of the rigid vigilance turned warning siren, setting it down with all their masks and armor and burdens.
Tomorrow, they would inevitably don it all again. Tomorrow, Goro would argue with a belligerent, hesitant Akira to return to Tokyo where he belonged, dragging him kicking and thrashing if he had to. Tomorrow, Akira would tell the other Thieves of his return, and he'd have to deal with the chaos that entailed. Tomorrow, they would face the new path they'd set themselves on in a world that never looked kindly on either of them.
But, here, now, it was just them, bared and vulnerable and safe woven together.
Curled together and finally allowed to rest, sleep took them under its wing.
Light hit his eyes. Akira snapped awake without any sense of his bearings. His heart lurched with half-asleep fear that yesterday had been the cruelest sort of dream—
A grumbled breath puffed hot air across his chest, dousing the panic setting his heart into overdrive. A head of honey-brown hair bunted against his chin, flyaways tickling his lips.
Akira curled closer, burying his nose in Goro's hair and breathing in the vanilla-and-cinnamon scent of his (undoubtedly very expensive) shampoo. Goro, still heavy and lax with sleep, settled as Akira calmed.
He readjusted the tangle of their legs to free his numb foot, careful of disturbing Goro's hip.
(Goro said he wasn't fragile, and Akira believed him. But he saw the way his right leg hesitated on stairs, felt the subtle tensing of muscle beneath his touch, noticed how he wouldn't lay on that side.
Goro wasn't fragile, but he did feel pain.)
Early morning light filtered through the blinds, casting lines of warmth over their bodies. The light haloed Goro's hair golden, turning him even more ethereal than he started.
Akira pressed his smile to the crown of Goro's head. Champagne bubbles filled his chest to bursting, so happy it hurt.
Goro was warm in his arms, chest rising and falling with even breath, choosing to be here with him. It was a miracle he was even alive, but that he was here—
Goro nuzzled closer with a sleepy noise, forehead knocking into one of the many bruises across his throat. Akira sucked in a breath at its ache, lashes fluttering.
(If Akira spent more than a few minutes parked in front of the mirror ogling and marveling at the decadent collar Goro had given him last night, that was for Akira to know and Goro—the smug, clever asshole—to have probably figured out and preened over.)
He closed his eyes, basking in the early morning cuddle—Akechi Goro was cuddling with him—and their combined warmth huddled under the blanket. He dozed, caught in the sleepy haze settled over them like a fog, and absently toyed with Goro's hair.
The sunlight traveled a good inch across their bodies before Goro stirred.
Goro woke slowly, minute little shifts and soft sighs. Akira brushed gentle fingers along his hairline, easing him awake.
"Good morning," He whispered, when he felt Goro's lashes feather along his collarbones.
Goro mumbled something that was nothing approaching words, leaning back to scrub at his eyes. Akira propped himself up on an elbow to give him space.
Goro rolled onto his back and stretched, nose scrunching and arms craning over his head. A soft, little noise of effort pitched in his throat.
He was so fucking cute. Akira couldn't not kiss him.
Goro had barely relaxed, arms lazily left above his head, when Akira swooped down and caught his mouth. He swallowed Goro's surprised squeak, uncaring of the raw taste of him in the first moments of morning.
"'kira—" Goro grumbled, voice rough and mumbly with sleep, and Akira stole that noise, too.
Goro shoved a hand to his face, pushing him back even as he laughed. He tilted his head to the side, a line of sunlight cutting across his face and highlighting the spray of pale freckles across his nose.
Akira caught his wrist, pressing a sweet, disarming kiss to the heel of his palm and dove down to kiss those, too. One at a time, following imagined constellations, just like he'd wanted to.
Goro huffed and whacked Akira's side with his knee, a token protest before letting Akira do as he pleased. He failed at suppressing his crooked smile, half-lidded eyes soft and warm as mulled wine.
Akira pressed one last kiss to the barely-there dot beneath Goro's eye before drawing back and leaning to the side—propped on his elbow, cheek resting in his palm. He watched Goro with all the shameless adoration he felt for him, probably smiling like a fool.
"Satisfied?"
"Mm, for now."
"At least offer me coffee first, if you intend to smother me more," Goro griped.
"I'll make you coffee," Akira agreed easily. "This morning, and every morning after if you'll let me. Breakfast, too."
Goro flushed, pretty as always. "I—ugh. It's too early in the morning for you."
Akira laughed, brushing Goro's bangs back and holding his gaze. "Let me make you breakfast, Goro?"
Stay?
Goro's hand traced over his wrist, lacing their fingers together and pulling Akira's hand down. He pressed his lips to part of the tangled scar Akira couldn't quite hate or consider ugly anymore. Not when Goro kissed them like that, gentle and warm and without shards.
Akira's breath hitched. Heat washed over his face, undone by the love hiding in plain sight in lips on ruined skin.
Goro smiled against him. The stars in his eyes sparked, fully abusing the power he had over him like the menace he was.
Akira loved him.
"I will."