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Halfway between adrenaline overdrive and drugged unconsciousness, he is seventeen with handcuffs around his wrists, he's soaked in sweat and water that smells like chemicals, and the man's shoe is bruising against his chest. The needle is in the man's hand, liquid dripping from its point. No matter how much he struggles, he can't breathe. He lost the bet; he made the wrong decision; he's going to die with all his ribs cracked beneath this man's shoe, crushing him like a bug. The needle is coming closer. He's pleading for them to stop. He cracks easily, gives up his pride, doesn't want it anymore; he just doesn't want to die; the needle is up against his skin and he's begging for anything else, anything else, he'll confess, he'll do whatever they want, and then the needle is under his skin, pushing fluids right into his veins, and he can feel it inside him as his bones begin to crack—
"Akira?"
Akira is in the dark. There's the sound of rain outside. He's flat on his back, blanket around his waist, the mattress dipped where Goro's weight is. No light except the thin sliver of moonlight through the window, where Goro didn't quite close the curtains all the way. The silver outline of Akira's dorm room desk, his study lamp, Goro's computer sleeping with the screen still open, Akira and Goro's bags full of college classwork sitting side by side. The edges of Goro's body next to him silhouetted in light.
Akira's too late in responding. Goro pushes himself closer, shoulder brushing against Akira's, voice still definitely more asleep than he looks. "Akira? Are you okay?"
"It's nothing," says Akira. He is so awake right now, like it were nine in the morning on three cups of coffee.
"You were making noises."
"I didn't mean to wake you up."
"Not what I meant," says Goro, voice both groggy and peeved simultaneously. Even with Goro half asleep, it's difficult to get anything past him. "What was it?"
"I'm fine."
There's a moment of silence where Akira is sure that Goro will go back to sleep after his long days of pre-law classes and his thousands of extracurriculars, but instead there's the rustle of fabric as Goro pushes the blanket off. "Bad dream?"
Akira doesn't say anything, because Goro already knows he's right. Goro's arm gropes for him blindly in the dark, wraps around his waist as if to keep him in bed.
For a whole second Akira wonders if he should get up and take a walk around the dorm building, get a glass of water. But he's the one who said it was nothing, and people don't go outside to stand around in the dark on November over nothing.
"Can you take your shirt off?" Akira asks instead.
"What?"
"I want to be the big spoon."
Goro insists on putting a shirt back on to go to sleep, and right now, Akira desperately wants to feel Goro's skin. There's a puff of exhaled air, then Goro groggily squirms out of his shirt and pushes it onto the floor, which is how Akira knows he's really tired. Akira wraps his arm around Goro, presses his face against the firm muscle of his shoulder.
"I'm cold," says Goro. Akira hugs him tighter, tangles his legs with Goro's, trying to give him a full-body hug to share the warmth. Goro makes a satisfied noise. "I meant I want the blanket."
"I am the blanket."
Goro's hand smacks around until he finds the blanket and then pointedly pulls it up over both of them.
Outside, rain drips against the windows. Akira's heart is painfully loud in his own ears, and he's sure that Goro can feel it against his back.
"Do you want to talk about it?" says Goro. It sounds stiff, like he's afraid Akira might actually say yes. It's a canned line practically right out of a How To Communicate In A Relationship book (which Akira actually caught him reading once). Goro has always been horrendous with talking about feelings. But Akira knows that he means it, whether it's a canned line or not, whether he's afraid of the answer or not.
Akira presses a kiss against Goro's spine, pressing his lips through his parted hair. "It's just a dream. It's not real."
"Hm."
That's the noise of Goro having opinions he's too tired to get into at three in the morning. Akira smiles. "I love you."
Another hesitation. "Hm," says Goro again, and finds Akira's hand in the dark. Akira's palm is sweaty and gross, but Goro, for once, doesn't complain as Goro squeezes Akira's bare palm, no gloves, skin scraping against the calluses of weapon use that have faded over time. Goro's never been good at saying those words. Goro finds other ways to say I love you, ones that don't scare him as much.
Sometimes, in Akira's nightmares, it doesn't end with the needle. Sometimes, in his dream, the men leave him, and Akira lies there pinned to the ground like a bug on a board, weighed down by his own drugged body, hoping someone, anyone, will come by just so that Akira won't have to be alone, when the door opens. There's the sound of footsteps, sharp and crisp on the concrete. The long shine of a gun, the silencer on the muzzle.
Awake and alive, Akira closes his eyes against Goro's back and tries to breathe.