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Goro knows that he isn't all the bad things he's done. There's more to him than his mistakes, than his lies, than the people he's wronged and killed.
Goro knows he's allowed to want something better for himself. He can long for these connections, for the love of other people. He can have this support, these relationships, without feeling guilty.
He's put everything behind him as much as he can, and he can focus on healing now.
But Goro also knows there is something to him that is all of those dark things. There is a darkness that lives in him, and there's a reason Loki is one of his personas.
The last thing he wants to do is just forget his past. But that’s what his therapist urges him to do, what his friends tell him, what Yusuke insists would help him forgive himself. Even Futaba and Haru, the ones he wronged directly. Even Akira. All of them have forgiven him, all of them nudge him forward on this long path of healing he’s supposed to be on.
And he has changed. Goro has changed in a lot of ways, and he’s doing his best to let go of the worst parts so that he doesn’t feel like all he’s doing is torturing himself by reliving it.
But he also hasn’t changed in other ways. He knows he clings onto something dark, something that’s a part of him he’s never going to be rid of. The part of him that obsesses, that clings, that wants too much. He can't let that go, that's too intertwined in Goro . It's something he buries, and can hide, but not something he can kill.
It haunts him most days, even good ones. Especially good ones.
Goro has to rationalize that he has self control. That those traits in him aren’t inherently bad, even if they were partly the reason he followed a dark path in the first place. They aren’t at fault, it was his own decisions that led him to where he is now.
He can obsess over other things. He can obsess over learning how to cook because Yusuke is useless over it, new TV shows, book series, places. He can obsess over things that are healthy, things that make him happy. Not over Akira anymore, not the Phantom Thieves, feeling validated, his killings, Shido, his revenge. That’s behind him. He can perfect the recipe for Yusuke’s favorite meal over and over until it can’t be improved anymore.
He can cling onto this new life. Hold onto the connections he’s made and fight to keep them, to be worthy of the love they give him. Cling onto his little apartment with Yusuke, the quiet life they share now. Keep something so precious close to him, only because it’s so precious. Not clinging onto a revenge plot that was doomed to fail anymore.
As for what he wants...it doesn’t matter what he wants, now.
He’s finally happy in his life, and that’s all he ever wanted. To be alive, to be happy, to be out of anyone’s control other than his own. To decide his own future. He has it, he attained it as difficult as it was and he clutches onto it to make sure he can keep it too.
As much as he loathes to admit it, he can’t erase his past. It’s always going to stay with him, it’s always going to be able to dictate the way he acts now. He is who he is now because of what happened to him, and he’s a little scared of who he might be without the darkness. He’ll accept it eventually, he’s sure. It won’t feel like it’s dragging him down forever. But for now, he just has to ignore the weight and keep moving as best he can.
Living with Yusuke has shown him a lot of things, that light and dark are married concepts, that one isn’t without the other. Of course Goro is more than happy to be the dark to his light, since he figures that’s what Yusuke is implying whenever he talks about it.
Because if anyone is the light to Goro’s dark, it would be Yusuke. Even though Yusuke seems to always draw those comparisons between him and Akira. Akira and him have always butted heads, but there’s also something ugly in both of them that makes Goro think Akira understands his darkness all too well.
But Yusuke doesn’t have that, even though he went through hell too. He came out, still seeing the beauty in things, still wanting to do right. Carry out his sense of justice and save people from his fate rather than punish the ones who hurt him. They stemmed from similar circumstances, and wildly branched off from one another.
They’ve converged now, their lives intertwined in this odd way where they’ve decided against everything to move in together. Yusuke does his art, and Goro studies for his degree in psychology while keeping up a part time job at a restaurant for some quick cash. Where they are in life should feel miles apart, but they still manage to make it work.
When they exist together, Goro sees what Yusuke means when he talks about dark needing light and light needing dark. They need each other. Yusuke pulls him consistently out of the deep end, steadies him on the invisible line he walks sometimes, reminds him to care for himself and remember that they have...so much time. That there’s no rush for him anymore, no time limit on his life that he has to watch anxiously as it ticks down. He can slow down every once in a while, miss some homework assignments to do something dumb, fail a couple tests because he went out instead of studying. Yusuke is always encouraging him to be spontaneous, to follow him on his quests of inspiration, to be his inspiration when there’s not a lot else to go around. And Goro wants...well it doesn’t matter.
He thinks maybe Yusuke needs him too, because otherwise he seems to forget his most basic needs. Goro is always telling him to eat, texting him reminders, or making food for the both of them. He reigns in the chaos of Yusuke’s actions, keeping him from going over the edge. He reminds Yusuke that they may have time, but not to cut it short so carelessly. Sometimes they need to have quiet, they need to have calm. Every other week, on Fridays, Goro picks up Yusuke’s melatonin supplements for his insomnia. It’s as ingrained in his routine as morning coffee.
They push and pull at each other gently, each keeping the other in a careful balance.
There is comfort, understanding, and happiness in their lives. Goro usually makes coffee in the morning that will never be as good as Akira’s despite him being the one to teach him. On softer mornings sometimes he makes tea instead. Depending on Goro’s schedule, sometimes they have breakfast together. But he usually has morning classes, so he’ll have something quick or pick up something on his way out. He’ll harass Yusuke to feed himself, then go to class or work depending on the day. They have lunches separately, but always try to have dinner together. Yusuke is awful at cooking, but he can bake if he follows a recipe, so they normally have some sort of baked good waiting as dessert for them.
Goro thinks they have a good life, a good system, and Yusuke seems equally as relaxed in what they have. They take care of each other, and take care of their home.
And that’s all Goro wants, really.
-
Yusuke wants Goro. There’s no two ways around the fact that he desperately, hopelessly wants Goro.
He has him, in some regard, in the arrangement they’ve settled in now. The one where they live together, eat together, take care of one another, and he tries to act like he isn’t in love.
Goro has no idea, which is a miracle because he’s the only one. Yusuke is far from the best at hiding things, he’s not even very good at it. He thinks that maybe Goro doesn’t want to see it, because there’s no other explanation. The very first time Ann came to visit she noticed. Even Akira did, as oblivious as he normally is.
But Yusuke wants Goro, and Goro doesn’t know it.
He can’t help it. Goro is...Goro. The depth of him rivals the deepest parts of the oceans, the life in him that Yusuke wants for himself, the rapt attention and the little ways in which he’s possessive of what he has.
Goro was someone Yusuke could never figure out at first. Someone he had resigned himself to never fully understand, because he knew they’d have a short time together anyway. He let himself admire the mysteries that would forever lay uncovered, but as time went on he became less and less satisfied with that. He wanted more than the nothing he was given, and he couldn’t grasp why. Goro Akechi was a traitor to them all, Crow and Robin Hood were both personas he made up to further support his lies. They all knew this from the beginning, but it did nothing to deter him. The betrayal came and went, and Yusuke’s obsession did not ebb.
In the engine room...several things happen. First is that Yusuke finally figures Goro out. They all do, they all see every single last part of him. They see Loki. Second is that Yusuke falls in love with that gentle, warm darkness Goro emits. He shouldn’t, and it was the worst possible place and time to do so, but matters of the heart are nothing if not fickle and contradictory. Third is that the door shuts between them and Yusuke’s heart shatters in his chest.
Goro came back to them in autumn, just as they were all buckling down to go through the cold seasons again, reminders of him everywhere they turned. He remembers the day vividly.
Yusuke was sitting in Leblanc, nursing a cup of coffee he couldn’t stomach, talking to Sojiro quietly about the new piece he was working on. Akira had nearly knocked the door off the hinges opening it so roughly, and he dragged in Goro Akechi. The two of them were a mess, cheeks flushed freezing cold from the weather, Akira was proudly displaying a swollen eye, and Goro a bloody nose. Goro was grinning bitterly, his knuckles bruised.
They’d sat together quietly in Leblanc for a long time, Goro drinking his coffee and refusing to answer any of the questions Akira tried to ask him. Finally, Yusuke asked if Goro wanted to see the new artwork he was working on, and they got something. A whisper, “Yes.”
Goro still holds back on them sometimes. A smile that’s a little too plastic, a formality that’s misplaced, and oftentimes having trouble wanting things. Yusuke knows all these things. Yusuke knows Goro, and adores every part of him.
Goro as a person is beautiful, no matter if he’s composed of parts that could be called ugly. It doesn’t matter, because Goro is himself and that is someone Yusuke loves dearly.
Goro has this darkness he tries to hide, and Yusuke hates it. He loves the darkness, hates that Goro finds the need to bury it so deeply within himself. Goro is wrapped up in this warmth of how he cares for others. He possessively holds onto Yusuke, onto their home, and Yusuke knows in any case he would fight tooth and nail to keep it. It’s a sentiment he shares.
He seems to obsess over their home as well, keeping things tidy and organized. He will not stop making yakisoba every Friday, and it gets better every time and Yusuke tells him that every time and every single time Goro gets that unguarded smile on his face. Endlessly pleased with himself that he’s made something they can both enjoy so easily.
Goro is composed of a million different layers that are all him but not quite at the same time, and at the end of them all Yusuke isn’t sure what there is. But he knows he gets a taste of it in that smile, so he tells Goro the yakisoba is the best thing he’s ever had every time he looks to him for confirmation that he’s done well. It’s Yusuke’s favorite thing about him, that private smile.
Yusuke wants Goro more than he’s ever wanted anything else in his life, but it’s also true that this is important to him. Goro is important to him, and the comfort with which they lead their lives is important to him. He doesn’t want to throw that away for something he wants, no matter how much he wants it.
They need each other by now, Yusuke knows that. They keep this intricate balance together that Yusuke can’t seem to put into words for anyone quite right. It just is what it is, and it works for them.
Yusuke has been in love with Goro Akechi for a long time, and he isn’t so oblivious he doesn’t see the fact that Goro feels...something about him. But Goro is good at hiding his emotions, so Yusuke can’t be entirely sure what that is, just that it’s something Goro doesn’t show often. But in glimpses, when he’s first woken up, or when he’s just about to fall asleep. At his most vulnerable, sometimes Yusuke sees it on his face. It might be adoration, he’s still trying to place it.
Either way, Yusuke will just let him figure it out on his own. Pushing him will only lead to a shove back, and more than likely Goro will just run away from it.
Yusuke is a patient person by nature, and what they have in the interim is more than enough. But it is in human nature to want more than what one has.
-
Goro has wanted a lot of things in his life.
When he was young, he would always nag his poor mother for the new toys from his favorite shows. He wanted the food his classmates bragged about eating. He wanted a dad, because really everyone has one so where is his?
When he found his mother, all he wanted was her back. For a long time every wish he used, every present he asked for, all of it was just the painful reality that he missed her hands in his hair, her hugs, her kisses, her love. Her.
As he grew older, the sadness faded. Left in its place was only anger. Contempt for the man he knew pushed her into that, who took his mother away, who ruined his life. And he probably didn’t know. Masayoshi Shido was the scum of the earth, and Goro wanted to ruin him just as wholly as he’d been ruined. In that want for revenge, he ended up a hitman at the age of fifteen. His want for revenge evolved, and he wanted attention and recognition and love and affection.
It all ended in the engine room. His want for revenge was replaced by a want to live.
And when he did, he didn’t know what he wanted anymore.
He wandered aimlessly for a while, all until Akira found him. They bumped into each other on the street, and Akira immediately was already trying to drag him back. Saying he was so happy Goro was alive, and he’d make him coffee, and acting as though nothing changed between them.
Maybe that’s why Goro punched Akira. Maybe it was just because he’s always wanted to punch his dumb face in. He got a good hit in, and nearly broke away until Akira elbowed him in the nose and surprised him long enough to get a grip on him to drag him towards the subway. Goro just gave up at that point, allowing himself to be carted away to Leblanc.
Yusuke was there, and he kept his resolve all the way until he was asked earnestly to take a look at Yusuke’s new piece. He gave in then, and he’s been giving in every single day he spends with Yusuke.
Goro knows what he wants now. But he can’t have it. Goro wants Yusuke, and he knows he can’t have him. It’s better not to think about it.
He’s better off leaving it unsaid, being grateful for what he gets and forgetting what he wants. It’s never mattered before. He’s never gotten anything he wanted.
-
Yusuke sees it. He notices the shift from Goro being confused, to being defeated. He knows that like that, Goro will not act first.
So he offers something of his own, and lets himself be vulnerable first. Goro seems to respond best to that.
Then he takes his bags and he goes to Akira’s.
-
Yusuke gives Goro everything. In so many simple terms so there’s no way Goro can rip it apart and try to interpret it for anything less than it is. Yusuke is in love with him, he likes him, he wants to be with him, Yusuke wants just like Goro wants.
And he just let him walk out the door because he was so shocked at finally being allowed something he wanted so much.
For once in his life he doesn’t run, he chases .
-
Yusuke sits in front of Sojiro, drinking coffee with his sketchbook open on the counter. He tries to draw anything else, but all that seems to find its way onto the pages is Goro. His hands, his eyes, his face, his smile. All of him, the pieces of him, the layers of him live in the pages of his sketchbook when he’s used to him living right in front of him.
“So you told him, huh?”
Sojiro hasn’t spoken the entire time, but his voice doesn’t surprise Yusuke. He could tell Sojiro was only trying to gather the right words, the right comfort. He probably feels he has to, since Akira won’t be back for a few hours still.
“I did,” he answers, dotting the freckles onto Goro’s face by memory. “He’ll need time to think, I’m sure. He’ll come get me when he’s ready.”
Goro thinks this is some sort of divine karma. Retribution for the subway accidents, because he swears a train has never gone so slow. He needs to see Yusuke now, tell him the thoughts racing through his head and bring him home already.
Now he just swears at the train like that’ll speed it up.
-
Yusuke frowns down at the sketch of Goro he has. He’s gotten something wrong, and no matter how long he stares at it he can’t figure out what. Something is definitely off, but as he cross references the image of Goro in his head with what he’s created he can’t see what that is.
“Yusuke!”
Goro probably has questions. He could’ve just texted Yusuke, though. Still, grateful for the real reference in front of him, Yusuke glances up.
Goro is panting, frantic as he comes over to Yusuke. As if he was going anywhere else.
Yusuke squints at his face, then finally sighs.
“I only forgot the freckle that sits away from the others.” He dots his page. “Right by your eye. There, that’s better.”
“Yusuke.”
“Hm? If you had more questions, we both have phones, you didn’t need to come rushing all the way here.”
Goro collapses in the seat next to him, glancing up at Sojiro.
“Hey kid,” Sojiro greets. “Relationship troubles?”
Goro laughs softly, out of breath.
Yusuke starts shading the sketch the best he can considering he didn’t exactly lug all his supplies with him.
“Drink that and calm down.”
The clink of a mug hitting the counter is the only sound in Leblanc now, and Yusuke settles in the silence as he lovingly finishes his sketch of Goro. This one is the gentle surprise on his face when Yusuke confessed, still fresh in his mind. It had been such an unguarded expression, Yusuke wants to hoard it forever.
Goro chugs the coffee, really. It can’t be more than a few minutes before he’s setting it down and thanking Sojiro.
“Now you two go upstairs and talk.”
“Boss,” Yusuke complains. “There’s no need for that--”
“Just go.”
So Yusuke stands and goes upstairs into the attic. Akira sometimes sleeps here, sometimes sleeps in his room at the Sakura residence. Either way, it’s touched by the Phantom Thieves. Yusuke’s glow in the dark stars still stick to the rafters, and now that it’s getting dark they glow gently.
Yusuke sits on the couch, looking up at Goro. He starts to ask what the question is, what was so pressing Goro felt the need to rush all the way here.
But then Goro kisses him desperately, and the thoughts in his mind stop.
-
Goro is kissing Yusuke, and he probably shouldn’t be. He hasn’t said anything, hasn’t accepted the confession, and all in all he’s probably being too forward. He didn’t even ask.
He starts to pull back, but Yusuke’s hand tangles in his hair and pulls him in deeper.
He laughs, and tries to stifle it by kissing Yusuke again, but it’s too late. Yusuke is pulling back with a question in his eyes.
“We’re making out in Akira’s room, I feel a bit weird is all,” he admits.
Then, “Oh shit, wait. Wait, that’s out of order. Sorry, I meant to say that I accept your confession. That I love you too...I’m messing this up, aren’t I?”
It’s dark in the room, comfortable. But the stars give enough light that Goro sees the quirk in Yusuke’s lip. The amount of fondness that expression holds makes Goro’s chest tight.
“Mm, probably. But I wouldn’t have you any other way, my love.”