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Goro tells Akira he’s never been stargazing.
It’s some night, some time, in Kichijoji, some alleyway outside of one of a million jazz bars, and it’s a statement that really doesn’t mean much. It’s just a fact, some little tidbit Goro has dropped surreptitiously in the middle of the smalltalk they keep up so that Akira doesn’t have to go home, doesn’t have to leave this one, blinding alleyway with one blinding boy, lit by neon lights and soft lines against the hard brick of a building.
They’re talking about the past, because they never talk about the future. Akira doesn’t know if it’s because they’re afraid, or because they’re resigned. (Akira wonders if Goro will remember nights like these when he goes to kill him in a month or so. He’s not sure whether he prefers the answer be yes or no.)
“Inaba, huh,” Goro says, and Akira watches his fingers twitch for his pocket. Akira wonders if Goro smokes. His hands seem empty without something in them, a briefcase, or a toy sword, or the gun Akira sees in his nightmares, sometimes. A cigarette would fit him, Akira thinks. “When you said you were from a country town… Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised I’ve never heard of it.”
Akira shrugs, and curls his hands in the pockets of his coat. Goro looks warm in his jacket, something light colored and soft looking, like the slope of Goro’s glowing hair. Maybe Akira wants a cigarette. Maybe he just wants one to give to Goro. “No one has, really. It’s not like anything interesting has happened there.”
Goro laughs quietly. It’s strangely robotic, in the way that Goro’s laughter tends to be. “I’m sure that’s not true. You seem to bring the interesting with you wherever you go. It’s rather impressive.”
Akira blows a small cloud of warm breath into the cool air, reaching up to tug on the edge of a bang. “I’ll take that as a complement.”
Goro’s laugh sounds even tighter the second time around, and Akira wonders if he’s ever made Goro laugh before, a real, unfaltering joy.
When Goro turns his face, taking a breath like he’s getting ready to excuse himself for the night, finally, after they’ve run out of conversation topics, something in Akira seizes. “Actually,” Akira says, too fast, cringing a bit when Goro snaps to look at him like he’s pulled him from somewhere far away. He tugs on his bang so sharply it hurts, pain pricking across his hairline. “There wasn’t much to Inaba but the stars.” Goro throws him a confused but interested look, shifting his weight and leaning against the wall like he’s changed his mind about leaving. Good. “If you ever ran out of something to do, there was always stargazing.”
“Stargazing, huh?” Goro says, glancing up at the sky. It’s dark with light pollution, or maybe clouds, or both, if Akira has to guess. He shoots Akira a polite smile. “I’ve never really had the time for something that leisurely.” He sighs. “I suppose when you’ve lived in a city like Tokyo all your life, the chances are few and far between. My increasingly busy schedule doesn’t help.”
“I’ll take you,” Akira blurts, and watches Goro’s eyebrows shoot towards his hairline. “To see the stars. You’d like it.”
Goro’s mouth parts in surprise, before he pleasantly links his hands in front of him with a smile. “I think I’d quite enjoy that.”
Akira nods. He wonders what else he can say to get Goro to stay right where he is.
--
Akira wonders, if between Sae’s palace and Shido’s engine room, Goro managed to forget about Akira’s promise. It’s one of several, sure, but Akira grips Goro’s glove in December and curses himself for hanging onto it. When he sticks his head out of the window of Leblanc’s attic, it’s too dark to see the stars, too.
--
Even when they fight a god, Akira thinks about gloves, and stars, and alleyways in Kichijoji. He wonders if some other pair of poor bastards have taken their spots.
--
What do you say to the only person you’ve ever loved when they come back from the dead?
With Akira’s other friends it would be so easy—Ryuji would want a joke, and Ann a hug, Morgana some words of encouragement—but Goro saunters back into his life and tears down the blinders Akira has put around his name inside of his head, and it’s a fucking ordeal wrestling Goro into Leblanc to just sit and have coffee with him like they used to.
Like we used to? Goro sneers. Before I tried to kill you?
Yes, Akira says, and makes him sit at the counter.
Even for all of his bravado, neither of them talk as Akira makes himself a cup of coffee, and he certainly doesn’t want to look up and read Goro’s regret in his eyes. He just missed him so much, and now that he’s here, Akira doesn’t know what to do with him.
“Are you afraid to talk to me now, Joker?” Goro asks, tracing the rim of his coffee cup. There’s a sharpness to his words that’s missing from his face, oddly vulnerable in the low light of the café. He’s missing his gloves, for once, and Akira thinks back to Kichijoji, to wondering if Goro smokes. He wonders if he really knows anything about him, after all. “Scared I’ll use whatever you pass along against you?” Goro chuckles. “I’m afraid I don’t have it in me anymore.” There’s something soft in the end of his words, a downturn to the cut of his previous sentences.
“That’s not it,” Akira says, and reaches over the counter to flick the top of Goro’s bare hand. He’s rewarded with a flinch, and an even gaze thrown in Akira’s direction. Quietly, he adds, “You know that’s not it.”
“Still contemplating Maruki’s offer?”
Yes, Akira thinks. “No,” Akira says. Technically, he’s thinking about the package that came in a few days before Shido’s ship went down, a little plastic container on the edge of his workbench that Akira hadn’t dared to touch after it came in, too painful when he thought about it for long.
“No, I’m…” he glances at Goro’s profile, the swell of his mouth and the golden shine of his eyelashes, and before he can think about it, he’s reaching out to grab Goro by the wrist, and tugging him out of his chair. “Come with me.”
Goro doesn’t say anything as Akira crosses around the counter, pulling Goro up the attic stairs, and towards the edge of his half-made bed.
“What am I doing up here?” Goro growls. He sounds a little upset, but not particularly angry, like he feels like he’s being toyed with instead of insulted.
“Trust me?” Akira asks, and rests a hand on Goro’s shoulder. “Close your eyes.”
“I don’t know what—”
“Please,” Akira sighs, voice catching. He hates feeling like this, like he has to walk eggshells around Goro because he’s scared the wrong move will have him vanishing from this reality like the dream Akira knows this is. He wants to grab Goro by the shoulders and tell him that there’s so little that could make Akira hate him, that he spent the month without Goro curled up in his bed, hands folded over a glove pressed to his heart.
Goro lets his gaze flit between Akira’s eyes, and Akira squeezes the hand he’s still holding, letting go of a held breath when Goro’s eyes flutter closed.
He lets go and works quickly, dragging the chair that’s all but reserved for stamina training across the floor and snatching the little plastic container off of his desk, pressing his hands to the ceiling and working from his bed when it gets to be too much a strain. Goro’s face pinches and relaxes incrementally, like he wants to open his eyes and see what Akira is doing, but he stays still, and keeps his eyes closed.
Eventually, after what feels like has been too long with the nerves writhing around in his stomach, Akira drops down onto his bed next to Goro, and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Lie back,” he says gently, and Goro doesn’t even question it this time, just gingerly spreads back onto Akira’s bed. Akira goes down with him, both of their legs still hanging off of the edge, and takes his hand off of Akechi’s shoulder. “Open your eyes.”
Akira watches Akechi’s face as he takes in the gentle green of the glow in the dark stars on his ceiling. They’re too dark to reflect in his eyes the way real stars do, but Akira can still see the light in them from what’s creeping in through his window, and Goro’s voice catches in his throat, mouth parted in surprise.
“You said—” Akira starts, by way of explanation, but Goro turns his head and looks at him, and his mouth falls shut.
“You remembered.”
Akira nods wordlessly. Goro looks soft, the way he did in Kichijoji, hair fanned around his head on Akira’s blankets and eyes bright, and he thinks that if they’re going to do this, if destroying Maruki’s world takes Goro with him, well, this will be how he wants to remember him. There’s surprise on Goro’s features when Akira turns to look at him, even after all of this, but he doesn’t glance away, and neither does Akira, not when Goro is his own promise taking up his empty bed.
Gently, he pushes his hand down the mattress until he feels Goro’s wrist, and then slides his palm across Goro’s soft skin, intertwining their fingers gently. Goro doesn’t startle, doesn’t make a sound, he just stares at Akira with some half formed affectionate look behind a shield of impassiveness. That’s fine. Akira likes him as stoic as he does snarling. He wonders if he can see the stars in Akira’s glasses.
“I love you,” Akira says, so quietly he wouldn’t be sure Goro would have heard him if not for the widening of his eyes, the way his body tenses up. “I have since—”
“Akira,” Goro says, turning his face up at the ceiling again. “Be quiet.”
Akira does as he’s told, ignoring the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. Though Goro doesn’t let Akira pull his hand back, just holds it in his palm and stares up at the ceiling. “I’ve killed people,” Goro says.
Akira lays at his side and stares up at the glowing stars. “I know.”
“I tried to kill you.”
Akira winces, tries to shake off the memory of needles and blunt objects that prickles underneath his skin. “Unfortunately.”
That earns him a little huff of laughter. “You don’t love me.”
There’s not any room for argument in that, just the slow blinking of Goro’s eyes where he’s staring up at Akira’s heart laid bare in cheap mass produced stickers on his ceiling. “I do,” Akira says anyway, squeezing Goro’s hand.
Goro’s sigh sounds a little tired, like he’s dealing with a particularly obstinate child. It makes a smile bloom on Akira’s face playfully, as he shuffles just a bit closer on the bed, just enough that the lines of their arms press together, Goro’s warmth radiating into Akira’s bones.
“Akechi—”
“Tell me again,” Goro whispers. “Tell me again when we’re through with all of this, when I’m sure this isn’t… some strange form of Maruki’s actualization bullshit. That my desires aren’t making you say this.”
Akira feels something dangerous, something like hope, pulling at his chest. He nods. “Okay.”
Goro still doesn’t let go of his hand. “Do you know any constellations?”
“I don’t.”
Goro sighs, and Akira feels him rest his head against the edge of Akira’s hair. “Make them up.”
Akira tries to keep the smile out of his voice. “Okay.”
--
Maruki goes down and Akira wakes up in prison. He supposes he’s had worse weeks, truth be told.
--
Sometimes, Akira wakes up and wonders if it was all a dream. The Phantom Thieves, Shido, Maruki, Tokyo—all of it. Then he reaches around under his pillow and grasps for Goro’s glove, and feels that dangerous little prick of hope in his chest again. Because he’s a third year now, and he has entrance exams to study for and friends to keep up with, but he holds Goro’s glove and shambles around Inaba like a shadow.
At least, he does until he decides to go out, drop into one of the local bookstores and see if there’s anything as interesting as Flower-pedia had been, when the cashier standing behind the register makes Akira freeze mid-step.
“Can I help you?” he asks, with striking red eyes and close-cropped chestnut hair.
“Uh,” Akira says intelligently, and watches said cashier roll his eyes.
“What, you didn’t think I’d let some other asshole adult take me out, did you?”
Akira laughs so hard he cries.
--
Goro lives in Inaba now, for god knows how long (“Until I’m bored, I suppose,” he supplies when Akira asks, leaning back on the couch in his considerably small apartment. “Or until you’re tired of me.”) but Akira goes out of his way to stop by the bookstore every day after school, and he thinks he spends more time at Goro’s rundown apartment than he does in his own house.
He’s barely waited a month before he shows up at Goro’s the night before he has the day off, and drags him out towards the hill that overlooks the town, chattering excitedly as Goro staggers behind him, unsure of where Akira is leading him.
“Here, here,” Akira says, and pulls Goro up to the ledge. He smiles and sits on the edge of the slightly deteriorating wooden fence, grinning up at Goro as he glances around suspiciously.
“You didn’t bring me out here to finally extract revenge, did you? Because I’ve said it once, but I will say it again: I am very sorry for attempting to murder you—”
“No!” Akira laughs, and pulls Akechi into sitting next to him. “No, I’ve got a surprise for you just… wait.”
“Alright,” Goro says pleasantly, and leads them in small talk for the better part of an hour, while Akira glances back at the rapidly setting sun.
“—and I am still a bit upset that you passed my number along, by the way. If Takamaki-san texts me one more time asking into whether or not I’ve eaten, I’m afraid I’ll have to change numbers again.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Akira laughs, and pats a hand comfortingly on Goro’s shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, she does the same to me and Ryuji.”
Goro sniffs. “Well, that’s understandable. You two are prone to forget even the most basic of your own needs. I’m very capable.”
Akira rolls his eyes with a smile. “Capable, yes, of course.” Akira glances over his shoulder once more and feels his heart flutter against his ribcage.
“It’s getting rather late, Akira, shouldn’t we—”
“Be quiet,” Akira whispers, and throws long legs over the other side of the fence so he’s sitting facing the city. Goro grumbles but mirrors him, his whole body turning towards Inaba, and Akira hears the gasp that gets caught in his throat. “I told you Inaba didn’t have much. It’s still got stars.”
Akira watches Goro take in the hundreds of stars dotting the sky, twinkling and stretching across the still blue deep color of the new night sky, and Goro doesn’t even blink, like he’s afraid that will wipe them out of his sight. Akira can see them in his eyes, white and yellow and blue in the red of Goro’s gaze, and he places his hand gently over Goro’s. “Better than last time?”
Goro looks at him slowly, remis to take his eyes away from the view, and Akira can feel his own gaze softening. “It’s gorgeous.”
Akira smiles, and reaches out to brush a bit of Goro’s slowly lengthening hair away from his face. His skin is warm to the touch. “I love you,” Akira says, and watches Goro’s mouth pinch shut a bit, his eyes closing quickly.
When he opens them again, Akira can see the stars reflected in the tears gathering on his eyelashes. “I love you too, you over dramatic sap.”
Akira laughs, and puts his hand on the edge of Goro’s face to pull him in for a kiss.
“You’re so sentimental,” Goro sighs, his breath tickling Akira’s mouth. It makes him giggle, high and happy. “Show me which ones are constellations,” he says, with his eyes closed, and his forehead pressed to Akira’s.
Akira laughs nervously. He knew he was forgetting something. “I don’t know any.”
Goro kisses him again.
“Make them up.”