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Goro isn’t sure how long he has been asleep for when he finds himself suddenly awake in the darkness. His eyes slide open of their own accord; it’s dark and seemingly quiet, so he doesn’t immediately identify what it was that brought him to wakefulness. There’s no visible clock on his side of the bed, and no watch on his wrist - no way of telling the time. He can only wait silently to see if whatever it was that woke him up occurs again. He holds his breath, listening, gazing into darkness… nothing happens… his eyes begin to drift closed again….
And then he feels it: the mattress shakes, ever so slightly.
He peels his eyes open again. Akira’s back is toward him, less than a foot away. And now, with his eyes adjusting to the dark, he sees that… Akira’s shoulders are trembling. Like… he’s crying?
“Kurusu,” Goro whispers, a little uncertainly. There is no response in words, but a soft whimper emanates from the other side of the bed. He must be dreaming, Goro realizes, then grimaces, unsure whether to wake him up or let him be. Then Akira flinches, and another whimper escapes his lips, and Goro reaches out to the other man without thinking. “Akira?” he asks, placing his hand gently on his shoulder.
All movement and sound from the other side of the bed ceases as Akira suddenly freezes under his grasp.
“...Goro?” he whispers back hesitantly.
“Yes.”
There’s a quiet moment that Goro spends trying to figure out whether he should remove his hand now that Akira is clearly awake - then Akira turns over to face him, and Goro pulls his hand back with the movement.
“Nightmare?” Goro asks softly, once Akira is peering back at him in the dark.
“You got me,” Akira replies just as quietly. Goro catches a flash of teeth, but the lighthearted grin that Akira is obviously aiming for looks more like a pained grimace. They stare at each other for a moment, Goro waiting for Akira to elaborate, Akira waiting for… well, Goro has no idea.
“What was it about?” Goro prompts finally, and if this conversation were happening with anyone else, he would absolutely have given up by now and gone back to sleep. But Akira… Goro thinks that Akira sometimes does too good a job of listening and less good a job of being heard. (Plus, Goro is curious now.)
Akira’s expression darkens, his gray eyes turning bleak, and the way they turn away as he breaks eye contact with Goro belies his continued attempt at vague, untruthful lightheartedness. “Oh, you know. Spiders.”
Goro doesn’t believe him in the slightest and is opening his mouth to say so, but the words die in his throat. Akira is still not looking at him - in fact, he seems to be glowering off into the distance, with a small frown tugging his lips down. One hand rests on the pillow next to his head, and - this is what draws Goro’s attention - the fingers of that hand are pressed idly to his forehead.
Now, Goro knows Akira’s usual tics by heart, and this isn’t one of them. So this can only be a clue as to what Akira’s nightmare was about. Which means…
Akira catches Goro staring and aborts the gesture, hastily lifting his fingers to brush his hair out of his face. But it’s too late. Goro knows. He reaches out his own hand and, with slightly shaking fingers, touches Akira’s cheek.
“You dreamed about that day, didn’t you,” he whispers, brushing his thumb over that spot on Akira’s forehead. He remembers it well: a drugged, battered Akira, handcuffed to a cold, metal table, gazing up at him with clouded eyes. A gun, held by Goro himself, pressed against his head. A hollow laugh, and then a muffled shot - too quiet for the damage it has done to both boys. Those gray eyes, always so full of life, gone blank. A pool of vivid red spreading too quickly, dripping like tears over the edge of the table. A feeling like fabric tearing in his heart.
“Hey.” Another hand tugs at his own, and Goro blinks out of his dissociative state to see present-day Akira smiling ruefully at him. “You’re too perceptive for your own good, detective.”
Goro, usually so eloquent, can’t find the words to respond; his mind is fogged with mingled horror and regret. This… this is why he should never have admitted his feelings to Akira. He has already caused too much of Akira’s pain, even with his mere presence. He doesn’t deserve to be around Akira. This was a mistake -
“Goro.” The hand holding his tightens, and Akira’s expression is intent. “Listen to me: it’s okay. That was years ago, and I don’t blame you for my nightmares.”
“Maybe you should.” Goro’s voice is hoarse when he finds it. But Akira is already shaking his head firmly.
“You did it because you had to do it, not because you wanted to. If you hadn’t been there, Shido would have sent someone else after me. You know that,” he says insistently. It’s difficult to see in this darkness, but Goro’s mind knows Akira’s face so well that it can fill in the blanks and imagine his serious expression, those black brows drawn together and lips tugging down at the corners.
Still, Goro hesitates again. His chest feels hollow, as if regret has chased all the air out of his lungs, leaving nothing behind but self hatred. Then, with a sigh, he reaches out and cups Akira’s cheek, brushing his thumb along his cheek.
“Even so,” he murmurs. “I hate that it’s me you see in these nightmares.”
To his surprise, he feels Akira’s cheek lift under his fingers, and he can see the ghost of a smile in the darkness before Akira speaks.
“You know, it’s almost funny. In my dream, when you… shoot me… I feel this weird kind of regret. I think it’s because I’m afraid to die and miss out on time I could be spending with you.” It’s the same sort of half-hearted attempt at lightness as earlier - the shadow of the past will never quite leave them alone - but as it nearly always does, Akira’s attempt at humor is enough to draw Goro out of his melancholy state. The deep feeling of regret has nestled itself permanently under his breastbone, but for now, he ignores it in favor of comforting Akira.
“Only you can wake up from a nightmare and still be so saccharine,” Goro grouses, but they both know that his complaining is always merely an act by this point - and in the same way that Akira’s humor calms Goro, so do his “complaints” cheer up Akira. Then he allows himself his own moment of sentimentality. He props himself on one elbow and leans forward, brushing his lips against that spot on Akira’s forehead - and he knows this won’t undo the damage that his past self has done, but for a moment it’s enough to brush it away like a cool, cleansing cloth. Goro feels the warm breath of Akira’s sigh in response as he pulls away, only to reach in again to press his lips against Akira’s own.
When their kiss finally breaks - after seconds or minutes or hours, maybe, Goro doesn’t know, time is meaningless in Akira’s grasp - Goro says quietly, “You don’t have to be afraid of that, you know. I would stop Death itself from claiming you in order to spend every second that I can with you.”
“Now who’s the sentimental one,” his lover teases. “What if you get sick of me?”
“In your dreams,” Goro quips right back at him. He slides his hand down Akira’s arm and tugs at him; Akira obediently wriggles closer and flips around so their bodies fit together perfectly, Goro curled around Akira protectively.
“Hmm, at least it’s you I get to look at when I wake up from nightmares,” Akira mumbles sleepily into his pillow. Of course, this is far from the first time that Akira’s expressed such sentiments to Goro, but that doesn’t stop his stomach from swooping as if it is the first time, and he hides his smile from the darkness by pressing his lips into Akira’s hair. They fall asleep like that, tangled up together, no more nightmares to be had.