Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s a difficult thing to win a battle after purposely losing it. However, from the expression on Ren’s face and the glove in his pocket, Goro knows he’s managed it.

Good. This is the fitting end to their tale, the conclusion he always wanted.

And what a relief to have all those thoughts he’d been bottling up out in the open. Honestly, he really does feel physically lighter, and all he had to do was admit to Ren how deeply he fucking despises him. An open, candid conversation. This is how adults, true adults, conduct their affairs, and as always Goro is happy to be in their company. He’d even say it again, he'd shout the words a hundred more times if it didn’t feel cruel at this point—the poor thing looks absolutely furious.

“Ah, look at the time,” Goro says smoothly, glancing at his watch. “Let’s call it a day for now.”

This was fun, but he has plenty to do back at his apartment. Important business. Work to catch up on, dinner to scrounge up… damn, he really is hungry, isn’t he?

“Wait.” Ren says.

Goro does.

“You got to confess. Now it’s my turn.”

He barely has a moment to raise a polite, inquisitive brow before Ren is charging at him. And Goro remains, still and unyielding as a statue.

He has the upper hand. He worked hard for it. Flinching now would mean he couldn’t keep it.

Ren grabs the collar of Goro’s jacket in both hands. Pulls him forward, sharply enough that Goro’s neck snaps back from the force of it.

It’s awful, clumsy, just lips smashed against lips, but in that instant something changes. Everything within him, everything that is him sparks to life. The rush is all-encompassing, save for one last vestige of his mind: the one that was expecting a fist, and which manages to ask, confused, he missed?, before it too is winked out of existence.

In five minutes he’ll will wonder why he chose to kiss Ren back, where his brain was, what the fuck he was thinking. But now?

Now.

Ren sucks a harsh breath in through his nose as Goro responds. Clutches him harder, closer.

Now he’s not Akechi Goro Detective Prince but someone else—a secret so well-kept no one alive has witnessed it. Someone powerful, who wasn’t humbly fatigued from his duel with Ren, no, he loved it, reveled in it, revels in this. He’s not perfectly tailored for public consumption, he’s not wise beyond his years. He’s wild and impulsive and reckless and maybe even a little bit stupid. His phantom claws adapt easily to grasp Ren’s biceps and he groans ferociously past an invisible spiked helmet into Ren’s hot, open mouth.

He’s here, he’s alive, he’s eighteen years old and he’s never felt so good.

And Ren shoves Goro away as quickly and easily as he’d pulled him in.

Goro stumbles backward, catches himself.

There’s no time to regain his bearings. He’s lost, abandoned with an open mouth and a heaving chest which he prays to god doesn’t look quite as obvious as Ren’s.

Ren wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Adjusts his glasses. Turns, with a casual wave of his hand, and walks away.

“See ya, Crow.”

And then he’s gone.

Goro is alone. 

He is alone, isn’t he?

He blinks, glances around. The station is silent, empty, the same as it was when they’d arrived here earlier. When Goro lured Ren down for… that was today, wasn’t it?

He knows he just looked, he's sure of it, but he can’t seem to remember anything he saw. His shirt is messed up and untucked under his jacket, and his collar all askew, so he fixes that. His heart is beating so fast—

What the hell—did Ren just kiss him?

Goro touches a hand to his lips, watches it play out in every millisecond that he closes his eyes, feels it in his body over and over.

It doesn’t make sense. His mind is buzzing with activity, but nothing is connecting. It feels like he was just played, like he lost… but lost what?

Something hot and violent bubbles up in his gut. He can't stay still—he's pacing along the station now, up and down, up and down, up and down.

Who cares, who gives a shit. He didn’t lose. He couldn’t. It doesn’t even matter. None of it matters. There was… there were things that happened before Ren kissed him, and whatever it was Goro remembers thinking it went well, so—so what if Ren kissed him. Ren kissed him? It has nothing to do with Goro. It was simply something that happened. But why?

And, oh god, oh shit, why did Goro kiss him back?

Goro stops in his tracks, balls his hands into fists and shakes with fury.

There are no answers to be found here. He’s already stayed too long.

He flies out of Mementos, into the open air. The cool November breeze is bracing, and extraordinarily welcome. Ren is nowhere to be found. Goro picks a direction and starts walking.

But really. Really, it doesn’t matter. Because Goro got what he came here for. He remembers the earlier part of the day now, as if he could ever forget—that glorious all-out duel, lesser persona and hand tied behind his back notwithstanding. His final confession and final challenge to his rival. And if he made out a little with that rival too then that’s fine, sometimes these things happen. Sometimes you simply end up with your tongue deep inside a hot, wet—

A tree branch smacks Goro in the face.

“Aghk!”

He reels back, almost bodying a salaryman who’d been walking behind him. His attacker turns out to be more of an overachieving twig than a branch—he’s fine, and there’s an errant leaf in his hair. Goro quickly brushes it out. Three more people pass him, easily maneuvering around the offensive tree with the barest hint of attention paid to it.

Here’s the problem, the creeping horror which is starting to ruin whatever idiotic trance still has a hold over his mind: though Goro’s superiority in ability and intellect is vast and unimpeachable, he wasn’t just flattering Ren when he told him he’d quickly grown into a formidable opponent. He’s sharp, sly, a true wildcard, which is half the fun of toying with him. And Goro’s studied Ren long enough to know that while he may be difficult to predict, nothing he does is senseless. There has to be logic behind this move, even if he can’t see it yet.

It’s a long walk back. By the time he reaches his apartment building Goro has made some progress.

First, he’s decided that Ren did in fact kiss him in Mementos. He’s tabled the topic of how hot it was. He has a few suspicions for Ren’s mysterious motives. He’s also accomplished walking into someone on the sidewalk, doubling back for his lost glove before remembering Ren has it, and he briefly forgot where he lives.

As the doorman waves him in, Goro feels an urge he hasn’t felt since his first time in the Metaverse, the urge to scream at him, at anyone: Something happened to me! Something happened to me and I’m different now!

He gives the doorman a nod.

Amidst the saccharine tunes of the elevator Ren’s fists are still embedded in the collar of his jacket, twisting, tugging. I hate you, Goro said. Now it’s my turn, Ren said. And Goro is kissing Ren back, too hard, too ferociously, to leave any doubt—he can’t begin to imagine what Ren must have thought of him. What Ren thinks of him now.

There’s a hole growing just beneath his ribs. Remembering satiates its awful ache and makes it grow stronger all at the same time. He doesn’t know what it is, he doesn’t know how to stop it, and worst of all, he's not sure he doesn't like it.

See ya, Crow.

The elevator dings.

Goro trudges down the long hallway. Opens his apartment door, drops his key on a kitchen counter.

This place is unchanged, beige walls and bare furniture. He hates it, and he’s not sure why he thought it’d be different.

You can’t ever bring him here, a small, stupid voice whispers in his head, it’s too embarrassing.

He waves the thought away—in no world would anyone other than Goro ever have a reason to set foot here—and opens up the note he’d started on his phone titled Motives. This is important work, after all. He’s too close to the end now.

A joke for his friends is the worst one so it’s at the top, having been written first. Temporary insanity and Unknown status effect followed soon after. Tripped and New way to punch are unlikely. Attracted to me and Likes me, he’d typed out quickly when he was sure no one could see him. They’re still horrible to look at.

He knows and he’s fucking with me, he writes now, before deleting it.

Goro isn’t going to sleep tonight. He’s going to read every message he and Ren have ever exchanged, examine every photo of Ren that exists, and plan out at least five possible texts to send him the next day, ranging from aloof to outright flirtatious. He’s going to scour the internet for every advice column, every forum post, every “Is he into you?” teen magazine knockoff website quiz. He’s going to scream into his pillow at least twice. And tomorrow morning he’s going to sleep straight through an entire calculus class after indulging too deeply in an elaborate daydream, the contents of which should remain unsaid.

But right now, shame and fury makes his chest ache and his cheeks burn. Because if he’s being realistic… Ren simply doesn’t like Goro, the same way Goro doesn’t like Ren. Joker made a bold play, and Goro fell into his trap.

He’s just fucking with me.

Chapter Text

Goro can’t stand to be in his apartment much anymore, a fact which has become troublesome as the days grow shorter and colder.

Today’s brief respite is on a bench, one of many in a row overlooking an empty park. He’d already tried and failed to eat his lunch, so now he’s sitting here for no reason, wasting time he doesn’t have. He should care about that, but he really doesn’t.

A pigeon across the dirt path picks at nothing on the ground. A jogger huffs her way past, disappearing into the distance. Two teen boys on another bench down the row are getting rowdy enough for Goro to hear them, so he turns to watch.

They can’t be much younger than Goro. Their school uniforms make him want to vomit.

“Oh my god, you like her.”

“No I don’t!” the second boy shouts. His tone is unconvincing.

“Okay this is stupid, you gotta text her! If you don’t I will—”

There’s a brief interlude in their conversation while they wrestle, then the first, more brash boy holds Goro’s phone up in the air, victorious. “Give it!” Goro yells, though he isn’t trying all that hard—it’s almost a relief to have someone else in on this secret, boldly exclaiming Goro’s deepest desires. “Don’t text him! What if he doesn’t like me back?”

“Nah dude, he totally likes you,” the boy says, tapping away on Goro’s phone for him. “He kissed you, didn’t he?”

“Shut up,” Goro mumbles, shrinking down in his seat.

“Yeah that’s like, the biggest sign ever. I’m gonna text him—how about: hey you’re cool, wanna go out sometime?”

“No! That’s awful,” Goro shouts, reaching for the phone again. “Give it back, I’ll do it!”

“No way, you’ll overthink it like you always do,” the first boy says, standing up and dancing out of his reach. “Thank me later when you’re ~on a date~!”

As the two boys run off, shouting into the distance, Goro can see the rest of the story unfold. It’s a good one. There’s an awkward yet totally captivating text exchange. Then the nerves before a first date. Planning what to do, where to go, what to wear, what to say. The thrill of it going well, how incredible it feels to form that rare, perfect bond with another human being—a person who knows you, gets you, likes you, for exactly who you are. No matter who you are.

Goro blinks himself back to earth. Back to his bench down the row, alone. He stares down at his lap, where his darkened phone lies silent. He’d already deleted Ren’s number along with all their conversations weeks ago. It’s all gone.

The skies are gray. His hands are cold, and he’s so tired.

He gets up from the bench and walks anywhere else.

Chapter Text

“You can’t be serious.”

Ren holds his hands up defensively. “It was the only open spot, I swear,” he says.

Goro takes his own look around the club and, unfortunately, Ren seems to be telling the truth. Every other table and booth are already occupied, because it’s deep into a Saturday night and he waffled on accepting Ren’s invitation for too long.

But in his defense, who asks their murderer to go to a jazz club with them four nights in a row?

Goro gingerly sits down and scoots into what they’d started disrespectfully calling "the kissing booth" last summer. The things they'd witnessed foolish, luststruck teens and young adults do in the privacy that this particular booth provides… he can only pray to any deity out there that the Jazz Jin uses strong cleaning products. Copious and dangerous amounts of bleach preferred.

“Hey,” Ren says as Goro settles in, greeting him with his usual magnanimity.

Goro nods at him. “Evening.”

My tongue has been in your mouth, Goro’s lesser mind pipes up. He attempts to chase it away with something benign and mundane—like The temperature of this room is currently room temperature and Wow, those bricks sure are rectangular. This happens so frequently now that he’s almost used to it.

Almost.

Thankfully, a night out at the Jazz Jin is such a simple routine that one doesn’t need much of a functioning brain. Goro puts in a drink order, the band finishes warming up, and he and Ren exchange light pleasantries and easy conversation. As easy as these things can be, at least, with the taut rope around his chest pulling him always, always toward the person beside him.

“Oh! I saw it this time,” Ren announces excitedly, cutting short a debate about microwave versus stovetop popcorn which Goro was winning. He tilts his head toward the jazz band at Goro’s questioning look. “That was the nod, right?”

Ah, the bass player just finished up his solo. He must have signaled to the rest of the band that he was done using the sign Goro told Ren about… when was that, last night? After so much extended one-on-one time with Ren he’d been desperate, pulling out trivia he’d learned about this style of performance without any hope he’d find it remotely as interesting as Goro.

“Non-verbal cues…” Ren hums, drumming his fingers on their table along with the tune. “Might be a tactic we could use in the other world, yeah?”

“Exactly,” Goro agrees, as if he’d been just as clever. You were made for me, he doesn’t say.

They come up with a few signs to try, after the astounding realization that they'd already been using and understanding some of each other's unconscious cues without knowing it for a while now. There’s still time to try something new—they’re halfway through this Palace now, having made great progress in the last week, but there are still some frustrating-looking puzzles between them and their goal. It’s looking like the main squad for tomorrow is shaping up to be Crow, Joker, Queen, and Violet.

Goro considers the lineup, then simply has to point out, “Makoto is unnecessary. I’ll be able to easily solve whatever riddle your ‘counselor’ can conjure up. Bring the bruiser along instead.”

“That’s exactly what she said to me about you,” Ren laughs, before leaning in and saying under the music, “My secret is that if I bring you both, you’ll get into a brainiac competition and we’ll finish the puzzle twice as fast.”

“Funny,” Goro grumbles. “Did you tell her that too?”

“Nah, just you. Don’t narc me out,” Ren says, then winks at him.

Goro? Turning Ren in? “Oh, I could never,” he smiles back, thoroughly enjoying himself.

He relaxes further into the booth, registering tentatively that he and Ren have gotten closer to one another. It keeps happening, time and time again.

Or maybe Goro is overthinking things, as he sometimes tends to do.

“Mm. It’s cozy in here, isn’t it?” Ren says. His eyes are closed, expression completely serene.

“Don’t be nice to this horrible thing,” Goro sneers.

Ren snorts and laughs at that, his fake glasses inching down his nose. Goro could stare at him until the ending of this universe and the next and still never grow tired of him.

He’s right too—now that they’ve been in this particular booth for a while, he can see the appeal of it. Off on the very edge of the floor, in a corner dark and secluded enough to feel private, but close enough to the stage that the music can hum in his bones, making him feel loose.

Making both of them loose. And stupid.

“Come on, we’d better stay on the good side of the kissing booth,” Ren says with his trademark Joker smirk. “It might—uh.” And then he clamps his mouth shut. His eyes go wide.

Ah, shit.

Ren never finishes whatever his thought was going to be, of course he doesn’t. He could say anything at all and it might fix this: “The kissing booth might explode,” for example. Perhaps some fun wordplay: “The kissing booth might turn into the killing booth and put us both out of our fucking misery, you stupid stupid stupid idiot.”

Goro should speak up and save them both.

He should do it. Right now.

God, but nothing he can think of is good enough. Wasn’t making conversation an easy thing just a minute ago?

An awful silence falls over the booth, the fucking kissing booth, their collective inaction introducing the very unmentionable topic Goro is always trying to avoid. That forbidden thing is just hanging there, menacingly, right above their heads.

“Well,” Goro finally says, to say something, and then immediately wishes he’d said nothing at all. He adjusts his gloves.

“Not that it’s anything—” Ren says. “What I mean to say is.”

“Of course,” Goro agrees. What exactly is he agreeing with?

This is excruciating.

He’s starting to sweat under his coat—why is he still wearing his coat? Goro tries again to think of anything, anything else, to change the topic and shift their attention.

He fails.

Ren opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “I should probably—I, I think I owe you an explanation, cause it’s. You know.”

No. No, no, the last thing Goro wants is an explanation. He doesn’t want it ruined, because he knows it will be ruined. He wants it to remain exactly as it was, forever, perfect and frozen in his memory. Just a memory.

“By all means, explain away,” Goro says with a careless wave of his hand.

Ren shifts in his seat. Looks at the band, at his drink, at his hands, at the wall, anywhere but at Goro.

“I was,” he waves his hands in front of him, like he’s still pulling his thoughts together. “I was so pissed off… I knew you were still holding back in that fight, and you told me you hated me, and I hated you too, and I thought, well,” he hesitates again. “I had this idea that doing that might make you as mad as I was.”

Ah. So that’s it then.

The stars wink out. Time collapses in on itself. All living creatures are destroyed, along with any trace they ever existed. Goro dies.

“Pretty dumb, right?” Ren smiles, twists one of his curls. “Because I never actually, uh, hated you. Obviously.”

Never mind, Goro’s alive again.

“Obviously,” Goro repeats quickly, before Ren changes his mind. And because he won’t be outdone, he adds: “While I don’t particularly like you, there are people more worthy of hate in this world.”

Still smiling, Ren turns his body to face him completely, an elbow perched casually on the top of the booth. “Yeah.”

Don’t ask me why I kissed you back, Goro begs silently.

“So—”

Fuck!

“Don’t you think it’s interesting how the conceptual feelings of hate and romantic love are chemically similar in the brain?” Goro quickly interrupts, using nearly all his remaining spell energy to say romantic love in a normal tone of voice like a mature adult. “And not just chemically, if you weren’t aware—it turns out the same neural circuits are activated for those two particular states of mind, though there is a slight difference in how they react.” He can barely hear his own words over how hard and fast his heart is pounding. “Considering how close the pathways are, it’s completely understandable that under high pressure some wires could get crossed. Hormones are a tricky thing, after all. Especially at your age.”

“Yeah,” Ren says. It’s eerie: he’s looking at Goro like he’s just said the most interesting thing in the world, but at the same time Goro’s not sure he heard anything at all. He sincerely hopes Ren was actually paying attention.

“So really, it could have happened to anyone,” Goro concludes anyway. There. The perfect excuse. His position defended. They’re back to normal again.

His mouth is so dry.

“Yeah.” Ren is quiet for a while, like he’s considering his words carefully. Goro is sweating, parched, dying of a heart attack, when Ren leans in and murmurs: “I think about the sounds you made every night.”

Goro kisses him.

Ren’s hand tangles in Goro’s hair. Their teeth clatter off each other before they quickly figure out how to fit together again. A tremor flies down Goro’s spine, and the kissing booth claims its next victims.

It’s so much better than he remembers. Ren thought of him, Ren wants him, Ren’s wanted him all along—how could such a small discovery change everything?

Goro’s heart is free, soaring high amongst the clouds.

“I was so nervous,” Ren laughs an eternity and a moment later, their faces an inch apart. His smile is captivating, the widest Goro’s ever seen it. Goro can’t wait to kiss it again. “You were playing it way too cool.”

Goro smiles back. Wearing any kind of mask seems foolish, pointless. They’re simply too close to each other to put on a show—and he couldn’t even if he wanted to. He can’t seem to remember how. His ribcage is cracked open and the truth is pouring out, smooth and refreshing as water. “I was? I can promise you I was an awful wreck,” he blurts out in a voice he’s never, ever heard before. “Look at how my hand is shaking.”

“Mine too.” He grabs Goro’s raised hand, clumsily slides his glove off. Ren’s fingers are too clammy and too warm. It’s perfect. And Ren kisses him again.

The music thrums in his veins, the velvet seat of the booth crunches beneath his palm. Ren makes a little sound, and Goro knows he’ll remember it for the rest of his life.

How amazing, that Ren likes him back. How convenient, that this booth was the only one available. It’s like a dream.

“Stop.”

He’s got a hand pressing back against Ren’s chest, the heartbeat within it almost as quick as Goro’s thoughts as he chases down the strands of an idea. He can’t lose it, losing it could mean the end of both of them.

“We can’t do this,” Goro says, staring sightlessly at the ground as his mind continues to work. “It might not be real.”

That’s it. Of course it isn’t real. How could he be so foolish?

It’s over, then. Again, over before they could really begin. Murderous fury, animalistic passion, longing beyond longing—why is it that the shape of Goro’s greatest temptation is always Ren?

He looks hurt.

“You saw the sorry state of your teammates,” Goro explains further. “That man can and will do anything to keep us in this twisted snow globe of his. He could change our memories, our desires, anything.”

You really think you would be my greatest wish? Ren should scoff.

“Oh. Yeah,” he says quietly instead. “Sure.”

The world slowly blooms back into focus around them. Goro feels no shame or embarrassment for making out in public. The discomfort of a stranger isn’t his problem. His heart still pounds in his ears, and the beat sounds fake.

Ren has a stupid, blank look on his face. Like he doesn’t fully understand the implications yet, but he trusts Goro enough to go along with it anyway. Probably for the best. “Well uh, after all this—” Ren stops himself. Shakes his head, straightens his shoulders. The meaning is clear: his mask is back up. “Only if you want to, I mean. No pressure.”

On the seat of their booth, Ren’s hand hesitantly sneaks on top of his own. It’s warm and real.

Goro doesn’t move. “How gentlemanly of you,” he says wryly, finding his own mask fits smoothly back into place as well—though that feeling beneath his ribs isn’t going away quite so easily.

Ren shrugs.

As Goro watches him out of the corner of his eye, a missing piece of the eternal puzzle that is Ren clicks into place—a piece that was gifted to Goro by Ren himself. He can feel the quiet nervousness radiating off of him now. Anxiety caused by Goro’s presence and mitigated by Goro’s advance toward him, as said by Ren’s own mouth. Well then, isn’t that interesting.

In the midst of devastation Goro takes heart in this new knowledge. He’s all-knowing, powerful, untouchable. Until he recalls what happened next.

Shit, shit, god damn it, what the hell did Goro say to Ren? What exactly did he say? Did he really admit—what was it, something about his shaking hand? Fucking hell, what saccharine, disgusting, idiot spirit possessed him to do something like that? He said out loud, with his own mouth, that Ren made him a mess and now Ren knows. He knows.

This, alongside a thousand terrible feelings roil in his stomach, mix in with the already-present elation and subsequent horror of having made out with his rival—again. Embarrassment, longing, fury, anxiety, each fighting each other to surface for the barest of moments before being shoved down in exchange for something new.

Well, he thinks to himself, grasping at any life raft and finding one, at least I’m not alone.

Goro carefully intertwines his index finger with Ren’s, under the table where no one can see. Not even them. With his other hand he clenches his drink, and wishes it would shatter under his fingers.

Chapter Text

Ren’s holding some watermelon, a slice in each hand, looking at them like he doesn’t understand what they are. Now he’s sitting in front of an enormous bowl of ramen, fake-ass glasses he’s still wearing for some reason all fogged up from the steam. Now he’s just napping in an RV—this is a new one. The afternoon summer sun hits him in such a gorgeous way that it briefly makes Goro forget that someone had to take this picture, and that someone isn’t Goro.

Goro scrolls past countless, endless group photos of Ren with all his friends posted on various public social media accounts. He’s seen these before.

He puts the phone down, and grabs a pod of instant coffee.

A familiar mantra marches its way across his thoughts, its path so well-trodden its words are practically imprinted there: he’s happy and he’s moved on. That’s good. That’s what you want. He’s happy and he’s moved on. That’s good.

Goro takes a mug out of his cupboard. The black mug, the one he likes.

It didn’t work out after all. Sometimes these things don’t. Goro was licking his wounds, and Ren was in prison. Goro was captured by the vestiges of his father’s followers, and Ren was released to finish his school year. Goro escaped, was on the run again, and Ren traveled home, far away from the city which remains Goro’s best chance to stay hidden. And now this fucking roadtrip…

It’s simply too much trouble. The company Ren keeps, those friends of his, the multitude of groups tracking his every move with varying levels of success. Goro doesn’t dare attempt to send a message to him because he knows it will sound some kind of alarm—and even then, god. Just the act of letting that infuriating group know he’s alive would doubtless bring constant complication to his currently completely normal and fine life.

Goro has always been on his own. He makes his own choices, for his own purposes, with only himself in mind. This is the right call. This is what he wants.

The coffee machine hums as it works. Ren is waiting for him, within reach, just there on the countertop.

He picks up the phone again, unlocks it, and swipes through the pictures.

This is unproductive, he tells himself.

Ren’s hair looks good in that one, he responds unhelpfully.

He puts the phone down.

There's not much more to do here, so Goro walks out of his kitchen and into his living room. Then, back to the kitchen. Back to the living room. The shittiest thing about this new apartment: there’s not a lot of room. He just can’t get a good pace in.

He could set up his punching bag. That might help. No, coffee first, that’s still being made back in the kitchen. God, this sucks. Everything sucks.

He remembers being so frustrated with his mother when she sank into one of her frantic, wistful moods. There were other men out in the world, after all—why care about just that one? That one, of all people? Why talk about him endlessly, cry over him, waste all her remaining hopes and dreams on just one small reunion they both knew would never come?

Goro returns to the kitchen. He takes a shaky breath through the powerful, all-encompassing ache in his heart—an ache which is apparently a genetic condition—and wishes he could apologize. Tell her he understands now, at least a little bit. He could ask her how she handled this but, well. She didn’t.

There’s no one in the whole world like your father, his mother had always said.

How do you know? Goro would yell at her when he couldn’t take it anymore. There’s hundreds of people in this city!

Perhaps he should take his own advice, then. He can find someone else. If this is his first… crush—or whatever, something more dignified than that—then perhaps the solution isn’t waiting it out, but finding a second, new one. A better one.

So… how would one do that?

The corner of Goro’s lip pulls up in anticipatory disgust, even as he takes a sip of his shitty instant coffee. Perhaps a café? He could sit at a quiet counter, television droning in the background, the bespectacled barista in front of him—no, stop that.

Alright, should he go to a bar, then? To find men? God, he can’t even begin to imagine the caliber of idiots which inhabit such a place. A dance club, then? No, no, not even worth considering.

Goro likes to be alone. The only thing better than being alone is…

There’s no one in the whole world like him.

He shakes his head, physically clearing the thought away. This is pathetic. This is just fucking pathetic. He’s nineteen years old, for fucks sake—he needs to hurry up and get over it and learn to be fine on his own again. 

Yes, that’s good, that’s a great plan, because living his entire life completely isolated and dying alone is the opposite of pathetic.

Goddammit.

In his mind’s eye the Ren on his phone warps, perks up from his nap. “I’m happy,” he tells Goro, “and I moved on. That’s good. That’s what you want for me.” The image twists further, and Ren is standing in front of him, his smile sharpened into a cruel smirk. “I found someone new, and we fuck all the time, and now I don’t think about you at all.”

Goro drops his full mug onto the countertop.

“Shit!”

Hot coffee flows everywhere, everywhere. He tosses his stupid phone onto a nearby table, rushes to find a rag to clean it up.

He can’t do it. He can’t see Ren again. That’s the thing, that’s where all this agonizing and hand-wringing always leads—he just can’t. It’s too risky. It’s too complicated. He’s weighed the pros and cons, and it doesn’t make any logical sense.

It’s been too long, and now it’s too late.

Another image forms in his mind while he sops up the ruined coffee, one he’s tortured himself with so many times before: Maruki lurking in a darkened booth, manipulating puppet strings. Placing false memories of a kiss in Mementos that might never have happened into Goro’s mind. Forcing Ren to host a desire he’d never felt in the first place. Compelling Ren to kiss him back after Goro’s stupid mistake. Compelling Ren to say, bashfully, “After all this—”

“Only if you want to—”

And then, similarly, the moment of their reunion: Goro’s heart at its fullest and most fragile—so terribly fragile, like his mother’s before him. And Ren laughing at him, pity and disgust in his eyes, his arm around some random, beautiful girl. Looking at her the way he looked at Goro. Kissing her the way he kissed Goro.

And still, even in the midst of this waking nightmare, Goro misses him.

At least he knows for sure that Maruki was defeated. Only reality would feel so fucking horrendous.

He chucks the disgusting wet rag in the sink as hard as he can. The shit cherry on top of this shit morning: he can’t stop thinking about Ren having sex again. Screw the coffee, he’s taking a shower.

Chapter Text

An early autumn breeze whistles through a small, sleepy town, rustles still-full trees and their leaves. An owl coos softly somewhere to the east. The moon is high in the sky, the hour so late that only a few steadfast crickets keep up their chorus of chirps. An assassin slides open the second-story window of a small suburban home, and slips inside.

Silent as a ghost, he creeps across a dark bedroom and stops beside a small, twin-sized bed.

Goro tries to take in the rest of the room while he’s here. There could be much to learn, after all. Childhood trophies, posters, even toys, perhaps. But his eye keeps being drawn back to his target. He hasn’t seen him this close in months, years, centuries. He’s older and younger at once, sleeping soundly on his back, Morgana curled up on his chest.

Amamiya Ren is a leader of men. He’s fought gods and demons, and even more impressively he’s bested Goro more than once. Now here he is, totally vulnerable, lips slightly parted in sleep. He looks cute.

Goro slips his hand into his pocket, retrieves a small pre-prepared note. Perfectly ordinary stationary, perfectly crinkled, perfectly imperfect penmanship reading:

Joker—

Get a burner

And Goro’s new phone number beneath it.

Heart pounding loudly in his ears, he examines Ren’s bedside table to find the most perfectly careless place to leave it. He hasn’t even found it when a hand lightly wraps itself around his wrist.

Well, shit. There goes that plan. He should have known better than to try and sneak up on a thief.

Ren blinks up at him, his half-open eyes clearly struggling to focus on the arm he’s captured. He mumbles the words, clearly still mostly asleep, but it sounds like, “Goro, get back here.”

“What?”

“Huh?” Ren blinks again, turns his focus higher. His eyes widen, all vestiges of sleep falling off him instantly. “You’re—Akechi?” His voice is hushed, but he might as well be shouting. He sits up, launching Morgana off of him with a loud, extremely cat-like screech.

Goro’s wrist goes cold as Ren finally releases him, needing both his hands to hush his cat.

“What the—!” Morgana shouts as his attention turns to Goro, before he’s promptly interrupted by a sharp thunk! from the next room—the room which Goro knows from his reconnaissance should contain Ren’s parents. 

Everyone freezes.

Goro’s eyes dart back toward the window. Ren’s eyes widen and impart a message which couldn’t be more clear: Don’t you fucking dare.

A tense moment passes.

Silence rules the house, and after another few careful seconds, they all relax again.

“Akechi!” Morgana hisses quietly this time, facing him on all fours as menacingly as a small cat can. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s you,” Ren whispers to Goro. He won’t stop staring at him, and he’s got a goofy smile on his face. Not an entirely worst-case scenario for this botched reunion, then. Probably.

“It’s me,” Goro whispers back.

He thought he’d missed Ren before. While nursing his wounds alone, running from his captors, enduring the mundane loneliness of his apartment. Even during those dark days in December, the ones he tries to forget… but surely nothing could match how he feels now, this new torturous depth of longing with Ren finally right in front of him. Yet again, these feelings of his make no sense at all.

Ren starts to say something else, then glances back at that shared wall. After a moment of deliberation, he uses the old signs Ren and Goro had dreamt up together on a cold January night in the Jazz Jin, gesturing to Goro: Follow me. Then to Morgana: Stay and keep watch. He glides over to his window—the same one Goro used to grant himself entry—slides it open again, and climbs out. Out, and up, presumably to the roof.

Well, Goro’s gone this far, hasn’t he?

When he steps outside, it’s a different universe that awaits him. He can feel the light, crisp nighttime air on his skin, barely rustling his hair. Silence which can only be found in a small town like this amplifies every movement, every breath, every thought tenfold. Across a small sea of shingled roofs, they sit alone—no one else in the world exists here in this space. Just Goro and Ren.

“I come up here a lot,” Ren says, as Goro settles in to sit beside him. He’s still talking quietly, but the fear and urgency is gone. “To talk to Mona or just sit. The walls in there are paper thin and my parents can’t stand any kind of noise.”

Goro looks up at the stars. They’re brighter than anything he’s ever seen.

“You’re alive,” Ren says.

Goro laughs—yes, he is alive. “You thought I’d died?”

Ren doesn’t answer that, doesn’t need to at this point. Goro knows what he did by waiting this long. He can feel sharp gray eyes boring holes into him, but doesn’t want to turn to meet them quite yet.

“Where have you been?”

“I had matters to take care of.”

A frustrated silence stretches on long enough that Goro finally faces Ren and finds him waiting for a real answer—an answer which isn’t bullshit. “It’s a long story, I’ll tell you another time,” Goro sighs. “What you need to do is tell your hacker that however she altered your phones—it isn’t enough anymore for people like me to keep in contact with you and stay alive all at once.”

“Ah, shit. So,” Ren holds up Goro’s note between two fingers. “Get a burner?”

Goro’s not sure how or when Ren got that note, because he sure didn’t give it to him. “Get a burner,” he confirms.

Ren nods, pockets the note into his pajama pants.

There, that’s another necessary step completed. He’s not sure if Ren is feeling pissed, betrayed, tired of Goro’s shit—he surreptitiously observes his profile, looking for any helpful sign, but of course Ren is also notoriously difficult to read. Goro has devoted so much valuable time and brainpower to figuring him out, and still has no answers to the most important questions in life: Does he like me? Is he with someone else now? No really, does he like me?

Goro’s torment is eternal.

Ren surveys the landscape in front of them, completely unaware as always.

“There’s a new supermarket over there,” Ren finally says, pointing somewhere to the southwest. It all looks the same to Goro, he can’t see it. “And everyone talks about it like it’s the new town hall. It’s weird.”

He looks back at Goro, but Goro isn’t sure what he’s trying to say. He’s out of practice.

Ren sheepishly waves a hand, explains further. “In the city things changed constantly. But here… I dunno, it feels like this place has always been frozen in time. I just thought it would stay frozen while I was gone.”

Ah. “Time will always move on without us. If you’re not running in front of it you’ll be left behind,” Goro responds, leaning back on his hands.

“Yeah,” Ren sighs, a wry smile crossing his face. He looks relaxed, happy, even as he says, “It’s never felt more like it’s about to catch me. I hate being stuck out here”.

Under these stars, Goro is stricken with a powerful urge to—for lack of a better phrase—spill his fucking guts. There’s an intimacy out here, and honestly an intimacy which has always existed between the two of them. He wants Ren to know him. He likes telling him, telling anything and everything, and he feels safe when he does.

“That’s why I came to find you,” Goro admits. “I could feel my life passing me by. A safe, boring life in a safe, boring apartment. I…” he swallows, takes a deep breath. “Missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Ren says immediately, that wide smile returned to his face. Thanks to Goro. Goro did that.

Alright, that’s enough for now. “Well, Joker,” Goro says quickly, changing the subject. “If you weren’t stuck out here, wasting your life with unimportant tasks like graduating high school—what would you be doing?”

“Well I’d be out there finding you, for starters.”

This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone. No one has ever felt this strongly about any other person in the world—Goro is the very first one. Patient zero.

Here the two of them are: the clock isn’t running down. No one’s trying to kill either of them—at least not right now. There are no grand plans, no world-ending crises. Ren shifts, carefully uncrossing and re-crossing his legs, and in the process adjusts his left hand so the side of it rests ever so slightly against Goro’s right, pinky finger to pinky finger. Goro’s not sure if Ren noticed, and at the same time he’s absolutely positive that Ren has to have noticed. It’s exactly as warm and real as he remembers.

“It’s not so terrible out here,” Goro admits. “It’s quiet. Peaceful. And the company could be worse.”

He turns his head to Ren, finds Ren staring at him again.

“Wanna make out?” Ren asks.

Inside his mind, Goro implodes.

Outside, he attempts to save face. “Oh, so you remembered that?” he says, with what he hopes to god is a flirty smirk.

One that Ren easily returns. He’s so fucking good at it. A professional. Goro is going to make out with him.

“Come here,” Ren murmurs, his hand already winding its way through the back of Goro’s hair, teasing in a way he’s done before. He must like it.

Kissing Ren this time is such an ecstatic relief. He won’t be able to fully process the meaning of it all until later—that Ren does in fact like him, Ren is attracted to him, Ren liked him in January, in November, maybe even before that. Ren missed him. Ren isn’t with anyone else. Because he’s with Goro.

For now, it’s enough to simply exist, here, with him.

“Hey,” Ren says after a while, his lips red and gorgeous as they work to maneuver to a more comfortable position. “What are you up to, anyway?”

Goro’s brain is off. “Huh?”

“You don’t have to go to school. What do you do all day?”

“Ah. Well, if you’re so curious, today I got a job as a bartender so I could drug your usual tails for the night,” Goro says. Two men in suits, their eyes gliding past service workers, acting like they’re immune to all the evils of the world because of the power their employer holds. He hopes their hangovers are truly awful.

Goro pushes Ren down to lie flat on the roof, climbs on top of him. “But I think I’ll probably be fired by tomorrow,” he sighs with mock sadness.

“Whoa,” Ren says stupidly. “Hot.”

There are more important matters to take care of here, so they decide to allow the conversation to taper off again.

The world narrows around them—no past, no future, no problems, no worries. Only heat, only the present moment, only Ren. Goro finds fun in the technique of it—this is an entirely new world of tactics and maneuvers. Ren shivers, bites his own lip and groans when Goro licks the shell of his ear, and Goro files that away with an efficiency which simply comes naturally. Now he knows one of Ren’s weaknesses.

Eventually, Ren’s sleep shirt gets so hiked up under his armpits that he simply has to take it off. Goro can’t be outdone, so he starts working on the buttons of his own shirt.

As he does, he can’t help but remember something interesting. “Did you call me by my given name?”

Ren doesn’t answer, busy staring at Goro’s chest with a focus that is entirely too satisfying.

“When you woke up,” Goro says, tilting Ren’s head up with a finger under his chin. “You called me Goro.”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. Would that be… okay?”

Goro considers it. “I’m… not sure,” he answers honestly.

“That’s okay. We’ll get there,” Ren smiles with entirely earned confidence, his hand slowly tracing a path up and down the bare skin of Goro’s side, beneath his open shirt. Goro’s pants were by no means comfortable before, but they’re becoming more of a problem with every passing minute.

He collapses down atop Ren again, reveling in the new feeling of hot skin against skin, and realizes with a start that he might be about to go all the way on a fucking roof. And that sounds great. He can’t find a single thing wrong with the idea.

A veritable buffet of options before him, Goro decides the best course of action is to explore Ren’s neck and make his way down, and down, and down. Just the thought is beyond exciting. Ren moans when Goro nips right above his collarbone, kicks his leg out, and a vent below them suddenly rings out with the loudest bang! Goro’s ever heard in his life.

Fuck.

They freeze. Ren must have hit some kind of debris on the roof, launched it—how incompetent are Ren’s shitty parents that they don’t keep their fucking roof clean? If this wakes them up—

“Joker!” They both hear, muffled but clear enough inside the house below.

Fuck!

“Shit!” Ren exclaims. Goro scrambles off him.

“Joker!” Morgana yells again, as loudly as he can. “Your dad is headed to your room!” Morgana continues to yell as Ren flies off the roof, swinging back into the house through the window with his supernatural level of grace.

Goro stays where he is, listening in, ready to move if needed, but mostly just… catching his breath. Remembering that the outside world does indeed exist, sometimes. Ren’s shirt is crumpled up in a heap beside him.

“—told you not to go up there,” Goro manages to catch a muffled, quiet conversation in the room directly below. “—damage the roof.”

“I wasn’t,” he hears Ren respond. Ren isn’t going to win any awards for this extremely rough impression of someone who’s just woken up, but hopefully it’s good enough. “It must’ve been a crow or something.”

Sure, blame me, Goro thinks, rolling his eyes, just barely catching himself before he laughs out loud with giddy insanity. Shit. They’re done again. They might be cursed. Goro really thought he was about to go all the way on a roof.

He can’t stop smiling.

It takes a while—Goro’s really not sure how long, time isn’t passing for him the way it usually does—but eventually he hears a little “Pst,” from the window below.

Ren’s head is poking out. He’s still shirtless.

“Get back in there,” Goro whispers, balling Ren’s shirt up and throwing it down at him.

Ren catches it easily, then tosses it back up. “Keep it. Will I see you tomorrow?”

Goro takes a quick second, something he surely could have done during all that time he had to himself. He wipes his mouth, combs through his hair, decides not to bother with re-buttoning his shirt. Takes a quick huff of Ren’s. It smells like sleep, desire, sweat, and detergent.

He follows Ren’s lead and drops down silently from the roof, perching on the windowsill. Ren stands before him, thumbs hooked casually into the pockets of his pajama pants. His hair is extraordinarily messed up.

“You know, my life doesn’t revolve around you,” Goro finally responds, as quietly as he can while still being audible.

“What?”

“My life,” he tries again, enunciating carefully, “doesn’t revolve around you.”

“What?” Ren says again, coming in closer, a shitty grin splitting his face.

“Fuck off.” They have to kiss again, they simply have to, but then Goro does the responsible thing and gently pushes him away. “Just get a fucking burner,” he murmurs.

“Okay. Wanna stay the night?” Ren tilts his head toward his bed.

The implication, the idiocy, the sheer boldness of such a question—it knocks Goro briefly speechless.

“Are you insane?” he asks when he recovers, laughing a little at the audacity. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Ren seems pleased, totally unphased. “Cool. And the next day?”

Goro throws Ren’s shirt in his face. Later that night he’ll regret it and miss it, but it’ll be okay because he’s seeing Ren tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.

Ren is going to tell all his friends that Goro survived, and the whole affair will be so deeply annoying that Goro almost runs off again. But they’ll find an equilibrium that works. They’re going to track down the people following them, and with the help of Ren’s network they’ll pick them off one by one with blackmail, prison sentences, and maybe even a few threats of incredible violence. Ren will try and fail to teach Goro how to drive in an empty parking lot. Goro will sprain his wrist doing something stupid and have to wear a brace for Ren’s high school graduation.

Goro walks back from Ren’s house out in the countryside, his shirt still unbuttoned, fluttering in the breeze.

He marvels at how the world seems to have bloomed several new colors. Or maybe those colors were always there, and now Goro can see them.