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The warm lighting and doldrums of the cafe that had set to close minutes ago greet Goro as he avoids the gaze of the barista and the patrons alike. He's a regular here – now and then both, back when he was a troubled teen with a rivalry pitted against another troubled teen.
It's not that they're any less troubled as adults, waltzing haphazardly into their early twenties, but years of therapy look good on Akira, and a solid year of rehabilitation for his culmination of physical and mental scars looks only slightly worse on Goro in comparison.
Albeit begrudgingly, the two of them have changed. For the better, surely, but it isn't often that Goro gets to see him outside of their late-nights between school and therapy and being dragged out to places by Akira's friends.
(Not their friends. Never theirs. Goro is allowed in their social circle out of pity. He hangs around like a stray cat that has received its first morsel of canned food and has since developed a strong hatred for cheap kibble, though, so he isn't any better than the hand feeding him.)
The friendships he built are the ones he craved as a younger version of himself, but now that he has them, he can't help but wonder how they work. What is and isn't considered normal. How he's expected to react to the things that come up. If he indeed fits in, or if his 'friends' pity him because of their experiences – both the shared ones and the ones simply heard of. These friendships are the ones that he used to envy through fogged windows of some cramped cafe that no one else would step foot in for the next week, so obscure and tucked away that it was a wonder the owner could even pay to rent out the space still. Probably a front for something.
Probably something he should've investigated back in his heyday for some cheap notoriety.
The closest thing to consistency in his life was the folding of one leg over the other and steam billowing out of his cup and into his face, clearing sinuses that he had not known were at all congested. Consistency is watching his barista pour steamed milk into the glass, and counting the seconds that pass to gauge just how many milliliters of milk go into it. Consistency is knowing the calories and nutritional value like most people know the backs of their own hands – though the last one does not apply to Goro, who winces when he sees himself in the mirror because that's not him.
Never mind the fact that his presence feels more like a plague or a curse than good fortune, the roof of Leblanc over his head is a comforting one. Comfort that he surely does not deserve, yet comfort that Akira does not rip from him all the same, so Goro chooses the path of selfishness that his therapist insists is not at all 'selfish' but is instead him allowing his desires to pilot for once.
The cafe is closed to the general public at this hour, evidenced by the last few patrons that had shuffled out as Goro shuffled in. Akira does not comment on it, and Goro doesn't seem the slightest bit remorseful about showing up after hours – because it's just one of those nights. One of those nights where he wishes his feet would've brought him back to his condo, where he would have been greeted by nothing and nobody, and the silence there wouldn't be quite as comforting as the silence that he falls into around Akira.
The silence is only stuttered by the clinking of mugs as Akira wipes them down. The plates follow next and then he's topping off Goro's coffee with the remainder of the brew, notably not adding any additional milk even though it throws off the ratio; considerate of how weird Goro can be about the precision with which he consumes anything. The kettle goes with the rest of his dishes, and after a long sip of the frothiness at the top of his cup, Goro finally speaks up.
"Oh? Are you officially closing shop?"
Akira casts a glance over his shoulder. His little smile is sinful – the same one that conveys nothing more than his unwavering mischief. Always so happy to play Goro's game, and for what?
"Suppose you could say that? I meant to close up… Oh, around ten minutes ago." Akira shrugs his shoulders and then returns to the kettle filled with a mixture of vinegar and water. Goro notes that he's descaling it – rather pointlessly too, meaning he must be killing time. "But something kept me around, I guess." Then, as if realizing Goro could easily twist his words into making himself feel like a pest, he tacks on: "Not complaining, though. I did have stuff to finish up."
It must not have been a lot of stuff because he seems to finish tying together his loose ends at record speed, signified by his hands reaching around to pick at the knot of his apron until it lets up on its hold of him. It's tossed haphazardly into a barrel of aprons that needed to be washed at the laundromat before Akira rounds the counter to smooth his hand through the back of Goro's hair.
"I'm actually shutting it all down for the night now, though. Just leave your cup there when you're done, I'll get it in the morning if Sojiro doesn't beat me to it." Akira works out a small knot in Goro's wind-tousled hair and then kisses the crown of his head before turning to head upstairs to the attic. "Gonna go get changed. Door's open for you always, of course."
Goro chews the inside of his cheek and if something akin to an expression of gratitude comes out through his gritted teeth, then it goes unmentioned by both of them – and probably unheard by Akira, who had already ascended far enough up the staircase that the clunking of his shoes against each one faded into nothingness over the sound of the kitchen sink's drain struggling to gurgle down the large sum of sudsy water. He's invited up intentionally – because Akira knows Goro would slip away into the night without any kind of warning if he hadn't explicitly been told to come up when he's done nursing his drink. It should be thoughtful, but Goro's already filled with regret before he even goes up.
It's one of those things where he can't think too hard about it. Besides, there isn't much room left in his brain for new thoughts, anyway. He's hung up on everything – about them, really, but it's not something so easily put into words. If it were, then Goro wouldn't be sitting alone at the countertop sip after sip, wondering if Akira truly wanted him to come upstairs or if it was an offer done out of obligation. He wouldn't be left in the dark recesses of his mind, wondering if both of their lives would be better if Goro extracted himself from this entanglement – surely it would hurt at the moment, but then it would get easier once they learned to live without each other.
…Goro has tried to force that narrative on them already. Twice, now. He knows good and well it does not help to tuck his tail and run, and it isn't exactly fair to Akira, either. He invests too much for Goro to not feel nauseated the entire time they're apart when he does that, yet he has too much respect to crawl back to Akira and apologize when the chances of him having moved on were non-zero each time. No point in opening old wounds and complicating Akira's life because of his lack of impulse control when it comes to ditching everything and trying to start over.
Before he can spend too long thinking about how close the exit back out into the windy streets of Tokyo is, Goro tosses back the remainder of his drink – still hot enough that it singes his tongue and will no doubt leave everything half-flavored for the next week until it heals – and collects himself to head up the attic stairs instead. He's much slower going up than Akira had been, who usually runs up so fast that he tumbles over himself and has to break his fall with his palms.
Goro still hasn't fully recovered from the lingering effects of the circumstances surrounding his not-quite death. It took a year of rehabilitation and an ongoing cycle of physical therapy, and still, he lags in ways that only serve to make him feel incapable and pathetic, even when Akira promises him it's more commendable that he bounced back when most people would rather give up and remain hopeless with the condition that he had been left in. The nurses had marveled when he woke up at all, so the revelation that he would eventually be able to walk again had come as a shock even to him.
As promised, the attic door is indeed open for him. That, too, should be reassuring – but it just makes panic rise in his throat and regret seep into every fold of his brain like molasses into a formicarium for ants.
When he pokes his head around the corner, Akira is already waiting for him, visibly pacing around the room because he hadn't expected Goro to ever show up after time had gotten away from him in his few-minute-too-long stupor. His arms open wide, inviting in the same way the attic door being ajar was meant to be, and Goro can't stop himself from crossing the space between them to take his spot right in front of Akira after ditching his shoes by the entryway.
Immediately, a hand flattens down the collar of Akira's shirt, stretched and misshapen from years of wear. His touch is unsteady, and the fingertips that barely threaten to skim over his pulse permeate a chill that rips down to the innermost parts of him, but his heart is the rotten core of an apple and Akechi Goro is the worm nestled meticulously within it; it feels like home in a way that it shouldn't. A bitter taste on both of their tongues is the only reminder that this should have never been, and the pendulum of Goro's mind oscillates between wanting to stay and darting for the exit once more.
Akira craves the selfishness of keeping Goro right where he is. It's something he dreams of, but not something that he allows himself to have – Goro has made it abundantly clear that his grapple for freedom all of his life is not something that he's willing to compromise on, even as the greater part of him knows better than to think that he could ever belong to anyone else in the way that he belongs to Akira. His heart and soul do not belong to him alone, lost and intertwined so intimately with Akira's own that ripping them away from each other would only leave a gaping hole where these things should have been planted securely all this time.
Goro isn't sure that it's healthy. Akira isn't sure, either, but it has never been a disservice to them.
"Let me have this," Akira all but pleads, his voice cutting through the otherwise still sound of crickets from outside the attic windows. They both want this, Goro knows, but acknowledging that fruitless desire and satisfying the carnal beast inside of him are two wildly different things. He needs to know that he's doing this for Akira, too. To detach himself from his selfish desires. "I missed you the past few days. People avoid your seat on purpose, I think."
Goro stands firm on the balls of his feet instead of leaning up to kiss that inconsolable frown off of Akira's pretty face (chances are that Akira is unaware of it, anyway), even when he feels a visceral urge under his skin to make him smile. It's an expression that he's met with more often than not these days, like he worries a little more about losing Goro each time he spirals slightly deeper into the halfway point of an episode. The crashing waves take him to some faraway place and it gets more difficult to pull him back to shore when he's already adrift – and the vast expanse of sea stands in as the stretch of emotions that Goro does not have the words for; emotions too big for his form, too big for the cavity where his heart is supposed to be.
He does not know how to experience these emotions with any semblance of efficacy even after trial and error of therapy and workbooks, and so, they grab hold of him and set him on the charted course of failure with the only ending in sight being the part where he crashes and burns. Everything around him will billow up into smoke and soot – irreparable damages that, in the end, he's left alone to sift through the damages of. Salvage what he can. Toss out what he can't.
(Toss out everything, even the things that are best for him – like Akira. Always Akira. Start over in a new city. Assume a new identity and make the world forget he ever had a place in it.)
"Things would be better if we had met much earlier in life," Goro muses idly, and not for the first time – but would it truly have made any difference? That look on Akira's face only worsens with his musings, enough so that it almost pools his stomach with guilt instead of the seemingly perpetual disassociation that oozes into every fold of his brain and leaves him feeling hollow and unsure of who he even is. "I wonder how different things could have been for us, Akira."
Goro's lips twitch into a smile that barely holds back the convoluted slurry of emotions laden within him. His smiles are always closed-mouthed in times like these, when he's biting back a particularly harsh comment or a nasty remark that he knows he'll regret putting out into the air later. All of the toxic sludge will come spilling out of him if he bares his teeth like a feral animal.
"Would you still be interested in me, then? Or are you just interested in picking apart everything wrong with me?" His smile is gone, replaced with a blank slate for him to craft and curate at the next circumstance that calls for it – the very way that he had been conditioned to. "Do you keep singing all of these praises when I'm gone, or is that when you capitalize on letting your true thoughts about me spill out to all of your little friends? I can only imagine the— the kicks that you get out of it all."
Akira swallows hard at that, loud enough that his gulp reverberates in the eerie silence of the attic, and Goro wants to flick him on the chin for swallowing like an animal gulping down swine feed, like he hadn't just berated the one person who has long since come around to wholeheartedly tolerate him when he's being neurotic. The four walls always echo, but even they seem to know better than to bounce Goro's words back at him, for he's met with nothing but the droning on of silence.
Do the words even slip past his lips, or has he managed to imagine that, too? The same way that he imagines that, maybe, he and Akira could have ever been something worthwhile in some contorted form of reality that didn't entail death and harrowing revelations.
Goro feels the distending of Akira's throat where his thumb has fallen against the warm side of his neck, and only just finally allows himself the reprieve of pressing a fleeting kiss where the digit had been, as if to add permanence to his touch and seal it away forever. It's selfish. Goro doesn't deserve to touch him, but Akira just huffs through his nose amusedly, and Goro thinks he can even see his lips curling into some joyful microexpression instead of that god-awful frown. It means nothing when his vision is swirling and all he can feel is the knot in his throat that makes him want to wedge two fingers down after it to alleviate the pressure and give his tears a reason to be there.
"It isn't like that. Nothing would be the same. You wouldn't be you, and I… I wouldn't be here. I would still be at home. Without you. Or anyone else that means something to me." Akira's fingers fidget into the cotton of Goro's t-shirt, twisting and untwisting like he might be able to count the fibers if he tries hard enough. "Most of my friends are our friends because they want you around."
Goro narrows his eyes. The question has been avoided, as far as he's concerned. Friends aren't always so loyal that they won't backstab each other. He has watched that happen – has partaken in it, himself, out of necessity. But everyone is chasing after something, aren't they? And what if he's tied up in some ruse now that he's too oblivious to see, and once he lets his guard down, he's met with the harsh reality of being alone forever because he's irredeemable and intolerable?
Besides, meeting Goro had nothing to do with Akira's presence in Tokyo, and things still could have been different for them with or without that notch in the timeline. The issue in their dynamic was never Akira, and even Goro knows that when he has the mental clarity to accept himself as the sole provider of complications – the issue is that he's only just the passenger to his autonomy, and all he can do is watch as he repeatedly crashes into the good things in his life and tears it all down. Around him, everything is on fire, and all of it is his own to clean up – but where does he even begin with picking up the pieces? And when those slim hands with fingernails painted in meticulous vermillion show up to partake in cleaning up the wreckage for him, insisting that he need not do it alone all the time, what was Goro supposed to say?
It's not worth it. It never was, and that's why Akechi Goro was simply a dead man walking for as long as he was, after waking up and being dismissed from the hospital. He misses the freedom that he felt during those months. All he had to do was pull off one more task, and then he could rest – and yet here he is, in the throes of his miserable life while biting back the urge to shove Akira and run before he could stand back up. It's a sorry excuse of an existence, and it's made worse by the reminder that Goro does this to himself by showing back up when Akira does not need someone as hectic as him throwing off the careful balance of his life.
And Akira, for some god-awful reason, continues to let him disrupt the balance that he curates for himself. Why?
"Akira," Goro finally says, voice foreign to his ears and loud against the low humming of the lighting, or the pattering of rain on the window only a few feet from them, just by the mess of Akira's bed. There are clothes strewn about that belong in a closet or a storage bin, a jacket far too heavy for the weather outside, and a pair of pajama bottoms that need to make it to his laundry bin instead. Goro would take the time to pick them up in his finicky ways if he could do much more than focus on reeling himself in from the downward spiral that threatens to overtake him.
Akira does not stop ghosting his fingers over the crosshatch of scars over Goro's arms, stories embedded into his pale skin forever, but he does peer up at him through his dark eyelashes painted in mascara from half a day ago to signify that he's listening. "What exactly makes a place worth denoting as a 'home', in your opinion?"
Akira comes to a complete stop this time. He stands up to his full height half of a foot taller than Goro, and he's no longer hanging his head like a sad puppy left without food or water – he's staring down at Goro, the same way everyone always has. It's not as intimidating nor nearly as demeaning, though. The bewildered look etched into his features makes him look more like a deer in headlights, strangely innocent and soft around the edges, as though Akira wasn't a kaleidoscope of a broken man inside, held together with cheap school glue and sheer spite to keep living his life the way that he wants.
The sight of him is the shovel that digs a crater of nausea and hollowness in Goro's chest all over again, so he forces his gaze off to the side, locked instead on the litany of posters and trinkets that Akira had been gifted by his friends who loved him so warmly. Goro wonders what that's like. To not be so lonely. To feel a sincere gratitude for the people in his life expressing adoration for him.
"It's only just where you live. How does that saying go? 'Home is where the roof is'?"
Which is truly such a stupid response that it makes Goro's face twist like he ate something sour, like his words are nothing short of vile and lacking any sort of body. Akira must say these things to torment him. To make him feel like an imbecile for asking in the first place and not having the answer on standby already. It's always a test of his patience, but it's not punctuated with the same snide grin that he had trademarked as Joker's own. This is Akira – warm, fleshy Akira, who swears that he loves Goro even when he's a crumpled mess of a man on the floor of his bedroom. Even when he learned that Goro's condo is depressingly bare, with hardly even a bed to sleep on and certainly without color or decor to give it any life. The curtains are always drawn tight, he never opens the window to let in the fresh air, and the two hanging plants that Makoto had given him are wilted and perhaps a reflection of his well-being.
"Would it kill you to spare me your blatantly disparaging comments? Truly, I—" Goro shakes his head, molars clenched so hard they audibly squeak in his ears. The words on his tongue dissolve into individual letters that he has to swallow down, knowing better than to think everything needs to be vocalized these days, but the shape of those letters goes down like a pill too big for his esophagus and he chokes like a fool. "Whatever! Spare me the folly, Akira. What is the discrepancy? At what point is that shift made?"
Akira shrugs but seems to get this faraway haze to his eyes that indicates he's thinking, as opposed to blowing Goro's question off. 'Home' to him is wherever he can get a roof over his head – it just so happened that he found his footing in Tokyo and got swept up in the frantic whirlwind of teenagers who wanted justice to be served efficiently. But Tokyo in itself is hardly his home – it's the select group of friends that give it any significance to his life. "I've never really thought about it," he admits, staring down at their socked feet. He nudges Goro's with his own to have yet another point of contact, then sweeps his shaggy mess of brown hair from his face and brushes his lips over his forehead. "It's all about who you surround yourself with. The… faces and personalities. I never had the same sense of belonging in the suburbs because I was only existing. Not really living."
Not really living. It's the sentiment that sticks out to Goro the most in flashing neon letters, and the thing that makes him realize just how broken his life has been this entire time. All of his time has been wasted – servicing others, and pleasing those around him that wouldn't care if he was announced dead the very next morning. Everything has always been a masquerade to make the lives of everyone else easier. To keep him there where he wanted them, just for any inkling of acknowledgment or praise.
Most of all, it was all to give himself a feeling of self-worth and identity.
Goro had once trained himself to not be so facially expressive about the ugly things. Akira claims that he's far easier to read visually than anything else – his texts are always cryptic or blunt even when he's in a good mood, and it's because Goro passes them through so many filters before he hits send. He analyzes every stroke of the characters he presses on his keyboard, ensuring they're polite but not quite uptight or fake. He thinks of all the ways the other party could respond, and what he would then say to their retort, and how that would chart their conversation from there – and if it wasn't up to his standards, then he would scratch it and try again.
Underneath the layers upon layers of protection that he has built around himself, what exactly is left of Akechi Goro?
"I'm not alive," Goro sputters stupidly. The words aren't quite what he means and they must not register with any significance to Akira, even though it's something like a pathetic confession to how miserable and exhausted he is. But Akira – sweet, sweet Akira – is far too patient while he frantically combs through the cogs of his brain to find the words, to figure out what such an utterance is supposed to mean. There's a hand that has since fallen to his hip, bonier than Akira would like for it to be in an ideal world, and it's the one thing keeping Goro tethered to their current reality while the grotto in his chest splits ever deeper.
Hot, angry tears spring to his eyes, entirely out of his control. He never cries, not really – it's a rare occurrence for when he's torn between sheer anger and some sort of sadness that he has a hard time fathoming, for when his emotions are so much and so extreme that it becomes one of the only options. He hadn't been able to cry before therapy. Akira must notice, he has to, because the hand on Goro's hip snakes around to the small of his back instead, and Goro can't stop the way he all but slams his face into Akira's shoulder. It's so selfish to take from him like this, but Goro never lets himself be greedy with anything good in his life, so he swallows down what will be tomorrow's regrets and takes it for what it is.
"It's all pointless. It's all so—" Goro's face contorts again. Angry, this time; eyebrows furrow and he drags his head up from Akira's shoulder to glare at him like he cannot believe the audacity it must take to love him when he's so ugly inside – or, rather, the audacity to lead him on and claim that he does. "You don't love me. I don't understand how you could."
He doesn't let Goro get very far from him, even when one of his pale hands presses into Akira's shirt and picks at the decal of a local band that has seen so many washes that it's barely a ghost of what it once was. The hand presses, weak and futile, as if to create space between them – but if Goro wanted to, he could side-step out of Akira's grip and exit the building without fuss. And Akira would let him go, of course he would, but he'd be left standing in the middle of his room wondering where he went wrong; pacing until he drills holes into the wooden floor with nothing more than the friction of his socks and the fervor of asking himself what he could have said differently to keep Goro from leaving him again.
"Does it matter if you don't understand?" Akira's head tilts to the side. His free hand grabs at one of Goro's to absently intertwine with his own. "I've never fully understood you either, you know? I don't think it's as bad of a thing as you think. It just means…" He hums, "I get to learn a bit more about you all the time. It'd be weird if I knew everything about you."
Goro doesn't think so, but he can't bring himself to verbalize that. He thinks it'd be convenient if Akira could just exist in his headspace alongside him, instead of trying to find the words that accurately depict how he does or does not feel. He wishes, sometimes, that Akira could read his mind or exist as an extension of himself. Instead, he only sniffles in response, and he feels so vulnerable in such proximity that he has to hold his quivering breath to keep from subjecting Akira to hearing it.
"It's okay, Akechi. I know you don't get it, but I love you." He kisses the side of Goro's hand, and then once more at the seam where their palms meet. "You're always worth it. To me you are, I mean. And… It isn't your responsibility to wonder why – it's my responsibility to show you."
"I never said I wanted you to," Goro counters through the tightness in his throat, "It isn't your responsibility to show me jackshit."
The vulgarity is taken in stride. They've been here before and they'll be here again. "My self-appointed responsibility, then. It's not selfish of you to accept that from me if I'm going out of my way to tell you that this is what I want."
And, still, it doesn't register in Goro's brain that it isn't selfish to be loved. It isn't wrong of him to feel as much as he feels, even when his emotions are all-encompassing and suffocating to the point of being a hindrance. He wishes he could turn them off forever instead of trying to figure them out. He wishes that things were easier in his life, the way that things have always been painted out to be in fiction – because the way that he feels about Akira isn't far off from all of the awful, cliche novellas that Goro had wound up knee-deep in just to be likable to the older audience he grew up around. It's just that he can't ever express it without it coming out all sorts of wrong.
It's a whirlwind. It's too much. It's never enough.
Goro can get exactly what he wants from Akira at any given point and there will always be a much more selfish side to him that somehow wants to be consumed by it all instead of simply existing in the serenity that comes with his presence. How many more loose threads between them are there to weave together to keep them from ever being apart, though? How many times can they slap a patch over the holes and loose knots and pray that it keeps for good this time?
It'll never last, yet he always has had a hell of a hard time speaking that into existence. One wrong utterance and Akira will realize that a life outside of him exists and is much more worthy of being glorified than holding together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that compromise Goro's intrinsically botched being when Akira would almost certainly rather be sleeping at this hour.
He should stay because he knows he'll regret it in the morning if he doesn't, when he inevitably wakes up cold and alone in his desolate condo with no one but himself to blame for the vacancy. He has Akira's eyes on him – has his hands on him, even – so what's the meaning behind the soul-crushing feeling in his chest like they just declared a break-up instead of having a heartfelt conversation? Why is it never enough?
In times like these, even calling back to the mounds of homework given to him by his therapist to help him sift through his emotions that he deems too big gets lost on him, head in such a flurry that none of the skills taught to him in therapy are available for retrieval until after the fact. Sometimes, Akira can reel him back in with grounding techniques. Other times, Goro was already set ablaze and there was no putting the fire out once his mind was set on crashing and burning. Unfortunately, though this particular episode wasn't caused by anything Akira had done or said, he still ended up taking the brunt of Goro's cumulative bad day. Caught in the crossfire.
In all fairness, he has two options. One: extract himself from the situation entirely after making enough of a fool of himself. Or, two: blow up on Akira in his face instead of going to his home to stew in it alone. The latter is worse than the former – so, hey, maybe those therapy techniques have helped at least a little. It's no secret that Goro has dampened down some of his knee-jerk anger responses.
"Goodnight, Akira," Goro says, voice barely above a grumbled whisper, as though it doesn't make him feel an immediate pang of regret. It doesn't stop him from disentangling himself from Akira's grasp, first shuffling to the side to get his warm hands off of him, and then to the stairs to retrieve his abandoned shoes.
Maybe the space will be good this time. Maybe this will be when Akira's brain catches up with the reality around them and he'll realize that this isn't healthy for him to tolerate, and one day he'll find comfort in the simplicity of Goro's absence.
Akira swallows hard. It doesn't feel that way to him. Goro has always been so difficult to read, and knowing what he needs to hear in comparison to what he wants to hear has never been any easier than that. It's less often that they leave things on open notes like this, usually resolving their issues in the form of crashing into bed and sleeping it off even if back-to-back these days, but…
"Text me when you get home?" Akira calls out to him after he's halfway down the attic stairs, even though he knows Goro won't text him again until the funk in his head clears – whenever that is. Sometimes it's before he even makes it home. Sometimes it's a few hours. Other times it isn't for a sum of days.
There have been times Goro has pulled away for months and suddenly showed up again unannounced looking particularly beat down and sorrowful for it. Akira would be more concerned about whether or not he was even alive if not for the activity statuses on his unfrequented social media accounts that he shamefully looked at to see if Goro had replaced him or moved on already.
Not that he ever could, even if Akira doesn't believe him when he says that. It's hard to replace a part of himself so effortlessly.
Goro has nothing to say in response to that question. Meaning that it might happen. It might not. Akira gives him the benefit of the doubt that he simply hadn't heard him ask it, and takes his seat at the foot of his bed to sift through the accumulated unread texts from his shift at work. There's a lot of them – Ann inviting him out to get lunch tomorrow, Futaba asking when he would come over and mooch off of her gaming consoles and check out the newest installment to her setup.
With great hesitation, he clicks Goro's text thread and opts to send him a short series of messages to let him know he is thinking of him and that it wasn't just for show. That the door is still figuratively open, even if he knows Goro habitually locked the door to Leblanc on his way out every time.
[22:48] i hope you're alright
[22:48] i would really like a text to know you're home safe but it's ok if you don't want to
[22:50] i didn't get to say it back before you left, so goodnight <3 sleep well
Akira puts his phone down and clambers into bed to sleep it off, before deciding to pick up the phone for one more quick text. He always realizes far too many texts in that he's spamming a little, but Goro has repeatedly claimed to not mind, so the guilt is short-lived and easy to swallow down – even when the 'Delivered' at the bottom of the screen flips to say 'Read 22:51' instead, but his typing bubble never pops up. That's fine. Akira figured it would play out like this.
[22:53] call me if you need me, ok? ringer will be on all night