Chapter Text
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Goro feels really fucking stupid right now. He’d been in his apartment not even an hour ago, alone except for Hel at his feet, while some gameshow played on the TV. Apparently, Goro should not be left alone on his couch, because then he starts thinking about cheeky smirks and gunmetal grey eyes, and he inadvisably leaves Hel – his service dog, for his paranoia and panic attacks – in his apartment to hop on a train to Yongen-Jaya of all places.
“You can admit that you miss him, min opprører. None shall hear you but us.”
“I think this could be good for you.” his therapist had told him, when he brought the subject up two weeks ago. “It will give you the opportunity for closure, regardless of his own decision.”
Goro had scoffed at that. “There’s only one decision he could possibly make.”
He’d kept track of all of the ex-Phantom Thieves recently, after getting a new phone with a new number and new social media accounts. He was never so careless as to Follow any of them, but he liked keeping tabs sometimes. Sophia’s words had been on loop in his head since she spoke them, calling him something so ridiculous as Amamiya’s “heart.”
Sano-san had frowned at him, the tapping of her pen against her clipboard bringing him back to the conversation at hand.
“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t have brought it up. Hope is a good thing, Akechi-san, just as much as logic. It sounds like you knew eachother well back then, but a lot can change in three years. Be prepared for his rejection, but don’t count on it. Both of your feelings will be important, and you can’t ignore his based on the regret you have for your past together.”
He’d crossed his arms then, unable to come up with a proper rebuttal over his Personas’ excited chattering at the idea of seeing Amamiya again. Even Hereward, normally content to let Robin Hood and Loki do all the talking, could not contain himself. Goro nearly choked on his tea when Hereward called Amamiya “thine hyht.”
As if waking up from Maruki’s Reality – alive and at the rehab center that had housed himself and his mother when he was a child – hadn’t been strange enough, Goro also had to get used to knowing a new form of English. Having Robin Hood had been a boon in school, making his English classes a breeze, and Norwegian had fascinated Goro, but Olde English. It was only vaguely similar, and ultimately useless in modern times, and he only knew he’d accidentally switched to it by the odd looks he’d receive during English conversation.
“Thine hyht” had a few meanings, all far too vulnerable for a relationship that was unlikely to happen.
Our joy. Our bliss. Our hope.
Ultimately, Goro chose to leave it up to fate. The gods have been making a mockery of him his whole life, what’s one more occurrence?
That is what has led him to standing just outside the range of LeBlanc’s single lantern, completely alone, with just enough time to get back to his apartment before the last train. Maybe a reconnaissance mission is a stupid idea, but he figures that if Ren still lives here, then Goro has time to figure out how to approach him. If he’s moved on, then perhaps that’s the universe telling Goro to do the same. The problem now, is that he can’t bring himself to step any closer.
“Summon your courage, my liege. We can steal 'round the corner, to see his lights from the alley.”
“Or you could stop denying yourself and knock.”
Sometimes, Loki had the worst ideas.
It’s not even about courage or denial. Far too many memories of a warm belly and an old chess set have flooded his mind. Thoughts of strangling a boy for saying “Honey, I’m home.” the second he walked in the door. The cold, dead tone of that same voice when it confirmed they would fight to return to reality.
“Can I help you?”
Goro whirls around, the voice familiar, yet also slightly different. Those eyes he’s been dreaming about for the last three years grow so large Goro wonders if they’ll fall out of their sockets.
“Akechi…?”
He’s just as beautiful as the day Goro left him. He’s changed, of course. Broader than he was as a teenager, finally treating his back properly by standing up straight, but he’s the same too. Same odd fashion sense, same curly, untamable bird’s nest atop his head, same eyes.
God, Goro missed him.
There’s an awful feeling bubbling up in his chest. He thinks a part of it might be relief, but it’s quickly being overshadowed by his own shock and a sense of resignation.
Because of course, no matter how well thought-out a plan is or isn’t, it will never work out the way he wants it to. Not when Amamiya Ren is his opponent. Amamiya doesn’t even have to try, and Goro is left at a loss. This was supposed to be recon. He wasn’t supposed to have to figure out how to talk to him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Goro’s brain restarts when Amamiya moves, taking careful steps forward, arms raised like he’s trying not to spook a wild animal. It’s a horribly apt description, for how Goro feels like turning towards the other end of the alley and bolting. It’s only when Amamiya is barely a meter away, that Goro finally finds his words.
“Long time no see, Amamiya.”
He has just enough time to think that that is not the thing you say to the first person who has held your life in their hands and allowed it to choose for itself, when Amamiya’s face contorts. Before Goro can even begin to parse the expression, his head is knocked to the right, and a throbbing pain spreads throughout his jaw. Goro’s hand reaches up, pressing into the angry welt, and he stares at Amamiya incredulously.
“That’s what you say to me!?”
Amamiya is yelling. Goro has never heard him yell like this before. He’s standing with his fists clenched, breath heaving like he’s run a marathon, and all Goro can think about is how the bastard’s taller than him now, and he’s yelling.
“You- what the fuck is wrong with you!?”
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Goro finds himself and pushes Amamiya back, simply to quell the ache brought about by being able to touch him again. “You’re the one who punched me.”
God, he missed this. The contact, the back and forth; a consistent push and pull, like the waves of the ocean conversing with the moon. Goro craves it like he never has before.
“You let me think you were dead.” Amamiya growls, and Goro’s heart suddenly can’t figure out if it’s starting or actually stopping. “For three years. Not a call, or even a text? A ‘Hey, guess it takes more than a bullet to kill me. Don’t worry about how my vital signs completely vanished after the gunshot on the other side of the bulkhead, or how I confirmed it. I’m going to fuck off now, bye.’ Where were you? Why come back now?”
Where to even start? How do you tell the confident, righteous inferno in front of you that you’d lost all that you once were. That it took this long to find the pieces of yourself that you wanted to keep, and heal the ones that were hurting you? By no means is Goro finished with that, but he thought he was in a good enough place to finally sew this particular wound up. To let it scab and scar, until it’s only something he remembers when he accidentally brushes the leathery flesh with errant fingertips. He hadn’t been expecting this.
“I…”
Amamiya’s face crumbles. His nails are surely digging crescents into his palms by now, and Goro turns away before clever, intuitive Amamiya can glimpse his fractured heart through his eyes.
Maybe this really was a mistake.
In his periphery, he sees Amamiya deflate, those slender fingers finally releasing his skin from its tortured state. A moment later, strong arms wrap around Goro’s torso, so tightly he has no hope of moving, much less escaping. He doesn’t even know if he would. He feels like he could – should – suffocate.
“I’m still pissed.” Amamiya’s sniffle is muffled in Goro’s shoulder.
“Okay.”
“You owe me an explanation.”
“I know.”
Goro agrees quietly, easily. For all the scenarios that have filtered through his mind the last few months he’s entertained the ideas, this was never one of them. They’re silent for some time. Goro wants to lift his own arms, to hold Amamiya so close that maybe they’ll fuse into a single, jagged being, but he’s so scared that if he moves, everything will disappear, instead.
Amamiya shifts against him, shuddering breath fanning hotly over Goro’s collarbone, and he supposes he should do as promised.
“Can we go inside? I don’t want to talk out here.”
He both feels and hears Amamiya breathe in. When he pulls back, his eyes are red in the low lighting, but no tear tracks are shining down his face.
“Futaba still has the café bugged. We… can go to my apartment.” he twists the hair over his forehead, same nervous tell as when they still knew eachother.
Goro can only blink at him for a moment. “What are you doing here, if you don’t live in the attic anymore?”
“Futaba and I went to Akihabara.” Amamiya shrugs. “I wasn’t comfortable with them walking home this late by themself, so I dropped them off.”
Second pass, before laughter, a little too close to the edge of mania, escapes Goro’s lips.
Of course. Pure coincidence.
“I really, really can’t stand you. Do you know that?”
A grin splits Amamiya’s face, bright and new, and if it’s a little watery, Goro won’t fault him for it this time.
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
An awkward walk to a near-empty train car, to more walking, eventually leaves them standing silently in Amamiya’s apartment. They remove their shoes and Goro puts his beside Amamiya’s in the genkan.
It’s a nice place. Goro’s a bit too lost in his own reeling mind to pay full attention, but he can appreciate the modestly sized layout, likely chosen for his rival’s – can we still be called rivals? – sheer number of companions. He follows Amamiya past a well-maintained kitchen and a dark hallway into the livingroom proper.
“Listen, I…” Amamiya starts, rubbing the back of his neck – another old tell. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier. You don’t… owe me an explanation. We made our choices back then for the sake of our freedom. But…”
Here, his eyes take on that hard look he got when he was asked to make a decision as Leader. Goro wonders how often he still has to use it; if his Thieves have grown into their own or if they still rely on Joker helplessly.
“I still want to know. What you’ve been up to... how you’ve been.”
He turns that gaze on Goro, softening its pointed edges until it resembles pleading. Goro scoffs, looking away before it can trap him any more than Amamiya does naturally.
“Still as selfless as ever.” he sighs, crossing his arms. “I wouldn’t have followed you all the way here if I don’t intend to talk.”
He glances back, weak as he always was, and catches another smile Amamiya’s never given him before. He doesn’t know what to do with it.
“I’m going to make coffee. Go ahead and sit wherever.”
It’s a good excuse for escape, and Goro almost wishes he had the same, but he thinks if he left now, he’d never come back. He looks around, to the tall, Western-style dining table near the hallway, and the kotatsu on the other side, sitting between a comfortable looking couch and an overfilled tv stand. He chooses the couch.
Minutes pass with nothing but the sound of a brewing process Goro has viewed more times than he bothered to count. He nearly jumps when a mug enters his frame of vision, Ren moving around as silent as he ever has. Goro thanks him quietly, grasping the mug and resting his hands in his lap, staring into the dark liquid.
Ren sits beside him and curls up, legs tucked underneath himself and his own mug cradled close to his chest, as he leans into the back of the couch with his right shoulder. He’s in the perfect position to watch Goro’s every movement, but he’s also not as far away as he could be, and that ugly little thing called hope flares to life in Goro’s chest.
The Ren he knew wouldn’t speak first, if given the choice, so Goro begins without prompting.
“I’m not… entirely sure what happened after I was shot in that bastard’s Palace.” his fingers clench around his mug, but he forces them to relax. “When the False Reality vanished, I woke up in a rehab center I had stayed at with my mother, before. That’s where I heard you were in prison. Sae-san… wouldn’t let me take your place.”
“Sae knows you’re alive?” Ren whispers.
Goro nods. “She said it would fuck up her case if I turned myself in. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”
For all the new sides he’s seen today, Ren’s face is completely blank when Goro looks up. He chooses to take the silence as his cue to continue, rather than dwell on it.
“I wondered later if she’d been lying to me that day. At the time, I was too pissed off to think about it. I couldn’t stand the thought of just walking away.” he seethes at the idea, even now. “She told me I should go live the life I was meant to, but what I was meant for, after everything I’d done, was justice served unto me, same as the others.”
Goro sighs, closing his eyes in an effort to calm down. As much as he still hates it, he can now recognize what she was trying to do, and can feel a detached sort of appreciation for it. He continues again, this time at a more level tone.
“But I wasn’t going to risk Shido walking free, so I gave her the files I had on his ring of connections, and I checked myself into an institution. The bullet that was aimed for my heart ended up just left of it, so there I could fully recover while also working through… everything else.”
He has to pause, knowing Ren is going to hate his explanation for his actions. He takes a careful sip of his coffee, then an actual drink when it’s the same. Ren, even after all this time, remembered how Goro preferred it. He could fucking cry – something he’s been allowing himself more often lately – at the idea that for all Goro has missed this, missed him, Ren has maybe missed him just as much.
He realizes, suddenly, that even if Ren hates it, he deserves the truth.
“I didn’t want anyone to know where I was.” he says resolutely. “I wanted to heal on my own. For so long, I was no one without my anger. I felt… completely hollow without my revenge. I wanted to change that.”
“I would have left you alone if you asked.”
Ren speaks so softly that Goro would not have heard him if not for the quiet of his apartment. He scoffs, pushing down the lump in his throat with a vengeance.
“Yes, I’m sure you would have, what with your self-sacrificing nature.” he watches his coffee shift at the slightest movements, and takes another drink, savoring it. “I guess I wanted… a clean break.”
“And now?”
With his perception shifted so far off its axis, he can now hear the vulnerability in Ren’s own voice. Ren’s hope. He wants to fuel it, selfishly, but he promised himself honesty, and he won’t go back on that now.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t even planning on seeing you tonight. I just wanted to know if you were still at LeBlanc.” he glances up, wry smile on his lips. “You ruined my plans, as usual.”
Ren smiles, brittle but real, and shrugs his left shoulder. “Guess I can’t help it.”
Goro feels terribly fond of him in this moment as he rolls his eyes tiredly. “As if you’ve ever tried.”
Ren’s deep chuckle becomes a yawn, undeterred by the coffee they just drank.
“It’s late.” Goro stands, finishing his mug and placing it on the kotatsu. “I should head home.”
“Stay?” Ren shoots up, arm making an aborted motion towards Goro before settling back on his own mug. “I have a spare futon. I’d offer my bed, but Mona’s in there and I don’t wanna wake him.”
Goro stares, stunned. Despite the night going better than he could have ever hoped for, he never thought…
“Okay.” Goro says, after far too long.
Ren’s even gracious enough to lend him some sleep clothes and an unopened toothbrush. There’s a bruise forming on Goro’s cheek when he looks at himself in the mirror, but he feels he hardly has the right to be upset about it.
Coffee and curry spices permeate Ren’s laundry, even under the fresh smell of detergent, and Goro can’t help breathing it in after Ren retires to his own room for the night. The neighborhood he chose is quiet, unlike the steady murmur outside Goro’s own apartment in Kichijoji.
Despite nothing going the way Goro planned tonight, when he’s lying on a futon in Ren’s livingroom, with the hope of becoming a permanent fixture in his life, he can’t find himself regretting a single moment.