Chapter Text
Goro was sure by now that something with Akira Kurusu was just not... right.
It had been a sneaking suspicion but one that seemed inevitable, that grew and grew until it had outgrown his guts and turned into a dark swooping feeling in the pit of his stomach instead.
It had all seemed so harmless when they'd first run into each other.
“Oh wow,” he said like all of the people before him, straightening the glasses on his nose as he stood next to Goro to hide out from the rain underneath the supermarket covers. “Aren't you that detective who's always on TV? Goro Akechi?”
Goro didn't think anything of it, nodded and smiled and mentally prepared himself for taking a picture with another country boy tourist falling for his looks. A pretty country boy, for a change, but still...
Instead, the boy beamed at him and said, “Hey, you work with the police, right? If there was a teacher sexually abusing students, do you think you could do something?”
Goro was stunned.
What the hell was he supposed to say to that? He had a reputation to uphold. Never, in all the years of his career, had anyone had the guts to walk up to the Detective Prince and outright try to recruit him for some sort of... of...
A teacher doing what now?
Goro stared at the boy with narrowed eyes, searching for clues in his expression and clothes, anything that would give away what he needed to know – was he on to him? Was he genuine? Was he this pretty on second glance?
(He was.)
No tourist boy, his brain helpfully provided him some semblance of a sane thought.
“Judging by your uniform, that would be Shujin Academy, yes?” he finally settled on saying and the boy was still grinning widely, nodding now.
“Yeah. I've just transferred there and apparently there's been some long-time abuse going on that no one's doing anything about? There's students beaten up by the Volleyball coach but they're too afraid to speak up and girls being pressured into sexual activities.”
“And none of them are willing to come forward?”
The boy thought for a moment, biting his lower lip.
“One girl tried to kill herself,” he told him after a little while. “Her best friend might be willing to say something. She's angry. She wants justice for her friend. That usually fuels that kind of stuff.”
He sure seemed to know what he was talking about.
Goro tried to suppress the numb, cold feeling spreading in his bones at this boy's conviction of suicide and justice going hand in hand. As if there was anything other than this guy's twisted, shattered body, blood spilling out on the ground in red rivers between the lines of the asphalt, to make things better. To bring true justice to his victims.
Goro knew there wasn't. Goro knew the job he pretended to do was essentially pointless, nothing but another game of charade in a world that was already pretending – just a requisite he used in his grander play to get true justice.
Still.
One less pawn on the field to cause harm...
Why the hell not.
It was not like he could decline anyway. He was the Detective Prince - Caring about these matters was expected of him.
(And the girl, the girl, she was still alive, not lost yet like his mother was, alone and shattered because no one was there to help her in her time of need, there was still a chance for her, would it be so bad, would it be so bad if he was the one to give it to her?)
“There's a café nearby,” he told the boy, not sure why he remembered it so clearly when he had never been in this part of the city before, “how about you invite me for coffee and tell me all the details over that?”
For some reason, the boy's grin only grew cockier at his words.
“You know, I think I might be able to do that.”
The café, it turned out, was one the boy had to regularly visit. He seemed familiar with the owner, a gruff man who was eyeing Goro suspiciously.
“Haven't I seen you on TV?” he asked while he brewed him his coffee. “A detective or something?”
Before Goro could do more than nod, the man had already continued speaking.
“He's not in trouble, is he? Barely here a few weeks and already coming home with the cops... Can't believe it.”
“Oh,” Goro said automatically, lips moving on their own accord. “No, no, it's not like that at all, I assure you – we merely met – I kind of ran into him, quite literally. He uhm, invited me for a coffee. That's all.”
The man huffed and grumbled something not loud enough for Goro to hear and the boy let himself fall onto the booth seat opposite him with a lopsided grin.
“I just moved here,” he explained apologetically. “He still needs to get used to me. He'll warm up in no time, no doubt. I'm irresistible.”
Goro couldn't quite hold back a short chuckle.
“And incredibly modest, I see.”
“Yup, that's what I'm mostly known for at school – irresistible and irresistibly modest. Well... that and my criminal record.”
Goro raised a single eyebrow.
“Oh. So this is the part where you open up to me about being a filthy criminal leading me into a trap for some convoluted revenge plan?”
“Nah,” the boy laughed. “This is the part where I tell you I punched a guy for trying to rape a woman and he got out of it unscarred while I got an assault charge and I'm determined not to let that stop me from standing up for people when no one else does.”
Goro opened his mouth, then closed it again and quickly decided to buy himself some time by drinking a sip of his coffee.
The taste spread on his tongue like no coffee he had tasted before – the heat perfectly accompanied by a mix of bitter and sweet and something rich underneath that made him crave another sip immediately. It was a weird taste – it seemed to remind him of something he was sure he'd never experienced, felt almost nostalgic. Like coming home. But Goro knew better than that – home hadn't tasted this sweet in a very long time.
Fuck, that was some good coffee though – a far cry from the instant crap he usually drank.
“You'll burn your tongue if you don't slow down,” laughed Kurusu. “You can just tell me what you think, you know, I don't care if it's filtered or not.”
Coughing, to cover up that he had, in fact, burned his tongue, Goro replied the first thing that came into his distracted mind, “I don't think I've ever met someone like you.”
It was weird how sad this boy's smile turned all of a sudden.
“Maybe in another life.”
“Maybe,” Goro huffed. “Though I would argue that then I'd know your name.”
“Oh, gosh, you're right, I totally forgot to introduce myself. Sorry! My name's Joker! Uhm. Errr... I meant Akira. Kurusu Akira."
Goro blinked at him.
“Those were two very different names...” he finally said quietly.
Joker, he thought.
Joker.
Something about that seemed to ring some bells but he wasn't sure what it was. And why should it?
“It's a nickname my friends call me,” Akira swiftly told him. “You can too, if you like.”
And Goro, testing the word out on his burnt tongue like he had the coffee before, trying to taste for the weird sense of familiarity coming over him – he liked.
Suguru Kamoshida, it turned out, was the scum of the Earth and Goro actually enjoyed taking him down immensely. With Suzui's and Takamaki's support, it was easy to get the rest of the Volleyball team on board. One after another they spoke up, trusting Goro as someone who was their age and yet had the authority to get them out of the hell their teacher had put them through.
It was odd. He looked at their injuries and bruises, looked into the girl's empty eyes and the open trust she and the others met him with for a moment, there was raging, hot anger at the people in power who had watched it happen, had just stood by and done nothing, pretended not to notice what was in plain sight in front of them.
And the next moment, he looked into Joker's eyes and saw them gleaming almost proudly at him, the grey beneath his glasses by no means dulled, and for the first time since they met, Goro felt the urge to kiss him – and he could not, for the life of him, figure out why it didn't feel like the first time at all.
They met a lot after that. It wasn't that they were friends – Goro didn't have any friends, would never have any, wasn't meant to have them – but there was just something about him, something calling out to Goro that needed to be explored. He felt the indescribable need to understand Joker but every time he tried to, he found himself already understanding. He was like a book he had never read before but every time he opened it, his mind told him that he already knew all that was between the lines.
“Masayoshi Shido,” Akira told him one evening when they were playing chess in Leblanc again.
Joker was an excruciating opponent – he seemed to always anticipate even Goro's most elaborate tactics.
Goro almost dropped the Tower in his hands at the sound of his father's name.
“Wh- What?”
Joker pointed at the muted TV behind him and Goro turned around to find footage of father dearest, talking his usual, insignificant babble – nothing but empty promises and malicious intent hidden away in sheep's clothing while he prepared to do to this country as he had done to his mother.
“What about him?” he asked, unable to bite back some of the bitterness that had seeped into his voice - into his being - ruining the relaxed mood he'd been in.
“He's the asshole who got me my assault charge,” Joker told him and Goro wasn't sure how he did it – his voice was free of the same bitterness, was light and casual as he made another game-ending move.
Goro took a deep breath, held it for a moment, trying to think, then threw his King on the board.
“You messed with a very powerful man, then,” he finally trusted himself to say, clutching to the Detective Prince's usual calmness with a crow's claws.
“Yeah, I somehow always come across those,” Joker muttered. “Still. Sucks, doesn't it? That he's up there, allowed to keep on spouting his bullshit and I'm down here, being judged and criminalised for seeing the truth.”
Goro was recollecting his chess figures carefully, buying himself time as he avoided Joker's gaze.
“As worthwhile as the concept of justice is,” he finally said, instead of all the things he'd like to say instead, “it's sadly, more often than not, out of our grasp.”
Several pictures filled Goro's mind all at once.
Shido, bleeding and shattered, fallen from his own throne of bones, sobbing for forgiveness.
Shido on his knees in front of his fallen kingdom, grasping for ashes.
Shido, at his feet, telling him he'd have never left if he'd known- if only he'd known.
Shido, on a golden luxury cruiser, laughing snidely as Goro bled out, uncaring, unmoved, until regret was forcibly operated into him with a sharp dagger, until his insides were rearranged and his acknowledgement had lost its worth, pale and useless and then as gone as he was, quickly fading from reality.
Goro blinked in confusion and they were all gone again, leaving nothing but a weird, hollow feeling.
Joker was watching him carefully.
“I don't think justice is unachievable,” he finally said. “I just gave mine away for someone else's. I'd do it again.”
He could tell from the look on his eyes - serious and never leaving him - from the earnest tone of voice that something was hidden in those words, something Goro should understand but didn't.
Maybe if he had read the book.
“So I met this guy,” Joker told him one day over coffee. He had been right – Sojiro Sakura had considerably warmed towards both of them. In fact, he seemed downright happy to see Goro whenever he came by.
“You're clearly a good influence on the boy,” he had told him.
Hah.
If only he knew.
“A guy?” Goro was aimlessly driving his spoon through his coffee, watched the dark colour whirl around in the cup.
Then Joker's words really sunk in and his head shot up, eyes widening.
“Oh,” he said. “You met a... I see. Well uhm. I didn't know- I mean...-”
Joker raised two hands, laughing at him but somehow the gesture didn't grate on Goro's nerves like all the condescending little fake chuckles he got from the adults in his life.
“No, not like that – sorry. I just... He's an artist. Kinda stalked my friend Ann, you remember her?”
Goro did. Ann Takamaki had been difficult to forget – the only thing that had stood out more than her blond hair and the loud cheerfulness she seemed to never quite lose, was her exceptionally fierce kindness.
He couldn't blame any artist wanting to capture that energy on a canvas.
However...
“Stalking, you say?”
Joker rubbed the back of his head awkwardly.
“Yeah, it was a bit much. We stepped in and it turned out he's really not a bad guy – just really bad with social cues and stuff. Didn't realise that what he was doing was concerning at all.”
“Hmph,” Goro made, finally taking a sip and yet again enjoying the familiar, perfect flavour. “Typical artist type.”
“Met many artists in your life, then?” Joker asked with a pleasant smile and Goro squirmed, trying not to think of Madarame, one of Shido's questionable sources of income, and his disconcerting acting. How he kept the world under his spell while committing fraud with the art they admired so much – art he hadn't even created himself.
“No,” he replied and then, because it was Joker and everytime he didn't watch himself around him, a weird sort of muscle memory seemed to take over, seemed to make him entirely too comfortable and made him forget everything he needed to be careful about, he added, “you caught me talking out of my ass, congrats.”
Before he could even regret his hasty words, Joker had already rewarded them with an open laugh, leaning back on his side of the booth.
“It's not that hard, you talk out of your ass constantly.”
He opened his mouth to disagree, to act outraged, to tell him he had to be mistaken but the words wouldn't come when he looked into those grey eyes – they were full of nothing but gentle teasing and genuine fondness. No judgement, no suspicion, no rejection.
Goro had never looked at someone and felt accepted. He wasn't sure what to do with it, acceptance, had never learned, but instinctively he knew what he didn't need to do.
Lie.
“Most people don't notice,” he finally said, revelling in the feeling of talking the way he had always wanted to talk to people for the first time in so many years.
“I'm not most people,” Joker replied still smiling at him with that intensity and Goro-
Fuck him.
Goro was smiling back, matching it effortlessly.
“I'm sorry,” Goro said in absolute disbelief, “could you repeat that?”
Joker, at least, had the decency to look awkward about it.
“My friend Ann is being blackmailed into posing nude for a portrait,” he told him again, voice dull from resignation. “We might need your help again.”
Goro let out a mighty sigh.
“Start from the beginning, please. What happened?”
“Well, you remember artist guy, yeah? He uhm... seemed troubled. So we did some research and it turned out his guardian is kind of abusing him.”
“Kind of?” Goro asked icily.
Joker rubbed his forehead, looking tired.
“He's that famous artist, I'm sure you heard of him – Madarame. No one knows how messed up he is, but apparently he's getting all the credit for his pupil's works. He lets Yusuke live in some kind of shack, with barely any food or money to paint all day long for him. And Yusuke is too blindly devoted to see him for who he really is.”
Madarame.
Goro shook his head instinctively, trying to shake off the mix of disgust and dread he was feeling. He'd known, of course, about Madarame's fraud but had never known any details. This was... troubling, to say the least. If it was true.
Was the kid really so far gone not to recognise abuse when it happened to him or was Joker sticking his nose where it didn't belong?
As if he was reading his mind, Joker let out a sigh.
“We talked to someone – an ex pupil of Madarame. He told us someone else had committed suicide under his care. And now Yusuke's alone in there with no one to turn to. We just wanted to talk to him but he got really angry and threatened to call the cops on us.”
“I don't see what for,” Goro hummed. “You didn't break in, did you? He let you in?”
“Well, yeah, but...” Joker interrupted himself, looking down at the table and Goro sighed.
“But you can't let it rest knowing what Madarame is doing to him.”
“Sorry,” Joker gave him one of his lopsided grins – The one Goro knew so well, liked so much and had barely ever seen. “But yeah. Think you can do something about this?”
Could he?
Hardly.
Madarame's criminal business directly funded Shido's campaign. If Shido heard about him taking down Madarame, he was a dead man. History. And his plans sharing a grave with him.
He looked at Joker who stared back at him, his usually so inconspicuously hidden grey eyes wide and hopeful.
However...
Goro sighed and put down his empty cup.
“I could at least try to talk to him.”
Why am I doing this?, he asked himself as he sat in the bare, run-down shack on a stool opposite Yusuke Kitagawa, the smell of dried paint invading his nose whenever he tried to take a breath.
“Listen,” he told him, “I'm here because your friends have voiced concerns, not to bring you into trouble.”
“They are by no means my friends,” Yusuke replied coolly. “This is a rather personal business and, quite frankly, none of yours – or theirs.”
“I understand that,” Goro replied because he did.
What on Earth was he doing here? Why had he agreed to this in the first place? If anyone had sat him down years ago to tell him that his father was an abusive piece of trash he would've... he would've...
Goro sighed.
He would've been grateful someone else saw the truth.
“I understand that,” he repeated. “However, sometimes we're blind to the things we don't want to see, things others are seeing clear in our stead. The way you live here – This hardly qualifies as a home, Kitagawa-kun.”
“Sensei felt it important to free oneself of the earthly riches of this world to not fall into greed and-”
“Kitagawa-kun,” Goro interrupted him gently. “Madarame is not here. I would bet he's not here a lot of the time, isn't he?”
Yusuke's eyes narrowed.
“Sensei is a very busy man.”
“I'm sure,” Goro replied snarkily, feeling the concerned kindness of the Detective Prince slip from him, “having to secretly upkeep a whole other home cannot be easy.”
Kitagawa's look hardened before him.
“If you have to spout false accusations like the lot of them, I'm asking you to leave this house.”
“Which house?” Goro asked, vitriol now out in the open where it belonged. “Oh, you mean these scraps of junk pieced together?”
“That is enough!” Kitagawa had gotten loud now, the hand holding his brush clenched to a fist and shaking. “What would you even know about this?”
Goro thought back to his early years as Shido's “employee”. The way his hand had still trembled when he'd aimed a gun at someone's head. The way it would come over him from one moment to the other, bouts of random panic from somewhere deep inside the pits of his stomach, making the pen in his hands shake while he sat safely in school.
Goro let out a breath and felt some of his anger fade away along with it.
“I know a lot about this, actually,” he told Kitagawa, feeling calmer now, letting some of his own resign colour his tone. “I grew up being shoved from foster home to foster home and the one thing I learned is that I don't owe anything to a bunch of people who were supposed to be responsible for my well-being but couldn't be bothered to do the bare minimum – or even worsened my situation.
You don't have to live like this, Kitagawa-kun. You've met people willing to support you in whatever endeavour you should attempt – something I never had. They only want the best for you. Your art is astonishing, quite frankly.”
Goro pointed at the countless portraits set up in the cramped artist's atelier.
“You've long outgrown the need for a mentor who merely wishes to enrich himself on your talent. You could build yourself your own life and art community.”
Kitagawa had sat quietly, his jaw set tightly, but that was alright because Goro could see from the look on his face that he was listening.
“When my mother died,” he finally said, “I was without parents, merely a child. I had no where to go. Sensei took me in, from the goodness of his heart.”
“The day my mother died,” Goro replied, suddenly finding it hard to hold the words back, his anger flaring back up in flames, anger at the world, at Shido, at this stubborn fool refusing to see what was best for him. “There was no one to take me in. My father was somewhere else entirely, living his life untouched and having left her to die in shame for being a single mother – So, I'm asking you, should I have let myself be used by this man for a less than loving home?”
“I am sorry about your circumstances,” Kitagawa replied and Goro felt his insides turn into hateful little knots at the notion of pity, “but mine are my burden to bear, not yours. And now I wish for you to leave.”
So Goro left. Goro left with a storm inside, deadly and unrestrained and unsure who to unleash it on. Madarame, for what he was doing to Kitagawa? Shido, for everything and more? Kitagawa for being so incredibly idiotic or himself, for having revealed so much, for supporting the person indirectly responsible for all this, for doing just the thing he was judging Kitagawa for?
It's not the same, he told himself on the way back, his feet carrying him automatically to the only place he could bear to be right now, the place that somehow drew him in with the promise of finally getting his thoughts sorted and calmed.
It's not the same, it's not the same, it's not the same.
I'll kill him. I'll ruin him. I'll make him grovel. It's not the same if the endgame is destruction. It's not the same-
Why did he feel so dirty all of a sudden, so touched and dressed-up by Shido, why did it feel like he was showered in blood that wasn't on his hands but was?
Akira took one look at him when he entered Leblanc and walked around the counter quickly, hands on his shoulders to guide him inside gently, drop him down at the counter seat right opposite him.
“Curry and coffee on the house,” he told him. “It didn't go well, I take it?”
And Goro, with dry lips and a weird tingling numbness coming over his mind like a blanket of snow, said the only thing he could think of.
“We've got to stop Madarame.”
As soon as Goro had pulled himself back together, he decided to pay cognitive Madarame a little visit.
It was an urge that burned underneath the nails of his fingers, itching and painful, reminding him that someone with as little heart as Madarame would hardly do anything out of the goodness of it.
“Let's have a little chat, shall we?” he told him, gun poised, as Madarame scowled at him.
“You've come to take me out, then? Has he sent you?”
Goro wasn't in the mood for witty banter – it took everything in him not to pull that trigger. But if he did, his own plans would be ruined and all would be for nothing.
Just a little longer...
“Yusuke Kitagawa,” he told him, voice coming out harshly, harsher even thanks to his mask. “You took him in many years ago. What were the circumstances?”
Madarame looked confused.
“My pupil? What is it to you?”
It only took one familiar move to unlock his gun, the resounding click seemingly enough to get Madarame to pale and take a step backwards, both hands in the air as he started babbling.
“Of course, of course, whatever you want to know – it was quite the successful investment after all. His mother – his mother was sick. She painted this portrait, the Sayuri. I only had to take one look to know I could make it a hit.”
“So you killed her.”
The Metaverse was no place for weakness. Most of his more vulnerable emotions turned into rage here and rage into the strength guiding him.
But even here, even now, Goro felt mortification in every single muscle of his body.
“You killed her over a painting?”
“I did not kill her!” Madarame replied pleadingly. “I didn't kill her. When she had another seizure, I just watched her, then took in the kid to make sure he wouldn't find out. I turned out well for me - he had her talent.” Madarame lifted his head a little, gathering his confidence. “So what, right? You're doing the same thing!”
It's not the same, Goro told himself, but even in a world built entirely on other people's cognition, he didn't seem to be able to make these words any truer.
“It's not the same,” he said, regardless.
Madarame's pathetic features turned back into a scowl.
“Isn't it? People dying for someone else's profit and you're the one pulling all the triggers. You're hardly one to judge me, are you?”
Oh, he wanted to shoot so badly. Wanted to never hear this voice again, free the world of another horrible influence and watch his blood spill from him in splatters. Wanted to shatter the truth in his words along with his brains.
All it would take was one gentle press of his finger.
Instead, Goro turned around without another word, leaving the metaverse behind.
All he needed was Yusuke Kitagawa to file a law-suit that even Shido's corrupted pawns in the police couldn't shatter.
All he needed to do was to find proof that couldn't be obstructed.
For once, Goro would actually choose the role of the detective over the dark assassin.
“Are you okay there?” Joker asked with a light chuckle. “You've been blankly staring at that piece of paper for a while now.”
Goro looked up tiredly.
“I have?”
“Yeah.” Akira, the angel that he was, set down a cup with fresh coffee in front of him without Goro even having to ask, and took a few minutes to sit down beside him. “Once in a while you'd make a frustrated noise, like a grunt. Very attractive.”
Goro sighed.
“Sorry. I'm a bit- What I need is proof. Proof good enough to convince someone as stubborn as Kitagawa. There's just nothing in those files. It's completely useless.”
“Hmm...” Joker had the decency to look like he was genuinely concerned – God, he probably was, he was that sort of sappy (kind) idiot.
And he had been the one to get him onto the case to begin with, after all – even if by now, it was deeply personal for Goro.
“Well, you know, I was thinking... if Madarame does commit fraud, he's going to have to keep his faked paintings somewhere, right? There's this massive locked door in the shack that Yusuke told us he never enters... Maybe...”
He could kiss him.
In fact, he would very much like to kiss him.
Instead, Goro jumped off his seat with a little cry.
“You're brilliant! A genius! An absolute- I have to absolutely go right now and make sure Kitagawa opens that damn door! I-”
He stared down at his still full cup of coffee.
“Sorry,” he told Akira, feeling genuinely apologetic but when he looked at him, he only saw lightly flushed cheeks and a tentative little smile.
“It's okay – off you go, be a hero,” Akira told him. “I'll drink the coffee myself.”
A hero, Goro thought numbly.
How odd.
When it came from those lips, the word almost seemed to hold some sort of plausibility again.
It was very easy, after Joker's ingenious idea. After Kitagawa – Yusuke, he supposed, since the boy had offered – had seen the room full of copies of his beloved painting Sayuri, he'd been more than willing to cooperate and find out the truth.
Goro had kept in the shadows as much as he could, told Yusuke what to do and helped him work around the corruption Shido had implanted into the police – basically given them a law suit they couldn't possibly refuse.
Madarame's lawyers had been hard at work, but in the end, all he had left to do was confess and Goro had personally made sure the original Sayuri made its way back to Yusuke.
The real Sayuri... What an odd thought of the young artist, to give it to Leblanc for safe-keeping.
How much odder even that it wasn't odd at all to Goro, as he stood in the little café, unable to take his eyes off the portrait.
“The love of a mother,” Akira muttered quietly next to him. “Who'd have thought, huh?”
The words tumbled out of Goro before he could stop himself.
“I wonder if my mother ever looked at me like this.”
He felt Akira's eyes on him, the intensity burning him but he didn't look to the side, kept his own gaze firmly on the Sayuri.
“I'm sure she has,” he finally said softly. “Goro, she loved you.”
He tore up against his will, refusing, absolutely refusing to even blink as the tears ran down his face, arms slung around his own body as the Sayuri kept getting blurrier and blurrier.
“I miss her,” he croaked out and suddenly there was another set of arms around him, pulling him against something warm with a firm grip. A beating heart somewhere beneath his ear and a real person holding him like he'd last been held with eight years.
A broken sob escaped him.
“I know,” Akira said simply and he didn't have it in him, then, to ask Akira how he knew.
Because right now, he knew Akira too and he knew that he was safe and God, he wanted to be safe.
“So, we're visiting a TV studio for our social studies trip,” Akira told him during darts. “It's like I'll finally be seeing your natural habitat.”
Goro hit the bull's eye perfectly three times before turning around to him with a beaming smile.
“Oh yes? Which one.”
“The one in Shibuya. We'll be going this Thursday and Friday. We'll finish off by watching some kind of talk show.”
Huh.
Even as the sort of person who didn't believe in coincidences, who had early learned to accept that the universe played favourites and Goro would never be one of them, he had to stop for a moment and work through the expectations of surprise and the absolute absence of it.
“Yeah, I know the show,” he told him, intentionally waiting until it was time for Akira to throw and then getting infuriated because he hit Triple Twenty regardless. “I'll be on it, actually.”
Akira let his final dart sink, turning his head to grin at Goro and it was unfair, how the summer sun that was mercilessly shining down on Tokyo seemed pale in comparison.
“Oh yeah? Maybe we'll see each other, then. Ann will be there too – You remember her, right?”
Goro nodded, his mouth suddenly feeling dry.
He hadn't considered it at the time, but now that he thought about it – Ann had been so beautiful. And Akira, Akira was so beautiful too, so caring, had done all these things to help her. Surely they would... - It made sense for them to date. It was the logical conclusion, really.
Goro could imagine a million different things he'd prefer doing over running into Ann and Akira standing in a quiet corner of the TV studio, exchanging bodily fluids.
About nine-hundred thousand of those things included doing the very same thing with Akira himself.
Joker's last dart hit Triple Twenty with dangerous accuracy and a loud “thud”, tearing Goro out of his miserable thoughts.
“Do you always have to one-up me?” he sighed and Joker merely smirked.
“What sort of rival would I be if I didn't?”
Rival.
Goro hadn't thought of it that way – they weren't friends, he knew that much.
They weren't... anything more than friends.
But they weren't nothing.
Rivals.
He tried the word out in his mind, put it in connection, let it snap into place and decided he liked it.
“I'm sure we'll run into each other,” he told Akira, suddenly feeling so much lighter. No matter what Takamaki and Akira had, he and Joker had something else, something unique, something better. “Somehow we always do.”
“Yeah,” Akira replied cheerfully. “Isn't that weird?”
They won their match of 701 and the one after, too. Goro was starting to get the impression that it was impossible to lose with Joker by his side, constantly motivating him to reach new heights.
He hadn't wanted to lurk behind the corner like an idiot, listening in on them talking.
He shouldn't – God, he was Goro Akechi, celebrity. Famous Detective Prince, the dream of all girls and regrettably rarer boys and all genders outside the binary.
But he couldn't help it – the way Akira and Ann talked, their familiarity with each other... it was infuriating. Worrying.
Painful.
They wanted to go to Dome Town, that much Goro had heard out of their conversation. A nice, pleasant time spent together after their trip. He'd never been to Dome Town – always considered it a waste of time. What was the point to go onto attractions that made a person scream in terror, one after another, the same artificial thrill again and again, when he already knew so much more powerful thrills waiting for him in the Metaverse?
No, he had other things to do, more important things, things that required his full attention, required him to stay firmly on the ground.
However...
“Sure, sounds like fun,” he heard Akira say from behind his corner. “I'll ask Goro if he wants to come, too. He's my partner in crime, I need him on the rollercoasters next to me.”
He supposed he could be persuaded to give it a try.
Rollercoasters, it turned out, were fun.
Dome Town was a paradise, something he had underestimated - Goro could openly admit that.
“That one, we haven't tried that one yet!” he told Akira as he dragged him by the hand to the next one, mindlessly grabbing it, and Akira laughed, stumbling after him readily.
“Slow down, you're almost faster than the last one we were on.”
“Of course I am,” Goro called back over his shoulder excitedly. “The last one sucked ass. Come onnnn, they'll start without us.”
“We lost Ryuji and Ann,” Akira pointed out.
Who cared, really.
But Goro supposed he should really act like he cared a little – and they weren't so bad. He had liked Takamaki – Ann – when he'd first met her, her fiery determination to bring Kamoshida to justice had been admirable, really. He didn't like the thought of her and Akira together but after seeing her bickering with Saka- Ryuji like an old married couple and after having Joker's attention on himself all day...
Well, he felt a little better.
The adrenaline of the countless attractions they've been on might have something to do with it.
“And that was a haunted one,” Akira informed him. “To scare little kids. It wouldn't be that fast.”
“Fast rollercoasters with loopings are so much more scary than all these plastic spiders,” Goro told him earnestly as they finally sat down again, pressed against one another in the little cabin, Akira's warmth radiating to him in a way that felt familiar by now.
Safe.
He sat in a metal contraption about to do a triple looping, held by nothing but a single bar and Joker's arm looped with his and felt safe.
“I think spiders are terrifying, actually.”
Goro gave him a look of pure disbelief but before he could say another word, their cart starting rolling and every sane thought in his head was replaced by “wheeeeew-hooo.”
Ryuji and Ann had caught up to them once they left the rollercoaster, Goro still buzzing and beaming from the ride, even though his stomach was slowly but surely getting a bit overwhelmed.
“Man, I've never seen anyone this excited about a bunch of rollercoasters,” Ryuji said instead of a greeting. “You act like you've never been to a place like this.”
He should clam up at the signs of being the freak again, should carefully hide away his missed childhood the way he always did, joke and brush it aside and move on, but he was still high from the rides and Akira's fond eyes on him, so he merely shrugged.
“I haven't been.”
“Huh?” Ann asked, looking stunned. “Never?”
“I haven't been much either,” Akira told them quietly. “Just once. My parents didn't like taking me, they thought it was a waste of time.”
So had Goro. Weird, how his own thoughts had seemed so reasonable in his own mind, but hearing about them from Akira's parents suddenly felt like poison spat freely.
From all he'd heard about them, he'd deserved so much better. He had defended a woman (from his goddamn father, of all people!) and got cast out for it, abandoned by the people who were supposed to protect and love him the most.
People who had never bothered to once take him out and let him have a good time.
Goro felt the high silently fade, making space for new, sadder thoughts.
His mother would've taken him if she'd had the money. She would've loved to, just to see him smile – she'd always tried so hard.
She'd always tried so hard.
And Akira's parents hadn't tried at all, had had a son so much better than Goro ever could be and didn't even appreciate him one bit.
Goro squeezed the hand still in his.
“Want to go onto another?” he asked him. “I feel a bit nauseated but if you give me a minute-”
“I'm good,” Akira smiled. “Don't worry. I could do with something to eat, though. Anyone want pancakes?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Goro laughed, not quite sure why himself, but Akira merely laughed like he was in on the joke.
So, apparently he did have friends after all, because that's what Ann called him when they came to him for help about Kaneshiro and neither Ryuji nor Akira offered any protests.
He wasn't quite sure how to handle being someone's friend – he'd never done it before. But Akira smiled at him like nothing had changed and Ann kept on trying his coffee then frowned, complaining about his lack of sugar and Ryuji kept on grimacing but not at him, never at him, saying coffee was gross anyway and all in all, he thought he was not doing the worst job at it by just doing things like he had done so far.
The far bigger, more pressing problem at the moment was... well.
“So you're telling me the student council president is pressuring you into... taking on the actual mafia?”
Ann shrugged a bit uncomfortably, looking awkward, as if he'd just asked her whether or not she's done her homework, not gotten involved into Yakuza business.
“It just kinda happened,” Ryuji said. “We were just talking, y'know, about the whole Madarame thing? And she heard us and was all like 'well, you don't have to tell me how you did it but I already know you were involved and I'm sure you don't want anyone to find out, right?' ”
“That's ridiculous,” Goro snorted. “Who does she think she is? Madarame was brought to justice by the law.” He paused. “She uh... doesn't know I was involved, does she?”
“No,” Akira reassured him quickly. “Don't worry. I think it's just because of her sister – she's some high-profile prosecutor, you know? I think she got suspicious of the lawsuit being so thorough – she doesn't know we had help from the inside and thinks there was illegal business involved.” He nudged Goro in the side playfully. “Hey, lighten up.”
Easy for him to say – if Shido ever got wind of him having anything to do with the Madarame arrest, he'd-
Had he said prosecutor?!
Goro raised an eyebrow.
“You wouldn't be talking about the Niijima sisters by any chance?”
Ryuji's mouth fell open and Ann froze mid-sip.
Akira merely beamed at him in something that looked awfully like pride but couldn't be. Wasn't allowed to be.
“You know them?” Ryuji asked.
“Well, I know Sae Niijima, mostly. I've met her sister a few times but we don't get along very well.”
“Hard to imagine you not getting along with people,” Ann replied cheerfully and Goro believed he heard Akira snort into his coffee.
He bit back a smirk of his own and turned it into an innocent batting of his eyelashes instead, feeling those observant eyes on him.
“Well, what can I say – some people just don't respond well to my natural charm. More often than not, it's jealousy.”
Ann and Ryuji stared at him.
Akira coughed.
“He's joking.”
“O-oh,” Ryuji said, a stuttering laugh leaving him and was soon accompanied by Ann's nervous laugh. “Right.”
Goro rolled his eyes and decided there was no harm in a bit of honesty. Somehow, these people were his friends and they hadn't pushed him away after his childish rollercoaster high, so maybe – maybe he could afford to be a little more himself? It was risky but...
He glanced at Akira who smiled back at him, as if he wanted to encourage him, as if he knew, could read his thoughts. Sometimes Goro thought he could.
And that had to mean something, right? That he was still here regardless?
He leaned forwards, lips curling upwards as he whispered to Ann and Ryuji in an almost conspiratorial tone.
“Actually, I think it's because I'm a bit of an asshole.”
Now it was Ann's turn to snort into her coffee – Ryuji looked absolutely dumbstruck.
“Never thought I'd hear the Detective Prince say asshole,” Ann finally brought out with a raspy voice.
And when he glanced back at Akira, he was smiling so widely at him, he seemed to try and compete with the sun again.
“You don't mind, do you?” he asked and Ryuji and Ann spluttered out encouragements but Goro was barely hearing them – they weren't who he had talked to.
But Akira just leaned forwards and said, “Please. That's what I like about you.”
And Goro felt like a heavy, sharp-edged piece of rock simply fell away from his heart.
“How do you constantly bring yourself into these situations, can you tell me that?”
“It's super simple! I talk to the reporter, get the name from her and then you can give it to the police. No harm done, right?”
Goro sighed.
No harm done, except that Shido would personally rip his throat out if he locked up the biggest source of income he had – he'd pretended not to know who was behind the current series of students being blackmailed into drug mules for a reason.
Makoto Niijima was insane, sticking her nose into business it didn't belong in – of course she would, though. In her frantic desire to finally impress her sister she'd do pretty much anything. Goro couldn't even blame her, not really, not with how much Sae had changed lately, how more and more dismissive she'd started not only to talk about her sister, but everyone around her.
Both seemed to have only eyes for cases that weren't even theirs to solve, for entirely different reasons that still both led back to Sae's new, unfortunate drive for success.
Goro's gloved fingers clenched around his phone for a moment.
He knew she was about to develop a proper palace.
“Have you noticed that you and your friends get blackmailed quite a lot?” he asked because thinking about Akira's weird problems he constantly dragged Goro into was actually less headache-inducing than thinking about anything else in his life.
Akira merely grinned.
“I just must have a very blackmail-worthy face.”
Yeah. Goro would love to blackmail him to move this face against his until he saw stars from lack of oxygen, actually. But instead of saying that aloud, he merely sighed.
“Very well. You go in there and talk to your reporter friend.” He wasn't even going to ask how and when Akira had met a reporter. He seemed to collect the weirdest bunch of friends all over the city. He'd even found a s tray cat somewhere. It drove Goro a little mad. “I'll wait here – they tend to be a lot less talkative towards detectives.”
It wasn't as if it mattered. He doubted she'd just give away the name of a mafia boss to an underage boy in a shady bar in the red-light district. The whole excursion wasn't only dangerous, it was downright ridiculous.
Goro pulled up the collar of his coat, hiding him from the view of the people around him, all staring curiously in their direction. At night in Shinjuku. He had to be crazy.
Akira came out of the bar half an hour later with a wide, satisfied grin on his lips and a name on his tongue.
“Junya Kaneshiro,” he told Goro as if this somehow was news.
Goro felt his stomach sink like it had just the other day, on the rollercoasters but for far, far less joyful reasons.
“Think you can do anything with that?”
“Honestly?” Goro replied, lips dry. “Probably not.”
They looked at each other for a moment and there it was again, in the middle of a bustling street in the middle of a red-light district, there was nothing but understanding in Akira's eyes. He didn't ask any questions, didn't ask why, didn't need to. He just nodded and said, “We'll figure something else out, then.”
Before Goro could say anything, before he could even try to come up with words to say, he heard voices talking loudly with each other coming nearer and nearer. Both he and Akira straightened up and watched the gayest men Goro had ever seen in his life walk up to them, faces gleaming in delight.
“Oh, just look at them! Aren't they adorable?”
It was so rare to see Akira surprised, Goro would've loved to take the tame to cherish it, had their next words not punched all the oxygen out of his body.
“What a cute couple you two make!”
“We're not- we're not- we're not a-”
“Really, it's okay, hun! Everyone from a mile away can see how gay you are. But hey...” One of the men leaned into the other, winking at them. “No judgement from us.”
Goro wanted to die. He wanted the Earth to open up and swallow him whole. He wanted to look anywhere but at Akira, his face burning.
“I don't think they know yet,” the other man giggled, knowing eyes piercing through Goro.
Akira finally found his voice again.
“Uhm. Well. Thanks, you two. We- we appreciate the- the support but we have to go now. My, uhm, parents told him not to take me out for too long and you know, I don't want him to be in trouble. It's all already very tense because uhm, well – the whole gay thing,” he had leaned forwards for the last few words, whispering them in a conspirational tone.
He was so full of shit.
But Goro refused to fall behind, batting his eyelashes at them with a sweet smile.
“Yes, his parents are ever so stuck in their ways. It's difficult to come to terms with him not dating some average girl, you know? It helps that I'm gorgeous, of course, but it's still going to take some time to win them over.”
Akira seemed to have trouble holding back a snort while the two men awwww-ed and nodded eagerly, giggling the entire time.
“What's so funny?” Goro asked him, sharpening his sweetness into a dagger. “Don't you think I'm beautiful, darling?”
Akira, to his credit, didn't miss a beat.
“Oh no, honey, how could you ever think that? You're the most beautiful person I know. I just remembered the day we met and you told me how modest I was for some reason.”
“Come on, sweetheart,” Goro told him, his arm looping with Akira's again like it belonged. He ignored the racing heart this little game was leaving him with – he was too good an actor to let his real feelings seep into his role. “If we leave now, I can still kiss you good night.”
Things somehow got worse, the way they always did around Akira Kurusu – intensified levels of trouble that spiralled out of control quicker than Goro would've liked, and Joker did what he apparently had decided worked best in that kind of situation – he turned to him.
“Who do you think I am? Yoda? What do you think I can do if Niijima decides to mess with the Yakuza?”
“I don't know, “ Akira told him with a shrug and moved to re-fill their cups. “All I know is that she's about to do something rash. I can feel it in my guts.”
Goro knew Akira's gut feelings quite too well – unfortunately, they were mostly terrifyingly accurate. Still...
“I know Niijima as a very level-headed person. I can't see her try to offer herself up for drug-dealing. Surely she'd know that getting into contact with a Yakuza leader would only get her into trouble?”
“What?” Akira smirked, arms on the counter as he leaned towards Goro, so close, their noses almost touched. “You're a level-headed person and you're telling me that under enough pressure, you wouldn't eventually reach breaking point and do something insane and incredibly destructive to prove yourself to everyone?”
Goro blinked.
“Teammates? Friends? To hell with that...”
“Touché,” he said, slowly, trying to clear the sudden fog in his brain. Words came to him he didn't remember saying, yet alone yelling but they were his. He recognised feelings he hadn't quite unwrapped yet, rage, jealousy, simmering beneath his chest at the thought of Akira handling circumstances so similar to his so much better.
“Criminal attic trash,” his brain provided but when Goro looked up into Akira's gleaming grey eyes, none of that familiar anger at the world burned inside of him. On the opposite - Akira seemed like a soothing, cool blanket wrapped around him to take the edge off the burns.
“How are you doing anyway?” he asked, his heart beating out of his chest. Where was this coming from? Should he be angry? Had he been angry? Would he be angry? Angry about what? Akira had been thrown out by his parents for saving a woman from Shido, of all people. They had a common enemy, they were both outcasts from society and Akira... Akira relied on him.
With a painful clench of his heart, Goro realised that he was all he had ever wanted.
“Huh?”
He let his tongue dart out, wetting his suddenly dry lips.
“Ah, at school, I mean. Are people still talking?”
Akira shrugged.
“They always are, I try not to pay them much mind. I've got Ann and Ryuji to keep me company, they're great. And I take Morgana with me.”
Morgana, right. Goro remembered the black cat he'd seen on occasions – very elusive little thing that bolted pretty much everytime it encountered him. Akira said he was a stray, roaming around the school when the whole Kamoshida business had happened and he'd saved him from Kamoshida's rough treatment.
Goro couldn't stand cats. He wasn't sure why. They reminded him of something buried deep inside his subconscious, some failure he had tried to forget but sometimes... sometimes...
“Why'd you ask?” Akira's gently curious voice tore him out of his confusing thought spirals.
“Oh, I'm... I'm not sure. I just...- The people at my school. They make up all kinds of things about me. I pass them in the hallway and they talk about how I'm constantly demanding special treatment. Some claim I'm sucking up to teachers to keep my good grades. Some... say worse. I doesn't seem like any of my successes will convince them to stop, ever. I was wondering if it's the same for you.”
Akira shrugged.
“A little. I walk up to them and they scramble away like I've got a contagious disease. They whisper about all the violent things I allegedly do every day. They call me plain, then say it's to hide my criminal mind. I try not to pay it any mind.”
“You're far from plain,” was all Goro's trembling lips managed to bring out and he wanted to tear them out of his face directly after, but Akira just smiled at him softly.
“Why, thank you, neither are you, Akechi Goro. And for the record, everyone who knows you knows you don't need to suck up to any teacher for your brilliant grades.”
“They don't though.” The words escaped him without thinking, his throat drying up, turning them into hoarse croaks. “No one does. I won't let them. I didn't want to let you – so why do you know me?”
Joker rested his chin on his hands, elbows on the counter and looked at him with such a Joker-typical smile, his eyes hiding behind the glare of his glasses as the low Leblanc lights reflected in them.
“All you needed was someone bothering to try, Goro.”
Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him.
“And because I know you so well,” Joker added with a little wink, freeing him from having to make any kind of reply he was unable to form in his numbed brain, “I just know you'll agree to talking to Makoto for me.”
He didn't know Niijima Makoto very well.
He met her a few times, of course, since he was working with her sister. He knew she was a know-it-all (and she'd also tell him not to throw stones in a glasshouse, a knowledge that didn't particularly endear her to him), he knew she was goody two-shoes and he knew she had some kind of problem with him.
Which – fair enough, he couldn't stand her either. He only played nice (most of the time) because that's what his image required and because he worked with Sae-san.
Still. He couldn't be expected to always hold back his jabs in her presence – he was only human, after all.
“Ah, Niijima-san,” he greeted her the day she strode into their office like she owned the place, looking for her sister. “How good to see you – I wanted to talk to you, actually.”
How funny that after years and years of Shido pushing him around, of Goro biting his teeth together and doing whatever it would take to get to his goals, all it took for Akira to make him do things he really, really, really didn't want to do was a cute little smile and empty words.
Niijima stared at him with widened eyes.
“With me? Why's that?”
“Well...” He looked around pointedly. “Let's go somewhere more quiet, shall we? It's a rather... delicate matter.”
She frowned but she followed him, which he supposed was more than he had expected. He'd have been happy, more than happy, actually, to just return to Akira and report that she had refused to talk to him under four eyes but oh no, she had to play nice and follow him into Sae's empty office and lean against the table with her arms crossed, quietly waiting for him to speak instead.
“Kurusu-kun had a little talk with me,” he told her courtly and watched her frown deepen.
“Kurusu Akira? I didn't know you two knew each other.”
“We're... friends,” Goro replied, the word still feeling heavy and foreign on his tongue.
Nijiima shifted uncomfortably. “I see. So this is about...”
“Your little blackmail ploy, yes.” Goro was trying his hardest to keep his voice as pleasant as possible. “Are you aware that I was the one helping Kitagawa-kun with his lawsuit? Nothing more shady going on than someone knowing how to play the system, I assure you.”
“I didn't know you were involved with that,” she admitted after a few seconds of silence.
“Well, there's plenty of things you don't know,” Goro replied, unable to fully ban the righteous condescension from his tone. “This Yakuza business is dangerous and the police are on it. You should keep your nose out of things it doesn't belong in.”
“What's it to you?” she asked coolly.
“Kurusu is very concerned that you might do something stupid.”
“Kurusu should mind his own business – wasn't that the advice you were just trying to give me, Akechi-kun?” she asked sweetly.
Something inside Goro snapped.
The “Kill them with kindness” approach was his thing.
“Fine. Let's cut the crap,” he told her dully, all pretence falling off him as the Detective Prince made space for the real Akechi Goro.
He could see from her eyes widening that he had hit his mark.
“You don't like me. I don't like you. I'm only here because Akira asked – I don't want to talk to you and keep your bothersome ass out of serious trouble, but here I am, so you're going to have to deal with it now. What is this about?”
“I didn't know he had you this whipped,” Niijima replied with a sharp smirk, regaining her composure surprisingly fast.
“No one has me 'whipped',” Goro hissed. “Are you going to answer my question now? What is this? I'd be nonsensical to claim you were stupid, yet here you are, getting caught up in Yakuza-business. Do you have a death wish?”
“Oh, he has you whipped,” she grinned, making his blood boil. “And it's very simple – the principal asked me to look into this. I am student council president, after all.”
She said it so proudly, like the title was worth anything. Like she was anything but a handy little puppet for Kobayakawa to draw the strings on. Like she was anything but teacher's convenient dump for all their responsibilities.
Goro tried to swallow down the gross taste her words left on his tongue and felt it settle in his throat instead.
He could understand it, to a degree – Had he not tried to gain every title achievable, had poured his everything into every area of his life to prove himself, had tried so hard to become part of a society that just didn't want him, rejected him, no matter how well-behaved and perfect he was?
He was student council president for his own school, after all.
“Your principal is an idiot, then. One willing to put his student's lives at risk, even. That's the man you wish to support with your skills?”
Kobayakawa had to be under a lot of stress from Shido, to grasp to straws so desperately – Shido was the only reason he had gotten his position to begin with. He'd always been incompetent to the bone.
Goro could only assume he wanted to make an example out of Niijima – Mess with Kaneshiro and this was what happened, even to good little council presidents. Hm.
Well, Shido did talk about disposing of him constantly. Goro had done his best to delay the inevitable but all in all, he seemed to be just another corrupt coward undeserving of his mercy.
Goro realised, with a jab, that he felt sorry for Niijima.
Urgh.
Gross.
Meanwhile, her gaze had darkened.
“You think I can't do it. Just like the rest of them. You think-”
“I think you're a teenager getting roped into something far beyond any teenager's capabilities by a man who's too cowardly to face the danger itself. A man who desperately wants to seem like he's doing something and wants you off his case at the same time. You're being used.”
“You think I don't know that?” she hissed. “I know that! And I'm tired of it, I am! But my sister – she won't even look at me. I'm nothing more than a nuisance. She tells me I eat her food and spend her money, I'm nothing but an inconvenience to her and then there's you – God, I'm so sick of you. Over-achiever Akechi Goro, solves every case. 'Why can't you just be more like him, Makoto? I'm not coming home for dinner, Makoto, I'll be eating out with Akechi-kun, the golden brilliant boy!' “
Goro blinked, feeling like something very heavy had laid on his chest the longer she ranted, eyes ablaze and hands curled into fists.
“She didn't say that,” he finally brought out. “She didn't-”
“No, but she might as well,” she spat at him. “She already told me I was useless to her.”
“She... what...”
Niijima was breathing heavily now, turning away from him and Goro let her be for a while, pretty sure that he didn't know how to deal with a crying Niijima – Or anyone crying, for that matter.
Instead, he tried to calm his whirling thoughts. He had known, of course, that Sae was becoming... a problem. She'd changed, lately, a lot. Her moods had gotten worse, her determination to prove herself had led to more and more methods he couldn't approve of. He knew, of course, that this was intentional – Shido and CIU director were adding more and more pressure onto her, would enjoy watching her break and shatter and finally be replaced with someone from Shido's inner circle. Someone, who wouldn't ask pesky questions about the mental shutdowns and psychotic breaks.
Someone complacent.
“Once we pushed her enough to have one of those palace things,” Shido had told him in a bored voice, barely looking up from his paperwork, “you'll be able to deal with her, isn't that so?”
Fuck.
He'd been worried about her, the last few months. He hadn't bothered to be worried about her sister, as well, hadn't even wasted a single thought on her but...
Aw, fuck it.
“You're not useless,” he spoke into the quiet of the room. “She's under a lot of pressure and she's saying things she doesn't mean.”
“She did mean it,” came the prompt reply. “I know she did. It's right – I mean, I am-”
“You are not useless,” he spat back. “And it's not your responsibility to be of use – She's supposed to take care of you. She's your guardian. She provides. You're a teenager. You're pouring so much into your studies, you bring home excellent grades, you devote your free time to everything she asks you to do – it wouldn't hurt her to acknowledge that, to acknowledge you, to realise what she has with you to... to...”
He had to force himself to stop, hands shaking as he clenched them into fists himself, realising he'd somewhere along the way forgotten who he was talking about.
Niijima turned around to him, tears finally drying from the shock openly visible on her face.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
Because I've been made to feel useless all my life.
But telling her this was too much – Goro thought he'd rather eat his own tongue than entrust something so personal to her.
So he shrugged instead.
“Akira has me whipped.”
The laugh she let out was shaky. The hand she raised to finally wipe away the wet of her eyes was trembling, but she smiled at him.
“I'm... I'm sorry. You were right, honestly and I was being very rude. I- I know I shouldn't mess with the Yakuza, of all things, I just... I wanted to show her so badly. I'm not even sure, now, if I wanted to prove myself or just finally make her understand what she's doing to me by being as destructive as possible. It's childish, isn't it?”
Goro shrugged uncomfortably. He wasn't good at comforting people he even liked.
(Not that a lot of people came to mind.)
“Maybe so,” he finally said. “But I can hardly blame you for it. You know what they say about glasshouses.”
“Oh please,” she laughed. “I can't imagine you ever being in the same situation.”
Well, Goro thought. At least he knew he was a good actor.
“You'd be surprised.”
He turned for the door, hand already on the handle when he turned around one last time, hesitating.
“You... might want to talk to Akira,” he finally said, sighing lightly. “I, for the life of me, can't figure out why he sent me for this conversation. He's so much better at this... this...” He waved his hand around, trying to find words. “He's better at making people feel like they're worth something,” he finally said.
And Niijima gave him a smile so soft, he felt like he probably needed a shower after this.
“You didn't do too bad yourself, Akechi.”
So that was that. It's not like they'd be friends after this or anything, but it went well, right?
“So you're friends now?” Akira asked, grinning as he moved his pawn in the exact way Goro had hoped he wouldn't.
“We are absolutely not,” he huffed, setting himself up for yet another overwhelming defeat. “She's... maybe more bearable than I had originally assumed. That's all. Did she talk to you?”
Akira nodded.
“Yeah. She won't go after Kaneshiro on her own. But we still need to come up with something to stop him. Some classmate of mine got roped in by him, you know? Now his life is pretty much ruined. We can't let this happen.”
They couldn't.
Goro swallowed.
Kill Kaneshiro and Shido would know it was him.
Give his name to the police and people would know it was him – and also do nothing because he was one of Shido's best sources of income and Shido as well as the Yakuza had far more control over the police than Akira even knew.
So what could they do?
“What if we sent an anonymous tip to someone?” Akira asked cautiously. “Sae Niijima maybe?”
Goro's eyes flickered up from the board, fixating him.
“Out of the question.”
“What?” he asked, looking stunned. “Why? Won't she be able to do something?”
Of course she would be. She could easily get the gears rolling that needed to be set in motion. She would make sure this would not be overlooked by the people who were desperately trying to overlook it.
But this would also paint a direct target on her back. And for Goro, who had checked the navigation app just yesterday to find that she had finally spawned a palace... Well. He, for once, really didn't want to be the one to hit this particular target.
“It just is. I mean it, Joker. Don't.”
He promised him, wide-eyed, and then he beat him in chess. And the next time Goro went to work at the office, Sae greeted him with a bundle of paperwork he was going to have to take care of, because she was too busy with the Kaneshiro case she had finally made progress on.
So Goro sat alone in his office, with his phone turned off, suppressing the urge to scream, to smash it against the wall, to call Akira, to text Akira, to delete him from his contacts and his life, to tear through the papers and bury himself in a sea of their leftovers.
He had asked for just one thing. One thing.
Never would he have thought Akira was just the same as anyone else, taking, taking, taking from him until he was left with nothing and then stabbing him in the back.
He worked extra hours the entire week to avoid both Shido and Akira, but as usual, life didn't play by the rules Goro would love it to play to.
Shido had enough of being postponed after day three and ordered him to “make time” for him, so Goro had no choice but to see him and do as much damage control as possible.
“I want to know where she got the name from,” Shido barked. “This woman is getting on my nerves. Any progress with a palace yet?”
“I'm afraid not, sir,” Goro swiftly lied, glad he had so much practice in it. “It's only a matter of time, though,” he added to appease him. “The pressure on her is only increasing now.”
“Good, good,” he muttered, pacing up and down his tiny office, hands behind his back. Goro busied himself fantasising about stabbing him in the back with his metaverse claws and gutting him, slowly, painfully, tearing bowel for bowel out of his twitching, bleeding body.
It helped a little.
“Did she tell you anything?” he finally asked. “About who gave her the name?”
Goro hesitated, his name already on his tongue. What would Shido do when he learned about Akira? Would he connect him to the boy who had stopped him from raping a woman? A boy whose life he had ruined before simply walking away, never looking back? Hardly. Would he order him to kill him – He couldn't imagine Akira having a palace, so that was probably out of the question. Would he send the Cleaner? Maybe a bit much. He'd definitely keep an eye on him, though. He'd want to know how he knew. Might stumble over their friendship. Might stumble over Goro's hand in all the income he was currently losing, not just from Kaneshiro, but Madarame as well.
No, best not.
(And no matter how betrayed he felt... he didn't want to rat out Akira. He didn't. Why didn't he? Where was the justice in that?)
“An anonymous tip,” Goro finally said. “I could not trace it back.”
“Urgh.” Shido let himself fall back onto the chair behind his desk, annoyed. “Well, see that you keep an eye on this situation. We cannot afford losing more allies like this. Someone seems to come after them one by one and if I don't find out who's behind this, I'm going to have to assume we have a mole in our midst. You understand me?”
His eyes were sharp as they fixated Goro.
“Yes, sir, I understand perfectly.”
He did, the message was perfectly clear: Prove your continued worth to me or I'm going to decide you're a traitor. A problem he had never had before meeting Akira. A suspicion that had never ever come up.
He bowed courtly before making his leave – Another waste of his time, having to face his greedy, disgusting father and his tantrums, rather than... rather than... work.
(Rather than sitting in Leblanc with Akira, Ann and Ryuji and sometimes even Yusuke, laughing and joking and feeling at home or being with Akira, alone, in Jazz Jin or Penguin Sniper, having more fun than he had his entire life, rather than being with his friends, who liked him and appreciated him the way he was, not being pushed around by someone who had already rejected him before he was even born.)
At home, Goro ignored all his messages and calls by Akira, fell into bed and wished he had never found out what it was like to have friends, to care, to have his heart ripped out from a place he had not known still held it.
That morning, Goro awoke with the indescribable urge to shoot Joker in the head.
It wasn't just the dream – though he still saw it in front of him, Joker's unsettling calm eyes, blood running down his forehead, his head smacking against the table. It was the waking up rock-hard from it, it was the horror and arousal mixing into one and him jerking off to the thought of pressing that trigger, of finally winning, of finally beating his rival, finally paying him back for all the anguish he had caused him.
And when he had cleaned himself up, had gotten rid of the proof, sanity kicked in and he was left with guilt and confusion. There were things he felt for Akira that didn't make sense – things living somewhere deep inside of him that he clearly was unaware of, until they came to the surface like they had always been there, only leaving him wondering when they went again.
He wanted to see him smashed on the ground beneath his boot, but he also wanted him in his arms, safe from the world that had branded him for doing the right thing.
He wanted to prove himself to him so badly – show him and his smug grin that he wouldn't, couldn't be beneath him, that they were equals, that he was worthy, but at the same time, whenever he looked into his face, he knew that he didn't need to, that Akira long knew.
Nothing made sense. Nothing. Made. Sense. And now he had betrayed him, had brought the closest Goro had to a family into direct danger and Goro would have to be the one to pull the trigger, sooner or later, to end Niijima Sae's life and he had been alright, he had been alright with walking over bodies but now he wasn't anymore and that scared him more than anything else.
Not Sae's body. Never hers.
His door rang and Goro flinched for a moment, unused to the sound.
He knew who this was before he even opened. Hesitated for barely a second, then opened it either way.
The only times his life seemed to make perfect sense was when Akira was around. So he would let him in and he'd look at those grey eyes and he'd decide whether or not he wanted to kiss or kill him.
“Hey. It's me,” Akira unnecessarily greeted him as he pushed open his apartment door just a nudge, his head peeking in, as if unwilling to intrude while intruding.
“Yes, I can see that. Come in before the neighbours see you acting like a burglar, will you?”
“Oh sure. Sorry.”
Akira squeezed himself in through the gap and pushed the door closed behind him.
Like a cat, Goro's brain unhelpfully provided.
Great, he told his brain. But I hate cats.
Yeah? his brain asked back. Why?
Because pancakes, Goro replied, then frowned.
“So uhm...” Akira interrupted his impending insanity with a shuffle of his foot. “I wanted to talk if that's okay.”
Goro didn't ask him how he knew his address – He had gotten so used to Akira just knowing things he wasn't supposed to.
He just led him into his living room wordlessly and fell down on one side of the sofa, leaving enough space for Akira to sit down on the other.
The idiot turned to him immediately – Goro turned to the wall.
It had been a stupid idea, all things considered. He'd always known looking into these eyes would only hold one answer for him, one he wasn't willing to give at this moment.
(Kiss, kiss, kiss!)
“I know you're mad at me,” Akira told him, like he was a genius for it, like it was so difficult to figure out.
Goro snorted towards his wall. Somehow, he never noticed how bland it looked compared to Leblanc. Uncomfortable and devoid of any life. A while slate. Like he didn't even live here. Like he was just a ghost.
Then again, he was never meant to be a permanent thing – just a blip that would turn itself into a tidal wave and take Shido with it while it crashed, crashed, crashed on through.
Akira was better off without him.
“It wasn't me, Goro. I swear to you, it wasn't me. Makoto told her.”
“And you told Makoto,” Goro told his wall, feeling just as dull as it was.
“No. I told Ann and Ryuji – They were the ones who told her. We made that plan to get to the name together, remember? So I told them. I didn't think they'd tell Makoto, but you know how they are – they want to help. They didn't think about it being a danger for Sae.”
Goro didn't say anything. The wall didn't say anything either, just stared back at him silently.
“I'm sorry,” Akira said, clear desperation in his voice. “I really am. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. Just please. Please don't shut me out.”
Am I shutting him out? he asked the wall.
The wall didn't reply.
Neither did Goro.
He heard Akira clear his throat and when he spoke again, his voice was wavering.
“Can I tell you a secret? Something I've never told anyone?” he asked.
Was he... crying? For the first time, a bit of hesitation filled Goro, a bit of warmth curled in his stomach, driving away the cold. He felt the urge to turn around but felt like he couldn't now and waited instead.
He really wanted to know his secret – he'd never been told a single secret in his life and he thought Akira's were probably more interesting than most. Maybe any.
Akira didn't say anything, apparently waiting for his okay. Goro imagined himself telling his secrets to someone facing the wall, someone cold, but the image that came to him was he, facing Akira in a dirty, run-down laundromat, spilling all his secrets to cover up the most important one and watching his fond smile never waver.
Goro turned around and looked into reddened grey eyes, swallowing down the urge to kiss the tears away like a hard to swallow pill.
“Well?” he asked, trying to keep his tone cool and failing spectacularly.
The corners of Akira's lips twitched.
“I really want him dead,” he finally said.
Goro... felt his heart speed up like he was running a marathon, felt it betray him and send heat spreading through his body with every little pump, melting all the ice.
“What? Who?”
“Shido. I want him to die.”
“Oh.”
For a moment, no one said anything anymore, they just looked at each other. Akira had his lips pinched together and his chin raised, watching him with quiet determination, as if challenging him to say something.
Goro couldn't imagine ever turning down a challenge given to him by Joker.
“Yeah,” he finally said, lips numb and tingling. “Me too. But I want to be the one to do it.”
It was wrong, how easy it was to say. How safe it felt to admit.
The smirk on Joker's face made it feel so right, though.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “I want you to be the one to do it, too.”
What was he supposed to say to that? “Great, thanks? Glad we agree?” There were words on his tongue, complicated words, words that held a lot of weight and felt pointless to give to someone who already knew. Somehow already knew.
When had he started to accept that Kurusu Akira knew every little corner of his mind, the darkest, most horrible pits? Had he ever not? It was like part of his brain had just been okay with that.
God, what was happening to him?
“He's my father,” he finally said and yes, it felt pointless, but it still felt good to say. And it felt good to watch Akira back away slightly, eyes wide in shock as he looked at him. Maybe this was the first time he'd ever truly seen Akira taken aback.
It was ridiculously satisfying.
Goro imagined that look as he held to a gun to his head and could almost get hard again.
What was wrong with him?
He waited quietly, really wanting to know what Akira had to say to that.
“I... I'm sorry,” was what he finally seemed to settle for after a while of carefully thinking it through. “That must suck, having him as a father.”
“Yeah,” Goro told him. “But one day I'll kill him and that'll be lovely.”
“Can I help?” Akira asked softly. “Please?”
Goro looked at him now, really looked at him. The quiet despair on his face was delicious and it felt familiar, it felt like losing him and like dying and like never wanting to see it again while simultaneously not getting enough of it.
“You really didn't tell her?” he asked even though he knew the answer and Akira shook his head.
“I really didn't. I promised you. And I...” His voice choked a little when he spoke next. “I'll always keep my promises to you. No matter what.”
Goro adjusted his right glove nervously, suddenly feeling as if his hand was naked and Akira's gaze got drawn to it, a little crooked sad smile gracing his lips.
“I believe you,” Goro told him, because somehow despite him never having had any reason to believe in anyone before, he did.